Japan Update Sunday 28th

We went to the local park - Nagai park which has a couple of large stadiums and was a bit grey because it is winter, apparently it is usually very colourful. Unfortunately the garden was closed because it was Sunday. Loads of people jog here and everyone cycles - young and old - rich and poor - the cyclist is king. The roads are totally cyclist friendly. There are no raised curbs at junctions and people can cycle pretty much anywhere including on the pavements. That is well cool because people want to use their bike all the time. Kids go to school on their bikes with their parents and the city seems almost surreal with so few cars driving around. English cities could do the same with a bit of willing.

Japan - First Impressions

I arrived in Japan this morning at 10:30 having experienced a very short Boxing day (about 16 Hours) and have travelled from Kansai airport to my friends' house in Osaka. My first impressions are:

1. The country is very neat. Even the slums look tidy and the roads are very well kept


2. There are lots of English signs and people who speak English so travelling around on these major routes was pretty easy


3. All of their electricity is carried on overhead wires which make the towns look very messy. They do it because of the earthquakes but I don't know whether they mean that cables would break in earthquakes or that the overhead wires are easier to fix.


4. Lots of the nicer homes have Typhoon windows (steel roller shutters) which are designed to withstand the massive beating they can experience in the storms.


5. You are not allowed to park a car on a public road overnight, you must have access to private parking space.

Pics to follow.

Project Management Debacle

There is a story today about the Department of Transport royally screwing up a project to save the taxpayer money. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7784868.stm has the details but in theory the scheme would save £57M (although it doesn't say over what time-frame). In the end, the scheme cost more than double, saved only half of the prospective amount and cost the taxpayer some £81M instead. To say that this is complete incompetence is too harsh to others who have made less ridiculous cock-ups in the past over large scale projects. What annoys me the most is that the lessons are never learned.

For instance, look at the passport computer system, the 2012 Olympics, the Millenium dome, the new Air Traffic Control system. All of them varying degrees of overspend. Of course once the projects start going awry, there is generally no option except to keep spending until completion, you can hardly write-off £50M and end up with nothing can you? I'm sure many articles have stressed the risk of large projects, the importance of breaking projects down into conceivable and manageable sub-projects etc but although this must be standard knowledge, the mistakes continue.

I want to propose something more radical for large scale projects. A large projects requirement specification that would be mandatory for the public sector and advisable or perhaps mandatory for the private sector too (their mistakes can impact the public after all). This requirement would end the days of "the timescales were too unrealistic" and "the budget was far too low". It would require such things as project managers being part of some parent organisation which demonstrates their ability and accountability. It could require that timescales be stated as minimum realistic and likely overrun. It would require that if a cost-saving exercise, costs be produced for the range of outcomes so that it is not given the go-ahead if only the best-case scenario is worth it (since projects rarely end up with the best-case outcome). If it is a money saving scheme then the requirement could say that permission would only be granted if the saving is at least X% of the cost over 75% of the outcomes etc. It could require that a Project manager signs his authority to say that the timescales are achieveable and if they are tight that money exists to ensure they do not slip.

Of course, this is a great idea and of course, it would never be implemented, partly because it is far too simple and partly because people would never agree what numbers would be appropriate for the spec. However, I personally think there are issues much deeper that would need to be addressed. We have a "cheapest price/shortest time" mentality for the most part and we don't trust people to give us honest prices for work. We therefore beat down their margins until they cannot afford to shoulder any contingency if problems arise. We can't accept that projects need to be planned well and might take longer overall but with a saving in cost and a higher confidence in the quality of the outcome. We cannot always plan things so that if the project must be shelved, that we might have at least gained some benefit in the part of the project that has been finished.

The Century of Self

The BBC had a series a few months back called the century of self. I have started watching it on download and have seen 2 of the 4 episodes which so far has covered the turn of the century up until the start of the 1960s. It talks about Public Relations (meaning that a consumer is sold something they want rather than need) and then the effect of psycho-analysis on many areas of life including government trying to repress people's 'irrational' hidden feelings in order to prevent terrible events like Nazi Germany.

One of the most interesting points that has been made is that consumerism is a form of control exerted over the population. By telling people that they want your products, you provide an anaesthetic to life in general. The people feel like their needs are being met so they stay quiet and don't interfere with society (in a negative way). It was seen as essential to democracy although several people pointed out that the opposite is true and it is a form of control to maintain an authoritarian state - even if it has a democratic form. Any distractions the governments of a country can produce help to keep the masses under control.

I then saw today that Sony are releasing Playstation Home, an online multi-player virtual reality where you can create an avatar for yourself (a graphical 3d person) and then interact with other people who are controlled by real people somewhere in the world. Of course this is pure fantasy. How many people who are overweight/underweight or unattractive will simply produce an avatar looking like Tom Cruise or Penelope Cruz and live out a lie online to avoid their real life. How sad it is that the businesses are actively promoting something that like the BBC documentary makes people avoid real issues in life which are 1) dealing with problems you have and 2) doing something positive for others. Consumerism like online role-playing games do neither.

As a Christian, I think that the only way to achieve either to any degree is by letting Jesus deal with your issues either once or ongoing depending on the issue and then for a positive affect, telling others that God wants to help them too. Of course being a Christian is not allowed anymore!!! It is wrong to tell people that Jesus is the only way to get genuine contentment but if what He said in the Bible is true then He is the only way to 100% peace in life. He is the Son of God and told us that He was the only way to God so there isn't really much room for debate there. It often makes me chuckle when a mere human being says that Jesus was wrong or mis-quoted, how terribly unqualified compared to God are we to have any strong opinions! As someone said in a book I read recently, if there is any doubt as to whether something is what we think or what God says, it is much safer to go with God's point of view :)

More data security and ineptitude

Somebody was telling me about the changes that were made on London Underground after the Kings Cross fire which killed 31 people in 1987. Very many changes were made and in total they all but removed the chance of a serious fire incident in sub-surface stations. One of them that interested me was about the fire systems. Back in the day, there were fire systems but they had to be started by a person. What if the person was absent or forgot or was unavailable for whatever reason? Obviously the system wouldn't operate. The Fennell report decided that a fire system can not rely on somebody to start it but should be automatic with the ability to override it if it was not required to go off. This simple but very perceptive statement identified the fact that people are not perfect, even the most able of us. It realised that however much people are trained, they sometimes choose to ignore training or they simply forget. The Kings Cross fire reminded us of that to fatal consequences.

How does this relate to data security? Well, losing thousands of people's data does not usually kill anybody but it would be wrong to say that it is unimportant, at the same time, if somebody loses data, are they realistically going to be put in prison or fined a massive amount. The simple reality is that so many people are working with data and probably either losing it or leaving it unsecured on a day to day basis that we cannot rely on training and processes and guidelines alone for our security. We must make the system robust enough so that security cannot be side-stepped or at least not without a very specific choice to do so which could then be punishable by more strict sanctions. It wouldn't take much (and has possibly already been done) to work out all of the places where data security is an issue and then enforce changes. Examples include mandatory locking screen savers at a desk, mandatory encryption on laptop hard-disks and removable drives. Locking of data so that it cannot be arbitrarily moved to pen drives etc (this can be hard but it is doable) and all of these done in a way that cannot be bypassed. You would then need a robust auditing system so that things done 'outside of the box' are recorded.

The biggest problem with this is really application support. When many people write web sites or databases, particularly for internal use, it is time-consuming and complex to lock data and pages down, to understand the myriad of security levels and protocols to find out what can be circumvented and what cannot. If the tools provided this out of the box (and there are some things along these lines like the owasp esapi) then our job would be much easier. Even on a basic level, the current voices in the media don't seem to realise that a password protected windows hard disk can be read directly from another operating system that does not choose to use the windows security system. If this is really the level we are at then government should bin any more data projects until people learn what they are doing. People might not die but it can be very, very annoying!

How to save car fuel

In these days of credit crunch and high fuel prices, i thought you might like some advice on how to save petrol. I will outline some points below and why they are important. It is hard to give exact facts and figures so just do the things you can and don't worry about the things you can't.

1. Do not take the car out on lots of short journeys - walk or cycle if you can. When you brake, the heat generated in the brakes comes from the moving energy of your car which in turn came from the fuel. Lots of braking which is common in short journeys is very inefficient.


2. Do not leave the car ages to warm up on cold mornings. As long as you keep your revs low (< 2000), you are not saving the engine from any more wear and tear than if it is left idling in the cold. Let it run for perhaps a minute but any more is wasting fuel.


3. Avoid constant accelerating and braking. Again, braking heat is wasted fuel. If you are on an A road and there is traffic, speeding up to 65 or 70 in a gap will undoubtably require you to brake as you approach the next lump of traffic, try and even out your speed so you can keep it constant.


4. Do not use excessive accelerator pedal going up hills. You understandably use more fuel going up hill and you cannot get all of this back by rolling down the other side so keep your gas pedal steady and allow your vehicle to slow by 5 or 10mph going up a hill, it will not add significant time to your journey but watch your mpg stay up.


5. Keep your car in good condition and serviced regularly. You can lose over a third of your car's potential efficiency by using dirty oil and filters as well as fuel injection systems. Poorly tuned fuel systems can inject too much fuel for the amount of power the engine can actually produce.


6. Avoid excessive acceleration. As you accelerate, the fuel system is usually pouring loads of fuel into the engine and most of this during acceleration remains unburned and wasted. Accelerating at a reasonable level reduces the amount wasted.


7. Keep your top speed down on the motorway. The faster you go, the more wind drag your car has to counter and this all costs fuel. If you have an mpg meter, compare the fuel used at 60 to that at 70 and think what that might mean for 80 or 90mph.


8. Try and read the road ahead. If you only have 1/4 mile before a roundabout you gain little or no time and lose fuel by speeding up excessively only to brake again. Also, on many A roads, you will not be able to go far at 60mph before having to slow to turn off or to avoid hitting the slower guy in front. A little thought and you might not need to go right up to the speed limit.


9. Keep your revs below 2000 in normal mode but make sure they are high enough for the gradient you are driving. Trying to maintain speed on a hill at 1000rpm will probably use more fuel than selecting a lower gear and being closer to 2000rpm since if the car has little power at 1000rpm (which it often doesn't) you might be wasting fuel trying to generate the power you need for your speed.


10. Every now and then, take your car revs up nice and high to make sure the fuel system stays clean. Running constantly at low revs can cause the system to gunge up with no perssure to clean the gunge out again.

Why philosophy should be a mandatory subject

Philosophy for most people conjures images of either very clever or very boring people talking about riddles or extremely complex problems that most of us neither know or care about but it is so much more when taught properly. It is traditionally separated into 5 disciplines but the one I am most interested in is logic although there might be some crossover into ethics depending on the logic.

For instance, should we kill healthy people to harvest their organs for sick people? 1 Person could help save 5 or more people! Many people, I would expect, would simply be disgusted by the idea but why? If people thought about it and analysed it, something that philosophy teaches, we might not actually know why we would be disgusted by the idea. Why do people bully each other, why do people get wound up, are some people born to be stupid? All of these might be interesting questions for children to debate at school and it might help them to avoid unhelpful situations.

The reason I was reminded of philosophy and why its application is important is looking at the wind power debate (realistically wind power vs nuclear power). I expect strong views on either side. 'Green' people find the idea of dirty fuel like uranium to be outrageous, nuclear people think that wind power is unworkable. The problem I have is that logic seems to be put to one side so people can have an argument based on their ethics rather than the practical reality of life. Some systems can go ahead without 100% certaintly, knowing that we can iron out difficulties on the way. For instance, we might think that a power station that needs to supply 5Gw on paper can only actually output 4.9Gw which leads to a shortfall but which in reality will probably never happen and by which time we can either improce the efficiency of the station or add another generator etc. Some systems, however, pass or fail on just one problem. If the UK wants 10% of its electricity from wind power then that 10% needs to be available all the time. Even 1 or 2 minutes of outage, although not a problem on paper (99.9% sounds good), the reality is that power cuts would have to be applied or the voltage would drop since people at work are not going to switch off their computers when a drop in the wind is detected. Some research guy at the Met centre recently said that during the winter, it is known that the wind can lull for sometimes a few days across most of Europe and that is now a BIG problem at a time when people are using the most energy. No-one will export to us because they will need their own power then.

I then wonder how much better our government decisions would be if philosophy was taught as a mandatory subject at school.

Going to church is a pain?

We were talking once at church about which services people attend and why. Some of the obvious things were parents with young children go to the morning services 1) because they are up early and 2) because there are activities organised for them. Others said they went to the 5pm service because lots of the other young people went there so they could catch up with each other. Some people however were of the opinion that they went to the first service in the morning so that the rest of the day was theirs. This is understandable. People do not want to go to a morning and evening service which basically uses up their whole Sunday when they have worked all week or otherwise go to a 5pm service that means they don't get a whole day to do something, especially if they want a lie-in the morning.

I then thought however that this state of mind was slightly disturbing. Church was seen as a burden rather than a blessing, something to try and fit in with our 'normal' life, something that didn't get us excited and therefore pushed to the top of our priority list but something to be tolerated, to prove how good a Christian we are. This is most sad. The early church seemed to be full of meaning, power, love, practical service to each other. I guess the root problem is that for most people and most churches, this is no longer the case.

Personally I think this is a 2-sided problem. On the one hand, many leaders in many churches are either not spritual enough to even know how God wants them to run their churches or otherwise spiritual people are still bound by traditions and order and control and programmes rather than being spirit led and fluid in their approach. When was the last time your church broke with its usual format? The other side however is that it is hard to be like that when the members of the church are not supporting the ministries of the church. While people are simply sitting through services and not being part of youth work, or womans work, or mens work, or prayer ministry or healing minstry etc, the leadership can only do so much.

The solution in my own opinion is simple yet costly. Leadership have to remove the scaffolding or saefty net from the way the church is run and they need to insist on members being involved in ministries. There can be no excuse. I can't see any way for somebody to be a Christian or church member and not be involved in at least one minstry even if it is only practical rather than spiritual. From the members point of view, we all need to insist on being involved, even if the leadership are not very good at delegating, we need to insist on our God given right and expectation to be part of the body of Christ and not, as in some cases, just an annoying rash getting in the way of the leadership. I don't think it can be enacted from just one side and that is why communication is required. if people don't like it, they can leave - hopefully they will find somewhere else they like - but the people who remain will be something useful and powerful in the Kingdom of God.

Music Vid

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=uhqeGyYXuJ0

My good buddy and singer songwriter Jeff Martinez. We miss you dude.

Trouble-shooting your Central Heating System

A few people in recent years have asked me to look at their Central Heating systems because they didn't work or didn't work properly. The only reason I know about them is that I have read a few books and done a fair amount of plumbing to try things out. The basics are very straight-forward and there is no reason why you shouldn't troubleshoot and fix your own systems.
Firstly there is the question of whether the system has ever worked properly i.e. was it installed and commissioned properly or not. If it has worked and no longer does then assuming you haven't got anything fancy, either the boiler, the pump or the 2/3 port valves have broken or the system has become sludged up. If the system has never worked properly or you are unsure then you can carry out a few basic checks to narrow down what is wrong.
1) Do you know how the controller works? Are you definitely 'demanding' heat from the boiler?
2) Make sure the room thermostat is set high enough (if you have one, it is usually on the wall in the hallway or living room). The thermostat only affects the heating, not the hot water.
3) If you have a hot water cylinder (or copper cylinder) then make sure that the hot water thermostat on the side of the tank is set to about 70 degrees.
4) If you are not getting hot water or heating, ensure firstly that the boiler is firing up and getting warm. At the same time, check the two pipes connected to the boiler (the two largest on a combi) to see whether hot water is leaving the boiler. If the boiler is not firing up at all then either the controller/circuitry is broken or the boiler is faulty. Perhaps it has no gas or the control board is broken.
5) If the boiler is firing up (the fan goes on an it makes a bit of noise) but no hot water is leaving it then the pump is probably broken or the system has a blockage. Bear in mind that the water will take up to a few minutes to heat up to a noticeable temperature. If you have a combi boiler then the pump is built-in whereas if you have an indirect system with hot water cylinder, the pump is usually either next to the boiler, or next to the hot water cylinder. You can tell if they are working because they vibrate slightly when operating.
6) If the pump is turning but no hot water (or not much hot water) is leaving the boiler then the system might be blocked either because of sludge or possibly because all of the radiators are turned off and there is no bypass circuit or valve to let the water circulate. You can obviously test this out by ensuring that at least one radiator is fully opened on both sides and see whether this causes the water coming out of the boiler and that one radiator to heat up. If this is OK now, you will need to balance the radiators.
7) If only the hot water OR the heating on an indirect system is working (the system with the hot water cylinder) then the 2 port or 3 port valves might be jammed which can happen after a number of years. These are smallish silver boxes, usually next to the hot water cylinder and you can try these out by moving the manual lever on them and testing which pipes next to it get hot. One of the outputs will connect to the hot water cylinder and the other will feed all the radiators.
8) If only some of your radiators ever get properly hot then either the boiler is not substantial enough to feed all the radiators or the system is not balanced properly (also there could be a blockage somewhere but you can find that out after attempting to balance the system).
9) Firstly, once your few radiators have got hot, carefully touch the pipes leaving and coming back into the boiler. If some of your radiators are opened too much then they will be stealing too much hot water and the boiler return temperature will feel almost as hot as the feed (or pretty close) on a properly balanced system, the feed is usually too hot to touch and the return can be touched for a second or so. If the return temperature feels low but only a few radiators are hot then it is likely that either there is a blockage, the cold radiators are turned down too far or are off, or the boiler simply cannot provide enough heat for the radiators.
10) If the system has worked before then the boiler should be the right size in which case you might want to find if the cold radiators are turned down (there are two valves, the one you normally use to adjust it and the one that is set in position to try and balance up the system).
11) Balancing the system is easy in theory, you are trying to set the close-down valves (the ones you don't normally touch on the radiators) so that all the radiators heat up at the same rate. This means that the ones nearest the boiler feed will need to take less water than those further away to ensure the pressure at the end of the system is still high enough to move water. I usually start by opening up all the normal radiator valves (or thermostatic ones if fitted) to maximum and start up the central heating. I then have to dash around the house and turn down the ones that heat up quickly and if others are cold, I turn them up (all on the close-down valves remember). They don't have to be perfectly balanced, which you won't able to do anyway but a good check is that you should be able to feel a temperature difference between the input and output of every radiator like the boiler where the input is too hot to touch and the output not loads cooler but just about touchable. If you can get this across all the radiators by turning the close-down valves up or down then you should get a nice system!!!

What do we actually know?

Edward de Bono is a famous philosopher and thinker. He coined the phrase "lateral thinking" and teaches the importance of 'thinking about thinking'. I heard some feedback from one of his courses which taught a logical way of separating up a discussion into types of discussions so that the meeting could be fruitful rather than the usual messy argumentative style. He called these topics after coloured hats, one for creative thinking, one for negative aspects, one for positive, one for gut feel, one for information and one for the actual struture of the other coloured hats.
When we were talking about it, the person who was telling me this said that we should try a 'white hat' exercise which means we should list what we actually know about something, in this case Speed Cameras. Somebody said, "we know that they are there to raise money", at which point my friend questioned whether we actually knew that or whether we just thought that. After a similar process for other statements, we realised we only actually knew one thing about speed cameras and that is that they detect people travelling above a certain speed. I found this interesting because a lot of our discussions, arguments or techings are filled with statements that we either think are true or otherwise we are unsure but state them as fact anyway. This makes the discussion almost pointless. You can end up with two people arguing from two equally untrue positions rather than separating fact from opinion or belief.
A lot of what we say we know comes from what other people have told us and we have various reasons for believing it or otherwise but when we are talking about important issues, we shouldn't assume a trustworthy source is definitively correct and talk from that perspective.
I sometimes wonder whether discussions about evolution or Biblical interpretation etc would be much more beneficial if we only thought about what we actually know!

Under grace or under law

I was thinking the other day about being under grace and under law. Have you ever heard people say to Christians that you should forgive rather than punish because we are not under the law but under grace. The whole are is quite misused and mis-quoted by people.
1 Peter 2 tells us to submit ourselves to the authorities since they are delegated by God. We can therefore deduce that we come under the law of the land (whatever that is), so for instance, if we were caught speeding, we wouldn't be able to say that we shouldn't be punished because we are under grace not law!
We should really understand that law and grace for the Christian are related to our relationship with God rather than men. At work, our immediate boss might say that we are not allowed to take time off according to the rules whereas our managing director might allow us to because they are in charge of the rules. In the same way, God knows that we might be punished for breaking an incorrect human law even though with regard to our position before him, we might stand as a justified or innocent person.
So what impact should it have on our lives and our dealing with others? Personally if someone says they live under grace, i would expect them to be gracious. If they are not gracious then they prove that they do actually live under the law and should be treated as anybody else. Of course, in our times, some people want to treat others legalistically, with pride and arrogance, while being treated themselves graciously with forgiveness and humility!! Typical!

Eco-Friendly House DIY Style

I moved into a new house about 3 months ago. Well, it's not quite new, more like 70 years old but it's new to me. Because I have a bit of money, I wondered what to do in my new house. I came up with two things. I wanted it to be eco-friendly and I wanted it to be one of these automatic houses. More on the auto thing later but first eco-friendly is not a term I particularly like because it conjures up images of hippies and dirty people who would be more attractive if they washed and did their hair! I don't care for some of the so-called eco-lifestyle such as all sleeping in the same bed to share warmth and eating mouldy vegetables from the garden but there are good things about it too. Forget the fact that I would save umpteen tonnes of CO2 because I don't really know how much that is but saving CO2 also means saving money and this is also a good reason to make your house friendly to the environment.
Anyway, there are some things that make a big difference and some that don't. Search the web and there's loads of stuff about all things eco.
I want to share my investigations about insulation since it is the easiest thing to do to make your house use less fuel to heat it. Most people have heard about 'fibre-glass' loft insulation but there are some things you might not know. Currently the Building regulations recommend a minimum of 250mm of fibre-glass type loft insulation. That usually equates to 100mm between the ceiling joists and another wider strip of 150mm going across the first strips to add extra warmth and cover the gaps left between the joists and the 100mm insulation. Find out how much you have in your loft. If only a little bit is there, add some more or replace it. It might cost about £200 but it will not only feel warmer but will reduce your heating bill (as long as you have a thermostat in a useful place or thermostatic radiator valves (TRVs)). Whatever you do, don't open the windows to compensate for the extra warmth. Fit TRVs which will turn the radiator off when the room gets warm. If you are going to convert the loft into a usable room then keep 100 or 150mm insulation in the floor (to stop all the downstairs heat making its way to the loft) but you will also have to add insulation to the rafters. Unfortunately, the rafters are unlikely to be much taller than 100mm (4 inch) which is not deep enough for fibre-glass to provide good insulation so you will have to use rigid phenolic or similar insulation (often called Kingspan but available from other places too). This is quite expensive, about £35 for a 2.5 x 1.25 metre slab at 70mm but it is much higher spec for the size. It can be quite tricky to fit because every gap between the rafters will be a slightly different width and if there are gaps between the side of the slab and the rafters, then the insulation properties will be a bit rubbish. You need to measure each gap and I would suggest doing a section no longer than 1.25m/4 feet at a time otherwise it is a pain. You need to do something to ensure an air gap above the insulation to avoid damp problems unless you have breathable felt in which case you don't. Breathable felt is more like soft fabric whereas tar-type felts do not breathe.
Once your roof is insulated, if you picture the heat inside the house it will rise towards the top ceiling and then move sideways towards the walls. If the walls are not insulated then you could lose a great deal of heat, especially in the winter when prolonged cold causes the walls to absorb lots of heat from inside. If you have a cavity wall (most houses since the 1970s) then arrange to get it filled with insulation. Phone around for prices since some systems are very expensive. If it is already filled (most houses since the 90s) then you will not gain much by doing anything else but if, like me, your walls are solid brick or concrete then you would do well to insulate them. You can do it externally with a render type product (or rather somebody would do it for you) or you can go a much easier route and batten the inside of the walls with 2 x 1 inch wood and fill the gaps in between with 25mm solid insulation (about £10 per sheet) then cover the whole lot with plasterboard, screwed to the battens and tape/plaster it and hey presto - not bad wall insulation. If anything, it protects the cold surfaces of the walls directly touching your nice heated room and stealing all your heat. Since the inside surfaces of walls do not generally get really cold, the insulation will work just fine.
Now double-glazed windows are amazingly expensive, especially when you look at how quickly they are manufactured. For this reason, there is not much point in replacing your windows unless they are broken. It can take 25 or more years to re-coup the cost of the windows and they might not even last that long and that is compared with single glazing rather than existing double-glazing.
There is one reason why eco is good and that is because fuel costs go up and up all the time. In the future, suppose electricity costs a £1 per unit, having your lights on would cost enough let alone other utilities. A house that is very efficient will mean that you can afford to run it properly and comfortably. mmm Nice

Going Out to Save the World?

I think I might have talked about this before but I was reminded again recently that lots of Christians are going out to save the world. Strangely, although our intentions might be good, we are often, I think, guilty of bypassing God's will and thinking we know best - exactly as sinners do all the time!! As somebody once said (origin unknown) "The road to hell is paved with good intentions".
We only have one model for mission activity explicitly stated in the Bible in Acts 13:1-3: "In the church at Antioch there were prophets and teachers: Barnabas, Simeon called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manaen (who had been brought up with Herod the tetrarch) and Saul. While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, "Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them." So after they had fasted and prayed, they placed their hands on them and sent them off." (NIV)
It is clear from this model that 1) The people were sent FROM the church, not from their own ideas, 2) They were sent BY the Holy Spirit 3) The people who were sent had not decided to go anywhere before the Holy Spirit sent them. Whether the fasting was just a means to focus prayer or a requirement is for your own quiet times.
Sadly many people totally circumvent this. Without it being Spirit led, we are in danger of not hearing his voice but the voice of our own soulish intent to do good stuff for God. It should not be the case of deciding I want to go to such and such a country so I will approach the church and prayer for confirmation, it should be the normal and ongoing purpose of the church to prayer and be prepared for the Holy Spirit to send people. This avoids any egos being involved and also more importantly allows God to do things in his perfect timing rather than our rubbish timing.
Of course you could argue that just because this is the only model in scripture doesn't mean it is the only one to be used but as far as I can see, this is a good model and doesn't seem to have any shortcomings so why invent another model? Unless of course it is to suit a soulish intention!

DIY Help - Floor joists in the loft.

It still seems a common but sad fact that most UK houses are built with a mostly useless space in the loft. If you want to use it then you will often have to carry out some often extensive remedial work to either strengthen it for use as a room and/or making space in the roof woodwork for what you want. Ironically, newer houses are worse than older houses in this respect since the newer cheaper to build trussed roofs often leave little or no room to use without major alteration. When you alter these roofs, you end up having to revert the structure back to an 'old fashioned' style with purlins (the lateral large joists that stop the vertical joists from sagging).
Anyway, lots of people ask about strengthening floors in the loft and when this is requried/what size timber etc. The science is quite straight-forward. The joist performs 1 or two functions (usually) the first is to support the imposed load of the room: dead weight is the joists, floorboards, fixings etc and the imposed load is the stuff we have in our rooms, whether people, baths etc. The second function that joists often perform, especially in the loft, is to act as a tie beam for the roof or walls so that the weight of the roof does not cause the bottom of the pitch to spread out (imagine folding a piece of paper in half and putting it on the desk like a tent, what happens when you press down on the top of it?). In downstairs rooms the joists will also stop walls from collapsing inwards which might happen if you took out all your floors without supporting the walls first.
Your first question therefore is what weight or force do the joists have to take in order that they don't sag excessively causing ceilings to crack. This is largely dependent on whether the loft will be used as a room (in which case it is the same as all other rooms) or just for some light storage (in which case if you keep the storage above about 3 feet of the supporting wall in the centre then you would probably get away with the existing joists - the sagging after all is largest in the centre of the joist span.
An Architect or Structural Engineer will be able to tell you what the recommended joist sizes are and these are related to the quality of wood (commonly called C16 - weaker or C24 - stronger) and also to the span that the wood has to bridge. If the walls are 2 metres apart then the wood will sag less than if they are 4 metres apart. Unfortunately now these tables are not publically available and are held by an organisation called TRADA (of which architects etc are members). You might be able to get a friend to look for you or ask at your library. These tables might say for instance that a piece of 50 x 220 timber in C16 quality can span a distance of 4.64 metres (or more likely you will have measured 4.5 metres and found the cheapest and smallest size of timber that meets this span as 50 x 220mm). Nobody is checking mm but don't take any big risks because the few more pounds of larger wood will be less than repairing your plastered ceilings when they crack or fall.
If you are planning to fit the joists yourself then you need to be comfortable working out the loadings of the roof (unless you are simply adding in the joists without touching the existing structure). In most cases, in a purlin'd roof, you will need to move purlin supports to fit in your larger joists and if you are making a room, you will also need to remove the tie bars, remembering that the roof can spread or collapse (very quickly) if it is not supported properly! Often you will need to do a bit at a time, taking out a single support and building underneath, adding a new support before removing any more. Depending on how well the roof is currently supported (i.e. it might be bordering on the dangerous) you might have to put in several temporary supports before you remove anything. The roof is heavier than you might think!!!
The Building Control department in your local council can advise on all these matters and they will take you to court if your roof alterations hurt anybody!

Are you really a Christian?

I was listening to come guy preach about being a Christian and it made me think that there is a large gap between the non-Christian and the people we all know are fairly serious about their Christian life and ministry (not perfect people, just people who have God as number 1 priority most of the time!). These people are the middle ground, they are most probably going to heaven when they die, they have hopefully made some sort of commitment to God but their church participation is maybe limited, they have no spiritual ministry to speak of and their lifestyle is not a lot different from people who don't even know Jesus. I then wondered about these people and what the Bible would say about them and I got to the point of the cross and what it is supposed to do in the Christian.
I think there are probably loads of good books about it but I guess we have to be clear on a few definitions before we start. SALVATION is new life in Christ, experienced now, being saved from the world with its temptations. ETERNAL LIFE starts now and is related to the fact that we will not experience the second death. MINISTRY is what we do in God's work and can consist of various elements of the gifts in 1 Corinthians 12:27-29 and perhaps other related things.
I have come to the opinion that baptism is required for salvation, since Jesus said that unless somebody was born of the water and the spirit, they cannot enter the kingdom of God - what is the kingdom? Jesus said it was near and 'at hand' meaning the kingdom is for now. We would presumably enter the kingdom of God after we die regardless but to enter it now requires baptism of water and the spirit. In Acts we read that some followers were baptised in water but had not received the spirit so really we need to assume that we need to be prayed for to receive the spirit after we believe and are baptised.
Does that mean that people who are not baptised cannot have a spiritual ministry? I can only say generally yes that is true from the scriptures although my experience is that possibly some people are given spiritual ministries without baptism. Of course, that is subjective and I don't know how spiritual these people actually are. I don't even know how spiritual I am!! These people, assuming they had made a decision to accept Jesus, would have eternal life since this is God's gift rather than something we earn but it does seem dangerous to separate eternal life from salvation.
It seems in the Bible that baptism was not an issue for people like it seems to be today so maybe there was not a lot of teaching on it for that reason but I think as churches we should be putting baptism as an essential stepping stone to salvation - the people of Israel did not enter the promised land until after they passed through the waters of the Red Sea. I think a lot of these people in the middle are not baptised but what if they are? Some people are simply resistant to the Spirit of God for a prolonged period and I think that God does not contend with them forever and people can get to a point where they lack spirituality until such a time that they might beg God for forgiveness!
So how do we measure our Christian life as being somewhere in the meaningful band rather than the rubbish band? Well we can ask a results-based question - "How many people have you led to the Lord recently?", or maybe, "How many have to talked to about the person of Jesus?" and we can ask a comparative question - "what in your life is different from a non-Christian?" or perhaps, "In what way does the cross and the putting to death of self affect you?". For many people the answer is "None" and "Nothing". If we do not suffer for Christ and if the cross makes no impact on us then I would suggest we need to sort our life out - Oh and get baptised first!!!

Securing Data

I was just reading AGAIN about the loss of personal data by a government contractor who copied the data to a USB stick and then lost it. What I don't understand is the amount of lethargy the government and others have had when it comes to understanding 2 things: 1) Security sensitive data is NOT the same as data in normal unimportant documents like many email etc and should not be treated thus and 2) It will NEVER be enough to rely on people following procedures to ensure safety or security in ANY scenario, let alone one that involves people's actual identity.
Security sensitive data (SSD) is treated like most data. It is stored in a database, many of which can't distinguish between someones bank details and their favourite colour. It is then possible to back it up to file, move it between computers, send it to external drives and in some cases read it physically from the disk with no encryption to break. What is needed is simply a linking up of various software vendors to agree on a new type of data in software systems and databases. This data will always be encrypted and can be forceably restricted to, for instance, only be allowed to live on a nominated server(s) and not be allowed to be copied onto an external drive. This would be defined by the person who creates the data so that even if it is sent to an external contractor, the safeguards would not be able to be removed (although presumably if the contractor wanted to copy the data off the screen somehow into another document that would be possible). Sure it would be quite a bit of work but with the amount of investment in these large systems and the potential cost of information loss, you would think that the powers that be would have finished this by now. This also mitigates the second point which is for one reason or another, people don't always follow a process, either at all, or 100% correctly. Somebody is covering for someone else's job, a new starter doesn't understand the ropes, communication is misunderstood, costs are cut etc, etc. By securing the data itself in a way that is coherent across platforms, peope don't have to remember not to write it to CD because the data will not let them do it. With basic tools like mandatory encryption and password protection, even if the data is mislaid, the chances of it being useful are very slim.
Come on everyone - sort it out!!

Are you hungry for God?

We have these evenings at church called "Hungry for God". They are quite simple really, they are free-format, sometimes having longish times of prayer, often music and perhaps an impromptu talk or other. Ironically, these midweek meetings are probably much more like Sundays should be!! Maybe in a few years they will be.
I am really impressed by the way in which the leadership have broken the mold a bit and although not revolutionary, have displayed a willingness to think bigger than Sunday + Home Group which is the staple of many a church. I was however struck by the fact that I was going to a meeting because I was "hungry for God" and I wanted Him to do something to me or for me. Talk about warped. Surely, if I understand things, life should be God centric, not Me centric. He does what He wants to to whomever He wants to whenever He wants to - period. Even in the well-meaning I had missed the point. Part of the problem with these sorts of meetings is that we expect or want God to do something when we go there. Really, God wants us to be hungry for Him all the time and maybe or maybe not, one day God will do something for us, to us or with us. I, however, am not the person who decides that. I will not decide whether I want to be a missionary or a vicar or anything else because God has ordained a path for me for a short or long period.
They are talking about doing them on the same evening every week next term which I think is a shame because it makes things more formal and becomes another meeting for the people who are 'good' and go to all the meetings!

Church or Show Business?

I started thinking the other day about the way in which the church nowadays has become very music oriented with all the good and bad things that are related to it. I assume it mostly started with John Wimber in the 60s who as a professional musician wanted to write good songs and play good music in a church context and that seems to be a good aim.
This led me to thinking, how far have we taken this? Can we no longer have any church meeting without music? Do we do it because it is an easy low cost way to make people feel comfortable or happy or worshipful in meetings? If we subtract the music and an obligatory sermon we are left with roughly nothing. What about all the other parts of church life? Prophecy, encouragement, charity, evangelism? Spiritually speaking, music and teaching are easy to do. They have little real cost and can be faked easily enough if we are not actually annointed to do them. Other gifts that we conveniently push to the sidelines require us to engage with God or other people and these are much harder to do. In evangelism, although we can pretend to be annointed, if we are not then it won't take many rejections or lack of 'results' to provide an excuse to jack it in. Prophecy won't last long if we get it wrong. Even general charity and encouragement require a spritual energy that is not easy to fake over time.
I was also thinking about the big events that we like to do with churches in the West. Some of these attract thousands of people and often they cost large amounts of money which without being too killjoy could be funnelled into more deserving projects. I understand the logic of "people are encouraged by these events", which seems to be the most common justification of the events but the implication of that comment is that if people are encouraged (because it is big and fun and there are lots of people etc), they will always be encouraged and therefore we should always run the events - there is no real space for God's opinion.
A few years back I heard that New Frontiers had stopped running the Stoneleigh Bible Week despite massive support and popularity. It was refreshing that people had put their faith before the 'logic'. I'm not sure how many of us would have done the same.
I am often troubled by the egos that get polished at these events. It is often about a few very highly regarded speakers or 'worship leaders' teaching to several thousand listeners which doesn't seem very much like Church. What about everybody being able to exercise gifts? What about the fact that just because somebody has been annointed to teach in the past doesn't mean God won't decide to use somebody else in the future. The marketing is full of 'Speakers include John Smith and Charlie Brown' as if these names are selling the event! Shouldn't it say something like 'We believe God wants to use this event to encourage and teach you' and not bother with the 'names'?
The other flaw in the encouragement logic is that the big events can have the opposite effect. They feel so great when you are there that normal church life seems tedious or lacking even if it isn't. You can't have the buzz permanently so won't it make you feel like you are missing out for 51 weeks per year? I'm not even convinced that much equipping takes place because equipping is about a person engaging with God and if they can't do that away from the big events then nothing much will come of it. Sure there are life-changing events but these happen in many contexts outside of these big events.
I'm not sure. I keep wondering, is this Church or Show Business?

Do I need God?

If you ask some people about God they say He doesn't exist - atheists, others might say they are followers of 'God' - religious people, but what about the band of people in the middle? The people who say "I don't need God, I am a good person" - what are they called?
If you ever visit the BBC News web site, go to "Have your say" where the site invites opinions on various news events, for example "Is it OK for a school to ban religious jewellery?", or, "Should Gordon Brown resign?". Many of the opinions expressed (certainly the most recommended ones) are very right-wing but it is the content of some of them which proves the point that people do in fact need God.
On one of the debates, they were asking "How can we control the drug use problem". Most of the recommended answers simply said we should legalise drugs and then be able to control or tax them and then the price would fall and dealers wouldn't make much money any more. An understandable view-point. There are other people however who said that the people who take drugs or deal them should be dealt with consistently and severely so that most people will not risk it. An opposite and equally understandable opinion. So which is right? Of course the answer is that no-one actually knows except God but people (including Christians!) rarely articulate this key fact. People often cite examples in other countries or sometimes pseudo or partial evidence for their view and the strength with which the view is expressed can be incredible despite this underlying ignorance.
So what? If you think for a moment why these people have such strong views when they don't actually know the correct answer you can only come up with one reason: Ego/pride. The fact that I will pour my heart and soul out to argue something that I really have no definitive idea about rather than saying, "i don't really know", or, "I suspect this would happen" says much about me and most other people in the world to some degree or other. It says that I am very inadequate in the knowledge department and I need someone to tell me what to know.
When you look at Jesus' life and when people asked him a question, he NEVER said, "it is six of one and half a dozen of the other", there was no politik. Either he had an answer or the question wasn't relevant and might have been answered in a different way. We believe of course that his answers were from God so we can be sure that they were right. So to go back to my earlier statements, people DO need God because he is the only one who can a) tell you the correct answers to something or b) tell you that the question is irrelevant and requires no answer.
I sometimes wonder how many of the "Have your say"s Jesus would write in to and what He would say!!

People who annoy me on roads

The roads can be pleasurable places to be. Doing 60 on a quiet country road in sunshine with music or maybe no music is bliss. But driving can also be strenuous, arduous, annoying (and expensive). I decided to make a list of people who increase the stress levels on the road for different reasons. How many of these do you relate to?

1. Old people. Now to be fair not all old people fit the stereo type but you know the score, driving at 50mph in a 60mph behind a Nissan Micra and lo and behold, it is driven by some old gipper. To make it worse, they are allowed to drive during the rush hour to their unimportant meetings while the rest of us are trying to get to work.


2. Motor homes and caravans. Great equipment to go on holiday with, fun to drive across Canada or the US with but they are NOT made for UK roads (except perhaps the motorways) they rarely drive at their legal speed limit and don't move out the way for those of us who do. Others drive way over their limit and wonder why their chavvy 4x4 ends up on its roof.


3. White van drivers. Or more specifically nowadays van drivers of varied coloured vans! Nothing specifically against the van but it is annoying when so many of their drivers think they are exempt from the mobile phone usage laws. Also every now and then you get one doing 90mph or more down the motorway.


4. People who don't overtake. When you are doing 50 in a 60mph limit, generally you feel slowed down even if it wouldn't add hours to your journey time. What is therefore more infuriating than a queue of people behind a slow vehicle, none of whom appear to be willing and/or able to overtake! Sometimes vehicles need to travel slowly and one reason for making lorries go 45 on an A road is so the rest of us can overtake easily.


5. Middle lane drivers. Well not so much middle lane drivers as people on the motorway who don't follow the legal pattern of driving which is in the left hand lane except when overtaking. The number of times I have been boxed in by someone sitting in the middle lane only going slightly faster than me and who could have been behind me and given me room to pull out. This is not helped by the lawlessness with speed I experience on motorways in general.


6. Policemen not being there when people are doing really bad things. The number of times I've seen someone hitting 110 or more in the outside and I've prayed for a cop car to pull them over and throw the book at them. It would given us a reason to obey the law whereas it is safest in the UK to dirve at 80-85 to keep up with everyone else. Apparently there are limited resources. Maybe they could take some of the money they give to welfare and teachers and pay for more policemen!


7. Speed cameras. I don't mind speed enforcement but like most people I appreciate it when context is taken into account. A policeman will not stop you going 40 in a 30 in the middle of the night because conditions might well be favourable, however he would stop you doing 25 in a 30 if it is icy because it would be dangerous. A speed camera would do the opposite and does not distinguish between safe and unsafe driving or tailgaiting and does not provide the leaway of reason on limits.


8. People who go ridiculuously over the speed limit. Despite not liking speed cameras, I also get annoyed by people going really fast, usually on motorways. Scenario: driving at 70mph in the middle lane and approaching a lorry overtaking another lorry and need to pull out. Look in mirror and should be able to pull out without thinking if the space next to me is clear because no-one should be going faster than me. Reality: Someone in the outside lane is going 90-95mph so I have spend time working out if I have time to pull out and if not waste another 10 seconds waiting for a gap, perhaps using my brakes or slowing down considerably while billy whizz is going past. Another reason for the police to be really tough on these things.


9. Lorries overtaking other lorries on the motorways - 'nough said.


10. Every man and his dog having a blue disabled badge, somewhat takes away the point of yellow lines when they are all blocked by blue-badgers!


11. Toyota Pious, I mean Prius. It's not great, it looks pretty grim and when driven like most people do its economy is unimpressive for its price. I still fail to see why car companies haven't done something much more drastic. You can buy electric cars already so why not from the major manufacturers? Come on people, if I could buy a little car that is powered off the leccy and could do up to 70mph for, say, 100 miles before needing a relatively quick recharge then I would buy one. I saw this one they sell in London but you have to get it serviced and the range is not high enough to get from my house to a service agent - nice!

Guide to Plastering

Well, I am not a plasterer but I know how to plaster so I thought I might help the world and give my experiences with plastering so that you can have a go.
There are various plasters available and it depends on what you are plastering as to which sort you need. Basically there are undercoat plasters and there are finish plasters. All plasters are classified by the background they are designed to be applied to, some are for backgrounds that suck water a lot and others are for backgrounds that do not. So here is my advice:
1) One coat plaster is only really worthwhile for small areas, try and use separate plasters otherwise.
2) If you choose a plaster designed for low suction for a high suction background, it will crack as it dries. If it is a finish then you will have to start again or do loads of filling.
3) If you choose a plaster designed for high suction for a low suction background, it will take a long time to dry and this will affect the quality of the finish as you trowel it but is generally passable.
4) Make sure you get all the equipment you need ready to go before you start mixing anything. You will ideally need a bucket to mix in - a large one unless you are only plastering a small area (1 bag of finish will do about 10 square metres of wall). You will also need a finishing trowel, a spot board (a smooth board used as a table for the plaster), a hawk and something to get the plaster out of the bucket with. You will need something to mix the plaster with and the most popular are metal mixing paddles that fit into electric drills. You can use a battery drill but ideally it should be at least 18v because a lot of torque is required to stir wet plaster.
5) Finish can only be applied directly to walls that are basically flat and have no areas that suck a lot. If this is not the case, mix up an appropriate undercoat plaster so that it is a creamy consistency slightly tigher than a McDonalds milkshake. It should be able to make shapes in the bucket but it should have a wet look to it.
6) Don't take too long stirring it because it will start to harden but make sure there are no dry bits in it to cause lumps. You might have to use a scraper or something until you are comfortable using the paddle effectively.
7) Empty the bucket of plaster onto the spot board so it is quick and easy to get to. Use a bucket trowel or something similar to remove all the loose plaster from the mixing bucket and if you have an assitant, get them to clean the bucket and mixing paddle in cold water. Don't wash plaster down the sink!!
8) Scrape some of the plaster onto the hawk with the finishing trowel and use the finishing trowel to scrape plaster onto the wall. If you are undercoating, you might need about 10mm of plaster but if the wall is not flat, some areas might be more like 30 or 40mm deep but undercoat plasters can handle this.
9) Make sure that the plaster level is basically flat, you might need to buy a plasterers feather or use a dead flat piece of metal to run across the surface and make sure there are no major bumps or troughs. The flatter you get the undercoat plaster, the easier it will be to finish. Do NOT try and get a finish quality surface, you don't want it to be flat and it will waste time, just get the plaster on and make sure it is generally flat. Put any unused plaster into a bin bag or empty plaster bag and clean your spot board and trowel. Clean tools are happy tools!
10) Once the undercoat plaster starts to get firmer, scratch the surface in a diamond pattern every 4 or 5 inches apart to provide a key for the finish to grip onto.
11) Leave it to dry!
12) Finishing is a different beast, the tolerances are much closer, the plaster is applied more thinly and everything that goes wrong affects the look and might ruin the finish. You can always scratch it and do it again but you don't really want to.
13) The finish is mixed basically like the undercoat plaster to a creamy finish, do not make it too tight otherwise you will not be able to trowel it on.
14) It is very important that all lumps are mixed out of the finish, otherwise you will get holes in your finish that need to be fixed or filled later on.
15) Empty the plaster onto the spot board and wash the bucket and paddle.
16) The finish is applied in two stages, the first needs to be quick and will not be perfect - do not try and make it perfect. Stage one is simply covering the wall with a consistent surface of finish plaster only a few millimetres thick. If you have no lumps you should be able to do this fairly easily. If you get any major holes while you are skimming at this stage then put plaster over the top but you must do this now or wait until the plaster starts going off or you will pull the plaster from the wall.
17) You can trowel over any major marks AS YOU GO but do not be tempted to go back over previous plaster to correct things until stage 2. The end of stage 1 is to have a fairly flat but not perfect layer of plaster over the whole wall. When you are first learning to plaster, you will be slow which is why you should start with a small wall and then work up to a larger one.
18) Wait until the plaster starts to go off, that means if you put your finger onto it and pull away, it will not cause a little peak but will leave a finger mark. This means you are ready to start the trowelling and repairing.
19) At this point your wall will have various levels of defects so work in stages starting with the major defects and work down to the smaller ones. Using a wet trowel, flatten out any lines or peaks and if you have holes, take some of your existing plaster (do NOT mix up more plaster) and carefully push this into the holes as you trowel them. The more you do, the better your wall will become and you either stop when you are happy with the finish or when the plaster has dried so much that it will not trowel any more. Make sure you keep your trowel wet or it will pull plaster off of the wall. It is worth investing in a nice trowel for £30ish which will make trowelling much easier to do, especially when you are learning.
20) Any defects after the wall has dried can be sanded or filled with fine fill but unless you have plastered a lot, do not expect perfection here.

NO2ID !!

I went to see the NO2ID cards website yesterday and it was interesting to read about the various to-ing and fro-ing in government circles about the whole thing. For some reason the whole idea of ID cards disturbs me, not because I have anything to hide but they really are so far off the mark for the situations they are suppose to resolve. I have listed a few below but there are many reasons why it is a bad idea:
1) The system will be ludicrously expensive. The NHS IT system is already over 10 billion pounds and it isn't finished and only relates to people with medical history! Our government has spent so much money that it would be like borrowing £50K from the bank to buy a 4 x 4 when we only earn £15K per year!
2) The government depts have shown a massive incompetence when dealing with our data. No way I want to trust them with any more, espcially data that is valuable.
3) Identity information, once stolen, cannot be changed without having eye and finger transplants. The risk is too great.
4) It is impossible to say with any certainty that the data will be safe. Just like a dam, one breach and it could all be gone. What happens when we get accused of crimes or screwed up with our finances because of mistakes in the system? The government will shrug their shoulders and be totally unaccountable just like they are with everything else.
5) There are thousands of illegal immigrants here who are not caught and when they are, are not deported for other reasons. ID cards will not change that situation one little bit.
6) The extra trust you would be given by having an ID card means criminals with the ability to forge them or get them by deception would have more access to various systems and locations in which to commit crimes.
7) Most people won't be able to check the validity of an ID card anyway so it has limited value as any sort of proof of ID.
8) Once they are introduced there is every possibility that the requirement will creep and more and more things will require ID cards, even if they are introduced on a partial or volunteer basis, once they are in, they will certainly increase in use.
9) Because most governments are incapable of admitting mistakes, once the system is in and paid for to the tune of 10s of billions of pounds, there is no way that they government would accept it was a waste of money and scrap it. Also, there is no way to prove its real value until the full price is paid, the government would always insist it will be better when it is finished.
10) It's just a rubbish idea that the government have come up with that most Joe public have no way to stop and no say. Stop pretending that the government care about what you think and do something about it. Write to councils, write to MPs sign up to NO2ID and vote for a party that will scrap the whole ludicrous idea!

Trains and crap Britain

I like Britain and I enjoy living here for the most part. When I was in Central Asia last year for 6 weeks, I really missed some things in Britain like the things we have on offer to buy, the cool climate and things like electricity and fridges! However there are some things that are crap in Britain and the trains really say it all to me.
Britain has become fixated on money. It used to be subtle but it isn't anymore. Virtually all government arguments are about the cost and value of certain decisions, money being wasted etc. Strikes are common because people want to be paid more. People complain about expensive houses and want the government to basically give them money (which the government obviously magics up in a big money room and doesn't come from taxes!), even great institutions are made or broken on the cost.
Do we like the railways? Of course, virtually everyone likes travelling on a train, in a sense, because it is roomy, mostly quite fast and allows you to do things you can't when you drive like walk around, buy food on the move, make phone calls and work on your computer. What people don't like are the prices, the hassle and sitting on a train for 4 hours at a signal because of a broken down train or suicide or points failure or staffing problem (driver in bed asleep). I thought about the Swiss trains, which granted are based on a much simpler network, and wondered how can they not suffer the same things that we do? Of course they can and they do but the issue is not so much "is the train going to break down" but "we will reduce the chance of breakdown and deal with it effectively when it happens".
Back in the day trains were new and went about 25 mph which was like greased lightening but Stephenson wanted more speed, more power, better traction, lower maintenance etc and improved various aspects of his machine to achieve these. Did it cost money? Of course and lots of it but what he ended up with was something with higher value, he got back the money he invested with interest. Why do Britons not do this anymore? Why do we bulk at investment rather than make things better? Why don't we make decisions to prune the rail network and make it work better? Spend money on useful projects and improve what we have?
I still don't understand in this day and age why it is considered normal to have points failures and signal failures. If we can send a space shuttle into space with no room for failure then why not take the same approach with the railways and create equipment that either doesn't fail or fails in a way that can be predicted and dealt with before it actually happens?
Oh yeah, it costs money.

Revival, revival, revival

I'm bored of the those people who are always banging on about revival like we will click our fingers, maybe pray a bit and then everyone in the world is going to be saved. Don't get me wrong, I like optimism and after all, we know God wins in the end but it seems people want a quick fix. Let us think about what the Bible actually says about Christian work which might lead to a 'revival'. 1) Big things in the Bible occurred when one or more people were dedicated to God in prayer and lifestyle. That is not to say that God cannot work unless we are perfect but there is a fairly understandable link between our own holiness and the Spirit's ability to work. 2) If we look at Paul's journeys, at one point he was not allowed to enter Bithynia, the Spirit would not permit him to enter. This surely means that God is not doing everything everywhere all the time, you could say that He has a time for different people - presumably for various reasons. 3) Specific places are not more special than other places for God. Look at the Ethiopian in Acts. He went to Jerusalem to search for truth and where did he find it? in the middle of the desert with Phillip.
If you really want revival, you need to spend long periods of time talking to God and listening to Him. If we were really good at that then perhaps God would use us for just 3 years and change the whole world just like He did with Jesus!

Words, words, words

I certainly talk too much, I have too many opinions, too many of which are not based in Christ but in intellect. If you're honest many of you are probably the same. We express our opinions freely and can end up with a church run by the most persuasive people rather than the most spiritual (who would say what God wants to be said).
Anyway, one of the facets of this which is a big problem in the world in general as well as the church is our definitions of words. We can debate or argue about a certain subject when we might not be disagreeing because our definitions of words and sometimes our logic is too vague or abstract.
I heard it said once that Jesus told us to love one another, therefore it is OK to be in a relationship with anyone because we are loving them. Reason this is wrong? Definition of love is too vague. I have also heard it said that it is OK for Christians to sin because we are forgiven. Reason this is wrong? The assumption that forgiveness wipes away all consequence of sin. As a third example, there is debate about whether baptism without immersion is void after all the Biblical pattern is for full immersion. Reason this argument might be pointless? because we assume that a certain arbitrary level of physical imitation is acceptable to God and a lower level isn't. We could argue if we were pedantic that all baptism should take place in the Middle East or by a Jewish person but we don't because 'that would be silly' are we best placed to argue God's way in the human intellect?
The answer? Jesus told us that we would be held accountable for careless words and James warns that he tongue is dangerous. We should be slow to speak. Also more importantly, if Jesus said that he only spoke what the Father told him to speak then that is a pattern we should follow but rarely do. Next time someone asks you something Christian, try taking a few seconds to 'hear God' on the subject before you answer, or maybe just show humility and accept if something is your best guess rather than being written in stone!

Is there Absolute truth?

Forgive the philosophical tone of this post, especially since I am not a philosopher but I was wondering about the question after having some conversation or other with my father about decisions in life and what was right and wrong. For instance, is it right for a Christian to be a soldier? Is it right for any Christian? Do these grey questions imply that there is no absolute truth. (Some people would think it is not a grey question but for many I think we would agree that we would be uncomfortable with the killing part of being a soldier but would accept that many soldiers are believing Christians)
As in many subjects of life, people seem to disagree, not because they necessarily disagree but because they are careless with words and definitions and not humble to backtrack on an opinion. So person A, lets call him Bruce, says that "Truth is absolute", he believes this because God is absolute, Jesus calls himself the Truth and is God therefore, Truth is God is absolute. He therefore believes that his view on being a soldier is the universal view that should be held by everyone. Person B - or Charlie - has a problem with this stance because he thinks that it is wrong to be a soldier if you are a Christian because it could involve killing someone which he thinks the Bible doesn't agree with. He also knows that lots of soldiers are Christians so he has a few options. 1) He is wrong about thinking it is wrong, 2) All soldiers who are Christians are wrong or 3) truth is not absolute because what is wrong for him is not wrong for others. The 3rd option is the most palatable so he disagrees with Bruce and they have a big argument and both storm out of the pub cursing the other person's lack of theology!!
What if we more careful with our definitions? When we talk about absolute truth, we are unqualified to talk about it because it is much beyond our understanding but we can probably safely say a few things. Bruce and Charlie would both agree that God is absolute and that what he knows and thinks both in Himself and for us are absolute but we cannot go much further than this with any certainty. We can say with certainty that the Bible forbids murder but we also know that God ordained various people to kill others in a way that would be murder if it wasn't for the fact that God allowed them to do it. So if we defined murder as killing without God's permission then it would be an absolute statement of truth and Bruce and Charlie can then argue about whether God permits armies to kill people and if so to what extent it is allowed!
Put simply, life is complex and although there is a perfect/absolute plan in God's mind, for the most part this appears to be worked as best as possible in real life allowing for the complexity of humans and their own ideas.