There are two names synonymous with radical change in the UK.
Robin Hood, Jim Wallis' favourite historical British character, as he told me when I interviewed him for BBC Radio Newcastle some years ago, who robbed the rich to give to the poor.
In fact on that visit to the UK Jim advised me that he had taken a detour in order to visit Sherwood Forest.
What he would make of the actions of the con-dems its fairly easy to imagine, but the real or imagined actions of Robin Hood hold out the possibility that in time good will prevail and the unjust receive their just deserts, so we can only hope.
The other name is of course Guy Fawkes, sometimes described as the only person to enter the House of Commons with honourable intentions.
Today we remember the Fifth of November, Gunpowder, treason and plot.
It just so happens that it is also my mothers birthday, who had she lived would now be 97, sadly she died in 1980 of secondary cancer following an earlier diagnosis of and surgery for, Breast Cancer, I still miss her.
Today is also the wedding anniversary of my youngest daughter, so happy anniversary to her and her husband.
It can be useful to mark these personal and family anniversaries with what is happening in the wider or 'bigger' society. A way of taking the temperature of the world we inhabit with its challenges, its gifts and its blessings.
Certainly the present Government represents to a greater degree than any before, the challenges.
Shades of Thatcherism as we privatise more, sell off our social housing, invest in a potentially inflationary policy of housing subsidy and seek to cap benefits so that the poorest in our society bear the greatest burden of addressing the long term structural inequalities built into the fabric of our society.
In effect robbing the poor.
So much has been and is being written to challenge the negative impact of policies that in effect simply reward those at the top. The reason that so much is written and so many campaigns are launched is because we know who ate and are eating the pies, leaving just crumbs to fall from the rich man's table.
But the real tragedy of the these years of austerity (at least for some) is that it was not, and is not necessary.
A recent report demonstrating the richness and economic benefit arising from those who come to make their home here, completely undermining the false claim that immigration is always negative.
If money was fairly and evenly distributed throughout society then we would all be so much better off than some of us are, even if others might feel that the rewards they receive for their work could be higher. But a recognition that there should be a relationship between the highest paid and the poorest in any company, without the need for the Government to subside via the tax system, employers who pay poorly
Comparing the society in which I am growing old compared with the one in which I grew up is almost impossible, there is no comparison, shopping with my mother in 1950's Britain with rationing and ration cards, eking out the house keeping as best she could in order to feed her family, was soul destroying.
But there was community, there were networks of family support and over time we began to prosper as a family as society generally began to benefit from the great vision of social justice, of public ownership, of health care free at the point of delivery introduced by the first Labour Government.
Now, that system is being consciously and actively dismantled giving rise to increased pressures imposed through changes to the benefits system, job losses and the high cost of buying and heating a home.
For the thousands who now have to resort to food banks to feed their families even the 1950's, that previous decade of austerity, would appear to be, halcyon days.
Nye Bevan fought the 1945 general election on a programme which would effectively lead to the 'complete, political extinction of the Tory Party'.
His vision was for a society built on justice in which working people had power and in which the individualistic competitive society based on capitalist hedonism was replaced with socialism.
It was about the test of what makes a good society, it has been well characterised as the 'Kingdom of Bevan'.
On Thursday a new co-op will open in a new development opposite where I live.
It is a measure of the potential to continue to hold onto that vision of a better society promoting the 'common good' that my mother would have recognised the co-op as not only a place to do her family shopping but one in which , as an owner, she had a personal and valuable stake, represented by the 'Divi'.
So as Robin Hood continues to inspire and Guy Fawkes continues to challenge we must continue to hold out for the possibility of changing society for the better, as The Tunes sang, Truth, Justice and the Mancunian Way.
Robin Hood, Jim Wallis' favourite historical British character, as he told me when I interviewed him for BBC Radio Newcastle some years ago, who robbed the rich to give to the poor.
In fact on that visit to the UK Jim advised me that he had taken a detour in order to visit Sherwood Forest.
What he would make of the actions of the con-dems its fairly easy to imagine, but the real or imagined actions of Robin Hood hold out the possibility that in time good will prevail and the unjust receive their just deserts, so we can only hope.
The other name is of course Guy Fawkes, sometimes described as the only person to enter the House of Commons with honourable intentions.
Today we remember the Fifth of November, Gunpowder, treason and plot.
It just so happens that it is also my mothers birthday, who had she lived would now be 97, sadly she died in 1980 of secondary cancer following an earlier diagnosis of and surgery for, Breast Cancer, I still miss her.
Today is also the wedding anniversary of my youngest daughter, so happy anniversary to her and her husband.
It can be useful to mark these personal and family anniversaries with what is happening in the wider or 'bigger' society. A way of taking the temperature of the world we inhabit with its challenges, its gifts and its blessings.
Certainly the present Government represents to a greater degree than any before, the challenges.
Shades of Thatcherism as we privatise more, sell off our social housing, invest in a potentially inflationary policy of housing subsidy and seek to cap benefits so that the poorest in our society bear the greatest burden of addressing the long term structural inequalities built into the fabric of our society.
In effect robbing the poor.
So much has been and is being written to challenge the negative impact of policies that in effect simply reward those at the top. The reason that so much is written and so many campaigns are launched is because we know who ate and are eating the pies, leaving just crumbs to fall from the rich man's table.
But the real tragedy of the these years of austerity (at least for some) is that it was not, and is not necessary.
A recent report demonstrating the richness and economic benefit arising from those who come to make their home here, completely undermining the false claim that immigration is always negative.
If money was fairly and evenly distributed throughout society then we would all be so much better off than some of us are, even if others might feel that the rewards they receive for their work could be higher. But a recognition that there should be a relationship between the highest paid and the poorest in any company, without the need for the Government to subside via the tax system, employers who pay poorly
Comparing the society in which I am growing old compared with the one in which I grew up is almost impossible, there is no comparison, shopping with my mother in 1950's Britain with rationing and ration cards, eking out the house keeping as best she could in order to feed her family, was soul destroying.
But there was community, there were networks of family support and over time we began to prosper as a family as society generally began to benefit from the great vision of social justice, of public ownership, of health care free at the point of delivery introduced by the first Labour Government.
Now, that system is being consciously and actively dismantled giving rise to increased pressures imposed through changes to the benefits system, job losses and the high cost of buying and heating a home.
For the thousands who now have to resort to food banks to feed their families even the 1950's, that previous decade of austerity, would appear to be, halcyon days.
Nye Bevan fought the 1945 general election on a programme which would effectively lead to the 'complete, political extinction of the Tory Party'.
His vision was for a society built on justice in which working people had power and in which the individualistic competitive society based on capitalist hedonism was replaced with socialism.
It was about the test of what makes a good society, it has been well characterised as the 'Kingdom of Bevan'.
On Thursday a new co-op will open in a new development opposite where I live.
It is a measure of the potential to continue to hold onto that vision of a better society promoting the 'common good' that my mother would have recognised the co-op as not only a place to do her family shopping but one in which , as an owner, she had a personal and valuable stake, represented by the 'Divi'.
So as Robin Hood continues to inspire and Guy Fawkes continues to challenge we must continue to hold out for the possibility of changing society for the better, as The Tunes sang, Truth, Justice and the Mancunian Way.
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