24th October 2011

Apparently the campers around St Paul's are digging in until Christmas.

I wonder if they are expecting Father Christmas to drop by?

Whilst it seems to me to be an over reaction by the Dean and Chapter, the closure of the Cathedral whilst the Stock Exchange remains open for business, seems to have rather missed the point of the protest.

It is clear that there is something rotten in the state of human affairs and money lies at the heart of it.

Ridiculous rewards for some, if the rumours are true Tony Blairs reward of £2M for acting as an adviser to a Bank is one example of a reward so far outweighing the effort and intelligence brought to bear on the task as to be obscene.

But the FT at the weekend continues to publish its How to Spend it Magazine and the number of zeros attached to everything from Houses, to Cars, to Televisions, to Clothes, to Watches and Furniture is truly eye watering.

But the goods on sale and the price tags suggest that the bonuses are still being paid and are out of all proportion to the effort involved in 'earning' them.

At the other end of the scale yesterday I met a group of young men who had arrived in Italy after a perilous crossing of the Mediterranean from Libya.

For three days, like St Paul, they had been 'adrift at Sea' and in 'shipwrecks often'.....

Refused entry into France, the Schengen rules appear to have been suspended at Ventimiligia, they are living in Genoa on food stamps, vouchers and handouts, but at least they have been welcomed by the Church.

The condem Government continues to act as though there is nothing wrong with the system of bonuses and disproportionate rewards and really nothing wrong with some individuals getting to eat the pies whilst others don't even qualify for the scraps from the rich mens tables.

The trickle down theory of wealth creation was discredited in the 80's and a fairer system of redistribution was introduced, perhaps history will judge Gordon Brown more kindly than the electorate did. Now however, the clock has rewound itself and we find ourselves fighting the old battles again.

I have yet to work out how a very few individuals wrongly claiming benefits, given the millions that go unclaimed, can somehow be painted as the cause of all societies ills, when others can receive millions in bonuses? I read recently that RBS paid more in bonuses than it owes the UK Government, that was payments to individual employees simply for fulfilling their job description.

The LSX protesters are right to draw attention to what is happening and right to lay the responsibility at the door of the Stock Exchange, sadly St Paul's decision to close has cast them in a dubious light, let's hope that Father Christmas brings them what they are hoping for ........

22nd October 2011

Missed a couple of days blogging this week.

I have been travelling. First by train down to Brighton and then up to London and finally to Genoa.

When we travel together the resident critic has to use a wheelchair and so this week was an exercise in testing current attitudes to disabled passengers on trains, planes  buses and taxis.

We were generally delighted with the ease with which we were able to get about, as we usually use our own car it made quite a change, but it was not necessarily a change for the worse.

We had two trips through London at rush hour and the commuters were brilliant, courtesy and kindness all around.

The flight to Genoa was very comfortable and easy which was suprising given that when we arrived at Gatwick the departures board announced a two hour delay, which was then changed to the scheduled time when they found another plane.

Unfortunately a bit had fallen off the 'new' plane and had to be glued on again and so we had to sit on the tarmac waiting for the glue to dry!

We left an hour late after sitting in an increasingly  uncomfortably warm cabin.

But once in the air the G&T certainly helped to cool us down.

In London I missed the campers in St Pauls churchyard but couldn't help wonder what on earth was going on.

The campers are campaigning to close, challenge, disrupt or just draw attention to the Stock Exchange?

The Chancellor of St Paul's Cathedral asked the police to withdraw and appeared generally to welcome the campers, then the Dean announces that the Cathedral has closed for the first time since the Blitz and blames the campers' creating a risk to the public, the worshippers and the 'pilgrims' despite the fact that groups of a 'hundred' can still attend for weddings?

Having worked in a Cathedral myself I rather thought that this particular crisis had the marks of the Chinese word for crisis which, apparently, means both risk and opportunity.

I rather think the risk has been overstated, apparently the campers have been advised by the fire brigade and are taking their advice and anyway they are right next door to Black's camping shop so handily placed for everything from billy cans (if not Billy Bragg, who apparently is in Dublin) to sleeping bags.

But I obviously don't know all if indeed  I know any of the facts and the Dean might be right, after all he used to be Bishop of the Isle of Man and knows a thing or two about risk, given the TT and Birching.

But the opportunity, it seems to me to provide sanctuary, an honourable and ancient tradition whereby anyone, simply by grasping the door of the Church, can claim protection is an excellent one being acted out here by the protesters and apparently the Cathedral did ask the Police to draw back and they did.

So sanctuary was offered and received.

Some years ago I ran a pilgrimage in Birmingham during Holy Week where the pilgrims visited the City and re-enacted some of the events of the first Holy Week.

One event was overturning the money lenders tables.

So to re-enact this event I arranged a visit to the Stock Exchange.

The LSX campaign is an extraordinarily focussed attempt to draw attention to the fact that, as Bill Clinton once famously explained, it's the economy.

If we want to know why our society is in such a mess, is, as the PM states, broken, then all you have to do is follow the money ......

18th October 2011

It's a test of just how inclusive the big society really is. Travelling with a wheelchair certainly has its challenges. The booked assistance worked really well, apart from our being forgotten at Euston but the Train Manager rose to the occasion. Then we walked down to Kings Cross, Thameslink, managing to avoid manic commuters, rabid dogs and broken pavements, only to find that the last Brighton train had departed four years earlier, apparently we should have been at St Pancras! So back through the thronging crowd, past the Eurostar Terminal and onto the First Connect platform. Again the staff were great, helpful, courteous and got us onto the train, but there was no space for the wheelchair amidst the grimly determined strap hangers on the crowded train. It might be grim up North but travelling home at Eight at night after a hard day at work and paying a fortune to travel on an overcrowded train and then having to share the limited space with a wheelchair, it was a test of everyone's patience. So when we arrived in Brighton I expected a stampede for the doors, with us crushed in the rush. But surprisingly and refreshingly, No .... People stood back to allow us to get off the train. A cheery Station Attendant placed the ramp and Hey Ho, there we were, the first stage of our journey completed, so let's hear it for the commuters on the 16 43 City Thames Link to Brighton train a magnificent testament to the bigness of our society, maybe the 8 13 Brighton to Victoria won't be so bad after all on Wednesday morning? Now if First Connect could just lose a couple of seats and create some wheelchair spaces .........

15th October 2011

I have a confession to  make.

I have renewed my subscription and re-loaded The Times app. I know, but what can you do?

Personally I blame the in-house critic who has sooo missed her regular meetings with and reading of, Caitlin Moran's column.

Certainly the column has not let us down this morning ....... Go Caitlin!

I just hope that Cameron, Clegg, Osborne et al read it this morning, it won't make them weep but it just might make them think.

I suppose the thing is I got over myself.

I know all the arguments against News International and I largely agree with them but, apart from the fact that I am off to Genoa for six weeks as a Chaplain at the Church of the Holy Ghost (Piazza Marsala, if you are in Genoa a warm welcome awaits you), and the fact that English Newspapers cost three times the UK price in the Eurozone and are delivered to the ipad for a third of the UK cover price for the printed edition, the main reason I surrendered to what was probably always inevitable, was Liam Fox.

If we didn't have a free press he might have continued to act in a manner that was both high handed and unaccountable.

They do it because they think they can, think they can get away with it, think that no-one really cares, that it doesn't matter.

I guess that at least he wasn't seen wandering round St James's Park dropping secret documents into litter bins in a Tinker, Tailor, Soldier Spy scenario.

But apart from the issues of defence security and the matter of acting with a duty of care to the people of this country, it now appears that Mr Fox's friend was given some £147, 000 by a consortium of right wing groups and by association that money would appear to be an attempt to secure influence.

However bad the Government, and for the poor and for the working man this Government is very bad news indeed, (see Caitlin Moran), it is essential that we have a free press, even one owned by the Murdoch family, to maintain pressure, to root out inappropriate behaviour, to hold to account and to shine a light on the murkier areas of activity, it is the only way that the truth has half a chance of prevailing rather than being the victim of weasel words and chiselling.

I have always read The Times, I began reading it when the front cover carried the personal columns, I suppose that I have got used to the editorial style, which despite the change of ownership, has remained consistent over the years, and I have relied on the Editorials and the columnists but more recently the separate supplement, The Game has become required reading on a Monday over my porridge.

So we are back again, Sport, Opinion, Headlines, it doesn't take long, but it keeps those politicians on their toes ...........

13th October 2011

The big society seems to have slipped down, if not off, David Cameron's agenda recently.

This could mean of course that this blog may have to be re designated and turn its attention to a wry look at other matters in the news.

It was interesting who picked up on the big society and who didn't.

My only contribution to a recent meeting of the Co-operative Party discussion on the big society was to observe that Mr Cameron would doubtless be delighted to know that we were discussing his spurious notion, if only to oppose and reject its principles, because it meant that he was setting the agenda.

As my biography indicates I have spent most of my adult working life either as a Clergyman in the Church of England or in the Charitable sector.

As such I believe that I am to some degree qualified to discuss the big society because I have worked in and with local communities around a range of ideas and issues from homelessness to unemployment. I was a founder member of Church Action on Poverty and have both established and managed a range of community projects in Yorkshire, Lancashire, the North East before taking on the leadership of a National Charity with community and volunteering activity across the United Kingdom.

Words can lose all meaning if they are used inappropriately or imbued by the person using them with a spurious meaning.

Mrs Thatcher on the steps of Downing Street in that famous film clip rehearsing the words of St Francis Prayer: Where there is hatred, let us sow love; where there is injury,pardon; where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; and where there is sadness, joy; pretty much rendered the prayer unprayable, which was quite and achievement.

And the big society?

Well if by big you mean inclusive, large, grand, significant, then the idea of a big society is undermined by the diminishing of people by a thousand small cuts.

So in this big society, the big people are those with large bank accounts, big bonuses and big tax cuts and their relative size is created not by making the big people bigger but by making the rest of us smaller.

And society, the concept which was challenged by Mrs Thatcher's claim that it didn't exist, well that too is undermined by the way that Mr Duncan Smith's emphasis on welfare undermines the truly big concept of social security.

The grand vision of Beveridge and Aneurin Bevan, of citizens feeling secure in their homes, their families and their jobs is watered down and becomes simply welfare which, of course is too close to farewell.

Yesterday in PM's questions the Prime Minister stated that the Government regretted the seventeen year high level of unemployment but that it was doing all it could to get people into work.

Cutting public expenditure?

Reducing Investment ?

Transferring jobs from the public to the private sector ?

It seems to this observer that little or nothing is actually being done, somehow we seem to have returned to the Thatcher view that the market rather than Mervyn is king and the economy like the weather cannot be controlled.

11th October 2011

It's hard to know where to start today.

The indefensible, apparently right wing, Defence Minister, Dr Fox who has confused his verities with his werrities.

The shocking figures showing the number of jobs lost in the public sector.

The equally scandalous reports that child poverty is in fact increasing in the UK.

The economist who forecast the recession who is apparently suggesting that it would be better as some have recomended, for debts to be written off and money given to individuals who will spend it to greater benefit.

Quoted in today's Guardian Professor Steve Keen suggests that: the key to averting or curtailing a second Great Depression is to reduce the levels of private debt, through a unilateral write-off, or jubilee.

So it might in fact be worth starting with two quotes from the Bible.

From the prophet Micah: do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with your God.

And, from the Book Leviticus Chapter 25 vv 39-41:

   ‘If any of your fellow Israelites become poor and sell themselves to you, do not make them work as slaves. ⁴⁰ They are to be treated as hired workers or temporary residents among you; they are to work for you until the Year of Jubilee. ⁴¹ Then they and their children are to be released, and they will go back to their own clans and to the property of their ancestors.

Theology will not convince everyone. Not every one is religious or believes in God. But every one does have a theory to live by and which supports their views and opinions.

Sometimes an individuals ethical framework will be based on a humanist world view.

Politicians of right and left will have a theory which is shaped by their own individual value system.

Whatever drives a persons view there will always be an outcome in terms of policies, actions and moral behaviour.

Micah predicted the downfall of Jerusalem. He stated flatly that the city was doomed because its regeneration was financed by dishonest business practices. These business practices impoverished the city’s citizens.

Some bells ringing there?

The idea of a Jubilee is written into the text of the Jewish Scripture, it appears to have been placed there for two main reasons, the first, because the theology states that nobody 'OWNS' anything, because the land belongs to God, it is the land of God's promise, we live in it by God's grace.

The second because, human nature being what it is, some will prosper and some will fall back, so, in order to ensure that the land holdings of each of the tribes of Israel is secured, every fifty years, each man's patrinomy will be returned to him.

An idealistic but powerful vision which appeals to the poor more than millionaires or billionaires or trillionaires.

It seems that not only the UK, but the entire western world, has lost its way.

The con-dem Government has decided that reducing the national debt is the only way forward, so with what are proving to be weasel words, it is driving its policies forward and the poor are paying an ever higher price.

There will be no Jubilee that is certain, but perhaps a little justice and mercy wouldn't go amiss?

8th October 2011

This week Billy Bragg was member of the Question Time Panel.

He came up with a statistic and a proposal for spending the £75 Billion of QE2.

His statistic was that it amounts to about £4000 per person/household.

His proposal was that each household should receive that amount to spend as they choose, thereby ensuring that the money is spent in the local economy rather than locked up in UK Banks.

Unsurprisingly his proposal seemed pretty popular with the audience.

Baroness Warsi demonstrated how the economy needs two levers, unfortunately she appeared to be miming the part of a bar maid on East Enders. Apparently QE2 is OK because it has been introduced by George Osborne whom we can trust rather Gordon Brown whom we couldn't.

I have mentioned in this blog that some years ago I proposed this idea when I worked for a Government Task Force in Birmingham, it was a serious proposal, as I am sure Billy Bragg's was, and after the laughter of my colleagues had subsided the Head of the Task Force Initiative appeared to give the idea some serious consideration before deciding it was too risky.

But what is the risk? and is it less of a risk than giving the money to the Bankers?

My experience of Bankers is not an especially good one.

Some years ago I had the privilege of spending a semester at an American College in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Every day I walked to 'school' through Harvard Yard to Brattle Street where the Episcopal Divinity School was located.

Before we left the Pound was in free fall against the dollar and so I took advice from a friend who was a banker, he put me in touch with an expert of foreign exchange, well he said things won't get worse than they are, in fact they can only improve, so hold on to your sterling just now and exchange it when you are close to leaving.

The pound dropped even further and when I did exchange my money I was roughly 10 cents in the pound worse off, receiving a dollar for every pound.

So with my much reduced capital which had to last me and my family, six of us in total, for six months in America, I opened an account at a Bank in Harvard Square and deposited my cheque.

Once our travel money had evaporated and the cheque had cleared I went to the Bank and tried to cash a cheque.

There is no money in this account, I was told by the teller. Clearly she was not a fortune teller in fact I had no fortune, it had disappeared.

But, I said, I have only just deposited a cheque, not in this bank you haven't, but I deposited it with you I exclaimed, panic rising in my voice.

I've never seen you before, she said flatly.

At the interview with the manager of the bank, thankfully I had kept the receipt, I shared the view that I thought that in America people came in off the street and robbed the bank, not the other way round.

I look forward to Billy Bragg turning his idea into a song  about who are the bank robbers and who are the robbed.

I just hope that Mervyn King keeps the receipt.