Week 18 2014

Tendring Topics…….on line

Bravo David Cameron!

            It isn’t very often that I find myself leaping to defend David Cameron our Prime Minister from his critics. In fact, I don’t think that it has ever happened before and it may well never happen again.  I do however wholeheartedly agree with him that Britain is a Christian country and we should celebrate that fact.  I would qualify that declaration though (and I think that Mr Cameron would agree with me on this point) by asserting that Britain is not only a Christian country; but it is a Christian country in which adherents of other faiths or of no faith at all, are not just tolerated but welcomed. They are given exactly the same rights and privileges as Christians to practise their faith, to build places of worship and religious teaching, to bring up children in that faith, and to encourage and accept converts from any other religious tradition or from none. 

            That is surely one of the reasons why the fact that we are a Christian country should be celebrated.  At least during the past 1,000 years it is only in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, and in countries with a Christian tradition, that people of all religious faiths have been able to worship, teach and proselytise on equal terms, and  can expect to enjoy the protection of the state in doing so..

            There have, of course, been a number of countries in which folk of different faiths have lived together in peace in the past – in Moorish Spain for example, or Bosnia under Turkish rule – but always the adherents of a minority faith were second-class citizens. Those wonderful examples of Moorish architecture you may have seen in southern Spain were almost certainly built by Christian slaves.  In 1980 my wife and I toured what was then still a united Jugoslavia.  In Sarajevo we visited a Mosque and a Serb Orthodox Church.  Both were open to tourists and worshippers.  The latter though was behind a high wall so that during the period of Turkish rule the Muslim majority need not be visibly conscious of the infidels in their midst.  It took Marshal Tito’s godless (but springing from a Christian tradition) communist government to give tolerance and equal state recognition to followers of the Serb Orthodox and Croat Catholic traditions and to Muslims.

            In the Middle East there were countries, among them Iraq, Syria and Egypt, which although predominantly Muslim, at one time had considerable Christian minorities. They were prohibited from making converts from among their Muslim neighbours, but otherwise thrived and prospered.  All of that ended as a result of Britain’s blundering foreign policy, particularly with Tony Blair’s and George Bush’s disastrous – and illegal – invasion of Iraq.  Now, throughout the Middle East, Pakistan and much of Africa, Christians survive in fear for their livelihoods and their lives – emigrating where they are able to do so, and adding to the growing number of asylum seekers.  In Saudi-Arabia, Christian faith and practice are banned absolutely, only the most extreme Muslim worship and practice being permitted.  But Saudi Arabia buys our weaponry and we buy their oil – so their intolerance and contempt for human rights are tolerated, and visiting Saudi royalty are treated as honoured guests!   That is not something of which we should be proud!

            It is true that in Britain Christians have done terrible things both to each other and to others in the past.  I don’t think that we need to reproach ourselves too much about the medieval crusades.  Muslim armies had invaded Christendom (in Spain)  before those crusades and, advancing from Constantinople (Istanbul) to the outskirts of Vienna, long after them. The Crusades had, at least in the first instance, the surely laudable objective of ensuring that Christian pilgrims could visit in safety the holy places in Palestine. 

            The same cannot be said about the torture and burning alive of heretics in medieval Britain, about which the godless Lord Byron wrote, ‘Christians have burned each other, quite persuaded, that all the apostles would have done as they did’.  Nor about the witch hunts and witch hangings of the 17^th and 18^th centuries, and of Christian involvement in the slave trade.  None of those practices can possibly be excused though it must be said that it is quite a long time since a heretic was burned or a witch hanged in the UK, and Christian Britain was among the first countries to ban slavery and to use its navy to stamp out the slave trade.

            In the recent census only just over half those who responded declared themselves to be ‘Christian’. That was a majority, if only a small one – but I know of people who certainly hold Christian values and Christian beliefs but hesitate to describe themselves as ‘Christian’ because they fear that that would associate them with the inquisition, witch hunts and over-eager fundamentalist doorstep evangelists today!  

            But today’s numbers of professed Christians are only one of the reasons why we may claim that Britain is a Christian country.  Christianity has shaped our history over the past 1,000 years.  It has enriched our language.  We all know what is meant by ‘A Judas’, ‘a Good Samaritan’, ‘a Job’s comforter’, ‘a Delilah’,  ‘Petering out’, ‘David and Goliath’, ‘Adam’s ale’, ‘Old as Methuselah’, ‘Antediluvian’, ‘a Martha or a Mary’, ‘a voice crying in the wilderness’  - there are many more, all directly linked to the Old or New Testaments of the Christian Bible with which during my childhood and youth almost everyone was, at least to some extent, familiar.

            Nowadays the Christian Church sometimes acts as the prophets of the Old Testament did and points our rulers, concerned only with worldly values, towards compliance with the will of God.  Archbishop Runcie incurred the wrath of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher when his service of thanksgiving after the Falklands War remembered the Argentine as well as the British dead, wounded and bereaved. ‘It was like a Quaker Meeting’ she is said to have complained.  That suggests to me that the Archbishop had got the service about right!

            It says much for David Cameron that he continues to proclaim his Christian faith despite the fact that in recent months his government’s policies towards the poor and disadvantaged have been strongly criticised by the leaders of all Christian traditions. I disagree with virtually every other statement he has made and almost every policy of his government.  But - like him, I believe that we live in a Christian, but uniquely tolerant and welcoming, country – and that this is something that we should celebrate, and for which we should thank God.‘

Hier stehe ich.  Ich kann nicht anders!’

            ‘Here I stand.  There is nothing else that I can do’.  Thus spoke Martin Luther, the ‘father of Protestantism’ as he expounded his reformist doctrines.  Writing, for the first time ever, in support of David Cameron as he declared his Christian faith, I found myself wondering where I really stand on the burning political issues of the 21^st Century. I know that I am an opinionated old man, but what do those opinions amount to?  Am I a really a closet revolutionary, a well-meaning but somewhat woolly-minded liberal, or could I possibly be at-heart a true-blue Tory?  Where do I stand on the political spectrum?  Well, here are some of my deeply-held convictions:

             I believe that there should be a steady reduction of the income gap between the wealthiest and poorest of our countrymen, and that our government should work towards a society in which no-one’s income is more than ten times that of anyone else’s. Steps towards this would be a shift from indirect taxation (VAT and Excise duties) to direct taxation (Income tax and death duties), and a revision of the income tax system to ensure that we all pay the same percentage of our income in tax. I believe that those who move to tax havens overseas to avoid paying income tax in this country, should automatically forfeit their British nationality and their right to a British passport. I’d also like everyone to have a fair wage and to give of their best without a ‘target' and without a promised bonus as a bribe!  I'd like to put behind us a system in which the poor are forced to work hard by the threat of starvation and homelessness; and the very wealthy are persuaded to work by the promise of an enormous bribe. We must get rid of this 'expecting an enormous bonus', culture.  It is infinitely more damaging both to individuals and to society than the 'benefit culture' that members of the government are so keen to eradicate.  

            I believe too that we should scrap our nuclear weapons and nuclear submarine fleet and that the role of the armed forces should increasingly be that of dealing with the results of civil and natural disasters (earthquakes, fires, floods, civil conflicts, failure of private enterprise contractors, and so on) and the evacuation or rescue of their victims.

 I’m clearly a ‘loony lefty’ – well to the left even of ‘Old Labour’!

            I am though also convinced of the reality and threat of Global Warming, and of humankind’s responsibility for it. Accepting this and attempting to respond positively to it over-rides all other political concerns.  I think we should redouble our efforts to explore and exploit renewable energy sources and believe that wave and tidal power, surely much more dependable than that of the sun or the wind, have yet to be fully exploited.  We should be working towards the total ending of the use of fossil fuels. Fracking should be made illegal throughout the UK.  Those convictions surely put me squarely among the ‘Greens’.

The Scandinavian model – Queen Margrethe II of Denmark disembarks from her Royal Yacht in London Docks, as she visits and encourages the Danish athletes at the 2012 Olympics.  Photo by my elder son Pete.   

           

But..........I also believe in the merits of our constitutional monarchy (though I’d prefer the informality of the Scandinavian model) and I am certainly not a republican.   I think that there is a lot to be said for the selective education that made it possible for folk like me to climb out of the ‘aspiring working class’ into the lowest levels of the ‘middle class’.There clearly is something the matter with our educational system.  Michael Gove, Education Minister, seems desperately eager to put it right and I wish him well in that task - but he really has a knack of upsetting everybody from the NUT to his own 'old Etonian' colleagues!

 Although I think that women should be able to aspire to any job in the United Kingdom (even those of Archbishop of Canterbury or York if they’re the best candidates for the job) I also think that making a comfortable and happy home, and bringing up children ‘in the way that they should go’, can be a perfectly satisfying and fulfilling career for some women. It is a career that they should be encouraged to follow if they wish to do so. I have no doubt that the best person to guide and guard a child from infancy to adolescence is not a child minder or a nursery school but the child’s mum.

Children are bound to be neglected if both parents are in  full-time work.  Mum and dad will  be away from home all day and when they get home there'll be a meal to be prepared, housework to be done and private mail to attend to..   They are really very fortunate if they can find the time and energy to listen to their children's concerns and help them with their homework.

 In the 'bad old days' when I grew from childhood through adolescence to adult life, folk married before they lived together, and didn't marry until the potential husband's income was sufficient to support a wife and family.  I really wouldn't wish to return to those days.  Then though, there would always be either dad or mum (all right - so it would most likely be mum!) at home when a child or young adolescent came home from school . Consequently there was much less juvenile crime, and schoolchild pregnancies, juvenile 'social diseases' and juvenile drug-taking were virtually unknown.

Some of my thoughts on these issues are probably 'to the right'  of those of many Conservatives! 

         Oh yes – and I’m an unashamed Europhile and a Federalist!  Every political party (except of course UKIP) has a few of us. Can you wonder that, in ‘first past the post’ elections, I no longer seek for a candidate I’d like to see win. There won't be one.   I look instead for the candidate I most want to be rejected and vote for the candidate most likely to defeat him or her!

           

         

           

           

           

         

Week 17 2014

Tendring Topics…….on line

‘Treat other people as you would like them to treat you!’

            A couple of weeks ago I commented in this blog that this commandment, that Jesus said summed up the whole of the moral teaching of the Old Testament, applies as much to the affairs of nations as it does to those of individual men and women.  I have often regretted that he didn’t add its corollary (perhaps he thought it was so obvious that there was no need to spell it out) ‘Do not do to others what you would hate them to do to you’.   My comment came in connection with the current crisis in the Ukraine and the Crimea.  It seems to me important that both sides involved in this matter should ask themselves how they would feel and what they would do if they were in the situation in which their opponents find themselves.  If both did that, I think there might be a chance of their coming to a compromise acceptable by both sides.  

            A lot has happened in the past fortnight.  Crimea has been ‘annexed’ by Russia.   I have heard no reports of protests from the inhabitants at their change of nationality; no reports of Crimean citizens seeking political asylum in ‘freedom loving’ Ukraine, or begging NATO to free them from the Russians. Surely most people in ‘the west’ now accept that annexation as a fact even if they continue to claim it was ‘illegal’.  It was, no doubt, this that has encouraged the mostly Russian-oriented residents of East Ukraine to assert themselves, raising Russian flags and seizing police stations and government buildings. Probably some of them would like to become Russian citizens.  It seems though that many, perhaps a majority, would prefer to remain an autonomous region of Ukraine but retain the right to have Russian as the region’s ‘first’ language and to conduct their own economic relationship with their Russian neighbour.  Surely this offers ground for a compromise that would involve no bloodshed and could be accepted by both sides without 'losing face’.

            The Foreign Ministers of NATO and of Russia and of the Ukraine are to meet shortly, but the meeting will be fruitless unless both sides are genuinely seeking peace.  Our Foreign Minister William Hague has told the world that he is quite certain that the present unrest in eastern Ukraine has been created and orchestrated by Russia. It is surely much more probable that Russia has simply exploited a situation that already existed.  Their efforts would have been in vain had they not known that a substantial majority of Eastern Ukrainians regarded themselves as being treated  as second class citizens, and would welcome any support that Russia could offer them.  I am equally sure that NATO would have been helpless to support (as I am certain they did) the demonstrators and rioters in the cities of Western Ukraine had they not known that a substantial majority of Western Ukrainians wanted to get rid of their pro-Russian President.

            Has anyone else noted the sinister similarities between the situation in Europe today and the one that existed just a century ago in the summer of 1914?   Bosnia-Herzegovina was then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.  The ethnic Serb Bosnians deeply resented this, and one of their number – Gabriel Prinzip – assassinated the Austrian Grand-Duke Ferdinand and his wife while they were on an official visit to Sarajevo

            The Austrian Government was quite sure that the Serbian Government was responsible for this outrage (just as certain, I am sure, as William Hague is, of Russian responsibility for Eastern Ukrainian unrest today).   They presented the Serbs with a humiliating ultimatum that would have effectively robbed them of their independence. Surprisingly perhaps, the Serbs agreed to comply with every point but one of the ultimatum – but that one was sufficient for Austria to declare war on Serbia.

 Serbia had a powerful ally in Tsarist Russia, and the Austro-Hungarian Empire had a powerful ally in Germany. Russia had a powerful ally in France.  France had a powerful (but perhaps a little hesitant) ally in Great Britain and, of course, Britain had its world-wide Empire. Immediately the Austro-Hungarian Empire declared war in Serbia, Russia declared war on Austria-Hungary.  Then, like falling dominoes, Germany declared war on Russia, France declared war on Germany and, last of all, and only after the Germans had attacked France through Belgium whose neutrality had been guaranteed a century earlier, Great Britain declared war on German. The British Empire obediently followed its leader ……. and the senseless slaughter of ‘The Great War’ began.

            World War I could have been avoided had the governments concerned had the sense to meet together in a spirit of compromise, genuinely seeking a just peace rather than national advantage, before all those alliances were activated.

             It may be thought that the current situation is quite different.  There’s no thought of war – yet, and in any case, both Russia and NATO possess nuclear weapons ‘the ultimate deterrent’.  Surely no-one would be stupid and arrogant enough to start a world war with the nuclear threat hanging over all our heads.

            In June 1914 there was no thought of war either, except perhaps in the minds of a few power-hungry rulers.   There was no ‘ultimate deterrent’ in those days, but had anyone had the least inkling that that the assassination in Sarajevo would trigger a world-war resulting in over Sixteen Million (armed forces and civilians) dead, I am quite sure that a compromise would have been found.  God forbid that there should be any thought of war today – but if there were to be an armed conflict, we shouldn’t imagine that those ‘ultimate deterrents’ would actually deter either side.  They haven’t deterred any act of aggression yet!  Both sides might well decide to be the first with a pre-emptive nuclear strike that – they would probably delude themselves – would make ‘the other side’ see reason!  

Later News

          The meeting of Foreign Ministers appears to have been much more useful than I (or the Foreign Ministers themselves!) expected.  The pro-Russian protesters are to lay down their arms and vacate the Ukrainian government buildings and other property and an amnesty is offered them.   The Ukrainian provisional Government has promised to grant autonomy to the eastern region retaining only defence and foreign policy over the whole country.

            The US and UK foreign ministers have voiced cautious optimism about the final outcome while threatening further ‘consequences’ for Russia if the pro-Russian protesters do not fulfil their side of the agreement.  The only people who weren't represented at the Geneva talks were the pro-Russian protesters!  How extraordinary that the people most concerned weren't represented while the USA, on the other side of the world and with no possible national interest in the Ukraine, dominated the proceedings!

            The agreement was reasonable enough – if the Russian Government does control those protesters or can exert sufficient pressure on them to persuade them to comply with it.  I am by no means sure of either.  I recall that a similar ‘reasonable’ compromise was agreed to end the mirror-image demonstrations and protests in Kiev and other cities in western Ukraine that began this whole crisis.  The protesters ignored the agreement and carried on with their by-then violent protests until they had obtained all their objectives and had formed a new government with a new ‘interim’ President. I am still cautiously optimistic as I write these words (on Good Friday).  I may need to alter them before I post this blog on Easter Monday!

            Well, Easter Monday is here.   Some of the militant pro-Russian activists are refusing to disarm and leave the buildings they have occupied. True to form, William Hague tells us that Russia will face dire consequences.  Penalising the Russian government for the stubbornness of the pro-Russian activists is directly comparable with, and would be just as daft as, penalising the Irish Government for the activities of dissident republican groups in Ulster!

‘Blessed are the Peacemakers for they shall be called the children of God.’

Meanwhile, in the United Kingdom ……….

          ……the Trussell Trust, to which most food banks are affiliated, has declared that during the past financial year 913,000 people required emergency food parcels for at least three days.  This is an increase of 163 percent over its figure of 347,000 during the previous twelve months. It was also reported that 83 percent of its food banks had reported that government benefits sanctions were driving people to seek food aid.

            The Church Times reports that the publication of these figures coincides with the sending of an open letter signed by 42 Anglican bishops and 600 other clergy and ministers of other Christian traditions, to David Cameron, Nick Clegg and Ed Miliband asking them to work with the parliamentary inquiry into food poverty launched two weeks ago, and to implement its recommendations.

            The letter says, As we approach Easter the mind turns to the hope of spring, the promise of resurrection and renewal.  Hope drives us to act.  It drives us to tackle the growing hunger in our midst.  It calls on each of us, and the government too, to act to make sure that work pays, that food markets support sustainable and healthy diets, and that the welfare system provides a last line of defence against hunger.

            Among the signatories were the Archbishop of Wales, Dr Barry Morgan, nineteen other diocesan bishops and representatives of other denominations, including the Roman Catholic, Methodist, Baptist and United Reformed Churches.

            I very much hope that a representative of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) was also among the signatories.

         

           

Week 16 2014

Tendring Topics……..on line

Maria Miller

            When I learned that Prime Minister David Cameron was giving his full support to Ms Maria Miller in her defence of her job as Culture Minister, despite clamour from the press and some MPs for her resignation, I wondered if it might be the kiss of death.  She wouldn’t be the first to have been forced into resignation within days of the Prime Minister offering similar support.  Her case had been considered by the independent Commissioner appointed to investigate alleged fraudulent claims for expenses by some MPs.  He had ruled that there was no evidence of deliberate fraud but that she should apologise to the House of Commons and pay back £46,000 that she had been paid to her but to which she hadn’t been entitled.  He also commented that she had been less than co-operative during the course of the investigation.

            It was though, not the commissioner but the Parliamentary Standards Committee consisting of fellow-MPs, who made the final decision.   They agreed that Mrs Miller should make a public apology but they reduced the amount she would have to repay  from £46.000 to just over £5,000!   Isn’t it the members of that committee rather than Ms Miller who should have been considering resignation!

            It was this remarkable reduction in the sum that Ms. Miller had to pay back, plus her very half-hearted and perfunctory apology to the House of Commons, that caused the outcry – not least from members of her own Conservative Party – and ultimately led to her resignation from her Cabinet post.

            My interest in the case is that it draws attention, once again, to the very different standard of behaviour expected of MPs of all political persuasions, and that of other professional servants of the public in central and local government, and the very different code of discipline that rules their behaviour. I know very little about the Civil Service but I do know that local government employees who had been revealed to have fiddled expenses or claimed allowances to which they were not entitled, to the extent of thousands of pounds, would be lucky if their penalty was only the loss of their job – more likely they would be prosecuted, face a possible prison sentence, the loss of their pension entitlement and the probability that they would never work again in a responsible job.  They would certainly never have been given the soft option of returning the money they had fraudulently obtained and making an apology.  How nice it must be to be able to do as Mr Cameron suggested, and ‘draw a line under the past’.  No doubt every arrested burglar, confidence trickster and rapist would like the same! Why shouldn’t erring MPs be treated exactly the same as erring civil servants and local government officials?

How about genuine mistakes and misunderstandings?  For goodness sake!  MPs make the laws that we have to obey.  We can surely expect them to understand their own rules – and to know the difference between right and wrong!  How strange that ‘mistakes and misunderstandings’ are always in one direction.  Has there ever been a case of an MP accidentally or mistakenly paying a substantial un-owed sum of money back to the government?

A Not-Unhappy Ending

            Those who have been concerned about Ms. Miller’s financial situation now that she is no longer a Minister of the Crown will be relieved to know that I have just heard on the tv news that as a former member of the Cabinet she’ll get a £70,000 golden handshake on her departure

Suffering from Depression?   Or just depressed?

Almost every week we get new, and often conflicting ‘health advice’ or ‘health warnings’ from this, that or the other ‘expert’, on the front pages of the popular press.  Any alcohol intake is harmful. A glass of red wine every day will guard against heart disease and will halt the progress of macular degeneration of the retina of the eye. All smoking is harmful and inadvertently inhaling some-one else’s second-hand smoke is no less dangerous. The whole nation is suffering from obesity as a result of eating too much and exercising too little.  Eat too little and you’ll become anorexic. Over-exercise could give you a stroke or a heart attack.  Try to eat at least five portions of fruit or vegetables every day. Eat more fruit or vegetables every day – seven is better than five and vegetables are better than fruit!

The latest health scare – though it claims to be stating a fact rather than issuing a warning – is that most elderly people are suffering from depression and that the NHS ought to do something about it.  Well, I am 92 and, God willing, I shall be 93 in about six weeks time. I just don’t believe that many of my contemporaries are suffering from clinical depression. Depression is a serious and very unpleasant mental illness.  Some years ago I was acquainted with someone with what we then called manic-depression (now I believe bi-polar disorder is the pc expression). When that person was in her depressive phase she was quite incapable of doing anything at all but sit and weep, totally convinced – whatever her actual circumstances at the time – that all the world was against her and that she faced a future of total misery.  Very unpleasant as it undoubtedly is - clinical depression is a definite medical condition that can be treated.

There may, for all I know, be some old people today like that – but I am sure they are a  small minority  Most of us oldies are depressed from time to time, but that’s not the same thing at all.  We are depressed because many of us have plenty to be depressed about.  Imagine what it must be like to be old, helpless and housebound, with no family left and few if any friends. You’re living on the state pension and any benefits you can get hold of.  You’ve really got nothing to do all day, no purpose in life, and you speak only to occasional tradesmen, perhaps to a welfare worker or a meals-on-wheels deliverer. To be depressed in such a situation is not a condition  that can be remedied by anything the NHS can offer. Goodness – anyone who isn’t depressed under those circumstances must surely be suffering from some other mental illness!

I’m glad to be able to say that my circumstances are not a bit like that.  I’ve a comfortable if modest home and an adequate income (when you’re in your nineties the opportunities for extravagant living become a little limited!)  I have concerned neighbours and reliable friends whom I see regularly.  No member of my family lives nearby and some live and work overseas – but I see some of them regularly and all are in touch by phone or email. I would be housebound if it were not for my electric mobility scooter (my ‘iron horse’) on which I visit local friends, do my shopping, and go to church and to our local Quaker Meeting.  I receive and answer emails, and I write this blog and try to publish it every week!   I think that, for a nonagenarian – I lead a pretty full life.

I know that I have a great deal to be thankful for.  I am sincerely grateful - but I can’t pretend that I don’t sometimes feel depressed and dispirited.  I miss my former physical strength and dexterity.  Every movement that I make is now an effort and everything I do takes three times as long as it once did. I can’t climb a step-ladder and stairs are very difficult for me.  It takes me a long time to cross a room to answer a phone or to go the front door for a caller.  I am clumsy.  I accidentally knock things onto the floor and find it increasingly difficult to pick them up again.  My short-term memory (particularly for people’s names) is bad and getting worse.   I’m truly grateful when people are extra kind and helpful towards me (as most people certainly are) but I resent my frailty that prompts their kindness!  In old age it really is more blessed to give than to receive.

I’m often told what a host of happy memories I must have to fall back on.   It’s true and, in the past I have enjoyed sharing them with my wife who featured in most of them.  Sadly her life came to an end nearly eight years ago – just three months after we had celebrated our 60^th wedding anniversary.  Now I find that it is the very happiest memories of the past that are most likely to bring tears to my eyes.

I don’t think that very many of us oldies suffer from clinical depression.   Most of us would much rather be known as ‘Cheerful Charlies’ rather than ‘Moaning Minnies’. Even those like me though, blessed with steadfast and caring friends and loving relatives, a purpose in life, and all the material things that we really need, are sometimes depressed. This is simply because living through very old age can be a depressing experience. There's no denying it and I really don't see what the NHS - or anyone else - can do about it!

Happy Easter!

Yesterday (13th April) was Palm Sunday, when Christians remember that Jesus Christ rode on a donkey in triumph into Jerusalem, cheered on by the same crowd that a few days later would be howling for his death.  Next weekend comes Good Friday when we remember his sham trial, torture and cruel execution – followed on Easter Sunday by his glorious return from death.  I sometimes lose patience (another symptom of old age perhaps!) with those, usually very well-meaning and reasonable people, who say, ‘Of course I’m sure that we should all try to follow the example and teaching of Jesus, but I really can’t accept all that supernatural stuff, and as for his return from the dead – I ask you!’

I prefer ‘miraculous’ to ‘supernatural’.  Jesus was brought up in a remote and insignificant part of the Roman Empire.  In early adult life he preached and healed the sick for no more than about two years.  He was then arrested, publicly humiliated and tortured to death by crucifixion – a word so familiar to us that we may not appreciate what a cruel and agonising method of execution a first-century crucifixion was.  Does anyone imagine that this unsuccessful preacher and healer, judicially murdered in his early thirties, would have featured even as a footnote in the pages of history, had not a handful of very ordinary down-to-earth people been quite convinced that he had walked with them, talked with them and shared meals with them, days after his cruel execution - and were prepared to die for that conviction?

Had there been no Resurrection there would have been no teaching to hear, no example to follow. Christ is risen!   He is risen indeed, Alleluia!

  

 

Week 15 2014

Tendring Topics…..on line

Reviving the Poll Tax?

          It was the introduction of a Poll Tax, a government demand for an equal sum per head from every adult without consideration of ability to pay, that provoked the Peasants’ Revolt in the 14^th Century, a revolt that was put down only by the treachery and cruelty  characteristic of rulers in ‘the age of chivalry’.

It was the Poll Tax (the government preferred to call it the Community Charge) that in 1990 finally led to Mrs Thatcher’s downfall as Prime Minister.   She had long promised to get rid of the rating system – raising a proportion of local government finance from a local tax levied on households calculated on their home’s estimated rental value.  It wasn’t popular (no taxation system ever is!) and by the 1980s was out of date. It had been years since there had been a revaluation.   However, imperfect as it was, the rating system meant that there was at least a rough relationship between the amount on the ‘rate demand’ (that was an unfortunate word if there ever was one) and the wealth, or lack of it, of the ratepayer.

            Mrs Thatcher abolished the rates and, as had been promised in her party’s election manifesto, replaced it with the Poll Tax levied equally on every adult resident in every flat, bungalow, dwelling house, mansion, or palace in the local authority’s area.  The rate per head (per ‘poll’) was set by each local authority.  There were modifications.  The unemployed paid only 20 percent of the local poll tax for instance but generally speaking ‘the rich man in his castle’ paid exactly the same as ‘the poor man at his gate’ or in his tied cottage or squalid tenement.  ‘What could possibly be fairer?’ –  that’s what the rich man in his castle asked!

            As in the 14^th century there was fury among the have-nots. There were protests all over the country and, particularly in London, demonstrations that evolved into riots.  Mrs Thatcher faced a revolt from her colleagues in government. She resigned as Prime Minister and Party Leader and was replaced by John Major.  He abolished the Poll Tax and replaced it with ‘Council Tax’, very similar to the old ‘rates’ except that there were ‘bands’ according to the estimated value of the property; undeniably less unfair, though still very generous to those in really palatial homes.

            Now, Lord Warner, a Labour Peer and one time Health Minister in Tony Blair’s New Labour government is suggesting something very similar to the old discredited poll tax to fund the NHS which, he says, is facing financial collapse.

            He thinks it would be a good idea if every adult in the country paid £10.00 a month for their ‘membership of the NHS’ and their right to NHS services. He also suggests that adult patients should pay £20 a night for stays in hospital.  There are a number of exemptions including us pensioners!  I’d like to think that this is out of genuine concern for the old and not just because all politicians (including those who have safe seats in the Lords) are aware that it is us greybeards who actually bother to vote at elections.  We’re the ones who can decide election results. 

            Supporters of Lord Warner’s idea say that there’s a black hole of insolvency in the finances of the NHS – and how else is it to be filled?   I believe that this can be done, without reducing anyone into either homelessness or starvation, by using the income tax system.  Income tax is the one form of taxation that, by its very nature, can never reduce anyone to penury.  Thanks to the latest budget no-one whose taxable income is less than £15,000 a year has to pay it at all and even the highest rate taxpayers,  those with a taxable income of £150,000 a year or more, only have to pay in tax 45% of their income above that level.

            First of all I suggest that all state benefits – children’s allowances, disability allowances, job seekers’ allowances, attendance allowances, pensioners’ winter fuel allowances, free tv licences, NHS prescriptions and bus passes be added on to any other taxable income, and income tax at the appropriate rate charged.  The state retirement pension is taxable so why should other benefits be tax-free?    Those with an income below £15,000 a year (and there are plenty of those, both in and out of work) would be completely unaffected by this change.  The rest of us would have to pay a little extra.  I, for example would have to pay income tax at the standard rate on my winter fuel allowance, my attendance allowance (that I get because of my very limited mobility), my free tv licence and an estimate for the cost of my free prescriptions.  I wouldn’t have to pay it on the cost of my bus pass because my mobility is so limited that I can’t use one.  I think that that is all.

            I wouldn’t enjoy paying that extra tax, but it would only be a percentage of my total income and wouldn’t leave me either hungry or homeless.

            It may be that that reform alone would be sufficient to fill the ‘black hole’ in NHS finances.   If not, then an extra penny or two on income tax would certainly be unpopular – but not, I think, as unpopular as the imposition of a new ‘Poll Tax’ on every adult to fund the NHS.

            I am beginning to think that the big divide in our society is not between black and white, between atheists and believers, or even between rich and poor – but between those who believe that ‘fair taxation’ is achieved when everyone, wealthy and poor alike, has to pay the same amount (poll tax, VAT, customs payments and so on) to finance the purposes of central and local government, and those who believe that we should all pay the same percentage of our income   The strange thing is that those who are most opposed to taxation being based on an equal percentage of taxpayers’ income are those who are most insistent on percentage rather than flat rate pay increases!

‘We won’t play with you – so there!’ 

            That childish playground threat came to my mind when I learned from a tv news bulletin that, because of the Ukraine/Crimea crisis, NATO was ceasing all co-operation and ending all communication with its Russian equivalent.   I’d have thought that a time of crisis was just when it was important for the two sides to get together and each try to see the other’s viewpoint.  The Presidents of the USA and Russia have recently had an hour-long telephone chat and their foreign ministers have also met – sadly fruitlessly – but this is the time to try, try and try again!   It is not the time to draw apart, start to mobilise forces, and make vague threats.

            I had feared that, in suggesting that Russia’s claim to the Crimea might have some justification, I was a loan voice crying in the wilderness.  Agreement has come from unexpected areas. In an interview on tv, a right-wing American Republican Senator has affirmed from his visit to the Crimea last summer that most Crimeans were either ethnic Russians or wanted closer friendly ties with Russia.  He fears that NATO is dragging the USA into distant squabbles in which the USA has no interest.  I had thought that Nigel Farage, leader of UKIP, was blinded by his Europhobia when he suggested that the EU was partly responsible for the riots in Kiev that had preceded Russia’s recovery of the Crimea. He had even found a kind word to say for Vladimir Putin, the current favourite bogyman of the press. However, a thoughtful email from a regular blog reader has made me wonder.  Here it is:

Crimea is a problem isn’t it?   I do think though there has not been much effort to see it from the Russian point of view. Putin sees the “enemy” – NATO – getting closer and closer – and in the end threatening to take over his main naval base.  The pattern is always the same; first of all the EU woos nations with promises of open markets, infrastructure investment, a stable currency etc.,  and then the NATO boys come in behind and sign them up to an organisation which was actually set up to confront the Soviet Union. So ‘annexation’ without a shot being fired has been a pattern of NATO for the last 2 decades.   As a result the Baltic States which border Russia and have large minority groups of Russian workers, become part of the enemy – in Putin’s eyes. Clearly he could see Ukraine going the same way, and I think he may have been right.  Even the EU trade deals will probably disadvantage Russia by cutting off its access to Ukrainian products.  He probably thinks Belarus might go the same way, leaving Russia isolated economically and militarily.   He comes over as “tough and dictatorial” but do you really imagine he could have secured his Naval bases in the Crimea by negotiation?

On top of that, the “democratic and legal high ground” is not all with the West. After all, the elected government of Ukraine was overthrow.  There has not yet been an election to confirm a new mandate, yet already deals with the EU are being signed. It looks very much as if when the Pro-Russian government came to power, the EU continued its discussions with an opposition that had no legitimacy. They thereby aided and abetted civil unrest. Now that Crimea is not part of Ukraine, remaining Ukrainians will probably vote to go West.  That might not have been the case while Crimea was still part of Ukraine.

  

The most important part of that email is right at the beginning.  No effort whatsoever has been made to see the Russian point of view.  Fortunately we do know how the USA would react under comparable circumstances.  In the Cuban missile crisis the then USSR wanted to put missile launchers on Cuba to protect it from the very credible threat of an invasion from the USA.  There had been such an attempt at the Bay of Pigs, that had been foiled.

            The siting of missiles capable of striking into the heart of the USA was sufficient for President John F. Kennedy to threaten the USSR with armed retaliation and the world with nuclear war.  Fortunately Nikita Khruschev, the Soviet President, was wise enough to communicate with John Kennedy, and to withdraw his missiles; but – no doubt as a result of that friendly chat between the two Presidents – there was no invasion of Cuba.

            ‘Treat others exactly as you yourself would wish to be treated’, is sound advice for Nations as well as individuals.   How many bloody conflicts might have been averted had governments followed that advice!

Late comment

I have this morning (7th April) heard on the tv news that there have been riots in several towns in the Eastern Ukraine.  The suggestion was made that Russian Agents had provoked them.  This just as likely (and just as unlikely) as the suggestion that British and/or American Agents provoked and encouraged the riots in Kiev and elsewhere in western Ukraine that led to the overthrow of the elected pro-Russian President.

I think the situation is a very dangerous one and I hope, for the sake of all of us, that both Russia and NATO will refrain from interfering and from encouraging either side.  Certainly this is not the time for threats or promises of reprisals or other 'consequences'.

           

                                                                              

           

           

           

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