JP's Corner of The Blogosphere

Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important - CS Lewis (he's right, you know...)

I got my third mention on Cross Rhythms and I won the 5 CDs. Score!

Thanks to Mike Rimmer on Cross Rhythms I've just got a second mention on air, just minutes after the first one. Bonus! Now to deflate my head, so that I can fit through my door again...

I quite often listen to Cross Rhythms Radio and tonight I decided that it would be worth my while entering their "what would you do with £3m?" Prize Draw to win 5 CDs (not £3m, but nice nonetheless). I don't know yet if I've won - probably not, alas - but I did get a mention, which would have been very cool if other people I know were listening. If I had a list of things to do before I was 30, getting a mention on the radio would feature - though I've already surpassed that by getting a greeting live on German Radio last year ( SWR 3 - yes, really). Keep the comments about the class system coming - I like a healthy debate, and knowing I have readers massages my ego. Also, Anthropax, have you read my answers to your theological questions?

Good morning folks! In exchange for helping out with the BNC Open Day on Thursday, I have got free accommodation in Oxford this week, which I have chosen to take advantage of. It's given me the chance to catch up on a bit of work, and make sure all is in order before I finally leave Oxford for the summer. I've also enjoyed the opportunity to see a few people - I had a quality coffee with Mr Youthblog this morning (thanks Ian!) and Mrs JP is working in Oxford so of course I've enjoyed seeing her. I was reading Anthropax's blog yesterday and came across a post he'd written about the Daily Mail. He seems to have quite a detailed way of categorising people (I particularly like the idea of having a 'middle-middle class' category) and this has got me thinking about whether or not it is right to attach such labels to people. One argument is that there will always be a class system based on such things as the food you eat and whether or not you say 'napkin...

According to an article I read in the London Metro (and which was also reported by the BBC News Page), scientists have found that "wearing socks is helpful for both genders" - and no, the article was not specifically about clothing or footwear... The thing is, a reliable source informs me that women don't find men who wear socks in this case (especially those who wear nothing but) especially sexy. What do visitors to my corner of the Blogosphere think?

Those of you who know me will know that I whinge quite a lot about the railways. Don't get me wrong, I really love train travel, and as a non-driver I rely on it quite a bit to get around. It's just that there seems to be an awful lot of governmental bureaucracy which hampers the system. In light of yesterday's headlines about over-crowding I feel that now is a good time to share my feelings with the world at large. The idea of a congestion charge for railways, is, quite frankly ludicrous. Just recently Tony and his cronies - who ride around in Jaguars, oblivious to everyone else - deemed it a good idea to try and price people out of their cars by using a sateliite based charging system. *cough* Big Brother *cough*. And now it seems that you will also be financially penalised for using public transport instead. At this rate I'll be charged for walking at peak times next... I can't believe that one of the solutions is to 'scrap smaller stations and underus...

Ladies and Gentlemen. I apologise for the lack of recent postings, but I’m pleased to announce that I’ve returned to my corner of the Blogosphere and will hopefully be posting again on a reasonably regular basis. For those of you following the theological debate I am pleased to announce that it has re-commenced. For those of you familiar with the Oxford bubble, the reasons for my absence can be summed up in two words. 8th Week. For those of you in the real world, I’m referring to the fact that it was the last week of term, and in this case the last of the academic year. This means that it was a week packed out with punting and garden parties, with farewells as many friends move on to pastures new, and end of term deadlines for some. Others had to suffer exams – in my case, two small German exams, which after some time in the library didn’t seem to go too badly. Currently I’m homeless – I had to relinquish the keys to my college pad yesterday – but my very hospitible friends in JW Fla...

Time for another rant about Oxford Council. Or, as Kev G would probably say, Oxford Julian Council. (Don't ask, but it is conducive to being said with a bit of anger and venom). I was attempting to cross Cornmarket Street on Monday evening and was confronted with a truck laying crowd control barriers and lots of confused people being forced to go all the way to one end of the street and back again to get across. Behind this truck was a tipper truck and a machine scraping away the (fairly new) surface. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, for the third or fourth time since I've been in Oxford, Cornmarket has been resurfaced yet again. At least this time they didn't close it for very long. So now we have a nice new, slightly yellow, surface. Oooh. My life has been improved no end, and I'm sure that the taxpayer feels that their money has been oh so well spent. To make matters worse, Cornmarket is the only street in central Oxford where the surface has always been of good quali...

Taking advantage of the ability I have to blog whilst out and about, I just thought I'd share with you the fact that I'm currently being punted down the Cherwell, enjoying strawberries, Pimms and the sunshine. Nice.

As promised, here is my report from the Oxford Union on Wednesday, where Eddie Irvine, ex-Formula One driver and something of a playboy came to speak and answer questions. Being in the Macmillan room, it was a somewhat low-key affair, with only about 40 or so people in attendance. This provided plenty of opportunity to ask questions. Without a doubt, Eddie is cool. Very cool. In his own laid back style he shared his opinions frankly and honestly. In the world of F1, Ferrari, apparently will always have the upper hand - they'll always attract the best drivers and sponsors. Eddie acknowledged that this did not make for a level playing field, but said that the "leveller is the fact that they are managed by Italians". When it comes to Team Orders, he said that he would happily move over for another driver if asked - "I know I could have beaten him, and that's what counts. What's important is what I know I can achieve, I don't care about the opinion of the...

Yesterday evening I was strolling past the Magdalen St Cinema, and I saw a police car stopped on the side of the road. It was one of the expensive (for the taxpayer) Omegas, designed for high speed work - not at all over the top for central Oxford, oh no. Two policemen were stood behind it, writing out tickets of some description for two cyclists whom they had apprehended. The thing is, I can't see what the cyclists could have done wrong - certainly not to the extent that they deserved a fine. Unroadworthy bikes? They looked in better condition than most of the bikes you see in this place. Lack of lights? It wasn't dark enough to warrant them. Cycling down Cornmarket? It was outside the hours of restriction, as far as I know. They had possibly jumped a red light, but cyclists seem to do that all the time; why were they singled out, and why wasn't a warning good enough? I would have loved to have asked the cops what was going on, but I'd have probably been bange...

Another birthday today! This one's important as it's Sam's 18th. Happy Birthday Sam! I've enjoyed the good weather in the last couple of days - Oxford is particularly beautiful when the sun is shining. Apart from spending my lunchtimes chilling out in the vast expanse of Magdalen's grounds I've largely been using my time to catch up on those things which I've been putting off for ages. I also took part in a pyschology experiment on Tuesday, which was fun. I had to have three electrodes attached to my head, and then stare at some patterns on a computer screen whilst data was taken about the electrical activity in my brain. Last night, Eddie Irvine was at the Oxford Union, so I enjoyed going to hear what he had to say. More on that later, I think, as I need to get on now.

Last week, both student papers reported an incident in which a student from Balliol was arrested for referring to a police horse as gay, whilst on his way back from a night out. Rather drunk, he apparently told one of the mounted policemen he encountered on Cornmarket that the horse he was riding was gay. Evidently the policeman took offence to this,and a little while later the student in question was apprehended by no less than six officers, arrested and fined £80. I can't help but feel that it was a complete waste of police time and resources, which would be bad enough if the police dealt with real crimes properly and efficiently. I remember however an incident in my first year when some of us witnessed a girl being kicked in quite badly by a very drunken male companion. Upon dialling 999 we waited almost 20 minutes for the police to arrive, in which time her male companion had had ample time to stagger away completely. At last four squad cars turned up, but they seemed more i...

It seems to be the week for birthdays, and my friend Davey (aka Kev G) is 21 today. Happy Birthday! The last couple of days have been fairly mundane. I was woken up again at 5.15 today by the guy with the petrol powered street vacuum cleaner. Words fail me, particularly as today there didn't even seem to be any rubbish on the pavement - I watched him blow air around in a random manner for a good couple of minutes and feel that he achieved precisely nothing for the cleanliness of the city centre, the wellbeing of its inhabitants or the environment. I also can't understand how it can make so much noise. In the year that I've lived here I've got used to the noise of the random drunks and the drone of the buses, but this vacuum thing defies belief. Even when the guy had ambled 100yards down the street, I could still hear it above everything else! If you're an employee of Oxford City Council, may I suggest that you employ your street cleaner man to clean up your garden...

The rather unusual title of this post is the best way I've so far come up with of describing the *loud* noise which has woken me up this 'beautiful' morning. Apologies, dear reader, for this rather impromptu post, but I really feel the need to find some way of venting my anger. It's 5.20 on a Monday morning and below my window a joker in a fluorescent jacket has spent the last 15 minutes moving bits of rubbish around the pavement using the loudest (and probably most polluting) street vacuum thing in the known universe. I'm going to lay the blame at the door of the council who's road sweeper has just trundled past below as I've been writing this. As if I wasn't awake enough already! I can't stand our self-righteouss, inconsiderate, liberal 'green' (yeah, right) council at the best of times, but I really hate them now. Time to try and get some more sleep...

Seeing as it's Sunday I thought I would begin by briefly sharing my thoughts following church this morning, which incidentally was great. We were looking at Psalm 95 and the idea of 'worship', and I came away struck by the fact that our main calling in life is to worship God, to honour Him for who He is, and what He's done. It's so easy to busy ourselves with a multitude of things, or to stand at a distance that we perhaps don't make time for God or develop intimacy with Him in the way that he wants us to. So there you go. This weekend has been quite a good one. Lara and Tom have both been celebrating their 21st birthdays (a belated Happy Birthday, guys) and my friend Richard was visiting, which was fun. There have been a few comic moments, notably Josh 'Chez' Down's uncharacteristically chav way of greeting some of the first years in the quad last night. I'm fairly certain that you would have had to be there to find it funny, but I thought I...

Afternoon folks. I spent an hour or so earlier this afternoon with my friend Oliver baking a cake for Lara's 21st birthday - the talented people who would normally make a cake are all snowed under with exams. Taking the recipe from the internet, we set to work in the kitchen in Christa, Tracy and Lara's flat (thanks guys!). It seemed to go well, at first, but problems ensued when trying to remove it from the baking tray. A lack of grease meant it was stuck fast, and attempts to remove it resulted in the cake crumbling a bit. We were able to rectify this with the icing, though we'd been forced to adapt the ingredients slightly and were perhaps a bit liberal with the apricot jam used as a glaze. Still, I've not laughed so hard in ages, and it was a lot of fun. I would at this stage like to defend my cooking however. Despite a few past disasters it has improved immensely since coming to university, and my main courses seem to have gone down well - even the very talented L...

My first entry whilst 'out and about' comes to you live from Merton St. amidst crowds of people seeing the History finalists out of their exams. The number of people is unbelievable; as my friend Rob has just noted "the historians do no work for three years, and the world and his wife still turn out to meet them." Although I caught up with a few people - including some from BNC and Keble - I've spectacularly failed to meet Sam from New College or the Magdalen bunch - sorry guys! I have however had the pleasure of bumping in to the one and only Marcus Walker. Right dear readers, time to work my way back to college and continue reading 'Atomic Spectra'.

Apparently I can post via email, which means I can theoretically post from anywhere I like using my telephone.  How cool…

Rather worryingly this is my second post in a week which mentions the Spice Girls, but let's not dwell on that too much. I've just returned from listening to Geri Halliwell address the Oxford Union , which was fun. It's always interesting to see people like this and hear what they have to say. Geri waffled a lot about life's purpose, and the like without really saying anything useful, so in many ways it was like a reading of a poor self-help book. On the whole however, she came across well. Well spoken, and with a typical Watford accent she was obviously very experienced at dealing with the media and handled questions well, even if she did cop-out of some of the more difficult ones. What impressed me most however was the fact that when asked she sang an impromptu couple of verses from a forthcoming song, and I discovered that, contrary to popular opinion, she can actually sing. Without so much as even a microphone to mask her voice it actually sounded rather good.

Indeed you have. My profound title for this morning's entry comes from the Stereophonics album with the same name. I love such statements, and the cool name was one of the driving forces behind my buying the album at the weekend. Well, that and the fact it was only £5. I've always liked the Stereophonics, and so far I've not regretted buying one of their albums. I also bought a Jeff Buckley album for £5, purely because lots of people I've come across recently seem to really like his music - £5 was a small price to pay for seeing what the fuss was about. Again, JP's verdict is a good one, though I would love it if someone could tell me what the song 'Hallelujah' is all about. I've heard rumours it's about someone who's suicidal, which is probably even worse than being about transvestite prostitutes. Away from the world of music, chapel yesteday gave me something to think about "Bless those who persecute you" is something I struggle with....