21st March 2014

It is strange really!

How Bingo has become fashionable!

Apparently it is how hard working savers spend their time when they're not working or saving.

Unless they're in the pub saving even more money.

Good evening? Great evening! 

I saved fourpence, how did you manage that? I had four pints and that lovely George Osborne gave me a penny off each pint.

Whose George Osborne? 

He's the one who went to Eton and makes a habit of parking in disabled spaces to eat his lunch.

Oh! That one?

My father died recently.

He was a hard working bus driver for Manchester Corporation, bought his own house, did his best for his children, saved and, after my mother died, he remarried and moved to Australia with his second wife.

When we were young we used to go to Scarborough for a family holiday and stayed in a B&B run by a distant relative of my Grandmother.

Years later my father told me that after paying the fare for the Ribble Coach from Manchester and the reduced family rate for the B&B, he had £5 for a family of four to have a holiday, worth more than it would be today but still not a fortune and there were very few ice creams just plenty of long walks.

On one occasion my Grandfather joined us, I remember that he and I had to share a bed in the attic.

But I remember that holiday because my Grandfather took me to play bingo and to my great excitement we won, suddenly he shouted House, and an attendant came along and asked what prize he wanted.

Bingo!

In my first parish on a large Salford Council Estate I once suggested a Bingo Night to raise funds, the idea was rejected, Bingo was not for the upwardly mobile members of the parish, in those days attending church was how the aspirant working classes demonstrated their aspirations and they wanted to put Bingo behind them along with the Devil and all rebellion against God.

But the Bingo Hall in the nearby Town prospered and plenty of the parishioners who largely didn't attend Church, did attend Bingo faithfully and the caller called out the numbers like hymn tunes and sometimes people even won.

Of course Bingo is like life, and like life the faithful will rehearse the Bingo Prayer at the end of each day.

As I lay me down to slumber
All I need is one more number
When to the big game in the sky I go
I pray the Lord I can yell BINGO!

In fact I had to wait quite a few years before I could persuade a congregation to play Bingo.

My last parish was pretty upper middle class, and in parts distinctly nouveau riche, so after they had exhausted wine tastings and cheese and wine and bring and buy and garden fetes and garden parties and murder mysteries and antiques roadshows they asked had I any ideas?

I suggested Bingo to which someone added fish and chips so the date was set, the hall was hired and hard working savers set to and after some effort located a Bingo Kit and I was appointed caller.

Bingo!

The evening was a great success, funds were raised, fish and chips were consumed the Sancerre was chilled to perfection, it was a class act, if a tad middle to upper class.

Well after this weeks budget it must be said that Burlington Bertie (30) encouraged those approaching the time to retire (65) hoping in time to enter Cameron's Den (10) himself, meanwhile encouraging workers and savers to strive and strive (75) whilst making it clear that the shirkers will continue to find it unlucky for some (13) because they can no longer rely on the state (8), because he has removed it.

14th March 2014

Wry was the answer in a recent crossword clue, see:

Using or expressing dry, especially mocking, humour.

Well it is I suppose, given this definition, stretching a point to describe this blog as Wry!

But given the subject matter that I try to cover, the whole rigmarole of the so called, 'Big Society', the attack on those who stuggle in an increasingly hostile environment to make ends meet, who literally are faced with a choice between heating and eating, where the best example of the so called big society, in which citizens seek to help each other out, is the explosion of food banks, that dry, especially mocking humour, can only be seen as inappropriate.

But wry is the word I hang onto because every example that comes along simply re-inforces the view that whilst some folk barely hang on with the 'help' of pay day loans, others simply amass unsustainable wealth in their barns.

Two deaths this week, Bob Crow, the indefatigable leader of the RMT who worked tirelessly to  defend and improve, the pay and conditions of his members and now Tony Benn.

Both men, who have been excoriated by the press and politicians of both left and right, will now see their legacy reviewed and those who couldn't find a good thing to say about either will pay their glowing tributes.

In the village that I lived in until I retired and moved North, there was an eccentric couple who had literally filled their house with newspapers and magazines, rumour had it that when they died there were editions of various magazines and newspapers dating back to when they bought and moved into the house.

There were rooms that it was impossible to enter, piled high as they were with newsprint.

Certainly no car had ever been parked in their garage as that was the first place in which they began to store the collection.

They weren't misers.

They exhibited no particular signs of irrationality, they just couldn't thowaway or recycle their newsprint.

But it was odd behaviour which when it was shared amongst neighbours and villagers was described using dry, mocking humour.

But what if these elderly neighbours had otherwise been amassing instead money?

Brown, Green and Blue banknotes. stacked under the bed, in the garage, in the lounge and hallway.

What would have been said when this huge treasure hoard was finally revealed?

That amassing all this wealth only served to make other people poor?

That it was irrational?

That nobody benefits when such a huge amount of money is withdrawn from circulation?

That nobody needs a house stuffed with money?

But then when Bankers negotiate their bonusses, when the the senior management team of a business are offered retention bonusses simply for staying in the jobs they applied for and to which they were appointed.

When CEO's simply seek to amass wealth and store it in their barns.

What do we say?

Better to prepare for a rainy day?

Well I think that I would want to report the wry view of a penniless teacher from 2000 years ago who described such people as 'rich fools' who simply attached too much importance to wealth.

This 'rich fool' of Luke's Gospel amassed his wealth in his barns until his barns were full and then he built new and bigger barns and then he died.

As the condems vision of society, of which someone said, there is no such thing, moves towards its completion people are finding that there is simply less humour, less compassion, people are smiling less, we are entering difficult and anxious times, there is simply less kindness in human interaction.

Instead of piling up treasures on earth in bigger and bigger barns it is surely time for a spirit of generosity by which treasure is shared more widely and commonly between people.

As Tony Benn and Bob Crow might have suggested quoting another socialist visionary, from each according to their ability, to each according to their need ......

3rd March 201

From 1974 until 1978 I was the Vicar of St John the Baptist, Little Hulton, Salford, Greater Manchester.

Little Hulton was once famously characterised by one of its famous Sons, Sean Ryder of the Happy Mondays, (the actor Christopher Eccleston is another famous son along with Paul Ryder), as a place better escaped from.

Together with the neighbouring parish of St Pauls, Peel and parts of the nearby town of Walkden nearly 60,000 people lived on a vast council estate.

In the mid seventies Salford local authority was busy demolishing the inner city slum dwellings and employed a housing nominations policy which favoured those whose houses were being cleared.

The consequence of this policy was that young people in Little Hulton were not offered housing on the estate near their families and in their own communities and instead when they married moved off the estate often into private, mortgaged properties in the towns that ringed Little Hulton and ran along the East Lancashire Road towards Liverpool, and in the process affecting the communities sustainability.

With Right to Buy, Margaret Thatcher's iconic housing initiative, property in Little Hulton was sold to existing tenants at massive discounts and it was soon possible to recognise the privatised properties as they sported, porches and mock tudor beams.

Once the pressure mounted those properties that had not been privatised were handed over by the local authority to housing associations.

Two years ago the impact of the twin policies of the Labour Controlled Council and the Thatcher Government had resulted in the highest concentration of Housing Association Properties in Salford being concentrated in Little Hulton.

Of the properties in Little Hulton and Walkden 65% are privately owned and 35% owned by Housing Associations, comparative figures for the UK are 82% privately owned and 10% owned by Housing Associations.

But that was two years ago.

The numbers are changing dramatically. The Lobby Group Million Homes, Million Lives is now reporting that the number of owner occupiers could fall nationally as low as 49% by 2041 based on current numbers which have fallen to 65%.

It seems that the direct consequence of right to buy, as pointed out by James Meek in the LRB, amongst others, is the rapid increase in private landlords, many of whose portfolios include large numbers of former Local Authority properties.

The tragedy of the collapse of the post war vision, characterised as 'Homes for Heroes', is that the continuing desire for home ownership cannot be fulfilled, the report above characterises a new and emerging 'Generation Rent', relying on the private landlord, who by design or necessity can offer neither the security or the necessary support once provided by the local authority in its role as Landlord or indeed in some recently publicised cases simply refusing to accept as tenants any who are on benefits including housing benefit.

There are always good news stories to be found and publicly rehearsed but as Salford's Joint Strategic Needs Assessment reveals there is a high concentration of social properties with low private home ownership indicating low incomes, benefit dependency  and potentially, fuel poverty and health issues.

Diversifying tenure is recommended as a way of achieving an improved housing choice and a more sustainable community.

It is certainly better, than cutting benefits, sanctioning spare rooms and creating housing and economic stress.

As Vicar I lived in the Vicarage next door to the church.

Even that house, surrounded as it was by a tree lined garden, was not immune to the housing crisis. 

In 1976 during a long hot summer the foundations of the house cracked and the house split from top to bottom, coming to rest with a massive gap at the top of the wall requiring part demolition and rebuilding on new foundations.

If Pisa's Tower had been built to the same specification it would never have leaned.

It was the collapse of the Vicarage that led to me writing an application for a new job in the North East sitting at my desk tapping my feet to the accompaniment of pneumatic drilling outside.

For me, as for Sean Ryder, Little Hulton had become a place to escape from ........ and in the process I became Britain's first punk vicar, but that's a story for another blog!