Saturday 27 July 2013

26th July 2013

So the Chancellor says that it’s his plan we’re all going to do well. We’re all in this together and we’ll all do well together, North and South, Plutocrat and Pauper. Tosh! If you believe that you’ll believe anything. If he believes his Orwellian statement which flies in the face of the evidence that with perilously few exceptions incomes are falling and none faster than those who rely on state funded benefits either through welfare benefits or tax allowances. But as the threatening billboards tour the country on the sides of delivery vans one group of people who won’t believe it are those who came here for a better life. As I was told in Italy last week by someone whose ambition it is to move to the UK, we just feel more comfortable speaking English. As one of today’s crossword clues captured it: A number of countries under one ruler? Answer: Empire. We English travelled the world, annexed it and demanded that folk spoke English, now they see the opportunity to flourish in the home of the language they were forced to learn, that is of course why the ridiculous, threatening billboards are in English, so that they will be understood, and what they say is, you’re not welcome here. A view reinforced when people from commonwealth countries are required to pay substantial bonds before they are allowed to visit. But were we ever welcome there? I guess that the Archbishop of York would know? The Ex Pat Ex Ugandan Judge is now launching a campaign to improve the pay of the low paid. Very correctly he identifies the problem of a Government subsidising businesses by offering various benefits to enable the low pay to actually survive in the low wage economy. The co-op is seeking, with the encouragement of its members, to implement the living wage but as the management of the Co-op as a business stress the ultimate impact is on the bottom line, profit. Is this what George Osborne means, that he will support the campaign to improve pay at the lower end of the income scale? I wonder how the Ugandan ex Pat Archbishop feels when he sees the Billboards, but then he is a legal immigrant. And his counterpart in Canterbury is going head to head with Wonga. By some strange, magic wave of his Arch-episcopate crook he is going to turn how many thousand Church of England Churches into Credit Union HQ’s. Gaining him a host of mainly, it seems, female fans amongst the commentariat. Of course that can only happen after the Church has disinvested in the Wonga holding company, which was apparently slightly embarrassing to the ex Oil Executive, Archbishop ‘light’ Welby, but he presses on regardless with his plan. When I started a community project in North Tyneside in the early eighties it took a good deal of lobbying before the church even began to take the reality of poverty seriously. Only after CAP and Faith in the City did the churches begin to engage with the realities of poverty in the urban, inner city and outer estate communities. It took seven years to launch a successful credit union so I am not sure that time is on the Archbishop’s side. I recall one meeting with Sir Richard O’Brien Chair of Faith in the City when person after person stood up to say that they simply could not afford to attend church because they had nothing for the collection. A conference I ran at the Cathedral in Newcastle drew a large group of people from an outer estate when I mentioned their expenses for travel there was an embarrassed smile as they revealed their strategy for travelling affordably on the Metro. So I wish Archbishop Welby well. After Rowan Williams’ poetry we turn to his successors’ concern with poverty and with Bankers. Now that I am retired I look back on a working life as a Parish Priest, qualifying as we did as a family for benefits and free school meals whilst still being one of the most affluent families in the Parish and wonder whether the effort (and the contradiction) was worthwhile? For me, now that I am a Church Pensioner, the jury is still out ………

Wednesday 24 July 2013

24th July 2013

Genoa 2013

Choosing a locum in Genoa in July during a heatwave in the UK might seem like poor planning. But when the offer came in the middle of a wet Cumbrian January, it seemed like an opportunity.

The Anglican Church in Genoa, The Chiesa Anglicana, is located on Piazza Marsala, a short walk from Piazza Ferrari the central square in Genoa, with its statue of Garibaldi and its many roads (Vias) radiating off away to the outskirts of the city and down past the Cathedral to Porto Antico.

Sunday services, even in July when the City is vacated by those fortunate enough to have a house in the cooler hills, are well attended with a rich mix of English ex Pat’s, American and European visitors together with Anglicans from Africa and India.

On my first two Sundays the organist, Flora, was in the UK visiting friends and family and so the service was accompanied to great effect by two violinists, Hanuka and Eleanor, from Japan and Germany and now resident in Genoa.

Since my last visit to Genoa a regular Wednesday lunchtime service has been introduced, this brings together a smaller group of regular attendees for worship and mid week fellowship. But the biggest change was in the huge improvements to the ordering of the interior by the congregation with the support of the relatively new friends group.

My first official engagement as the Locum Chaplain was to attend a reception given by the American Consulate in the grounds of the Palazzo Bianco in Via Garibaldi, to celebrate Independence Day and the close relationship between Italy and the USA. There was no ‘Tea’ on offer, (it wasn’t a Tea Party!) so with ‘reluctance’ I sipped my cold Prosecco and toasted the pilgrim fathers silently.

The month has been spent seeking shade from the heat, occasionally from the thunderstorms but even in the evening the temperature has been 27 degrees and at mid-day as high as 37.5.

Other snapshots of our visit were of Beat Box, a Beatles Tribute band playing live at a Beatles Convention in Porto Antico, all four ‘Beatles’ Giovanni, Paolo, Giorgio and well …. Ringo? In their Beatle Party Wigs, played their parts right down to the ‘Liverpudlian’ banter between songs.

Whoever said nostalgia is not what it used to be?.

And to end Gezmataz, Genoas own Jazz festival which was especially wonderful featuring as it did the UK’s Andy Sheppard who was born in Warminster and who a couple of years ago played a wonderful, benefit concert for Lanercost Priory in Cumbria.

The congregation in Genoa are hoping that he can be persuaded to do the same for them.

Monday 22 July 2013

22nd July 2013

I guess that if you went to Eton you might not relate too easily to the idea of fags in plain wrappers.

Dismissed by some of their own party as 'Posh' it is all too easy to misunderstand the current Tory leadership.

If, after a privileged education you went on to a privileged University life how are you meant to understand either the lives that other people live or indeed to care overmuch about them.

So confronted by the howls of outrage from your folk its much easier to say to yourself, let's keep cutting the welfare budget until we've said farewell to the poor.

At what point will we start to see economic migrants queueing up to leave the UK for the prospect of a better life elsewhere?

It would of course just be a case of history repeating itself.

All those folk who took a ten pound passage to the land of opportunity following hard on the heels of those who were sent there for stealing a sheep seem, to have done OK.

And now we're seeing the revenge of the economic migrant returning as a Lobbyist to win an election and help an old friend or two.

Smoking is both popular and addictive.

I grew up in a smoking household and possibly for that reason decided that I wasn't particularly attracted to the habit, so I am a non-smoker and therefore a disinterested party.

That I suppose is why tobacco, screened behind counters, sold in plain packaging or left around in free trial packs, leaves me quite unmoved.

I can't say the same for Gin or Whisky or a pint of real ale.

Then again smoking carries all the risks, as stated on the plain or decorated packaging, and some of those risks lead people directly to the doors of A&E.

The impact of smoking on health, and of course of alcohol as well, is one of the reasons why the NHS is under such pressure.

So it is interesting that as the pressure mounts to expose the extent of conflicted interest, that the links between winning an election, selling tobacco and opening up the health service to private competition seem to trace back to one and the same lobbyist.

There is no conflict of interest we are told, which is probably true because the parties in this drama all share the same interest.

What I imagine would be the preferred outcome of all of this is that in future all lobbying is done in plain packaging and any links with the lobbyist and the politician would be perceived as purely accidental.

Meanwhile it is in the interests of the privileged elite to keep the focus of the debate on the unions and, heaven forbid, the proponents of welfare.

Maybe the Labour leadership needs to lay down a new challenge, 'Repent for the kingdom of Bevan is nigh'

Now there's an election slogan that's clear, like our packaging.


Tuesday 16 July 2013

16th July 2013

It was always my intention to make sure that this blog was as humorous as I could make it.

But the actions of the coalition over the past three (is it really only three?) years make it very difficult to retain a sense of humour.

We are seeing a new kind of conviction politics, they are convinced that they are right so, whatever the evidence, they press on with policies that damage social cohesion, confirming rather than challenging prejudice and ensuring that they demonise whoever gets in their way, the poor, the immigrant, the ill and the old.

I once attended a conference in London which was addressed by Mr Ian Duncan Smith. He spent the first part of his speech rehearsing a set of prejudices as facts, a set of strategies as a substitute for compassion and a set of conclusions that were frankly scary.

I recall asking a question to which the answer was incomprehensible and debating whether to stage a walk out but before I could decide he had left, I suppose that I stayed because the the whole speech was so barking that neither I nor anyone else believed that these ideas could ever be seriously proposed by a serious contender for Government and were just plates being spun by the latest in a series of failed Tory Party leaders during the post Thatcher lost years when Blair was in his pomp.

Now those scary ideas are policies and are inflicting untold damage and misery on people who are struggling to get by, raise their families and hold on to whatever zero hours job they can find.

The newspapers carry numerous stories and commentaries on the flaws in the coalition's claims and yet again and again in the right wing press the same old, same old, hackneyed phrases are rolled out presenting prejudice as fact and stirring up deep seated resentment and animosity aimed at the poor and the stranger in our midst.

It may be that people are wising up. The latest salvo from the Chancellor, that he will not raise tax because he can continue to cut welfare to pay down the deficit, is apparently according to one comment that I read, not widely believed. Nevertheless the continuing narrative representing Labour as the party who left a financial mess and the party of welfare continues to undermine Labour's standing in the polls.

Sadly, despite his image being so successfully undermined by Vince Cable , the facts of the matter are that the financial tsunami that swept across Western Europe which began with the tectonic plates of sub-prime mortgages crashing in the USA was largely held back from swamping the European economy by Gordon Brown's intervention.

Far from being the party who left the mess Labour was in fact the party that ensured that the mess didn't completely swamp the British economy.

There is a large measure of agreement that complex financial instruments, the packaging and selling of debt, hedging and arbitraging were responsible and no-one has gone to jail for it.

And as for Mr Duncan Smith's cynical description of Labour as the party of welfare.

Well the Milliball's should be celebrating. What exactly is wrong with being the party of welfare?

Surely the welfare, the well being of society as a whole is what Government should be in the business of ensuring and protecting.

Apparently IDS as he is widely known is planning to restrict family allowance to the first two children, apparently the scheme is drawn up and will be introduced if the Tories win the next election.

So then we can add to those named above, children, as their welfare is put at risk by short sighted, mean spirited policies.

It is truly hard to see where the humour is in any of this?

Friday 12 July 2013

12th July 2013

My father was fond of observing that the only sure way to have genuine mourners at your funeral was to die in debt.

I must have taken this fatherly advice a little too seriously because debt and I have been life long companions.

Most recently of course, as a retired clergyman I acquired the biggest debt of all when I retired, a mortgage.

But having been retired for some time that debt is about to be discharged.

However lightly I might take it however debt is a serious matter.

As the song has it:

You load sixteen tons , and what do you get
Another day older and deeper in debt
Saint Peter don't you call me 'cause I can't go
I ow my soul to the company store

Debt is a form of social control. Nobody is going to rise up and demand the end of injustice, there will be no barricades in the city of the indebted. Debt keeps us in our place and the company store keeps us just fed and watered enough to keep us fit to work and drunk enough at the weekends to ensure that we cause no trouble for the company which owns us lock stock and over a barrel.

Of course you could say that in the 21 Century this view of indebtedness is out of date and unrealistic but students now leave University with sizeable student loans which take years to pay down.

People who lose their jobs through redundancy or incapacity will have to rely on loans from Banks or Pay Day lenders to fund them before their benefits become payable.

And despite the associated risks individuals are incurring large, even in Japan, inter generational, mortgages in order to put a paper roof over their paper house.

And amongst all the news today we have been told that the Con-dem project has not finished, there are more cuts to welfare promised by the Chancellor because he can and because he will not countenance raising taxation.

According to research published by The Resolution Foundation up to 650,000 more UK Households would face debt peril, defined as spending half of disposable income on repayments, if interest rates rise by two percentage points.

Inevitably the report in the Financial Times notes that in this situation the poor will be disproportionately affected with 7% of the poorest fifth having half their income claimed by repayments compared with 3% of the richest fifth.

But hey, that's OK they don't vote Conservative.

Recently the Archbishop of Canterbury was quoted rehearsing an argument that I have  made in this Blog, that inflation is a tax on the poor and it is the tight control of inflation that is being relaxed, so whilst the Chancellor will not raise taxes on the wealthy, he will raise a tax through inflation, on the poorest.

Inflation which reduces the value of assets also reduces the value of debts, which looks like a good thing, almost 'forgive us our debts' or at least reduce their value through inflation but it overlooks the fact that in his prayer Jesus asks that our debts are forgiven as we forgive others indebtedness.

Of course we could recall the Year of Jubilee in which all debts were written down and each persons patrimony was returned but for that we might have to wait for the return of a Labour Government or Judgement Day whichever comes the soonest.

So we sit back and let this social experiment continue as the post war settlement is renegotiated, public ownership is discredited and everything is sold off to the lowest bidder.

Now we take our own rubbish to be recycled and soon we will delivering our own letters and paying for the privilege into the bargain.

And to add insult to injury Mr Clegg is at it, preening and posturing as he declares that he will talk to the party with the most votes first after the election and would be happy to coalesce with anyone, perhaps we should all vote UKIP just to see the look on his face, before the economy sinks like a stone and we're all genuine mourners at the graveside.
















Tuesday 9 July 2013

9th July 2013

Well done Andy Murray.

There, that’s said.

To be honest I have absolutely no interest in Tennis, I have played it in a bat the ball kind of way, Racquets as it were, and quite enjoyed the dashing about the court shouting Love and Deuce and even In and Out occasionally.

I enjoyed the playing but not half as much as much as I enjoyed the post match refreshments.

Especially the cold beer!

In my view, like so much of modern sport, it is overhyped and the players overpaid.

Nevertheless having said that, I have to acknowledge the determination, the professionalism and the discipline that goes into making yourself a world number one in any sport and Andy Murray has certainly achieved that, so well done to him.

As always, there is a moral to this.

The sight of the tennis player standing at the door of Number 10 Downing Street with the PM behind him, bathing in reflected glory.

What can you say?

About as little as it seems wise to comment on Falkirk, Unite and the Labour Leadership.

Of course Labour needs a much more robust relationship with working people, indeed after the smooching of the wealthy by New Labour, a period of reassessment is called for.

We have a Government with a clear agenda.

It aims with the support of the media, to reduce the State, to reduce support for welfare and to restore the busted trickle down economic theory of Thatcherism.

Rather than fighting amongst themselves, Unite whose Secretary was elected by a minority of those eligible to vote, should now be focussed on working with the Labour Party to offer a reasoned and reasonable opposition in an attempt to reduce the damage being done.

But no, instead it seeks to use under the counter, behind the scenes strategies, which effectively undermine its position and will, if not checked, hand the 2015 election to the Tories.

Unite and its leadership needs to adopt a much more rigorous approach in its strategy for proposing a socialist alternative to the policies of the con-dem Government.

There are clear justice issues here to be promoted under the broad heading of truth, justice and the Mancunian way.

Determination, professionalism and discipline win Wimbledon as we have seen and celebrated and midway through 2013, now with possibly two years to go, before the election, it is time to get serious.

People will not be bullied into voting Labour.

There has to be a reasonable informed public debate about the shortcomings of the coalition’s strategy, the demonising of some, the failure to protect others and the sanctimonious habit of always claiming to be doing the right thing.

About which any hermeneutic would observe that the word right usually implies, to the right, rather than correct or necessary.

The theories being offered to support the coalition’s forward strategy, the arguments for deficit reduction, a prolonged period of austerity, continuing unemployment facing young people; alongside its failure to boost the economy, invest in the future, build more houses etc etc.

All this needs addressing from a socialist, humanist perspective. With perhaps a reference to the need to recognise that prosperity is possible without a continuing dependence on growth.

Unite and its leadership needs to be putting its moral weight behind Labour as the only serious opposition and the only serious way of challenging the current direction of travel of the economy.

Perhaps the days of beer and sandwiches are over, that’s no longer the way that business is done.

So adopt the steely determination of an Andy Murray and settle your differences over a Ruby Murray before it’s too late.

In Falkirk you could try D’yoga, strengthening mind and body for the challenge ahead or maybe Indian Harvest in the hope of anticipating an Indian Summer in 2015.

Friday 5 July 2013

5th July 2013

I am trying to understand exactly whose future it is that I am stealing.

But that is the accusation levelled against me by politicians, pundits, columnists and others.

It seems that as a baby boomer I have been blessed with final salary pensions, rising house prices, social security, health care and now in retirement I can live high on the hog, benefitting from the excesses apparently owed to the ‘me’ generation of which I am clearly and inescapably a part.

Well, it is certainly true that for some of my contemporaries that is true, especially I might add for the politicians, pundits and columnists amongst them.

However it is not true for a retired clergyman in the Church of England.

There was house price inflation, but it benefitted the Church Commissioners because I lived in a tied cottage called, The Vicarage.

My pension whilst certainly not ungenerous is tied to a formula linked to the average stipend, which is and always has been a figure somewhat below average wages, and, because I left my last job before 65 in order to support my wife who is disabled, I forfeited a percentage of my pension.

So with the state and occupational pensions we get by and remain fairly self-sufficient.

We neither complain nor do we believe that we are stealing anyone’s future.

Having for years woken up in the night worrying about money and trying to work out how to get to the end of the month in one piece, its certainly nice not to have to do that now, but as for stealing futures, I plead not guilty.

The real interrogation is due not for the elderly but for the politicians and the financiers.

Tony Blair tends to be criticised for the part he played in going to war in Iraq, but his failure to address the welfare crisis is something that he deserves greater criticism for.

Gordon Brown acted to head off financial melt down but failed to lay the blame squarely at the doorstep where it should have been placed.

And the con-dems have continued to reward the guilty and punish the innocent having neatly played the Labour Party into a corner where they are busy earning the soubriquet of the layabout party.

When the new governor of The Bank of England addresses the issues which have brought the economy to the brink of recession, indeed almost leading into a depression it might be that he will begin to steer the economy forward, but if that is to happen he will have to address investment, get the banks lending again and responsibly this time but also get the economy moving with investment in infrastructure development and, most importantly, ensure that we start to build houses again.

I can say with some confidence that I am not personally responsible for house price inflation, I have not forced bankers to accept large bonuses against their will and that, unlike some I might mention except that I have no desire to be sued, I still pay my taxes.

The headlines are relishing the plight of the Labour Party and the embarrassment caused by Unite’s involvement in the selection process.

But the Labour Party should now be making clear that it is a party of the left, that it does have a socialist manifesto and that he seeks to replace banditry with social justice and a better and fairer future for people in the UK as part of a wider vision for Europe.

The elderly are not stealing younger people’s futures but we do have a Government which is failing young people whilst laying the blame at anyone’s door rather than taking responsibility.