AN OUTSIDE VIEW

I went somewhere different for mass today - a church built about twenty-five years ago. The design was a break from tradition, with a short wide nave so that everyone was close to the sanctuary. The interior was exposed facing brick, the acoustic lively and the general ambience light and airy. The liturgy was spoken apart from the hymns. Thus it can be said to be an expression of the predominant theology of the post-Vatican II movement. Attendance at this, the main Sunday High Mass, was poor, with less than one-third of the places occupied - though it could be that many people were away on holiday. It would be more difficult to construct such a building today, as there is a growing movement towards the use of the Extraordinary Form of the Mass, which in turn is having an influence on the way that the Ordinary Form of the Mass is celebrated. One thing that needs to be recognised is that whatever growth is taking place within the Catholic Church is focussed around the Extraordinary Form,...

First reactions to the terror in Oslo assumed that it was the work of Islamists. It then turned out to be the work of what appears to be an - apparently lone - maniac with links to the extreme-Right". In other words it had more in common with those rampages that deranged men (they are always men) embark on from time to time in the US, with a close resemblence to the McVeigh bombing. It has naturally come as particularly shocking that it should have happened in Norway, which, like the rest of Scandinavia, has been regarded for the last decades as a haven from the nasty things that happen in the world. Yet every human society has a dark underside and there is no such thing as a safe place. On the other hand, these events do not happen in a vacuum. There have long been strange right wing movements throughout Europe and the US. In the latter case, they hark back to the ideal days of the early US where sturdy independent homesteaders lived simple honest lives as horny-handed sons of th...

Network Rail faces a battle with its staff over proposals to close nearly all Britain’s 800 signal boxes and replace them with air traffic control style computerised centres. NR held talks on the plans this week with unions representing its 5,000 signallers. The company refused to confirm claims by the Rail, Maritime and Transport Union that the changes would reduce the number of signal staff, which the union puts at 6,000, to 2,000. The changes are intended to boost punctuality and save £250m annually. Full article in FT It is not clear from the article whether this refers to the introduction of the European Train Management System (ERTMS), which still has a long way to be developed before it can be said to be beyond the experimental stage. Whilst I have nothing against the introduction of new technology, I would question whether it is sufficiently robust to withstand the kind of things that can happen in the long run, such as extreme weather, solar flares and other unusual and pot...

Yet another abuse and cover-up story surfaced at the weekend, this one concerning the Irish Diocese of Cloyne. But to what extent it can be relied on is another matter, as the comment from Thirsty Gargoyle points out. However, over the past few years, the skeletons have been tumbling out of the cupboard in Ireland. One disastrous consequence is that the once-solid Irish Catholic church is now on the verge of collapse. With the Catholic priesthood so tainted, who would want to be a priest in such a situation? Although the abuse has been described as "paedophilia", strictly speaking, it is not, since the abuse has mostly been directed against pubescent boys, from which it can be concluded that the priesthood has accepted into its ranks homosexually-orientated men who could not control their inclinations. A look around the world reveals a mixed picture. The Irish-influenced church in the USA seems to have suffered similarly. In England and Wales, nasty cases have come to light ...

A report today states that as many as 12,000 troops could be needed to provide security during the Olympic games, to protect the games themselves and key venues in London. The decision to bid for the games was taken by the Blair government around 2003 and is an example of the then-prevailing megalomania. The same hubris produced assurances that boom-and-bust had been defeated. Yet this was already after the attack on the World Trade Centre and it was obvious even then that the games would present a security problem.

The Neo-Libertarians in the Conservative Central Office think tank are presumably the driving force behind the proposals to privatise more public services, as set out in the new White Paper. But the big private consultancies will just muscle in. These outfits cannot provide the continuity and local and specialist knowledge essential if the job is to be done well. Nor are they particularly innovative, except in devising the kind of asset-stripping deals that caused the trouble with Southen Cross. The public sector is often indifferent but that is ultimately preventable with good democratic control and accountability. This is a recipe for disaster.

I am not an advocate of Buying British in principle, but Derby would almost certainly have got the Thameslink train order if there had been some rational thinking about Thameslink itself. There is no conceivable train that can operate the route satisfactorily as it comprises two inter-urban routes, two airport links and an inner city metro all in one. Thameslink should have been cut back to operate within the area of the Greater London Authority. Anyone who has used the service regularly and thought about it must realise this. A problem at, say, Brighton will result, a couple of hours later, in disruption at Bedford, and vice versa. This is not unusual as both the Brighton and Midland main lines carry dense traffic. It would have been better to cut back the route and transfer it to London Overground which is a similar type of service. The trains could then have been a further build of Bombardier class 379 Electrostars. For the long distance routes a further build of class 377 Electrost...