Always Hope

Yesterday I posted a critical comment on someone else's blog. It doesn't matter where, or why, because this is not about that blog post or the argument I had with it.  It's just something that the blog author said that got me thinking, along the lines of: "if you don't like this stuff, you don't have to read it". Now to be fair, I had been close to the bone with my comment, and much credit to him for publishing rather than quietly suppressing it, but at first I was a bit put out.  Then I wondered how I would have reacted if I had received that sort of comment on my blog. In the end, I felt a bit uncomfortable about it all, and was pleased to give him the last word, even though I didn't agree with him because it is, after all, his blog. It did feel a bit like going into someone's living room and shouting at them. On the other hand, why do we blog if not to get a reaction?  The internet is a public space in which anyone can see what you've w

Today's C of E - related spat relates to the Telegraph's provocative Ageing Church of England will be dead in 20 years . This is a write-up of what would otherwise have been a footnote to one of the most uncontroversial General Synod meetings for some years.  I'm not sure which debate this took place in, probably the one on Mission Action Planning, but the Revd. Patrick Richmond assured the Synod that unless things change, "some extrapolations" show that the church "will not be functionally extant" by 2030.  Despite the obvious fact that "some extrapolations" translates as "my personal opinion", this is worth considering, as bloggers will.  Stuart at eChurch Blog takes it as a statement of the bleeding obvious.  Meanwhile, my blogging friend David at The Vernacular Curate is on good table-thumping form as he castigates Mr Richmond for his whingeing pessimism. So, we're all doomed, or just a bit of old-fashioned doom and gloom?

Yesterday I wondered aloud if anyone else was feeling bemused by the media frenzy over The News Of The World (of not-so-blessed memory) and its associated publications and personnel.  Apparently not.  The general consensus is that this is one of the most important events this year and deserves every micro-second of media coverage that is being devoted to it. We are told that we live in a new media culture, where the news agenda is set, not by editors sitting in a darkened room somewhere, but by the people, the millions of bloggers and tweeters and whatever who get hold of a story and force the powers that be to take notice.  This is obviously true, and has in many ways increased the transparency and accountability of public life, in this country at least.  The downside of this, though, is that news media tends to be more knee-jerk reactionary than ever, less given to analysis, and dare I say it, more and more likely to initiate huge bandwagons that everybody else jumps on.  The blo

...just in case you wondered. The latest thing in Christian blogging seems to be to dramatically announce your retirement .   Over at The Beaker Folk, the Archdruid surveys the blogs that are left, and wonders who else might quit.  Whilst quite chuffed to be included in the survey - I noticed I got mentioned thus: Charlie Peer is an interesting (and   Always Hope ful) blogger in Cornwall. He hasn't blogged for a few weeks, but then he does that from time to time. Or at least I hope he's not stopped this time. I want to reassure readers of Always Hope that this is all part of the cunning plan.  Today I am announcing that I am not giving up blogging: there won't come a day when hordes of readers log on, only to be disappointed to find nothing new here - after all, how would they know the difference between that and any other day? Instead, I prefer to keep you in hope for the days when you visit this site and find, to your amazement, that I've written something.