Week 32 2011 16th August 2011

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!