I know him! I know him!

Here is John Sentamu's Speech on 'Englishness' or if you want the short version, the summary from his own site. He quotes from two books I have read - Kate Fox's Watching the English and Paxo's The English: A Portrait of a People. I do apologise for the variation of the old joke about the devastating letter - we have to forgive Doctor Sentamu; it's apparently in the job description! Nice to see a bit of depth and intelligence in a speech these days. There is indeed a loss of great orators; no one to fire up the determination to do things - the reaction of people to speeches these days is polarised - no one is converted or even convinced to consider the other side of the argument. All response seems to be knee-jerk condemnation of everything that one does not agree with.

I wonder if the recent requirement for archiving details of emails for a period of time (really cannot be bothered to look up the details) will result in more people writing real letters? It would be a very good way of keeping things out from under the noses of our dear leaders wouldn't it? Of course this could be remedied by requiring Royal Mail to take a copy of every letter but that would be far too difficult wouldn't it? My point here is that the Government have decided to keep records of emails not because they should but because they CAN. All you need to do to foil the system is to get hold of a pen and some paper. Unless of course there is a secret army of Civil Servants armed with kettles and photocopiers, who open up all the mail and send cross-referenced copies to a disused aircraft hangar near Ongar. It is the information equivalent of the black economy. I return to my argument that it is not only the great majority of internet commenters who have no idea of how big the world actually is but the Government as well. Lack of capacity planning has just come back to haunt me in some small local issue; it will come back to haunt the implementers of The Great Email Archive as well.