Dispatches: Unholy War

Channel 4 have just screened an edition of their Dispatches documentary series investigating threats made against muslim converts to Christianity in the UK. More information is available on their Dispatches web site and, at the time of writing, the show is available for Windows users to watch online through their 4OD service.

There were several issues raised by this programme which I believe need an urgent and prayerful response. I’m not yet sure what that response should be in every case, so I’ll leave it to your discretion; but do please share any thoughts below or on the I promise to pray for the city of Bradford every day Facebook group.

• Firstly, the main narrative of the show followed a Bradford family who converted to Christianity and faced five years of harassment, death threats and destruction of property before finally being forced to move away from the city. The family’s church in Manningham, which was shown but not named, had also suffered intimidation and vandalism as a result. According to the show, there are 3000 former Muslims in the UK who face such persecution.
• Secondly, the show made pointed references to the problem of bogus asylum seekers seeking to bolster their case by claiming a fraudulent conversion to Christianity.
• The middle third of show was given over to highlighting the dangers of American Evangelicals who come over to the UK and stir up trouble by deliberately targeting children, divorced women and other vulnerable Muslims for evangelisation. Chief among their organisations of concern was a group called Caleb, who’s UK base is in Bradford. The fact that Caleb Project Europe ceased to be two years ago seemed only to deepen the presenter’s suspicion, particularly given that several of the old Caleb team remained in the UK, working independently and continuing to rent the same office space. Caleb’s operations in Bradford were portrayed as shadowy and somewhat sinister. The presenter managed to elicit a condemnation from the Bishop of Rochester, who’d never heard of Caleb. No mention was made of whether they’d attempted to contact the Bishop of Bradford, or any of the many other reputable groups with whom Caleb have partnered.
• Finally—and this wasn’t mentioned in the documentary—there is another, entirely unrelated, Christian project in Bradford that goes by the name of Caleb, who run addiction recovery programmes. There’s a lot of potential for confusion here.

Find her. Save her.

A few years ago I played through Bioware’s Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. It won stacks of awards, and was undeniably one of the best games of 2003. It was also the first time I’d played a proper RPG. The concept of levelling a character was entirely alien to me, and I didn’t do a very good job of it. By the time I reached the grand finale I’d spread my experience points so thinly that defeating the final boss was nigh on impossible.

The inventory, storytelling and character interaction, though, were familiar gameplay elements, reminiscent of the classic adventure games of my youth; Day of the Tentacle, Monkey Island, Grim Fandango etc. I installed a copy of ScummVM and, through the likes of Adventure Gamers and Just Adventure, discovered that the adventure genre wasn’t nearly as dead as I’d been led to believe. I downloaded demos of The Longest Journey and Syberia. I scoured the shops in a vain effort to find these fabled saviours of narrative gaming. I discovered that the cancellation of Sam & Max: Freelance Police wasn’t the death knell I’d thought—that the exiles of LucasArts had gone their separate ways and founded many exciting new companies. I subscribed to Ragnar Tornquist’s blog. And then I got rid of my computer.

Last night, after years of anticipation, as the proud (and only slightly smug) owner of a shiny new MacBook Pro with a specially created Windows Vista Ultimate partition, I completed Dreamfall: The Longest Journey. It’s one of the best games I’ve played, and easily deserves to be listed alongside the greats mentioned above. I could give a list as long as you’d like of things that could be improved with the game, but none of them detract from the fact that it showcases some finest writing ever seen in a game, and for that alone you should play it.

Basically this whole post is a rather longwinded way of saying that you should buy this game. Now. It’s only a tenner off Steam. Go on. Find her, save her.

The Deathly Hallows (spoiler free)

I finally finished reading the Potter chronicles yesterday. Tycho of Penny Arcade describes the experience thus:

I finished the last Harry Potter yesterday, but I couldn't actually tell you what happened in it. It's been like that for several books now, starting with The Order of the Phoenix, where I grip the book with hunger and aggression and consume it without ever tasting the meal. I have a sense of being satisfied, but it is murky, and distant, the way an anaconda must feel one week after eating a jaguar. What is most important is that the wait, that long famine, has come to a close.

I had steered clear of reviews until now, but I think that's probably the most accurate one I'm likely to read. It's been like that for me since Goblet of Fire. I still couldn't tell you what happened at the end of that book. One of the things that most impresses me in Rowling's stories is the way things all tie to together. Unlike other people (George Lucas) who claim to have planned a saga, but clearly made it up as they went along, she appears to have actually been telling the truth. I feel I would get so much more from it if I could actually remember what happened in Half-Blood Prince.

Last night, all remained clear in my head, but it's fading fast. I guess at some point I'll just have to reread the whole lot…

Confirmed: DESO to close

Last Wednesday the Prime Minister's office formally announced plans to close the Defence Export Services Organisation. SPEAK have a press release, and also an example letter to send to Gordon Brown. Note that the Prime Ministerial statement says that the functions of DESO are to be reallocated to other departments, not ceased completely. It's important, therefore, to write and ask that this not just be a continuation of the status quo by another name. If not removed altogether, funding for arms promotion should, as a minimum step, be limited to an amount proportional to the share of UK exports they represent.

What shall we abolish next?

One week ago The Guardian reported that the Treasury plans to shut the Defence Export Services Organisation. This has been a long running SPEAK campaign, and I might have got a little over excited in my immediate response:

Dear Marsha Singh,

I am writing to express my unbridled joy at the news, as reported in this morning's Guardian, that the Treasury is planning to disband the Defence Export Services Organisation. This obviously corrupt and unnecessary government department has long been a blot on Labour's record of reforms and I know I represent many when I say I will be pleased to see it go.

I expect that this news will have come as a nasty shock to many involved in pushing so called "British" arms, and that an intense period of lobbying will now ensue. I would ask that you now write to Chief Secretary to the Treasury Andy Burnham and request he show the strongest resolve in following through on these plans. The fact that the arms industry continues to receive DESO's subsidies is clearly contrary to every principle of free trade; to say nothing of the obvious ethical questions, and the fact that no British civil industry is supported in such a way. I therefore ask that you also express to the Chief Secretary how important it is that closure should mean closure, and that the function of DESO not be passed elsewhere within government.

Obviously you don't all need to be quite that gushing, but I would urge you to write to your MP with similar requests, and also to sign the petition on the Downing Street web site.

Redesign

Regular visitors to sphericalbowl.co.uk¹ will have noticed that I’ve given the site a bit of a visual overhaul. Faced with the prospect of imminent redundancy, it seemed sensible that I should prepare a portfolio of sorts. There's still a bit of tweaking and tidying to be done, and I suspect I might have to revisit a couple of things I bodged since the last redesign, but so far everything’s holding together in most modern browsers. Something bizarre is happening in IE, which I guess should be the first priority. For the moment though, if you’re still using that browser, hitting refresh a few times seems to fix it—which is odd, given that the code is completely static.

¹ I realise regular visitors these days are probably the Googlebot and er… no one else