Jonathan Chilvers

Find me at www.resistanceandrenewal.net

2012-01-20T18:13:00.000Z

After being in sporadic hiatus for a number of years you can now find me regularly blogging with Jon Kuhrt at http://www.resistanceandrenewal.net/

So come and visit us over there and thanks for reading.

Hustle's bubble

2011-01-17T21:25:00.002Z

I knew my appetite for ideas had sparked into life when my first thought after watching a Friday night comedy-drama that doesn’t take itself too seriously was to link it to a major socio-religious theory. Theology buffs buzz in when you figure it out, the rest of you why not humour me – it is honestly quite interesting.

Hustle is a BBC drama in which a gang of successful, high living and smart mainly twenty somethings use their considerable skills to con successful, high living and fairly stupid people out of hundreds of thousands of pounds. It’s all OK though, because our metropolitan heroes only target people who really deserve it. Oh and everyone would do the same as them if only they were clever and brave enough.

The show is funny, enjoyable, interesting and well done, but the fact that it occupies prime time viewing on the BBC is culturally revealing.

In the mid 1980s author Walter Wink argued that ‘the Myth of Redemptive Violence’ is deeply rooted in our society and thinking. The distinctive feature of the Myth, he said was ‘the victory of order over chaos by means of violence’. P14 (Engaging the Powers)

Think of virtually any Hollywood action movie and this makes sense:

“An indestructible good guy is unalterably opposed to an irreformable and equally indestructible bad guy. Nothing can kill the good guy, though for the first three-quarters of the show he (rarely she) suffers greviously, until somehow the hero breaks free, and [violently] vanquishes the villain, and restores order until the next instalment.” (p17, ibid.)

The implication is that the violence is somehow cleansing and final. Our heroes are not morally compromised in employing violence. It's like the satisfying feeling of a swinging right hook without the implications and regret after. Such black and white stories subtely give the green light to our desire for retribution whether we feel powerless (lash out in frustration) or powerful (eliminate enemies).

Away from action movies, compared to most societies we are relatively sensitive to ‘real world’ violence. However, in our money obsessed society it isn’t a surprise to see that we’ve transplanted the story to create a myth of redemptive finance.

Our hustling heroes take on the obnoxious, corrupt and exploiting, fleecing them for all they’ve got, leaving their bank accounts and their reputation in ruins. As the audience we get have our Satisfaction. We see the moment their ego filled bubble is burst – when they realise it was a wonderfully elaborate scam. Staring into their eyes the leader of our gang says “you’ll get everything you deserve”, before the team walks off, successful sheriff style confidently into the distance. Another case solved.

Except of course, it’s a lie. In real life we’ve only seen the beginning. We don’t see the bad guys who don’t ‘learn their lesson’ who become more bitter and twisted and wreak further financial or emotional havoc. We don’t see the escalating cycles of claim and counter claim that brings the fear and the violence even to the most chic of 21st century suits. We don’t see the way that innocent families and friends get pulled into a mesh of lies and ruined lives.

The myth of redemptive finance is so simple, so alluring, so beguiling ‘moral’. Yet however you dress it up it’s still as futile as its violent cousin. I like the show, but want to make sure I burst my own Hustle bubble.

Worth their weight in Gold: Long term tenancies must stay

2010-09-06T21:36:00.001+01:00

The Coalition government has announced that it is considering ending life time tenancies for tenants of housing associations or local authorities. David Cameron’s reasoning behind floating this change is that:

“maybe in five or 10 years you will be doing a different job and be better paid and you won't need that home, you will be able to go into the private sector.”

The inference is that social housing should be only a safety net, not something that is potentially available to all. That would represent a fundamental shift in the purpose of council and housing association properties.

Housing is a fundamental human need as every student of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs knows. Without security of shelter it is very difficult to think about working and contributing back to society. The stress of not knowing whether you’re safe staying in your house can be a massive emotional and physical drain. In a world where people feel that so much is changing and out of their control, security of tenure is a cornerstone in their lives.

If the coalition is serious about tackling the culture of benefits dependency by getting people back into work this is not the way to do it. Effectively penalising people by getting them to move from their home and pay private sector rents because they’ve got a job hardly helps incentivise people. It doesn’t matter that this might not be for years – the message it sends is that work still won’t pay. Social Housing needs to be used more effectively and there’s room for reform, but redesigning it as a safety net is not the way to go.

The other thrust behind the coalition announcement on tenure is money. The communities department claims that Social Housing is subsidised to the tune of £35 per week by each tax payer. If that were true there would be good cause to try and seek savings in economically tough times. In reality, housing association and local authorities fund all of their maintenance and running costs through rent receipts.

What the Communities department may be referring to is government subsidy for the building of new social housing – which stands at a total of £8.4bn over three years, although this still works out at considerably less than £35 per tax payer per week.

So what is the link between building new homes and the cost of renting one?

In the private sector when a building company has completed a new home they sell it (directly or indirectly) to the first owner. If the owner chooses to let the new property they effectively pass on the cost of the build, management fees and their mortgage through the rent to the tenant. Housing associations also borrow cash to contribute to new builds, but the full cost of the build isn’t passed on in rent because of the government subsidy. So the Communities department are right - social housing rents are lower because of the building subsidy. However, rents are also lower because Housing Associations don’t have to make a profit for their shareholders.

There’s another catch. Everyone seems to agree that we need more homes, but the private sector isn’t that willing to build them either and is crying out for – you guessed it – subsidy. Until 2006 the government funded, with some success the Business Expansion Scheme to encourage the private sector to build new residential homes and now the private sector are calling for its reintroduction. It looks like the tax payer is going to be forking out for new builds for some time to come. If the government is going to invest money in the new houses why not invest it where you know it will get passed onto those that most need it rather than ending up in the pockets of commercial builders?

If the coalition seriously wants to try and reduce public subsidy of new builds it could allow rents to go up in the social housing sector to allow greater reinvestment in new builds. This would mean people that were working in social housing were paying closer to the private market rent. It would also mean that it was paying more in Housing Benefit, but there would be the incentive for the coalition to get more people into work without having to end secure tenancies. However, the Housing and Council Tax Benefit system needs reforming because it is a massive disincentive to work because it effectively taxes a new worker at 85%.

Ah, what a tangled web. What was it Palmerston said about the number of people who understood the Schwelsig Holstein Question? Maybe subsidising social housing isn’t such a bad idea.

Social Housing secure tenancies are worth their weight in gold. They improve the quality of life for millions of people in this country by meeting a basic human need for the long term. Treating the national stock of four million Social Houses as a safety net by forcing people to leave their homes when they get work is short sighted, unlikely to save money or increase the total housing stock. Tackling the culture of welfare dependency is and should continue to be a top priority of this government, but ending security of tenure will damage, not contribute to this aim.

Down at the Sally

2010-08-27T22:31:00.000+01:00

I very rarely mix work with the pleasure of blogging, but if you're interested you can read a few of my job related thoughts at the (slow loading) Salvation Army website here.

My Cousin Rachel by Daphne Du Maurier

2010-08-22T22:25:00.000+01:00

Shakespeare had Hamlet and Othello and the legend of Faust has been worked and reworked through modern literature, but Daphne Du Maurier’s tragic heroes will stick just as long in the memory.

Du Maurier was ahead of her time. Her gothic settings in rural Cornwall may look back to the Victorians, but her strong female characters and rich, sometimes shocking plots belies an author writing as early as the mid 20^th century. Du Maurier loves to holds her readers in suspense and her characters are full of unsettling ambiguity and anxiety.

My Cousin Rachel is a sinister love triangle between the bachelor Ambrose, his adopted ‘son’ Philip and the beguiling jet-setting Rachel. The centre of the story concerns Rachel’s motives. Is she devoted and vulnerable wife or devilish deceiver and fiend? It is to the credit of the author, but apparently missed by most of the reviews I’ve read, that the answer is both. As Mr. Kendall, the straight laced godfather of Philip states

‘There are some women, Philip, good women very possibly, who through no fault of their own impel disaster.’

Du Maurier unravels the tragically flawed personality of a woman shaped by the harsh male dominated world of the 19^th Century. Seeking to protect herself after a failed first marriage at a young age she learns to manipulate and control those around her using her intelligence and beauty. She pursues security and enjoyment in financial wealth and will go to great ends to achieve this. However she desires company and needs to love and be loved deeply, if on her own terms.

In Ambrose and Phillip she finds two men who offer her the love she craves, but because of their naivety do not threaten the dominance and control she needs. Power unbridled is badly used and does indeed ‘impel disaster’. Her ‘will to power’ is sometimes viciously victorious over her caring love for her men, but at other times touchingly checked, often with the help of the one man she truly respects – the hard headed Italian, Rainaldi.

Daphne Du Maurier captures the contradictions so often inherent in the human condition and her mystery detective style make My Cousin Rachel a page turning, but provoking read.

Prayer adapted from an Indonesian creed.

2010-06-15T21:18:00.000+01:00

Thanks to CORD. I like the final verse the best.

I believe in God, who is love and who has given the earth to all people.
I believe in Jesus Chris who came to heal us, and free us from all forms of oppression.
I believe in the Spirit of God, who works in and through all who are turned towards the truth.

I do not believe in the right of the strongest, nor the force of arms, nor the power of oppression.
I do not believe in racisim, in the power that comes from wealth and privilege, or in any established order that enslaves.
I do not believe that war and hunger are inevitable and peace unattainable.

I believe in human rights, in solidarity of all people, in the power of non violence.
I believe that all men and women are equally human, that order based on violence and injustice is not order.
I believe in beauty of simplicity, in love with open hands, in peace on earth.
I dare to believe in God's promises.

Running off the edge of solid ground?: Farewell to the election

2010-05-20T22:02:00.001+01:00

The election made my typing fingers itchy. After two months of high political drama that itch has been well and truly scratched. The leaders' debates, the Lib Dem surge, Bigotgate, election night and the flux and surprises that came as the nation negotiated its first hung parliament for 35 years.

As I wind up this chapter of my blog it's led me to reflect not just on the experience of the nation, but also my own interaction with the political process. As someone who figures that they mind find themselves heavily involved in big P* Politics one day it's vital that I understand the impact that engagement has on my own wellbeing.

I normally shy away from using the term 'spiritual' as it smacks of decartesian dualism: mind versus body, the physical self pulled away from the soul. However, there's been times when I've noticed that near obsession with polling data and live up-to-the-minute updates have damaged my spiritual health. The silence and centring on who I am in God get lost in the chitter chatter and turning over in my mind of the latest twist and turn.

CS Lewis writes: "Nearly all that a boy reads [in newspapers] in his teens will be known before he is twenty to have been false in emphasis and interpretation, if not in fact as well, and most of it will have lost all importance." (Surprised by Joy)

In a 24 hour news world what is reported as fact in the morning will have been proved false by lunchtime. Was there a point of following polls showing a Lib Dem surge which dissipated into a nothingness that will not merit even a footnote in history?

A loss of God-centredness also makes me less effective in making the arguments that I want to put advance. Losing the link with the passions and motives that helps sustain my views in the first place means losing sight of the larger perspective. Just as cartoon characters run off the edge of a cliff and then look down to find no solid ground beneath them I run the risk of forgetting why I believe the point I am promoting. The big picture gets lost and it's easy to get tangled up in threads of little consequence or to miss the perspective that opens or subverts the debate.

Unless I stay rooted in who I am by keeping time for silence, prayer and calm I will get sucked into a maelstrom of mediocrity and have nothing distinctive to offer our public life.

Walking in God given gifts should overall bring energy not drain it away. Sure, there will be seasons of hard, tiring work, which sometimes last months or even years, but there is also something invigorating and a deep inner contentment that tells you you're in the right place.

I love talking with people about issues that really matter to strangers on the doorstep, people at church, work and friends. I love challenging people's preconceived ideas and finding good ways to disagree. I love attempting to articulate a vision of positive change. All this is good, yet I need to fiercely guard my spiritual health and say no to lie that if I must be absolutely uptodate on the latest developments to make a contribution.

It's easy to jump from obsession to obsession to avoid facing ourselves. I'm having a rest now...although there is the World Cup just around the corner...

* most of us are involved in little p politics - when I go to a meeting at work with outside agencies to talk about the way we interact or want to work together - that's politics.

Skepticism and cynicism

2010-05-20T20:47:00.001+01:00

Skepticism examines each question on its merits; cynicism doesn't bother to look.

Skepticism assumes mixed motives; cynicism that everyone's snout is in the trough.

Cynicism knows that we're going to hell in a handcart; skepticism holds out the possibility that something new might work.

Take a deep breath and count slowly to ten: Media Mumbo-jumbo and Labour Lacuna

2010-05-10T22:00:00.000+01:00

The Labour party seem to have a gap in their common sense and decency and I've heard more media mumbo-jumbo in the last couple of days than even by the normal standards. So here's 10 thoughts I need to get off my not especially hairy chest:

Gordon Brown was not squatting. He's the Primeminister until we get a new one. I'm pleased that we have constitutional arrangements in place that keep the country running until negotiations are completed.
Labour lost the election - 91 of their 349 seats to be precise. Some senior Labour figures don't seem to have noticed this. Not mentioning any names Mr. AJ, Mr.AC, Mr.CW. Lord PM
There's no such thing as an 'anti-Tory majority' or a 'progressive majority' . There is still an anti Tory vote, but not since the 1990s has it been anything like a majority. and what about the 'Anti-Brown' majority? The Lib Dems have always taken seats from both the Tories and Labour. Some Lib Dems are closer to Labour, some to the Tories. That's why the 2 big parties have always complained about the 'Fib Dems' saying one thing in one part of the country and another elsewhere.
Nick Clegg is not exercising more power than befits his party's size. The Tories didn't get a majority so it's right that they can't implement their entire programme unbridled. Clegg has only enough political capital to push a few key issues of his / his party's choice. Overstep the mark and Conservatives will look elsewhere or they'll be a new election and the Lib Dems will get punished.See this where the New Zealand third party got their fingers burned.
Ashcroft and other Tory snipers don't get it. It's not David Cameron's fault that he didn't get a majority. After all these years, voters still weren't quite convinced that the Tory nasty party isn't still lurking beneath the surface. There's some pretty big planks laying around in people's eyes.
The grassroots of both Tories and the Lib Dems need to accept the current reality. Yes there are going to be policies implemented that you don't like, but neither party won the election. It doesn't mean to say that your party doesn't believe in them, but you haven't won the argument in the country. If you feel that strongly don't blame your leadership, go and make the case to the electorate next time.
The way that Cameron and Senior Tories have handled themselves has been impressive. Cameron has taken risks to make progress and been surprisingly flexible in his approach. So far, it's not an idle boast to say that they've acted in the national interest.
A Conservative/Lib Dem agreement is the only option in town... Labour plus Lib Dem still doesn't command a majority and Labour couldn't guarantee getting a referendum on PR through parliament.
..Apart for a Conservative / Labour grand coalition. Why isn't this being discussed? There wouldn't be the sticking point on PR, it would be a unity government in times of economy crisis. Cameron gets to be PM, it would give Labour time to get a new leader whilst staying in office and Clegg gets increased exposure as leader of the opposition. Maybe they're worried that it would be a bit of a squash on the government benches. The opposition would be able to sunbathe on them.
The longer the Lib Dems go without making a decision the worse it will look for them. More than anyone else they need to show that coalition government and hung parliaments work. They should be jumping at the Tory offer of a referendum on AV now. It's even guaranteed by whipping the Tory party through the lobbies. They're not going to get anything better than that.

X marks the spot: election day is special.

2010-05-05T22:43:00.002+01:00

The average person voting to choose who makes the laws and governs is extremely unusual when you look at world history. The UK is 'the oldest parliamentary democracy in the world' and we only introduced something close to universal suffrage in 1928. That's within my grandparents' lifetime. Voting is part of our key freedoms - freedom of speech and freedom of association.

We take it for granted that we can vocally disagree with our primeminister and call for the end of his leadership in the most abrupt terms without fear of reprisal. Try asking the Spanish whether that was possible before 1976 under Franco or the Russians under Bhreshnev in the 1970s and 1980s.

I can meet up with others and discuss a completely new form of political system if I want to and go to church on a Sunday without fear of arrest or 'disappearance'. Not something the reformers massacred at Peterloo, Manchester in 1819 or Catholics in the 17th and 18th centuries would do lightly.

It's a cliche that my grandparent's generation fought for the freedoms to vote and speak freely that they'd so recently won, but none the less true for it. Those freedoms really were under threat in the UK first from the Nazi Germany and then the Communists. Modern, civilised countries like Hungary and East Germany had to wait until the 1990s for another chance to vote freely.

It's therefore a privilege and a duty to vote.

Democracies are fragile. If we don't exercise our vote it imperils our freedoms.

If the link's not clear hopefully this handy homemade flow chart will help.

Not many people vote or hold the government to account

↓

Government doesn't have a strong mandate or legitimacy to govern. (i.e. there's no broad agreement among the population that they have the right to govern.)

↓

Government finds it can get away with stuff because not held accountable, but is still unpopular

↓

Government finds ways other than voting to claim legitimacy i.e. ultra populist give aways to keep people quiet and buy them off / claiming there's a big crisis and so strong unified leadership is needed. The military step into prop up the government.

↓

Government says that dissenters are enemies of the people and the country. There's no longer the democratic space or methods to challenge those in power.

↓

Government uses force, coercion and fear to maintain power. It cannot rely on the consent of the governed.

How far down the chart is the UK?

Democracy works because it provides a way for us as a country to agree on who has the right to rule us. David Cameron didn't assassinate Gordon Brown and seize power by force and precipitate a civil war was because he knows that the rest of the country agreed that the Labour party, by the rules in place, should be in charge of the country for a few years. If we don't join in with giving that peaceful consent by voting we risk rulers having to find other ways to maintain power - through force, fear and bribery.

Every time I walk into a polling station and mark my X in a box next to a candidate of my choice, freely and unwatched I marvel at what I've just been able to do. Then I look around and imagine the millions of other people in the country doing the same thing on the same day. Joining in the rare and unusual national act of choosing who will have power to shape our lives for the next five years.

Enjoy election day - it's special.

Election prediction - which way is the wind blowing?

2010-05-05T19:05:00.003+01:00

Here's my predictions for the election. Why not have a go yourself here and post your results in the comments section below.

Number of seats:
1 Conservative 315
2 Labour 218
3 Lib Dem 83
Other 33

Share of Vote:
1 Conservative
2 Labour
3 Lib Dem

Government:
David Cameron leads a minority administration.

We shall see in 48 hours or so...

Take that peg off your nose!

2010-05-04T21:29:00.000+01:00

I've blogged on this before here, but it's worth mentioning again in the light of Ed Balls' comments over the last day or two.

Voting tactically is a wasted vote.

Here's two reasons:

1) Voting what you think is what actually changes things. Political parties pour over the breakdown of votes in a particular seat and when they see increase support at the ballot box for a smaller party they look at the best and most attractive ideas from that party and adopt them. Your choice of party might not have got in immediately, but you've shaped the political landscape in a positive way.
Vote tactically with a peg over your nose leaves you dissatisfied and the people in that party assuming that you like their ideas and policies and you no closer to seeing the changes you'd like.

2) Voting what you think creates some momentum.
Voting is a way of showing others that there are more people that think like them. We're not always good about talking politics in public. If everyone tactically votes a monster raving loony supporter may never find out that there's actually 100s of others in his constituency with the same views.

Moving from fourth to third or third to second in a seat means that your choice of party becomes more high profile, gains more members, gets more media time. Nick Clegg wouldn't have even made it into the debates if the Lib Dems hadn't gradually increased their share of votes and seats over the last couple of elections. Yes, this is playing the long game, but they'll always be some reason to vote tactically- at some point you have to go for it.

Many people say they need to vote tactically to 'keep out the Tories' or 'get rid of Gordon Brown', but a huge swathe of voters say 'oh, they're all the same really'. It's not possible to have it both ways - there's no point in voting tactically to get rid of one lot if they're all the same really!

If you like the Tories best vote for them. If Labour, Labour. If UKIP, UKIP. Time to take that peg off your nose and vote for whoever you like.

The Green backbone

2010-05-03T21:44:00.000+01:00

It probably wasn't too difficult to sense my anger and disappointment at the main parties lack of honesty over cuts in my last post.

In fact, their lack of honesty and imagination in trying to explain some of the big changes we need has been shocking. Although there are significant differences between the parties it's not surprising that they're not always easy to spot through the mud slinging fight for the middle ground.

If you've read some of my other posts you'll know I'll be voting Green on Thursday. One of the reasons for this is their upfront clarity on some radical, expensive, but just and necessary policies.

Take inequality. Money doesn't make us happy, but study after study shows that the more unequal societies are the less well they function and the more unhappy they become. Have a look at the Equality Trust. The Green Party would tackle this head on. Imagine the reduction in inequality if we:

raised the minimum wage towards £8.10 per hour to reward working rather than benefits (saving £6bn in tax credits)
abolished the upper limit for National Insurance (you currently only pay 1% NI on earnings over a certain figure) - raising £9.1bn
Help lower earners by raising the lower National Insurance limit to the personal allowance rate costing £3.9bn.
Help lower earners by reintroducing the 10% tax band and the 22p basic rate, costing £14.9bn.
Reform inheritance tax, so that the level of taxation depends on the wealth of the recipient rather than that of the deceased, raising £3bn by 2013. This will encourage people to distribute their property widely.

Other parties claim that they want a fair tax system, but mess around at the edges. The Greens are prepared to say that: yes, taxes would rise for the much better off, because someone working 60 hours a week to get by on the current minimum wage as a security guard shouldn't be earning 5 times less than a high flying barrister for the same hours. These are big, controversial changes, but it'they're not impossible to achieve. They're costed upfront and as the Green Party say in their manifesto "All it requires is political courage – and popular democratic backing for that courage."

Take communities. All the parties want to 'support communities', but wouldn't dream of challenging the vested interests in the status quo that relies on consumerism, greed and squeezing employees dignity and supply chains till the pips squeak.

Only the Greens are prepared to say that they'll restrict planning laws to make it harder for Tescos etc. to build outside of town and to create local business zones within walking distance for everyone. Only the Greens will enable more companies to become mutual or cooperatives so that they have space to build in local social and environmental benefits into their business model because profit is not the only bottom line. Only the Greens are prepared to stand up and challenge the culture of long working and commuting so that people can spend time with their families and being involved locally.

'Supporting Communities' isn't wishy washy idealism or empty rhetoric. It takes backbone and sustained conviction. The Green Party have consistently shown on their campaigning on the environment that they're prepared to lead the way and stand up and say the difficult, unpopular things to those in power and where necessary, the public.

I could go on, but I hope you're beginning to get the picture!

It's time to lift our vision and know that as a country it is possible to challenge the social and economic injustices and binds that we take for granted. It is possible as a nation to stop obsessing about greedy economic growth and materialism at any cost and to take more time to value and enjoy our relationships and support those around us.

I'm fed up of waiting for the main parties to show the leadership, vision and substantive policies we need. I'll be voting Green.

We're not stupid - tell us where you'll cut!

2010-04-27T22:18:00.000+01:00

Money isn't everything, but when the country's structural deficit is anywhere between £70 and £90 billion per year it's pretty important.

The structural deficit is the amount of money we borrow to keep doing the things we do at the moment - the revenue costs if you like. If we borrow to invest in something new that doesn't count. Gordon Brown's 'golden rule' was based on a similar distinction, the rules of which got helpfully tweaked at various points over the last decade.

All the parties say they want to reduce the Structural deficit between half and two thirds over a parliament and say they can eliminate somewhere between £7.6bn and £12bn of 'waste' in public services , but that still leaves some pretty big figures. Today's institute for fiscal studies report states that:
"Based on commitments made so far, the Liberal Democrats would need to cut an accumulated £51bn from spending on public services by 2017. Labour's plans would require a slightly smaller cut during that time of £47bn, the IFS said, while the Conservatives would cut by the largest amount - £57bn."

As I said. some pretty big gaps. Some will come in tax rises, but what about the rest?

Take a look at the BBC articles here and here for some more explanation.

Last October at conference time it looked like the Tories were going to lead the way and be more honest with us about what they'd cut. But they ran scared as soon as the polls began to change at the beginning of the year.

There's going to be massive cuts in the public sector. It's not going to be possible to protect frontline services - every single one of the nurses and teachers. I want to know what each party is planning to cut so that I can see their priorities. I want to see some honesty and leadership so that we can at least look back and say 'we know what we voted for'.

We're not stupid so tell us where you'll cut!

The grass is green and it's time to step into the fray.

2010-04-19T23:02:00.001+01:00

When a politican comes on TV and says, as they occasionally do, that their faith is a private matter and doesn't impact their politics it's a nonsense. It's like hearing that grass is orange and houses are built from the tip of their roof upwards.

Everyone's assumptions about the world around them - their beliefs - impacts their thinking and their actions.

I long to see God's 'kingdom come on Earth as it is in heaven' - a kingdom of justice, reconciliation,peace, creativity and freedom for each person to be who God has made them to be. Every time God breaks through into our society in these ways His kingdom extends.

So when I'm figuring out which political party to support that's where I'm coming from.

Which parties and individuals are most likely to be open to breaking down the structures of economic, social and relational injustice that imprison both rich and poor? Who will best challenge lies, mistrust and hypocrisy both institutional and personal that contaminates our society and pulls us into a slough of cynacism? Who will listen to the people, but show courage and leadership in addressing our economic woes - for 'without vision the people perish'?

These are tough questions and it's not possible that any one party will come out well in every area. It can be difficult to see how a particular vision works out in practical policies, but much better to make your best guess than keep that vision locked in an ivory tower, clean and untouched, but useless.
I've always been hesitant to openly supporting a political party - too much commitment for a gen-Xer like me, but sometimes you've got to step from the sidelines into the fray.

So I've nailed my colours to the Green Party flag this time round.

Like Labour, the Green Party are passionate about reducing inequality and poverty. Like the Tories they see the importance of building communities from the bottom up - the government can't solve everything. Like the Lib Dems the Greens are strong on freedom of conscience, religion and liberties.

Unlike any of the main parties the Greens grasp that our relationships with each other and the world around us has a central and profound effect on our wellbeing.

The Green Party offer a coherence in this area that is strikingly absent from the three main parties. The Greens argue that we need to break free of an economy and culture locked into over consumption and materialism so that people are enabled to do what most of us want to do - feel safe in our society, spend time with their families and contribute sustainably to the communities around us.

We work the longest hours in Europe and commute two hours a day and risk living to work and destroying our own hopes, our relationships and the planet. The Greens have a raft of proposals that would encourage a positive cultural shift - to promote local shops, jobs and services and want to move towards a time where a 35 hour working week is the norm.

Whilst some people run around like headless chickens in a rat race others don't get the support they need to find work that provides purpose and an opportunity to contribute or get paid a derisory minimum wage that leaves them with the stress of poverty or embarrassment of claiming benefits or aren't recognised for the role of caring they do. The Greens would increase income tax for higher earners, pay everyone a 'citizen's income' to support families and carers, invest in hundreds of thousands of Green jobs and raise the minimum wage towards £8.10 per hour.

The people I've met and heard who are in the Green Party are passionate about seeing positive and concrete change, aren't afraid to say and do the right thing even when it's unpopular and have deep flowing, well thought through philosophy and values.

Of course I don't agree with everything they say (nuclear power and faith schools spring to mind) or even all of their underlying thinking (I might write on this another time), but these are people who best fit the questions above that come out of my faith. I respect their character, values, commitment and policies which means I can look people in the eye and say 'It's worth voting Green'.

And I'll be voting for....

2010-04-04T23:00:00.000+01:00

The general election gun will be fired by Gordon Brown on Tuesday (although as you've probably noticed everyone's already dashed off) and I've had a look at the themes of six of the major parties.

So, for those of you who don't already know, it's time to tell you who I'll be voting for on May 6th.

[very small drum roll]

And you'll just have to wait a bit longer, whilst I buzz on about an electoral bee that lives in my very fetching bonnet.

I've listed the parties in order of my preference as would be possible under the Alternative Vote system as opposed to the current First Past The Post. A form of this is already used in the European and London Maryoral Elections and Gordon Brown has promised a referendum on it if he wins this time round. It has two major positives:

Firstly it means that every MP would get a majority. If after all the first choices are added up the person with the smallest number of first choices gets eliminated and their second choice votes reallocated. This carries on until someone has 50%.

Secondly, you don't have to think about worrying about tactical voting (not that you should anyway) - if a currently smaller party is your first choice, put them first. You can then put your 'least worst' option of the big parties second and when the small party is eliminated your vote will count for the big party.

So Alternative Vote keeps the good bits of the First past the post but makes a fairer, healthier addition to democracy.

Anyway. I'll be voting for...
[no drum roll this time]

1. Green Party (Feel the Love / Black Eyed Peas)
2. Conservatives (Eine Kleine Nacht Musik)
3. Lib Dems (Park Life / Blur)
4. Labour (Day in the life / Beatles)
UKIP
BNP

It was a real tussle about whether to put the Tories or Lib Dems second. The Conservatives have more 'bad eggs' in their party than the Lib Dems which makes me nervous. However, they are the only one of the main three parties over the last couple of years that have consistently talked about the importance of supporting family relationships and rebuilding our society not from the state down, but from the bottom up. So if I had to choose between the three I'd hesitantly give the Tories a chance.

Luckily I don't have to choose and now I'm officially off the fence in the blogosphere I'll spend some time explaining why I'm voting Green as well as reflecting on the campaign to come.

Sing a simple UKIP song

2010-04-03T22:13:00.001+01:00

I'm cheating a bit by rushing onto UK Independence Party before the election is announced on Tuesday. I will come back to the Scots and Welsh Nationalists and some of the smaller parties, but wanted to give fair due to a party that claimed they came second at the last European Elections.

The temptation to take the mickey out of UKIP is strong and I was planning to christen them with the theme tune to the Wizard of Oz.

If only we could get out of Europe....then everything would be wonderful. All the nasty witches of the economy and hundreds of thousands of immigrants would magically be sorted out and Britain would be home again.

UKIP plan to 'end multiculturalism', ban the wearing of the burka in public and take Britain out of the EU, but sign free trade agreements to protect 'European jobs' (50% of the UK's trade is with the EU). Expand the the military by 40%, establish an English Parliament, get European lorries off the road, release businesses from 120000 EU laws, make St. George's Day a holiday... you get the picture. Here's their summary manifesto.

This is the sense that comes out strongly from their speeches and TV appearances. However, delve a bit deeper and there is another more interesting theme that emerges. Simplicity. Or as they would put it 'straight talking'. UKIP aim to cut through all the complex governance of 21st century life and make things clear again.

UKIP and their leader Lord Pearson (have you heard of him?) would remove all existing taxes and replace them with a flat 31% tax for everyone and a local VAT tax for Councils. This idea is appealing - hard to avoid, everyone knows what they're getting and where it's going. The simple theme is continued through a smaller number of benefits, 'life meaning life' and abolition of regional government.

Transparency is an important part of accountability and engagement. It's very difficult to challenge something if it's wrapped up in bureaucracy, jargon and exceptions. Sometimes in our effort to be fair we make something so complex that it obscures justice. That's where UKIP have a valuable contribution to make in UK politics. However, simplicity from a defensive heart can cause oppression. Locking up 'career criminals' for good, a virulent attack on the public sector and ending 'abuse' in the asylum system come from a fear of change and ignorance of 'people not like us'.

The UKIP sing a simple song which is initially appealing and touches some of the real frustrations of bureaucratic modern life in the UK and problems with the EU. The racist ' I don't understand you foreigners' undertones are disturbing.
When UKIP gets down to detail it feels like they fade away, stick their fingers in your ears and wish things were like they were when they were children. After me, sing 'La la la la la, la la la la la, la la la la la laaaa.'
Watch the video. For you Carpenters fans, their version is here as well.

All the people, so many people - the Lib Dems' Parklife

2010-04-01T21:30:00.000+01:00

Do the Liberal Democrats have a distinctive identity, or as their opponents suggest do they sit in the middle trying to be all things to all people?

One of the things I find encouraging about the main political parties is that they have all grown out of particular philosophical and political traditions. This provides them with an important underlying cohesion and narrative. The Labour value the Christian socialism of RH Tawney and the works of Tony Crosland. The Tories look back to the 'Grandfather of Conservatism' Edmund Burke and more recent thinkers like Michael Oakeshott.

The Liberal Democrats can lay claim to the even clearer heritage of Locke, Hume and JS Mill - founding thinkers of liberalism.

Of course this is to simplify political thinking. There are many overlaps and Tories especially might draw inspiration from these philosophical giants. However, it does point to the fact that the Liberal Democrats aren't just a party in the middle bobbing up and down, thrown this way and that by the latest political storms. Their consistent stand against ID cards and other infringements of civil liberties such as 28 day detention without trial demonstrate this well.

Perhaps unfortunately for the Lib Dems the political debate has moved away from these issues at the moment. So what else have they to offer?

The two senses that come from the party are policy openness and a welcome break from the cult of the leader.

Environmental and transport emerge as a key strand for their policies, along with the economy and their key policies are laid out in this nifty little booklet (pdf).

Their website if full of pictures of 'prominent' lib dems, most of whom aren't Nick Clegg and their news archive actually has initiatives from the relevant portfolio holder without the leader holding their hand. There is a lot of talk about 'All the people' in the party (the Lib Dems would like to convince you that there are 'so many people') all working together 'hand in hand' ready to support you through your 'parklife'.

It's that last part that still provides the problem for the Liberal Democrats. There's still a sense that, with the exception of Vincent Cable, they're not heavyweight enough for the big stage. OK to run your councils and clean up your park, but you wouldn't quite trust them with the nuclear button (which they wouldn't renew).

In the past their picking of unrelated key campaign issues (think Iraq war & Tuition Fees to appeal to disgruntled Labour voters in 2005) has made them sound more like students with gripes than with a strong, coherent narrative to govern.

The leaders' debates will be a massive opportunity for Nick Clegg to show that he can stand toe to toe with the other would-be PMs. These three set pieces of the election may well determine whether the Liberal Democrats join the big boys in government or continue jogging round and round and round the election cycle never quite breaking through to new ground.

A Day in the Life of the Labour party

2010-03-25T21:33:00.001Z

I was going to blog on the budget, but it was so interminably dull that I'm not going to bother. However, Alistair Darling's speech from the dispatch box was helpful in one respect.

In these series of posts I've tried to sketch out the overarching themes and priorities of each party. Before yesterday, try as I might, I couldn't figure out what Labour's big picture was. Now, I've got it and it boils down to one word. Recovery.

We'll look after the economy better than the Tories and we'll still look after health and education. Although you hate and loathe us you still deep down have some grudging trust that we'll do OK with these three key areas. The Labour party's latest attack ad features Tory Chancellor 'Boy George' with the strap line 'When it comes to the recovery he wouldn't know where to start'. The entire Labour election campaign rests on a well worn proverb: 'better the devil you know'.

I'll start with the positive. Labour have done a good job with the NHS. Their boast that 'We created it, we saved it, we value it and we will always support it' is a fair one. In 1997 it was as common to take political chunks out of the NHS as it is the BBC today. Now it is unthinkable for the Tories to contemplate dismantling a system that is based on the principle of free at the point of need.

The manifold problems with the 'trust Old Harry' argument start after that.

I hardly meet a teacher any more that has anything positive to say about the target culture, the national curriculum or discipline in schools.

There are undoubtedly some brilliant schools managed wonderfully by superb head teachers, but these seem to be in spite of the Labour regime not because of it. Yes, they've put a lot of money into schools (and many excellent new school buildings), but they seem to get themselves in a terrible initiative-itis muddle in how to use it.

One pedagogical victory for them - when was the last time you heard someone say 'those that can't, teach?'.

And the economy. I worked for 3 years in the Citizens' Advice Bureau from 2005 watching people stagger in with debt up to their eyeballs in times of economic plenty. How long can this go one we asked?

The golden Brown years were fuelled by mortgaging our future with consumer credit. One of David Cameron's best lines was that Labour 'failed to fix the roof whilst the sun was shining'.

I need more than 'fear the incompetent/evil Tories' from Labour, yet when I look beyond the gloss they seem all over the place. I respected David Milliband's and Hillary Benn's effort in the run up to Copenhagen climate summit, but they haven't grasped the environmental nettle properly at home. I liked Alistair Darling's straight talking today, but he gets knocked back by the rest of his party for his trouble. Where is the coherent vision and leadership for the next parliament? Where do Labour want to go?

In honour of Labour's loss of direction I have nominated The Beatles' A Day in the Life as their anthem on this blog. The song takes us through the journey of someone not quite sure where they are going with a subdued air of of nostalgia for past glories. As John Lennon sings this 'News is rather sad'.

The lyrics are disjointed jumping from subject to subject each stanza and the melody doesn't stick with the normal verse /chorus outline.

The famous and unexpected take off in the middle sounds like a desperate attempt to launch a new policy initiative. They emerge only with something small, useful and popular, but hardly enough to smooth the bumps in Labour's road:
I read the news today oh, boy / Four thousand holes in blackburn, lancashire / And though the holes were rather small / They had to count them all / Now they know how many holes it takes to fill the albert hall.

The Labour party have stirring values of social justice, strong community and rights matched by responsibilities. Our economic recovery is likely to be slow and difficult - Labour's recovery of their vision and purpose could take even longer.

Green Party - walking the line between radical and mainstream.

2010-03-23T20:42:00.000Z

The Green Party feels that it's on the edge of electoral breakthrough and wants to be seen as one of the main players in the British elections. Over the last few years it has elected a leader for the first time (it used to have two non-executive principal speakers), worked to show that it's not just about the environment and professionalised its approach to communications and campaigning. As it moves towards the mainstream it walks the line of wanting to remain true to its radical roots whilst appealing to a broader cross section of the population.

It will be clear why I've chosen 'Where is Love' by the Blackeyed peas in my electoral playlist. Rap music has made the journey from the musical outback towards the popular mainstream, but maintains an edge. It's radical, but not too radical. Lyrics like "I think the whole world addicted to the drama/ Only attracted to things that'll bring you trauma / Overseas, yeah, we try to stop terrorism / But we still got terrorists here livin'
/ In the USA, the big CIA" maintain an outside perspective but with a very accessible tune and chorus.

The Green Party's core values stress the close interdependence between the earth and people and between people themselves, of whatever race, gender or sexual orientation. They are internationalists, seeking peaceful, long lasting solutions to problems, but also emphasise building sustainable interdependent communities at local level.

Given the coherence of their philosophy it seems odd that their headline policies for the election seem rather piecemeal: Free insulation, safer streets and free school meals all seem rather lightweight. The meatier ideas of green energy for all and a living wage of at least £6.80 per hour illustrate the still strong emphasis on climate change and deeply rooted ideas of reducing the gap between rich and poor.

The Greens are generally seen as a party on the left, but differ from Labour in two key respects. Firstly the idea of bottom up sustainable communities contrasts sharply with Labour's model of top down solutions. Secondly the Greens tend to emphasise greater economic equality not as an end in itself, but because it will make people happier. Policies that aim to what they see as a culture of overconsumption, overwork and overcommuting in employment reinforce this theme.

The Green Party has about 125 elected local councillors and 2 MEPs - it may soon have an MP. It will be interesting to see how it adapts to life as a mainstream party with the pressures to adapt principles to the sometimes less than green world of politics.

Bank to basics

2010-03-23T09:39:00.000Z

If Alistair Darling does announce in the budget tomorrow that banks will be legally required to offer a basic bank account to anyone with an address it will be an excellent step forward.

How are people supposed to get jobs and enter the mainstream of society if they can't be paid by their employer? They're more likely to stay unemployed or keep taking cash in hand. The government has promoted 'financial inclusion' for the last decade with some success, but 1.75 million adults still remain stubbornly outside the banking system.

This is partly down to the government's cockeyed approach. It's put time and money into setting up a postoffice account which can only accept money from benefit agencies, not employers or savings! Given the opportunity to sort the problem out when the contract came up for renewal last year it did the same thing again.

The even bigger issues have been those of identification and bank intransigence. There's no short term profits in offering a service to people that you can't sell credit to and an account which isn't allowed to go into the red. So even banks that offer them put a tangled web of bureaucracy in the way of something that should be straightforward.

One building society with a generally good reputation insists that all basic bank account applications are sent to head office rather than dealt with in branch like other accounts. I was supporting someone to get an account. Twice an application was sent off from the branch. Twice it got mysteriously 'lost' in headquarters. The government recognised that this paperwork caused problems and in 2005 put three years of floating staff in to help people through the process.

Identification is a problem - even if people have a tenancy agreement to prove address (not always the case) they often lack a passport, birth certificate or driving licence and the money to obtain one. The banks need to be more thoughtful in finding ways to help people prove who they are without putting an insurmountable barrier in their way. It is possible to do, but it does take a little more time and effort.

Access to a basic bank account is an essential prerequisite to integrating and fully contributing to society in 21st century Britain. It is a solvable well defined issue, which the banks could easily have resolved for a relatively small amount of money. It is a shame, but given the recent record of the banks unsurprising, that we need legislation to force banks to take on their social responsibilities in our society.

Eine Kleine Nachtmusik and the Conservatives. Are their changes only skin deep?

2010-03-21T22:47:00.000Z

Since David Cameron became leader of the Conservatives in late 2005 he has tried to change the face of the his party. There's been the friendly green tree logo, the drive to get more women & ethnic minority candidates selected and statements reclaiming areas such as poverty reduction and getting people back to work as 'Conservative' issues.

The question is - have they really changed? Has Cameron merely worked PR magic to make the Tories electable again? Or has the party genuniely rediscovered it's philanthropic, 'one society together' strand based on financial stability that was submerged under a deluge of Thatcherite monetarist dogma in the early 1980s?

The answer is that the party is changing. A work in progress. There are more women, ethnic minorities and people who are gay standing for the Conservative party this time round, drawn from a range of working and geographical backgrounds. This policy initially ran into the sand of the blue rinse constituency associations on the ground. It has recently gained a fair wind again because of the number of 'old school' Tories stepping down in safe seats because of the expenses scandal. However, there are also still scores of Old Etonians and incredibly wealthy people for whom £5.80 is the price of a daily duck sandwich rather than the hourly national minimum wage.

The Centre for Social Justice headed by Iain Duncan Smith has come up with some fantastic ideas for addressing issues of poverty and family and society breakdown. 'Making Britain the most family friendly country in Europe' has made it as one of the Tories six priorities for the election, but it remains unclear about how many of the CSJ's ideas are actually Tory policy.

Other Conservative themes for the campaign include: 'back the NHS' and 'raise standards in schools'. However, there are still some within the Conservative party who are part of the monetarist and libertarian strand of the party whose instincts are to dismantle public health and education and move towards private insurance schemes as modelled in the USA.

Osborne and Cameron talk in their speeches about cutting the country's massive debt to 'get the economy moving' whilst finding new innovative ways to deliver services. However, there are those within the party who want to take the opportunity to ideologically 'roll back the state' at the expense of the most vulnerable, under the badge of an 'age of austerity'. The IEA are at the policy end of what tails off into an extreme fringe.

I've chosen Eine kleine Nachtmusik (link includes excerpt) as my piece of music to represent the tone and mood of the Conservatives. There's a positive feel about the party: they have their own themes and ideas for government and don't spend all their time bashing Labour. Like the bold, crisp start of Mozart's serenade they know what they want to say and are articulating themselves more clearly than either of the other main parties.

Eine kleine Nachtmusik is a beautifully written piece of music, but as one critic put it is written from 'a light and happy pen'. It has the feel of an easy to absorb piece that is skin deep and lacks the depth and fullness of a Tchaikovsky or a Beethoven. I remain to be convinced that the likability of David Cameron and his ideas will translate to a party and policies that will bring real financial stability and rebuild our society. I am happy to be proved wrong, but there is still the vague sense that there might still be 'Eine kleine Nacht', or a little [of the] night about them.

The BNP are angry and powerless

2010-03-17T23:05:00.003Z

If the British National Party were a piece of music they'd be Left for Dead by Ghost of A Thousand. Click here for the YouTube link. I'm sure that Ghost of A Thousand wouldn't want to be associated with the ideas and policies of the BNP in any way at all and in no way want to imply that that's the case. However, the personal narrative of the man in 'Left for Dead' illustrates and illuminates well the theme that pervades the BNPs websites and discussion boards as a whole: anger.

The BNP are angry at their people are not getting jobs, angry that they can't get a house, angry that their countryside is being spoiled and angry that powerful people keep putting them down. They call clever outsiders 'stupid', the EU are 'criminals' and the 'gang' of the three main parties are 'liars, buggers and thieves'.

Again and again the narrative of the angry powerless vs the powerful elite comes out. Their pub talk language (taxes are squeezing me to death) bridles against the carefully crafted sentences of mainstream politicians. From stories on discussion boards of clever windfarm people been sent packing by ordinary folk in the South West to anger at the way that David Dimbleby unfairly picked on Nick Griffin on question time. This sense of grievance, injustice and wanting to get their own back drives the BNP.

'Left for Dead' is shouty, angry music, but the guy in the story of the song is articulating a real sense of hurt and loss that isn't otherwise recognised: 'What is it we're looking for? have I left this way to late?...all my life I've been left for dead'. The same is true for the BNP.

'The ruling elite' tell people that asylum seekers and immigration don't put a strain on housing and health services. This isn't true. Asylum seekers don't get public housing in London where shortages are most acute, but many understandably choose to stay with their national communities on friends floors. When asylum seekers are successful they become refugees and are eligible to go on the housing register, adding to the overall wait. Economic migrants from central Europe are not eligible for public funds including council houses unless they are working, but this still puts a strain on resources. When people have been waiting years for a move living in substandard high rise accommodation this isn't just a theoretical debate to have over dinner, but has significant impact on quality of life.

When I worked in the East End of London older white people frequently said to me 'I've lived here all my life and it doesn't feel like home any more'. People who rarely travel more than a few miles from their homes had seen their whole world turned upside by the massive migration into their communities over the last 30 years. Slapping the label racist on them and squashing their right to articulate their sense of loss pushes them towards a party that finds some way to say what they are feeling.

Other parties don't articulate these problems and so the BNP are left as the only party in the field. They are free to lash out and blame 'Asians, coloureds and black' for all the problems afflicting the white British working class. In 'Left for Dead' in his frustration the guy takes a has a go at 'all the same kids at shows'. The kids are the easy target, but being angry at them doesn't address any of the underlying problems.

The BNP lash out at 'Asians', 'coloureds' and Blacks because they lack both a spirit of generosity and decency, but also the imagination and belief that things can change and improve. Their 'solution' to encourage resettlement of millions of people of 'foreign descent' is an attempt to invoke the halycon days of a golden era that never existed at the expense of ruining the lives of those being told to move. Their other high profile policy areas like the environment ('Land and People' as the BNP put it) reinforce the view of Britain of a once green and pleasant land being irrevocably spoiled.

The BNP aims to be the party of the ordinary white guy against powerful corrupt elite forces. They proclaim a narrative of bitterness and hatred towards non-white people in response to real problems that people experience in their daily lives in areas like housing, employment and community breakdown. They're also very angry.

Next up: the Conservatives

Party priorities: Putting together the playlist

2010-03-15T21:41:00.008Z

Over the next few weeks I'll write some posts looking at the priorities of the main political parties. In line with my recent post about being open to voting for smaller parties I'm planning to look at about nine.

I could have begun by looking at what each party thought about a policy area - e.g. health, education, but this can be misleading. All parties have a certain amount of political will and capital that they can spend on the things they care most about. UKIP may have a wonderful transport policy, but chances are they're not going to spend a lot of time talking about it when they knock on doors.

I'm going to try and catch the mood music in a party - the prominent melodies, ideas and themes. I won't rely just on what the parties themselves say are their priorities, but look at how the overall composition of actions and words comes across . Although I'm not going to be completely unopinionated (I'm guessing you won't be shocked) I will try and give people the benefit of the doubt - it would be very easy to tear into the contradictions within every party and just create lots of noisy feedback.

I'm not planning to look at the Northern Irish parties, although in the unlikely event that I have any readers across the Irish Sea I'm happy to do requests!

So the top 9 in share of the vote from 2005 are as follows: Labour, Conservative, Lib Dem, UKIP, SNP, Green, BNP, Plaid Cymru & Respect. Depending on how things go I may throw in the Liberal party, the English Democrats and the Christian Peoples Alliance. There's no end of tiny parties out there to choose from, although most of these are only fielding candidates in a few of the 650 seats.

Only five of the parties can claim any kind of national reach: UKIP have currently declared 438 candidates and the Green Party 295. The BNP currently cover one fifth of constituencies with 137. Small parties normally have a wider base than is evident at a general election, as the first past the post system and large constituencies prevent much progress. Most put their limited resources into European and local elections where victory is more plausible.

I'm going to approach them in alphabetical order which means I'll be starting with the BNP. Trying to exclude the BNP from political debate is counter productive. Whether you like it or not they articulate the concerns of at least 0.7% of the population (2005) and in a liberal democracy everyone deserves the right to be heard.

Don't panic! The Ins and outs of a hung parliament

2010-03-14T21:11:00.019Z

Reading the press over the last couple of weeks anyone would think that after election day Westminster will be obliterated by some gigantic trans London hyper-bypass.

In contrast, I would suggest that a deep breath and brief wipe down with your handy travel towel will reassure you that a Hung Parliament is really nothing to be worried about. Not only would it be mostly harmless, but would be beneficial for our democracy and raise the tone of political debate significantly above some of the current Vogon Poetry we hear.

It's true that the financial markets (and everyone else for that matter) don't like uncertainty and that a power vacuum could be problematic. However, before you reach for the panic cord (probably located in your nearest disabled toilet) let's briefly reach for the mathematical light switch and then the likely senario.

There's 650 seats up for grabs, so the winning post for a simple majority and the ability to govern unaided is 650 /2 + 1 = 326 seats. However a majority of anything under 20 is considered extremely shaky because some MPs are independently minded / disloyal pains in the backside, depending on your point of view. The following shows the state of the current parliament where Labour have a safe majority of 66. (click on charts to enlarge)

Based on the current polls the Conservatives are likely to end up with the largest number of seats, but not enough to have a simple majority. The pie could divide something like this leaving the Conservatives a few seats short and gain support from independents or Northern Ireland Parties;

or more like this when they'll need to look to the Lib Dems.

Initially, the incumbent prime minister has a chance to try and stay in office. When another party's got an absolute majority, it's obvious they won't be able to, so they quit. If there's a hung parliament this isn't so clear which is why it's important that Nick Clegg has said
"The party which gets the strongest mandate from the voters will have the moral authority to be the first to seek to govern."
This indicates that Clegg will try and do a deal with the largest single party first, which at the moment looks reasonably certain to be the Tories.

Nick Clegg is unlikely to go into a full blown coalition with either the Tories or Labour as that would tie his hands to publicly supporting policies and programmes that would be unpopular with his support base. The Liberals are terrified of their distinct identity being subsumed into one of the two larger parties and that could cause lasting damage.

Instead the Lib Dems could agree to support a Tory minority administration on key pieces of legislation, such as an emergency budget and a change to the voting system.

This piecemeal approach would prevent Lib Dems from holding ministerial posts (Vince Cable would miss out on the trappings of being Chancellor of the Exchequer), but mean that they held ongoing influence on what got through parliament rather than negotiating a programme at the start.

This route also has the major advantage of being quicker to sort out because there's less to agree on up front. The parties will be under pressure to agree something quickly, especially on the economy in the name of stability. The outline of an agreement would be there within a couple of days and even with complex internal Lib Dem procedures it could be signed and sealed in a week to days.

The Lib Dems wouldn't hold all the cards. If they pushed things too far the Conservatives might gain Labour support for some measures, leaving the Lib Dems sidelined and looking like a child hitting out in a tantrum in a room full of older boys. If the Conservatives felt that the other parties were blocking a popular key reform they could call an election which would essentially be a referendum on an issue of the Tories choosing.

In practice a minority government is only likely to last for a year or 18 months before this happens or the government falls apart and loses a vote of no confidence. Another General Election would be called and the public would have the chance to pass judgment on how the parties had coped with the new arrangement.

A Hung Parliament wouldn't be a big surprise and many other countries across Europe manage them constantly. The parties will know that negotiations need to happen swiftly to maintain their own confidence and authority. It is perfectly reasonable to run the government as a minority administration for a short period of time, with key legislation gaining support from other parties.

So relax, keep your slippers and dressing gown on and Don't Panic.

Sorry about the lack of numbers on the pie charts - they should be there but the computer has defeated me for this evening.
15/3/10 - thanks to 'two''s comment I have ammended this post in the paragraph 'Initially the incumbent prime minister'

Talking tough: The BBC must not be sacrificed to the god of consumerism

2010-03-12T21:17:00.008Z

The BBC is a fantastic organisation, fulfilling it's mandate to educate, entertain and inform on a transparent and relatively low budget. The BBC strategic review dominated by the closure of the 6 Music and Asian Network contains a lot of positive ideas – it's nearly always beneficial to do fewer things, but do them better.

Linking BBC2 and BBC4; Radio 4 & Radio 7 and moving the best bits of 6 Music onto Radio 2 will ensure that innovative programming reaches a broader audience and is not lost in some back corner of the network. Putting a cap on sports spending, and better Childrens' programming make sense as well. Precisely because it is not a commercial organisation the BBC must continually ensure it innovates and make efficiencies to maintain value for money and our trust. The BBC is the jewel in our cultural heritage and we must remain as 'critical friends' to make sure it stays that way.

The BBC provides a large amount of trusted and free journalism that is the envy of the world – we'd be mad to throw it away. However James Murdoch and other commercial organisations are frightened and angry that the BBC is stopping it making even more money for themselves, not just in the UK but around the world. Using their massive media power, Murdoch and co are trying to creating a culture that makes it trendy to have a go at the BBC. They are aiming to neuter and hollow out the BBC over the next decade. They're using assumptions that aren't being challenged by mainstream media (including the BBC itself) or the main political parties:

1) Commercial competition is always good and must be 'given space' to do well. I see no evidence that the market could provide anything as good as the BBC in terms of programming or journalism (look at ITV or commercial radio). I think that the BBC have showed us that James Murdoch is wrong when he says that "The only reliable, durable and perpetual guarantee of independence is profit."

I hate adverts and certainly don't want my daughter subjected to their 'buying stuff will make you happy' lies. If the BBC means that there are less commercial radio and TV stations then so be it – we don't have to monetarise and consumerise every part of our nation's life. There is still more than enough space for competition to operate and offer alternative opinions and views – look at the Financial Times' online successful subscription and the vibrancy of Sky Sports. If the Guardian started charging I'd pay because I'm looking for something different from what the BBC can offer.

2) The licence fee is an expensive and unfair tax. At £142.50 a year (less than £3 a week) the licence fee is amazing value for all the radio, TV and web content that the BBC provides. I'd pay a lot more, so shouldn't I pay a subscription service? But why should people less well off than me miss out on the highest quality programming and journalism? Something as important as the culture and news of the nation should be available equally to all. It's healthy to have one place that the nation turns to to debate issues and in a crisis. Yes, the licence fee is a regressive tax, but it's one of the few transparent, ring fenced taxes we have. This makes it an easy target when people want a moan, but actually the form of funding for the BBC is a big strength. A few people may opt out of the BBC like they opt out of the state education and health system. But as a nation everyone benefits from people getting free health, education and accurate information and so everyone has to pay their tax for these services including the licence fee.

3) The BBC is biased. Yes it is. It isn't left wing or right wing, but it does have a liberal slant. It reflects the views of a metropolitan London upper middle class. But so does every other newspaper in the country. However, unlike almost every other newspaper or TV station in the country it does set out to be impartial, which gets it further than most. And over the last 10 years it has worked hard to regionalise and diversify what it does. Again this has benefits for everyone including commercial operators as many presenters who got a start with the BBC move networks in due course. The controversial move of Radio 5 Live to Manchester is a good example of a hugely difficult thing to do, but will have long term benefits.

It's time to challenge the lie that the BBC must be offered up to the great god of money making consumerism. It would benefit no-one apart from a few very wealthy and powerful media magnates who would then dominate and filter the information and news we receive and rely on. Media magnates are accountable not to the nation, but their shareholders.

We can moan to the BBC and contact our elected politicians and they must listen – we need to use that power wisely so that we can take pride in a healthy and robust BBC that we can enjoy in our daily lives.

Photo: The high priest, James Murdoch.

To hell with tactics – vote for whoever you like

2010-03-10T22:16:00.002Z

I was going to describe the following as a socratic dialogue, but the idle daydreaming of a political junkie in election year is probably more appropriate...

Me: Nice and warm today isn't it?

Average UK voter (AUKV): Whatever. Shall we cut the small talk and get straight on with the politics?

Me: Wow, great daydream! Go for it.

AUKV: All the parties are pretty much the same

Me: Really?! have you compared UKIP and the Labour party recently?

AUKV: but all the main parties – they're all out for what they get and they all promise the same old stuff.

Me: Well I disagree with you on both counts.
There was a culture of claiming maximum expenses which was rightly exposed, but most Mps go into politics to improve people's lives and work extremely hard, normally 60-70 hours a week.
And there are important differences between the parties for instance on taxes and the role and size of government.
But if you really think that there's no difference vote for one of the smaller parties that best matches what you think. You can choose from anyone to the Socialists through to the English Democrats or BNP.

AUKV: But voting for a small party is a wasted vote

Me: So voting for a party that you don't really agree with isn't a wasted vote?

AUKV: It could be tactical.

Me: It could be but you just said there wasn't any difference between the main parties so exactly what is your tactic?

AUKV: OK, OK but it doesn't make any difference voting for a small party – I may as well not bother at all.

Me: Political parties pour over election figures. If a small party does even well the bigger parties adopt some policies of the small party, because they see they're popular. Look at what happened when the Green party first made it big in 1989 or how the Tories responded when UKIP first hit the scene.

Secondly, as you've pointed out people vote for parties they think have a chance of winning. Vote for your smaller party of choice now and next time they'll have a launch pad from second or third place and be perceived as real challengers.

Plus voting is far more enjoyable and satisfying if you vote for a party whose vision and policies you actually support. Aren't you bored of voting through gritted teeth?

AUKV: So... to hell with tactics?

Me: Yup, if you positively support one of the main parties, great, but otherwise just vote for whoever you like.

AUKV: What's that flying mushroom over there that looks like David Cameroon's head?

Me: I dunno, I'm too busy looking at the digestive biscuit that's got Gordon Brown's hair.
Must be part of my dream... or the new Alice in Wonderland movie.

The Future of History - it's out of order.

2010-03-09T15:38:00.009Z

An open letter to Michael Gove (shadow Education secretary).

Dear Mr. Gove,

I am pleased that you are planning to get some of the 'finest minds in Britain' together to take another look at the National Curriculum should the Conservatives get into office.

However, to assert that history should be taught 'in order' is a mistake for two reasons.

One of the primary benefits we derive from learning history is alternative perspective. The past really is a foreign country. Not only did they do things differently there, but the finest minds of the age made assumptions that we find alien and almost mind boggling. Kings claimed divine authority to rule, scientists firmly believed that fire was an element called Phlogiston and people didn't have computers.

Showing children that there are other ways of living and thinking gives them the invaluable ability to start asking questions about the assumptions of our own society.

Understanding that things change because of the discoveries and actions of individuals means that children learn that they too can be significant. These realisations don't come if children just scratch the surface of history with dates and events - they need to be completely immersed in a different cultural and historical landscape. From this view it doesn't matter which period of history and which part of the world, although the further away temporally and geographically the more pronounced the differences become.

I was taught history in order. Starting with the Egyptians and the Romans in primary school we made our way through the Victorians at Juniors before arriving at WW2 by the time we reached GCSE. The problem with this approach is that I never touched the ancient world after the age of 7 and the Tudors passed me by before my teens. Like the whole of the rest of the nation I learned more about WW2 than the rest of history put together. Revisiting the classical world at an older age would have been instructive, broadened my horizons and provided new points of comparison.

An overarching narrative is important, but something as simple as a pictoral timeline round the classroom can show where the studied event fits into historical 'order'.

History is a wonderful and essential part of every child's education and I am glad that you are thinking about it seriously and discussing it publicly. In this light I look forward to your response to the points raised above.

Yours sincerely,

Jonathan Chilvers

Power Politics: how to slaughter the fluffy bunnys and stay popular

2010-03-08T21:24:00.001Z

When Alistair Darling, George Osbourne and Vince Cable each sit down to work out what to tell the voters about the public service cuts to come they're faced with a tricky problem.

Everyone knows that the finances are in a mess and that there are going to have to be cuts. But spell out specifics and people realise that it's their hospital, road or care home that's getting hit and before you can say 'NIMBY' facebook campaigns have hatched on every cyber-street corner. Look what's happened with 6 Music and the Asian Network.

Say too little and your party is accused of being shifty, vague and patronising ordinary Joe-public.

The three main parties are like jostling athletes in the 10000 metres - none of them want to be the ones hitting the front first and taking the flack from bringing the bad news specific to people. The pace in the race slows to a jog and soon no-one's prepared to say that they'll cut a strawberry shoe lace from front line services.

However, there's a third underlying factor in the equation.

How you gain power dictates what you can do when you're in power.

This is most easily traced where money's involved. When the old Labour party relied on being bank rolled by trade unions to win an election the Unions expected a lot back when they were in power even when politicians knew it wasn't best for the country. Republicans elected on the back of the Jewish or Oil lobby will constrained in their choices by who their power base are, even if they want to vote differently on a decision.

This axiom is less obviously at work, but equally important in the vision and policy announcements that a party makes during an election campaign. The more you say up front the easier it is to govern. If you promise in the campaign to slaughter all the fluffy bunny rabbits and little woolly lambs in the UK and you still manage to get elected your policy might still be unpopular, but no-one can say they didn't know. You gain a mandate to govern and it's much harder for those that disagree with you to go against you when 'the people have spoken'. It's recognised in parliament that laws enacting specific manifesto commitments get an easier ride than other bills.

The importance of this rule cannot be underestimated. It should give impetus to politicians to go out and make a clear case to the country for what they believe in an election campaign, especially the difficult and unpopular bits. It also explains why 'good' people go into politics thinking that they'll change things for the better when they're in power, but get caught in the system: in keeping their head down they didn't gather upfront support for their changes along the way and became beholden to party, business or pressure group interests.

During the conference season last Autumn Osborne and the Conservatives were the only ones to even begin to spell out the cuts that will be needed to public finances. He was reported as saying that the country could be virtually ungovernable if he didn't make the case upfront - it would be worth losing some support and getting in with a smaller majority if it gave him more leeway in power. As I suggested in my last post the party that gets this risk right have much to gain, however, now the lead has closed, the nerves have kicked in and the Conservatives are back peddling.

All three wannabe chancellors are on the horns of an electoral dilemma that will not just determine the outcome of the next election, but how we are governed for the next five years.

Back on the Blogging (& election) Beat

2010-03-07T21:40:00.003Z

It's been a couple of years since I blogged regularly, but the lure of the general election has got my typing fingers itching and I will be posting frequently over the next couple of months.

It's going to be a pivotal election - not because the two main parties have radically different ideas for government, but because it is a vital chance for democratic politicians to grasp onto and build upon any modicum of trust that remains with the public.

This is a massive opportunity for a party to stake out positive vision and leadership for the country. People are desperate for someone to speak up with openness, integrity and well thought through policies that stands a chance of renewing the country economically and socially.

Overly negative and personal 'attack ads', always shown to work in the past are just as likely to back fire this time round. The public mood will stay switched off.

I've been encouraged to see that the first round of Tory billboards (I've never voted Conservative before, but...I like their plans for families/the economy etc) do focus on setting out the party's ideas rather than attacking Labour. Whether senior strategists can hold their nerve and stay positive as the campaign hots up remains to be seen.

We need a general election where politicians are prepared to put forward specific ideas and policies that they're prepared to debate and defend rather than say as little as possible and hope that they don't make any howling 'mistakes'.

Campaigning proactively in the recent years of spin and holding the mythical 'centre ground' has been seen as unnecessarily dangerous, but this time round the greater risk is staying the same and meeting the public's ditch-like expectations.

Fairtrade Future - Kick out the Cowboys

2009-03-05T21:09:00.001Z

One of the most important and exciting announcements of the week has been that Cadbury's are going to make all of their dairymilk bars out of fairly trade cocoa, with a commitment to transferring the rest of their products when they can. In one fell swoop the amount of fairtrade chocolate sold in the UK will almost double.

This major step raises an enticing prospect. Whilst munching on a gloriously milky bar of chocolate with a newly clean conscience it becomes possible for the first time to realistically imagine a nation where all raw food and cotton products imported are fairly traded.

Time and again you can ask oppressed producers and traders the world over and they will tell you they want not charity, but justice. It is no longer acceptable for us to complicit in trading and working practices that is oppressive just because we can't see them. If cost is an issue I challenge you to reduce the amount you give to 'good causes'. Instead, prioritise buying products that aren't about benevolently distributing philantrophy whilst holding onto power, but that fundamentally shift the way our global society operates - for the better.

Why allow plcs to get away with a few kind words and a little charity around the edges? Why should we put up any longer with bullying companies that grind down peoples' humanity for the sake of a cheap chocolate bar? Such thieves and cowboys should be chased out of town and out of business.

My daughter Abigail

2009-01-15T16:50:00.000Z

I have a daughter. My daughter is called Abigail. Hello, would you like to meet my daughter? Nope. Sorry, still hasn’t sunk in. Not only do I have a baby in my house, but she’s not going anywhere and she will, God willing, grow up through being a toddler, a child, before herself possibly having children, growing old and dying. I helped start all that - she came from me!

I am relishing the opportunity and responsibility of nurturing her, teaching her and ‘instructing her in the way she should go’, including giving her the context and opportunity to love, worship and relate to God in her own way. I’m very wary of placing any of my expectations on her or recycling my own disappointed hopes onto her, but inevitably dreams and ideas float up and as long as I’m aware of the dangers I don’t necessarily think they’re a bad thing.

I’ve thought about this quite a bit and I genuinely don’t think I mind whether she’s clever or not. However, overwhelmingly I’d love her to empathise and reach out to the needy, the lonely and the sad particularly as a child and I’ll encourage her to do that from a young age. I really believe that outward looking families with children can be places of great healing for isolated people and that children can have a great impact in their peer group by actively including those that are left out in school and play.

My other desires are a little trivial in comparison:
1. Help her learn to catch well so that she can enjoy outdoor activity and sport (especially with me).
2. Teach her Cantonese from a young age – I can’t think of one other work related skill (other than reading and writing) that she might thank me more for in 15 to 20 years time.
3. Hope that she likes train sets. Because I do. They’re fun.

The heart of the gospel

2009-01-15T16:22:00.000Z

John 15 is well known for the metaphor of the ‘vine and the branches’– a picture that we can do nothing without being in God. By the time I get to the second half of the chapter (entitled ‘The World Hates his disciples’ in the NIV) I skip through it and nod sagely without really taking it in. Except this time. For some reason I flitted lightly over the first part arriving fresh at the second and to my surprise found not just something different, but the very heart of the gospel.

In this passage (John 15:18-27) Jesus sets out his mission with a startling and uncomfortable clarity:

“If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not be guilty of sin. Now, however they have no excuse for their sin… if I had not done among them what no-one else did, they would not be guilty of sin. But now they have seen these miracles, and yet they have hated both me and my Father. But this is to fulfil that is written in their law:’They hated me without reason.’

Jesus came to expose and lay bear our sin by bringing the kingdom of the Father onto earth. Laid alongside our miracles and a love that stretches even to death (v13) we have ‘no excuse’ (v22) if we fail to recognise our sin. Jesus adds that He will send the ‘Counsellor’ who will be the Spirit of truth and John 16:8 adds that the Spirit will 'expose the guilt of the world'

This though is only the start. For once I bothered to look up the cross reference for verse 25 which leads to Psalm 69 and the John passage came alive. David starts by crying out ‘I sink in the miry depths where there is no foothold… who hate me without reason outnumber the hairs of my head’ before praying ‘in your great love, O God, answer me with your sure salvation...do not let me sink; deliver me from those who hate me, from the deep waters.’ (13-14). Just as Jesus promises to us, David is persecuted and mocked because ‘zeal for God’s house consumes me’ (v9).

What David cries out for in hope we see fulfilled in Jesus. By revealing so starkly the sin of humanity Jesus lays the foundation for our rescue – he completes it with an embodiment of love which surpasses sin. Jesus rescues us from the miry pit of the world’s sin as he defeats sin by not succumbing to it – even in the face of death when he had ‘done no wrong’.

The sin from which we are rescued is primarily corporate – our individual sin is a corollary. Those who choose to ‘obey His teachings’(v20) are lifted up and rescued by His Spirit from the sin that engulfs our world which also consumes us. We no longer have to be bound and embroiled by the sin of those around us – when we are hated we do not have to hate, when we are mocked we do not have to retaliate. We do not need to conform to the ways of this world, but can be transformed.

Yet we are still in the world and Jesus ‘chose us and appointed us to go and bear fruit-fruit that will last’ (v16). We become part of the glorious contagion that is freedom from the despair and hopelessness of sin. Along with the Holy Spirit we reveal the truth and ‘testify about Jesus’ (v26) the rescuer, the Messiah.

The Vine and the Branches is a wonderful hors d’ouevre, but forgive me if next time I turn to John 15 I look forward to the meat that follows.

Moving over

2008-05-20T11:04:00.000+01:00

You've probably noticed I haven't posted here for a while. Whilst I haven't done much writing recently you can still find me occasionally at http://threeinablog.blogspot.com , a space which I share with - you've guessed it - two other people.

Scandal, hubris and Tolstoy: The travails of Gordon Brown

2007-12-04T11:58:00.000Z

Northern Rock, Missing Child Benefit CDs, Labour party donations. The three sagas that have thrown the Brown government into turmoil and the media into a feeding frenzy. Three months ago Brown was heralded as the most skilled political operator of a generation – he had dealt with foot and mouth, set out a new agenda and had the political hacks asking ‘Tony who?’. But let’s look at the events that have caused all the hoo ha of the last month.

Firstly, Northern Rock. The government managed this pretty well, responding to events (the credit crunch) beyond their control – they had to let the markets know that the Rock had been lent money by the Bank of England or they’d have been accused of a cover up. If they’d have immediately guaranteed every penny thus negating the risk that big investors took the cries of ‘moral hazard’ would have rung out around Westminster. In the end no punter has lost a penny and the government should (eventually) get it’s money back.
Brown's Star rating: * * * *

Next, the missing Child Benefit CDs. In an immediate sense it clearly wasn’t the government’s fault that so much sensitive data had been put in unregistered post by the HMRC. What was more damaging for Brown were the stories that came out of the Revenue and Customs about the low morale and cost cutting regime that meant that taking short cuts had become normal. Brown loved the headlines when he was chancellor about slashing civil servants jobs and saving the tax payer millions, but preventing good staff doing their job properly is a false economy. In the event the government did the firefighting as well as they could, but this was a past action that came back to haunt Brown.
Brown’s Star Rating: *

Finally, the donations scandals. The major Labour donor David Abrahams had been siphoning his donations through his staff who lived on Council estates to ‘protect his privacy’. Some people in a Labour party strapped for cash decided not to look too closely at where the money was coming from and got caught. Human instinct tells us not to look a gift horse in the mouth, but we expect incredibly high standards from our politicians and expect them to rigorously fight their instincts each and every time, even when it doesn’t seem that anyone’s looking. Let him who is without sin casts the first stone…

The encouraging thing is that Brown and Hilary Benn honourably actually refused the donations with Hilary Benn telling Abrahams to donate the money directly if he was that bothered about being involved. The slow drip drip of information leaves a sour taste in the mouth and there may be more to come, but I don’t see why anyone else should fall on their swords yet. The enquiries will lead to ever more stringent rules on donations and we will remain one of the cleanest political cultures in the world. Bungled administration and wishful thinking yes, but widespread corruption – unlikely.
Brown’s Star Rating: * * *

So Brown’s not done too badly over the last month by my reckoning, but he’s been caught at the centre of a rabid media and, as Harold Wilson said, events dear boy, Events. In War and Peace on the eve of battle, Tolstoy has Napoleon surveying his troops and making decisions which he thinks will be decisive in steering the course of the fight. In fact his orders had very little bearing on what happened and the battle was won and lost by millions of combined actions by the soldiers on the field. On this occasion the French lost and the shine on Napoleon’s ‘genius’ was tarnished. Yet as Tolstoy said ‘his orders were not any less good’ than on the occasions he was victorious.

It is hubris on the part of politicians when they pretend that their decisions are the prime factors in events, but equally ridiculous when we the public foist that expectation and belief upon them.

The good Good Book book: a Review

2007-10-26T13:56:00.000+01:00

Is it possible for a book dealing with religion to be feted by both ardent atheists and practising Christians? The answer to this question may lie in the reaction that Karen Armstrong receives for her text ‘The Bible: the Biography’.

Armstrong attempts to weave together modern Biblical criticism and a history of the spirituality of the people who wrote and have read the Bible. By focusing on how Jews and Christians have interpreted and more importantly experienced the Bible she manages to cast light and good sense on both the nature of the Good Book and the current mudslinging that passes as debate between the fundamentalist camps.

One of the focal ideas of Armstrong’s book is illustrated through the story of two of the disciples walking along the road to Emmaus after Jesus’s death, but before his resurrection was understood. A stranger joins the disciples and begins talking to them about the events of the last few days, before demonstrating how these events fulfil the writings of Moses and the Prophets. Later, as the stranger breaks bread, the disciples realise that they have been in the presence of Jesus and they ask “Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?” (Luke 24:32)

Since the destruction of their first Temple the Jews had found they would experience the divine presence (Shekhinah) when they read and discussed the Torah. (p72) Now the disciples literally experienced the divine presence as they discussed the scriptures. This was carried forward into the Christian tradition – as people came before the Bible with a sincere heart they could experience Shekhinah in the person of Jesus. John emphasised this point by saying that Jesus is the word become flesh. – Jesus was the embodiment of the scriptures and the Shekhinah.

This insight in Armstrong’s book is crucial for two reasons. Firstly this understanding of the relationship between the text and the Shekhinah helps explain why Jews and Christians have been so happy to interpret, allegorise and reinterpret the Bible down the centuries. If the divine presence/Jesus is present when the Bible is sincerely discussed and studied then God himself is intervening and is leading and guiding the interpretations. This reading resonates with most Christians today. Christians would say that they find that studying and discussing the Bible can lead to a sense of a living relationship with God, which would correlate with the earlier Jewish/Christian understanding of Shekhinah.

Secondly, Armstrong demonstrates how the Bible can be read seriously without being read literally. The authority of the Bible for Christians for most of the last 2000 years (and for Jews before that) has not stemmed from its unchangeable word for word accuracy, but in the manifestation of the Shekhinah when it is read, expounded and discussed with a sincere and contrite heart. Indeed, the manifold readings, ambiguities, interpretations and changes to the texts were crucial to the spiritual exploration and growth of God’s people.

Biblical fundamentalism, which emerged in the mid Nineteenth Century divorces the divine presence from the Bible and tries to make it stand alone by arguing that any sentence of the Bible is literally and rationally true to anyone in whatever context. This approach is a travesty because by taking it out of the context of community study and spiritual approach it emasculates the Bible from its depth of richness of truth and insight – the very opposite effect to what was intended. Although there are few in the UK that would take this approach to an extreme, its influence as a school of thought with evangelicalism is still considerable and Armstrong’s emphasis on the Shekhinah is a vital corrective.

Some secular readers may be uncomfortable with the extent to which Armstrong ‘buys into’ the spiritual approach to reading the scriptures. Christians not previously exposed to academic biblical criticism may struggle with Armstrong’s ready acceptance that many books in the Bible were not written or edited in the time or place they thought; or be irritated by Armstrong’s readiness to cast doubt on why Jesus was crucified and whether Jesus claimed to be the Messiah (p56). Yet none of these reservations should prevent readers from missing the central thrust of this book.

The Bible: the Biography could be a book of deepened understanding, connection and reconciliation for both Christians and secularists. Yet as Armstrong concludes: ‘We are a talkative and opinionated society and not always good at listening…we expect immediate answers to complex questions…this makes a truly spiritual reading of the Bible difficult’ (p 226). The impact of this book will depend not solely on the text published, but on the attitude people choose to adopt as they engage, discuss and interpret it.

picture: amazon.co.uk

To poll or not to poll, that is the question

2007-09-27T14:53:00.000+01:00

In all the feverish speculation amongst the tiny minority known as the 'political classes' about whether Gordon Brown will call a general election one thing seems to have been forgotten.

Do we, the public, really want a general election?

Unless I've missed something there has been no loud street protests demanding the chance to vote, no people queuing outside polling stations desperate for their chance to put a cross in a box. Any groundswell of popular support for a general election must be smaller than a beginner's mole hill.

We're just over two years into a five year parliamentary term and the public seem perfectly happy with the job Gordon is doing. Why would us hard working families want to bother going out on a rainy November evening just to massage Gordon's ego?

Come back and ask us in another year or two and then, sure, we'll come and join in and put a cross in a box, but don't play silly political games now just to get another couple of years in power.

And just a warning... if Gordon does go to the Queen in a week or two's time the Great British Public, not being particularly keen in being dragged into political shennanigans, might not play their part as the Labour party would wish.

picture: bbc.co.uk/news

Journey to Jon's World

2007-08-17T17:17:00.000+01:00

In my haste over the last few weeks it seems like I've forgotten to blog (not having internet access didn't help). Don't worry! I will be back... Thankfully in the meantime another Jon has stepped in to the blogging world - so see through his love of IBM and Formula 1 (!) and go and have a look at Jon's World.

It's all about relationships; well durr!

2007-07-10T11:09:00.000+01:00

It was refreshing to hear Iain Duncan Smith and Ed Milliband debating the value of marriage on ‘Today’ this morning. The main point of discussion was the £20 a week tax break for married couples if one parent stayed at home to look after children, but both MPs still managed to tie themselves in knots.

Duncan Smith was asked whether the £20 was a bribe to get more people to stay together and Ed Milliband was trying to say that he thought marriage was the ‘bedrock of our society’ whilst simultaneously saying that he didn’t mind whether people were married or not. Duncan Smith obviously didn’t want to call it a bribe, but at the same time didn’t want to say that the measure was pointless and would have no effect either.

The trouble was that the discussion was framed in the context of money and ‘incentives’. Do we really think that it is possible to incentivise people to have better relationships by giving them more money? It might have some effect on the margins – if a family is on a low income it might ease the pressure of debt, which is a major factor in breakdowns; it might enable a handful of married parents that wanted to stay at home to fulfil that wish, but surely this is just tinkering at the edges. Tax policy is an extremely blunt instrument when it comes to relationships – no wonder Duncan Smith and Milliband couldn’t cut themselves out of the tangled arguments they were having.

The best way to bring up children is in the context of committed relationships. It is not the only way, but it is the best way. I know of virtually no-one who would disagree. I watch friends in stable relationships with good support networks bring up children and I wonder how they manage. I am constantly amazed by the minor miracles that lone parents perform every single day. Ask an exhausted, overstretched lone parent whether they’d like a partner to support them in bringing up their children well and you can guess what they’ll say. To mend our ‘broken society’ as the conservatives call it we need to invest in our relationships – give our time, expertise and yes money to them.

The state of our relationships with our partner, family and friends is the biggest contributory factor to our happiness, but as a society we don’t systematically try and support people to deepen and strengthen them. However good our relationships are we all need to work at that and society needs to create spaces and places that people can do that – relationship health check ups, pre marriage classes, access to counselling and help before a crisis not when it’s already too late; retreat ‘time away’ weekends for couples…the list is endless.

Politicians believe that the only ‘levers’ of power they have are economic ones. Not true. We need people to lead the way in creating a culture where our relationships come first and politicians have a role to play. Bill Clinton in his 1992 election campaign famously posted the phrase “it’s the economy, stupid” – maybe now the sign should read “it’s all about relationships; well, durr.”

The Silver Ring Thing

2007-06-27T09:10:00.000+01:00

The battle over school uniform must be as old as school itself. The constant low level guerrilla warfare of teenagers seeing what they can get away with before a vigilant deputy head confiscates the three ear piercings, demands that the skirt be longer or orders the hair to be tied up. It’s not often that this attritional battle puts its head above the parapet as it did last week when a sixteen year old ended up in the high court over a ring. Lydia Playfoot claimed that her silver ring which symbolised her pledge of abstinence was a religious symbol and it was therefore discriminatory not to allow her to wear it - an ingenious tactic in the teenager-teacher contest.

It is also a disingenuous one. Lydia says that the silver ring is an expression of her bible believing Christianity which teaches abstinence before marriage. However, wearing a silver ring is not an integral part to the Christian faith – it is different to the command that Jews or Muslims should not eat Kosher or Halal foods. You can express or maintain sexual abstinence without wearing a silver ring.

One of the defining factors about the new Christianity in the early centuries was that there weren’t any fixed ways that you had to outwardly conform. Paul clearly says that non-Jews didn’t have to be circumcised to become Christians as some were claiming. Instead Christians were meant to ‘circumcise their heart’ meaning that as people’s hearts were changed on the inside by the love and forgiveness of Jesus that there would be visible outward changes in their actions. However, these outward actions wouldn’t be subject to any law or dos or donts, but that the love of God would freely shine out of them. In this context, teenagers may find it helpful and prudent to them to wear the silver ring to remind themselves and others of the pledge they have made, but it is not integral to the Christian faith.

Indeed, in an environment where the school has a responsibility to promote emotional literacy, good relationships and good sexual health it may be beneficial for the school to allow the wearing of the silver ring to encourage young people to think about the implications of having sex too early. The ABC approach to sex education encourages Abstinence outside of marriage first, if not abstinence then Being in stable relationships, if not in long term relationships then use Contraception. In this framework the silver ring thing could have a positive impact both on Linda and the wider peer group if the school chose to engage with it.

However, ultimately the school must decide their policy and if there is a fairly implemented, consistent uniform policy that forbids rings then Lydia Playfoot should abide by it.

To assert a right to wear a ‘religious’ symbol runs the risk of Christians ‘defending God’ because they feel that they are being discriminated against and are feeling squeezed out and under threat. Lydia’s father said that he saw the ban as symptomatic of the onward march of ‘secular fundamentalism’. This may or may not be the case. Aggressive secularism that seeks to expunge any mention of religion in the public sphere is one element in our society; but the way to address this trend is not to defend Christians’ own rights (did Jesus defend his ‘rights’ as the son of God when he was being taken to the cross?) but to preach through actions and words the good news that through Jesus, as a society we can ‘live life in all its fullness’.

The Silver Ring Thing is a useful and innovative idea which can help young people to build healthy sexual relationships. To try and defend its position in a school by equating it with other religious symbols may have short term gains, but skews the focus of how Christians need to be engaging in our society.

Hodge on Housing

2007-06-04T15:43:00.000+01:00

I’m a bit slow off the mark with this one, but a couple of weeks ago Labour minister Margaret Hodge, whose constituency is in East London got rounded on by her colleagues for posing the question: "In exercising that choice as an economic migrant, should they [migrants] then presume to have automatic access immediately to public social housing?" She went on to say that there was an ‘essential unfairness’ in the housing system biased against families that had grown up in the UK. The tone of Margaret Hodge’s comments make me uneasy – for a start migrants don’t have automatic or immediate access to public housing – the length of time varies on where they come from – for the EU accession countries it is 2 years; and many of immigrants I’ve spoken to don’t presume to have access to social housing at all, but expect to pay their own way for some years and are rather surprised to have access to social housing at the stage they do. Using language like this is misleading and aggravates the ‘fear of the other’ and the often defensive mindset of different communities.

Although Margaret Hodge was cak-handed in her comments, for Alan Johnson to say as he did a few days later "There is no evidence whatsoever that immigrants are causing a problem with social housing" was akin to sweeping the issue under the carpet.

No, of course immigrants don't go to the front of the queue, but three things do happen.

1. Asylum seekers get dispersed around the country and then when they gain indefinite leave to remain return to the area where their own community is to receive support – often East London. They then live in overcrowded housing and consequently gain more points on housing registers or bidding systems and significantly add to the numbers on these lists.

2. Economic immigrants come to the country and stay in private rented accommodation for a couple of years until they pass the habitual residence test and are entitled to benefits/public support. They then join the Council housing register and add pressure to it.

3. Where there are children of refugees or economic immigrants (who have satisfied habitual residence) involved the whole family is likely to be classed as priority need and get housed straight away.

These three issues significantly exacerbate the chronic housing shortages in the London area. This means that someone who has been working all their lives and paying NI contributions and then loses their job or suffers a relationship breakdown and becomes homeless the local authority can do nothing to help apart from placing them on a housing register which will take 3-5 years to yield them a property. The first time in their lives that they need the safety net of the state it does not provide. The ‘contract’ at the heart of the welfare state has failed them

It’s true that the economy benefits from diverse economic immigration, but the social infrastructure takes years and years to catch up – the issues in public housing are repeated in health services in East London. I hate to see any attacks on people based on race and long for more dialogue and story telling at community level so different communities understand where each other are coming from, but it is true that if you are a person that has been working in the UK for decades that the significant increase in immigration levels significantly reduces the chances of you getting housed quickly. To attack anyone says that as racist is not helpful, because we can’t address this housing crisis with practical solutions until we’ve acknowledged it and what many people feel is the root cause of it. If we don’t do this then the BNP will continue to look like the only party that’s dealing with issue head on.

The bulk of this post first appeared in the comments section of this post by Paul Burgin.

Walking on the quiet side

2007-05-22T11:35:00.000+01:00

Ask people why they go hill walking and one common answer is: ‘It's time to escape the busyness of our everyday lives, the crowded towns and cities’. People go for the peace and beauty of the hills and the freedom of walking along a ridge with a vast expanse of valleys, mountains, fields and the sea below. Even when the cloud and fog swirl in there’s still that sense of majestic otherness, of something completely beyond our whim and control that stands impassive and unchanging.

There are two ways to do hill walking. The first is to set a challenging route, bagging as many peaks as possible. Give yourself something to aim at and experience the satisfaction of completing each peak and the whole walk. The second way is to wait and to linger; to stop and to wonder; to dispense of agenda. So often I go to the hills to rest from doing – to go on holiday, but forget to stop. I replace one set of to do lists with another challenge to keep my thoughts occupied. I long to stop and be still, but am scared that I don’t know how.

Henri Nouwen, catholic priest and profound writer put it like this:

“My own restlessness, my need for companionship, my fear of rejection and abandonment made me flee solitude as soon as I had found it.

The resistance to solitude proved as strong as my desire for it.” (Our Greatest Gift, p19)

We all need to practice solitude. Only by stopping do we face ourselves and God. Even when I am alone at home the TV, radio, books, housework, computer, study all provide myriad easy excuse and worthy work which helps me avoid what I want to do. I need to “be still and know that He is God” and that He loves me without condition, whatever I think of myself and that He is “my refuge and my strength”. (David in Psalm 46) Without knowing that I am always restless, running away or avoiding myself. Surrendering to and trusting God takes me to where I need to be.

The second way of hill walking is always harder, but I want to go there more.

Time Flies: the generations since slavery

2007-03-27T12:18:00.000+01:00

This photo is one of many showing four generations of the Royal Family taken at the beginning of the twentieth Century. Queen Victoria was born in 1819 and the little boy at her side became Edward VIII and lived until 1972. 150 years in four generations. My own grandmother has six great-grand children of her own and their cumulative life span will doubtless be even greater.

On Sunday William Wilberforce’s great-great-great granddaughter (six generations), now in her 60s gave an interview on Songs of Praise talking about her ancestor’s work in abolishing the UK slave trade two hundred years ago. Andrew Hawkins, a descendent (fifteen or sixteen generations?) of the ‘pioneering’ slave trader from the sixteenth century Sir John Hawkins also appeared on the programme.

When we argue over whether we should apologise for the UK’s role in the slave trade two hundred years plus can seem like an eternity ago and an apology anathema. Place four generations of people in the same photo and two hundred years passes in the flash of a camera bulb. We all know what an impact our early years have on our development and attitudes in later life. Our grandparents are often important influences and figures in our lives and they are passing down lessons and teachings that they absorbed as children themselves.

Widen the picture to society in general – the institutions, the attitudes, the vested interests and the power structures and it becomes far clearer that we live daily in worlds shaped by the actions of our ancestors, both good and ill. Walk around Bristol, Glasgow and Liverpool and the grand merchant housing and buildings staring out into the Atlantic give a poignant reminder about the foundations of our wealth; the bricks and mortar symbol of intangible injustice.

Maybe we don’t need to apologise for the UK’s role in the slave trade – at least not at first. We need to understand our own history and more importantly acknowledge that we, as individuals cannot separate ourselves from it. The Israelites of the Old Testament understood this. The biblical book of Exodus says that “I the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments”. Sins and injustices perpetrated by others affect us down the generations unless we choose to break out from them.

The Greek word ‘repent’ in the Bible doesn’t just mean ‘apologise’ – it means turn around and start walking the other way. Maybe the reason we as a nation struggle to acknowledge our history is that by facing up to it we would be called to act today – to break down and speak out against unjust economic, social and political power structures where we see them, knowing that we might discover that down the generations we have benefited from those same structures more than we would like to think.

What went wrong? Western Impact and Middle Eastern Response by Bernard Lewis

2007-02-13T11:30:00.000Z

It’s easy to forget that the countries of Europe haven’t always been the dominant military, economic and political world powers. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries it was the Islamic world that defined ‘modern’ and was at the cutting edge of science and culture. Those travelling from the Maghreb, Turkey or the Levant saw little reason to travel to the backward lands of the Gauls, the Franks, or the Angle-Saxons. In ‘What went wrong?’ the eminent Professor Bernard Lewis takes the Long View. Why did the Ottoman Empire face long term relative decline vis a vis ‘the west’? Why did they fail to successfully respond to the challenge following the Western Renaissance and subsequent military and scientific progress? Why over four hundred years later do we still not see scientific discoveries emerge from the Middle East when the countries of South East Asia have come so far so fast?

Professor Lewis asks some interesting and pertinent questions, but fails to come up with any clear answers. The book is an amalgamation of three lectures and it shows. It meanders through war, music, science and art, repeatedly covering the same ground without coming up with any coherent arguments or exploring his assumptions about the benefits of modernisation. The text is as a watery soup, spiced with a lazy Orientalism, which leaves an uneasy taste in the mouth. Every page I kept expecting looking for the meat of the subject, but it was desperately lacking. There are a small number of exceptions – his discussion of the use of time and clocks and it’s take up in the Islamic world is fascinating and some of his anecdotes from Muslim diplomats residing in the west raise an interested smile.

We need incisive, self-aware scholarship in the debate about modernisation and Westernisation, preferably from Middle Eastern Scholars themselves. Bernard Lewis fails to add much beyond unhelpful generalisations and stereotypes, yet the book is still displayed prominently in major bookstores. My copy of ‘What Went Wrong?’ is waiting to go back to the charity shop from whence it came, although I hestitate, fearing that I would be subjecting someone else to the risk of picking it up to read. Cultural history and its impact on politics is a difficult, but potentially intriguing and revealing genre to investigate. Unfortunately on this evidence and despite his reputation Professor Lewis is not the man for this particular exploration.

What Went Wrong? Western Impact and Middle Eastern Response by Professor Bernard Lewis was first published in 2002.

The End of the Lion King - or Just the End of the Beginning?

2007-02-06T11:30:00.000Z

At the end of the Lion King Simba majestically walks onto Pride Rock and is anointed King with the blessing of Rafika, the monkey priest. But the land that Simba inherits has been ravaged by the hyenas. It lies cold, barren and grey. Simba looks like he’s got a major rebuilding job on his newly adult, lion paws. But no – as Simba stands aloof on the rock the countryside below him changes colour and is restored in seconds to its former beauty and fecundity.

Films and novels frequently portray a struggle for power in which the good guys prevail, but at considerable cost in terms of lives, land and social cohesion. The hard difficult, divisive work of reconstructing is yet to come. Yet in most cases what is actually only the end of the chapter is treated as the end of the story. The victory of the ANC in 1994 in South Africa has given way to the reality of the HIV crisis and corruption at high levels. The orange revolution in the Ukraine; the symbolic destruction of the Berlin Wall, the list goes on. The euphoria and cry of ‘things can only get better’ in the early hours of May 2nd 1997 wear off to leave… well you get the picture.

Are there any films or novels that deal with both the titanic struggle and the difficult rebuilding or, in terms of successful narrative are they different, mutually exclusive stories? The Lord of the Rings comes close, especially in the book. Remnants of the enemy rampage through The Shire and as Sam becomes mayor back at home and the hobbits have to clear up the mess. More poignantly Frodo has to deal with the shadows and nightmares that remain in his mind and to face up to his own frailties as ultimately he allowed the ring to control him. This kind of post-adventure trauma is rarely glimpsed in fiction, but it’s significant that it appears in one of the longest popular movies/novels of the twentieth century. Maybe there’s just not normally the time for such coverage. Maybe, it’s just not as interesting to deal with such material. As long as we remember that in reality it’s not as easy as Simba found it in the Lion King.

It's 'the Christians' versus 'the gays'. Again. Give me the mods and rockers any day.

2007-01-31T17:15:00.000Z

Another argument, another fight where the church ‘stands up for what it believes’, another media outing where Christians end up looking defensive, unloving and narrow minded. Jerry Springer, faith schools and now sexual orientation regulations. Sigh.

To briefly clear up the misunderstandings: Religious non-commercial (i.e. charities and churches) organisations are exempt from the regulations as long as they can show that it is necessary “(a) to comply with the doctrine of the organisation; or (b) so as to avoid conflicting with the strongly held religious convictions of a significant number of the religions followers.” Churches don’t have to hire out rooms to the local gay pride group if they choose not to. Ministers (who are specifically mentioned in the regulations) will still be allowed to condemn sexual orientation as a 'disease' in their preach should they be that way inclined. Churches and other organisations don’t even have to be organised enough to have it written in their statement of faith - as long as a significant number of their followers agree – that’s fine. The regulations only affect Christian businesses – and no, a Christian publisher wouldn’t be forced to print gay porn, because it would also refuse to print straight porn. However, it might have problems refusing to print a leaflet advertising a pro-gay march. Yes, it will affect a Christian bed and breakfast who didn’t want gay couples to stay in its rooms.

When the dispute over the sexual orientation equality regulations arose two questions came into my mind:

1) Is this a freedom of conscience issue even if the vast majority of the public disagree?

2) Are Christians right to fight for an exemption even if they do honestly believe that practicing homosexuality is wrong?

My immediate reaction to the first point was to think that surely a business can operate in a free country as a private entity and therefore choose to serve whoever it wants. However, businesses operate within the stability of the legal framework given to them by the government and business is regulated in hundreds and hundreds of ways. Whilst our society protects the right to own private property and forbid entrance to others at your whim or discretion once you register a business that legal entity becomes subject to regulation including discrimination legislation. In any case, as the opt outs above indicate religious groups have been granted freedom of conscience in this issue.

Should Christians fight for an exemption for Christian businesses? I don’t think so. Most Christians (some bedrudgingly) accept that people are gay and can’t do anything about it even if they wanted to, but say that the sin occurs when homosexual acts are practised. To take the bed and breakfast example – there are no guarantees that two men booking a room (even a double room) are going to have sex in the bed and who’s going to check?

The more important point though is that Christians should stop defending their own rights not to be upset for a second and welcome everyone in as created and loved by God, even when they personally find this difficult. Sacrificing what you consider to be your own rights for the sake of demonstrating Jesus to others is a hard thing to do. Paul says in his letter to the Philippians “Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus, who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant.” This doesn’t mean that Christians have to agree with everything someone says or does, but it will be a far more effective witness to the grace, compassion and Good News of Jesus than telling someone to go away. Based on the teachings of Jesus and the Bible, Christians should be at the forefront of social inclusion and equality not dragging their heels.

This brings me to the ‘gay adoption’ row. I help run a weekly activity for children on a local estate, most of whom are from broken homes. I constantly see the need, especially although not only from among the boys for strong, positive role models of the same sex. Hopefully the work I do plays a small part in providing that role model, but ultimately that figure needs to comes from within the home – day to day, month to month, year to year contact. Adopted children who are likely to have had a very disadvantaged start to their life are likely to need this even more. Therefore I really struggle with the idea that a boy should be placed for adoption/fostering with two women or visa-versa, however loving or stable that home might be.

Now the Catholic Adoption agencies already place children with single parents and this is not ideal for either parent and child (having seen exhausted friends *with* partners bring up a family I am constantly in awe of any single parent that manages to bring up a child). However, being adopted into any stable, loving home is better than living in care, so it may be a necessity. All children’s law puts the interest of the child right at the heart of every case, above that of the rights of the adults involved. Therefore Adoption agencies, all other factors being equal, should be able to differentiate between (not turn away anyone) a married couple, heterosexual partners, a gay couple and single parents when considering a placement for the long term good of the child. This would be a very specific very unusual exemption which would exist not to defend Christians right not to be offended or upset, but for the long term good of a child.

Maybe, just maybe if the Christians who campaigned against these regulations (who don’t represent everyone in the faith) had started from the point of view of defending others’ equality and interests rather than themselves this argument might have ended in a different place than the other public disputes of the past two years. Perhaps next time?

20 Questions to a fellow blogger

2007-01-31T17:12:00.000Z

Paul Burgin over at Mars Hill invited me to answer ‘Twenty Questions to a fellow blogger’ which I did in my normal concise style (!!) You can read it here.

Death and taxes: the NHS has become the battleground for survival

2007-01-30T21:23:00.000Z

Alice Mahon (former MP) today became the latest in a growing line of people threatening to take legal action against the NHS. Calderdale Primary Care Trust (PCT) have refused to prescribe her a series of injections of a new treatment to prevent her going blind costing several thousand pounds because it has not yet been approved for use by NICE. When Ann Marie Rogers went to court in order to try and obtain cancer drug Herceptin on the NHS she was originally refused, but won her case on appeal. NICE then ordered Herceptin to be made available across the country.

Individuals can’t be blamed for trying every available avenue open to them to secure treatment for a disease that could severely affect quality of life or cause their deaths. However, one person’s successful battle for treatment means another’s cut in funding, extended waiting list and death. In November doctors in Norwich estimated that funding Herceptin for 75 people would mean around 200 people not receiving chemotherapy. There must be hundreds of other examples across the country where one person has managed to work the system to their advantage leaving other services on which people depend without the resources they need to function to save more lives. We may not literally fight each other in the UK for our survival anymore, but the natural instinct for self preservation above all others is still alive and well.

We are all fighting for scarce resources and NICE and NHS trust managers are caught in the middle holding the purse strings having to make incredibly difficult decisions about the most effective use of funds and, to put it bluntly, who should live and who should die. It seems ludicrous that a court of appeal judge is able to make a decision about a drug’s or treatment’s availability without ever having a chance of appreciating the complexity of choices NICE and NHS managers have to make and without having to deal with the subsequent implications for funding of other treatments. If we want the fairest outcome for all people, not just those able to take their claim to court the decision must be left in the hands of the medical experts and trust managers. They won’t always make the ‘right’ decision because managing funding is not an exact science and you can’t always anticipate the consequences of funding a particular treatment, but at least the decision will be made taking into account all the factors. We need a transparent system, with a means of appeal within the NHS so that patients can understand the decisions made, but judges need to recognise that they cannot rule on something so far reaching.

In the meantime as a country it is time to start deciding what our priorities are – do we want to invest in quality of life or length of life? Is dying with dignity more important than curing all diseases? In a consumer society this is a tough conversation to have because we are used to the idea that we can have everything if only we can discover it and pay for it. We hide from our collective mortality, even when dealing with our frail ill health. But however much money gets taken from our payment packets and ploughed into the NHS we will all still get ill and die. The NHS proves once and for all that however hard you try you cannot avoid death or taxes.

The magnificent man still in his flying machine: Tony Blair vows to fly on.

2007-01-09T19:03:00.000Z

Tony Blair has announced that he has no plans to stop using long haul flights, although under pressure he has announced that all his flights, both ministerial and personal will be ‘carbon neutral’.

Offsetting Carbon emissions by planting trees is fine as a short term mechanism and certainly better than nothing, but what happens in 40 years when the trees rot and decay? The carbon in them is released again. These articles and diagrams from the New Internationalist show clearly why offsetting will salve some consciences, but is not a long term solution.

It is true that not flying is the biggest single action that an individual can take to reduce their carbon emissions. One short haul flight can wipe out hundreds of saved car journeys and thousands of energy saving lightbulbs. Flying already contributes 3% of the UK’s CO2 emissions and is expected to grow significantly. Blair argued that not flying would damage the economy, but the Stern Report showed that not dealing with climate change would have a far bigger and possibly devastating impact on the world economy.

If we’re going to change our lifestyles in any way reducing our flights is the best option.

In addition to not flying we ought to choose not to fly we ought to write to an airline explaining our decision: Carbon free flying is estimated to be 35-50 years away at the moment – if airlines became worried about their profits that timescale could be dramatically reduced. (Incidentally this is also why I support airlines being bought into the Carbon emissions trading scheme with tough year on year reductions in credits to incentivise green innovation.)

However, I’ve argued before that we must seek largescale scientific and political solutions to climate change that involve China and India whose emissions of C02 are rising exponentially – we don’t have time to be messing around recycling.

The unsightly media scrum descending on Tony Blair’s personal choices is therefore not only slightly distasteful and puerile, but more importantly misses the point. Unlike most of the rest of us, there are dozens of political decisions that Blair could prioritise that would have a massive impact on the environment. I would happily swap Tony Blair commuting from Sydney every morning by private Concorde if he prioritised:

a) pushing a tough EU wide carbons emissions trading scheme,

b) investing the same amount of money into clean energy technology as into Trident

c) facilitating fast, effective and cheap technology transfer to China and India

d) a tidal barrage on the Severn (5% UK electricity), a new generation of Nuclear power stations and a solar panel and wind turbine on every new home.

If he did all this he could even take John Prescott, his long-lost great-aunt-Doris and the entire England Cricket team with him if he wanted.

Twenty-Eight years later and there's plenty of Life in Brian

2007-01-04T20:55:00.000Z

Monty Python are great. I love sitting down and watching their eccentric, off the wall, irreverent humour. As I’m also partial to mediocre time-filling talking heads programmes I was pleased to flick over to the ‘Secret life of Monty Python’ on Channel 4 the other day which focused on the making of and controversy surrounding the Life of Brian. I’ve seen Life of Brian many times and it’s one of my favourite films. However, as people who have watched it with me will testify, apart from the first time I saw it I always leave the room with about ten minutes to go. This coincides with the crucifixion of Brian to the song of ‘Always look on the Bright side of Life’.

When Life of Brian first came out in the UK in 1979 many Christians, led by Mary Whitehouse and the Festival of Light movement (which was later renamed CARE) tried to get the film banned because of it’s ‘blasphemous’ nature, particularly the last few minutes. Although it was classified as an AA (14 years plus) certificate a significant minority of local authorities did refuse to show the picture as they were legally entitled to do. Watching the Channel 4 programme made me wonder whether a 26 year old Jonathan Chilvers would have been amongst those campaigning for the film to be banned in 1979 or not. Britain twenty-eight years ago was a very different place and the group of churches to which I belong has some roots in the Festival of Light movement and many Christians at the time felt that the vestiges of Christian Britain needed to be defended and boundaries drawn.

Although it has its downsides, generally I feel fortunate that I have been born into a post-Christian culture and a non-Christian upbringing which means that I’ve never felt that I’ve had anything boundaries or traditions to defend. I don’t feel that I have to make a last ditch effort to man the barricades to stop the tide of secularism and apathy flooding our religious shore. Instead I can focus my energies on proclaiming the central message of Christianity through what I say and do. My central confidence means that if God is true then he is big enough to take whatever people choose to throw at him. As Joel Edwards, head of the Evangelical Alliance (an umbrella group of churches) put it:

“Earlier this year[2006] the Archbishop of Canterbury gave a sermon about terrorism being a form of blasphemy, because it suggests that God is too weak to look after His own honour. The terrorist feels they have to step in with violence to do His work for Him.

I think that sometimes we have engaged in a form of verbal terror that has the same roots. Evangelicals must recognise that we can be secure in our faith in God, and this security then frees us to be risky and curious at the same time...[we need to] resist the knee-jerk tendency to protest everything(sic)… our role is not to monitor mischief but to proclaim this good news that brings spiritual and social transformation to society.”

I am relieved that twenty five years on I am able to sit down and watch ‘Life of Brian’ as often as I want and that the Pythons were allowed to poke fun at religion. Like all of human life religion throws up comical situations and humour can be a great way to cut through pomp, posturing and arrogance. How did acting as a holier-than-thou defensive pressure group help more people see and hear the central message of Christianity? It didn’t. Christianity is not about forcing people to conform to moral standards they don’t agree with in order that Christians feel safe and happy in the world.

Paul says in the Bible that ‘everything is permissible, but not everything is beneficial’. I don’t watch the last ten minutes of Life of Brian because visual and aural memories can be very powerful and long lasting. I don’t have many visual images of crucifixion in my mind and I don’t think it’s beneficial to my daily walk with God to have that sequence of film and song in my head when I’m praying or thinking about the death of Jesus. I’m not offended, I just don’t think it’s helpful for my subconscious concept of God and my relationship with Him. It’s probably not beneficial to other people’s view of God either and part of me wishes that people didn’t see ten minutes of film that may contribute to them dismissing a part of Christianity which could have a huge impact on their lives. However, individual free will and responsibility is a vital component of the Christian message and one that fed into the enlightenment idea of liberalism and a free press. It’s a concept that I would never want to obscure and Christians must find ways to challenge people’s attitudes towards Jesus within this context through what they say and do.

On the Channel 4 programme Terry Gillam wondered aloud whether in the current climate of religious groups loudly taking offence, a film such as Life of Brian would still be commissioned. I don’t know what I would have said in 1979, but if the remaining Pythons ever want to make anything even half as good as the Life of Brian I’ll be watching.

Women or prostitutes?

2006-12-16T14:13:00.000Z

The horrific murders in Ipswich have led to a debate in the media about how the people killed should be described. Many people have said that the newsreaders shouldn’t say ‘5 prostitutes have been murdered’ because the word ‘prostitute’ labels them negatively. The word ‘women’ should be used to emphasise that these people had homes, families and cares just like everyone else. Others have argued that the fact that the women were prostitutes is a central part of the story – it is prostitutes that have been targeted. Both are right: there is a temptation in all of us to strip people of their humanity by using derogatory labels (gypsies, commies, niggers etc), but the press need to communicate the story. Perhaps ‘five women working as prostitutes’ should be used?

This formulation is also problematic. Should prostitution be described as ‘work’? Work implies that society recognises prostitution as a valid way of making a living. Could someone working as a prostitute be one of Tony Blair’s ‘hard working families’ receiving working tax credits and the minimum wage? The International Union of Sex Workers wants to see prostitution classed as a proper job with employment protection. I have heard a number of contributions in the news recently from groups representing or supporting sex workers who have implied that women have to work the streets to provide and support their children in the same way that others go to work.

This is nonsense. It can never be beneficial for any child to have a mother working in prostitution. Working as a prostitute is physically dangerous, chaotic and destroys your sense of self-esteem and self-image. It is not a freely taken life ‘choice’ and should not be seen as a ‘job’ in the normal sense. No UK national has to work in prostitution purely for financial reasons – the government provides child benefit, child tax credit and maternity grants as well as housing if you have children. The majority of UK women working as prostitutes are there because they need to sustain a crack or heroin habit – a dependence that unscrupulous dealers or family members may have encouraged. Women may feel they are stuck, fearful of pimps or family members or unable to escape their addiction.

The housing charity Shelter found in their report on sex workers that: “While society may view prostitution as the biggest problem for these women, the women themselves relate it to their homelessness, drug use, and lifestyles characterised by poverty, chaos, and desperate choices.” We should be supporting women working as prostitutes to escape their chaotic, dangerous lives. This is never easy as women may need years of assistance to escape the cycles of fear, dependence and poverty. There are many voluntary organisations that do work with women on the streets such as UTurn in East London, Streetreach in Doncaster and Real Choices in Manchester and these need extending and funding. It was heartening to hear that Suffolk Police are now working with the local Council to house women on the streets, voluntary organisations who offer harm reduction and support and have themselves set up an emergency fund to deal with basic living needs and so are ‘slowly dealing with the reasons that women need to be on the streets in the first place’. It is sad that it takes five murders to produce such a well-coordinated response.

The media and society at large must avoid labelling women who are prostitutes as if they are a ‘dirty’ sector of society - different to us or unreachable. Through voluntary organisations at local level we must support women stuck in prostitution and help them recover their sense of freedom and self. Prostitution should not be described as work. It is life driven and marred by dependence and abuse.

The Perfect Daily Express.

2006-12-08T16:24:00.000Z

It's just a pity they didn't try a bit harder and get the migrant scare story in earlier than page 7.

Should we renew our Nuclear deterrent?: Two arguments based on different attitudes to risk

2006-11-28T10:42:00.000Z

1: The minimise risk argument

“I believe climate change is, without doubt, the major long-term threat facing our planet.” Tony Blair, February 2006

“Terrorism is the greatest 21st century threat.” Tony Blair, November 2003

The two greatest threats to the security and stability of our planet and the UK are climate change and extremist-Islamic terrorism. The rise in global temperature of anywhere between 2 and 6 degrees Celsius by the end of the century will cause flooding, starvation and migration on an unprecedented scale unless we act now. Dirty bombs or biological terrorist attacks could destabilise the world’s economy and prompt retaliatory attacks which could plunge the planet into a growing cycles of violence. In this framework how do we decide whether or not to renew the UK’s nuclear deterrent?

Our current system of approximately 200 trident missiles based in four vanguard submarines is due to expire in the mid-2020s. It will have cost us £15bn in today’s prices to acquire (about £0.5bn for every year of service) and between £1.2bn and £2.2bn per year to maintain. Costs of upkeep are budgeted at 3 and 5.5% of the MoD’s annual expenditure and come out of the department’s standard budgets. As a comparison the annual budget of the NHS in 2007/8 is predicted to be £105.6bn, a bill exceeded only by Social security expenditure. A new system would cost around £20bn, again probably for a lifespan of around thirty years in addition to an ongoing maintenance budget. It is clear that if we want a new system or we wanted to extend the lifespan of trident we could afford it.

But is it worth the money if it is not addressing the two main threats that face our planet? Should we not be prioritising huge investment in research into clean energy sources and invest resources to protect us from terrorism and address root causes around the globe? Nuclear weapons do not contribute anything to dealing with either of these threats – against whom would we retaliate if an Islamic extremist drove a barge up the Thames and detonated a nuclear device on it? Some will argue that it is not possible to know the threat that we will face in thirty years time from an authoritarian Russia, a dominant China or another state. Old fashioned interstate warfare may be out of fashion, but is likely to return in the future. We need to maintain our deterrent for such a future to ensure that we are not bullied in international affairs by those that retain nuclear weapons. There is a possibility that we could retain a ‘virtual nuclear arsenal’; that is we would retain a stock pile of fissile material without having any warheads. We could revive our nuclear weapons capability within 6-24 months. The problem with this idea is that we would not have a delivery system available – we have no plans for suitable aeroplanes (e.g. stealth bombers) and if we decommission trident, no submarines. It is a truism to say that we don’t know what the future holds, but again it comes down to an issue of priorities. If after we’ve worked out what we need to spend on climate change and international terrorism we feel we can afford a trident replacement it should be pursued.

2: The maximise peace argument

The argument for retaining the nuclear deterrent is based on the concern that if other nations have it then we need it in order to ensure that unscrupulous states cannot threaten us with weapons with no fear of reprisal. Yet everyone, including those who support maintaining a nuclear deterrent agree that we should move towards a world without nuclear weapons. Although multilateral arms reduction has significantly reduced the size of some nation’s arsenals (noticeably the USA and Russia, but also the UK) no state that has possessed nuclear weapons capability has ever renounced it (South Africa never tested a nuclear weapon) and there seems to be no likelihood of it happening in the near future through multilateral negotiations.

For the UK to renounce the nuclear deterrent would be an historic move and allow Britain to commit itself to leading the way to push for the world that we all want where we don’t think that we might have to blow each other up. Giving up the deterrent would need to be seen as a first step as we committed ourselves to ‘making peace with as much effort as we put into going to war’ (Ron Sider). To unilaterally renounce our nuclear deterrent would be a risk, but it carries the possibility of a huge peace dividend in the long term. It would be a calculated risk. It is never comfortable to do something different and lead the way. It is always easier to keep the nuclear deterrent because everyone else has, but history is not made by people or nations that don’t have the vision to challenge the status quo. The principle behind argument 1 is to maximise and manage our safety within existing political boundaries, but doesn’t believe that it’s possible to push back those boundaries and deal with the root causes of our fear. Unilaterally disarming would be a prophetic action by a nation in that we would show that we had a vision for a world without nuclear weapons.

It would have to be a decision by a nation. This could not be made by leaders alone, but would need to have the understanding and support of the country. If in forty years time we are being bullied by China into actions because they are threatening us with nuclear weapons if we don’t comply and we don’t have the capacity to retaliate, we as a nation need to be able to say that we took the decision to disarm understanding the risks because we believed that it was worthwhile pursuing peace.

We’re not in that place as a nation now and to be honest, I don’t know whether we will ever be in that position. It is the place of our leaders to open up the discussion to see whether the UK as a nation can be strong enough to count the cost, take the risk and resolutely pursue peace.

Ten things I would never do

2006-11-23T20:10:00.000Z

I’ve been tagged to complete this blogging meme by Paul Burgin:

10. Become an accountant

9. Say that football was a better game than cricket

8. Leave my wife

7. Give up in a game of monopoly

6. Eat a tarantula

5. Wax my legs

4. Go into space

3. Stop reading

2. Say that I was 100% right

1. Complete any Top 10 blogging memes (hang on… oops)

Faith Schools: from theology to practice

2006-10-29T18:26:00.000Z

Schools are the battleground of ideas that will define the future of our society. Children will be hugely influenced by what you tell them at a young age. As a society what are we going to teach the next generations in our schools? People with strong belief systems (whether religious or secular) are therefore likely to have robust opinions about schooling and in particular faith schools. In the midst of this debate I want to set out what I consider would be a good Christian school starting with theology, moving through values to policy. I write using the Christian example, but I don’t believe that this rules out a good Muslim school. This piece is not designed to defend all faith schools or their policies and the approach here is not that of all Christian schools.

There is a strong emphasis in the Bible on ‘building God’s kingdom’ (Many of you like me who went to a C of E school will have learned the Lord’s prayer - ‘Thy Kingdom Come on Earth as it is in Heaven’ – my italics). This means that we are (very junior) partners with God in creating a society as God intended it to be before we all got tangled up in sin. In the gospels ‘God’s kingdom’ is compared to earthly kingdoms which are held together by force and coercion and God’s Kingdom which comes about through people’s free choice.

There is also an emphasis in Christianity about giving freely of the good things that we have, with no strings attached. God gave his son freely to the human race and allowed him to die and we should follow God’s example with our money, ideas, gifts and time. Therefore if Jesus says that He can give life in all its fullness and we find that to be true then Christians have a responsibility to assist and support people and communities who choose to do that.

Schools are an important building block in society and also an arena where Christians can give freely of valuable (certainly not complete) understanding of how to live life well. Crucial positive values and practices for schools can emerge from the theological roots crucial outlined above: that each individual treated as someone created with loved by God with unique gifts; a strong caring community rooted in compassion (not just tolerance or respect) for others; and modelling strong moral characteristics including self-confidence, giving selflessly and leading others wisely and honestly. For all the evil that has been done in the name of Christianity down the years there is also a strong tradition and working out of these values as part of faith down the years and within the church there is still an explicit desire to practice and live these tough values, with God’s help.

Whilst it is possible to instil these values in children in a secular school and there are many good schools with excellent head teachers and staff that do this, it is hard to do. We live in a society where learning to live well is not normally explicitly practised or desired. You cannot just turn ‘values’ on at a tap. They have to come from somewhere and they have to be practised. We all know that we’d like to be kinder; more self-assured without arrogance; wiser leaders, but if it was easier to do our country would be a lot better place to live in. I’m not saying that churches have this sorted by any stretch of the imagination, but that they are rooted in a history hundreds of years long of people who down the years have tried with God’s help to practise these values. There is also more likely to be an explicit subculture in a faith to encourage each other to learn to live well that can be passed on into a school and be a defining feature of it for many decades. A church aims to be in a community for generations; a head teacher, however good at creating a positive school culture will not.

To return then, to the principle of freely giving of what we have which is good. On these grounds selection on the grounds of faith in church schools is wrong. If, as Christians we are genuinely giving freely and sacrificially as God did then we cannot create schools just for our own children. I know that as a parent I would find this more difficult to say, but Christians should expect no favours from faith schools because of their beliefs. No selection would also rule out the sham of parents attending church to get their children in. That is bribing parents to attend church and God’s kingdom is not built by coercion.

If parents do not want to send their children to a faith school they are free to send them elsewhere and eventually faith schools or particular ones would close down. However, this is not the pattern at the moment and my experience working in London’s East End was that most parents found Christian values instinctively attractive, even if they were of no faith, nominal faith or other faiths. I have heard a number of Muslims say that they would rather send their children to a Christian school than a secular school, because of the values system and also that holding one faith can aid respect of someone holding another. The details and practice of a different faith can be worked out and taught at home and through the Mosque.

To build God’s Kingdom in society and to give freely of what we have that is good as God did. These two principles should be at the centre of all Christian faith schools. A friend of mine always used to explain a Christian community project he ran by saying that ‘faith was his motivation, not his hidden agenda’. The schooling of our children will rightly always produce passionate debates because the development and input they have at an early age is so important in who they turn out to be. My hope is that this debate will not always be as fraught as it has been in the past week as all sides seek to understand each others' motivations and make clear own agendas.

Find ‘The Squid and the Whale’ in a film of family break-up

2006-10-11T08:45:00.000+01:00

If you’re looking for a film about sea mammals or a cute cartoon with talking fish, you’ve come to the wrong place. Maybe you should try here or here instead. If you’re more interested in a short feature about how teenage children cope with divorce then stick with me.

The Squid and the Whale focuses on one literary New York family during the traumatic first few months after separation. The film focuses on the loyalties of the two boys, Walt and Frank as they are pulled between their two trying-to-be-civil-but-not-really-managing-it parents. The parents, Bernard and Joan start out with the best of intentions about arranging an amicable split in the interest of their kids, but cannot help but say exactly the wrong thing and under a veneer of suburban reasonableness the tug of war quickly becomes more savage. Both children suffer confusion and doubt as their moral compass is spun around and writer/director Noah Baumbach perceptively captures the responses of the two different age teenagers. Angry at his mum for cheating on his dad the older Walt follows his father’s advice to ‘play the field’ and starts to make the same mistakes his father made. His younger brother’s reaction is portrayed as exhibiting itself through misbehaviour at school and running away between parents as he is unable to express the anger and confusion he feels.

Emotionally the parents are a mess, but the father especially seems to have no-one else on whom he can emotionally offload apart from his son. Expecting Walt to deal with his baggage as well as his own creates an insufferable burden. In one scene, seeing his dad sitting lonely in his new apartment, Walt feels he has to invite his dad along to a movie with his friend. Bernard then enters a relationship with one of his students as he tries to fulfil his emotional needs. The film is an indictment of the isolation and lack of community support in modern day living and also raises questions on a personal and political level about what support we can give separating parents. At the moment in the UK parents may get relationship counselling prior to break up, but following separation this normally stops and many couples get pushed unnecessarily towards solicitors and an adversarial legal set up. Many aren’t aware of the 3rd party mediation services that are available.

The film is devised as a short, intense feature and is very successful within this remit. However, it would have benefited from weaving in the story of a second family going through separation which would give Baumbach the opportunity to explore different ways parents and consequently their children handle family breakdown.

If you’ve got this far and are still wondering about the Squid and the Whale then you’ll have to go and watch this fascinating film to find out where they fit in, but don’t hold your breath looking for sea mammals.

Lifting the veil?: Jack Straw’s comments articulate discomfort that we all need to address

2006-10-10T11:29:00.000+01:00

I’ve only spoken to women wearing the veil on a small handful of occasions, but based on these meetings I have sympathy with Jack Straw’s comments last week. Over two-thirds of our communication is non-verbal and you quickly realise how much you rely on people’s facial gestures when you can’t see them. (Radio requires unique skills to do well and there is a reason why it’s not considered the ‘done thing’ to end a relationship over the ‘phone.) More than that though, because someone’s face is so much part of who they are as a person I find it deeply unsettling that people aren’t willing to share or display that individuality and sense of self. Instead they prefer to walk around incognito and stripping themselves of their individuality and personhood in terms of their relationship with the public world.

As someone with faith I respect and understand people’s desire to be completely committed to what they believe even when this is counter to the prevailing culture. However, to genuinely respect that decision rather than to merely tolerate it I need to understand and challenge women who wear the veil about why they do it and why it is an important part of their faith. This is especially important where there is a widespread belief amongst non-Muslims that wearing the veil is part of male oppression.

It’s not enough for women to say ‘I wear the veil because it’s part of my religion’ – not all Muslim women wear the veil. Why is it an integral part of the faith – how does it aid surrender and obedience to God? Is it an outward symbol of a deeper understanding or truth about who God has made us? How does wearing the veil fit within different tenets of Islam’s understanding of the roles and interaction between men and women? How does it enhance and contribute towards the quality of relationships within the Muslim Community? What exactly is the connection between the veil and relationships between men and women? Such questions are primarily for discussion within Islam, but non-Muslims should not shy away from asking searching questions in a spirit of understanding and engagement, especially on the basis of good one to one relationships.

Women have the right to wear the veil, but without hearing from Muslim women who make this choice directly I find it a puzzling decision when it hides and strips away such an important part of women’s individuality and personhood. Jack Straw’s comments are welcome and timely and articulate many people’s vague sense of discomfort (Listen to the radio phone-ins the day after). Straw’s actions can spark a more honest dialogue that can build bridges between Muslim and non-Muslim communities. Women who wear the veil have a responsibility to explain their decision rather than respond to these measured comments as if making them was a threat to them practicing their beliefs. The rest of us must seek a genuine respect of others beliefs and ask the right questions.

Morals or safety at the Israeli embassy – we need to know

2006-10-05T14:23:00.000+01:00

The media has got themselves in a muddle over the case of PC Alexander Omar Basha, the Muslim police officer moved from guarding the Israeli Embassy. The Sun, which broke the story this morning said that PC Basha was moved on ‘moral grounds’. The Muslim Association of Police Officers have said the reasoning was based on the officer’s ‘welfare’. (See this BBC news article.)

Scenario 1: Credible and specific threat – moved on grounds of welfare
If PC Basha has received credible and specific threats against the welfare of himself or family because he is guarding the Israeli embassy (presumably from Muslims who are against Israeli foreign policy) then his reassignment could be considered on safety grounds. If PC Basha was to publicly state that he was to remain guarding the Israeli embassy despite threats this would be a courageous gesture. It would demonstrate that he believed that violence towards any party in the Middle East was unacceptable even if he believed that Israeli foreign policy was fundamentally flawed. However this decision would be a difficult personal one and he should not be blamed if he decided not to take it.

Scenario 2: No credible and specific threat – moved on moral grounds
If PC Basha has received no specific or credible threat against himself and has been moved only on moral grounds then this is unacceptable. It indicates that either he is a pacifist and does not believe in the use of force (in which case he cannot be a police officer) or it indicates that he believes that people have the right to physically attack the Israeli embassy and those working there and representing Israel. Even if PC Basha fundamentally opposes and objects to Israeli foreign policy (the Sun claims that he has taken part in anti-war marches over the recent conflict in Lebanon) he cannot even tacitly support individual’s desire to harm Israeli property or people. He must either resign or guard the embassy.

It’s still not clear which scenario is in play. We need clarification from the Met as soon as possible.

There's no fire without smoke

2006-10-03T10:25:00.000+01:00

After the overwhelming lead taken by Common Sense at the fire fuelled Bridport Carnival in August it seems that Red Tape and Bureaucracy have pulled a goal back in Watford.

(Thanks to Kerron Cross for highlighting this)

Top four ways to smuggle drugs into prison

2006-09-19T10:40:00.000+01:00

1. In your backside. Prison trousers are specially designed to be strong and small to try and prevent people discreetly slipping drugs into…and through their pocket at visiting time.

2. In a birthday card. Cut horizontally through a thick birthday card and lay your drugs as flat as possible inside the card before resealing the corner.

3. Swallowed – enough said.

4. In your shoe. Cut out a square inside your trainers before placing your packet inside and gluing it down again. Wear insoles for extra cover.

When someone is desperate and determined enough to get their heroine, cocaine or cannabis into prison it’s almost impossible to stop them. You can search prisoners, but you can’t check every piece of mail and you certainly can’t search every visitor. Even if the prison service had more resources it wouldn’t be worth spending them on tightening regimes to try and cut out drugs in prison completely.

Any resources would be far better spent on helping prisoners who want to ‘do their rattle’ and come off heroine whilst they are inside. Prison is lonely and can be a time of reflection. In the space that prison can provide we should be offering more people courses to help them understand when and why they use in preparation for when they get out.

Many prisoners come out with good intentions which are very quickly dashed, because either they:
- Don’t know how to cope with the uncertainties of freedom and so turn back to the only way they do know to regulate their fears.
- Have nowhere to live on leaving prison - the problems mount up and using is the obvious escape.

Prison is necessary to protect the public from a relatively small number of individuals who are a danger to the public. But for many a ‘short, sharp, shock’ simply disrupts any progress that is being made on the outside and leaves prisoners back at square one when they get out: without a secure or any home, in a cycle of drug use, theft and user-on-user violence.

Things are improving slowly. For instance, there is greater communication between the probation and prison service than there used to be and there is some preparation for outside life when you’re inside, but there is still a long, long way to go. There is frequent worried headshaking in the media that drugs are readily available in prison. They’d do better to be concerned that the help and preparation needed for successful living in mainstream society is not.

Uncle Tom's Cabin: Part one

2006-09-07T17:36:00.001+01:00

Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe joins a long list of novels which are written with the primary motive of persuading the reader of the validity of a political cause – in this case for the abolition of slavery in the US in the mid nineteenth century. In most cases the cause quickly overwhelms the artistic integrity of the novel and it plunges into obscurity. What great works of fiction are remembered from the Russian and Chinese socialist literature of the 1930s and 1940s? Occasionally the novel and the cause dovetail to produce a seminal work that takes its place in literary and political history. Tolstoy wrote for overtly political purposes in the late 19th century as he longed to see a reformed Russia. The Women’s room by Marilyn French published in 1977 had an impact on the lives of millions of women, but by most accounts (I haven’t read it) is an extremely good novel. Uncle Tom’s Cabin deserves to join such exalted company, despite the occasionally overbearing authorial voice and some shoddy sentence construction.

That it had a huge impact on 1850s America is beyond question. When Abraham Lincoln was introduced to Harriet Beecher Stowe he is famously attributed as saying "So you're the little woman who wrote the book that made this great war!". The narrative of the book is compelling. Stowe traces the journey of two slave heroes (George Harris and Uncle Tom) through the subtleties and harshness of slavery. George Harris attempts escape to Canada with his family who are about to be sold individually to different owners. Uncle Tom hates his slavehood, but chooses to submit to his masters out of Christian piety (and strength?), with painful but dramatic results.

Where Harris’ story takes him out of slavery, Tom’s story burrows right to its core and explodes it. It is therefore with the journey of Tom that Stowe is most concerned and as a Christian it is also the more challenging. Stowe’s primary concern is the affects of slavery on both master and slave. Through Tom’s journey we see slavery through the eyes of the benevolent, but apathetic owner (St.Clare), the northern visitor (Miss Ophelia) and the tyrant master (Simon Legree). Stowe is critical of them all and the social groupings they represent. St. Clare alleviates his conscience by treating his servants well. He does not beat them and believes slavery to be wrong, but is not prepared to step out publicly and challenge his peers or rock the boat. Through the relationship of Miss Ophelia and the abused black girl Topsy, Stowe brilliantly uncovers the distaste and prejudice that many northerners felt towards black people whilst still calling for abolition. Stowe expects a lot of her characters – personal piety and a comfy, lukewarm, socialised morality is not enough. The true Christian is expected to risk exclusion, jeering, financial, familial and social disaster in actively and wholeheartedly challenging the evil they see around them.

In this, it is Tom that leads the way. As he enters the hell of Legree’s plantation he battles to keep his faith and the souls of all those around him (both owner and slave) alive. For Stowe slavery is a system that has so brutalised and marred the identity of all involved that the participants are little more than animals. Formerly ‘good people’ like Cassy are sucked into the swamp of anger and violence and inadvertently try and pull Tom down with them. To triumph Tom must beat and transcend the system by refusing to play by its rules. He turns away the opportunity to ‘take his liberty’ and kill Legree for he knows that it will be a false victory that will only mar his race and sink humanity as a whole further into the pit.

The power and pull of a brilliantly crafted story of an unlikely hero fighting for his and others’ souls makes this a great novel, despite the intermittent weaknesses in style and prose. The story of George Harris has only two endings: either makes it to safety or he doesn’t. The journey of Tom seems to take on cosmological significance as it cracks open and draws out the central venom of slavery and it easy to see, one hundred and fifty years later, why Uncle Tom’s Cabin shook America to its core.

Bridport Carnival: Common Sense 1400 - Red Tape and Bureaucracy 0.

2006-08-29T10:39:00.000+01:00

Last week I attended the Bridport Carnival and torchlight procession. After all the floats with dinosaurs on and majorettes had paraded past, over 1400 people wound their way down increasingly narrow roads to the beach half an hours walk away. The vast majority of people, whether aged five or eighty five carried foot long ‘torches’ which would have made more than ample flame throwers. In an era where putting on any kind of public attraction requires a hefty tome of insurance policies, health and safety assessments and permits I was amazed that the event had been allowed to happen. The list of authorities (District Council, County Council, Fire brigade, police etc) who could have objected on safety grounds would have as long as a fully lit torch. But even as the streets narrowed and became more crowded common sense prevailed. One stupid ten year old boy did throw his still flaming torch into the hedge, but almost immediately a member of the public went over to extinguish it. Numerous lads had to drop their torch in an amusing hurry after encouraging their light to flame rather too extravagantly, but no damage was done.

Of course the event was well planned and there was an ambulance on hand, but marshals kept a low profile and the success and safety of the event was dependent on the community’s common sense as a whole. People not only took responsibility for their own actions, but also kept an eye on others and were prepared to intervene if necessary. Health and safety rules and regulations are in part a response to the breakdown in communal common sense. If enough people aren’t prepared to take responsibility for those around them then, yes, ‘there will always be one that spoils it for everyone’. The Bridport Carnival showed that it doesn’t have to be like that, but that it’s in everybody’s hands to ensure that risky public events aren’t extinguished under the weight of bureaucracy and red tape.

Warming up the crystal ball: climate change predictions

2006-08-16T22:11:00.000+01:00

On Tuesday the National Academy of Sciences released ‘the most detailed report yet’ outlining the effect that a rise in global temperatures of less than 2, 2-3 or over 3 degrees Celsius would have on the planet’s plant life, sea levels and rainfall.

The main scientist, Dr. Scholze reckons that at least a two degree rise in global temperatures is inevitable which he believes will cause a world wide loss of forests, increased flooding and a significant reduction in fresh water supplies. The UK Hadley centre, a leader in climate change research estimates that a 3 degree rise would put 400m people at risk of hunger, and half the world population at risk of flooding.

These studies stick to changes in the natural world, but I thought it would be an interesting exercise to make an educated guess on what changes of a 2-3 degree rise by the middle of the century would mean for us living in the UK. I’ve tried to steer clear of being alarmist and these are just guesses so I’d be interested in your predictions.

In 2050 I think that:

1) We will live in fortress Britain. Climate change is going to create numbers of refugees unprecedented in world history. Millions will be forced to leave land that has become inhabitable because of drought, salination of water supplies or wars over ever more limited fresh water. In constant fear of tens of millions coming to the UK we will close our borders to all but the luckiest of refugees and enforce military defence measures to put off would be illegal entrants.

2) Thousands of older people will have died in summer heat waves. In the summer of 2003 in France, tens of thousands of older people died as a direct result of the heat wave. By 2050 thousands will of older people will die in more frequent and more intense heat waves in the UK.

3) Hundreds of thousands of homes in the south and east will be uninsurable and unsellable. A 3 degree rise would increase risk of flooding by 17 times in South and East and the Thames Barrier is already being raised significantly more often than 10 years ago. Nobody (or very few people) would die, but dealing with flood damage will be a reoccurring problem.

4) Progress in the developing economies will have been wiped out. Developing economies will struggle to maintain growth went hit by more frequent and intense problems. Our ability to promote sustainable development will vanish as we try to deal with crisis after crisis.

5) Our financial affluence will have been severely dented. The economy won’t have crashed into unending depression – no one individual shock would be big enough to precipitate this. Our economic patterns will adapt and evolve and there will still be plenty of work around to deal with the effects of climate change. Some jobs may have moved back to the UK because the world will be a more dangerous and uncertain place. Supply of goods to our kitchens and living rooms from around the world will be inconsistent and regularly disrupted.

I'm in my mid 20s: I don’t expect to witness the worst of the effects of climate change. I believe I will see extremely serious flooding, drought that will kill hundreds of thousands and create millions of environmental refugees, but not on the scale of the second half of the 21st century could produce. It will be the next generation that has to deal with those catastrophes – something that’s worth bearing in mind for those of us considering having children.

To read about how I think we can alleviate climate change see my post from late June here.

Israel fights Hezbollah: An attempt to understand

2006-08-11T23:15:00.000+01:00

I have found the last month's news very depressing. I simply can’t understand what Israel think that they are going to achieve by attacking Hezbollah in Southern Lebanon. Every day I get more and more angry about the destruction wrought in a recovering and increasingly vibrant Lebanon. The Middle East is an entangled spiral of complex problems which defy clear analysis, but in an attempt to understand Israel’s reasonaing and mentality in this conflict I have identified three possible underlying causes, one geopolitical, one psychological and one religious cause for the Israeli Government’s actions. Hopefully I will end at least being able to empathise with the Israeli position.

1. Geopolitical. To fight Hezbollah is to fight Iran. The links between the two since Hezbollah’s formation in 1982 are irrefutable. These are not purely funding links (although these are substantial), but also command and strategy links, which mean that all important decisions are made in conjunction with the highest members of the Iranian government. In addition the two share similar interpretations of Sh’ia ideology. Iran are the other major power alongside Israel in the Middle East. Iran is a rich, well educated country, with a much greater sense of national identity than any Arab nation. Since the 1920s Iran and Iraq have always acted as counter-balances to each other in the region, but the power vacuum in Iraq means that Iran are firmly in control of that see-saw at the moment. From Iran’s point of view the time is right to extend their economy, political and military hegemony. Until now Israel have always had two trump cards to counter the hegemony – American support and the bomb. They must be scared stiff that they’re about to lose the second. For Israel, any chance to show pre-bomb Iran that they are not to be cowed looks attractive.

2. Psychological. It is a natural instinct to want to obtain security by doing whatever is necessary to remove an enemy. The attraction of an offensive into Southern Lebanon must be considerable to the Israeli electorate. The idea of a buffer zone from Katusha rockets looks great on paper and no-one else was going to go and create it for the Israelis. One British journalist asked an Israeli in Haifa how many Hezbollah rockets had ever landed in his town in the 13 years he’d lived there before the current conflict. Answer: zero. But that’s not the point. No one wants to live in the constant fear of the front line – much better if you can to move the no man’s land into someone else’s back yard and let them deal with the consequences.

3. Religious. Long standing underlying attitudes reduce Israel's options.The Tanakh (laws, prophets and other writings that make up what Christians know as the Old Testament) is ambivalent at best about the right of other nations to exist in ‘the promised land’. Judaism has an honourable and living tradition embodied in the Tanakh of caring for the alien in the land. However, although the vast majority of Jews are not Zionists most have some belief that God grants Israel an inalienable right to eventually possess territory in the region at least partly at the expense of other people groups. For instance, the traditional orthodox stance is that Israel will not gain political control of the region until the Messiah comes. So although this view does not explicitly rule out a Palestinian land it colours the mindset and attitude which makes negotiation on land issues with neighbours interminably difficult. Therefore arguments continue not just with the Palestians, but with Syria and Lebanon over the Golan Heights and the Sheeba Farms, which have an underlying influence on the current crisis.

None of the three explanations above excuse what the Israeli government are doing, which is not only morally reprehensible, but politically pointless. Indeed its political futility makes it more morally outrageous for the deaths are utterly futile. Like other guerrilla forces Hezbollah will not be beaten by a conventional army. As all parties know without political progress we will be in the same situation in a few years. Both sides are fighting for a better negotiating position - to invert the aphorism politics will be the war continued by other means. But in all probability in a few years Israel will fight a renewed Hezbollah, guided and funded by an Iran with nuclear capability. Longer range missiles and suicide bombers will still penetrate into the day to day lives of Israelis. They will be no more secure. There is a growing movement among younger Israelis especially (witness the Israeli soldier protest petition 2002 and the grass roots movement that led to the founding of Kadima) which may challenge the underlying religious attitudes around right to land. (The Kadima's 2006 election statement is an interesting read in this regard). However, until this enters the mainstream Israelis will not live in a land of peace and justice, milk and honey.

It is obvious that Israel has been much wronged in its 60 year history. However as one of the few fully formed democratic nation state backed by the most powerful country in the world it has the responsibility to make moves towards peace and begin to unravel the knots in the Middle East. It must start by addressing the focal point of the Middle East web by recognising the majority of the pre-1967 borders and declaring its intention not to retaliate to suicide bombers and missile attacks. This is an extremely difficult, complex and risky thing to do and I did not write this entry to delve into possible solutions. It will not stop attacks on Israel immediately or even for years, but it will start to drain the poison at the centre of the boil and allow the region to address some of its other myriad problems. It is Israel’s only chance of the long term peace and security that it desires.

What authority does the Bible have and why do I keep coming back to it?

2006-07-25T18:28:00.000+01:00

To clear up a couple of myths to start with: the conservatively minded umbrella body the ‘Evangelical Alliance’ says in its basis of faith “We believe in…The divine inspiration and supreme authority of the Old and New Testament Scriptures, which are the written Word of God—fully trustworthy for faith and conduct.” Not 100% geographically or historically accurate, not a definitive guide to physics, chemistry or any other science (what did ‘science’ mean in the first century?), but ‘fully trustworthy for faith and conduct’. Faith being what people believe, conduct how people live their lives. Still a mighty big claim, I’ll grant you, but best to be clear what we’re talking about.

OK: ‘supreme authority’. This is far more problematic – what does it mean in practice? In the seventeenth century Theology used to be known as ‘the Queen of the Sciences’. It used to ‘sit over’ all the other ‘subjects’, which would derive their axioms from assumptions about theology, but be free to explore from there. Now, nobody’s claiming that the Bible says anything specifically about the failure of world trade talks this week, but it might be possible to draw principles about just and fair exchange of goods from the Bible and apply them. The same might be true of all other subjects. If God gives us minds to create, explore and discover within his creation all scientific, social science and arts disciplines become an opportunity to glorify God and know more about Him.

Notice that it was Theology, not the Bible that was Queen of the Sciences and the ‘supreme authority’. The dictionary defines theology as ‘The study of the nature of God and religious truth’. Christians turn to the Bible to find out more about the nature of God, but Christian theology involves interpreting what is in the Bible. Interpretation immediately brings the experiences and knowledge of the interpreter into play and therefore different interpretations. Some Christians in the nineteenth century tried to side step ‘interpretation’ by calling on the fallacious doctrine of ‘inerrancy’. This meant that they believed every single word of the Bible text was literally ‘true’ – whatever that meant. In a 21st century world that is used to textual criticism, genre and relativism this concept is outlandish – we take it for granted that what one word means to one person in one moment of time in one sentence can mean something completely different to the person sitting on the seat opposite. Luckily all the many writers of the Bible, who were used to dealing in myths, stories and parables to explain truth would be similarly mystified.

So the Bible needs to be placed in the context of wider enterprise of figuring out who God is called Theology – otherwise we’d be missing out on other ways God might make himself known and also disastrously ignoring our own ‘cultural spectacles’ and preconceptions. Christians tend to include amongst other things, knowledge of God through Creation; personal experience and relationship with God; and tradition. Tradition in these terms means the cumulative experiences and learning of Christians down the centuries – what Godly men and women have found to be true in their lives and those of the church. Therefore tradition is living and ever-growing – when I am inspired and encouraged to become more like Christ by Godly people around me they are part of and adding to the Christian tradition. Personal experience and relationship with God means seeing answers to prayers, listening to the promptings of the Holy Spirit and taking the risk to trust and follow God and finding His promise of ‘life in all its fullness’ to be true.

It’s here that the Evangelical Alliance’s belief the Bible is the ‘supreme authority’ comes into play. If I believe that God, by His Holy Spirit has told me to steal my next door neighbour’s X-Box, the Christian tradition says that the authority of the Bible telling me not to takes precedence over my personal ‘authority’ which says I should. Likewise, if there was a church pastor who told his congregation that the best way to be happy was to get rich as fast as possible, the ‘supreme’ authority of the Bible would come before the authority of ‘the church’. God can guide me and work through me, but will not speak outside of His written teachings. This sounds like an excellent idea at first - a kind of check and balance system to prevent abuse and stupidity. The Bible is unambiguous about some things, through both Old and New Testaments. For instance, it’s difficult to argue that the Bible as a whole doesn’t claim that there is One God; we are to follow Him with all our mind, heart, soul and strength and it matters to God whether we choose to do that or not. Therefore in some senses ‘the Bible’ could be treated as a ‘supreme authority’.

However, the Bible is not a ‘how to’ manual (how boring would that be). It is complex and logically paradoxical and is therefore nonsensical to talk of the Bible as a ‘supreme authority’ for all matters of faith of conduct without having some generally agreed interpretations. Supreme authority without recognised interpretation equals inerrancy. Generally accepted interpretations within the church (whether implicit or explicit) are that the Old Testament should be viewed through the ‘grid’ and understanding of the New and that it’s important to take different genres in the Bible into account. Interpretation has generally come from Church Tradition, which is the sum of Christian’s experiences and thinking down the ages, who themselves have been influenced by the Bible – the strands feed into one another and the boundaries blur.

I therefore prefer to think of the Bible not as a supreme authority, isolated from other authority, but the thickest of a number of shoots of a climbing plant, (creation, personal experience, tradition being others) woven around one another for support and strength as they grow. Not one of them could stand alone – they would all collapse and break.

This still all begs the question – ‘why do I believe what the Bible says?’. For me the simple answer is I’ve found it to be true in my life. However much I try to ignore the Bible or think that I’m bored of it I always get pulled back to the wisdom and life within its pages. That doesn’t mean that I understand it all or agree with it all or don’t find it confusing or difficult, but that it’s worth sticking with it like no other book. I frequently find stories or chapters in the Bible that in other books I would immediately dismiss or ignore, but if it’s in the Bible I’ve learned that it’s worth preserving, grappling and contending with.

A few years ago I heard Brian McClaren say that maybe what should unite our view of the Bible as a church was that we ‘take it seriously’. At the time I was horrified and couldn’t imagine a more wishy-washy way formulation. Now, although I’m not sure it’s how I would put it I have a sense of what he was getting at. If we, as a community of Christians take what the Bible seriously, really seriously - seriously enough to engage in thorough, honest studies of it bringing in all the analytical and spiritual skills we have at our disposal, to pray with it and take time with it - we invest it with authority as we communally find that it enriches our faith and lives.
Samuel Coleridge put it even better, as described in ‘The Church in an Age of Revolution’: “Coleridge held that if men would but read [the Bible] without preconceived ideas about its plenary inspiration, and see whether it did not speak to them with convincing power, they would be assured of its authority. It should be read and studied like any other literature, and then it would be found it be unlike any other literature...” (p81)

That’s my experience of the Bible. Somehow, against all the odds, God has fashioned a collection of books by working with deeply flawed human beings over thousands of years which are divinely inspired and therefore hold great authority in all matters of faith and conduct.

Welfare Reform - For the many, discussed by few.

2006-07-12T19:55:00.000+01:00

Last week the government published a bill that will directly affect three million people in the UK, indirectly touch millions more. Its success or otherwise will have a major impact on the long term health of our economy. It received some newspaper and radio coverage, but virtually no analysis or comment. Amongst other things, the Welfare Reform Bill aims to restructure benefits for people unable to work because of ill health or incapacity.

At the moment there are two benefits for people unable to work: Incapacity Benefit is based on previous National Insurance contributions. This is worth c.£58 for the first 26 weeks rising in two stages to c.£75 per week for a single person. Income Support, is income based and worth about £57 a week for a single person. The two benefits interact in convoluted ways and the government is rightly combining the two to create one ‘Employment and Support Allowance’ (ESA). It’s also abolishing the crazy system that means that the longer you stay on Incapacity Benefit the more money you get.

However, the real problem with the system at the moment is that it draws a false distinction between fit and healthy job seekers who get assistance and support in finding work and those on IS or IB who get put on benefits and forgotten. In fact, most people who go onto IS or IB want to get back working as soon as possible. So the government is planning to implement its ‘Pathways to Work’ programme, already piloted, which gives support to people with their health and employment to get back into work. This will be compulsory for those people deemed to have a non-permanent disability and failure to cooperate will mean a cut in benefit down to Job Seekers Allowance level of around £57 per week. Those who are deemed permanently incapacity with no chance of work will be given a higher rate of benefit and not be forced to engage in support programmes.

The cost of the Pathways to Work programme is estimated at a tiny £147 million per year. My back-of-the-envelope estimate suggests that only 30 000 claimants per annum need to come off benefit for the scheme to break even. The pilot areas have almost reached that target by themselves over three years.

Compulsory attendance at interviews with the threat of benefit cuts can be both helpful and fair, as long as this ‘stick’ is wielded justly, as a last resort and as discipline not retribution. Ultimately claimants need to be aware that they are being supported by the wider public and need to take responsibility for their actions and progress. Knowing that their actions matter could be beneficial for some claimants. If no-one cares what you do and how you progress towards work you are more likely to experience apathy and low self esteem. The lost benefit could be reinstated after a period of six months if the person was ready to reengage with training.

The success of the scheme will depend on two main factors. The first is the level and type of support. Is the DWP going to be able to provide individually tailored support, built on a relationship with a personal adviser that deals with mental health and stress, through to industrial injuries and lost limbs as well as retraining? It’s a huge ask and there is little evidence to suggest that the benefits bureaucracy can change its ways. Therefore the government’s plans to contract out some of the support services to the voluntary sector, whose ethos on relationship and developing individuals skills and gifts would be well suited, is to be welcomed. If the DWP succeeds in this area it will be a monumental turnaround and worthy of the epitaph ‘A welfare system for the 21st Century’. It would mean that claimants would be able to believe that the system is there to enable and support them rather than demean and dismiss them and treat them as an unwelcome statistic.

The second success factor is far wider ranging. Can the government lead the remodeling of the economy to promote more highly skilled part time work, anti-ageist practices and government-business partnerships to retrain people? Many people on IB can’t go back to working full time immediately or sometimes ever and need to gradually build up their hours over a period of years. By not modifying business practice to encourage more part time working the private sector are missing out on good people entering their organisations. If the government is going to retrain people they will need the cooperation of businesses on a significant scale. Central government needs to equip local authorities and Job Centre Plus’ to engage in partnerships that can produce win-win solutions and offer a package of incentives to businesses to engage. These changes are partly out of the government’s hands and will rely on the vision and expertise of political and business leaders and local and national level. As the population ages this remodeling is crucial for the long term stability of our economy.

The Welfare Reform Bill may not be much talked about, but it has the potential to transform Incapacity Benefits for the good of millions of claimants, the tax payer and the economy as a whole. Whether the government and the DWP can successfully legislate for and implement the changes remain to be seen: if they do manage, we should be talking about their achievement for many years to come.

Space for doubt…especially on Saturday.

2006-07-04T10:56:00.000+01:00

Book Review: Reaching for the Invisible God
by Philip Yancey

Philip Yancey compares ‘Reaching for the Invisible God’ as a progression from doubt towards faith, a journey which he says he himself has travelled. He addresses what it means to try and have a relationship with a God who can’t be seen or touched, often doesn’t appear to be there and is vastly more powerful than we are, but apparently doesn’t feel inclined to use much of his power.

The opening sections of the book are a place of loss and hard questions. Just as Yancey found a church who ‘formed a safe place for my doubts’ Reaching for the invisible God is a safe space to ask honest, challenging questions, knowing that you are in the company of not only the author, but Christians, atheists and agnostics down the centuries. As Yancey says ‘We all need trustworthy doubt companions’. The reader is encouraged to ask the same questions as the people in his stories: “Really, what can we count on God for”, “why does God allow horrific suffering?”, why does God not answer all our prayers and seem to remain silent when we most want Him to speak?. ‘

Doubt can eat into people, leaving them paralysed by uncertainty or it can prompt people to dig deeper for truth. Yancey doesn’t leave the reader to wallow in doubt, thrashing around in despondency; being destroyed by uncertainty. He leads us, by seeking out the lives of writers, saints and otherwise ordinary people, who have spent their lives reaching for an invisible God and asks what we can learn from their endeavours. Their lives produce a sense of reassurance (‘Yes, that’s how it’s meant to be – there is a way forward’) as well as immense challenge (‘How I’d love to be more like that’). Yancey offers a way in to the variety and richness of Christian tradition. Yet he never loses the puzzlement, mystery and amazement which keep him from offering trite soundbites and solutions. I finished ‘Reaching for the Invisible God’ feeling enriched and peaceful, but knowing that I have not just indulged in escapism. At the end of his book Yancey quotes George Steiner: “We know of that Good Friday which Christianity holds to have been that of the Cross. But the non-Christian knows of it as well. They know of the injustice, of the interminable suffering, of the waste, of the brute enigma of ending, which so largely make up not only the historical dimension of the human condition, but the everyday fabric of our personal lives…We know also about Sunday. To the Christian, that day signifies an intimation, both assured and precarious, both evident and beyond comprehension, of resurrection, of a justice and a love that have conquered death.”

By asking ‘where is God?’ Yancey catches us where we are, in between Friday and Sunday, without trying to hide either from us.

Greens - grow up

2006-06-27T11:00:00.000+01:00

The last year has seen a huge upsurge in the intensity and urgency in the climate change debate. Hurricane Katrina, the first climate refugees in the Pacific, the next generation of nuclear power stations, dire predictions from respected scientists such as James Lovelock, and the BBC’s climate chaos series have all contributed to the sense that climate change is happening now and has the potential to be catastrophic. Many climate change scientists argue that we have thirty years maximum before we cross the ‘tipping point’ when cataclysmic climate change becomes inevitable. Some say that we may already have passed it. A year ago it was mainstream to say that environmental issues were very important, but not the number one priority. Now most prominent public figures accept that climate change is very urgent and very important. A growing number of businesses are also pushing for a greener regulatory framework to promote investment and business solutions to climate change.

The Green movement should be pleased by this new found concern, but also has to adapt to the new reality in which it finds itself. The Green movement has its roots in the new ‘identity’ personal politics that began in the 1960s, along with gender and politics of sexuality. Its emphasis has been on living sustainably, building communities and making individual ‘green’ choices such as recycling, not owning a car and buying organically. Green campaigns, directly or indirectly have predominantly been about changing individual consumer’s behaviour rather than macro green policies: do your bit – we can change the world one by one.

The problem is that China is building as many coal power stations in a year as the UK operates in total – the Chinese have plans to build a further 544 coal power stations. The growth of the car market in India makes our vehicle journeys insignificant by comparison. As James Lovelock puts it: “Nothing we do in Britain is going to make a hill of beans of difference.” Trying to reduce the number of car journeys in the UK is a bit like putting all our energy into buying egg cups for people so that they everyone can help put out a fire, whereas what we really need is to club together and get a few aeroplanes with water jets. There may be ways of avoiding the worst excesses of climate change, but it’s not going to be through each individual changing their behaviour. Instead we need to be investing billions in clean technologies such as carbon sequestration techniques and transferring them to the Chinese, Indians and Brazilians as quickly as possible. The Green movement should be lobbying our government for the biggest investment in scientific research in history. If we’re going to prevent millions of climate refugees and the world’s poorest people being hit time and again by unnatural disasters we need to think big and quickly.

But can the green movement adapt? The idea of individuals taking responsibility for their own actions by changing their own lifestyles is deeply rooted. It rests on the assumption that doing good for others is also good for our own happiness, fulfilment and contentment – it’s a win-win situation. I have no doubt that this is true, but it is not the whole picture. The Green movement has always critiqued the descent into an atomised, consumer lifestyle, but like the rest of society has reacted against organised large scale, coherent collective action. We’ve focused so much on encouraging individuals to make good environmental choices we’ve lost faith in the potency of collective political lobbying and large scale human endeavour and scientific research. It’s time to “practice the latter without leaving the former undone.” It’s time to work with businesses, engineers and research companies to find large scale solutions to catastrophic climate change, without forgoing the critique on a wasteful, materialistic society out of touch with it’s environment. It’s time for the Greens to grow up.

What would you do?

2006-06-19T12:22:00.000+01:00

Last week the Joseph Rowntree foundation published ‘need, not greed’, a report which analysed the reasons why people take informal cash in hand work. The findings make fascinating reading for those familiar with the one dimensional government approach of enforcement and cracking down on benefit fraud. Every week I meet people who want to find legitimate work, but are frustrated by the benefits and tax system.

Andrea (20) had been out of work for a few months after personal problems before she found herself a 16 hour a week job in a hairdressers, which earned £88 per week. She wants to get back into full time work, but doesn’t yet feel she has the confidence to do so. The government estimates that she needs £45.50 a week to live on and therefore stops paying her Job Seeker’s Allowance. In addition, two thirds of the money above £45.50 a week that she earns is deducted from her Housing Benefit claim. She is £14.36 a week better off. However, because her hours and her pay vary from week to week she has to inform the Job Centre and the Housing Benefit department every time she gets paid. Sometimes she is not paid on time by her employers and she has to trust that she will not get caught out by inefficient, impersonal, unhelpful benefits administration that might delay the payments she needs for rent and living expenses.

Is it any wonder that people take on cash in hand work, whilst staying on benefits? If Andrea had taken cash in hand she would be £88 a week better off without taking the risk of being without money for weeks if her job stopped and she struggled to ensure she got the right benefit payments. There are numerous non-financial advantages to working part time rather than staying on benefits. It raises self esteem, helps people to get back into the job market, makes it easier to access privately rented housing and crucially, averts boredom and a downward spiral into lethargy and depression. When people ask me about cash in hand work I advise them that legally they must declare their earnings, but I would much rather they worked cash in hand than not at all. There are extra problems to cash in hand work over legal work– you are more liable to be exploited, be paid less than the minimum wage or not get paid at all, but in the context of the immediate minute to minute financial needs of most people on benefits these risks are worth taking.

The government is right that you can survive on the Job Seeker’s rate of £57.50 a week for over 25s, with the help of Housing Benefit and Council Tax Benefit. But imagine not being able to afford birthday cards and presents for your family; not being able to treat yourself once in a while without knowing that it will put you into debt at the end of the month; not being able to travel to visit your grandma for want of what is often just a few pounds. People don’t just want to survive, they want to live.

This is not an argument for increasing benefit rates. We need to encourage, equip and support people back into work in as many ways as possible (education, training, preparing CVs, fare to job interviews etc etc) and a higher weekly allowance will not achieve that. Neither would it reduce the amount of work in the informal shadow economy. We need to make a bigger financial differentiation between benefits and work, through significantly increasing the minimum wage and allowing a greater ‘run-on’ of benefits for the first few months when someone finds work. We also need an efficient and accurately run benefits administration. The ‘faceless bureaucrats’ which Gordon Brown and Oliver Letwin fight to cull have an important job to do in ending Benefit dependency.

The informal cash in hand economy can be an insecure and difficult financial environment, but it can be a lifesaver for those on benefits and I rarely feel the need to reach for the phone number of the government’s Benefits Fraud Hotline.

Name and some of Andrea's details have been changed.

Men - Go Crazy!

2006-06-19T12:15:00.000+01:00

It’s still the men who are REALLY interested. It has reached a mass male and female audience for the first time as shown by the endless stream of merchandise from pushchairs to tents, but most women can take or leave football. It’s the men who drive the fever, the passion and the wall to wall media coverage. Them, and the kids. For many kids football is the only thing that they see their dads and their dad’s mates get really excited about. Kids love adults getting excited about things – most of the time they are so sensible and boring: “stop running around, be quiet, calm down, I’m trying to have a snooze”. When the football comes on kids are encouraged to shout and wave their flags and jump up and down.

We are role models to the kids around us whether we like it or not and whether we’re parents or not. The only question is what kind of role model we’re going to be. Both genders can be role models to all children, but because boys and girls (to state the obvious to anyone who has any contact with kids) are very different, boys need male role models and girls need female role models.

There have been rumblings over the last fortnight about the ‘feminisation’ of school – the curriculum now suits girls’ style of learning and teachers, especially in primary schools are overwhelmingly female. Therefore, boys, so the argument goes, are bound to underachieve, because the system is weighted against them. What we need is a curriculum that boys can learn through as well, especially in secondary school. In Australia, although boys are behind the girls in the same way as in this country in more academic subjects, they aren’t seen as struggling because of the emphasis put on sport. More hands on learning is needed through apprenticeships and other work which provide a context where older men can garner respect and therefore authority over male teenagers. Before we go any further, let me be clear: there are multiple masculinities and some boys will always excel in the school system and society, but we can’t deny that there is a problem in the way that boys are growing up, coping in schools and maturing just for the sake of political correctness.

There is a stereotype that churches are ‘feminised’ domains too. In this stereotype a few older, weak in character, possibly gay men are in charge of a female congregation who prefer flowers, hymns and touchy feely emotions where everyone is terribly nice to each other. Like all stereotypes, this one contains some truth for some churches, but is far from always being the case. The Frontline Church in Liverpool, amongst many others exhibits a great model of Christian masculinity. Men play stupid, physical, games with each other, are highly competitive and are also demonstrably passionate about God. The church meets in single sex cell groups of up to 12 people (guess where they got that idea?!) with mixed ages. Boys and younger men learn emotional literacy and character development through discipleship and being around older men. Men who show that they can love their wives, give each other a hug and cry whilst still jumping into a freezing cold river, owning five guitars or going ballistic at a football match.

The best thing about Frontline is that, although I’m sure they would be the first to say they’ve got loads to learn, they share what they’ve got. Every week they run a 'Kidz Klub’ for over 500 children with as many boys as girls, as many male leaders as female. It’s telling that it’s only possible to properly discipline and teach the kids when particular leaders have a strong relationship with them. This does happen cross gender, but especially as the boys get older it comes from men. Good relationships beget respect and respect begets authority. It is in this environment that learning takes place. Jesus offers a great model of learning, mentoring and discipleship in the gospels. The church has a huge amount of tradition, learning and expertise that it can offer society when it comes to masculinity, male role models and mentoring relationships. Let’s freely give through our churches, projects, schools and time the good news that we have and show the next generation of boys and young men that we’re crazy about more than football.

This article was first published in a free monthly newsletter called 'IMPACT' run by the Christian Political Forum, which takes a thoughtful look at political issues and events. If you want to sign up email CPF-online@excite.com .

Nostalgia IS what it used to be.

2006-06-12T11:07:00.000+01:00

“If you weren’t born when and where you were, where would you have liked to have been?” In the late night discussions that followed I imagined myself taking part in the student protests in 1968 Paris, when the majority believed that it was worth trying to change things and were prepared to risk their degrees and futures to do it. You can picture my pleasure when such idle dreaming found its way to the top of the charts last week through Sandi Thom’s first single ‘I want to be a Punk Rocker’.

The song taps into the richest seams of nostalgia – yearning for a lost innocence and a rose tinted affection for previous fads and trends. However Thom’s nostalgia goes a step deeper. She yearns for a time when an individual’s actions counted and there was the freedom to imagine that a completely different and better society was possible. The implication of the song now is that we’re stuck with what we’ve got and that fighting against the capitalist and mass media dominated system is futile. We were born too late and our generation can’t be change makers.

Thom may well be speaking for a generation unhappily caught up in the corporate machine of work to live and live to work, but her defeatist attitude is wrong and self perpetuating. Firstly all those punkrockers and hippies of the 1960s and 1970s are now in their 40s and 50s and running the country. You only have to look at the background of current Labour ministers to see that the leftie protest generation made it into power – Jack Straw, Harriet Harman and Charles Clark to name but a few. This generation did make huge strides campaigning for gender and race equality and against apartheid. They also campaigned against the imperialism of Vietnam and the proliferation of Nuclear weapons. It’s great to look back on the 1960s and 1970s with a touch of nostalgia, but it’s important to remember that the idealism of the 1960s contributed to and then got swallowed up by the consumer society and family breakdowns of the 1980s and 90s.

Our generation does care – it cares about making poverty history and the Iraq war and is the first generation to grow up with the environmental movement. It cares about stable families and long lasting friendships. However it doesn’t have the confidence that it’s possible to do anything about it. Adrift in a world of individualism it doesn’t know the power of and doesn’t think it has the time for sustained grass roots organised mass action. As a result people only offer shallow commitment to ‘Make Poverty History’ hoping it will do something, but not really believing that it can. This can change. We too will become the generation that runs the country, but in the mean time we desperately need to find, grow and equip leaders and change makers so that we can show that we weren’t born too late and that radical change for the better is always possible.

The technicalities are circling

2005-10-31T19:57:00.000Z

David Blunkett’s critics accuse him of failing to declare a directorship with a DNA testing company to the standards watchdog within two years of leaving ministerial office. Contacting the standards watchdog was not compulsory, only advised. He did not hold the directorship whilst he was a minister. Indeed he resigned the post as soon as he was reappointed to the cabinet. On present evidence David Blunkett is guilty at most of a minor technicality. His opponents delight in tripping him up with an insignificant speck, because they sense he is vulnerable to pressure. Let’s hope that they remembered to check their own eyes first.

Public accountability and transparency of our leaders is to be welcomed, but as David Blunkett’s experience demonstrates technicalities in relation to dishonest gain carry disproportionate weight. We demand resignation for minor infringements in this area partly because there is no agreement on what other behaviour we expected from a minister.

The following questions are a suggestion of what criteria we should be using to judge ministerial conduct. They do not touch on the substance of the decisions made, which are rightly left to political argument.

1) Does the minister make decisions which s/he considers in the long term interest of the country even when these conflict with short term self-interest or political expediency?
2) Does the minister speak with integrity in public? Is the minister prepared to accept responsibility for mistakes as well as successes?
3) Does the minister promote good governance by making every effort to work with ministerial colleagues and overcome personality differences?
4) Does the minister lead his/her department in order that it is managed efficiently, develops a culture of honesty and integrity and seeks to bring out the best in its staff?
5) Does the minister ensure on a continuing basis that s/he listens and responds to a genuine cross section of informed and honest opinion and not become beholden to any one interest?
6) Has the minister used his/her office for dishonest gain?

Was David Blunkett’s misuse of his office to fast track the visa application of Ms Quinn’s nanny sufficiently serious, in the context of the other criteria that he should have been forced to resign?

If there are any ministers who could consistently answer yes to questions one and two it would be surprising although I’m sure that some could answer yes to three to five. However, because there is never discussion about these areas of a minister’s character, integrity and performance we simply don’t know. If we are to avoid the ludicrous scenes surrounding David Blunkett of the last forty-eight hours it’s about time we found out.

Happiness is.... [book review]

2005-10-05T01:46:00.000+01:00

We all desire happiness and spend a lot of our time looking for it. Jon Piper spends over two hundred pages arguing that not only do we look for it in the wrong place, but that we don’t look hard enough. Piper quotes CS Lewis:
“We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”
From this foundation Piper argues that in everything we do, whether it be spend money, pray, help others or praise God that we should aim to enjoy it. If we’re not enjoying it we are dishonouring God.

The book is clearly aimed at those who think that if you’re enjoying something you’re being selfish and not doing good. Duty and misery are the emblems of a do-gooder. Most of us probably don’t operate in this way, but it’s a useful reminder that if we give and help others purely out of a sense of duty it is likely to be embittering and we’re probably missing out somewhere. As far as the Bible goes Piper is on steady ground – the psalms tell us to ‘delight in God’, Paul exalts us to be a ‘cheerful giver’. This is no shallow outward conformity, but a deep rooted understanding that a good God created each of us and that we are incomplete and unhappy without Him.
This far, Piper is enriching and a reminder that doing good is a win-win situation, that in a moral economy there are no zero-sum gains. As John Donne famously wrote ‘when the bell tolls it tolls for thee’. We are all interdependent and only complete in relationship with others and with God. When other peoples’ identity is marred by poverty, broken relationships and sin so are we.

It is with the language in Piper’s book that I struggle. Enjoyment, pleasure and hedonism all have connotations of immediacy, short-termism and seeking a ‘buzz’ out of something. God never promised anyone this life all the time and we shouldn’t be seeking it. Piper understands this, but ends up tying himself in knots trying to explain it, whilst insisting on the framework and language of hedonism. He spends much time arguing that to enjoy God that you need to feel pain, cry and go through troubles, which boils down to the absurdity that to enjoy life you shouldn’t enjoy it – an absurdity. By majoring so much on enjoyment Piper implicitly discounts the pain and struggle of the vast proportion of the world’s population and history.

His argument makes far more sense couched in the language of underlying fulfilment and contentment. This doesn’t preclude joy, but allows for the pain and sense of injustice that we need to feel if people are to transform society rather than live in a happy bubble. An emphasis on a long term underlying fulfilment and delight would bring out the point that in order to pursue justice and compassion that is pleasing to God we must also seek completeness and our own happiness in God. Yet, by insisting on the framework and language of hedonism Piper skews his argument and partially hides the inspiring, intriguing and yes, delightful messages contained in ‘Desiring God’.

Desiring God was first published in 1986.

Know Thyself

2005-06-08T04:20:00.000+01:00

Tony Blair set off for Washington today to try and convince George Bush to sign up to his anti-poverty agenda for Africa. They’ll argue and probably disagree on how much aid and debt relief is needed, but also on what strings should be attached to those receiving aid. Conditionality is as old as aid and debt relief itself. It’s partly a consequence of country’s desire to exert economic and political power and control over other countries – raw realpolitik. However, it is also the product of the West’s view of its own development.

Both George Bush and Tony Blair are confident that the way to create development in Africa to develop is to let the invisible hand do its work and let trade and economic markets do their work with minimal interference. This is the way, they argue that the West developed to be the prosperous and civilised society that it is today. If Africa could just establish the rule of law and an open system of trade then their problems would disappear. From this perspective, attaching conditions to debt relief and aid is benevolent paternalism – a nasty dose of medicine that will be good in the long run. However, all this is based on the absolute conviction that the West has developed in the best way possible.

But what if the West’s way isn’t the best way? What if economic interactions aren’t the overriding way that human relationships should be viewed? What if human happiness isn’t dependent on a nation’s GDP as figures from the UN suggest? If we take a closer look at our own development then how we view the progress of the African continent is turned on its head.

The western model of development since the early 19th century has lifted huge numbers out of poverty, made people feel safer and created half a century of peace, but has also dramatically increased economic inequality, relational poverty and environmental degradation. We should look at our own development not just through an economic lense, but also from social, political, religious and cultural perspectives.

Bearing this in mind should inspire humility in our approach to international development. Bush and Blair should not be forcing people to follow our own, flawed development path, but offer to help find a different way forward. If they do so they may find that their own perspective worldviews develop and the strings they end up attaching to aid and debt relief will be very different.

If you want more info on alternative pespectives to development I recommend dipping into 'walking with the poor' by Bryant Myers. It's quite hard going, but an inspiring read.

Hands up if you want a debate!

2005-03-21T19:59:00.000Z

‘Would those who would like to discuss whether or not we have a debate please raise your hands now?’ Listening to the news this week I thought I’d been transported back to the Students’ Union. People from across the political spectrum were arguing about whether or not we should talk about abortion. Each morning I would turn on the radio anticipating that the debate would actually have started. Each morning I was disappointed. Just another hand raised in favour of debate.

If and when a debate does start let’s hope it’s a proper one. The early signs are not encouraging. The focus has been on whether the law should allow abortions at 24 weeks, 22 weeks or 20 weeks. This is tinkering around on the edges based on an unspoken consensus that a) we shouldn’t abort babies who might survive apart from their mother with the help of science and b) we shouldn’t abort babies who look like babies. The fact that if the parents waited another couple of weeks it would survive / look like a baby seems to be conveniently forgotten. If it was remembered the discussion seems almost irrelevant. A debate based on this consensus is a debate on quicksand.

We need an alternative starting point. A simple statistic can provide it. In the UK in 2003 were 695000 births and 181600 abortions. Factor in an estimated figure for miscarriages and 19% or almost one in five of recorded pregnancies in the UK is aborted.1 Whatever your view on a women’s right to choose or a baby’s right to life everyone should be able to agree that are too many abortions happening in this country. Whether a woman or couple choose to abort a baby or not the psychological trauma involved is huge and often life long.

I’m not sure I am in a position to tell a woman or couple whether or not they should have an abortion in a unique and difficult circumstance that they find themselves in. I do know that we need to find ways to reduce the number of women that face that choice in the first place. If we’re going to have a debate, these are the things we need to be talking about.

Note
1. There are no official statistics on miscarriages, although approximately one in eight pregnancies miscarry, mostly before ten weeks.

Stories of Grace

2005-03-04T23:16:00.000Z

2005 is the twentieth anniversary of the musical Les Misérables, based on the epic book by Victor Hugo. What is it that continues to appeal? The music is fantastic, but if you want staging and lighting there are many other performances that would up stage Les Misérables’ simplicity. It is the story, which starkly contrasts the costly, unlimited grace of the central character Valjean, with the harsh, uncaring, measured justice of Javert that continues to enthral.

Valjean’s story starts when he steals some candlesticks from a kindly bishop, but is caught. When the police arrive the bishop says that they were a gift and then gives Jean Valjean the rest of his silver. A reformed and almost unbelievably godly man Jean Valjean is placed in the maelstrom of suffering and poverty of 19th Century Paris. He then helps a prostitute, rescues a man trapped under a cart and saves the life of his future son in law at risk of his own life. Finally, he forgives and spares the life of his decades long-persecutor, the officious and just policeman, Javert.

The story is inspiring, but ultimately remote. The grace so costly, the poverty so harsh that it seems difficult to relate to our own times and place.

In his book ‘the Idiot’ Fydor Dostoevsky, like Victor Hugo, parachutes pure grace into a harsh landscape, this time full of ‘empty headed people’ obsessed with money, looks and power. The reader watches as different elements of St. Petersburg high society misunderstand, are broken by or refute the accepting, forgiving, innocent, unmanipulative actions of the ‘simply good’ Prince Mishkin.

In the Idiot, the moments of grace seem more within our grasp than in Les Misérables. The characters deficiencies are writ large, but Prince Miskin’s actions are smaller, accumulating gradually rather than immense actions of a superhero.

In ‘the Terminal’ Viktor Navorski (Tom Hanks), a man speaking no English becomes trapped within a busy, brash US airport. Passengers push past, always in a hurry and the staff are unhelpful and rude. In this arena Navorski helps passengers with their bags, stops them from slipping on wet floors and slowly breathes humanity into the staff.

In many ways ‘the Terminal’ is just another formulaic feel good film, but it also translates some of the stories of grace that we find in Dostoevsky and Hugo into a modern setting. (This is probably the only time you’ll hear a Spielberg movie compared to Dostoevsky, so enjoy it while you can.) The airport typifies our individualist, time poor, consumerist culture just as Dostoevsky compounds the wretchedness of St. Petersburg society and Hugo rubs in the poverty of nineteenth century Paris. Like Myshkin, Navorski steps in completely powerless and ignored, but with time and a natural inclination to serve. His actions are everyday and almost unnoticed – this is grace writ small.

Where are the small acts of grace in our society today? Grace is both hard to define and hard to find. In his book ‘What’s So Amazing About Grace?’ Philip Yancey starts by saying that he wants to ‘convey grace rather than explain it’. We need stories of grace if we are to understand, experience, enjoy and pursue it. We need the mountain peaks of Jean Valjean which can inspire and clarify our vision. But we also need stories in the foothills where we live our daily lives. If you’ve got any stories of grace, the smaller the better, please post them up or email them – I’d love to hear them.

Tea in Westminster

2005-02-23T16:40:00.000Z

Last Monday the prayer and campaign network SPEAK launched its creative petition the ‘Big Dress’. For four years SPEAK have been collected 15cm2 squares of fabric with people’s pictures, prayers and words calling for trade justice. These have been sown together to make a huge, tent like patchwork dress which was erected in Berkley Square, London. The Bishop of Barking led a fantastic, moving and visual service of repentance for the UK’s and our own individual failure to pursue justice in world trade. This was followed by a mass lobby of MPs at Westminster calling for accountability of UK based multi-national companies.

I was amazed by how easy it is to lobby your MP. We queued up for ten minutes at St.Stephen's entrance, before bypassing the streams of tourists and making our way to the central lobby. There you fill in a short green card explaining why you want to speak to your MP who is then legally obliged to speak to you if the House is in session, he or she is there and not speaking in a debate. You don’t have to make an appointment (although this helps) – you can just turn up. Although my MP wasn’t able to speak to me his researcher came down almost immediately and spoke with us and agreed that we should set up a meeting with the MP in our constituency. Others spent between five minutes and an hour with their MP, one group getting a cup of tea in the House of Lords!

So next time you’re in London pencil in a discussion with your MP on an issue of your choice over a cup of tea in the palace of Westminster!

To find out who your MP is visit www.theyworkforyou.com

Does Michael Howard have a point?

2005-02-01T17:41:00.000Z

Last week Michael Howard decided that his party was going to “tell the truth about immigration”. He quoted the government’s community cohesion panel in his speech on asylum:
"… inward immigration does create tensions … communities will perceive that newcomers are in competition for scarce resources and public services. The pressure on resources … is often intense and local services are often insufficient to meet the needs of the existing community, let alone newcomers"

For the vast majority of people in the UK the arguments and worries about asylum and immigration have no direct bearing on their daily lives. Their concerns and fears come through media coverage and a vague feeling that Britain isn’t ‘as it should be’. For instance, there were only625 people who described themselves as from an ethnic minority in Worthing, a town of 100 000 people, in the 1990s.

In contrast, almost seventy-five percent of all asylum seekers come to London. Asylum seekers, refugees, legal and illegal immigrants tend to end up in poorer parts of London where they can get support from their communities.
These are the areas that have the highest unemployment, lowest life expectancy and where it’s virtually impossible to register with a GP. The housing situation in the London Borough of Newham is appalling. Families of five or six people living in a one bedroom flat for years are not uncommon. The standard of accommodation is low – with damp and rotting windows being the most common complaints.

Since 2001 very few asylum seekers have been housed by Councils in London. They are ‘dispersed’ to other parts of the country where there are more houses. However, when they are granted refugee status they often return to London where they can get the support and help they need from their communities. When they have been living back in London for a period of time they are then eligible for housing support from London Borough Councils. The already desperate housing situation is exacerbated by a continual rise in the population and people seeking houses. People coming into the country are therefore effectively depriving the existing community of houses.

The perception is exacerbated by the fact that all Councils divide all their housing into two lists. The first is a waiting list for long-term accommodation where you and your family, when successful, become a Council tenant, basically for life (unless you exercise the right to buy or get evicted). The second is for temporary accommodation. All Councils have a statutory duty to house people that are homeless or severely overcrowded. This has to be done immediately and so they reserve property to this end. However, because of the severe shortage temporary accommodation can become quasi-permanent. If a refugee or immigrant is eligible for help in the borough they will get offered temporary accommodation immediately of the right size for the family, like anybody else. When an overcrowded family who has been waiting for a permanent home for years (the wait for a 3 bedrooom house is about a decade) sees an immigrant family move in next door to them it looks like they have jumped the queue. Explaining that it was a different queue is unlikely to be much comfort. Reacting by labelling these people ‘racist’ without acknowledging and addressing the issues under the surface is not going to improve race relations. It’s difficult to assess exactly how much additional strain immigration (legal and illegal) and asylum put on boroughs like Newham, Haringay and Tower Hamlets, but the perception that those coming into the country put strains on housing and health services has at least some truth.

Michael Howard is also right to say that the asylum system is in chaos. It’s virtually impossible to force someone to leave the country after their asylum claim has failed. Disappearing into the cash economy is easy, especially in London. It’s virtually impossible to track down illegal immigrants in the same situation – the government has no idea how many there are. Unscrupulous private landlords will accept illegal immigrants knowing that they can charge exorbitant rents for atrocious properties, because they can’t complain. The government has no idea how many illegal immigrants there are in the country. When in the country for more than a couple of years illegal immigrants will normally try and ‘go legal’ with varying degrees of success. Periodically the government offer amnesties to failed asylum seekers (the last one was issued by David Blunkett in 2004) that have ‘disappeared’ and eventually their position is regularised.

Michael Howard is right. Illegal immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers do put extra strains on demands for housing, health and education services in parts of the UK. However, it is also true that Britain can easily afford to allow all genuine asylum seekers into the country. We should be able to welcome asylum seekers and assume their stories of rape, torture and imprisonment are true. Why do the Home Office arbitrarily decide that people can’t stay because they ‘don’t have the evidence’? Why are we talking of imposing quotas on Asylum? Why do we leave a relatively small number of poorer areas to cope whilst the media and ‘middle England’ worry aimlessly from the sidelines about the threat to ‘Britishness’ or tut tut at growing racism?

The answer is that that it’s just too complicated and uncomfortable. We need to be pouring our time, effort, political will and money into resolving the problems of housing, health, the black market in our inner city areas. We need to find ways actively breaking down barriers between different races and religions. This doesn’t mean working only for tolerance but also the much more costly works of building relationships between people in different communities, whilst recognising the diversity or those different communities. We must demand that our hotel workers and cleaners are paid a just wage whatever part of the world they are from and be prepared to accept the rising cost of our own daily lives. We need to face up to our responsibilities in the developing world – to deal with debt, unfair trade and aids, to actively encourage good governance.

Until we as a nation start tackling the issues behind immigration and asylum rather than name calling, immigration and asylum policy will always be a fudge and a bodge job. Michael Howard’s reactionary, headline grabbing ‘solutions’ wouldn’t help the situation any more than the current governments. They wouldn’t prevent illegal immigrants entering the country and they wouldn’t relieve the acute problems in the boroughs most affected. Michael Howard may have a point, but he’s still not “telling the truth about immigration”.

Mediation for parents

2005-01-20T01:02:00.000Z

Yesterday’s government announcement on reforms to family law were desperately needed. I’ve been surprised by the number of fathers I’ve met in the past few months who, however hard they try, are having problems getting any access to their children.

Conciliation seems a sensible step, and is the first time, as far as I’m aware, that a anything resembling a reconciliation and mediation programme has gone mainstream in the public sector on this scale. Thames Valley Police have been leaders in restorative justice (a form of conflict mediation between victim and offender) since the late 1990s. Mediation has also been used by some local authorities to try and deal with neighbourhood disputes, young offenders and schools – see www.mediationuk.org.uk for more information. A number of conflict mediation charities exist throughout the country (e.g. the Christian inspired Conflict and Change) , from which local authorities sometimes ‘buy in’ expertise.

However, my (relatively limited) experience suggests that their services are not well integrated and tend to be called upon as a last resort, by which time it’s too late.

Mediation between parents to try and avoid damaging and painful court cases must be welcomed as a positive step. Whether a service run by Cafcass (Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service), a court based organisation, are the right people to run mediation I’m unsure. By the time people have applied to the courts in many cases it may already be too late and conflict mediation can be driven by those wanting to cut costs. A lot will depend on the expertise already existing within Cafcass and their ability to adapt to their new role.

As usual all the announcements yesterday focused on ‘what’s best for the children’. Protecting children is of course hugely important, but the rhetoric conveniently sidesteps and ignores what happens to the parents involved in the breakdown. The fact that relationship break-down is one of the most stressful events that can happen in your life, causing knock on effects to friends, jobs, the economy, mental health and the NHS, parents are simply left to ‘reap what they sow’.

The long term aim must be to develop a culture where asking for input into your long-term relationship or marriage becomes the norm, not just for those whose relationship is on the verge of breaking down. Relationship building is a core value in many churches (and other faith groups) , who potentially have a great to deal to offer wider society. Christians that have them don’t need to be defensive about the relationship-building skills that we can bring to people in our towns and cities. I don’t know anyone who wants to grow up as a single parent or see their relationship fail. A survey by the Scottish Council Foundation ‘identified [a parent’s] highest priority, both during pregnancy and after the baby is settled at home, as having the full support of partners and family members’ . However, the question is how churches can move beyond ‘marriage courses’ (excluding large segments of the population) and assist those wanting to work at long-term relationships, whilst still upholding the importance, benefits and sanctity of marriage.

Tsunami thoughts

2005-01-17T02:04:00.000Z

Like everyone else I’ve been encouraged by the response in the UK to the horrific tsunami in South East Asia. Peer pressure is usually used with negative connotations, but the past few weeks illustrate its positive aspects. It’s become expected that businesses and websites should collect funds and publish the contact details of the DEC. Between Christmas and New Year that callers were contacting Radio 5 Live to ask how much supermarkets were donating in the crisis. A spokesman from Tesco was hauled onto the programme and held to account. The ‘moral economy’ has been re-emerging for a few years now, but this is another boost as it continues to gather pace.

In the same way, politicians have been assessing the political importance of the public sympathy for the tsunami. For the first time, commentators are arguing there are votes ‘in’ international aid. In fact, there’s been some votes in international aid since the Jubilee 2000 campaign. Local MPs are always willing to meet church groups that are campaigning on aid, because they know that they are likely to vote. However, the government won’t see the tsunami’s political import purely in terms of votes. During the Jubilee 2000 campaign Gordon Brown urged campaigners to keep the pressure on him to act. Public pressure is one way to create political capital for politicians with the right ideas, but who need to clear ‘blockages’ of vested interest in the system. Hence the chancellor’s and the UN’s recent attempts to divert some of the political capital from public sympathy over the tsunami to assist in the Aids, debt and trade problems of Africa.

I’m not convinced this will work, because I think one of the reasons (although not the main one) that the British public were so generous in response to the tsunami is because no one was to blame. Debt, unfair trade and poverty in Africa are man-made problems. Their root causes lie with exploitation by the west of these nations and our consciences are touched with guilt at the thought. Even disasters caused by droughts or floods leave a niggling feeling of doubt in our minds as the spectre of man-made pollution and global warming springs to mind. If it’s our fault something is happening responding requires a change of behaviour on our part to restore justice. The politics is messy and repentance is costly. The tsunami gave the opportunity for grief, generosity and empathy unbridled by guilt.

Such emotions are God-given. Responding in this way makes us, as a nation, more like God wants us to be. The church needs to find ways of fostering and encouraging this into gifts that we practice regularly in the

. In a couple of weeks the tsunami and it’s devestating aftermath with disappear from our screens. What ways can the church find of keeping interest alive, of providing a valid outlet and opportunity for people’s interest and feelings? I don’t yet have answers to that question, although the possibility of churches initiating links with churches or other faith groups in affected areas springs to mind. If churches across a

town had the courage and vision to make links with a town in say,

Sri Lanka

over time it should be possible to draw in schools, businesses and local Councils into a connection that could be fruitful for all involved.

Jerry Springer

2005-01-17T02:00:00.000Z

The outrage of Christians at the Jerry Springer Opera worries me. I’m desperate to see Christians have the confidence to engage in public life and politics (small p), but this type of target is a red herring. Many Christians who wrote to the BBC did so with the best of intentions – to stand up for Jesus in a society that has forgotten Him. But to the rest of the country it makes us look defensive, over sensitive and interested only in protecting ourselves. If we are to engage distinctively with our society we must defend and raise our voices for others. There are more than enough pressure and lobby groups shouting their own interests.