31st January 2012

This is a bonus blog.

I might not have written it but thought that people might think that I was letting my standards slip as I had not posted for a couple of days having been away visiting family.

So this is a bonus blog.

On Monday morning I walked my six year old grandson to school, on the way he asked me what I did.

Well I said, I don't do anything really, because I am retired.

That's what I would like to do when I grow up, he replied, be retired.

Then I could stay at home all day and build Lego.

A fine ambition I think.

But now I have to make a confession. Just to be clear I have received a bonus this year.

My bonus was paid by the Government directly to me, tax free.

My bonus this year as last, was £10.

I did nothing to earn it, it was just paid to  me.

Whilst I was working I only ever received one bonus, I worked for a charity at the time and in one particular year the charity had outperformed on its business plan exceeding both financial and work targets and the board declared a thirteen month year, and all the charities employees received an extra months pay.

Of course we all rang in to declare the mistake that had been made and were all delighted when we were told that it was not a mistake.

Somehow an extra month seems fair and proportionate as a CEO it was always my hope to one day reward hardworking colleagues who were committed to their work and did it for the modest salary that the charity could afford in a similar way.

Now bonuses are all the news, exercising both the politicians and the commentariat and resulting in a veritable bonus of words generated by both.

For some reason best known to the remuneration committees, bankers and other CEO's and business people's salaries are paid on the basis of a monthly income and an annual bonus. It incentivises the captains of finance and industry, sometimes characterised as cartoon figures as in: Masters of the Universe, and means that year on year they exceed targets, which benefits all of us via the exchequer and taxes paid, it just benefits the bankers et al, a bit more.

So there are now a cadre of highly paid individuals who receive salaries in the mouthwatering reaches of the financial stratosphere, (think lottery winnings), on top of which they receive their bonus, so they win the lottery twice every year.

The CEO of RBS has been in the news and has effectively been ambushed by Ed Milliband and has decided not to accept his bonus.

Now whilst I question why anyone needs to earn £2M a year, unless its to live the life of Reilly, or should that be wryly? Nevertheless I think that Mr Milliband was wrong, if the contract said that in addition to a generous salary there was also a bonus to be paid, then it was only right to pay it if the job had been done well, which it seems it was, at least to the satisfaction of the board of RBS and the remuneration committee.

The real issue is why has this bonus culture arisen? What does it say about human nature and motivation?

In the present crisis it is essential that either we get back to earning a living in the international market place with a fairer distribution of wealth, the better capitalism argument, or we find better and fairer ways of organising our economic affairs, the mutualism or co-operation argument.

Others have written more effectively on this subject, not least in the report Prosperity Without Growth, but the political argument still revolves around getting capitalism back on track, this needs to be challenged and changed.

Otherwise, like my grandson, we might all have to plan for early retirement by stocking up with Lego.

26th January 2012

To start with I have to make it clear that I CAN spell pheasant.

I also know some good recipes for pheasant and I enjoy eating pheasant prepared in various ways, my most recent recipe was a pheasant, parsnip and snap pea curry which was delicious.

It was a freezer, fridge special insofar as the ingredients presented themselves and I organised them into a supper dish using the slow cooker and finishing the curry with coconut milk.

But for some reason I decided to alert my facebook friends to both the recipe and the fact that earlier in the day I had an altercation with a pheasant on a narrow lane which resulted in damage to both the pheasant and the front bumper of my car, which now bears the scars where the trim around the fog lights has sprung away from the bumper.

In that facebook post I chose to spell pheasant as feasant.

This resulted in a number of responses one of which was quite remarkable.

'The only use of 'feasant' I know is Damage Feasant Torts, This is a corruption of Faisant Dommage and signifies 'doing damage'.

One local estate which we pass regularly has a hand written notice declaring SLOW, Pheasants on Road.

But there was no such notice along the lane where my Kamikaze pheasant chose to fly out of the hedgerow as though it was playing a pheasant version of the game chicken!

Sometimes it’s hard not to blink.

Mr Duncan Smith must have wished that the Bishop’s had blinked or that the Lord’s had blinked again when the next part of his Bill was also defeated.

Welfare reform is having a bad press, with the left wing papers welcomed the robust challenges from both the formal and the informal opposition and the right wing press apparently claiming that on the whole the population at large is in favour of welfare reform.

Both sides claim to be Christian and both sides are claiming the moral high ground, whilst invoking the spirit of Beveridge.

There must come a time when politicians are best advised to put their party ideologies to one side and explore what is meant by ‘the common good’.

It is an important idea that underpins the notion that we are all in this together.

Sadly of course we are patently not all in this together.

The divisions in society are deepening as the storm clouds grow more threatening and the risk of a double dip recession grows more likely.

Labour is the most convenient whipping boy and Ed Milliband carries the argument to the Prime Minister in PM’s Question Time but his scope for a  response is limited by the memory of his predecessors words about booms and busts.

In fact it is probably the case that both parties are complicit in the feasant dommage of the economy.

Banks spent more than they had and awarded themselves huge bonuses for their failure, it was a bravura performance on their part but one that we can see should have been constrained more by legislative interventions.

But if the jobs are not there, if the cuts limit the scope that businesses have for growth, if the Banks are not lending, if public services are shedding jobs and the private sector is not creating them then the welfare budget will take the strain.

I have commented previously that there are other industrial and financial models, mutualism and co-operation is high on my agenda and should be high on the coalitions agenda.

We need a radical and daring new politics to replace the trench warfare between Labour and Conservative that has dominated the post war years.

We cannot as another story on facebook has it, continue to raffle dead donkey’s.

In the present climate of gloom and doom there is only one dessert to follow roasted feasant and that is Eton Mess, because that is what we are currently in …………..

23rd January 2012

Sometime in or around 1972 I filled my car with petrol. At that time petrol was still sold in gallons.

The price was something like 45 pence a gallon.

I was so shocked that I declared that when it got to 50 pence I was selling the car and giving up driving.

Yesterday, thirty years after I made that threat, I put four gallons of fuel into the car, the cost? £30.

Fuel inflation has made petrol and diesel as expensive as gold or diamonds.

I didn't buy my first house until 1987, it cost £30K.

But the first house I lived in in 1969 cost £3150 it was a three bed semi, newly built on a modern estate in a village near Doncaster.

The house I live in now is smaller than both those houses and is valued at over £100K.

House price inflation has made houses almost unaffordable for the first time buyer.

When I was first married my salary was approximately £60 a month and our housekeeping accounted for maybe half.

Wage and food inflation has made those figures look unbelievable today, my grandchildren think of the olden days, I think it was the sixties for goodness sake, they were the modern times.

Apparently the Big Society Committee has not met for a year.

So it looks like that project has not achieved lift off, Gareth Thomas a Labour MP was quoted in the Financial Times as saying that David Cameron's 'interest in bringing communities together to prosper was just a mirage'.

Meanwhile the IDS as he is known continues to press for a welfare cap in the face of hostility and amendments from Bishops and Lib Dem Peers.

I am glad that the Bishops have finally caught on and up because I was campaigning as part of an organisation I helped to found in the early 1980's Church Action on Poverty, that Child Allowance should not be included in the income calculation for Supplementary Benefit because to include it was regressive and affected children in the poorest families adversely, it's only taken thirty years but we have got there finally.

The problems we face as a country are complex and as in the Eighties the Government and the Prime Minister are looking for simple solutions to complex problems.

A previous Archbishop used to be a Vicar in Durham, he re-ordered the Church which was in the Market Place in Durham City, he published a book about his work in Durham and called it, The Church in the Market Place.

There is an apocryphal story about that book coming to the attention of the then PM.

The problem with inflation is that it is a regressive tax on the poorest.

Whether I pay £2 or £30 for my four gallons of fuel I can only drive the same number of miles.

Whether I pay £3K or £300K for my house, I still only have a place to live.

Whether I spend £5 or £500 a week on shopping, I still only get three meals a day.

But the effects of inflation sap energies, corrode the will and render people socially and economically lethargic.

Partly as a result of the shifting of the tectonic plates of global politics and economics, partly as a result of the collapse of belief in politics, largely as a result of the New Labour Project, people are no longer convinced by the rhetoric of either left or right.

It will be interesting to see what empty promises are rehearsed in the next round of Leader's Debates before the next election and whether anyone bothers to watch.

20th January 2012

The bread is being baked and the circus is heading to town.

This year we, or at least Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, celebrates the diamond anniversary of her Coronation.

It is certainly an achievement in a volatile world.

Since 1952 the world has been torn apart by strife, by wars, by emigrations and immigrations, there have been coups and counter coups, we have seen Nelson Mandela emerge from Robbins Island as a senior world statesman, there has been Mugabe in Zimbabwe, US Presidents have been impeached, HO Chi Min and Vietnam, the Beatles and The Rolling Stones, Prime Ministers have come and gone and throughout all this change from an ancien regime to modernity and beyond, the Queen has graced the Throne.

And of course the con-dem Government can't believe its luck.

So the bread is being baked and the circus is heading to town.

At a time when the country is being divided by policies which favour the rich over the poor, when poverty is on the increase, when living longer rather than being a joy is becoming a nightmare as heating bills soar and pensions are reduced, when Bankers Bonuses are still obscene compared to other peoples wage cuts, the Prime Minister defends capitalism as the only economic system to get us out of the mess it has got us into and one minister supports the crazy notion that £60M is spent on a new royal yacht.

Meanwhile the bread is being baked and the circus is heading to town.

The celebration is being called a jubilee.

Google it and you will find it there described as a Diamond Jubilee or The Queen's Jubilee.

Wrong word!

Inappropriate word!

So there will be street parties (or will there?)

There will be celebrations (or will there?)

Certainly they are being planned, and it may be that for some people an opportunity to celebrate the event might just take their mind off the credit card balances or the fact that their pensions or benefits are being reduced or removed, or that they have lost their job and are struggling to find another, bread and circuses can occasionally help alleviate the misery that life puts your way.

But it is not a Jubilee.

A jubilee is defined in Leviticus 25:10


Consecrate the fiftieth year and proclaim liberty throughout the land unto all the inhabitants thereof; it shall be a jubilee unto you, and you shall return every man to his own clan, you shall return every man to his family. 

For both Jews and Christians, the Jubilee is a special year of remission of sins and universal pardon.

In Jubilee slaves are to be freed.

In Jubilee debts are to be forgiven.

Rather than commissioning a yacht or throwing street parties maybe the con-dem Government could consider ensuring that there is some genuine contribution to the common good, some attempt to ameliorate the worst effects of the recession which has affected the wider global community but which is being deepened by their policies and the savage cuts in public expenditure.

There is another tradition which the present Queen has made especially her own, The Royal Maundy.

In 1997 the Queen came to Bradford Cathedral for the Royal Maundy, it was an impressive occasion, two people for each year of her reign were awarded a purse containing the specially minted Maundy Money.

I had the privilege of hosting the lunch for the recipients and shared with them the sense that the Queen had been gracious in her pursuit of this ancient tradition.

Originally the Monarch had literally washed the feet of their subjects as Jesus had washed his disciples feet, over time the Maundy Purse replaced the ritual foot washing, but the principle remained that the ceremony marked the fact that the Monarch was both King and servant of the people.

The bread is baking and the circus is on its way .........

18th January 2012

Generally speaking Genoa is a low rise City.

It climbs from the harbour up into the hills behind and most of the houses climbing up the hillsides are painted in various pastel shades, pinks, creams, greens.

However down in the Marina things are different as the huge private yachts line the harbour side, the boats here are mainly white with the occasional blue, grey or black.

Further out in the Cruise Ship Terminal the great ships lie at anchor awaiting a new crew and new passengers before the next voyage.

These liners are huge, for all the world like enormous blocks of flats lying on their sides on the water, with lines of windows sightlessly reflecting the warm Ligurian sun.

Passengers walk around the harbour to a viewing point where they can take a photograph of themselves with their ship in the background.

Cruise ships are suddenly in the news for the worst of all reasons as disaster at sea has caused needless deaths and the press coverage has been full of stories both heroic and tragic, of crew and passengers, often behaving selflessly without thought for their safety or lives.

Across Europe in a tiny overgrown graveyard in a Cumbrian Village there is a Gravestone depicting the name of Joseph Bell, Joseph was the Chief Engineer on the Titanic, recently  my Grandchildren mentioned that they were studying the disaster whose centenary is April 15th this year and I was able to tell them about the local connection with that disaster.

The gravestone carries a biblical sentence, greater love has no man than this that he lays down his life for his friends.

In Genoa last year I was invited to join the Coastguard cutter and the clergy from the Church of St Francis in a ceremony which is enacted each year to carry a wreath out to the Harbour Bar where it is laid on the water to commemorate the sinking of a British Merchant Ship, The London Valour which sank off Genoa in a freak storm in April 1970.

The sea is a dangerous and unpredictable environment.

However the last Labour Government decommissioned the Royal Yacht Brittania on the grounds of cost rather than safety.

The present Government appears to be pursuing a strategy to build or purchase a new Royal Yacht to use as a floating University and Research vessel, the expense will be considerable, covered by private donations and justified as an appropriate celebration of the Queen's Diamond Jubilee.

This at a time when the Government is cutting back on investment, choking off growth, savagely reducing the Welfare Bill,, replacing Disabled Living Allowance and insisting that, we are all in it together.

Well, maybe those who lost their lives on the Titanic were all in it together and the poor passengers in steerage lost their lives alongside others who died with small fortunes in loose change in their pockets.

The recent tragedy off the Italian Coast saw the same situation perhaps with rather more evidence of panic but many were saved.

In Genoa the superb Museum of the Sea offers the visitor a graphic and moving interactive display depicting the many thousands who were driven from their homes by poverty to seek a new life in a new country.

Now there is nowhere for the poorest to flee to start over with hope and aspiration, we are in fact all in it together.

We are charting new economic waters, we are appear to be all at sea, we are drifting, uncertain whether  the Euro will survive, whether the Brics will lead us forward into new prosperity or whether we will become client states with rapidly reducing production and rapidly increasing poverty, holed beneath the waterline and without a lifeboat.

One thing it seems is certain the wealthiest will be on their yachts sailing for the offshore Tax Havens where they will pay less tax and not have to share the uncertain fate awaiting the rest of us who don't have a yacht to our name. 

16th January 2012

Having seen the film War Horse with the family at the weekend I remembered this piece which I wrote for my Grandfather Frank Oswald Wilde who served as a farrier in 1914 - 18 until he was gassed and returned home.

1914

(i)

My name is Frank Oswald Wilde, farrier at Mossley Pit. 

Each day I made my way through early morning streets,

boots echoing the clatter of the girls clogs starting their shift at Medlock Mill. 

Then down the pit-shaft to the stables underground and the ponies. 

They’re tough, full of heart, they rub silky noses against my dirty, calloused hands

gently nuzzling with soft mouths for the treats I bring, an apple

or mints, it varies their diet, hay and chopped maize, hot water

to make a mash, keeps them fettled for their work, hard gruelling

work, they only see daylight once a year, at Wakes week

Rest of the time they drag heavy wagons along the rails

loaded with Coal and Slate that weigh heavier than they do

They could smell the damp, the gas that could kill or explode

sooner than any Canary, they would warn me, I would shout the others

The day of the call-up picture I asked if I could have a pony

Just to stand with him and show how he helped the miners

how we would win the war. The answer came back from above, No!

So I held two horseshoes, people should know the ponies work

(ii)

Now here I am in France. I’d heard the ponies were being drafted

I volunteered so now I’m here, getting the ponies ready to fight

for their country, here in this bloody, never ending, war, a farrier still.

They work twenty four hours a day, quiet as lambs, carrying

food, water and ammunition to the front, starved, sodden and spent. 

Little did I know, here above ground, they would still let me know

they smell the gas the Germans call dampf, the terror of the trenches

Like the Tommies these ponies die in their thousands, it makes

Me ask, which is worse, struggling on in the darkness of the pit

Or struggling here like this, blown apart and stitched together again? 

This terrible world they’ve entered frightens them and the poor bloody soldiers, 

conscripts mostly, like the ponies, the blasting at the coal face is nothing 

compared to the barrage of the constant Guns that drown us in the 

rattling death of the front and the choking of the damps

(iii)

When the gas came I wasn’t ready, the gas mask was a nuisance

It scared the ponies, first I knew they started to go down, front knees

first like they were in church starting to pray, then I knew, ‘the damps’

over they went, I got the mask on too late, so I joined them in prayer

Now I’m back home, my war is over, I’ll never go down the pit again,

the air's too poor underground, I cannot breathe. They say it will kill me

13th January 2012

I ordered a couple of items from a national store using the Internet.

Both items were available for collection from different branches of the store. I ordered and very efficiently emails arrived advising me of a collection date and time.

I then rang the nearest store and asked if it was possible for the second item, which they didn't have in stock to be delivered to them by the other store in order to save me the journey. I imagined that there would be lots of coming and going between the stores as they were only twenty or so miles apart.

No, I was told, it wasn't possible because the second store, in Penrith, was in the North West Region whilst my nearest store Carlisle, was in Scotland.

It makes sense. I suddenly realised, why my new Bathroom was recently delivered ..... from Scotland!

It's because we are in Scotland!

Of course it's a matter of logistics. Presumably the two retailers have distribution depots around the country and it is easier and makes most sense for Carlisle to be served from the Scottish depot.

I understand that.

But I wonder whether what makes sense logistically might also make sense politically?

In the big society of the United Kingdom does it make sense for the 'londoncentric' thinking of politicians to dominate life in these border regions?

The borders were and are debatable lands as the names of the Riever families carved into the footpath at Tullie House in Carlisle and the words on the Cursing Stone suggest there has been a long and at times fierce debate about who owns not just the land but also the cattle and the taxes and the wealth that the land produces.

The roads which snake across the border from Bewcastle to Newcastleton, even today are wild and remote and it is not always clear which country you are in until you finally arrive.

The economics of Scottish Independence will be debated, a lot hinges on who owns the oil and what share of the national debt Scotland inherits, and doubtless the political battle will be fiercely fought, already politicians are taking up their positions and issuing calls to arms.

But as part of that debate the issue of where the border is drawn will be raised, recently on the local news I saw a report from Berwick on Tweed and of course Carlisle itself has been the focus of territorial claims over the years which is why we have a huge castle parked on the 'English' side of the river.

So who knows but it will be interesting. The first skirmish has been the leaking of the First Minister's email to Sir Fred Goodwin. I am sure that we will all become familiar with the concept of due diligence as the debate ensues.

But friends who live in Scotland reassure me that there are distinct advantages to life north of the border so who knows, whether it's the high road or the low road, we might yet find ourselves in Scotland 'afore ye', without having stepped out of our front door ...................

11th January 2012

In one of the Cumbrian villages where I plied my trade as a country parson, the Co-op, originally a Miners Co-op in an intensely industrial part of East Cumbria which over the years had shed its industrial past like a moth its chrysalis and was now designated an area of outstanding natural beauty,  ran into difficulty.

It faced closure or amalgamation with another co-op.

The Chairman decided that if closure was to be avoided we needed to find a suitable partner and so a beauty parade was called and a meeting arranged for the co-operators who were members of the local co-op.

There were two branches located in adjacent villages and the meeting convened in the village hall was well attended as people wanted to be able to continue to shop locally.

The evening started with the three invited societies each making a presentation setting out the benefits of joining their larger society.

The representative of Co-op A started the proceedings with a history lesson. From the Rochdale Pioneers to the present day the history of the Co-op was spelt out in some detail. Looking around the hall it was possible to see first the boredom set in and then people struggling to keep their eyes open.

Young mums who had been up all night with teething babies, their hard working husbands who worked overtime to keep the family, farmers who had been up all night with lambing, all struggled with tiredness as the history lesson continued.

Eventually the Chairman interrupted like the Chairman in a social club might bring a poor act to an untimely end and the speaker hurriedly thanked everyone and sat down to await the verdict.

The representative of Co-op B I barely remember, other than throughout the whole proceedings, as he talked he rattled the change in his pocket, perhaps he thought the tinkling of coins might serve to keep his audience awake?

Then it was the turn of Co-op C. The speaker stood up and held up a loaf of bread, if you join us, he announced a loaf of bread will cost, and he quoted a price lower than the current price on the shelf. He then raised a bottle of Milk, again quoting a competitive price.

Then he thanked the meeting and the Chairman and sat down.

The outcome was inevitable.

I learnt a lot about the art of preaching that day.

I just hope that Mr Milliband has a similar lesson to draw on as he challenges the con-dem Governments appalling record on the economy as they continue to stifle growth and drive up both debts and prices.

9th January 2012

Having declared over supper last night that I was:

Bored with the big society.

Finding Mr Cameron's comments about high salaries a tad disingenuous.

Unable to look at Mr Osborne's image on the TV or indeed to listen to his voice.

Still not confident that Mr Milliband can win an argument never mind an election.

And, still fragile from watching Manchester United's poor second half performance against Manchester City.

The in-house critic called me a sour puss. As she pointed out they had won the game!

Maybe she was right, maybe I have become sour, maybe the cynic in me has been shown to be right once too often since the election.

Sour is a difficult word.

Things become sour if you leave them for too long in the hot sun, especially milk.

Words sour, looks sour, faces can carry a sour expression, even wine sours.

For those of us living on a pension, benefits or earning a wage that is not enough to sustain normal living, the idea of executive salaries outstripping both inflation and average earnings, might cause us to react somewhat sourly.

Sour is a word that carries a faintly bitter taste. Perhaps that is why the phrase appears in Matthew's Gospel Chapter 27: vv 34 where Matthew is describing the events surrounding the Crucifixion.

Matthew says's that they gave Him (Jesus) sour wine mingled with gall to drink. But when he had tasted it, He would not drink.

Various experts have seen this action by the Roman Soldiers as either an act of  mercy or of mockery, the sour wine and gall cocktail might have helped dull the pain, or maybe there was some suggestion of Hail the King! Drinking a sour toast to the figure nailed to the cross rather than the fine wine that might have been served to the person on the throne?

But then sour can be a discovery of quite a different kind.

At supper last evening, as I reminded my dinner companion we were eating Goulash.

The beef had been marinaded in smoked paprika and simmered in red wine, my own secret ingredient in a Goulash is to not use raw onion, but to add silverskin onions, the tiny pickled onions that come in a jar.

I served the Goulash with Saffron Rice.

But what made it so delicious was the final ingredient added after the meat was cooked and immediately before it was served.

Sour Cream.

Aah, now there is a contradiction in terms. Sour Cream is sweet and unctuous. It thickened and enriched the Goulash. It transformed the ordinary to make it distinctive and special.

It was so delicious that after I had added the cream to the dish I licked the spoon and then dipped it again for another taste.

It won't bring a change of government any nearer but a dash of sour cream from time to time might make the time seem to pass less slowly.

7th January 2012

I caught the bus today. It is an unusual event one that I would repeat more often if the buses were accessible but unfortunately in our part of the world we seem to use other peoples cast off old buses, so maybe in a year or two we will get the accessible buses after another town or city has replaced them with more modern ones.

Standing in the queue in the bus station I met a couple of people I know, had a telephone conversation which was listened to, chatted about the weather to another passenger in the queue and was then ushered forward to climb onto the bus by a genial fellow who said, on you go lad you were here before me.

I thought 'lad' was pushing it for 67, but then it seems 2012 is going to continue to be a year of cuts, starting with my age and then moving on to cuts of an altogether more serious kind.

The Labour Party has asked that Capitalism becomes kinder by cutting its profits, cutting top salaries and bonuses and cutting exploitation which only fails to recognise the basic truth of the matter, capitalism has failed, we need a new 'ism to help us face the challenges of the future.

Captain Ska has asked what is the point of Nick Clegg? and even the relatively gentle Harry Eyres,. writing in the FT, has described the Government as 'increasingly peculiar'.

But regressive taxes, challenging changes to the benefits, welfare and health services, are only peculiar if what you are striving to achieve is to promote humanity or what the church calls the common good, if your aim is beggar my neighbour style division it's not so peculiar.

If 2012 is to be a new year of cuts or a year of new cuts, then my New Year Resolution is that we adopt a totally alternative CUTS agenda.

In my CUTS agenda, I want the word cuts to act as an acronym for 2012, it will become the year when Culture, Unity, Trust and Spirituality came to fore, CUTS are the way forward but understood in a new and radical way.

Culture: should be the leading edge through which we rediscover what it means to be fully human, art, music, poetry, literature, writing, both classical and modern should be encouraged.

D H Lawrence should be championed as the writer for this generation as he was for his own, he recognised that there was little dignity in industrial work, which demeaned human beings, now with technologies that Lawrence could only have dreamt of, we have it in our powers to become truly human.

Lawrence not only celebrated the human potential of working people he also celebrated the equality that should exist between the sexes, a recent re-reading of Lady Chatterley impressed me with its vision of and for a greater more inclusive humanity.

Great music energises us, allows us to respond to the rhythms of nature, whether it is classical or pop is of no consequence, as we fill our lives with music, great music, music that seeks and expresses truth, so we will like, the primitive humanoids in Space Odyssey, rise in fulfilment of our human potentialities.

In Genoa at the Van Gogh exhibition I stood transfixed by the self portrait, it was an unflinching and almost brutally honest meditation by the artist confronting his own humanity and it said clearly I am HUMAN.

All artists should be given the support and encouragement of our society because they offer us an opportunity to confront our own humanity with hope.

Unity, at the present time the notion that we 'are all in this together' is neither believed nor can it be demonstrated. We are not all in this together. There is great wealth in our society, financial services, banking, technology, creative industries, research and development, if not manufacture, although the UK car industry under Japanese and Indian ownership, is proving the exception to that general rule, all produce enormous wealth which, if it was used as it is in the Scandinavian countries, would make us all richer and more at ease with ourselves.

By Unity I do not mean the false idea that hosting the Olympics or even celebrating a diamond Jubilee will bring us together in some common bond. By Unity I mean a commonality of purpose, aim and expression.
In Norway people leave the lights on all year round. It somehow encourages the notion of a society comfortable in its own skin and able to confront challenges more confidently.

Trust will almost inevitably follow if we are united in a common purpose. Currently the con-dem project is leading to increasing numbers of children living in actual not relative poverty. It is leading to people becoming uncertain about the future, especially if they are older or more vulnerable through disability or chronic illness. It is leading to people feeling betrayed by the democratic project as policies for which they didn't vote are being introduced, it seems, on an almost daily basis.

And because Trust has been betrayed there is a feeling that, Oh well you can't trust politicians so the devil you know, which raises the awful possibility that this administration may well survive for a second term through the inertia of an electorate that has lost faith in the political system.

So it is an urgent task facing the political parties that trust is restored if democracy is to survive.

Which leaves me with Spirituality. The matter of the spirit immediately conjures up what might be called the Dawkins/Pulman question.

But spirituality is about more than the existence or not of God. As Hans Kung, the Theologian commented on the Adagio of  Mozart's Clarinet Concerto in A major K. 622 on his first hearing of it, it was as though a window opened into heaven.

But spirituality is also about how the great faith's can learn to co-exist in an open society.

We are all people of the book, we share a common ancestry, we are all children of Abraham, we are all humanists in the sense that we have experienced God in the face of a human, Moses, Jesus, The Prophet (PBUH) and that should lead us to recognise that we always encounter the divine in our fellow human beings.

My first experience of studying for the Priesthood over forty years ago was a year studying Christian Humanism, the syllabus was largely, English Literature, Greek Philosophy and Law with some Bible Study thrown in for good measure. I am sure that both Jewish and Islamic students would have found the course equally compelling because it addressed the question what makes us and what keeps us, Human?

So there you have it, Culture, Unity, Trust, Spirituality let's make 2012 the year of CUTS and make sure that we don't miss the bus.

5th January 2012

I am in the middle of changing suppliers for both energy supply and telephone.

It has become easier to manage this process.

I have only made this change once before, after being accosted by a young salesman outside the supermarket,  It was raining and cold and I think I must have felt sorry for him, but in practise it made little or no difference, long term, to the costs.

Everything was just as expensive with the new company as with the old.

This was true for both energy and telephony, my last flirtation with another 'phone company sent me back to BT fairly rapidly.

This time however I am changing for a point of principle.

Mutualism.

I have decided that it is not enough to write a blog that is critical of the failed capitalist project which has generated neither wealth or optimism for the 99% and disproportionately rewarded the 1%, it is time to act and so my action is to change to a mutual for both energy and telephony.

I sent an email around friends and family advising my new email address and received some interesting responses.

No .co.uk? asked one friend.

coop.coop? said another that's like org.org, that's ridiculous!

I am not sure if it will be cheaper or whether mutual energy will make us warmer or mutual telephony will bring us closer but at least the money, my money will be going to an organisation with values and principles.

Criticism of my last post from the in-house critic aka the armchair critic.

She complained that my blog wasn't amusing.

Well I countered can you point to anything remotely amusing about what is happening now?

All we are promised are hard times ahead.

The consolation appears to be that the misery is shared? But we are not all in this together.

The movie Inside Job, which whilst focused mainly on the American economic collapse appears as a j'accuse addressed to the global financial services industry certainly was not a light comedy.

In essence it showed how the financial industry invented a whole raft of instruments which were in practise a license to print money and then with the complicity of governments, privatised their profits and socialised their losses.

Well now I can at least see that with my new suppliers profit will be socialised and I will just have to hope that there will be no losses.

And, as my bank is also a mutual, if I am right I may find myself laughing all the way there.

2nd January 2012

Happy New Year?

Is it possible to be positive as we look ahead?

The same old issues confront us and the old same old con-dem coalition keeps telling us in their High Tory, Old Etonian manner, that we are all in this together.

What tosh!

We are not in it together.

As some of us struggle to pay the gas bill. Huddling round a candle in some Dickensian caricature of life simply in order to keep warm, others lunch in warm restaurants pouring the wine and drinking the health of the economy.

As some of us struggle to balance the growing gap between the money and the end of the week or the month, others avidly read the adverts and recommendations in How to Spend it, or 'phone their stockbroker for investment advice.

Whilst some of us agonise over whether the family car will scrape through the MoT, others order a test drive in a new Range Rover Evoque.

And in a modern take on the Roman Orgy of Bread and Circuses, we are told that the Queen's Diamond Jubilee and the Olympics will provide a celebratory background as we see the Great being put back into Britain in 2012.

But because one is ticket only with many of the venues screened off in order to stop people being able to see events free from a handy view point, as my cousins and I used to watch Droylsden AFC from the branches of the apple tree in my Grandads garden, and the security with regard to Jubilee events will, sadly, be both strictly necessary and mean that only a select few will get close .

The celebrations will I imagine, hopefully, pass me by. I haven't bought any tickets for the Olympics and I won't be queueing outside Buckingham Palace for a glimpse of passing Royals.

Instead of a genuine alternative to the politics of hopelessness to take us forward into a new year we are being offered diversions to take our minds off the pain and convince us that we are all in this together.

I have just decided, as a matter of principle that I 2012 should be the year of putting my money where my mouth has been.

It occurred to me that as a tax payer and a citizen, that when there was a Gas Board and an Electricity Board and a Telephone Company, I owned the business, now the business is in private hands.

It was sold off by this Governments political heroine, so I have made 2012 my year of mutuality and I have asked that both my telephone and broadband services and my fuel be provided through the phone co-op and co-op energy respectively.

I have undertaken a price check in both cases and the results were I admit closer than I expected but it does seem to me that there are advantages in spending my money on a mutual business where as a co-owner of the business I both share in the profits and have a say in the democratic process by which they are managed.

2012 is designated as IYC, the International Year of Co-operation.

If it follows previous years for the young, the old, the disabled, we might not see too much coming out of it but there is no doubt that mutualism offers a better, more principled way forward for society and insofar as we are members we can at least claim to be 'in it together'.