Christmas time, mistletoe and lies

Every year there is a supposed attack on Christmas. Every year it's another example of how our heritage is being dumbed down, hidden away and removed in the name of 'political correctness' and to avoid offending other faiths.

Often those allegations wheel out members of said faith communities to support the apparent slight being directed towards Jesus' birth by saying they have no trouble with anybody talking about Christmas.

The most famous of all apparent attacks on a festival that isn't important in and of itself  is Birmingham's. We've all heard about how Christmas was rebranded as Winterval in an attempt to minimise any offence at all and to make sure that we of a faithful disposition knew that secularism has absolutely and completely done away with God from public discourse. I saw a member of General Synod appear on BBC Sunday Morning Live telling the nation all about it.

There's just one snag with that story - that it isn't the truth.

The truth is pretty ordinary. I quote from Mike Chubb, who was Head of Events in Birmingham at the time, and who himself is quoted by Andy Mabbett in a post titled 'Winterval - the truth'. Mike says

Quite simply, as Head of events at that time, we needed a vehicle which could cover the marketing of a whole season of events…Diwali (festival of Lights), Christmas lights switch on, BBC Children in Need, Aston Hall by Candlelight, Chinese New year, New Years eve etc. Also a season that included theatre shows and open air ice rink, Frankfurt open air Christmas market and the Christmas seasonal retail offer. Christmas, called Christmas! and its celebration, lay at the heart of Winterval.

So, just like a red coated Father Christmas and actually the linking of Christmas itself to an existing festival by the early church, the brand of Winterval was that. A brand. The success of that marketing campaign is clearly up for debate but the pervasive understanding that it was an attack on Christmas appears to have been whipped up by people who would identify themselves as speaking for me, other Christians and by extension as a representative of God.

And one of the characteristics of God is truth. This means that as Christians we stand in the middle of an epistemological minefield. On the one hand we talk about absolute truth whilst at the same time following a personal saviour who is absolutely relational. It's why we find conflict with both ends of the philosophical spectrum. But our knowledge of truth and belief in the relevance and application of those truths is absolutely central to who we are.

One of the offending lights from Rochdale
(borrowed from the Daily Mail article)

So it's always really distasteful when people lie in order to present a position that attacks other people and somehow 'defends' Christianity. Whether that is the individuals and councils who are behind the supposed slights or entire communities of people who aren't like us the fact is that we're not called to dominate. We're not called to win. We're not called to force people and coerce people into doing anything. In fact, The Church should stand at the front, clamouring in support of any attempt to hang Christmas decorations alongside those of Diwali and Eid because we're called to love.

Not just a subtle, hidden and diluted love. No, our love is sacrificial. It's loving beyond our own capabilities. It's loving people for who they are, as they are, not for what they might become or how they can change. It's unconditional. And so, it follows, that we would pour ourselves out to give value to other people and would, as the Daily Mail so generously suggests, want to shout 'Merry Christmas EVERYBODY' (except they seem to be suggesting that is A Bad Thing).

It does not follow that we would continue to spread untruths about Winterval. It does not follow that we would simply applaud Eric Pickles for suddenly giving us permission to forget about Christmas being about more than memorial. It does not follow that we would do anything other than demonstrate what it is to know Christ by making Him known in our lives as we challenge injustice, act with humility and hunger after mercy.

Let's make more of a racket about how much we spend on Christmas. Not just focusing outside our church walls on 'the world' but about how much we invest into Christmas as The Church. The Advent Conspiracy put together this little video - £34 billion pounds gets spent on Christmas by Britain alone; £31 billion pounds could go a long way to solving malaria, feeding the world and providing clean water. Of course it's not that simple but where would Jesus have us place our focus?

Today is St Nicholas Fayre in York, we're opening our church during the day for 'Thank God It's Christmas'. The church, next to the Minster, will be open as a cafe with free drinks and cake on one of the busiest days of the year. We'll also be having 12 minute long carol services every half hour through the day - a couple of songs and a brief talk about 'why Christmas is important to me'. I'm involved with one of them. This wasn't my theme, it could have been.

Tonight Conversations is celebrating Christmas. We're holding a Party with A Purpose. The purpose? Providing 'Christmas' for families in York who otherwise won't enjoy a turkey and trimmings, decorations or even presents. This is a city where 1 in 3 children live in poverty. That isn't my theme either, although maybe it should have been.

One reason Christmas is important to me is because it's a victory for humility. And that means it's all about everybody else. And even that isn't what I've prepared to talk about. Christmas, it is important...can we get on with telling people why please?

Reinventing the wheel

Sunday evening took this passage from Acts as its backdrop.

"They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved...All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of his possessions was his own, but they shared everything they had. With great power the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and much grace was upon them all. There were no needy persons among them. For from time to time those who owned lands or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales and put it at the apostles' feet, and it was distributed to anyone as he had need. Joseph, a Levite from Cyprus, whom the apostles called Barnabas (which means Son of Encouragement), sold a field he owned and brought the money and put it at the apostles' feet."
Acts 2:42-47 and 4:32-37

That's a revolutionary expression of community. That model of fellowship without borders was the hallmark of Jesus' relationships. Not just with his disciples but with those society wouldn't touch. The church of Acts are living with that same authenticity, vulnerability and generosity. They live grace, they are church. Those words aren't theological constructs, they're dynamic adjectives.

Their faith changed the world. Theirs a religion built around the service and love of those around them. Theirs a fundamentally relational pursuit of Jesus. Somewhere in the annals of history we dropped the ball. Religion became a dirty word bound up in ritual and show, dominated by fear, judgement and hypocrisy, not synonymous with the Gospel of 'good news' but seen to be something manipulative and controlling.

That's not the true story. When the Archbishop of York was asked about his thoughts on Big Society he claimed the idea as a rebranding of what the church has been doing since its birth. For Sentamu (whose full article is well worth a read), Big Society's just another name for the wheels which the church, alongside others, has consistently been involved with oiling for the last couple of thousand years.

Following the Spending Review the state is going to shrink, and there will be a reduction in services. There will be increasing needs and the church has the infrastructure, human resources and experience to contribute to finding solutions - the Church of England provides 23.2 million hours of voluntary service per month (and that's just one chunk of The Church). More specific is Acts 4:35 an initiative of Archbishop Sentamu that provides a mechanism for giving money directly to others for specific purposes (in many ways it's a local version of Kiva).

That's great, as is our local commitment to The Besom. But we are absolutely wrong if we think that we're the only people who care about kindling community and getting involved with transforming the lives around us. I might not enjoy the political rhetoric and cost-cutting reality that surrounds us at the moment but I do love the fact that there are lots of people who are exploring opportunities and experimenting with technology to give voice to the voiceless and support those who might otherwise fall through the gaps.

Sadly God's hands and feet are conspicuous in their absence. This just doesn't make sense. I can't get my head around why we're not round those tables, entering those debates and talking about the kind of compassion that hurts. The Acts model of community was radical 2,000 years ago and nothing has changed. What are we waiting for?

If it's permission we're looking for then the irony is that Acts 2 models of community are being spoken about and developed, probably by people completely oblivious to what's written in the New Testament. Maybe it's time we twigged that there's universality to the wheel? God doesn't always need us to start something, or for it to wear his brand or come under his 'ownership' for it to bring him glory and transform lives.

Is the Acts 2 challenge too hard given the busyness of life? I hear that, my daily commute sees me out of York for 12 hours a day. How do I foster meaningful community with those around me?Well, perhaps these four things which are already set up and focused on building relationship, fostering community and living generously can provide us with a platform inside church but also in dismantling the walls around our worshipping community.

The Big Lunch began life at The Eden Project a couple of years ago and encourages neighbours to spend the day with one another through street parties. Christine and I hosted one for our street in 2008 and it was brilliant (sadly we were both out of the country this year), instead of church on June 5th 2011 why don't we shut up St Mike's and break bread with our neighbours?

Flock Local was born at Glasgow's Social Innovation Camp last June. The premise is pretty simple - directing the energy of a flash mob into an activity with a social purpose. The website provides a front end for listing local events and a mechanism for people to register, communicate and pitch in.

Street Bank exists to help people share what they've got with people in their locality. Sign up, list the skills you can offer your neighbours or the things you've got to lend or give away and see what happens.

Street Club overlaps the others and is a sophisticated approach to providing digital foundations to a local community. It's designed to be a private online members club that revolves around ten key words - discuss, volunteer, ask, share, recommend, give, trade, play, save and party. There is something daunting about a resource this comprehensive but then it isn't a website designed for individuals is it?

This week Conversations starts life in its latest venue (upstairs in The Graduate, formerly Varsity). I'm (justifiably) proud to belong to a community that hopefully looks like that early church. I hope we're not just a community for ourselves but one that is committed to getting stuck into the world around us. We're here to follow Jesus and that means pouring ourselves out for the people of York, til it hurts. Maybe signing up to a few websites can help?

Success and how you define it...

In the last 24 hours I've seen two totally different ideas of what success looks like. I liked one, I didn't much like the other.

Today we had a celebration of Hull City Council's graduate scheme. We three grads popped over to the Guildhall for an hour with our line managers, mentors and the HR guys who've been running it. In the end four line managers made it, out of 12, and one mentor, of three. And rounding it off were our two handlers, a big HR boss (who I'd never met before) and an even bigger HCC boss (who I'd not met but who seemed, on the strength of our brief conversation, like she will be an asset to Hull. She's also been to Sierra Leone before which gives her many brownie points).

When we got the invites it felt a little weird. It didn't seem to make much sense to celebrate a scheme that has four of us looking unemployment squarely in the face come October 1st. Gallows humour on my part suggested it was more like a wake so when there was a little speech on how successful the scheme had been and there was a (muted) round of applause I just couldn't stop the incredulity and had to ask what criteria of success we were using. For me, the elephant in the room was our future employment, or not, as the main criteria of how successful this two years was for us.

I shouldn't be surprised. When we started in 2008 the graduate scheme made no promise of further employment and the 5 graduates who made up the first cohort warned us very early that little planning or forethought went into what had happened for them (eventually shoehorning them into temporary contracts until something came up...only 2 are still there today).

Call me naive but I thought they might have learned from that and heard the disappointment of our predecessors. It was the first time they'd run it after all, wouldn't they clock that paying the salaries of the three of us for two years, paying for an MSc in Public Administration at INLOGOV and giving us the breadth of experience and knowledge and building relationships across the organisation would make it strategically worthwhile to retain that value come the end of the programme?

So I asked the question and it led to a healthy discussion between me and the speaker. From the HR perspective it was successful - look at what we'd done in our placements, how we'd grown and how we were now really valuable assets not just to Hull but well prepared to go and contribute to the wider public sector. Sadly we were just the victims of poor timing and there was work going on to try and match us to vacant positions in Hull but clearly noone could have foreseen what the situation would be.

Those vacant positions form something called redeployment. Now, as you might imagine the public sector is full of terror about impending doom (we'll bypass the bit where that writing was on the wall 18+ months ago). So we have a recruitment freeze. That means they can't just keep us around in a job they make for us on an ad hoc basis. So since July 1st we've been on redeployment - that is we get first dibs on jobs at the same grade. We're not the only people at our grade and there aren't many jobs. Since July 1st there have been 3 jobs. None of us have got one. So, with four weeks to go, we are creeping closer to not being in education, employment or training.

However, the thrust of that argument about success was very selfish - what had we got out of it for ourselves. Call me old fashioned but I'd like to reclaim Weber's ideal of 'bureaucracy'. I am not working in the public sector for my own personal development. It wasn't about being a good way of getting another degree (who needs three anyway?!). It wasn't about what I would get out of it. It was, and is, and always will be, about the public. I chose the switch from international development because I desperately want to get stuck into the communities and lives that I can engage with as a British citizen who understands where people are coming from because I understand language, culture, history, food, weather, etc. And I chose to apply for the graduate scheme in Hull because of the hope filled vision of the future that this council shared with us. This idea that actually the problems facing Hull, of which there are plenty, aren't insurmountable and we could be part of that organisation getting stuck into it over time.

It's wonderful that the council is altruistic enough to train up people for two years so they can give them away but I'm not sure you could sell that to the ordinary man or woman on the streets of Hull? Don't they want organisations to develop people and retain the knowledge and build on those individuals? That's what I'd want City of York Council to do.

The reason this stuck was because of something I'd heard at Conversations on Wednesday night. We watched Nooma - Today, a video from Rob Bell (leader of a church in the US and author of a couple of really good reads - Velvet Elvis and Sex God). He was talking about how being stuck looking backwards means missing today and what that means for our approach to the future.

He talked about the exchange between Jesus and Mary Magdalene in the Garden of Gethsemane after his resurrection. Jesus says to Mary 'don't hold on to me' and Rob Bell made the point that after the resurrection, Jesus wasn't saying carry on and do what we did, he wasn't saying to keep harking back to the loaves and fishes, to bang on and on and on about the Sermon on the Mount and how great it was when he turned water into wine. Jesus' point is that all of that, it was about what's next, all that has been is nothing compared with what is next. And so we have Acts and the Holy Spirit and the church turning the world upside down on the basis of the resurrection kicking that off, not really because of the nice stuff Jesus said.

Rob Bell illustrated it with stories of people who spend so long rooted in the past and holding on to their experiences that they fail to live for today and tomorrow. The decisions that get put off because 'we're not ready' only to find that the opportunity has gone. Of not being able to see beyond the success we had before.

Instead it begs a different vision of success. One that's totally about the future and how it impacts on your life, the lives of those around you and the life of your community. That's a measure of success I can get behind because it's rooted in the hope of the future and what can be as a result. Not just pointing to how great stuff was (even if that has a longer term impact). I wanted to commit to Hull, I did. We might not have moved from York (and I've had the 4 hour daily commute as a result) but that wasn't because I wanted to leave after two years it was because of Christine's phd. That's finished in April, we could have left York and moved. Success for me would have been the future implications of what Hull City Council invested in us these two years. But for Hull, not for anyone else.

I'm full of hope about the future because it's literally the only way I know how to think. Naive idealism to some but I'll take your cynicism. There's some great stuff happening in the public sector and I'd love to be involved with it. There's some great stuff happening in the space between the public sector and the public public and it's going to be brilliant watching that unfold. What I do next is something of a mystery. There is a phenomenal job in York that I'm applying for but I don't just want to do a job for the sake of doing a job...If that's what keeps me in Hull beyond October I'd rather get paid less and temp in York so I can look after Christine and get stuck into my community than just go to Hull and get paid public money to do a job that happens to be there. At 26 I'm not prepared to just settle for shunning my passions.

The bottom line is that it wasn't a very celebratory affair. I hope what I said was reasonable, I certainly hadn't planned to get into the question of the scheme's success and I didn't go to cause trouble. It's not bitterness or anger, it's just disappointment. Maybe it was the fact this celebration didn't even have any refreshments. Too much to ask for tea, coffee, water and biscuits given that we were celebrating? Not even a round robin email saying 'we can't spend money on such frivolities but maybe we could all bring something'. It felt nothing more than a self congratulatory back slapping exercise for a vision of success that's rooted in a measure of how it makes your own life better, not what it's made possible for Hull.

So, now the dissertation is done it's time to get into what that future looks like. Exciting, innit? :)

Picture credit to:
su-lin: Party Poppers and More
Will Lion: successes and failures in this version but original CC image from parrhesiastes: 4th Dan throws First

Deuteronomy 5:16 - Commandment #5

Conversations is currently working its way through a series on the 10 Commandments. Last Wednesday (11th August) I spoke on number 5. I'm publishing more or less what I said not as an act of self indulgence or publicly air my dirty laundry but because maybe someone will find it useful. I've been umming and ahing about posting but have decided to do it.

"Honour your father and your mother, as the LORD your God has commanded you, so that you may live long and that it may go well with you in the land the LORD your God is giving you."
Deuteronomy 5: 16 (NIV)

Over the last few weeks we've heard about commandments 1 to 4, those commandments which look to our relationship with God over and above anything else. Commandment 5 is a step change in what Moses received at the top of Sinai. It's the point at which we look to those around us and the way our lives shape them.

I have a hunch that this is one of the least familiar of the ten. When people indicate that they live by the 10 Commandments, citing it as a benchmark of common sense natural laws they're thinking thou shalt not murder, not commit adultery, not steal, not lie, not covet their neighbour's ass. I don't think family relationships come into it.

A few years ago I spent some time temping. The job was incredibly dull and involved preparing forms for scanning by removing staples and paper clips, then scanning them in and then reading through the electronic versions to make sure the right letters had been recorded in the right boxes. The only thing that broke the monotony were the free text boxes which had to be entered manually. Sometimes they would elicit a good chuckle at someone else's expense but the majority were far from uplifting and spoke of children out of touch with parents or parents disconnected from children. Occasionally it was a casual and accidental drifting apart, sometimes it had happened many years ago and there was obvious regret in the writing but other times the tone left you in no doubt that massive tensions continued to exist.

And I think that our experiences will fall somewhere along a spectrum where that is at the extreme. For some of us the last thing we want to do is to honour our mothers, or our fathers. For others your family relationships are the bedrock of your existence, your support and your guidance.

When Dave asked me to talk he said 'pick your favourite'. It's not something I'd ever thought about before, a favourite commandment as such but for the 24 hours subsequent to that I couldn't shake off the relevance to me of this commandment. Not because it's a doddle, but because it's very much not. So, in order to give that some context I need to unpack my experience of family.

If you had asked me 6 years ago to talk about my family I would have given you a beautiful picture of Christian family life. Of a marriage proposal by telegram from a missionary in Uganda, of my arrival whilst Dad was completing vicar school and then my brother being born two years later after we'd moved to Bristol. A move again to Bradford, a church that began to flourish and the birth of my sister before we all moved to the idyllic Devon countryside where my parents even built a house to retire to. Beyond the five of us I was lucky to have both sets of grandparents and the families were connected not just by my parent's marriage but by Dad's brother and Mum's sister so we had overlapping aunts and uncles and plenty of cousins too meaning great Christmases and Easters and time spent surrounded by loving, nurturing
and encouraging relatives.

That's not to say there were no ripples. Just before my brother's second birthday he was playing in the car when it spontaneously combusted. His survival was a miracle. Also in Bradford my mum sadly suffered a miscarriage. I found the move to Devon really tough though that was nothing compared to the horrendous parish politics awaiting my parents and a combination of food allergies and rheumatoid arthritis left my mum operating below 100% in the health stakes.

By and large then we’re talking about 20 years of slight disturbances, of middle class dilemmas, of stable lives. Maybe Devon life saw tempers flare more often as the level of stress increased and we children became teenagers but there was never any doubt in my mind about the love in the family.

It was a Saturday in 2004 that turned life upside down. Christine and I had been having the day together and we'd been sat eating lunch in Cafe Rouge. Anyone who knows me will know that my phone is pretty much an extension of my hand and even six years ago that was true and I remember making the point of ignoring a phone call as it came in. A couple of hours later when I picked up the resulting answerphone message it changed everything. My parents and my sister had gone out shopping far from home when an angry outburst behind the wheel from my Dad broke the camel's back. He was left at the side of the road while my mum took my sister home, packed up their stuff and fled to a women's refuge. That's a big statement - it wasn't to family, to friends, or to neighbours it was effectively into hiding.

And this was how the disintegration of my family ideal was characterised. The narrative thread of happy families suddenly replaced by this new tale of systematic abuse and controlling behaviour by my father towards my mother. I still can't square that circle with what I knew growing up but individual, relative, perception of events is what's key and what 20 years of that perception produced was a very final situation almost instantly.

My dad went on the courses for abusive husbands and God did some remarkable healing in him that dealt with some of the root causes of the issues. It was like having known that the earth was flat and then seeing the world from space - what he had done and how he had behaved had not been malicious but they had pressed the wrong buttons and he could see just how far off course he had strayed. He wanted to fix things, it’s what men do. He chose to forsake any claim to an opinion of his own when discussing anything with my mum. He was humble, repentant, contrite. It didn’t matter. My mum was immovable on whether he might know redemption or whether it even mattered to her as she seemingly saw no value in him which, despite assurances that all is now well, seems to suggest there's still pain and hurt and stuff that isn't dealt with.

As the years have passed and the relationships have remained strained (in all sorts of different ways) it's almost as if reconciliation isn't that important. As I attempted to get my head around what was happening I stood on the faith that my parents, together, had shared with me and demonstrated to me as I'd grown up. To know the power of loving first, without condition, to honour repentance and to eternally be striving for healing. That’s a position with strange consequences - greater sympathy toward the abuser, than the abused.

But as Christians we believe in redemption, we believe in forgiveness and we believe in restoration. Our faith is all about what happened on the cross, and we leave what we’ve done there...and we leave what other people have done there too. Jesus’ resurrection makes the past irrelevant because we’re living for our God-inspired futures. When we are injured we could wait for the first move from elsewhere, for it to be made right by someone else but God’s already done that for Every Thing that Any One has Ever Done. And that's not something I can give up on.

Forgiveness is not something I can turn my back on.

The moment I give up on reconciliation or on the transformation of hopeless situations I’ve sold Jesus out and cheapened everything I believe.

So that's the context of where I'm coming from. My relationship with my parents is far from perfect. So when it comes to Commandment 5 I’m struggling.

But that’s a low key family story – for 20 years I knew middle class apple pie and ice cream. It’s nothing compared to the family stories I saw on those forms and it’s nothing compared to the dysfunction of God's people in Genesis. It only takes until chapter 9 for Ham, the son of Noah to incur his dad's wrath by telling his brothers about him lying around naked and drunk rather than covering his shame. Then Abraham abandons Ishmael in the desert, albeit on God's say so but hardly the basis for great father-son relationships (although it does cast Hagar as an incredible single mother). The conniving doesn't stop there as Rebekah plots with Jacob to manipulate Isaac into giving him Esau's birthright. And on, through Jacob's family line to Israel and the ridiculous soap opera of that family involving shared concubines, honour killings and eleven brothers selling their father’s favourite into slavery.

Basically the shape of Israeli families is a mess. The heritage of the people at the foot of Mount Sinai is not one of perfect fathers or wonderful mothers. But here, on the tablets in Moses’ hands, the distillation of what’s key to living it’s where God places the focus ahead of murder, of theft, of deceit, of lust. And in doing so he champions something that's actually new and different, he gets behind something to aspire to, he hitches his wagon to a picture of community that's for everyone.

If we were to pause and consider what the ‘ideal’ family might be it would be a place where relationships are unconditional, where people choose to love not only because of emotion, an environment where what we do is greeted with delight and interest and support and encouragement. But it would also be a place of challenge, and of discipleship and discipline.

That might be our projection of ‘ideal’ but when God tells us to honour our fathers and our mothers he can't point at a perfect, real world example from history. He knows that families are curious things, that they come in all shapes and sizes and that sometimes they don't work properly but here's a creation built on the premise of taking characteristics from a father and a mother to create unique, new individuals who are not carbon copies of their parents. Individuals like us who are not simply defined by our families and who are not, just, the product of a father and a mother regardless of their perfections or flaws.

Whatever separates us we are all united by this common fact: we are children. It's how we come into the world so of course the first commandment about other people is for the family.  We may have stories of parents that don't deserve honour. Or situations that cause hurt. Or circumstances that are marked by evil rather than love. And I'm not going to stand here and glibly say that the 5th commandment says to honour them, so you better had. It’s not that easy but it is that important – the way we approach family relationships is fundamental to who we are.

But how do we as individuals do that?  I think to get our heads round that question we need to take a step back from the biology of relatives. In the act of growing up we can break our interactions down into being about the words we say or the things we do: what we model. And those implications are about our wider community, not just our nuclear family.

Commandment 5 marks a step change from the heavenly to the earthly but it’s got a foot in each camp. Our relationship with God is inextricably bound up in the act of a parent sending a son to rescue us, out of love. This isn’t just a commandment about our earthly parents it’s a continuation of the 4 that have gone before, it's an instruction about worship.

It’s also a statement about community. In Revelation 21 John is told to come and see the bride, the wife of the Lamb. That's the church. Extend the analogy and you cast The Church as mother (Mothering Sunday is both about our real parents and 'mother church'). This is a reminder for us about honouring the body, about honouring Conversations, about honouring our church, and the rest of our family as embodied in the people of God. About choosing to love and to be united. About choosing to approach our difference together like we would difference in our families. About dialogue and engagement rather than private withdrawal or public criticism.

This is the first commandment instructing us how to support and strengthen one another. It’s a direct instruction for us to be involved with the lives of those around us as God’s hands and feet. Yes, we’re being told to make sure our homes are places of honour and responsibility but this is also about how we behave with each other as a family here, about the way in which we meet together as cell groups, the way we pray together, laugh together, cry together. It’s about the depth of relationship we strive for with one another and the effort we make to be that ideal model of ‘family’ we suggested earlier.

A place where relationships are unconditional, where people choose to love not only because of emotion, an environment where what we do is greeted with delight and interest and support and encouragement. But also a place of challenge, and of discipleship and discipline.

So if you’ve got honouring your parents down to a T, that's amazing. Would you help those of us who don't? Would you challenge us? Would you encourage us? Can we together strive to honour God as our father, and this community as our mother? Can we be real with each in the struggles we face and the difficulties we have? They might not be solved overnight and it might take as long as we live but can we be a community that has hope at its heart? If we are a place like that then maybe those hopeless situations can be transformed and maybe a commandment like this can become attainable rather than a struggle?

Friday - Kissy Dumpsite #sierraleone

Having visited the works yards we went to the second of Freetown's dumpsites.

Kissy is in the east of the city and is along the main route out of Freetown. It's not far from the works yards which are also located in this part of the city.

It's similar to Kingtom but probably worse. Kingtom has been created on an area of flat land through the middle of which a road runs. In the wet season half of the site is given over to farming because the land is not stable enough to cope with vehicles. Despite the lack of any earth moving equipment to keep the piles under control or the absence of any sorting it works, after a fashion.

At Kissy there was more evidence of people scavenging from the sites and people living along the border of the site. There were the remains of a broken Caterpillar slowly getting covered in waste. There was no sign of the road that had been built two years ago. This was a site built on a hill so when they'd built the road they had built it at a gradient. As the waste accumulated it became harder and harder to pass, harder and harder for vehicles to get back from the bottom and so the waste was dumped closer and closer to the road.

Now the situation is that they can't drive onto the dump. So it's entirely blocked from any new waste being dumped there. The result is they've started a third dump somewhere else where there was a whole.

During this visit we heard that a perfect location has been identified by the World Bank, somewhere that the waste could be properly managed and the landfill engineered well away from the residential areas it currently juts up against. Of course there's nothing to guarantee that people won't encroach upon that piece of land, or scavenge for whatever they can lay their hands on. But even before that becomes an issue there are a number of hurdles to overcome. One of the key obstacles is the logistics of the thing.

And that comes back to Freetown's roads.

This third site is down the road between Hastings and Waterloo. So it fits the bill for being out of town. It isn't near a water course and it could be engineered from scratch. However, it's hard enough for the 7 working vehicles to service the 45 transit sites and include regular trips to Kissy or Kingtom. For them to have to add an out of town excursion to that means more time sat in traffic, more strain on the vehicles, less time actually collecting the rubbish.

And then there's the economic ecosystem that lives off the existing sites. In the vacuum that had been left by waste no longer being filled at the farthest limits of the site there had been a lot of encroachment (this is the point being made at the beginning of the video). This is one of the hardest things to fathom about our time in Freetown - it's not just a dump, it's a home, a source of income, a source of food and a social space. The images of kids playing with kites, of parents carrying babies around, of whole lives found living on the edges is harrowing and difficult. We don't want people to be living on a landfill site but the reality is that this is a crucial slice of the economy in a city where there aren't exactly an abundance of different ways to make money. Perhaps a properly engineered landfill could see waste being sorted and might enable stuff to be retrieved without having to pick through the detritus of the city but it's likely that won't cushion the fall out and the repercussions on those lives we catch sight of in this video.



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Friday - Freetown City Council works yard #sierraleone

After our tour round the Freetown Waste Management Company's (FWMC) depot we moved next door to take a look at the council's yard. Until recently the two sites operated independently with FWMC acting as a stand alone private business commissioned by FCC to deliver waste collection for Freetown. A degree of separation remains but the two entities are more closely entwined, at least for now (the council seem desperate to outsource it as quickly as possible).

It transpires that FWMC have not been handling all waste collection. Do you remember the night gabbage collection at the market with the two lads perched precariously at the back of a lorry? The central market areas were the responsibility of the council to look after and to help them in doing that Hull City Council had sent three Vultures about six years ago. At the yard we saw evidence of all three but only one of them was in working order. The others had been cannibalised for parts to keep the others going. Now the final vehicle was struggling to keep going and FWMC had been press ganged into making sure the market didn't drown under rubbish.

However, the highlight of this trip was undoubtedly the sweeper. Earlier in the day when Doug Sharp and Bowenson Phillips had been on Lunchtime Break a viewer had texted a question to ask what had become of Freetown's infamous road sweeper. And we were privileged enough to get a photo taken alongside the folly of a former mayor.

Apparently, the story goes, the mayor acquired the sweeper for 500,000,000 Sierra Leone Leones (that's something like £80,000), a massive outlay for the city. It arrived with much fanfare about six years ago but worked for about half a day. The reason for it sitting dormant in the yard is unclear - someone suggested there was a skills gap in using it that meant the brushes could not be raised and as a result this damaged it, someone else said it was a question of parts but the overwhelming consensus was that the mayor had made completely the wrong decision in getting hold of a vehicle designed for evenly paved, properly made roads in a city where surfaces like that are not exactly common. Questions were raised over the cost of the vehicle and whether there had been a discount on it, or whether it had been given for free but nevertheless, as word of this waste of FCC funds got out the mayor was hounded out of the city in shame. Emerson, one of Sierra Leone's leading musical artists and well known for the political sparring of his lyrics even penned a song about the debacle.

At least we might be able to put to bed the rumour that the vehicle has been heavily cannibalised. But to the naked eye most of it looked to be in pristine condition. The problem is that the vehicle is completely inappropriate for Freetown's needs.

Friday - Freetown Waste Management Company works yard #sierraleone

Friday began with rain, and lots of it, but by the time we arrived at the Freetown Waste Management Company's (FWMC) depot the sun was shining and the ground was dry.

The tour of the works yard was fascinating. Led from one constraint to another by the clearly very capable Foday Fornah we saw the Freetown equivalent to Hull's Dalton Street depot. It would be more appropriate to think of it in terms of a graveyard holding the remains of both vehicles and strategic ideas.

I mentioned in a previous post that Hull has something like 60 vehicles for 117,000 households. These five vehicles account for about 40% of FWMC's total vehicular strength. That's to service the waste requirements of 2.5m people. And each of the ones in that picture, as well as another one elsewhere in the depot are in need of repairs placing an ever increasing burden on the vehicles that are working (well, they are for now).

We also saw the carcasses of the two earth moving vehicles that had, once upon a time, kept Kingtom and Kissy under control. Broken down, cannibalised for parts and now just left to rot.

In one corner were the yellow handcarts that had once been used by Klin Salone and other social enterprises to devolve the responsibility of collecting the waste still further. To enthusiastic youths who could collect the garbage and earn money from householders whilst FWMC gave them the tools and disposed of the waste. Because there were reports that some of them were taking money from householders and then dumping the waste round the corner rather than at the agreed sites meant this idea was knocked on the head. And so they sit in the corner of the works yard.

Elsewhere are the remains of these bins. The idea was simple - get some bins, go to retail businesses and charge them a monthly fee for locating the bins on their premises and FWMC will clear the garbage on a regular basis. Not only a way of generating some revenue but a further way of sensitising the Freetown population to use bins where they're provided.
Unfortunately, as you can see, they're completely unsuitable - made from a material that has rusted, without lids and not strong enough to stand the pressures they might have been subjected to. Nobody would pay to have bins like this on their premises. Chalk this one up to the 'former management'.

Given the road network of Freetown and the fact that it's not just streets of houses the solution isn't as simple as providing a fleet of waste compacting vehicles like we would have here. In fact, the way in which waste is being moved from house, to central point, to dump, is an effective principal. So it was a good idea to look at the hand carts and think that a similar role could be met by providing motorised tricycles that could take waste from one site to another. On the Thursday evening we'd seen them in action in the city centre but, once again, the utility of these approaches is let down by the fact there's more to go wrong. Of something like 20 vehicles, only 8 are in service.

We also had a look inside the stores - we saw some spare parts for the vehicles, and a few tyres and a collection of different bins including the familiar wheelie bins (without the wheels). Apparently they're keen to experiment with these bins but the unit cost of approximately $150 was a barrier. This is in contrast to the £30 cost of a bin to us in Hull. As part of our new waste strategy we recently replaced 140 litre blue bins with larger capacity 240 litre ones. They've all been recycled now but could we have usefully sent them here instead? Obviously there's a total cost to be worked out for shipping from here to there and it raises the contentious issue of #SWEDOW ('Stuff We Don't Want') but that's a debate for a blog of its own.

That's an attempt to distil the more important issues identified on our visit to the works yard but you'd really miss out if you didn't get it from Foday Fornah himself. There's a lot of info in these four videos and apologies that neither sound or camerawork is necessarily perfect but it beat taking notes!

Friday - Lunchtime Break #sierraleone

On Friday I had a close shave.

Mr Phillips, Freetown City Council's Chief Administrator told us that the Sierra Leone Broadcasting Company wanted to interview two of our party on a live lunchtime panel.

Doug and I traipsed over to the television studios (located opposite the Sierra Leone Special Court) and were just walking through the door into the studio when we were told there was a change of plan and they only wanted one of us and Mr Phillips leaving Doug to face up to Sierra Leone's very own Jeremy Paxman single handedly.

Having dodged the bullet I was sat in an office watching the feed. The show, 'Lunchtime Break' consisted of an interviewer with a series of different guests. One was a Dutchman working on non-violent methods of communication with the Sierra Leone army; another had something to say about paddy fields and a third was telling people about a competition called 'U Sabi Dance?' (You Think You Can Dance?) which left Mr Phillips and Doug.

Darren and Emma had remained at the Freetown City Council offices where they were discussing contract management with the relevant officers but, with televisions in all the offices it was easy for them to record some of the interview that took place.



This provided us with a good amount of celebrity related banter over the rest of Friday. Mostly it was completely unfounded but on Doug's return to the hotel after we had been shown Freetown's night life by our hosts the receptionist greeted him by asking whether it was he who he had seen on TV that lunchtime?

Thursday - Night Gabbage #sierraleone

As I mentioned in the first post for Thursday Freetown is a city that never sleeps when it comes to waste management.

Throughout the day the city centre is both a hive of activity (this short video captures some of it) and a congested mass of vehicles. Either way it makes waste collection difficult during the day. The solution is to work through the night to get on top of the waste situation ahead of the following day.

To do this Freetown Waste Management Company (FWMC) and Freetown City Council (FCC) deploy a number of techniques.

First of all are the sweepers. They're generally women and their task is to sweep the streets and pile up the rubbish.

Then there are those who collect that rubbish and bring it to agreed transit points, generally using one of the 7 or 8 motorised tricycles that FWMC have in operation.



One of the waste vehicles will have been parked at an agreed location and then begins the process of taking the waste off the back of a tricycle, dumping it on the ground behind the vehicle and then transferring it into the lorry. The compactor will then run in the period between tricycles. When it's full it will go to Kingtom or Kissy and the whole thing will start again.

It is no surprise that the most common faults with the vehicles relate to clutch and starter motor. The vehicles are Mercedes, the nearest stockist is in Guinea and there is no way of getting non-branded equivalent parts meaning that the upkeep and maintenance of the vehicles is almost impossible for the FWMC works team (but more of that later).

The markets are dealt with slightly differently. Six years ago Hull City Council sent 3 'vultures' that were coming out of service to Sierra Leone (there's a 'Stuff We Don't Want' debate to be visited with regards everything we saw over the last week). FCC controlled these throughout the period of time that the FWMC was in charge of waste. These vehicles were used by the council to keep the market areas tidy. Only one of them is still in service and that had broken down.

So, when we went out on the night collection we saw some pretty precarious activity in the market where waste had begun to pile up in amongst the various food and non-food stalls. You can see from the pictures what the solution was: a big lorry and a two wheeled cart to stand on...

Thursday - Kingtom #sierraleone

Kingtom was known to me from my previous visit to Sierra Leone. It was where I'd spent my first nights in country. But I didn't venture near the dump.

Freetown has two. There's one at Kissy and there's this one at Kingtom. It's in the heart of the city and borders a water course. It's far removed from how we manage landfill here.

For starters people can roam freely. Whilst they're not supposed to, it hasn't stopped people building homes, scavenging for reusable materials or even indulging in a little bit of agriculture. In fact, when it comes to using the landfill as temporary farmland that's a source of revenue for the Freetown Waste Management Company/Freetown City Council.

Add to that the absence of measuring the waste that comes in. There's no earth moving equipment to keep on top of the garbage. This means that during the rainy season only half the site is safe to use (hence providing the opportunity for agriculture). Lorries come right into the dump, drive onto the rubbish and choose somewhere to dump it without any sorting.

We weren't sure who was staff but we came to the conclusion that if they had wellies then that probably meant they were legitimate. However, that was the extent of protective equipment. As medical waste is treated in the same way as everything else that places these men, women and children at huge risk of needle stick injuries.

On the up side the road that ran through it was amongst the best in Freetown...

Thursday - Transit Sites #sierraleone

Here's a retrospective look at the week we spent in Sierra Leone. A blow by blow account of each day. As you might expect, that's going to involve a lot of looking at rubbish!

Day one, Thursday saw us meeting with the Chief Administrator of Freetown City Council (FCC), Bowenson Philips and put together an idea of what we would look at for the rest of the week. We spent some time with Freetown's elected members and then we headed off to learn about how a city of 2.5m deals with the rubbish it produces.

Waste is once again the responsibility of FCC. For the last few years the issue of waste was handled by an independent, arms length company created by the World Bank called Freetown Waste Management Company (FWMC). Now that the direct involvement of the World Bank has come to an end without FWMC being in a position to operate independently it has been brought back 'in-house' (although the noises from FCC suggested they were in favour of returning to a commissioned service as soon as possible). Donald Tweed, the head of FWMC, took us to see how things worked. The first things we saw were two 'transit sites'.





These are places in the city which are agreed points for dumping garbage. The council's 'fleet' of waste compactor lorries then roams the streets of the city (almost continuously) going from transit site to transit site where it is then transferred from its holding bays into the back of the lorries. When they're full they go to one of two dumps to be emptied.

Essentially this means that all waste is handled three times. You have those who are collecting waste from households, or businesses, or stall holders. Some of those are employees of FWMC, some are social entrepreneurs whose payment comes from those whose waste they collect. Either way their rubbish is dumped at these 40 odd transit sites. Freetown Waste Management Company then come along, empty the transit sites onto the ground, and shift it all into the back of the waste compacting vehicles.

FWMC had enjoyed working with the youth enterprises that were collecting waste and had provided them with the yellow carts you can see in the videos and the pictures. However, some of them had begun taking payment from householders to collect waste but were then choosing to dump it wherever they liked rather than at the transit sites. As a result FWMC were collecting the carts back in (and you can see evidence of this at the works yard).

Immediately we came up against the difficulties Freetown faces in getting waste off the streets. Although there was some evidence of sorting pretty much all the waste is lumped together. This includes medical waste as well as the high proportion of organic material sent to landfill. The strain this places on the city is compounded by a lack of vehicles to service a city of this size. In Hull, we have about 60 of these vehicles for 117,000 households all of whom receive a doorstep collection. Freetown has 10, not all of which work. Moreover, they're lorries designed for door to door collection and that's not really what Freetown needs.



Ideas were already forming about how processes might be improved. One of the suggestions was that it would be possible to increase the speed with which waste was collected by using front loading vehicles like the one picture above. However, it may well speed up the collection of waste and reduce the number of staff required but vehicles like that cost in excess of £100,000.

Rain means blessing?

We had quite the convoluted journey to get here on Wednesday and finally settled into our hotel yesterday.

Quite apart from finding our hotel wouldn't let us stay it involved a delayed flight out of Heathrow, our baggage taking an age to come off the plane, missing the first helicopter and so having to wait for the second. And we were in the minibus waiting to board it when the heavens opened...



It took an hour and half for that rain to clear, but it reminded me of a proverb my Dad brought back from Uganda...

Rain means blessing

I think we'll have to wait and see whether he was right :)

Hull-Freetown Good Practice Scheme

My arrival in local government was more by accident than design. After finishing my History degree I decided I wanted to throw myself into serving other people and help rebuild war-torn countries and work in international development.

So I did an MA at York's Post-War Reconstruction and Development Unit and that included great discussions with various professionals on the course as well as those teaching us. We went on a group research trip to Lebanon (during the Parliamentary sit-in) and I researched my dissertation in Sierra Leone.

It was a fantastic year. The people I met and the discussions we had offered an incredible opportunity to learn as well as to reflect that, again, most good practice is effectively sound theology (I have a number of partially completed blog posts exploring this which I will get round to completing, one day).

However, by the end of it I had reached two personal conclusions:
1 - that the most inspirational people I met, the people whose jobs I wanted to emulate, were those who had lived through the conflicts and were rebuilding their country for their families with an understanding of language, culture, food, weather, etc that would always be difficult for me to acquire.
2 - that I had very little other than youthful enthusiasm and academic training to offer a post-conflict situation.

That is not to criticise those who work for the aid and development sector, just to say that for me it wasn't the right moment. But I still wanted to pursue something akin to the work of international development but in a British context. And so I ended up on the graduate scheme in Hull.

I'd argue that in our wealthy country our lead development actors are found in the local public sector agencies. I have a lot of love for a system that is not without its flaws but which tries to recognise local concerns whilst applying national policy in a coordinated fashion.

I'd also argue that for development will always struggle to take root and produce national improvements for a country if competent and effective local administration isn't sat at the table talking about how to coordinate programmes and identify priorities.

My dissertation considered the 'Peace Gap' between elite ideas of what makes peace and the reality for those who live in places that are still recovering from conflict. We spend a lot of time and money and effort with national governance - getting countries to a place where they can trade internationally and receive delegations. At the same time international NGOs work at a local level to meet the most pressing needs of a community. And both of those things are brilliant because they will help to transform lives.

We bypass the bit in the middle at our peril and it's often identified as being the least effective bit of the jigsaw because of corruption or lack of skill. 'Good governance' is a much discussed phrase but does the focus on national governments and democracy overlook the need for all sections of a public service to be effective?

I only have fairly vague ideas about what my career might look like but I've been lucky enough to study for an MSc in Public Administration whilst in Hull and I have this hope of bringing the two worlds together. At the end of my MA I didn't have anything particularly special to offer but perhaps a grounding in international development and local public administration can prove useful? Whether that's true or not is a question to be answered in a few years - 2 years of experience is not enough to provide credibility and besides, I'm quite excited by the potential waiting to be unlocked within local government.

So, what has that got to do with Freetown?

Well, Hull is twinned with Freetown and has been for 30 years. Last Autumn a delegation from Hull visited Sierra Leone to look at how we could support Freetown City Council in delivering a waste strategy for the city and then we got some funding from the Commonwealth & Local Government Forum to do it.

Which means four of us are heading to Sierra Leone for a week to begin the first phase of the project - the evidence gathering. Our brief is to look at procurement, contract management, asset management and performance monitoring within the council. The goal is to start to put into place a waste strategy for the city but to get there we need to make sure the right foundations are there. Part of that is talking to Freetown City Council about their role at the hub of various efforts at tackling waste, water and sanitation.

Earlier this year the European Union provided 6 million Euros to organisations wanting to tackle these topics in Freetown. That's a lot of capital money that will be applied to the work that Freetown City Council is trying to achieve. Obviously it is vital that whatever is done includes the council, and doesn't take place full of good intentions but ultimately completely disconnected from any strategy the council may have.

Which is brilliant really.

This was meant to be sent from Heathrow before we left but sadly didn't get a chance to post it! So, we've been here a couple of days already.

LocalGovCamp Yorkshire & Humber: #lgcyh

I spent last Saturday at the National Railway Museum but I wasn't there to look at the trains. I was there with about 80 others for an unconference about local government.

Erm, what's an unconference?

I'm sure there's a full definition at Wikipedia but I think of them as being what you'd be left with if you turned the principals of participation on their head and removed keynote speakers and the cost from a traditional conference. There is a venue and there are organisers but the agenda and the structure are pitched over coffee and bacon sandwiches. Some come more prepared than others; the experts can be relied on to bring their insights, others collaborate before the event but equally things just bubble up as the day progresses.



Hold on, you gave up a Saturday during the World Cup to talk about work...are you mad?

I have some sympathy for those who looked at me like I'd lost the plot when I attempted to entice them along and I wonder whether it's hard to see the value if you've never come face to face with the concept in the first place? I'm not sure of the conversion rate but it always seems to find people singing their praises afterwards.

Twitter eavesdropping had given me my exposure to these events as well as connecting to some of the main protagonists but I did get to LocalGovCamp Lincoln where I put real human people to @s and avatars and found the unconference format to be really enjoyable (Andy is talking of hosting another). And Saturday was another opportunity to rub actual shoulders with some of the people pioneering new ideas in local authorities around the country. Unfortunately I didn't manage to collar all those I follow and sadly I was the only person from Hull City Council to make it (obviously I was more irritating than persuasive in my efforts to encourage people to come!)

One of the other disappointments of the day was the absence of the movers and the shakers. I work in a very hierarchical environment and it seems that across the country there's a real disconnect between the influential and the innovative. Of course there are notable exceptions and it's clear that some of the places represented at #lgcyh have achieved significant victories. Their trailblazing can help to further the debate but, for now, those paid to provide leadership in facing down the challenges we face are conspicuous in their absence from the discussions and these events.

In many ways perhaps there was little point in my having gone on Saturday given my role at work. However, from a completely selfish perspective it was fantastic to spend the day surrounded by a group of people who are passionate enough about the work they do and the public they serve to give up a Saturday and travel significant distances to share ideas and talk about the challenges they are overcoming. I took plenty from the four sessions I attended (blogs coming soon) and it was great to meet new people as well as those I already knew.

Last week saw the start of the formal process of the Graduate Scheme coming to an end. When I applied for this job I was excited by the hope of transformation that shone through the city's rhetoric. That excitement has been dulled by the discovery that much of it was just words and the apparent lack of value or strategic thought given to our futures. However, it's great to know that elsewhere in the region real value is placed on innovation and that there's a real ambition to transform public services.

An event like #lgcyh fits snugly with the excellent parts of the Graduate Scheme. Our flitting from service to service has offered a wide experience of local government. Our studying in Birmingham has exposed us to new ideas and encouraged us to explore innovation on an equal footing to men and women with varied experience and varied responsibility. Saturday was an opportunity for the story of local government to be told from a variety of angles and provide a fertile environment for new ideas. It was inspiring, exciting and challenging.

Huge thanks to Ken Eastwood, Kev Campbell-Wright and Melanie Reed who were the ringleaders in organising the day and kudos too to the National Railway Museum which was a cracking venue and put on a good spread (I judge most things on the quality of the cake).

Picture credits:
'The Programme' by London Looks (@ingridk)

#cisforchurch (and everybody else)

Earlier today I saw a tweet from @ShareCreative about CisFORchurch. Behind the link was some church research inspired by Seth Godin's book 'Tribes'. Through discussions with church leaders and members the authors consider what 21st century church community looks like and some of the common obstacles or concerns that exist.

The Conservative slogan of 'Broken Britain' gained traction because there is the perception that communities have fractured. Perhaps that's supported by people not knowing their neighbours and 70% of us being selfish but the internet has seen them reborn. The social web exists because people want to share their lives with others, they desire more than simple individualism or quiet desperation. And while some of those social spaces remain entirely virtual the real value of everything web 2.0 is seen in the act of transition to the real world. It is word becoming flesh.

And it's great to see some creative people recognising this and trying to help the church understand it. Christianity is all about relationships. The Trinity is a beautiful image of relational community. The Bible is the story of God's desire for relationship with His creation. The church exists to encourage and support, to connect and transform, to be both home and sanctuary. We're meant to be modelling community beyond just pitching up for a few songs and a prayer predicated on subscription to some specific beliefs.

So whilst C may stand for Church, what we discuss on a Sunday is not just for Church and Christians. The relevance and value remains without belief in God. There is a massive amount to say about the leadership of people, the management of performance and the very nature of organisations. In the last 7 years, at work and in study, it's remarkable how much of what has been offered as good practice has characteristics or motivation that resonates with my theology.

The first page of text ends with this paragraph, it's good stuff for everyone faith loaded or not:

when there is a thriving sense of community, there is a healthy degree of communication and an increase in communication leads to more collaboration. This type of environment is conducive to developing innovation, creative ideas and productivity

Take a look, have a think and let me know if you think I'm talking absolute rubbish :)

Open publication - Free publishing - More typography

OK, so what's next?

While we don't yet have a new government the thirteen years of Labour rule are almost certain to come to an end. Even if there is no agreement between Conservatives and Liberal Democrats with the result that a LibDemLab coalition is birthed it would be met with consternation by the 10.7m people represented by those who won the popular vote.

Whatever box you crossed, and whoever your local representative is our future is a future heavy on Cameron, Osbourne, Gove et al. It is one in which Conservative policies you agreed with, or detested, will lurk. Irrespective of a coalition with Clegg the Conservatives have the greater clout, outnumbering their prospective bed-fellows by 5 to 1.

And so, Big Society will be the order of the day.

The Conservative campaign left me uneasy. I found it contradiction heavy and substance light. An invitation to be part of the next government is hollow when it goes hand in hand with state bribes for a given value of 'family'. It is a ludicrous claim to propose that we're 'all in this together' when referring to austerity whilst simultaneously rewarding those who have amassed estates valued at £1m.

On Thursday I read this chilling article in the Independent of what Compassionate Conservatism looks like when put into practice. If you haven't already seen it, please take a few minutes to read it.

It should hardly be a surprise that in the quest for lower taxation, which this article suggests is the mark of 'success', services would be cut. Nor should it come as a shock that the drive for smaller government means lines are drawn in the sand about what's important and what's not, what's funded and what isn't.

Big Society, compassionate Conservatism holds as the ideal that individuals build community, that they are the solution to any or all issues and that the state should facilitate but not provide. Clearly in Hammersmith & Fulham the facilitation hasn't always worked and people have suffered as a result. If this is the nature of the politics to come and the outcome of the government we have chosen what are we going to do about it?

Our response, at every level, has to be more than just disappointment at the outcome and more than just thinking about what a politics of opposition can achieve in the next 5 years with an eye to the next election. A lot is being said about a hung parliament being a wonderful opportunity for parties to work together. The unspoken subtitle to this is 'because they're forced to'.

I hope that I'm not alone in believing that the men and women we ask to represent us would have a greater desire to work alongside the other parties than this seems to indicate.

A politics of opposition is what we've had and from my perspective that has created a tit for tat world where across the country it's all about finding the silver bullet that is the solution, or the flaw that will deal it a fatal blow. It's a tear up and start again approach because if you hold opposing views and the balance of power swings then necessarily Everything Must Go. Take the Pupil Premium, it may be a good way of targeting deprivation but it is such a departure from the current mechanics that it is not just a tweak but a rewriting.

Big society might not be something we like. We might believe that those who are vulnerable (to whatever extent) are the whole point of public services and the whole raison d'etre of sending men and women to Westminster to give voice to the voiceless and for government to be nothing if not a tool of social justice.

We also might be very uneasy with the Conservatives having the balance of power. But this is democracy, sometimes you lose. We might be concerned about where the scythe will fall, how important areas of policy are approached and what the long-term holds in a bluer nation. But, this is democracy and when your politics loses, other people have the opportunity to govern.

Conservative influence and Big Society will characterise the immediate future of Britain. And that means everyone will have to play ball, to embrace those ideas and get stuck in. Because if you don't volunteer, then who will?

We now need to be part of our communities in a way that delivers social justice and challenges the gaps a withdrawing state might leave behind.

History is claimed to go in cycles and whilst we will not return to a true laissez-faire regime (marriage tax breaks for example are a fairly obvious example of state interventionism) as that found in the 19th century we might end up closer to it than we are now. In a Britain with low taxation, bureaucracy and state intervention there was little in the way of education, health or support that didn't come from the generosity and compassion of those in local communities. It was on the back of socially conscientious pioneers who challenged this status quo that the Welfare State was eventually built.

I believe that the Welfare State is one of the greatest things about this country. Not just for what it has done and will continue to do but because it places at the heart of the nation a fundamental understanding that there is justice in the state acting corporately in support of those who have the least as well as those with the most. A humility to understand that we are 'all in this together' which breeds compassion and mercy, not self-interest.

It's obviously both premature and extreme to say that there will be a systematic dismantling of it. But with the extent of cuts forecast something will have to give. There's serious talk of Proportional Representation amongst the non-Cons but isn't this just losing badly? After over a decade in power in which they have enjoyed a stonking majority rule, and even then subverted the legislature, the Labour Party have turned to this now they are faced by the spectre of losing influence. It's worth remembering that in 2005 a majority government was elected with 35.2% of the vote, less than Thursday's Conservatives.

What is real from the point of view of the people is a genuine desire for engagement. Even though the hyped 'massive turnout' did not materialise (the total increased a mere 4% to 65%) there is an enthusiasm to be involved with the political process where our MPs represent us and do what we tell them to do (even if so far they have fallen short of what we've asked on issues like 10:10 and the Digital Economy Bill).

Organisations like MySociety and 38Degrees demonstrate the potential for people to get involved. Tom Steinberg, founder of MySociety, has been co-opted by the Tories so does this mean that Big Society is being planned to harness this basic enthusiasm for participation, and the ability for people to self organise?

The state is about to shrink, the services and opportunities people have access to must not be allowed to follow. Standing on the sidelines and complaining about the incompatibility of Conservative and Liberal Democratic politics doesn't fix that, continuing the petty and snide mockery that has characterised too much of the election serves the needs of nobody, hoping that in 4 years' time the public are disappointed and crave another change in government is selfish.

We should all be striving for this Parliament, which will be one of the hardest five years in a very long time, to be a success and to be able to turn around in a few years and declare

'you know actually Cameron has done a good job, Osbourne hasn't seen a double dip recession, Gove's schools have genuinely raised standards, Compassionate Conservatism has reduced inequality and we've surpassed commitments to international development and the environment'.

At this moment in time I don't see it, but even as a Labour voter there's nothing wrong in my saying I want it to happen. How do we, the public, put our politics and disappointment to one side in order to help make sure it becomes a reality? And for all we might want to whinge about Westminster, we make that happen by being part of the solution ourselves. I hope that the 10.7m people who voted Conservative follow that up by being wherever the state no longer is. But more than that I hope that the other 19m do that too.

There will be reasons people say they can't do it. But people have turned out to campaign for Proportional Representation as I type. Would we be so keen if it meant having to volunteer at the sharp end of service delivery? In the toss up between flopping on the sofa at the end of a long day or going to support others what will we choose? And how do we achieve it with anything like the coordination that's required? Who provides the leadership and the steer and the guidance?

I'm fairly disengaged - I work in one city and live in another, I'm out of the house for 12 hours a weekday. Am I willing to foresake my comforts to help the least? To add something else to my weekly diary? What will I do with my married couple's allowance, if we qualify? Will people use it to support those no longer helped through SureStart? Will those who benefit from an inheritance tax break be bothered that encouraging their wealth might mean denying support to those on the margins?

Unless we use what we have the state is not going to deliver a fairer Britain. We will have to be part of the solution from the pitch, not just the sidelines. And that might mean that Conservative policy works, and you'd be involved with making that so. Like I say, politics and ideology on one side. Big Society here we come...