Tendring Topics……on line
A Generation without Faith, Hope or Compassion!
St Paul, in his letter to the members of the newly formed Christian Church in Corinth, memorably wrote that there are three abiding and overriding virtues, Faith, Hope and Compassion* and that the greatest of these is Compassion, without which even our most worthy action or activity is valueless. Watching, on the tv screen, the rampaging mobs of young people, at first in London and later in other English cities, burning, destroying and looting other people’s goods and properties, it struck me how singularly lacking in all three of those virtues the members of those mobs seemed to be.
Faith? It would surprise me if there was a single member of those mobs who would have described himself as a committed follower of any of the world’s religious faiths. Nor I think, were they committed atheists (I reckon that Richard Dawkins is, intellectually, a bit out of their depth!). I don’t think either that they have a fervent political faith, a rage against authority like many that took part in riots in the past. These rioters ignored secular symbols of power such as Town Halls, Public Offices, and Police Stations, to vent their violence on departmental stores, sports outfitters and electrical and electronic goods retailers that were worth plundering. Their motive was greed - the acquisition of useable or saleable items – trainers, jewellery, electronic equipment and so on.
Then, there is Hope. That is something that we all need. It was what kept me alive and sane during the three long years that I was a prisoner of war. Dante knew what he was doing when in his Inferno he posted ‘All hope abandon ye who enter here!’ at the entrance to Hell. I reckon that most of those young rioters had abandoned theirs. Ill educated and undisciplined, they had little chance of obtaining worthwhile employment and a secure future. Government policies and government cuts had made that ‘little chance’ even smaller. They were the straw that broke the camel’s back; the fuse that ignited the powder keg of resentment and hatred. The riots were doubly welcomed by those who considered themselves to be disadvantaged. They provided them with an opportunity to hit out at a society that they felt had dealt with them unfairly, and of obtaining simply by helping themselves, some of the worldly goods they had seen flaunted on their tv screens.
As for compassion; there was little enough compassion in the minds of those who looted and then burned to the ground decades-old family businesses that had survived the air raids of World War II, and more recent enterprises developed perhaps by hard-working immigrants struggling to build up a support their families.
It is one thing to diagnose a problem; yet another to suggest a remedy. Perhaps some of their ‘elders and betters’ could begin by setting the younger generation a better example. It couldn’t have helped the moral development of the rioters to discover that a great many (many more than were actually prosecuted) of our MPs and at least one ‘Noble Lord’ had fiddled their parliamentary expenses, thereby robbing the rest of us, who pay those expenses with our taxes. It couldn’t have helped for them to know that a succession of Prime Ministers and other leading politicians of both main political parties, had courted the favours of an international enterprise that was bribing our police and spying on the private lives of British citizens. Had the culprits not been caught I have little doubt that both lots of wrongdoing would still be with us today. This surely suggests to the young that the one commandment that they need to obey is Thou shalt not be found out!
If we want Great Britain to develop into a land of which we can all feel proud, the government must work towards narrowing the yawning gap between the wealthiest and the poorest people in our country, and between the least and the most privileged. Can you even imagine riots such as those that we have experienced, happening in countries like Sweden and Denmark where the gap between wealthy and poor is much narrower? Have you noticed, by the way, that there has been no comparable rioting in Scotland and Wales despite some of their cities (Glasgow for instance) having a reputation for lawlessness? Could it be because they both have truly democratically elected assemblies that really do represent their whole nation?
Then again, it is no good haranguing parents to spend more time with their children while, at the same time, encouraging both parents to be in fulltime paid employment. It is no good expecting parents, tired from a full day’s work, preparing a meal and doing other jobs about the home, to spend any leisure time that may be left them playing with their children and furthering their education.
Finally – and I think that this is the most important of all – we have got to be prepared to tell young people that some activities, using drugs, indulging prematurely or promiscuously in sexual activity, stealing, gang-fighting, shop lifting, bullying younger kids and so on are not just unwise, dangerous, antisocial and bad for one’s health but wrong (wicked or sinful if you prefer) and that there is a ‘right’ and a ‘wrong’ that applies to followers of every culture and to adherents of every religious faith and of none.
We might even try to instil into the minds of the young the Golden Rule that you should always ‘Treat other people in the same way that you would like them to treat you’. I am told that that rule, or something very like it, is implanted in every religious tradition. I know it from Jesus Christ’s Sermon on the Mount. Jesus said that it was a summation of all the moral law of the Old Testament. If our forebears had tried to observe that rule rather more often during the past two thousand years, the world today would be a much happier place. Today could be a good time to start!
*The King James Bible says ‘Faith, Hope and Charity’. Most modern translation of the Bible say ‘Faith, Hope and Love’. I think that ‘Charity’ still has a slight taste of Victorian Workhouse ‘gruel’. Human love can be jealous and selfish. I think that ‘compassion’ is closer than either to what St. Paul meant.
That Dreadful Deficit!
If there is one message that the government has been absolutely determined, and largely successful, in impressing upon us all it is that Britain has an enormous fiscal deficit that simply must be reduced or eliminated.
Since it is indisputable that we have a large national debt, it must surely follow that someone has lent us all that money. Have you ever wondered who those manipulative money-lenders, those latter-day Shylocks, could possibly be? Harold Wilson, I remember, used to tell us about the financial machinations of ‘the gnomes of Zurich’. Today, if you were to ask a Daily Mail, or a Daily Express reader you would probably be told that the schemers of Brussels are most likely to be guilty. It was, so they would probably say, all part of a cunning plan to ensure that the malign European Union ruled Britannia!
In fact it seems that those nefarious international loan sharks live much closer to home than either Zurich or Brussels. They are, in fact, we ourselves! A reader’s letter in The Friend, a Quaker independent weekly journal, helps to explain the situation. Below are some extracts from his letter:
The national debt is owed to private individuals and is what constitutes their savings. Eighty percent of public borrowing is owed to UK citizens. The interest payments on that debt are not lost to society but will go to those citizens – and their lucky grandchildren………..
……….The UK government is emphatically not in the same position as a household or business. It is the issuer, not just the user, of its own currency and therefore cannot go bankrupt. The UK is fundamentally different to Greece and Ireland as a result.
In a recession, households and businesses, quite rationally, try to save money. This means that others lose income and possibly their jobs. It makes no sense for the state to add to the problem by reducing its spending at the same time………………..
………As the Quaker and Nobel-prize-winning economist William Vickrey said, ‘There is no real justification for a requirement that a budget of any sort should be balanced, except as a rallying point for those who seek to hamstring government.’ All this was understood decades ago by Keynes and the generations of economists and leaders he influenced. Sadly, such understanding does not lead to policies that give short-term benefit to the very rich, and so will now rarely be found in the press, tv or government.
The letter was written by Paul Doherty of Heswall Quaker Meeting who also comments that those who would like to find alternative views on how our monetary system works, could read about modern monetary theory in Warren Mosler’s The Seven Deadly Innocent Frauds of Economic Policy, a fascinating insider’s account.
I can’t get away from that deficit!
No, I can’t get away from that deficit no matter how hard I try. I have just been referred to – and have read on line – an article in the Daily Telegraph by Janet Daley who is reckoned to be an expert in economics. She is occasionally to be heard pontificating on the BBC. She is no fan of President Obama and recently wrote an article claiming that, as an African American he is, quite literally, only half African and only half American!
That should have warned me, but I read on. She says that we simply ’can’t afford’ our welfare state and our free national health service. She believes that the welfare safety net that was established by my generation 66 years ago (long before she was born!) should be dismantled and that we should revert to the everyone-for-himself-and-devil-take-the-hindmost system that prevails in the USA – and from which President Obama has tried, it seems in vain, to drag them. If you want to read it yourself try using Google to find Janet Daley, Daily Telegraph. The contribution in question is dated Saturday 6th August and is entitled ‘If we are to survive the looming catastrophe….’
I believe that that health and welfare safety net that offered everybody in the United Kingdom the Freedom from Fear promised by President Roosevelt (I bet Ms Daley would have had no time for him either!) was one of the proudest achievements of Clem Attlee’s post-war Labour Government that I am glad my vote helped to office. Funny thing – we had just come out of six years of total warfare which had left our country in ruins and many of us seriously injured in mind and/or body, with tens of thousands of homeless and (although I don’t know the figure) a national debt that must have been sky-high. Yet, we could afford it then; possibly because we had the will and determination to do so and because, in those days, we had a Labour Government that didn’t rate the interests of multimillionaires above the clearly expressed will of the people.
I really think that Ms Daley would be happier back in her native USA especially as the Republicans (reinforced by the truly Neanderthaler Tea Party movement!) appear to have defeated an attempt by the Democrats to make the really wealthy pay their share towards the reduction of the USA’s deficit.
We can afford the Social Security and NHS Safety Nets if we really want Britain to be a fairer society and are all prepared to contribute towards that end. What we can’t afford are the super-wealthy who avoid paying their fair share of taxation, and successful British Companies like Boots who – as I pointed out a few weeks ago – ‘locate’ the headquarters of their companies in overseas tax havens, to reduce or eliminate altogether their tax obligation to Britain.
I have long urged an overhaul of the Income Tax system to ensure a more equitable distribution of the nation’s wealth. I am amazed to learn that David Cameron is considering a change to the income tax system – but it is to help the wealthy, by reducing the 50 percent rate of tax on the taxable income of those with the highest incomes, ‘to increase competitiveness’. Words fail me!
Showing posts with label The Christian Faith. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Christian Faith. Show all posts
16 August 2011
04 September 2009
Week37.09
Tendring Topics…….on Line
Problems with ‘the natives’!
Nobody could accuse Lord Hanningfield and his colleagues on Essex County Council of being timid and unimaginative. Quite suddenly (I suppose that it couldn’t be anything to do with the recent change in the political complexion of Tendring Council?) they have decided to make our holiday coast, ‘as important as it was in the 1950s and ‘60s. Let’s take Tendring back as a place that people want to go to for a day, a weekend or even longer’.
They have certainly come up with some big ideas: a new Marina for Harwich and a second one (why not while we’re about it?) in either the Brightlingsea or Manningtree areas; cash for Walton’s Naze Tower walkway; more attractions in Harwich for cruise visitors, and a major redevelopment in Jaywick. How, you may wonder; is it all to be paid for? That is certainly the question that would have been asked by Lord Hanningfield and his colleagues had the proposals been the brainchild of their political opponents.
The answer, it seems, lies in hopes of funding by the Government, from the usually derided European Union, and from such groups as the East of England Development Agency. But Lord Hanningfield is also reported as saying that the county council is prepared to dip into its own pocket to help make big changes, ‘Essex County Council has got to bite the bullet and so we are going to invest money and do it ourselves’. It should, of course, be remembered that it is our council tax that fills the County Council’s ‘own pocket’. If any ‘bullet biting’ has to be done it will be us who will have to do it!
Jaywick’s residents were cheered to hear that dealing with their problems was to be a priority. It will be recalled that Jaywick has the dubious distinction of being the third most deprived community in England. For years its residents have been pleading for paved streets, better street lighting and better policing. His Lordship’s words though, were just a little chilling, ‘While it (Jaywick) is there it casts a shadow over the whole area’.
His proposals go far beyond mere paving and lighting. He sees a glowing future for a Jaywick restored as a seasonal tourist area. A centre for the arts has already been promised. Now the county council would like to see beach huts and summer chalets for holiday makers, more amusements, possibly a big dipper, perhaps even a theme park.
It is impossible not to warm to this vision of a Jaywick transformed into the brightest jewel of the Essex holiday coast. There’s just one little snag though. It is the one that was encountered in the 18th and 19th centuries by pioneers bringing the joys of western civilisation to the Scottish Highlands, to the North American ‘ Wild West’, and to Australia and New Zealand. What on earth is to be done about the nat
ives, and their clustered and unacceptably primitive homes? Residents of Jaywick’s Brooklands Estate, who had naively imagined that any improvements to their neighbourhood would be primarily for their benefit, have had a rude shock. They, it seems, are a major part of the problem. There really is no place for the chalets of Brooklands and their occupants in this vision of a New Jaywick Sands, Clacton-on-Sea’s reborn and desirable holiday suburb.
A big dipper for Jaywick? Surely Lord Hanningfield’s imagination can do better than that! Why not a Jaywick Wheel, rivalling that of Sheffield (illustrated) and the London Eye? Just imagine the breathtaking view from the top!
Genocide and/or forcible dispossession, the historically preferred solutions to ‘the native problem’, are no longer acceptable. ‘The County Council’, says its leader, ‘was working with Tendring Council and housing associations to create more affordable housing within Tendring to encourage people to move away’. I wish them joy. I wonder if the wizards of County Hall are aware that, almost half a century ago, the former Clacton Urban District Council tried and failed to find a legal final solution to ‘The Brooklands problem’.
This picture and the one below, show the transformation of a piece of wasteland in Jaywick by my friends Janet and Rodney Thomas. They demonstrate what can be achieved with very little money but a great deal of determination and hard work.
It was in the ‘60s that Clacton UDC declared Brooklands to be a ‘Clearance Area’ under the slum clearance provisions of the Housing Act 1936. The whole area was to be cleared and redeveloped. The council would have rehoused the occupants (this was in the days when councils were encouraged to build houses for letting!). Property owners would have been compensated. They however, were fiercely opposed to the plan. There was an appeal and a public enquiry. The appeal succeeded. Brooklands remained and still remains largely unchanged.
Today’s property owners, many of them owner/occupiers are no less determined than those of the ‘60s . John Walton, chairman of the Jaywick Forum, told a reporter, ‘People love where they are. Most of the people down there, the owner-occupiers, have made little palaces of their places’. A possible, rather expensive, solution to the problem is suggested by the quoted words of Mick Masterson, a Brooklands resident; ‘I have got a billion-dollar view. Most people are thirty feet from the beach. What would encourage them to move apart from a lot of money?’
One thing is apparent to me. Essex County Council doesn’t want Brooklands to be improved. They want it cleared. I think that Brooklands residents can bid farewell to their hopes of properly surfaced roads and street lighting.
'Nothing but the night'?
‘Oh no – not another sermon!’ Well, perhaps; it’s just that a news item on the tv last week caught my attention. The government, it was claimed, had relaxed Britain’s licensing laws in the hope it would promote the Continental practice of the moderate social use of alcohol with meals, and thus discourage binge-drinking. It has worked in reverse. We haven’t stopped binge-drinking but Continentals are beginning to take it up. It is already a serious problem among young people in Italy. I’d be surprised if Italy is the only country affected.
In the 1930s regular binge-drinking (drinking for no other purpose than that of getting drunk) was a relatively rare practice engaged in mainly by sad and lonely middle-aged or elderly alcoholics. It was certainly not a regular Saturday night social activity of teenagers and young adults.
What has happened to public attitudes during the past seventy-plus years to make such a difference? I think that a major factor has been loss of faith and hope. In the 1930s practically all of us believed in at least something, and looked toward the future with hope and confidence.
In this country most of us, deep down, accepted the truth of one or other of the traditions of the Christian faith. Many didn’t go to church but church-going was recognised as a natural and normal thing to do. Thanks to universal education with regular ‘Scripture’ lessons, we all had at least a sketchy acquaintance with the contents of the Bible and the basic teachings of Christianity.
We all hoped and believed that, as a result of scientific progress and the processes of parliamentary democracy, life would get steadily better for us all. Most had little doubt that another and better life awaited us beyond the grave. Throughout my teenage years I met only one person who wasn’t at least nominally a Christian; and who proclaimed himself to be an atheist, with no belief whatsoever in a spiritual dimension to our existence, or in an afterlife. He was a classmate and a good friend of mine (with whom I had heated arguments!) at Ipswich’s Northgate School. Atheist he may have been but it would have been quite wrong to describe him as a non-believer. He had a fundamentalist belief in the infallibility of Marxist materialism and a most fervent hope that its propagation would, sooner rather than later, bring us all to an earthly Paradise.
In those days all of us had at least a measure of faith and hope. For some the faith was in things of the spirit; others in the development of scientific knowledge or in political and economic theory. Some hoped for a Paradise beyond the grave and others for one on earth. Me? Oh, I wanted the best of both worlds. As a teenager I was a convinced Anglo-Catholic but I also believed profoundly that we could, by political means, 'build Jerusalem in England’s green and pleasant land’, and that we should strive to do so. Did not members of every Christian denomination pray, ‘Thy Kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven’?
Today, communism is ‘the god that failed’. Sadly in my opinion, democratic socialism is dying too…..perhaps it is due for rebirth! There are no Utopians. Scientific progress seems as likely to lead to disaster as to a better world. How long is it since any science-fiction writer envisaged a future that was anything but a nightmare? The only political groups that are consistently gaining strength are the extreme nationalist and xenophobic ones. Fortunately they are still very small. The Christian tradition that is most flourishing is a charismatic and fundamentalist evangelicalism, for which, try as I might, I cannot feel much enthusiasm.
Generally, I think that the prevailing spirit of the age is of disillusion, disbelief and distrust of all political, religious and scientific leaders. There is a taken-for-granted conviction that ‘those of us who live in the real world’ know that it, and the whole universe, is the product of mere chance (a cosmic accident!) and the world’s multifarious life forms simply the result of blind evolution. Nothing has ‘a purpose’ beyond that of perpetuating its species. Every species though…. and the world….and the universe, is ultimately destined for extinction. Fear, greed and the gratification of the senses are humankind’s only motivations. ‘Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die.’ And death isn’t, of course, eternal life or even eternal rest, but obliteration, total extinction. It will be as if we had never existed. Edward Fitzgerald summarised this nihilistic non-credo in his translation of ‘The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam’:
Alike for those who for ‘the day’ prepare.
And those who unto a ‘tomorrow’ stare.
The muezzin from the tower of darkness cries,
‘Fools! Your reward is neither here nor there.
as did A.E. Housman in the second and final verse of his short poem, 'The hollow fires burn out to black, the lamps are guttering low.........'
Never fear lad, nought’s to dread.
Look neither left nor right.
In all the endless road you tread,
There’s nothing but the night!
It is hardly surprising that young people regularly try to blot out the total futility of their existence with drugs and/or by drinking themselves into insensibility. If I shared their disbelief and lack of hope, I’d do the same.
St Paul told the people of Corinth that there were three great abiding virtues; faith, hope and love……and that the greatest of these was love. So it is, but it is also true that a society without faith and hope is heading for disaster.
Problems with ‘the natives’!
Nobody could accuse Lord Hanningfield and his colleagues on Essex County Council of being timid and unimaginative. Quite suddenly (I suppose that it couldn’t be anything to do with the recent change in the political complexion of Tendring Council?) they have decided to make our holiday coast, ‘as important as it was in the 1950s and ‘60s. Let’s take Tendring back as a place that people want to go to for a day, a weekend or even longer’.
They have certainly come up with some big ideas: a new Marina for Harwich and a second one (why not while we’re about it?) in either the Brightlingsea or Manningtree areas; cash for Walton’s Naze Tower walkway; more attractions in Harwich for cruise visitors, and a major redevelopment in Jaywick. How, you may wonder; is it all to be paid for? That is certainly the question that would have been asked by Lord Hanningfield and his colleagues had the proposals been the brainchild of their political opponents.
The answer, it seems, lies in hopes of funding by the Government, from the usually derided European Union, and from such groups as the East of England Development Agency. But Lord Hanningfield is also reported as saying that the county council is prepared to dip into its own pocket to help make big changes, ‘Essex County Council has got to bite the bullet and so we are going to invest money and do it ourselves’. It should, of course, be remembered that it is our council tax that fills the County Council’s ‘own pocket’. If any ‘bullet biting’ has to be done it will be us who will have to do it!
Jaywick’s residents were cheered to hear that dealing with their problems was to be a priority. It will be recalled that Jaywick has the dubious distinction of being the third most deprived community in England. For years its residents have been pleading for paved streets, better street lighting and better policing. His Lordship’s words though, were just a little chilling, ‘While it (Jaywick) is there it casts a shadow over the whole area’.
His proposals go far beyond mere paving and lighting. He sees a glowing future for a Jaywick restored as a seasonal tourist area. A centre for the arts has already been promised. Now the county council would like to see beach huts and summer chalets for holiday makers, more amusements, possibly a big dipper, perhaps even a theme park.
It is impossible not to warm to this vision of a Jaywick transformed into the brightest jewel of the Essex holiday coast. There’s just one little snag though. It is the one that was encountered in the 18th and 19th centuries by pioneers bringing the joys of western civilisation to the Scottish Highlands, to the North American ‘ Wild West’, and to Australia and New Zealand. What on earth is to be done about the nat
ives, and their clustered and unacceptably primitive homes? Residents of Jaywick’s Brooklands Estate, who had naively imagined that any improvements to their neighbourhood would be primarily for their benefit, have had a rude shock. They, it seems, are a major part of the problem. There really is no place for the chalets of Brooklands and their occupants in this vision of a New Jaywick Sands, Clacton-on-Sea’s reborn and desirable holiday suburb.A big dipper for Jaywick? Surely Lord Hanningfield’s imagination can do better than that! Why not a Jaywick Wheel, rivalling that of Sheffield (illustrated) and the London Eye? Just imagine the breathtaking view from the top!
Genocide and/or forcible dispossession, the historically preferred solutions to ‘the native problem’, are no longer acceptable. ‘The County Council’, says its leader, ‘was working with Tendring Council and housing associations to create more affordable housing within Tendring to encourage people to move away’. I wish them joy. I wonder if the wizards of County Hall are aware that, almost half a century ago, the former Clacton Urban District Council tried and failed to find a legal final solution to ‘The Brooklands problem’.
This picture and the one below, show the transformation of a piece of wasteland in Jaywick by my friends Janet and Rodney Thomas. They demonstrate what can be achieved with very little money but a great deal of determination and hard work.
It was in the ‘60s that Clacton UDC declared Brooklands to be a ‘Clearance Area’ under the slum clearance provisions of the Housing Act 1936. The whole area was to be cleared and redeveloped. The council would have rehoused the occupants (this was in the days when councils were encouraged to build houses for letting!). Property owners would have been compensated. They however, were fiercely opposed to the plan. There was an appeal and a public enquiry. The appeal succeeded. Brooklands remained and still remains largely unchanged.
Today’s property owners, many of them owner/occupiers are no less determined than those of the ‘60s . John Walton, chairman of the Jaywick Forum, told a reporter, ‘People love where they are. Most of the people down there, the owner-occupiers, have made little palaces of their places’. A possible, rather expensive, solution to the problem is suggested by the quoted words of Mick Masterson, a Brooklands resident; ‘I have got a billion-dollar view. Most people are thirty feet from the beach. What would encourage them to move apart from a lot of money?’
One thing is apparent to me. Essex County Council doesn’t want Brooklands to be improved. They want it cleared. I think that Brooklands residents can bid farewell to their hopes of properly surfaced roads and street lighting.
'Nothing but the night'?
‘Oh no – not another sermon!’ Well, perhaps; it’s just that a news item on the tv last week caught my attention. The government, it was claimed, had relaxed Britain’s licensing laws in the hope it would promote the Continental practice of the moderate social use of alcohol with meals, and thus discourage binge-drinking. It has worked in reverse. We haven’t stopped binge-drinking but Continentals are beginning to take it up. It is already a serious problem among young people in Italy. I’d be surprised if Italy is the only country affected.
In the 1930s regular binge-drinking (drinking for no other purpose than that of getting drunk) was a relatively rare practice engaged in mainly by sad and lonely middle-aged or elderly alcoholics. It was certainly not a regular Saturday night social activity of teenagers and young adults.
What has happened to public attitudes during the past seventy-plus years to make such a difference? I think that a major factor has been loss of faith and hope. In the 1930s practically all of us believed in at least something, and looked toward the future with hope and confidence.
In this country most of us, deep down, accepted the truth of one or other of the traditions of the Christian faith. Many didn’t go to church but church-going was recognised as a natural and normal thing to do. Thanks to universal education with regular ‘Scripture’ lessons, we all had at least a sketchy acquaintance with the contents of the Bible and the basic teachings of Christianity.
We all hoped and believed that, as a result of scientific progress and the processes of parliamentary democracy, life would get steadily better for us all. Most had little doubt that another and better life awaited us beyond the grave. Throughout my teenage years I met only one person who wasn’t at least nominally a Christian; and who proclaimed himself to be an atheist, with no belief whatsoever in a spiritual dimension to our existence, or in an afterlife. He was a classmate and a good friend of mine (with whom I had heated arguments!) at Ipswich’s Northgate School. Atheist he may have been but it would have been quite wrong to describe him as a non-believer. He had a fundamentalist belief in the infallibility of Marxist materialism and a most fervent hope that its propagation would, sooner rather than later, bring us all to an earthly Paradise.
In those days all of us had at least a measure of faith and hope. For some the faith was in things of the spirit; others in the development of scientific knowledge or in political and economic theory. Some hoped for a Paradise beyond the grave and others for one on earth. Me? Oh, I wanted the best of both worlds. As a teenager I was a convinced Anglo-Catholic but I also believed profoundly that we could, by political means, 'build Jerusalem in England’s green and pleasant land’, and that we should strive to do so. Did not members of every Christian denomination pray, ‘Thy Kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven’?
Today, communism is ‘the god that failed’. Sadly in my opinion, democratic socialism is dying too…..perhaps it is due for rebirth! There are no Utopians. Scientific progress seems as likely to lead to disaster as to a better world. How long is it since any science-fiction writer envisaged a future that was anything but a nightmare? The only political groups that are consistently gaining strength are the extreme nationalist and xenophobic ones. Fortunately they are still very small. The Christian tradition that is most flourishing is a charismatic and fundamentalist evangelicalism, for which, try as I might, I cannot feel much enthusiasm.
Generally, I think that the prevailing spirit of the age is of disillusion, disbelief and distrust of all political, religious and scientific leaders. There is a taken-for-granted conviction that ‘those of us who live in the real world’ know that it, and the whole universe, is the product of mere chance (a cosmic accident!) and the world’s multifarious life forms simply the result of blind evolution. Nothing has ‘a purpose’ beyond that of perpetuating its species. Every species though…. and the world….and the universe, is ultimately destined for extinction. Fear, greed and the gratification of the senses are humankind’s only motivations. ‘Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die.’ And death isn’t, of course, eternal life or even eternal rest, but obliteration, total extinction. It will be as if we had never existed. Edward Fitzgerald summarised this nihilistic non-credo in his translation of ‘The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam’:
Alike for those who for ‘the day’ prepare.
And those who unto a ‘tomorrow’ stare.
The muezzin from the tower of darkness cries,
‘Fools! Your reward is neither here nor there.
as did A.E. Housman in the second and final verse of his short poem, 'The hollow fires burn out to black, the lamps are guttering low.........'
Never fear lad, nought’s to dread.
Look neither left nor right.
In all the endless road you tread,
There’s nothing but the night!
It is hardly surprising that young people regularly try to blot out the total futility of their existence with drugs and/or by drinking themselves into insensibility. If I shared their disbelief and lack of hope, I’d do the same.
St Paul told the people of Corinth that there were three great abiding virtues; faith, hope and love……and that the greatest of these was love. So it is, but it is also true that a society without faith and hope is heading for disaster.
30 July 2009
Tendring Topics…….on line
Home Rule for Essex?
To be fair, Essex County Council’s leader, Lord Hanningfield isn’t quite demanding that. He did once in the past though….and then hastily assured us that he was ‘only joking’. Now though, he would like to see the billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money entrusted to quangos, to be made accountable to Essex County Council. He would also like, within the county, to have power to decide who should receive benefits such as Jobseekers’ Allowance and Income Support, and how much recipients should receive.
He would like the county council to be allowed to hold referendums on local issues, and to negotiate and then enforce a set of standards with such quangos as the East of England Development Agency, Arts Council East, Natural England and English Heritage. If they failed to meet these standards the county council would then be able either take on their jobs itself or find someone else to do it.
We do have a strange county council. They have sold off their old people’s homes, are eager to turn their schools into privately funded ‘academies’, and to put out to tender practically all the other services for which they are statutorily responsible. Yet, at the same time, they are taking over failing post offices (that’s one action of which I whole-heartedly approve!), running a bank and suggesting the provision of a county-wide public relations service. Now they want to become involved with the Social Security Benefit System and are casting envious eyes on the functions of the quangos?
Do they really want to run all these things, I wonder? Or do they simply wish to have the power to sell them off (like their old people’s homes) to the highest bidder?
The fact that Lord Hanningfield and his colleagues were recently returned to the County Hall with an increased majority confirms a conviction that I have held for some time. Most of the ever-fewer number of people who bother to vote in local elections don’t vote positively to get their representative elected…..but negatively to keep out of the Council Chamber those whom they trust even less or dislike even more!
With one statement reported as having been made by Lord Hanningfield I do whole-heartedly agree; ‘As things currently stand, the political system in England is far too centralised’. I’d add that the same applies to Essex, one of England’s largest counties. I believe that most of the County Council’s services could be run more efficiently and much more democratically by individual district and borough councils. The few that need overall strategic planning, together with many functions currently performed by central government, and least some of those of the Quangos on which Lord Hanningfield has set his sights, would be better performed by a larger East-of-England elected authority covering the whole of the Greater East Anglia Region.
Something to think about!
Once or twice a year I am asked to provide a ‘Thought for the Week’ (a kind of five-minute sermon) for inclusion in the Tendring Talking Times, the free weekly ‘talking newspaper’ sent to blind and visually impaired people within the Tendring District. I felt that one I recorded a few weeks ago might be of wider interest – so here it is, in its entirety. I don’t know if the ‘on tape’ version has yet been distributed.
Hello Friends. Ernest Hall here, with your thought for the week. You may remember that I am a Quaker and am also a member of the Church of England.
A visitor from another world, surveying religious practices on planet Earth, might be forgiven for concluding that of all the world religions, Christianity is the soft option. Think about it. There are no dietary restrictions. There is no rigid dress code. Any kind of dress or state of undress that is socially and legally acceptable in a public place, is likely to be acceptable in any place of Christian worship. Men, women and children are permitted, indeed are encouraged, to worship together. Christians, men or women, who marry someone of another faith, abandon their Christian faith, or are foolish enough to convert to another faith, suffer no temporal penalty. Those who attempted to exact such a penalty would themselves be liable to prosecution.
Initiation into full church membership may range from nothing at all, as with the Quakers, to brief total immersion as with some Protestant Evangelical traditions. For most it involves no more than a ceremony involving sprinkling of water on the forehead either in infancy or later in life.
Yes, the visitor from some distant galaxy might well conclude that Christianity is the soft option. But would he be right? I think not.
The late Archbishop William Temple once said that Christianity is the most materialist of the world’s religions. It doesn’t just require us to give thanks, praise and sacrifice to our Heavenly Father – or to follow a rigid dietary, dress or even moral code. Our religion is one of faith-in-action. We are expected to do God’s will as it is revealed to us in the example and teaching of Jesus.
The man who built his house upon a rock is compared by Jesus, not with a man of faith and nothing else, but with those who heard his words and acted upon them. Jesus said that not all who called upon him ‘Lord! Lord!’ would enter into his Kingdom but those who do the will of his Father, and our Father, in Heaven.
Jesus told us that the whole of the moral teaching of the Old Testament is summed up in the two commandments ‘Love God with every atom of your being. Love your neighbour as you love yourself’. In the Sermon on the Mount he clarified that second commandment telling his listeners, and through them telling us, that we should always treat other people in the same way that we ourselves would wish to be treated.
That is surely quite clear and easily understood. At first glance one might think that it could be complied with fairly easily. We all know how we would like to be treated. All we have to do is treat other people in the same way. Have we done that though? Sadly not; even the disciples who heard Jesus’ words and witnessed his example failed the test. When a Samaritan village refused to offer them hospitality and drove them out, they asked Jesus to bring down fire from Heaven to destroy the offenders!
Jesus said, ‘Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to those that despitefully use you’. Many of our forefathers have preferred to follow the example of those disciples rather than that of Jesus. Would medieval Christians, who condemned others to be burnt alive, really have liked to be treated in the same way? Nowadays we have nuclear weapons, cluster bombs and anti-personnel land mines. Do we really imagine that the manufacture and use of these weapons would receive the blessing of Jesus Christ, as we know him from the four Gospels?
Perhaps you are thinking, ‘It’s all very well telling us that Christianity is faith-in-action – but I am frail, disabled, old. It is as much as I can do to look after myself, never mind others’. Believe me, I understand that. I am myself in my late eighties and all too familiar with the progressive weakness and disability of old age.
Our God understands it well too. He is the God who rules the Universe but also notes the fall of the sparrow. A well-loved prayer in the Church of England Prayer Book begins; ‘Almighty God, unto whom all hearts are open, all desires known and from whom no secrets are hid………..’ God knows our weaknesses and our strengths and never imposes upon us a burden that, if we seek his help, we are unable to bear.
Even the weakest and most feeble of us can greet others with a smile, be generous with words of praise and encouragement and sparing with those of complaint and condemnation, never forgetting to say 'please' and 'thank you', and always apologising when causing inconvenience to anyone else. That may well be all that God requires of us. One of our Quaker advices tells us, ‘Be ready to give help and to receive it’. I know from personal experience, that for those who were once very active, receiving may be much more difficult than giving! Above all - however much or however little you do or give, do it with love in your heart. It will then follow, as the night follows day, that your heart will also be filled with peace and joy.
Thank you for listening Friends. Goodbye and may God bless you all.
Some, reading the above, may well wonder, ‘Does he really believe all that himself?’ I can only answer that I do…most of the time. I am often assailed by doubt though or, as our Quaker ‘Advices and Queries’ put it, I consider the possibility that I may be mistaken. Do I act upon that belief? I try to, but I don’t always succeed….which is why I value the Christian doctrine of forgiveness.
What I do know, without the least shadow of doubt, is that the world would be a much happier place if more people believed it, and acted upon it.
The New ‘Levellers’
Some months ago, I mentioned in this blog having read a review of a book by two esteemed academics, promoting and justifying statistically a conviction to which I have clung instinctively throughout my life; that the happiest human societies are those with the least difference between their wealthiest and their poorest members.
The book, which I have now purchased and read, is The Spirit Level by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, both of whom hold University Professorships, published by Allen Lane (an imprint of Penguin Books) at £20. It didn’t disappoint. Below is a quotation from Chapter 13 that expresses its whole theme.
It may seem obvious that problems associated with relative deprivation should be more common in more unequal societies. However, if you ask people why greater equality reduces these problems, much the most common answer is that it must be because more equal societies have fewer poor people. The assumption is that greater equality helps those at the bottom. As well as being only a minor part of the proper explanation, it is an assumption which reflects our failure to recognise very important processes affecting our lives and the societies we are part of. The truth is that the vast majority of the population is harmed by greater inequality.
Across whole populations, rates of mental illness are five times higher in the most unequal compared to the least unequal societies. Similarly, in more unequal societies people are five times as likely to be imprisoned, six times as likely to be clinically obese and murder rates may be many times higher. The reason why these differences are so big is, quite simply, because the effects of inequality are not confined just to the least well-off: instead they affect the vast majority of the population
This is demonstrated by statistics from the countries surveyed showing clearly the effects of inequality on virtually every aspect of human activity. Chapter headings include Community life and social relations; Mental Health and drug use; Physical health and life expectancy; Obesity; Educational performance; Teenage births; Violence, Imprisonment and Punishment; and Social Mobility.
In conclusion the authors give some thought to ways in which more egalitarian societies could be achieved without violent political upheaval. These are both convincing and encouraging, though not easily summarised. The Spirit Level is, on the whole, an optimistic book, diagnosing the ills of today’s society and suggesting possible remedies.
Everyone who is concerned about what David Cameron has described as 'our broken society' and interested in ways in which it might be mended, should borrow or buy a copy and, as it says in the Book of Common Prayer, 'read, mark, learn and inwardly digest it'.
Home Rule for Essex?
To be fair, Essex County Council’s leader, Lord Hanningfield isn’t quite demanding that. He did once in the past though….and then hastily assured us that he was ‘only joking’. Now though, he would like to see the billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money entrusted to quangos, to be made accountable to Essex County Council. He would also like, within the county, to have power to decide who should receive benefits such as Jobseekers’ Allowance and Income Support, and how much recipients should receive.
He would like the county council to be allowed to hold referendums on local issues, and to negotiate and then enforce a set of standards with such quangos as the East of England Development Agency, Arts Council East, Natural England and English Heritage. If they failed to meet these standards the county council would then be able either take on their jobs itself or find someone else to do it.
We do have a strange county council. They have sold off their old people’s homes, are eager to turn their schools into privately funded ‘academies’, and to put out to tender practically all the other services for which they are statutorily responsible. Yet, at the same time, they are taking over failing post offices (that’s one action of which I whole-heartedly approve!), running a bank and suggesting the provision of a county-wide public relations service. Now they want to become involved with the Social Security Benefit System and are casting envious eyes on the functions of the quangos?
Do they really want to run all these things, I wonder? Or do they simply wish to have the power to sell them off (like their old people’s homes) to the highest bidder?
The fact that Lord Hanningfield and his colleagues were recently returned to the County Hall with an increased majority confirms a conviction that I have held for some time. Most of the ever-fewer number of people who bother to vote in local elections don’t vote positively to get their representative elected…..but negatively to keep out of the Council Chamber those whom they trust even less or dislike even more!
With one statement reported as having been made by Lord Hanningfield I do whole-heartedly agree; ‘As things currently stand, the political system in England is far too centralised’. I’d add that the same applies to Essex, one of England’s largest counties. I believe that most of the County Council’s services could be run more efficiently and much more democratically by individual district and borough councils. The few that need overall strategic planning, together with many functions currently performed by central government, and least some of those of the Quangos on which Lord Hanningfield has set his sights, would be better performed by a larger East-of-England elected authority covering the whole of the Greater East Anglia Region.
Something to think about!
Once or twice a year I am asked to provide a ‘Thought for the Week’ (a kind of five-minute sermon) for inclusion in the Tendring Talking Times, the free weekly ‘talking newspaper’ sent to blind and visually impaired people within the Tendring District. I felt that one I recorded a few weeks ago might be of wider interest – so here it is, in its entirety. I don’t know if the ‘on tape’ version has yet been distributed.
Hello Friends. Ernest Hall here, with your thought for the week. You may remember that I am a Quaker and am also a member of the Church of England.
A visitor from another world, surveying religious practices on planet Earth, might be forgiven for concluding that of all the world religions, Christianity is the soft option. Think about it. There are no dietary restrictions. There is no rigid dress code. Any kind of dress or state of undress that is socially and legally acceptable in a public place, is likely to be acceptable in any place of Christian worship. Men, women and children are permitted, indeed are encouraged, to worship together. Christians, men or women, who marry someone of another faith, abandon their Christian faith, or are foolish enough to convert to another faith, suffer no temporal penalty. Those who attempted to exact such a penalty would themselves be liable to prosecution.
Initiation into full church membership may range from nothing at all, as with the Quakers, to brief total immersion as with some Protestant Evangelical traditions. For most it involves no more than a ceremony involving sprinkling of water on the forehead either in infancy or later in life.
Yes, the visitor from some distant galaxy might well conclude that Christianity is the soft option. But would he be right? I think not.
The late Archbishop William Temple once said that Christianity is the most materialist of the world’s religions. It doesn’t just require us to give thanks, praise and sacrifice to our Heavenly Father – or to follow a rigid dietary, dress or even moral code. Our religion is one of faith-in-action. We are expected to do God’s will as it is revealed to us in the example and teaching of Jesus.
The man who built his house upon a rock is compared by Jesus, not with a man of faith and nothing else, but with those who heard his words and acted upon them. Jesus said that not all who called upon him ‘Lord! Lord!’ would enter into his Kingdom but those who do the will of his Father, and our Father, in Heaven.
Jesus told us that the whole of the moral teaching of the Old Testament is summed up in the two commandments ‘Love God with every atom of your being. Love your neighbour as you love yourself’. In the Sermon on the Mount he clarified that second commandment telling his listeners, and through them telling us, that we should always treat other people in the same way that we ourselves would wish to be treated.
That is surely quite clear and easily understood. At first glance one might think that it could be complied with fairly easily. We all know how we would like to be treated. All we have to do is treat other people in the same way. Have we done that though? Sadly not; even the disciples who heard Jesus’ words and witnessed his example failed the test. When a Samaritan village refused to offer them hospitality and drove them out, they asked Jesus to bring down fire from Heaven to destroy the offenders!
Jesus said, ‘Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to those that despitefully use you’. Many of our forefathers have preferred to follow the example of those disciples rather than that of Jesus. Would medieval Christians, who condemned others to be burnt alive, really have liked to be treated in the same way? Nowadays we have nuclear weapons, cluster bombs and anti-personnel land mines. Do we really imagine that the manufacture and use of these weapons would receive the blessing of Jesus Christ, as we know him from the four Gospels?
Perhaps you are thinking, ‘It’s all very well telling us that Christianity is faith-in-action – but I am frail, disabled, old. It is as much as I can do to look after myself, never mind others’. Believe me, I understand that. I am myself in my late eighties and all too familiar with the progressive weakness and disability of old age.
Our God understands it well too. He is the God who rules the Universe but also notes the fall of the sparrow. A well-loved prayer in the Church of England Prayer Book begins; ‘Almighty God, unto whom all hearts are open, all desires known and from whom no secrets are hid………..’ God knows our weaknesses and our strengths and never imposes upon us a burden that, if we seek his help, we are unable to bear.
Even the weakest and most feeble of us can greet others with a smile, be generous with words of praise and encouragement and sparing with those of complaint and condemnation, never forgetting to say 'please' and 'thank you', and always apologising when causing inconvenience to anyone else. That may well be all that God requires of us. One of our Quaker advices tells us, ‘Be ready to give help and to receive it’. I know from personal experience, that for those who were once very active, receiving may be much more difficult than giving! Above all - however much or however little you do or give, do it with love in your heart. It will then follow, as the night follows day, that your heart will also be filled with peace and joy.
Thank you for listening Friends. Goodbye and may God bless you all.
Some, reading the above, may well wonder, ‘Does he really believe all that himself?’ I can only answer that I do…most of the time. I am often assailed by doubt though or, as our Quaker ‘Advices and Queries’ put it, I consider the possibility that I may be mistaken. Do I act upon that belief? I try to, but I don’t always succeed….which is why I value the Christian doctrine of forgiveness.
What I do know, without the least shadow of doubt, is that the world would be a much happier place if more people believed it, and acted upon it.
The New ‘Levellers’
Some months ago, I mentioned in this blog having read a review of a book by two esteemed academics, promoting and justifying statistically a conviction to which I have clung instinctively throughout my life; that the happiest human societies are those with the least difference between their wealthiest and their poorest members.
The book, which I have now purchased and read, is The Spirit Level by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, both of whom hold University Professorships, published by Allen Lane (an imprint of Penguin Books) at £20. It didn’t disappoint. Below is a quotation from Chapter 13 that expresses its whole theme.
It may seem obvious that problems associated with relative deprivation should be more common in more unequal societies. However, if you ask people why greater equality reduces these problems, much the most common answer is that it must be because more equal societies have fewer poor people. The assumption is that greater equality helps those at the bottom. As well as being only a minor part of the proper explanation, it is an assumption which reflects our failure to recognise very important processes affecting our lives and the societies we are part of. The truth is that the vast majority of the population is harmed by greater inequality.
Across whole populations, rates of mental illness are five times higher in the most unequal compared to the least unequal societies. Similarly, in more unequal societies people are five times as likely to be imprisoned, six times as likely to be clinically obese and murder rates may be many times higher. The reason why these differences are so big is, quite simply, because the effects of inequality are not confined just to the least well-off: instead they affect the vast majority of the population
This is demonstrated by statistics from the countries surveyed showing clearly the effects of inequality on virtually every aspect of human activity. Chapter headings include Community life and social relations; Mental Health and drug use; Physical health and life expectancy; Obesity; Educational performance; Teenage births; Violence, Imprisonment and Punishment; and Social Mobility.
In conclusion the authors give some thought to ways in which more egalitarian societies could be achieved without violent political upheaval. These are both convincing and encouraging, though not easily summarised. The Spirit Level is, on the whole, an optimistic book, diagnosing the ills of today’s society and suggesting possible remedies.
Everyone who is concerned about what David Cameron has described as 'our broken society' and interested in ways in which it might be mended, should borrow or buy a copy and, as it says in the Book of Common Prayer, 'read, mark, learn and inwardly digest it'.
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