26th November 2011

Snow and Strikes, or should that be Strikes and Snow.

If it's Wednesday it must be England, to misquote a famous line from something or somewhere.

On Wednesday there will be a Strike.

And to reinforce the welcome home the weather forecast is for Snow.

Snow is no respecter of people.

Schools will be closed.

Roads will be closed.

Travel will be chaotic.

And, however many days of work will be lost.

The strikers will also be accused of not being respecters of people.

Schools will be closed.

Roads will be closed.

Travel will be chaotic.

And, however many days of work will be lost.

This strike is over pensions. Being for once, in the right place and the right age at the right time I am now a pensioner.

I even retired early so I can't comment, but I can understand the anger when, as it seems is happening, employment conditions are being changed without proper consultation and people will end up working longer and paying more, for less.

Politicians are in a mess over this, the Labour leader is compromised by what he knows will be forced on him if and when Labour is in power. The Conservatives are now hiding behind Danny Alexander who swears that blue is orange and everyone will be better off and they have been listened to.

We'll see what happens on Wednesday.

Italians are used to strikes, often happening at the drop of a hat and without warning.

Our recent visitors were stuck in Gatwick because a strike prevented their plane landing in Genoa.

Apparently the ground crew had walked out, fortunately they walked back in, so the travellers didn't have a sleep over at Gatwick.

But I imagine that some unlucky travellers couldn't join their cruise ships that day.

There are all sorts of reasons to strike but I still think that the work-in at Govan sent out a more powerful message and for that reason my true folk hero has always been Jimmy Reid rather than Arthur Scargill.

We fly on Monday but all week we have been receiving emails from the airline. I cannot quite see how a proposed strike on a Wednesday should affect a flight on the preceeding Monday but apparently check in has been brought forward half an hour.

If the previous two flights are anything to go by that will mean more time stuck in the special assistance lounge at Milan Malpensa watching Italian TV and sinking slowly into madness as the flight delay grows longer.

But there is an upside to all this, a silver lining to every cloud.

According to my newspaper today Downing Street staff are going to staff the Border Controls during the strike.

I am left with a picture of an Angry American ready to give someone hell after a gruelling delay, only to be left tongue tied as s/he is welcomed into a gridlocked Heathrow by an old Etonian!

Unfortunately we are flying into Edinburgh so in our case it will be Alex Salmond, pity it can't be Jimmy Reid. 

24th November 2011

On a Eurocamping holiday in France in 1982 I  met a fellow Euro camper, (The addition of  the word Euro in front of the word Camping somehow transformed the experience from dull, boring and cheap to exciting, adventurous and sophisticated) eventually, actually quite quickly, the conversation turned to, and what do you do?

I muttered my usual holiday cover story about being a poet (who wants to meet a Vicar on holiday?) and he told me that he was 'in' shipping.

Well actually, he said, I suppose I make my money from currency speculation, I buy goods in one currency and sell in another and sometimes keep a ship at sea a few extra days until the exchange rate means that we can land the cargo with an increased profit.

Later that day we exchanged our last travellers cheques for Francs and hoped that they would last until we returned to the relatively safe harbour of the Pound Sterling.

That was my second trip abroad, the first was Germany in 1967 when the currency was the Mark but I subsisted on pfennigs, since then I have travelled more frequently.

The biggest headache was always trying to do the calculation, usually on the hoof, whilst the shopkeeper was wrapping the shopping up, to work out what we were paying in 'real' money i.e. Pounds.

Then came the Euro and the calculation became simpler, wherever you were in the Eurozone, divide by three and multiply by two.

According to my newspaper the the Euro is now under threat because the Bundesbank want to rename it the Mark and it is both overvalued and undervalued and until the economic conditions are right Britain will remain loyal to and dependent on Sterling.

Which hardly helps answer the question is the Euro safe?

As our current trip to Genova draws to a close I would argue that it is, but that it is still only worth 66 pence of Sterling.

How do I know this?

Because I went to buy a catalogue of the Van Gogh exhibition in the Palazzo Ducale only to find that it was priced at 35 Euros.

I estimated that its equivalent price in the UK would have been around £20. Divide by three and multiply by two and 35 becomes approximately 23, so I didn't buy the catalogue because it was overpriced in Euros.

Unfortunately we cannot exercise the same discipline with food, drink or other essentials so we continue to pay too much, roughly a third too much, for everything we buy.

But then, when sitting outside in glorious November sunshine enjoying a G&T, a third too much seems to be worth the extra if only for the sunshine alone, so we don't complain.

Should we be in the Eurozone?

Lord Ashdown thinks so, and thinks that eventually we have to be and on this I find myself agreeing with the Liberal Peer.

It seems crazy to me to place yourself outside the club of which you ought to be an active and influential member, even on the committee etc.

Would the over valuation have mattered so much if we had joined the Euro, I suspect not, and importing and exporting would presumably have been more straightforward?

Now it seems that, on the one hand the continued safety of the Euro is crucial to the con-dem's economic strategy and on the other the Conservative part of the coalition wants to place itself as far outside the sphere of influence as it can.

Which seems like a case of, heads you lose, tails you don't win?

But then capitalists make hay wherever the currency sun shines, because of course they are in the Euro and the Dollar and the Kronor and the Pound, wherever and whenever it suits them.

They just keep their ships at sea a bit longer or land their cargoes in more economically beneficial harbours.

22nd November 2011

There is a marvellous exhibition in Genoa, The Galata Museo del Mare. (The Museum of the Sea).

It tells the Story of Genoa's rise to power as a sea port in the Mediterranean.

The story takes the visitor from Galleys, to Galleons, to the huge cruise ships which now use Genoa as a base for holiday makers choosing a Mediterranean Cruise as holiday or winter break.

Something that I didn't realise although in a sense it shoud have been obvious, is that thousands of poor people fled Italy as unemployment and povery gripped the country.

Like so many Europeans they fled to the USA as emigrants seeking a new life.

Just as in Ireland and Scotland, clearances and dramatic shifts in agricultural practice, enclosures and folk simply driven off the land they had occupied, alongside poverty and starvation, meant that desperate people had no choice.

In one village that we visited, just outside Genoa, there is a huge memorial erected to the memory of those who left their families and communities to seek a new life.

America was the promised land.

The final experience for the visitor to the Museum is to relive the experience of an emigre.

As you arrive, in the exhibition hall on level three you are given a Passaporto and an official (Ufficio) emigration (Emigrazione) certificate or ticket.

You then move through the display which takes the form of boarding the ship that will take you across the Atlantic to New York, your final destination, my ticket was dated 20th September 1922.

The trip was rough, the accommodation poor, the weather terrible with stormy seas, thunder and lightening. But we arrived having managed to avoid the terrible illness that befell many of our fellow passengers.

Then of course we had to be processed through customs.

Then we were questioned by an immigration official.

This turned out to be a frightening experience with questions thrown at you without any obvious logic whilst still reeling from the shock of the voyage, the cramped conditions, the fetid atmosphere of the mens quarters and the poor food.

We had to answer a whole series of questions about our background, our health, our wealth and whether we had relatives or anyone who could sponsor us.

Interspersed with these questions were other questions about our politics and life style.

Was I a polygamist?No!

Was I an Anarchist? Hesitation!

Then came the result, REJECTED.

He who hesitates!

Fortunately I still have my British Passport and continue to be hopeful that when I land in the UK next week I will be allowed to enter the country and hopefully be welcomed.

But even now, in 2011, thousands of people from Africa are desperately fleeing war, turmoil, starvation and seeking a better life in the West, in Europe and in Britain.

As the exhibition dramatically illustrated, they risk seawreck and drowning as they cross the Mediterranean in small boats, often paying huge sums of money for their passage or being recued by the Italian Coast Guard Services.

And then, if they can prove that they are not polygamists or anarchists and do enter Italy, they will be held up and rejected at Ventimiglia when they try to cross into France, this despite the Schengen agreement.

History has a way of repeating itself.

As people seek to better their lives, they encounter frontiers that cannot be crossed and rejection that cannot be appealed. 

18th November 2011

Having just celebrated another wedding anniversary I recognise that numbers can be understood as achievement.

Wedding Anniversaries are usually celebrated in numbers like 25, Silver; 40, Ruby; 50, Gold and 60 Diamond, well we are somewhere between Ruby and Gold and that feels like an achievement.

Certainly when, as a fresh faced and naive young couple, we stood for our photographs outside on a freezing cold November day in Salisbury the thought that over forty years later we would be celebrating our anniversary sitting outside in warm Italian sunshine toasting each other with a G&T, was unimagineable.

Sometimes the achievement is in the number itself, sometimes the number can imply determination, dedication or perseverance but the numbers do matter.

Tragically a number that has appeared in the press over the past few days is neither a cause for celebration or a reason to be cheerful.

The number 1,000,000, indicates the number of young people unemployed in the UK.

C Wright Mills the sociologist has a comment in his book The Sociological Imagination.

Describing the impact of unemployment in a community he says 'the very structure of opportunity has collapsed'.

That is what has happened in the UK for our young people and the fact that in the rest of the Eurozone, Spain, France and Italy things are worse, does not make it OK.

Our politicians should be ashamed. Our business leaders should be ashamed.

We have allowed apprenticeships to disappear. We have allowed the market to replace common sense and wisdom. We have exported jobs and allowed the foreign ownership of our public utilities.

We have put profit before people.

From school to dole queue is not a career move that any young person would choose, especially when as they arrive as the latest sorry statistic, they are criticised and blamed by the millionaire members of parliament, individuals whose personal wealth has meant that they neither wanted or needed a job, simply assuming their inheritance and their role in the family business, or taking up politics as a kind of hobby.

This 1, 000, 000 is a statistic and a number that we should be deeply ashamed of as a nation, it means a gross cost that is significantly higher than the cost of investing wisely in our children's futures.

The cost both to the individual and the nation will be financial, but it is a cost that will also be paid by young people and their families in emotional and physical health.

In Spain the 'indignado's' have camped out in the centre of Madrid and other urban centres to demand changes to the political system.

The LSX campaign at St Paul's Cross is aimed specifically at the financial system and the Stock Exchange alonside such protests, we need in the UK a similar expression of indignation at the colossal and tragic waste of the talent and abilities of our young people.

Whilst personally, we have taken some degree of pride in our achievement, simply staying together like Derby and Joan 'for forty years or more' as the song has it.

However as we look at our grandchildren, their friends and their peers, we fear for their futures.

Their hopes and ambitions need to be nurtured and encouraged, need investment and a humane social policy, need apprenticeships and training opportunities, need a sympathetic and realistic government, if they are to be realised.

Our young people need a 'structure of opportunity' that allows them to look forward to a lifetime of fulfilling and rewarding work, inventing things, designing and building things, making things, building a future for themselves and generations to come.

We can't celebrate this million so let's set to and change it for something we can celebrate, a future for our young people.

16th November 2011

Last evening I watched a wonderful documentary made by the National Film Board of Canada.

It followed the activities of a group of homeless men in Vancouver.

Their 'Day' job was collecting tins and bottles which they sold for a dime or a nickel to maintain their simple lifestyle.

But they had developed an extreme sport, racing the shopping trolleys, which they used to collect their tins and bottles, down the steep hills of Vancouver. The Trolleys could reach speeds of 50 or 60 mph and the sport looked pretty scary, very dangerous but thrilling, like extreme sports usually are.

When I lived in Boston I was aware of the homeless who pushed their trolleys around the centre of the City collecting bottles and cans, both a useful service and a form of regular income.

Here in Genoa I have, insofar as language and lifestyle allow, become friendly with a homeless man who lives near the crossing near where we live, he spends his day begging from the cars paused at the traffic lights and always greets us with a friendly wave and a Ciao, Buongiorno or Buonasera as we pass by on our way into town.

Like the UK there is no fee payable for returning a bottle or a can so they remain discarded on the sidewalk or under the bushes in the parks and gardens.

Litter and homelessness are causes of public concern.

I read recently about the agencies in London complaining that homeless people had joined the LSX protesters in their camp at St Paul's and that this was 'hindering' the agencies work in re-settling their homeless clients.

On eof the first voluntary projects that I set up, whilst still in my twenties, was a hostel for homeless people, this led to a campaign to re-settle individuals into abandoned houses in a blighted area around my Church through a campaign of organised squatting.

Homeless people often reflect the general public in the sense that the reasons for their situation can be very varied, arising from illness, marriage breakdown, even suprisingly, choice.

Ross Raisin's new book Waterline explores how a settled man with a job and a family can so easily become another homeless statistic, moving from shelter to shelter.

Having read some of the interesting and challenging stories emerging from the LSX Camp it does seem to me that what has been created, possibly unintentionally, possibly intentionally, is a microcosm of wider society, with its health care provision, catering, university tent, lectures, active democracy, the LSX camp looks uncannily like a big society at work, or possibly in this case a small society with big aims and ideas.

Whatever, if you work on the basis that 99% cannot be wrong then perhaps its worth exploring the principles that underlie, not so much the demonstrators public aims which are becoming increasingly clear as the Global economy continues to act in a dysfunctional manner, proving beyond doubt that capitalism is part of the problem not part of the solution, but the organising principles that make the camp an exercise in democracy.

So if the Prime Minister wants some advice on how a big society could work in practice he should maybe take advice from St Paul's.

Meanwhile, lets add 5p to every bottle and can to add another income stream alongside the Big Issue, encourage active recycling and challenge Mr Dyson to design a faster, sleeker shopping trolley ....... 

14th November 2011

Was it a good game?  Was it a positive sign that things might improve at Euro 2012?

It was hard to judge from this game, England were defensive, the goal was somewhat 'lucky' and Fabregas thought that the best team lost, but then he plays for Arsenal, so that reaction was somewhat predictable.

Still I couldn't help feeling that normal service was still on offer. That come the serious competition England supporters will be disappointed again.

It is too easy to find excuses which might well be reasons.

Not enough investment in Youth Academies. Too many foreign players in the premiership. A lack of British candidates for the manager's job. Who know's but for anyone who follows a local team, whether as a season ticket holder, a viewer on TV or however they watch the game, whilst there will be disappointmens and cries of 'we wuz robbed', week by week the team will reward their support.

Sadly not so England, even if the team sheet reads like your favourite club, its performance will in all likelihood disappoint on the day.

When I lived in Newcastle, none other than Sir John Hall, he of Metro Centre fame commented in the local press, that when the team did well then production would improve in the Shipyards, he was talking historically of course.

But there was never any doubt that the Team's performance affected output.

Whether it was in a pit village, a shipyard or an engineering firm, from Birmingham, to Glasgow, from Tyneside to Sheffield and Manchester, Saturday's result influenced both attendance and attitude on the shopfloor during the week that followed.

Whether this explains the current state of the English economy is difficult to say but the latest news continues to be as depressing as the defensive display of the English football team.

Inflation is a regressive tax that impacts most severely on the poorest, but the Chancellor's latest proposal is designed to de-link the rise in benefits from the headline rate of inflation, which will be doubly regressive.

The Occupy protesters, supported by Ed Milliband, claim to represent the 99% who are now paying the price for the financial disarray which has resulted from the cavalier approach to the development of 'financial products' based essentially on re- packaged, unrepayable debts from sub-prime mortgagees in the United States.

In fact the proportion is possibly different in the sense that those who have prospered or been unaffected by the current crisis is more than 1% and the imbalance between reward and effort has seen CEO benefits increase disproportionally to the rewards for employees limited to an average 2.5% which the Chancellor is, apparently, seeing as the cut off point for increases in benefits.

Questions over the Government's record continue to rise with a conservative MP privately critical of the Prime Minister, the Home Secretary's performance over Border Controls raising eyebrows, the Lib- Dem's trying to face in two directions at once as they seek to support and oppose their coalition partners at one and the same time.

So whether football is a bell weather for the state of the nation or not, the economy, the Government and Fabio Cappello's youth policy, continue to struggle to convince, meanwhile apart from the weather, which continues to favour the South over the North, England remains as Shakespeare described it: a blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England ........

11th November 2011

At Eleven a.m. today we paused briefly and remembered.

Across the world, in different countries people were remembering.

In my childhood I recall that everything stopped, it was as though the clocks stopped ticking and the Birds stopped singing. But then my Childhood was so much closer to the events not only of WW1 but even more so of WW2.

Then people were remembering their friends, families and colleagues in arms.

In Italy, Remembrance Day is the 4th of November,  the day of the Armistice of Villa Giusti, although in recent years it has been transferred to the first Sunday in November.

We will keep Remembrance Day on Sunday, with a special service and prayers in the Chiesa Anglicana, I plan to say something about my experiences with the Charity Toc H which helped me to re-engage with the events of Remembrance.

For other people of course recent conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, the corteges that have passed solemnly through the town of Wootten Bassett, and the news headlines recording yet another death of a young man or woman in a distant conflict, far removed from home and family, has brought home the reality that throughout the so called peace of recent years, wars have raged across the world and innocent people have lost their lives.

In the midst of remembering every day events continue to challenge and disturb.

Yesterday we walked down past the area where flooding had ravaged the centre of Genoa and where lives had been lost. The underpasses were being pumped out and volunteers were busy clearing away the mud and detritus of glass frontages and shutters, that had been washed away by the force of the flood, along with the contents of window displays.

At one point we passed a tent on the side walk and realised that it was a stall selling mud caked shoes, presumably washed out of the shop windows and into the underpasses.

There were trays of shoes, some presumably having been on display for hundreds of Euros, this being the best shopping street in Genoa, all were now for sale for twenty euros, I imagine that the proceeds would go to some Charity for those affected in some way by the floods.

It was a bizarre sight, mud drenched designer shoes in plastic trays being sorted through by bargain hunters, it had the feel of a Harrods Sale, post deluge.

Today in the Co-op the in-house critic had to use the facilities, having acquired the 'chiavi', I put our shopping down briefly to open the door only to see a figure scurrying to where I had left the basket of shopping for which at that point we had paid and which contained the ingredients for our weekend meals.

I moved swiftly and headed the young man off at the pass.

Minutes later I heard a commotion to see him being escorted from the premises by a member of staff who had retrieved a bottle of spirits from his coat pocket.

Excitement, danger, threat. The adjectives that describe urban life.

Each day as we walk through the wealthy streets of this affluent town we are amazed and disturbed by the people, fellow citizens of post war Europe, who are forced to beg for the essentials to sustain life, and yet ..........

Only a week or so ago I read the Gospel for All Saints Day, it is a manifesto for saints, the poor at heart, those who mourn, the merciful, all who seek peace.

For them at least let us keep a silence on Remembrance Day.

9th November 2011

The weather in Genoa appears to be returning to normal with the low pressure zone filling and clear skies and warm air returning, although warm to a temporarily exiled Englishman to a Genovese it is now autumnal, so my T Shirt is looked at somewhat askance by people dressed in overcoats with mufflers and gloves.

To us it feels like a summers day but to locals it is time to get ready for Christmas.

Yesterday with rain still in the air after the thundery showers and the flooding we decided to take ourselves along to Cinema City where a film advertised as Lingua Originale, was being shown.

The film, Cowboys and Aliens was based on a graphic novel by Scott Mitchell Rosenberg.

It is an old fashioned western with the added twist of UFO's.

It was both entertaining and intriguing, reminding me a little bit of Eric von Daniken's, Chariots of the Gods, which appeared to convince many people that Jesus was a space man.

I remember in Youth Clubs in the 70's, teenagers waving the book under my nose and challenging me as the new curate, to refute the 'scientific' facts produced by von Daniken.

The Cowboy narrative is one of the core stories that human beings tell each other around the camp fires. It is central to the human need to tell stories, its popularity arising precisely because it is a core story and it often used as the progenitor of the Capitalist ethic.

There are good guys, bad guys, whores with hearts of gold, moral courage and heroism and, usually, good wins out and the hero rides into the sunset.

Cowboys and Aliens has all this plus some rather clever, self referencing, humour and its triumph is that in the end the whole human race is the good guy seeing off the alien bad guys, Cowboys and Indians are on the same side and even the outlaws are invited to share in the general state of grace.

Finally in a post feminist conclusion the woman who is neither a whore or entirely what she seems to be, having emerged from the camp fire naked and unharmed, offers herself as a final sacrifice to rid the world of the 'demons'.

Central to the narrative thrust of the film is the aliens desire for gold.

So desperate are they for gold that they collect gold where they can, the robber is robbed of his stolen bullion, and people are snatched in order that their spectacles and watches can be melted down in the alien's space ship factory.

With Harrison Ford, bringing the memory of his role in Star Wars as Hans Solo bringing down the Aliens with lances and stone axes and Daniel Craig reminding us of his role as James Bond, it is somehow unsurprising when an arch alien, demon, is drowned in molten gold.

Apparently one of the 'suprising facts' described in the report Value and Values published by the St Paul's Institute is that people in financial services think that they are paid too much and yet say that 'salary and bonuses' are (their) most important motivation.

Essentially the report is a survey of attitudes, which like people can be contradictory, but implicit in the text is a view that ethical capitalism is possible even desirable.

The trouble is that 'ethical capitalism' like UFO's is often reported but has rarely if ever actually been seen.

Perhaps what is needed now is for the Church to look at these issues again and in a future report to take on board that if the planet is to survive we need to adopt the view that prosperity is possible without GNP growth, see Tim Jackson's book Prosperity Without Growth which offers a new economic paradigm or the recent report from the Co-op published on November the 9th, showing that 300 Co-op's worldwide have generated $1.6 trillion, roughly equivalent to the GDP of the world's largest economy.

Both these alternative approaches to Capitalism suggest that there are other ways of doing the world's business.

Capitalism, like the wild west, needs to be radically rewritten if the world is to survive its current crisis ......

7th November 2011

I came to Genoa, locally it is called Genova, partly to enjoy some better weather, partly to take on the role of Chaplain at the English Church, the Chiesa Anglicana, and hopefully be of some use, partly because the in-house critic and I enjoy the continental lifestyle, the caffe corretto's, the G&T's in a bar in a sunny Piazza just watching the crowds pass by.

But on Friday we found ourselves sitting in the rising heat in a flat in Genoa in the middle of a classic mediterranean low pressure system.

Outside there was torrential rain, thunder, lightening and chaos.

On the internet we saw pictures of flooded underpasses, the river which is normally a trickle became a raging torrent and, where it met a rough sea and high tides, had burst its banks flooding the underpasses and streets around Brignole railway station.

Then we received an email to say that Mayor has advised everybody to stay at home for their own safety, no one was to use private transport, the police were issuing fines if you were in town in your own car or on one of the ubiquitous scooters, and if you were on the ground floor or in a basement, the advice was move to an upper level.

The main shopping street was flooded and there were ten fatalities and numbers of injured. All night the sirens sounded as the rescue services ploughed backword and forwards.

You knew how bad it was when the football was cancelled.

The next morning as the clear up began there was more rain and the curfew was re-imposed for a further 24 hours.

Whilst the actual storm blew in and was beyond the power of any individual to control it, just along the coast in Cannes, the economic storm continued to rage.
The Euro trembled in the strong winds.

The exchange rate floated, but managed not to sink and Berlusconi left Cannes to return to Italy saying that everything was fine, after all the planes were fully booked, the hotels were full and Italians were wealthy.

And of course in a strange way, whilst he is wrong at so many levels, he is also right.
By Sunday the Sun had put his hat on and was back out to play, the passegiata was resumed and the all the outside tables at our local cafe were full with people drinking Prosecco and eating delicious pastries.

An amusing footnote to all this was that at 10 30 during the evening of the storm, my doorbell rang  I assumed it was someone wanting me to open the Church as a refuge, which we had offered to do, or a member of the congregation affected by the flooding taking up our offer of a bed for the night.

I opened the door to a delightful young lady holding a bottle of wine.

As she spoke, despite my non existent Italian, I realised that it was not a gift that I was being offered and so I invited her in and retrieving the corkscrew from the kitchen draw, opened the bottle with a flourish.

Thanking me profusely she went back to her own apartment rejoicing.

Always glad to be of service!

5th November 2011

I spent some time clearing up in the Chiesa Anglicana in Genova yesterday, amongst the old pamphlets and books which have accumulated over years I came across a torn old pamphlet, without its cover, on closer examination it turned out to be edited by William Temple and published by Penguin in 1943.

Flicking through it the word 'economics' caught my eye:

The author of this particular essay, Malcolm Spencer, is discussing what the Churches have to say about Wealth and Poverty. He quotes a Papal Encyclical and a report of a conference held in Oxford.

The Papal Encyclical  and the Oxford Conference Report draw attention to the 'magnitude of social injustice which has marked the industrial life of the West for generations, and which still persists.'

Spencer quotes the Encyclicals as they speak of, 'misery and wretchedness pressing so unjustly on the majority of the working classes who are 'surrendered' to the greed of unchecked competition'.

But the report from the World Conference of Churches held in Oxford in 1937 is much sharper:

(i) The ordering of economic life has tended to enhance acquisitiveness and to set up a false standard of economic and social success.

(ii) Indefensible inequalities of opportunity in regard to education, leisure and health continue to prevail; and the existence of economic classes presents an obstacle to human fellowship which cannot be tolerated by Christian conscience.

(iii) Centres of economic power have been formed which are  not responsible to any organ of the community and which in practice constitute something of a tyranny over the lives of masses of men and woment.

(iv) The only forms of employment open to many men and women, or the fact that none is open at all, prevent them from finding a sense of Christian vocation in their daily life.

Spencer concludes: the present economic system .... necessarily produces intolerable degrees of poverty and intolerable conditions of unemployment and insecurity on the one hand and, on the other hand, to pile up totals of wealth and power which are a standing menace to the peace and stability of human society

Seven years after the Oxford Conference the World was at War.

3rd November 2011

The debate about fairness, in terms of both rewards and opportunities has been taken on board by amongst others, Rowan Williams.

He appears to be favouring a Robin Hood Tax, so called because it robs the rich to help the poor?

Well not exactly, but it is an attempt to re-balance a financial system that is intrinsically unfair by definition however it can only go so far and in effect is tinkering with effects rather than examining underlying causes.

The trouble with Bishops claiming that they understand poverty was best illustrated by a story I heard when I was a Vicar in Salford.

I have no idea whether it was true or not but it made its point pretty effectively.

A row had broken out in a Parish and the Parish Priest had been called in to see the Bishop. From the Bishop's study window it was possible to look down and see the parish in the distance.

You see, says the Bishop, from here it all looks so peaceful.

Yes, replied the Parish Priest, and I am sure that Hades looked peaceful from the comfort of Abraham's bosom.

So, thank you to all the helpful Bishops amongst the twitterati but I don't need the advice you so helpfully dispense.

So what can be done, the post war settlement has failed, no more homes for heroes, no more planning the economy to protect working people, no more welfare safety net. We now live in a world of bankers bonuses and CEO pay levels which, apparently now average £2.7M annually.

New Labour were relaxed about people becoming filthy rich because that was clearly in the long term plan.

So we were encouraged to borrow against the constantly rising value of property, we did it personally but  the Government also did it and now we are paying the price, through unemployment and cuts, cuts, cuts in public services.

Now we are in the mess we are in and there is no obvious way out and we are not all in it together some are more in it than others. So what can be done?

I have always thought that there were three important principles which should be written into the capitalist system:

The first is that there should be an agreed ratio between the highest paid and the lowest paid in any organisation. What that ratio should be is a matter for debate. A factor of ten would mean that in a company where the lowest paid earned £9000 the highest paid would earn £90,000, still a huge and questionable differential.

The second builds on the idea of a minimum wage to guarantee everyone a national minimum income. Whether the national wealth is generated by a few financiers or by mass manufacturing, that wealth needs to find its way into as many pockets as possible in order that it can be spent and saved, thereby creating both a market for goods and pool of national wealth. The current rewards system which gives a few millions and millions little or nothing has failed to stimulate either demand or saving.

The third is a jubilee. The biblical jubilee required that in the fiftieth year every man's (sic)  patrinomy be returned so that all would be restored to their own land and titles. The effect of this was to legislate against the accumulation of property and wealth in the hands of a few oligarchs. Ultimately taxation is not an adequate mechanism for redistributing wealth and a more radical intervention is required, this is both idealistic and impossibly millenarian but a regular debt write off for individuals, at least once in a lifetime, is both necessary and just if the usury of the banks is to be combatted and an equitable system introduced.

I once bought a book simply for the title, it was called The Millenium Postponed, inevitably ideas like these will be dismissed as unworkable and impractical, but compared with the National Lottery creating a new millionaire each week through chance, I suspect that they will have the advantage of simply making life less chancy and more equitable for people.

2nd November 2011

There is a constant knocking from the flat above.

It's hard to imagine what they are doing?

They can't be laying carpets because the apartments have marble floors.

There is no metallic ring so it can't be plumbing.

They could be hanging pictures but by now they would have more pictures than the Louvre.

And it's definitely not the assembly of Ikea furniture which only requires an Allen key.

I can only imagine that they're trying to escape by knocking a hole in their floor, which is our ceiling.

Any minute know I expect plaster to start falling from the ceiling and a smiling and plaster smeared face to appear.

I will say Salve, which is pretty much the best I can do in Italian and move a chair under the hole in a friendly gesture of welcome.

Either that or, if it continues for much longer, I might go up, knock on their door and demand an explanation.

Sadly this will do little good as I won't really understand and will have to demand to be shown.

I turned up a week early for a meeting today.

I think that it was put down to English enthusiasm because Italians tend to be late for most things. This can be partly explained by the fact that most events, be it Concerts,  Lectures or any  public gathering are normally prefaced with long and detailed speeches, usually by three or four of the more important people present. so if you turn up at 5 45 pm for a concert advertised as starting at 5 00 pm you may well have another 15 minutes of speeches before the concert actually starts.

I am sure that the audiences are generally delighted by what they are hearing and even expect it, but if you have difficulty following the gist of the argument, then it can become tedious.

With the saga of the campers outside St Paul's going on and on and more campers appearing in a street near you anytime soon, apparently there are campers at The Monument in Newcastle and more in Bristol and Glasgow, the movement is growing and the debate about a better, fairer way of organising our politics, our economics and our democracy is being extended Mr Cameron's vision of a Big Society is being realised, but not in the way he hoped. As I have said before, you should always be careful what you wish for.

In fact I am thinking of changing the strap line for this blog because the big society appears to be no more. At least I am hearing no more speeches or reading any more reports.

Soon we will be renegotiating our membership of Europe. I wonder, if that happens, whether the French will close the Channel Tunnel?

Indeed the whole of Europe could turn its back on us which would be a tragedy really because it does seem to me that what makes society large, in both the geographical and spiritual sense, is its openess to celebrating difference and embracing the cultures and ideas from other nations.

Walking to my meeting this morning, a week earlier than necessary, I paused for a coffee and stood at the bar like an italian and drank my caffe, exchanging a greeting with the Barrista and the man stood next to me.

As I left I realised that the name of the bar was a pun in Italian, the name of the street crossed with the name for the person who makes the coffee, barrista, I had ordered my caffe in the Cafe Baribaldi.

The little joke made me smile and I tried to think up some other puns that might amuse the politicians as they listen to the boring speeches and negotiate and renegotiate their way out of the current financial mess.

But I had arrived for my meeting and still hadn't got very far with my first attempt ......