28th February 2012

Today is a holiday in Spain.

The restaurants were all competing with each other offering great value Menu del Dia's but the supermarkets and most of the stores were closed.

In most of Continental Europe and America, public holidays are taken on the day they fall which can mean that depending on the actual day people may take an extra day to make a long weekend, which of course explains why most people seemed to be out and about yesterday.

Our American visitors have left via Flamenco in Madrid and are now en route to minus temperatures and snow flurries in Vermont.

This is the fourth time that we have exchanged virtual reality for the real thing, we met in Bolton in 1974, Cambridge, Mass in 1985, In Cumbria in 2005 and now in Spain in 2012.

Stuart came over to the UK in 1974 as a volunteer with Community Service Volunteers, thirty eight years ago with our long hair and beard's we were asked were we brothers? This Sunday in Alhaurin with our shaved heads and goatees we were asked the same question.

But no we are not, I started a charity called Nightcap which housed homeless young people in Bolton, Lancashire, and Stuart worked at the hostel as a volunteer for three pounds a week, food and accommodation provided.

Nobody got rich from the work!

I have been intrigued by some of the recent news from the UK.

Not the least by the resignation of the so called Families Czar and the reports about the company she founded, a4e.

In my last job I worked for a charity which sought Government support for its work with families and young people.

Often our bids were unsuccessful because as a charity we were perceived as being asset rich.

I spent long hours negotiating with Civil Servants, trying to sell our services and ensure that the costings reflected the actual costs of delivering the service.

Eventually the charity had to withdraw from running public programmes and move back to its original founding principles as a voluntary society.

As a social enterprise however it was the case that staff were paid wages which were not overly generous and that when surpluses were occasionally generated, they were ploughed back into the charity, often to cross subside other activity.

What is clear that nobody benefited personally from the activity of the charity.

In some of our programmes we were highly successful in helping young people plan for and find work and we continued to support them in the first months of employment.

Reading the newspaper reports of a4e of whose activities I was not especially aware when I was working it seems that significant profits were generated from the contracts with Government Departments and that those profits were seen as being available to both invest in the development of the company and as profits which could be shared by the companies owners.

The company was successful in getting people into work, but not necessarily more successful than the many charities engaged in this work, the difference seems to be that Civil Servants, who often do not understand the charitable world and how it operates appear to be quite relaxed about the profit motive.

A charity like Community Service Volunteers, with years of experience encouraging young and old in volunteering, in preparation for work and in undertaking social service activity in hospitals, the caring professions, working with the homeless and with families, undertakes this work not for profit but as a social good.

That is not too difficult to understand is it?

As our visitors left we promised that we would keep in touch and that in four or five years time we would swap our virtual world for the real world and visit with each other once again. 

24th February 2011

The road from Alhaurin to the coast at Fuengirola is new.

It cuts down through a valley descending steeply before rising again to give a breath taking view of the Mediterranean.

It could be, and for some is, a fast road.

But it is subject to a 60 KPH speed restriction. There are hidden cameras and heavy fines are levied for exceeding the speed limit.

On any given day it is possible to see groups of cyclists kitted out as for the Tour de France, speeding up and racing down the hills, each cyclist jauntily arrived in bright yellow, red and blue with dark glasses and helmets effecting anonymity as they race the the other traffic which might consist of small, heavily laden motor cycles,  struggling their smokey way up the steep slopes and racing the cyclists down the descents.

Trucks and white vans compete for space and speed as they race down the declines in order to reach the next peak without changing gear.

Each of the main ascents has a crawler lane and on the descents there are gravel channels if you lose control or your brakes fail.

The fines are not always notified until you come to re-tax your vehicle by which time with compound interest they have become quite high.

I guess that it keeps taxes low and pays for the road.

As the two older stretches of the route out of Alhaurin and through the built up stretch through Mijas into Fuengirola are also 60 MPH there is a sense that the speed limit on the new road is arbitrarily designed simply to encourage risk taking and to generate income from fines.

It is rare to see an British number plate as generally cars are required to be registered in Spain as, after a fairly short time scale the are deemed to be imported.

Today however, as we drove out of Alhaurin, having enjoyed a Menu del Dia in a local restaurant, we were driving out toward the new road, first there was the usual hold up as two locals stopped for an exchange of views about the price of lemons or the improvement in the weather, it was then that I noticed the mini behind me, engine revving impatiently.

I set off and the speed limit went from 40 MPH to 50 MPH then to 30 MPH within an few hundred yards, aware that just ahead there was a speed bump of epic proportions which could if approached at speed cause a small car to fly, I slowed down and dropped into first gear edged cautiously over the traffic calming device and proceeded to increase speed.

At that moment the mini roared past me, cut in front of me, in my view dangerously, and sped off in a cloud of dust and gravel. It had a British number plate.

His nought to so far above the speed limit he couldn't be seen by a speed camera, made me think that it could have been driven by Mr Clarkson.

It was deliciously, outrageously, rude.

The car was travelling so fast that as he disappeared from view I had no idea of where he was heading but if it was the new road then he would have been in Fuengirola 15 Kilometres away before I had reached my destination a Kilometre ahead.

I had just taken the funeral of a gentlemen who in his younger days had rallied mini coopers in the UK, I found myself wondering was this a coincidence?

Or was something more mysterious at work?

22nd February 2012

There are some good jokes about work.

Some jokes take a fair amount of effort to work.

Some work is a joke.

I have over the years undertaken some work which was a joke.

Told some jokes which were work and worked at improving some of my jokes.

I once took a job selling potatoes in tower blocks. It was a great idea, who wants to carry 14lbs of potatoes  up eight flights of stairs? Especially if you are a 60 year old widow.

The job was a selling job, knocking on doors and offering to deliver the potatoes for a small charge above the cost they were selling for in the stores.

The guy whose business it was paid a small fee for every introduction but only after the first delivery had been made and accepted.

Another job came about when I cold called a company during the vacation to ask if they had any work. I was told that they had no vacancies and then the director came out from his office and called me over. He asked if I could paint but I had to admit that I was not an artist, no he said I want you to paint my house.

I said that I could certainly use a paint brush.

He then invited me to join him in his MGB and drove me out to his house in Prestbury outside Manchester.

The house was empty apart from rollers, brushes and cans of white and magnolia paint.

I agreed to start the next day and he when I reported to his company office, threw me the keys to the MGB and off I drove to Prestbury.

I received £9 00 a week and managed to ensure that the job took the whole of the six vacation weeks I had available.

Even training to be a clergyman in the Church of England it was important to undertake some form of work experience / parish placement and quite a few of my fellow students found their first parishes that way.

I ended up finding my first job through the old boy network via the college principal introducing me to a friend of his.

But work experience is key to finding work.

It boosts confidence, can offer valuable contacts and helps build a CV.

The problem often is no experience no job, but without experience how do you get the job offer?

The government feels that its various work experience schemes actively encourage people into work, their are targets set and various private, charitable and public agencies are involved.

There is also criticism as people argue that some bigger companies are taking advantage of, especially young, people and some people with professional qualifications, quite reasonably it seems to me, argue that stacking shelves will not help them find work in their chosen professional field.

Mr Duncan Smith finds himself beleaguered, and has turned on the commentariat describing their interventions as snobbish.

One project that I had an involvement with in Manchester in the mid-seventies, funded by the Manpower Services Commission, employed young people to garden, decorate and clean for older people in the community, one of our initiatives was to offer these young people to local employers, whilst we continued to pay their wages.

They were both on the books and off the books.

Unsurprisingly most of the young people rapidly proved their worth and were offered full time permanent employment, so our graduation rate was extremely positive.

But nevertheless we were the biggest employers in our part of Salford and that was not a firm basis for rebuilding the local economy or creating permanent employment opportunities.

Whatever Tesco's meant to achieve by their involvement in the current work experience scheme and however well intentioned they were, their involvement has back fired.

But at the end of the piece it is no use Mr Duncan Smith or Mr Cameron complaining.

If the economy is not producing jobs that is their failure, not the young people's, you can't take a job that is not there.

So it is time to stop blaming the victims of failed economic policies and start investing in programmes that will enable the economy to start growing.

The con-dems protestations that it is everybody's fault but their's is beginning to wear a bit thin as unemployment continues to rise, especially for young people.

Unemployment is no joke although jokes are told.

It feels that the old order is giving way to a new order, Europe is entering a fin de siecle, with Greece still likely to be the first victim, if that happens delivering potatoes in Tower Blocks or painting houses for
£9 00 a week and a borrowed MGB might seem like a way forward.

As Waldo asks in the New Yorker next Monday, 'Where's my job?'

20th February 2012

The Church has always, whatever Richard Dawkins might argue, been at the heart of a particular vision for society.

Whether it is a big society or an open society or just a better society is not always clear.

Certainly my experience of the Church is that it has been open to the vulnerable and the needy.

Once as a young vicar I opened my door to a gentlemen who asked if I might make him a sandwich for his lunch.

As it so happened I was alone that day and I was having my lunch, which consisted of a beetroot sandwich, I know! but it just happens to be a favorite vegetable of mine, a little salt is all that is required to make it very tasty.

So I asked him to stay where he was and went in and poured him a cup of tea and made him a sandwich, personally I thought sharing my beetroot with a stranger was pretty sacramental!

I took it it out to the gentleman and offered him the tea and the plate, he reacted violently to the tea, I don't take sugar and had forgotten that he might, spat out the mouthful he had taken and asked if I had any sugar, I went back in and found some at the back of a cupboard, when I returned to the door, the sandwich was lying on the floor amidst the shards of the broken plate, where he had thrown it.

He shouted at me, in a violent and aggressive manner to the effect that my predecessor, Fr Hedley, had always made him Bacon and Egg sandwiches and he wasn't about to eat this muck.

Fortunately for me I am six feet tall, and weighed some 16 stones, so very gently but firmly I pointed out that what I had done was share my lunch and if he didn't like it he could push off and find someone else who could afford bacon and eggs.

I then swept up the mess and put it in the bin.

That was early on in my career in the church but the memory stayed with me, every time I opened the door to a stranger I knew that there was a risk associated with the action, most of the vicarages I have lived in have been isolated at the end of long drives and sheltered from the road.

Even our house in Newcastle had a long path through a wooded garden and the children always ran from the front gate to the door as fast as they could, to avoid who ever might be lurking in the bushes half way down the path.

As they grew older the children also opened the door to passers by who wanted a sandwich or a cup of tea or money and became adept at sussing out the con merchants and making sandwiches out of whatever was in the cupboard.

The church see's the open door as part of it's ministry to those excluded from society, it is quite properly a way of extending or fuzzing the edges of society so that people who might feel excluded can feel that at least the church is prepared to offer them some support.

There is also in the Gospels support for this policy, 'inasmuch as you did it for the least of these'.

One day at the Cathedral in Bradford, my sixteen year old son answered the door to a man asking for a sandwich, he hadn't apparently eaten for days, so my son who was in the house alone and just happened to be making himself a sandwich, made an extra one for the person at the door.

When we got back he told us that he had made a grave error, his sandwich had been finely composed, with ham and cheese a genuine deep fill special, not just a sandwich but a better than M&S, sandwich, the other was a little lighter, a little less generous, it was only after he closed the door and returned to his own sandwich that he realised that he had mistakenly taken the wrong sandwich to the door.

He was still put out with himself some day's later.

So in the big society the Vicarage is and will continue to be, an open door, where acceptance and generosity will be found by those who exist on the margins of society.

The tragedy in Thornbury, where the Reverend John Suddards has been tragically killed is subject to further investigation by the Police, I only hope that it will not become a further argument for closing the door more firmly on the excluded, because of course as I know only too well, in opening that door you are also opening to the possibility of 'greeting angels unawares'.

16th February 2011

It is fascinating, when you spell check Dawkins the computer suggests as an alternative - Darwin.

I think that's pretty eerie.

Is it the ghost in the machine displaying its sense humour?

Is it even stranger than that?

Is it a divine message, from a messenger using the spell checker as a high tech Ouija board?

Who knows but we do know that Dawkins is back in the news, again.

It is one thing choosing to not believe what other people believe, fair enough we don't all think the same thing about things, but to embark on a wholesale campaign to prove that they are wrong, in the face of, presumably, your being right, well it seems a bit extreme really.

I decided that there was something in all this religion business when I was really quite young.

 When I headed off to theological college I was just twenty years old.

Too young to know anything really.

But what I enjoyed about theological college, my first year was a foundation course called christian humanism, was exploring the christian scriptures, the Old and New Testaments and challenging some of the teaching, a bit like Dawkins I suppose.

When I was in my second year I came across a book by Bishop Barnes a former Bishop of Birmingham which challenged the received wisdom on the resurrection, Barnes who would have enjoyed debating Dawkins, developed a thesis that argued that the resurrection could not have happened and the foundations of the church were to be traced back to a kind of confidence trick by the disciples.

I decided to write my essay on the resurrection based on Barnes' book.

When I picked my manuscript out of the tutors in-tray, he had not marked it with an alpha, beta or gamma, the best being an Alpha triple plus and the worst a Gamma triple minus, I usually came somewhere in the middle.

Rather he had scrawled on the bottom of the essay, B*****k's.

So that was me put firmly in my place!

According to Dawkins a lot of Christians don't believe what the church teaches, well that's true and I imagine I might be one of them.

But it doesn't stop me feeling that the only story I know which makes sense of the world as I experience it is the story of the birth, death and resurrection of the man, Jesus of Nazareth.

More than that the story also steers me in the direction of being a better person than I would be left to my own devices.

There is in the christian tradition an ethical perspective which argues that we should respect and value the humanity of other people, it was this ethical perspective that led me with others to set up an organisation called Church Action on Poverty and to focus my work in the area called social responsibility.

In the news today is the story of the vicar murdered in his vicarage, we don't know the full story of what happened yet, but the story is a reminder of the vulnerability that so many clergy experience as they seek to follow their calling.

But also in the news today is the Queen exercising her role as Defender of the Faith.

The secular lobby has been quietly undermining the churches position for some years and has now gained in confidence, interestingly what it has done is to galvanise the churches into a robust defence of their mission.

Whatever the outcome of this debate it remains true that, in most places where I have worked the faiths have worked together to better their communities, notably in Bradford where, church, mosque and synagogue sought to witness to the unity of the city and its citizens.

Clearly the history of the church is the history of human sinfulness but it is also the history of a belief that beyond history in the realms of the eternal possibilities there may be a different purpose to human life, that our names, written in the hand of one we choose to call God, may have an eternal significance, or it might simply be confused with someones else's name ............

15th February 2012

The Anglican Church in Fuengirola is half way between the Railway Station and the Audi showroom.

Not quite Brian Patten's famous line 'O somewhere between Heaven and Woolworths', but close enough.

Being halfway between one thing and another can be a good place to be.

The shining cars on display in the Audi showroom suggests that all is well with the Spanish economy.

The prices in Euro's of the cars is eye watering, but the cars sell, which means that someone somewhere has got the money or the credit rating to afford to buy them.

The Railway Station is how everyone else gets around.

Apparently it is the best way to get to Malaga, it is accessible for the wheelchair and removes the headache that is parking in any City.

Being halfway between one thing and another is great because it means that you are both stuck in the middle and able to speak from where you are to those around you.

Currently the Government is stuck in the middle, somewhere between a rock and a hard place.

The rating agencies have put the Chancellor on notice that the triple AAA rating could be removed, the economy is flat-lining and wherever you look economic indicators suggest that we are are somewhere between a recession and a disaster.

Interesting that before the election we were offered a 'vision', I use the word advisedly, of a big society where we are encouraged to take more responsibility as citizens.

More responsibility meaning less government.

But the 'vision' is now contradicted by a Prime Minister who appears increasingly to have a tendency towards micro management.

Which means that increasingly the government is announcing policies and strategies for all sorts of issues.

Last week it was car insurance and driving down the cost of so many claims for compensation.

This week it seems that alcohol and the high cost of treatment versus the low cost of alcohol.

Micro management is very dangerous for any number of reasons but mainly because it is a way of avoiding the real issues.

After all it is so much easier to get worked up about public drunkenness and the impact that has on A&E units in hospitals on a Friday and Saturday nights than it is to get worked up about child poverty which is increasing and of course the cynical view is that it is much better to focus on TV images of young people staggering through the town centre than it is to show children starving because family incomes are being reduced by a variety of cuts in both wages and benefits.

During the last Conservative Government's time in office there was much talk of Victorian values everyone seemed to think that there was something valuable in reaching into the past.

I wrote an article in which I suggested that whenever the idea of Victorian values was raised the word Victorian should be replaced with the word Dickensian.

Dicken's bi-centenary has just been celebrated and will doubtless continue to be celebrated throughout the year.

Those novels which so graphically illustrated the grinding effects of poverty on family life and children's aspiration's can still be harrowing and especially so when the effects of public spending cuts is bringing the echoes of Dickens narrative back into our hearing.

I'm not sure which is worse, Mr Cameron's micro managing or Mr Osborne's refusal to manage at all, so we remain stuck as Gerry Rafferty's song has it, in the middle, although I increasingly wonder, should that be spelled muddle?

13th February 2012

It all started with a handshake.

At least a  hand was offered but sadly not shaken.

Not just stoking the bad feeling but actually quite rude.

Hand shakes were offered and not refused yesterday in my first service in Alhaurin el Grande.

This part of the Communion Service, the handshake, is accompanied by the words The Peace of the Lord be always with you.

In some churches as in football the handshake has had a turbulent history, some people apparently find it difficult to shake another person's hand, so in some churches as in some football matches, it doesn't happen.

But yesterday it did and a great group huggy experience it was as we were welcomed into the fellowship of the Church here and after the service we all repaired to a local bar for a coffee and chat and, as the sun had risen over the mountain, we were able to sit outside with our cafe solo's and con leche's.

As well handshakes we were given some Grapefruit that had been picked from the tree that morning.

Apparently The Archbishop is going to debate Christianity with Richard Dawkins.

Well I hope he keeps his sense of humour, doesn't get all ethereal and spitiual and poetic and mysterious and stays focused on the handshakes and Grapefruit otherwise he'll get bogged down in theology and Darwinian theories of evolution.

The Church it seems is under attack at the moment in the big society.

It has now apparently been ruled illegal for councils to start their meetings with prayers, there was no mention of handshakes or grapefruit.

The National Secular Society has won a court case.

Apparently a Cllr. Bone was offended by having to sit through prayers to a God he doesn't believe in, apparently it was an attack on his human rights.

He didn't want his human rights affected before he could start discussing reducing services to the public as required by a coalition which many people believe are engaged in a wholesale attack on human rights, even down to removing the legislation from the statute books all together.

Well maybe if Cllr Bone had shared in the handshakes and Grapefruit yesterday he might have seen another side to the God he doesn't believe in, who in some mysterious way helps people become more open and generous than (and here I speak only for myself) they might otherwise naturally be.

The Church of England is feeling a bit under attack at the moment, apparently it has now been proposed that the Chaplain General of the Prison Service need not necessarily be an Anglican or indeed a man I imagine.

On this one I cannot share the general disquiet of the Bishops as expressed in today's papers by the Bishop of Liverpool.

Apparently the majority of prisoners claim to have no religion, so maybe they would prefer Richard Dawkins or Cllr Bone to represent their their interests and their human rights.

Then of course their is a high percentage of prisoners who are not Christian but who may for example be Muslim or another faith.

For my money the recruitment process should be open and the best candidate appointed irrespective of their denominational or faith connection.

Sometimes we need a sense of history to ensure that we get a proper perspective on our current situation.

The part of Spain where we are currently staying was for a time ruled by the Caliphate and the name Alhaurin el Grande means The Garden of Allah.

So the invitation to yesterdays service could have read, join some members of the Church of England and other Churches meeting in the cemetery chapel in the garden of Allah where you will be made welcome with handshakes and Grapefruit ....................

10th February 2012

Where does it all go wrong?

From Politics to Football we appear to be digging ever deeper holes for ourselves.

Surely the best advice is: If you are in a hole stop digging.

NHS Reforms? Stop Digging.

Tax Breaks for the wealthy: Stop Digging.

Demonising those on benefits? Stop digging.

As for football? That should be stop tweeting.

Millionaire players and Millionaire managers and little or nothing to show for it.

An old friend of mine played professionally in the 1950's for a Northern Football Club.

On match days he used to cycle the ten miles from his home to the ground and then play for ninety minutes, there were no substitutes, and then cycle home.

For away games he would still cycle to the ground, but there would be a charabanc to wherever the game was to be played, when he got back to the ground, at whatever time that was, he would cycle the ten miles home.

And all for a wage slightly better than the average wage at the time.

Of course I remember 1966, I watched the matches on TV, and the immortal words, They thinks it's all over, It is Now!

But that was 46 years ago, and World Cups have come and gone quite a few times, and with them the disappointments.

That was why it became clear that we needed a foreign manager, now apparently it is equally clear that we need an English Manager.

And when asked David Cameron said that it would be a bad day for English Football if the Prime Minister chose the Manager.

Well that is true, but then it would offer him an opportunity to reshuffle his cabinet, Mr Duncan Smith or Mr Hague could take on the National Team?

There would be no scroungers if IDS had his way, people would have to play where he told them, it would be good work experience and get them job ready for when they were substituted.

Mr Hague's rather gravelly Yorkshire tones would reverberate around Wembley and after the game he could sink several pints with the players.

Mr Lansley of course would keep substituting one player for another, he might even decide that the Chairmen of Premiership Clubs should commission the players? (Asking the fans would be too dangerously socialist!)

I guess that Mr Osborne would be comfortable with the Champagne lifestyle of the premiership player but Mr Pickles might decide to reduce their Grants if they didn't reduce the admission prices?

Of course I will still be watching my team play on Saturday and I will be rooting for them to win and then go on to win the Premiership, Champions for the twentieth time, just as on the 6th February I paused for a minutes silence to recall the Munich Disaster fifty four years ago.

At that time Manchester United were chasing their third successive English League title.

Now Manchester United offers two models, whilst FC United of Manchester has become a Co-operative, Manchester United have been bought by American businessmen, the Glazer family, who have taken the club forward as a significant commercial enterprise with remarkable international support.

The Green and Gold of Newton Heath the club which became Manchester United is a symbol of supporters unhappiness with the Glazer's business model but on the field the club continues to perform successfully.

So maybe the FA should assess their options, turn themselves into a Co-op owned by the supporters or advertise for a wealthy American sugar daddy to invest in future success ....

8th February 2012

I once heard a joke from a Canadian about a guy from Newfoundland who moved to Mexico.

He was concerned about language and was relieved to hear that the main difference between Spanish and Canadian was to write or speak in capitals and very slowly.

He was in a bar in Mexico City chatting to the Bar tender and after a while of speaking slowly in Capitals asked where are you from, Newfoundland came the reply.

Well, he asked, why are we both speaking Spanish?

Wherever we go we take our language with us.

Alheurin el Grande is a pretty hilly place and is almost but not quite a suburb of Malaga but it has its own identity, its cafes, a great Library with exhibition space and a swimming pool.

Whenever I visit in Europe I get the same sense of wonder at how such relatively small towns maintain their Civic life, whilst in the UK they have the life leached out of them by centralisation and the processes of urbanisation which make every small place dependent on a nearer, larger better resourced centre.

There are just too many shiny sheds pretending to offer choice whilst actually reducing it.

We flew in to Malaga on Tuesday exchanging the freezing conditions of Newcastle with the balmier climate in Southern Spain.

The Euro has held out so we still had some spending money and our first task was to stock up the fridge in the Chaplaincy flat.

So hey ho, we couldn't find a co-op and decided that Lidl was the best place to go.

Stepping into the Lidl in Coin, (pronounced co-een), was an extremely strange experience, a kind of deja-vu, vu, vu.

It was laid out in exactly the same way as the Lidl store in Carlisle, exactly, so we were able to wander round and stock up with the basics with a sense of familiarity.

Most of the other shoppers it appeared were also English so the passing conversations sounded exactly like the ones you might overhear in Carlisle.

As I say Deja-vu, vu, vu.

Recent experiences swapping the familiar places, names, accents with the unfamiliar in Norway, Genoa and now Costa del Sol as a Locum Chaplain in the Diocese previously known as Fulham and Gibraltar is a strangely rewarding experience but it is also a lesson in the Europeanisation of the British.

In the different locations we have met British artists, writers and businessmen who have relocated for the stimulation, freedom or opportunity their new setting has given them. Many of the folk we have met have been able to develop their skills as teachers of the English language and it is the language that arguably is the most powerful force for change of all, we have already heard that speaking Spanish is difficult because so many local people want to practise their English.

In Genoa we used to visit the Cinema to watch the Lingua Original films shown in English (American) with Italian sub-titles. Which was a way for us to practise our Italian and for Italians their English.

This love affair with English and Englishness is somehow not reciprocated by the English themselves who resolutely refuse to learn European languages, I ask myself How rude is that?

We want to be European when it suits us, but we take the liberty of saying Non when it suits is also, we have a right of Veto and the Prime Minister made some political capital with the Euro-Sceptic element of his party.

But whether in Genoa or in Costa del Sol or elsewhere the British are voting with their feet to move for freedom, for better weather or (in some cases) better Health Care or just to eke out their pensions.

With the ending of final salary pensions it may be that the outflow of the retired to the land of the eternal golf of the mind might slow down but there was no doubting from the evidence of the flight we took from Newcastle, which was fully booked and the return flight also fully booked, that Europe, whatever the Euro-sceptics might argue, IS STILL AN ATTRACTIVE DESTINATION FOR MANY OF US.

5th February 2012

A new book describes the Churches Communion service as essentially a meal and suggests that even a dinner party might fulfil the same purpose as a secular ritual.

In 1993 I wrote a script for CFM radio, a local radio station based in Carlisle the programme was broadcast at Easter that year and the Radio Station decided to enter the tape for a competition called Easter on FM.

The programme won the first prize and as a result of winning the competition I was invited to the WACC, World Association of Christian Communicators’ conference which is held every four years and that year was being held in Metepec in Mexico.

This was an extraordinary, ecumenical meeting with professional communicators from across the world meeting to discuss the challenges and opportunities for communicating the Christian faith in an increasingly secular world.

The conference centre was in a converted Mill with manicured green lawns.

When I tried to leave the grounds I was stopped by armed guards and told that I needed to take care and I could see why as I stepped out of the westernised conference centre surroundings, into the Third World.

Every morning delegates gathered on the Heli-Pad to monitor the rumblings, the smoke and steam emerging from the mouth of the active volcano Popacatapetal, which eventually erupted a few years later.

As the conference unfolded a rumour began to circulate that the Bishop of the Chiappas, the indigent peoples of Southern Mexico was planning to attend. The rumour gained momentum as it was revealed that the Roman Catholic Churches support for the people of the Chiappas had brought them into conflict with the landowners. The landowners had taken out a contract on the life of the Bishop whose preaching had threatened their livelihoods and social position and consequently he was under protection and could not publish his diary in advance.

Nevertheless the rumours strengthened until one evening in the Dining Room as representatives of seventy nations were sitting down to supper, spontaneous applause broke out around a figure, surrounded by bodyguards, whom we recognised as the Bishop.

He spoke briefly to the conference delegates and in his address shared with us his vision of the kingdom of God, when the nations of the world could share a banquet in peace.

It was a very sobering moment in the conference proceedings and a reminder that the strength of the church is to be found in its weakness.

The Communion Service is more than a dinner party it is the re-enacting of this heavenly banquet in time and space.

3rd February 2012

The parish magazine was delivered the other day.

Al the usual stuff was there, the Vicar's letter, the Calender of events, notices about special services for Lent and Easter.

Additionally this month there was an item called simply Smile.

It included a number of jokes, some were in very poor taste and some were religious but there were no political jokes.

In some ways this is not surprising, after all what is there to laugh about.

According to what I read there is now so little substantive debate about policy matters in the House of Commons, that some MP's are wondering whether its worth turning up and Jack Straw wrote a piece which seemed to say, give us something useful to do. 

I recently read a report implying that there is not enough legislative material to last until the next recess (or should that be recession?).

I find this just a trifle shocking.

After all there is the big picture, Global Warming and the future of the planet Earth.

Then there is the economy stupid (or should that be the stupid economy?)

Then of course there is the NHS, Pensions, Benefits and Broadband.

It seems to me that the MP's we elect have some responsibility for continuing to hold the issues that face us as a society up to scrutiny in order that the general pace and direction of travel is consistent with ensuring that the well being of society is generally well served.

But what we get is a fairly crude attempt to draw attention away from the difficult and complex issues that don't respond to easy answers, with simplistic slogans, often populist in their appeal, a benefit cap, strip away a knighthood, demand an immediate response about the referendum for Scotland.

So we end up talking about Mr Goodwin instead of the financial chaos that engulfed both Europe and America towards the end of the last Parliament and which wasn't the fault of the Labour Party actually.

We end up talking about scroungers and benefit cheats instead of the many thousands of people who want to work but for whom jobs are simply not there to be found after public services have been shredded like Mr Goodwin's knighthood and the private sector has failed to take up the slack as promised.

We end up talking about Mr Salmond's expertise as a shrewd political operator rather than the benefits that an independant Scotland would bring to both nations, think Czech and Slovakia!

But more than all that we are facing issues that are complex and need careful assessment and balanced judgement instead we get crude and inflexible measures introduced such as the Child benefit proposals which are both grossly unfair and fly in the face of natural justice but which are introduced not for social or economic reasons but for political expediency.

A Government that governs with an eye on getting itself re-elected by definition cannot be governing in the interests of the country as a whole.

The joke that was, in what Kenny Everett might have called the worst possible taste, but which came closest to being a political joke, was Number 5:

My girlfriend thinks I'm stalker .... Well, she's not exactly my girlfriend yet ...........

2nd February 2012

The in-house critic and I are about to put easyjet to the test.

Not for the first time I might add and on every previous occasion they have passed with 'flying' colours.

But we are heading off to spend Lent and Easter undertaking Locum Duties in a parish in the Diocese of Europe.

These days travel becomes testing not only for us, because it involves wheelchairs which raise all the access issues that able bodied people have no need to be aware of.

So when we present ourselves at the check in desk we have to request special assistance to get us onto the aeroplane and we have to ensure that the wheelchair is also loaded into the hold and when we arrive at our destination we have to request that the wheelchair is brought up the steps or onto the air bridge.

There are always two worries: firstly that the wheelchair will fail to arrive at the destination and secondly that the baggage handlers will put it onto the carousel.

Whilst the chair has always arrived, it was, on one occasion at a large airport in the UK put onto the carousel, when we retrieved it it was so badly damaged that it was unusable and I had to carry it out to the car.

I challenged a member of the airport staff who reacted in strong terms to the effect that the damage had been done at the departure airport, it was neither their fault nor their problem and if I persisted with my complaint he would contact the union and their would be consequences!


What the consequences might be was not spelled out. I pointed out that whoever was responsible there were already consequences insofar as we could not leave the airport without some form of assistance, which as I recall was finally grudgingly offered in the form of an airport wheelchair.

Maybe he was having a bad day, maybe it was the time, some unearthly hour in the morning, maybe it was the weather, but he was determined that whatever it was we could share his bad day.

Fortunately that was an isolated incident and ever since we have been treated very well by everyone we have encountered, wished well on our departure and welcomed home on our return, so here's hoping that this trip will continue that tradition.

The reason that I mention all this was a report in my newspaper about another low cost airline which has been taken to court over its refusal to allow a disabled passenger to board the plane and in the same article there was mention of easyjet.

I am unaware of the particular incident but have to say that in our experience easyjet have always offered an excellent and friendly service.

That is only how it should be if we do live in a 'big society' and are 'all in this together' then whatever our circumstances we should have an entitlement that our human rights will be respected that access will be made possible and that life will be, if not trouble free, at least as easy as it can be.

Many disabled people complain about their treatment and often as our own recent and rather unpleasant experience recently demonstrated the police appear to have little or no interest when a complaint is made.

But we set off in the hope not only that we arrive at our destination but that we have a pleasant and easyjourney.