Tendring Topics…….on line
‘Non Angli, sed Angeli’
‘Not Angles but Angels’. These are said to have been the punning words of Pope Gregory the Great when in 573 A.D., before his elevation to the Papacy, he enquired about the origins of some young blue-eyed and fair haired slaves in a Roman slave market*. He had been told that they were called Angles and came from a remote heathen country called England on the very edge of the known world. It was an incident that is said to have led to his sending Augustine across Europe and the English Channel to convert the English to the Christian Faith.
Had political correctness been a fad of 6th Century Rome as it is of 21st Century Britain, he would have been instantly urged. ‘Please don’t call them “angels”. There are none in their religion and it will give them ideas above their station in life. In any case, quite a few of our keenest customers are non-Christian. Calling those slaves angels will bring down their price!’
These were some of the thoughts that went through my head when I read in the Gazette that a Charity called Whisperers, that tries to console and support the grieving parents of stillborn babies, had been chided by Colchester General Hospital for referring to these babies as ‘new little angels’.
Jenny Collins, senior midwife at the hospital is reported as saying, ‘We are not happy about the use of the word “angel” on a card giving information about Whisperers, because we suspect that it has the potential to offend some parents at what is an extraordinarily difficult and sensitive time for them. Not all religions believe in angels and secular people certainly do not’.
I can’t claim to be knowledgeable about ‘all religions’, but I do know that angels feature in the Christian, Jewish and Muslim faiths and what little I know of Buddhists, Hindus and Sikhs suggests to me that they wouldn’t in the least mind still-born children being referred to as ‘new little angels’. Nor I think, would any of the many ‘secular people’ of my acquaintance.
A few people (not necessarily those obsessed with ‘political correctness’) may quibble about the use of the word ‘angel’ for the souls of the departed. Angels, they may inform us, are God’s messengers and are a quite separate creation.
However, the man who was to become Pope Gregory the Great used the word loosely in the sixth century to describe Anglo-Saxon slaves. In the nineteenth century Cardinal John Henry Newman used the word in much the same sense as Whisperers do today, in the last two lines of his hymn, ‘Lead kindly light’
Then, with the dawn, those angel faces smile,
That I have loved long since – and lost the while.
With such distinguished examples, Christians at least can surely not object to the word being used to bring some comfort to bereaved parents whose grief and loss are really beyond consolation. I think that it is patronising and impertinent to assume knowledge of what will, and will not, give offence to other people.
*No, I don’t know why Pope Gregory and, for many centuries, Christians of every tradition, tolerated the institution of slavery. Jesus Christ condemned it when he said (Matthew 7.12) that the whole of the moral teaching of the Old Testament, “The Law and the Prophets”, could be summed up as “Treat other people exactly as you yourself would wish to be treated” – a little piece of fundamental Christian faith and practice that clearly rules out slave trading and slave owning.
We don’t yet know the half of it!
My idea of a ‘good’ budget is one that tends to narrow the gap between the richest and poorest in our nation. A ‘bad’ budget is one that widens it. It follows that it is a long time since I saw a good budget.
Nor is the present one an exception, though it has some good points. I am sorry that my former colleagues in the public service are having to pay for the economic crisis with a two-year pay freeze (in a time of continuing inflation this amounts to a pay cut, as David Cameron when pressed, was forced to agree) while others, whose folly and incompetence triggered the crisis, continue to enjoy huge salaries and bonuses.
There’s a rather harsh Spanish proverb that asserts, “Take what you want”, says God. “Take it…..and pay for it!” True enough - the trouble is that it is rarely those who take who have to pay!
I am glad that public servants earning less than £21,000 a year are exempt from the freeze and that they are to receive a flat rate increase of £250 a year. I think that we have to get away from the pattern of percentage increases. These can give the impression that the Chief Executive and the lower ranks of an organisation are having identical pay increases while, in fact, they are wildly different. Inevitably every across-the-board percentage pay rise, increases the gap between the highest and the lowest paid. Eventually, as we have seen, it results in some top officials enjoying a higher salary than the Prime Minister!
I am glad that the threshold of income tax liability has been raised (even though, as an over-65 year old, it doesn’t benefit me!) so that many people on low pay will be exempt from paying income tax in the future. However, it doesn’t do anything for those whose incomes were so low that they weren’t liable to pay tax anyway. We’ll all be affected by the increase in VAT to 20 percent. I remember Mrs Thatcher assuring us that VAT was one of the fairest taxes because it was the same for everybody and one had the choice of paying it or not. I don’t think that the householder with a leaky roof or the motorist who needs an urgent repair to his car to get to work, has much choice in the matter.
Many comfortably off folk (The ‘Middle England’ about whom the Express and Mail are always so concerned) will suffer as a result of cuts in means test related benefits, and some will be affected by the increase in Capital Gains Tax. I see little sign of the seriously wealthy (the owners of football clubs, luxury yachts and second homes in the Caribbean) being seriously, or even modestly, inconvenienced by the budget.
I am getting a little tired of hearing David Cameron and Nick Clegg saying how sorry they were to have to increase VAT and cut benefits but ‘there simply wasn’t an alternative’. Really? When they hadn’t considered the possibility of a modest one or two pence increase on income tax, and no one is even allowed to think about axing the vastly expensive and totally useless Trident Submarine programme.
And – there’s more to come. We don’t yet know the half of it. Every government department except Health and Overseas Development is to cut its budget by 25 percent – a quarter. We shall know the effect of this in October. It doesn’t take a clairvoyant to see an autumn and a winter of discontent looming ahead.
Does this mean that Nick Clegg and his colleagues have betrayed the electors by joining in coalition with the Conservatives? Perhaps, but without them things could have been even worse. At least the desires of right-wing Climate Change Denying Europhobes (like our MP) have been curbed. And does anyone really imagine that the income tax threshold would have been raised, that there would have been any rise at all in Capital Gains Tax, and that ‘Middle England’ would have been in any way discomforted, had it not been for the influence of Nick Clegg and his not-so-merry men.
Was it worth it? We’ll just have to wait and see.
A blog reader’s comment.
I wouldn’t pretend to be able to assess the effects of the Budget, and of cuts yet to come, on the national economy. However, here is the opinion of a regular blog reader who is much more knowledgeable in this field than I am – and who has an enterprise of his own, serving the public sector, likely to be directly affected.
'I am very concerned that the 25 percent cuts will make it impossible to win new business for the next five years. Perhaps even worse, this level of cuts – coupled with the same sentiment elsewhere in Europe – may cause negative growth, reducing tax receipts, and prompting another round of spending cuts and a vicious spiral downwards. I think they have taken a huge gamble, and that a more cautious approach would actually have been safer'.
Carry on working!
I took early retirement from Tendring Council shortly before my fifty-ninth birthday in 1980. I had no intention of sitting back and enjoying inactivity (for one thing, I couldn’t have afforded to!) but immediately embarked on a new career as a freelance writer. I wrote advertising features for Essex County Newspapers (now Newsquest Ltd) and for twenty-three years contributed a comment column Tendring Topics to their free newspaper Coastal Express. The column was the predecessor of this blog, Tendring Topics……on line.
‘Non Angli, sed Angeli’
‘Not Angles but Angels’. These are said to have been the punning words of Pope Gregory the Great when in 573 A.D., before his elevation to the Papacy, he enquired about the origins of some young blue-eyed and fair haired slaves in a Roman slave market*. He had been told that they were called Angles and came from a remote heathen country called England on the very edge of the known world. It was an incident that is said to have led to his sending Augustine across Europe and the English Channel to convert the English to the Christian Faith.
Had political correctness been a fad of 6th Century Rome as it is of 21st Century Britain, he would have been instantly urged. ‘Please don’t call them “angels”. There are none in their religion and it will give them ideas above their station in life. In any case, quite a few of our keenest customers are non-Christian. Calling those slaves angels will bring down their price!’
These were some of the thoughts that went through my head when I read in the Gazette that a Charity called Whisperers, that tries to console and support the grieving parents of stillborn babies, had been chided by Colchester General Hospital for referring to these babies as ‘new little angels’.
Jenny Collins, senior midwife at the hospital is reported as saying, ‘We are not happy about the use of the word “angel” on a card giving information about Whisperers, because we suspect that it has the potential to offend some parents at what is an extraordinarily difficult and sensitive time for them. Not all religions believe in angels and secular people certainly do not’.
I can’t claim to be knowledgeable about ‘all religions’, but I do know that angels feature in the Christian, Jewish and Muslim faiths and what little I know of Buddhists, Hindus and Sikhs suggests to me that they wouldn’t in the least mind still-born children being referred to as ‘new little angels’. Nor I think, would any of the many ‘secular people’ of my acquaintance.
A few people (not necessarily those obsessed with ‘political correctness’) may quibble about the use of the word ‘angel’ for the souls of the departed. Angels, they may inform us, are God’s messengers and are a quite separate creation.
However, the man who was to become Pope Gregory the Great used the word loosely in the sixth century to describe Anglo-Saxon slaves. In the nineteenth century Cardinal John Henry Newman used the word in much the same sense as Whisperers do today, in the last two lines of his hymn, ‘Lead kindly light’
Then, with the dawn, those angel faces smile,
That I have loved long since – and lost the while.
With such distinguished examples, Christians at least can surely not object to the word being used to bring some comfort to bereaved parents whose grief and loss are really beyond consolation. I think that it is patronising and impertinent to assume knowledge of what will, and will not, give offence to other people.
*No, I don’t know why Pope Gregory and, for many centuries, Christians of every tradition, tolerated the institution of slavery. Jesus Christ condemned it when he said (Matthew 7.12) that the whole of the moral teaching of the Old Testament, “The Law and the Prophets”, could be summed up as “Treat other people exactly as you yourself would wish to be treated” – a little piece of fundamental Christian faith and practice that clearly rules out slave trading and slave owning.
We don’t yet know the half of it!
My idea of a ‘good’ budget is one that tends to narrow the gap between the richest and poorest in our nation. A ‘bad’ budget is one that widens it. It follows that it is a long time since I saw a good budget.
Nor is the present one an exception, though it has some good points. I am sorry that my former colleagues in the public service are having to pay for the economic crisis with a two-year pay freeze (in a time of continuing inflation this amounts to a pay cut, as David Cameron when pressed, was forced to agree) while others, whose folly and incompetence triggered the crisis, continue to enjoy huge salaries and bonuses.
There’s a rather harsh Spanish proverb that asserts, “Take what you want”, says God. “Take it…..and pay for it!” True enough - the trouble is that it is rarely those who take who have to pay!
I am glad that public servants earning less than £21,000 a year are exempt from the freeze and that they are to receive a flat rate increase of £250 a year. I think that we have to get away from the pattern of percentage increases. These can give the impression that the Chief Executive and the lower ranks of an organisation are having identical pay increases while, in fact, they are wildly different. Inevitably every across-the-board percentage pay rise, increases the gap between the highest and the lowest paid. Eventually, as we have seen, it results in some top officials enjoying a higher salary than the Prime Minister!
I am glad that the threshold of income tax liability has been raised (even though, as an over-65 year old, it doesn’t benefit me!) so that many people on low pay will be exempt from paying income tax in the future. However, it doesn’t do anything for those whose incomes were so low that they weren’t liable to pay tax anyway. We’ll all be affected by the increase in VAT to 20 percent. I remember Mrs Thatcher assuring us that VAT was one of the fairest taxes because it was the same for everybody and one had the choice of paying it or not. I don’t think that the householder with a leaky roof or the motorist who needs an urgent repair to his car to get to work, has much choice in the matter.
Many comfortably off folk (The ‘Middle England’ about whom the Express and Mail are always so concerned) will suffer as a result of cuts in means test related benefits, and some will be affected by the increase in Capital Gains Tax. I see little sign of the seriously wealthy (the owners of football clubs, luxury yachts and second homes in the Caribbean) being seriously, or even modestly, inconvenienced by the budget.
I am getting a little tired of hearing David Cameron and Nick Clegg saying how sorry they were to have to increase VAT and cut benefits but ‘there simply wasn’t an alternative’. Really? When they hadn’t considered the possibility of a modest one or two pence increase on income tax, and no one is even allowed to think about axing the vastly expensive and totally useless Trident Submarine programme.
And – there’s more to come. We don’t yet know the half of it. Every government department except Health and Overseas Development is to cut its budget by 25 percent – a quarter. We shall know the effect of this in October. It doesn’t take a clairvoyant to see an autumn and a winter of discontent looming ahead.
Does this mean that Nick Clegg and his colleagues have betrayed the electors by joining in coalition with the Conservatives? Perhaps, but without them things could have been even worse. At least the desires of right-wing Climate Change Denying Europhobes (like our MP) have been curbed. And does anyone really imagine that the income tax threshold would have been raised, that there would have been any rise at all in Capital Gains Tax, and that ‘Middle England’ would have been in any way discomforted, had it not been for the influence of Nick Clegg and his not-so-merry men.
Was it worth it? We’ll just have to wait and see.
A blog reader’s comment.
I wouldn’t pretend to be able to assess the effects of the Budget, and of cuts yet to come, on the national economy. However, here is the opinion of a regular blog reader who is much more knowledgeable in this field than I am – and who has an enterprise of his own, serving the public sector, likely to be directly affected.
'I am very concerned that the 25 percent cuts will make it impossible to win new business for the next five years. Perhaps even worse, this level of cuts – coupled with the same sentiment elsewhere in Europe – may cause negative growth, reducing tax receipts, and prompting another round of spending cuts and a vicious spiral downwards. I think they have taken a huge gamble, and that a more cautious approach would actually have been safer'.
Carry on working!
I took early retirement from Tendring Council shortly before my fifty-ninth birthday in 1980. I had no intention of sitting back and enjoying inactivity (for one thing, I couldn’t have afforded to!) but immediately embarked on a new career as a freelance writer. I wrote advertising features for Essex County Newspapers (now Newsquest Ltd) and for twenty-three years contributed a comment column Tendring Topics to their free newspaper Coastal Express. The column was the predecessor of this blog, Tendring Topics……on line.
My retirement presentation (Left to right) myself, Heather, Councillor Fred Good, Chairman of the Council.
I also wrote half a dozen commercially successful books on domestic hot and cold water supply and drainage, provided the plumbing section of a number of nationally sold DIY Manuals, and wrote a regular feature on the subject for Do-it-yourself Magazine, as well as answering readers’ queries on the same subject.
For years my wife Heather and I had recouped part of the cost of the camping holidays we had enjoyed every year by writing articles about them, with photographic illustrations, for the camping and caravanning press. In retirement we exchanged our frame tent for a motor caravan and continued with this practice.
I worked hard throughout and beyond the first twenty years of my retirement, perfecting my writing skills and effectively supplementing my pension. My wife Heather was a partner in everything I did. We both enjoyed every minute of it.
For years my wife Heather and I had recouped part of the cost of the camping holidays we had enjoyed every year by writing articles about them, with photographic illustrations, for the camping and caravanning press. In retirement we exchanged our frame tent for a motor caravan and continued with this practice.
I worked hard throughout and beyond the first twenty years of my retirement, perfecting my writing skills and effectively supplementing my pension. My wife Heather was a partner in everything I did. We both enjoyed every minute of it.
Myself, aged about 70, surrounded by my books and with a copy of the ‘Coastal Express' by my left wrist. This was before I had been introduced to the joys of computing, and I am using a Brother electronic typewriter.It might be thought that I would therefore be wholeheartedly in favour of a later retirement age. I had carried on in paid employment (though very little pay as my output dwindled!) until I was over eighty. At sixty-five I must have been in my prime.
Quite so, but I retired voluntarily to do what I had really wanted to do throughout my life. I certainly wouldn’t have wished to carry on beyond 65 doing any of the jobs (public health inspection, housing management, public relations!) that I had done for the Council. I think that folk should have the option of carrying on working after 65 but that they shouldn’t be compelled to do so unless of course, they are incompetent as well as old!
The government is eager to get people capable of working, out of benefit and into paid work. They would, so it seems, like to do much the same with us pensioners. At the same time their policies ensure that there are fewer and fewer jobs for any of us to do.
During World War II there was a widely used propaganda poster announcing in large letters: From the Home Secretary: Three words to the whole nation: ‘ GO TO IT!’ To which an irreverent reply was, ‘OK – but where the ‘ell is it?’
A dire calamity!
Oh dear! England lost that knock-out match against Germany, and our World Cup Dreams have, once again, been shattered. It's true that the England team’s earlier performances in the World Cup matches - draws with the USA and Algeria and a one-goal win against tiny Slovenia – hadn’t inspired much confidence. Hopes had been raised though and I am sorry they have been shattered. Yes, I know that it’s only a game and doesn’t really matter. Thousands think that it does though, and I’m sorry about their disappointment.
2 comments:
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"I think that it is patronising and impertinent to assume knowledge of what will, and will not, give offence to other people."
Maybe so, but the Whisperers group are no less patronising and impertinent than Jenny Collins. The Whisperers are a group who have been in existence six months and have only had to deal with a small number of people who have sought them out because they already agree with them. Jenny Collins is an experienced senior midwife who had dealt with countless people of all backgrounds, opinions, and ways of coping. Both she and they may be "patronising and impertinent", but on this matter, I'd trust her judgement over theirs.
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