I’ve been totting up all the places in Britain I’ve resided in. The list does not include holidays or short stays, only genuine residency. I’m staggered.

Here they are: London, Edinburgh, Farnham (Surrey), Oxford, Melton Mowbray (Leics), Bournemouth, Poole (Dorset), Exeter, Cambridge, Canterbury, Cardiff, Swansea, Borth (Mid-Wales), Penzance and Cheltenham. I may well have missed out one or two.

This does not include foreign climes: Spain (Benalmadena and Estepona), Paris, Perth (Australia), Kaiserslautern (Germany) and a myriad of short stays here and there. I could claim to be an expert in answering the question in the title of this piece.

What makes someone extend their gap year for the rest of their life? Restlessness, perhaps? Inability to settle in one spot? That’s not true, since I’ve been over a decade in my current city in Devon.

It’s a mystery, especially as I’ve known for a long time that most locations have their faults and are much the same once you are familiar with them. Your own viewpoint is always present wherever you go. If you allow it, it will flatten all differences and enhance dullness.

One spot will always stand out though.

For me, Devon is the pitch-perfect place to be, across a wide range of variables. It has everything. Solitude, crowds if you want them, sensible cities, intriguing towns and chocolate box villages, beaches to north and south, and the greatest moor of them all — Dartmoor. Not to mention cream teas and great fish. It never fails to amaze or surprise.

It’s also relatively peaceful by today’s standards, and is thankfully insulated from most of the big political questions of the day. Even union leaders are more benign in Devon than elsewhere.

The big society is a reality here. Take a look at Northlew on Dartmoor, the tiny village that set up its own wireless broadband service, undercutting BT and all other providers feeding off the internet backbone. Devonians are nothing if not enterprising. They have to be. Big Society writ large.

While Cornwall can at times seem like the Wild West, Devon is for ever civilized and tidy. It’s the perfect county for a writer, even better for a contemplative, superb for a conservationist.

This is not a hagiography, nor a billet-doux to a patch of red soil. It is nothing but the unadulterated truth.

The Royal Mail, it is said, intends to abolish counties for delivery purposes. Those upcountry folk just don’t get it, do they?

John Evans

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How I dislike the phrase “mental health”. In its benign form it has a pastel, slightly perfumed air about it — something and nothing, as we say. Add the word “problem” and it becomes a spitting mass of contradictions and false positives.

Thanks to new American proposals, “psychosis” is set to become the badge of choice for mental health problems and perceived deviations from “normal” behaviour.

I once wrote an article on the mystical experiences of a few famed saints of the Church. “Hmm,” said an expert, “it’s probably bi-polar disorder.”

Nothing is allowed to exist beyond the current orthodoxy.

Descartes’s I think, therefore I am is a genuine symptom of psychosis because it locks us into random processes of brain activity. This extreme narrowing of experience is a prison cell for the mind, a place where the rest of existence is “other” and therefore threatening. It is characteristic of bullies, dictators, and authoritarians (who think they are always right) and scientism, which restricts all experience to pathways defined by blind intellect.

Only the narrow-minded could classify most human behaviour as illness.

We British should stop listening to American and European narrowlogues and revisit our famed tolerance of quirk, difference and benign oddity. That’s what made our predecessors such good inventors — and among the freest people on earth.

Apart from Boris, where have all the English eccentrics gone?

History teaching is rightly back in the educational spotlight under the new Coalition Government. Schools’ chief Michael Gove is determined to bring back rigorous teaching standards, including a detailed treatment of narrative history.

Pupils need to be able to position themselves in time and space. History gives them temporal awareness of their place in the scheme of things. Labour neglected the subject, appearing to believe that historical accuracy would turn students into Tories. They were probably right.

In my school, I was regarded as a whizz on the French Revolution. I was able to field questions that even the history master couldn’t answer in detail. What was my secret?

I hadn’t then read Edmund Burke’s famous work on the subject, nor yet Carlyle’s. Even Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities was a pleasure for the future.

The source of my devilish knowledge were the novels of Dennis Wheatley, who also wrote extensively on occultism. Anyone who has read the swashbuckling tales of one Roger Brooke, a fictional Englishman who spent the entire period in revolutionary France, will have a sound grasp of that important slice of French, and British, history.

I was lucky to live close to one of the last of the private libraries. It kept every book it had ever possessed, so was a treasure store of old fiction. I lapped it up in huge gulps.

My main point is that fiction can be an effective way of introducing youngsters to historical narrative. I happen to know that Michael Gove is a fan of Dennis Wheatley — who incidentally worked with Winston Churchill during the war.

Might we soon see the old boy back in favour in English classrooms?

Ever since I set up this website, Syntagma, along with Syntagma Media in 2005, I’ve regretted having to use syntagmamedia.com instead of a plain syntagma domain.

All things come to him who waits. The new .co domain suffix, which arrived on July 20, presents a clean sheet for those of us with impure business domain names.

As well as nabbing johnevans.co (a triumph, I assure you), I’ve managed to secure syntagma.co. The “co” signifies “company”, so is a dignified top-level alternative to .com, and is not local like .co.uk.

The present Syntagma site will remain on syntagmamedia.com for familiarity’s sake.

That vanity of vanities, a website in one’s own name, in this case John Evans (dot co) now exists: John Evans’s personal website.

I may yet regret this.

Annoyment of the Week

I haven’t really been annoyed by anything this week. A Conservative Government, albeit a tad diluted, is a serene experience for most of us.

Even Dave’s brutalist approach to diplomacy gives a front-foot feel to the new politics.

Does it get any better than this? When a chap can’t get steamed up about politics, might he be tired of life?

Now I’m starting to talk myself into artificial annoyments. I shall desist and bid you all peace and goodwill.

Germanic sense is beginning to overcome French pursuit of glory.

Wilhelm Nolling, one of five German professors challenging the legality of the European Union’s response to the financial and economic crises, is predicting social unrest.

“A transfer union [money flowing from rich countries to poorer ones] will destroy the social peace in Europe”, he said. “We need to form a new heart of the euro: France, Germany, Finland, Austria and the Netherlands. All the other states should be given their freedom back. That would give them a real opportunity to increase their competitiveness through currency devaluations.”

Just two years ago such sentiments were unthinkable. Now they are commonplace.

The shine has come off the EU and the eurozone. How soon before this absurd political confection is holed beneath the waterline?

Pics of the Week

The pictures show the Cathedral Green in Exeter 10 days apart. The first was shot on the 12th of July, the other on the 22nd.

What a difference a splash of rain makes.

John Evans

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Big Society Watch

“Would you mind outsourcing the sauce, please?”

Two stories caught my eye this week, both involved outsourcing work from public employees to the private sector. Each saved a ton of money and returned better services and efficiency. As examples of what can be done by the Coalition Government, and local authorities, they take some beating.

The Government-run Teachers’ Pensions Agency previously employed 430 civil servants. Under their watch, it would take up to two weeks to answer queries from teachers.

Now the ubiquitous outsourcing company, Capita, has been brought in to run the agency in Darlington. They have fewer than 200 people on the job and queries are answered in two minutes. The Treasury is said to be pocketing savings of up to 40%.

Just how many other public offices across the land could benefit from a similar transfer of power? I suspect there are thousands. The two-minute query brings to mind the Herculean effort it takes to get information from Gordon Brown’s botched amalgam of Revenue and Customs. In this one department, mistakes alone cost the nation billions of pounds a year.

The second example, is in the U.S. State of California, where the small Hispanic town of Maywood was facing bankruptcy. The 26-year-old mayor took the drastic action of sacking every public employee in the administration.

Policing was outsourced to nearby Los Angeles PD, which provides a much more professional service, according to locals. Other important services are now being handled by the county, again with greater efficiency. The move has saved 20% of the budget. Forty percent of the redundant staff have been employed by a nearby town that handles much of the work.

As ever, it’s the little things that people notice. One said, “It’s the small stuff — graffiti is cleaned away faster, broken lights fixed, even the street crossing guards outside the schools seem more alert.”

I’ll bet even the grass gets cut too — Exeter take note.

It’s early days, and the world is watching Maywood, Calif., but these are exciting times for those of us who have laboured under “not fit for purpose” public services for too long.

John Evans

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Big Society Watch

I’ve been doing my bit for Dave’s Big Society all week as our local council has stopped performing a variety of tasks, including grass cutting, to save money.

I live in a “Clean City”, as the signs keep telling us. It also has a Beacon Council, whatever that means. I must say normally it performs quite well, dispensing both cleanliness and a civilized living space.

Out walking this morning I noticed a long line of tall weeds running along the curbs of an adjoining street. From a distance they resembled those rows of poplars that line the French countryside. Up close, they are no such thing, just rank, ugly weeds.

Grass verges are in the same state — unmowed — while most council land is a mess. I’ve been clearing up the road outside my house, and some others have followed suit. In the lane, weeds were at waist height until some of us set about them.

Now I don’t mind making a contribution if it really is necessary. The problem is, councils tend to cut costs indiscriminately, without thought for the outcome.

Today, we had a “Community Safety” event on the Cathedral Green. Dozens of police officers, fire crews and safety people were milling around waiting to answer our queries about safety. There were few takers when I was there.

Call me naive, but isn’t that precisely the sort of thing that should have been cut first instead of the grass cutting?

Here’s a suggestion for our beleaguered councillors and officials: give the Secretary of State’s office a call; if you can get through to the Great Pickles (Eric) himself, so much the better. His bluff Yorkshire common sense should solve all your problems.

Ask him, or whoever is available, if the Coalition can waive all those daft edicts issued by Labour ministers in the tangled undergrowth beneath primary legislation. They cost too much local wealth to enforce.

Anything politically “correct” or safety related can comfortably go. So-called equality and diversity nonsense, ditto. Bonfire it all away, it doesn’t need an Act of Parliament.

Then perhaps they can start cutting the grass again.

Prime Minister’s Questions in the House of Commons (PMQs), was more than usually interesting today. Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg presided in David Cameron’s absence, the first Liberal to do so since the Whigs, or at least Lloyd George.

Note he said “Liberal”, not LibDem. Is Clegg beginning to distance himself from the leftie Social Democrats in his party? He seems to be comfortable in a Conservative environment, even though his Europeanism is driving some of us up the wall.

Fate blessed him today by throwing up a ghastly Jack Straw as his principal antagonist. Ancient old Jack, voice like a chainsaw, rasped across the dispatch boxes like a soul demented. His rambling orations were mostly drowned out by a very frisky House of Commons.

Speaker Bercow acted as if he were God, batting down anyone who irritated him, including Cleggy. What a bully this little man is becoming. Time for a guillotine, methinks.

Straw was truly awful — he won’t be back. Most of the other questions were locally based and seemed trite in the national Parliament. The Labour benches disgraced themselves yet again. Don’t they know they lost the election?

But Nick Clegg was the star. He replied coolly and competently, neatly sidestepping the elephant traps. Not bad for a chap on his first outing as Prime Minister Designate Surrogate.

Watch out, Dave. Don’t leave the capital too often.

Annoyment of the Week

With the results of the European Union’s rather tepid “stress” tests of a selective group of EU banks due out on Friday, there’s much talk of the “haircut” each country’s sovereign debt is likely to take.

In financial terms, a haircut is a market-imposed discount applied to dodgy debt, in this case government bonds. Greece is said to face a haircut of just 17% — many commentators think it should be closer to 50%.

The problem arises from the bit of the debt that’s counted. Bonds issued via “special vehicles” are not taken as state debt as they are “off-balance sheet,” a ploy much favoured by the US deceased corporation, Enron and Gordon Brown. They still have to be paid up or rolled over though.

All this talk of sovereign haircuts of up to 50% must worry Prince William. He’s already lost half of his.

Alas poor Times website. I’m hearing that not many people have signed up to it, which means a sharp drop in advertising revenues not matched by subscriptions.

I have to confess I’ve not yet taken the plunge either. The application form is annoyingly intrusive and it requires a direct debit instead of a simple credit card — although the micropayment method uses cards. Confusing.

Frankly, I just can’t be bothered with the whole thing. It makes life too complicated. Imagine going through all that rigmarole for every paper or magazine you read online. The FT is a nightmare.

I buy the Sunday Times print version anyway, so it’s a little less for me to read during the week. Now where did I put my bookshelves?

Andrew Marr has signalled on the BBC website that he will use the IPad 3G download alternative, which is more convenient. Amazon’s Kindle has a similar scheme for newspapers. Iain Dale has also balked at the News International sign up process. And there are many others.

When might we expect that particular paywall to come down?

Immortality Quest is a new website I’m in the process of setting up to concentrate my online content on the topic.

There are articles and links available from the header tabs and newer content will appear regularly on the frontpage. I’ll also try to source other writers’ quality content from time to time.

So, if you’re interested in all things immortal, especially yourself, head on over and take a look:

www.immortalityquest.org

PS: don’t forget the “org”.

Pic of the Week

A swan that thinks it’s a giraffe:

Photo: DCO

John Evans

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David Miliband is said to be odds on favourite to win the Labour Party leadership. That’s assuming, of course, that the AV system of voting doesn’t promote a rank outsider to the job, as it has a tendency to do.

Frankly, Diane Abbott would serve them right.

But let’s take Monsieur Miliband’s chances at face value. He is thought to be smart. At least according to a smitten Hilary Clinton, who took an immediate shine to Senor Miliband on a trip to America. We will investigate his “smartness,” or otherwise, in a moment.

His supporters claim he has “bottom,” that is to say, gravitas, presence and leadership qualities coming out of his … well, you get the picture.

The problem for Herr Miliband is that no-one really knows who he is, or what he stands for, and what kind of leader he would be.

Is he authoritative? A Churchill? Clearly not. A thinker, like Harold Wilson, who had so many thoughts he virtually paralyzed himself? A doer, like Clement Attlee, who built a crypto-communist state in this green and pleasant land?

We simply don’t know and would have to take him on trust, as we did with Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. That’s not a reassuring thought.

So let’s look at his alleged smartness. In a speech a few days ago, he produced a kind of personal manifesto that he wants to enact across Britain. He thought Gordon Brown would achieve it first, which is why he supported him as Prime Minister. Brown did precisely the opposite, demonstrating that the new would-be Dave does not have good judgement.

I’ve removed the padding from the following passage, leaving the Miliband concept structure in place:

“… we [need] renewal … greater moral seriousness and less indifference to the excesses of a celebrity drenched culture … greater coherence as a government, particularly in relation to child poverty and equality … party reform and a meaningful internationalism … civic morality to champion civility when confronting a widespread indifference to others … optimism born of clear strategy, bold plans for change and reform, a compelling articulation of aspiration and hope.”

Compelling, isn’t it? (Heavy irony alert). It reads like an assiduous, but vacuous, student’s manifesto, packed with nebulous aspirations, but no hard policies, nor any notion of what paying for these empty dreams will cost the nation. Just imagine him on the BBC’s Dragon’s Den trying to raise funding for his scheme.

“Er, what exactly is your product, Mr Milibond?”
“It’s band actually.”
“It’s a rock group?”
“That’s my name.”
“Rock group?”
“No, you don’t understand …”
“We need to know what you have to sell.”
“I don’t want to sell anything. I want to improve society, Europe and the international community.”
“Through rock music?”
“No, politics!”
“Ah, you’re a think tank?”
“No, a party.”
“So you want to set up a party organizing business for … whom exactly: kiddies’ birthdays?”
“No! For the benefit of the people.”
“Which people? We need to know your market demographics.”
“We’re going for the centre ground, plus any minority grouping we can bri… er, persuade to back us.”
“What do you estimate your profits at for years 1, 2, 3 and 4?”
“We don’t do profits, we have deficits every year, so we beg and borrow the rest, mainly from the trades unions.”
“So you have no intention of making money, just surviving on debt?”
“Like the country.”
“You are not a country, Mr Multibond. You are a non-existent company, with no money, no plans, no product, just idle hopes and dreams that have no relevance to the modern business world.”
“Exactly, it’s called the Labour Party. And the name is Mili not Multi.”
“Mr Mili, you’re fired.”

John Evans

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