Chillaxing and other misdemeanours

Too much travel and too many meetings make it hard to hit the keypad and write stuff here. But, today’s ridiculous preoccupation with David Cameron’s abandonment of his daughter in a pub forced the issue.

Apparently, the Prime Minister and his family went for a pub lunch with friends a couple of months ago. They got in separate cars to go home and only discovered when they got home that their daughter Nancy wasn’t with either of them. She had gone to the loo and got forgotten – being picked up 15 minutes later by a ‘distraught’ father.

I wonder if he was actually ‘distraught’ because he knew the media would get the story and make a meal of it?

Now, I can think of many reasons for criticising David Cameron. In fact, make that ‘many, many reasons’, starting with his policies, going though his values and continuing along the road of his leadership competence. But, to spend a whole day debating his parental competence is just absurd. If anything it exposes the pathetic lack of perspective offered by people who like to point a finger and sneer behind a hand. He didn’t abandon his daughter and she was totally safe while she waited to be picked up.

In other words, this is a non-story. Except, of course, in the hands of those who think it contributes to a growing picture of an incompetent man. Give the guy a break! I don’t ever remember losing my kids in a pub, but I do remember losing sight of my son on the beach once. Cue the media to rubbish my performance as a bishop and a human being.

While I’m at it, what’s all the nonsense about the PM relaxing too much? Haven’t we all complained that people in high-pressure jobs like his need to be counter-cultural and learn to get some space? You know, for weird stuff like thinking or dreaming or reflecting or reading or playing a game? Don’t we constantly hear of PMs from earlier days who used to read widely and write books while thinking about politics and the ways of the world? And don’t we constantly wish our PMs would think more deeply, act more wisely and live more healthily?

Maybe. But we also admire the French for having lunch breaks and sleeping properly at night. And we persist in this ridiculous notion that the PM must flog himself to death just to prove he isn’t slacking while there is so much to do in a tough old world out there. This all becomes a PR game in which too much energy, time and talk goes into creating images instead of dealing with reality.

Time to grow up, I think.

(I forgot to note that the ‘Nancy affair’ reminded me immediately of the episode in the gospels when Mary and Joseph forgot Jesus and left him in Jerusalem for several days. At least when Dave got back to the pub Nancy wasn’t having an argument with the local vicar…)

 

Words about Word

Prime Minister David Cameron delivered a speech yesterday in which he praised the impact of the King James Bible, stamped all over the nonsense assumption of secular neutrality, and called for Christians to be confident about their faith, the Bible and their right (nay, responsibility) to speak into public life. Not surprisingly, it has caused a bit of a stir amongst the commentariat whose assumptions got a bit of a kicking.

Cameron was speaking in an Anglican cathedral, so was duly confident in his laudatory observations on the impact of the King James Bible. He also used the occasion to give the Church of England a bit of a kick in relation to its wrangles over women and sexuality. Fair game, I say. And it was good to hear a British politician ‘do God’ without embarrassment, hesitation or self-exonerating caveat.

But, having praised the phenomenon and some of the content, I am still left with a cautious hesitation myself. And I think I know why this is.

He managed to talk up the language of the Bible without really referring to the content of it. Yes, the KJV has powerfully influenced our language and, proclaimed by the Church, has shaped our culture and law as well as our worship. But, we can’t just leave it there.

It reminds me of a rude remark I made recently at an interfaith gathering. I said that many of the global interfaith conferences I attend are a bit like a glorified BT commercial: ‘It’s good to talk’… provided we don’t actually talk about anything. Yet, avoiding ‘content’ is a sure way to waste time and money on non-engagement and the fostering of a false sense of coherence when all we have done is avoid speaking about ‘content’ that might prove contentious. Of course, this is a caricature, but it made the point: we have to move beyond talking about talking to talking about something.

Well, Cameron lauded the language and spoke eloquently about the need for moral codes and ethical foundations in private as well as public life. He argued for a thought-through moral and spiritual basis for our ethics – rather than just assuming one.

But, the problem with the Bible is that as soon as you get beyond the language to what it says, you begin to find it challenging – on lots of fronts. Beautiful language is a means to comprehension, not an end in itself. And it’s taking a bit of a risk challenging the Church of England on its ethical conflicts when those conflicts arise precisely from going through the language and on to conflicted ways of reading the text in its integrity. So, it is alright for the Prime Minister to “recognise the impact of a translation that is, I believe, one of this country’s greatest achievements” and to claim that “the King James Bible is as relevant today as at any point in its 400 year history” as long as we don’t delve too deeply into what it says. He goes on:

One of my favourites is the line “For now we see through a glass, darkly.” It is a brilliant summation of the profound sense that there is more to life, that we are imperfect, that we get things wrong, that we should strive to see beyond our own perspective. The key word is darkly – profoundly loaded, with many shades of meaning. I feel the power is lost in some more literal translations. The New International Version says: “Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror”. The Good News Bible: “What we see now is like a dim image in a mirror”. They feel not just a bit less special but dry and cold, and don’t quite have the same magic and meaning.”

I take the point (and basically agree with him), but the Bible isn’t meant to dazzle us with poetic magic; it is meant to open us to the mind of God… which tends to be a little bit challenging.

Like Shakespeare, the King James translation dates from a period when the written word was intended to be read aloud. And this helps to give it a poetic power and sheer resonance that in my view is not matched by any subsequent translation.

Again, point taken. But, resonance isn’t enough. It isn’t a performance prop. Like with Shakespeare, it is possible to enjoy the spectacle and experience of a play while going home oblivious to the point of it all. It won’t kill you, but you are missing out on rather a lot.

Cameron (or whoever wrote the basic text) does a good job of exposing assumptions of neutrality, affirming the role of the Bible in the development of British politics and culture, the fundamental power of biblical anthropology in shaping what would now rather weakly be called ‘human rights’, and the importance of biblically informed theological and spiritual motivation in social altruism. He says:

The Bible has helped to shape the values which define our country. Indeed, as Margaret Thatcher once said, “we are a nation whose ideals are founded on the Bible.” Responsibility, hard work, charity, compassion, humility, self-sacrifice, love… pride in working for the common good and honouring the social obligations we have to one another, to our families and our communities… these are the values we treasure. Yes, they are Christian values. And we should not be afraid to acknowledge that.

I didn’t know we were afraid to acknowledge that. But, we are not told which biblical origins these virtues are derived from… or just how to deal with the fact that some people who read that same Bible will not recognise in the same way Cameron does how those virtues should be worked out in concrete priorities, policies or practices. He is absolutely right to knock on the head the utter nonsense that confident Christianity confounds those of other faiths – usually a patronising and ignorant gesture from secular humanists who think they know better than Muslims what offends them. Christianity has indeed created the space in which all people can freely worship or not.

However, Cameron’s conclusion made me wince a little – not at what he said, but at the unarticulated assumptions behind it:

I believe the Church of England has a unique opportunity to help shape the future of our communities. But to do so it must keep on the agenda that speaks to the whole country. The future of our country is at a pivotal moment. The values we draw from the Bible go to the heart of what it means to belong in this country
…and you, as the Church of England, can help ensure that it stays that way.

And what might the ‘agenda that speaks to the whole country’ actually be? I suspect it has to do with stuff that some Christians, precisely because of their reading of the Bible – in whatever translation – believe is contentious on moral grounds. I am not saying they are right or wrong; my point is simply that Cameron’s point is itself contentious… as soon as you move beyond vague generalities about ‘values’ and ‘magic’ and into the text itself.

But, maybe he has just opened the door a little to a willingness to take the content of the Bible seriously and invite people to look at the text itself rather than some general or selective bits of nice language. (‘The Word became flesh’… which is when it all got a bit difficult…)

Two cheers for a brave and serious speech. One cheer reserved for the reservations above.

 

Things I didn’t learn this week

1. Why my voice disappeared under yet another bug. Did I become soft during a decade in the south?

2. Why my iPad gets the wifi signal, but won’t connect with the internet upstairs in my house when every other computer does.

3. How the Church of England can best respond to events in a single cathedral in one diocese when the story has an impact on all the other 43 dioceses – and the Church’s reputation.

4. What is causing the iPhone 4S battery life to be dodgy. Apparently, Apple engineers are working on it. No problem with my HTC.

5. How other bishops manage to read so many books and write intelligent stuff.

6. Why people subject themselves to the public humiliation that is X Factor.

7. What it means for Britain to be ‘European’ – wanting the benefits on our own terms, but without having decided what ‘belonging’ might mean.

8. Whether Nicolas Sarkozy was really narked with David Cameron – or just tired from sleepless nights caused by the new baby.

9. However justified the concerns of the ‘occupy’ campers, what their considered alternatives are.

10. How long the latest Chelsea manager will have a job before he heads ‘back to Europe’.

Off to Peterhouse, Cambridge, tomorrow to preach on ‘Bad Dreams’ in the college chapel at 6.30pm. Maybe I’ll have got some answers by then. You never know…

 

Notional Health Service

Being on retreat means being behind the game when it comes to the news. So, I have picked up on the latest NHS shenanigans with a certain incredulity. Given the lesson learned from Tony Blair – that New Labour behaved during its first term in office as if it was still in opposition and didn’t move quickly or radically enough to instigate change – it is understandable that David Cameron wants to get as much done as quickly as possible.

However, he is hampered by three factors: (a) his big ideas (the Big Society, for example) have coincided with massive financial retrenchment… with the former being undermined by the latter; (b) there seems to be little dynamic coherence between the major initiatives launched; and (c) the sheer incompetence of the process for legislation.

Is the NHS fiasco the third or fourth claw-back of confidently announced initiatives? The difference here, however, is the enormity of the changes proposed and the fact that NHS reform represents the flagship policy of the new government. Clawing back the sale of forests is one thing, but announcing a ‘pause’ in the legislative process for NHS reform is of a completely different order.

The arguments can continue about NHS efficiency (provided we remember that efficiency of itself is not the raison d’etre of the NHS) and whether or not care might be delivered more effectively (which is the point of the NHS). The inevitable pros and cons of different ways of organising health care must be weighed up – and it must be recognised that any and every system will have pros and cons – but we must not confuse ends with means.

The worrying thing this time, however, is that opposition to the reform of the NHS is huge and crosses many social and professional boundaries. Some resistance will surely be down to inertia, insecurity, vested interests, fear of change and institutional bloodymindedness. That happens in any institution. But, what is interesting here is that the opposition is informed, unconvinced by the proposals and fearful of potential disarray in the system – not for the sake of the system, but for the sake of the people for whom the system is supposed to exist.

There are two dangers here for the government. First, they rehearse the Thatcherite mantra that it is not the policy that is wrong, but that some poor people out there just haven’t understood it – that once they have understood it, they will obviously have no objection. In this case the policy has been understood and is being questioned in substance by very well-informed people. Patronising opponents won’t work any more.

Secondly, the process appears to be driven by a political dynamic and not one that serves the service itself. That is to say, it might be helpful if a pilot scheme or three were introduced in order to road-test the proposed reforms. A process in which the public was able to see what the outcome might look and feel like is far more likely to win over sceptics than an ideologically driven rush for change. But, we don’t do pilot schemes any longer, do we – in education, health or anywhere else?

I have no problem with proposals for ways of improving the NHS (given the caveat above that improvements always bring with them unanticipated or unintended deficits). I have no problem trying out alternatives. I am open to be persuaded that reforms are necessary and might be helpful. But, I am not happy to see legislation passed on proposals that have not been properly thought through, not tested in the real world (as opposed to on Excel) with real people, not communicated in a way that is respectful and convincing, and possibly shaped to solve a different problem (finance rather than health).

It must have been humiliating for the Health Secretary, Andrew Lansley, to stand in the House of Commons, unsupported by Cabinet colleagues, and announce a ‘pause for listening’ in the legislative process. Yesterday David Cameron had to take personal control of the ‘presentation’ and (bizarrely) state that consultation during the next couple of months will be ‘genuine’.

It’s a mess. And it is just the latest in a line of incompetently handled initiatives in this government’s first year in office. As Blair says in his book A Journey, it is far harder being in government than in opposition. It’s also hard, having listened to the Tories accusing the last government of incompetence, now to see such obvious incompetence in office.

Wouldn’t it be great if the Prime Minister could treat us like adults, apologise for the systemic process and communication failures of his government so far (forests, education, NHS, etc.) and announce a more mature way of doing things. It’s his first year and the economic pool we are paddling in is horrible, so we might even be sympathetic. But, while he pretends that everything is under control, that all the problems are the fault of the previous administration and that all his colleagues are competent for their office, we will continue to be suspicious.

 

Unfortunate collisions

It is a fact of life that decisions made by politicians or any other leaders are analysed by observers as if they were made in isolation from other factors. The moral purity or political expediency of a particular decision is examined as if this decision were made to stand alone and bear the weight of concentrated critique.

Yet, most of life is just not like that. The decisions we make are sometimes forced upon us at a time of least expediency and are conditioned by factors that might be either unfortunate, unwanted or, in some way or other, compromising. I suspect that this is usually unwelcome and even unhelpful.

So, at a time when many commentators – seemingly glad of some action to get their teeth into at last – are following the attacks on Libya with a critical eye back onto the hypocrisy of Western support for regimes such as Gaddafi’s, the decision to act over Libya is not capable of being seen through some pure moral lens. We might regret having (a) thought that stable Arab regimes were culturally appropriate and desirable and, therefore, sustainable, and (b) having aided such regimes for a generation or more by arming them to the teeth… in the interests of domestic security, of course.

But, our vision is always limited. It is easy to stand in the academy or the editorial office casting judgement that costs nothing to the judge;it is a different matter entirely to be compelled to jump when you would prefer to wait for more conducive circumstances. David Cameron might reassure us that Libya is no Iraq, but the threats of a ‘long war’ from Gaddafi and the concerns raised by the Arab League (these attacks were apparently not what they thought they had signed up to) might well confound him.

I began to think about this element of leadership while reading a paper produced this month by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation on Cohesion, counter-terrorism and community in West Yorkshire. I have a huge amount to learn from those on the ground when I move to Bradford next month, so I make no pretensions about fully understanding local cultures there. But, the interesting thing about this paper is the questions it poses to the way we ‘see’ communities in complex circumstances and the assumptions we bring to our judgements.

The paper, based on research, makes a number of points, but two are particularly interesting:

1. Despite allegations by politicians, media and others that communities lead ‘parallel lives’, the evidence suggests that there already is a huge degree of ‘community cohesion’ in everyday life.
2. Well-intended policies (a) to prevent terrorism and (b) to build community cohesion conflicted to the extent that potential for neither was maximised.

In the latter case it was simply that policies that were comprehensible in their own right were inhibited by their contextual association with the other. In the words of the summary findings, “The implementation of Prevent at the local level had direct and negative effects on the parallel attempt to pursue community cohesion programmes.”

This is similar to the coincidence of a good idea – the ‘Big Society‘ – with another reality – the Comprehensive Spending Review. The former might well be negated by its association with the latter… despite government attempts to separate the two and retain their distinctive integrities. Put simply (rather than simplistically), the Big Society depends on voluntary groups taking responsibility for services previously provided by the State while the funding for such groups is cut off because of the spending constraints. The association of the two initiatives is unfortunate for many reasons.

This might all be obvious to everybody else, but it has got me thinking about the nature of leadership in complex organisations and in complex contexts. We rarely have the freedom to make simple decisions in isolation from the rest of reality: normally our decisions are compromised, subject to unwelcome and intrusive extraneous factors, and held hostage to consequences which cannot be predicted. In the words of the final conclusion of the JRF paper:

Community cohesion as a policy cannot be isolated from the impact of other government policies.

A statement of the obvious, maybe; but, even though the powerbrokers need tight scrutiny in a democracy, we observers might do well to at least recognise the complexity of the decision-making process and its context when we cast our judgements from a distance and the comfort of a study.

 

Now, frankly…

As the Middle East continues to burn and the powers are being shaken by the winds of hope, some domestic matters maintain their importance for the future of British society. The Prime Minister seems to be letting no day go by without some major statement on something. This is not a bad thing in itself – especially as the subject matter is usually important – but it makes me wonder whether everything is being properly thought through before publication.

We all know that the forest sell-off has been embarrassingly dropped – and rightly so, in my humble opinion. But, today the Telegraph has an exclusive article by David Cameron in which he sets out his intention to expand his Big Society by decentralising public services and “replace targets with common sense”.

All this sounds great – giving local people control over the details of their lives – but there is a nagging doubt itching away in the back of my mind about the reality. ‘Decentralisation’ seems usually to increase bureaucracy, not reduce it. ‘Common sense’ of one group is the ‘madness’ of another. And none of this addresses the serious concerns about the impact of the ‘millionaires’ Cabinet’ proposals on the poorest or most vulnerable members of our society.

I don’t necessarily disagree with some of the sentiment behind Cameron’s agenda, but I have little trust that the outworking won’t simply benefit those who are most able to exploit it – at the cost of others for whom the charities will be expected to care.

The Bishop of Huntingdon expressed these concerns well – and with a clear appeal to the prophetic tradition in his sermon in the chapel of St Catherine’s College, Cambridge:

The strength of saying that we want a Big Society not a Big Government is that more people can be empowered and use that power to help others. The weakness, which many of us are worried about, is that for the powerful to say this, but then not take or not be able to take the actions that are necessary to empower others, but only cut their support, is to doubly disempower them: at best a Big Sell-Out – abdicating from government not augmenting society – and at worst a Big Smokescreen, if the benefits of privilege are perceived to stay just where they were, or even grow. If there is one thing that should sometimes keep our Prime Minister awake at night, this should be it.

One of the things I like about David Cameron is that you can usually tell when his own voice is behind the things he says or writes (as opposed to the voices of speechwriters or PR people). Reading his recent speech on terrorism at the Security Conference in Munich he not only wagged his real finger at his audience, but he also kept using the word ‘frankly’. This is good: it suggests openness, honesty and clarity. But, frankly, being frank and convincing isn’t enough when it seems that some thinking is being done on the hoof and without realistic thought being given to the implications.

 

Trusting in the New Year

The start of a new year always feels like we’ve got to the top of a dodgy ladder and fallen off, only to have to start climbing again. No guarantees and no foreknowledge of what exactly is to come.

OK, we can assume that 2011 is going to bring huge challenges to many people and life is going to be tough for individuals, families, businesses, institutions and charities:

• as unemployment shoots up, so there will be huge pressure on marriages (undermining family stability and affecting large numbers of children)
• history teaches us that this will put additional pressure on the NHS – particularly mental health services (which are already under-resourced and often hidden)
• radical public service cuts will have a direct effect on local economies which depend more on public services (particularly in the north of England)
• private businesses will consequently suffer in the wake of the above
• crime will increase, but the police will have fewer resources to address either the real situation or public perceptions of it.

And that’s just the miserable stuff for starters. You can add in predictions of continuing public unrest, direct protests against the effects of the cuts, and a growing public instinct for ‘doing something’ about it (an expression of human dignity and responsibility?).

So, no cheer then? Well, that depends. It is unclear whether faith communities and charities will be able to plug the gaps left by local or central government funding withdrawals. Asking people to give more to charity, though always desirable, is no answer to the problem of cuts to essential funding of local agencies who meet needy people where they are. Among others, churches may be deemed the appropriate agencies for rising to new challenges; but, so far, no research has been done into either capacity or competence.

In other words, we are walking blind into uncharted territory. I have sympathy with David Cameron’s vision for the Big Society, but I have serious doubts about it being deliverable in the short term – I can see it being undermined in both practice and theory by an over-ambitious and overly-radical programme of immediate (rather than programmed/staggered) cuts.

So, given the potentially overwhelming challenges that colour our view of the prospects for 2011 – internationally as well as nationally and locally – where might we turn for an overarching theme that might shape our approach to whatever lies ahead?

I think the Guardian put it well this morning in its editorial comment:

The cynicism which pervades public life at the dawn of 2011 is … a creed that ascribes the basest motives to everybody, and dismisses the very possibility of moral improvement. … mistrust is paralysing politics. It is evident in marketopian reforms which treat public servants as knaves to be slapped into line by the self-interested whack of the invisible hand. It is evident, too, in fear and loathing between the governing and governed, and – we admit – in newspapers being too gleeful about catching yet another snout in the trough. The great injustices of the day have at times been buried in a blizzard of dodgy receipts for duck islands and patio doors. The dismal worldview reaches its apogee in the rightwing blogosphere, where pundits parade as anarchists but subtly entrench hopelessness by decreeing every call for public virtue to be a cover for private vice. None of this is to deny the praiseworthiness of doubt and sceptical inquiry, preconditions for both good government and clear thought. But it is to hope, however vainly, for a collective resolution to extend a smidgeon more trust in considering what makes people tick.

Trust is essential and central to any constructive or positive approach to what lies ahead of us – which we have the responsibility to shape and not just to decry as if we are helpless victims. Trust assumes that we will take seriously the Common Good.

This means – taking the context of the Guardian’s piece seriously – that the media have a massive responsibility not only to question and critique, but also to see themselves as ‘players and participants’ of our society and drop the pretence of being disinterested, objective observers of everybody else. The media shape public perceptions of reality and motivation – and that makes them responsible agents in shaping society and the trust or cynicism that infect public life.

In All’s Well That Ends Well Shakespeare put is like this:

Love all, trust a few. Do wrong to none.

We don’t have a right to happiness, despite the assumptions behind the American Declaration of Independence. But, we do have a responsibility to take seriously the well-being of all in our society – especially those least able to secure their own. Trust will either encourage us – or its lack will further destroy us.

 

Big questions about the ‘Big Society’

I have to confess to being a little puzzled about David Cameron’s ‘Big Society’. The term appears to have been coined originally as a rhetorical antithesis to the bogey ‘Big State’, but we have had to wait to see it cashed out in terms of substance we can understand. If it is not to be simply a slogan, what does it actually mean?

It is already painfully obvious that the politicians who so loved the freedom of Opposition are now having to endure the ordeal of accountability. This coalition government has had the courage to address hard economic challenges (even if their solutions beg many questions – such as why the financial measures that got us into this mess came about in order to rescue banks which are now making huge profits which don’t seem to be paying off the debts incurred by the public purse…) and is approaching some issues with fresh vision after several years of stale over-legislation. But, the concept of the ‘Big Society’ has remained somewhat elusive. It feels as if what began as a mere rhetorical device has had to be filled with some sort of content after all… but simply being posited as the opposite of what we had before (as certain ideologues would see it) is clearly not enough.

Cameron’s speech in Liverpool offered a good start at helping us understand his ‘passion’. But it was striking for two reasons: (a) yes, it is a concept capable of some really interesting content, and (b) it has already been going on (largely unrecognised) under his nose for decades.

Commentators have been questioning whether the ‘Big Society’ is a concept or simply a con. Bloggers have launched in, too – sometimes helpfully identifying the right questions to be asking of the concept (or con). But, what is being missed is the recognition that what Cameron wants, the Church already does. He is walking on our territory without realising we have been there for years. It is what we do.

Take some basic facts which can be found among others on the Church of England website (now outdated by a year or two). The C of E isn’t always very good at telling its good news stories or conveying its successes. This is partly because we are busy getting on with the job instead of talking about it. Here are some facts:

• More people do unpaid work for church organisations than any other organisation.  Eight per cent of adults undertake voluntary work for church organisations while sixteen per cent of adults belong to religious or church organisations.  
• A quarter of regular churchgoers (among both Anglicans and other Christians separately) are involved in voluntary community service outside the church. Churchgoers overall contribute 23.2 million hours voluntary service each month in their local communities outside the church.
• The Church of England provides activities outside church worship in the local community for 407,000 children and young people (aged under 16 years) and 32,900 young people (aged 16 to 25 years). More than 116,000 volunteers and an additional 4900 employed adults run children/young people activity groups sponsored by the Church of England outside church worship.
• Church of England congregations give more than £51.7 million each year to other charities – that’s even more than the BBC’s annual Children in Need appeal.
• More than half a million worshippers subscribe to tax-efficient giving schemes such as Gift Aid, accounting for half the voluntary income of parish churches.

It is easy to hear David Cameron and his colleagues speaking as if we need to begin creating the ‘Big Society’ when it is already here, but unappreciated.

Of course, time will tell whether or not the concept is really a cover for getting stuff done on the cheap by volunteers. What also remains to be seen is whether churches and other groups have the capacity or competence to do some of what is likely to fall into their collective lap. Cameron says,

It’s about saying if we want real change for the long-term, we need people to come together and work together – because we’re all in this together.

But, we are not. Some people and some communities are ‘in it’ more than others and some are replete with the resources and skills to make differences less likely elsewhere.

It will be interesting to see where this will all lead – as the concept takes flesh and we find out what it really looks and feels like. Cameron says:

Not long ago, four parts of our country – Eden Valley in Cumbria, Windsor and Maidenhead, Sutton and here in Liverpool – came to us and said: ‘we want more power and control. You’ve spoken about it long enough. Now give it to us’.

Really? I cover Sutton and so far I haven’t found anyone who remembers saying anything of the sort.

Watch this space and join in the debate. It’s going to be an interesting ride.

 

Do I agree with Nick?

I guess it depends which Nick we are talking about…

Well, Nick Clegg has changed British politics for ever (according to the newspapers). It’s a bit ironic that the Tories are calling for ‘a change’, but obviously didn’t expect the people to be offered a real change. And, while we are at it, how did they come up with such a contentless slogan – Vote for Change – as if change of itself was a good thing? I always thought that change for the sake of change was unwise.

Meanwhile Labour have sunk into third place, yet Brown is playing the ‘Don’t Change – it’s too risky’ card at the same time as saying that lots of things require urgent and radical change… such as politics and the economy.

But both parties seem to be missing the mark in attacking the Liberal Democrats on the basis of their policies when what is evident is that post-debate Cleggmania has caught a mood – one in which people might prefer a risk and a change just to get away from the old ‘slagging off the opposition’ politics. (I also wonder if it is wise for the politicians to use the language of fear on people who have been living through the banking collapse, a prolonged recession, the threat of climate change and now a nuisance volcano stopping air travel… and yet are still here. Has the elctorate been ‘feared out’ and is now responding to the offer of some positive ‘hope’?)

I have to admit a respect for Clegg, but for an unusual (and probably unpopular) reason. I have written before about Helmut Schmidt‘s belief that no politician should enter Parliament if they don’t speak at least two foreign languages. The 91 year old former German Bundeskanzler says this in his wonderful book Ausser Dienst. His point is that we can only really understand our own culture if we first have looked at it through the lens of another culture. In an earlier post I wrote:

To learn a language is to enter beneath the surface of a people, their history and their culture. It is necessary to learn a language in order to understand how relatively limited is your own culture and understanding of the world.

Nick Clegg speaks fluent Spanish and – apparently – several other languages. This inevitably gives him a cultural and intellectual ‘hinterland’ which will make him more interesting than those who only know English (as a language) and Britain (as a place to live). As Brown becomes more gravely authoritative and Cameron sounds more shrill and hectoring, Clegg might just want to express some breadth and depth.

I know that correlations don’t make for explanations, but I do wonder if Clegg might just offer what people want – just as the other leaders are looking and sounding ‘old’.

Mind you, I still haven’t decided which way I will vote on 6 May. I know which ways I will not be voting. But an election that made me yawn at the beginning has now come alive. And it is possible that the real bonus of a potentially higher turnout than was originally feared will be the marginalisation of the extremist parties (who do well when moderate voters stay at home).

 

Hopes and deaths

I have just scanned the news and four things jump out as having something significant in common: David and Samantha Cameron’s son Ivan died last night at the age of 6; the Archbishops of Canterbury and York have published a superb and strongly-worded condemnation of Robert Mugabe’s regime in Zimbabwe and announced a day of prayer and fasting (as well as giving cash); a plane has crashed in Amsterdam; Obama has addressed his people with a strong encouragement that America will emerge from its problems eventually.

The thing that links these four ‘items’ is the fact that whether we are talking about a single family or a whole nation, a community of travellers or a starving and oppressed people, every individual counts. Millions of people die every day – most of them too young and most of them utterably avoidably. Over four million people have died in the Congo. Zimbabwe, with which I mostdeeply connected, is suffering terribly both from its own internal problems of misrule and corruption, but also from the neglect from elsewhere in Africa to do anything about Mugabe. But, when millions die unnecessarily every day, why does the death of one person hit the main headline?

Anyone who has done pastoral work – especially in contexts of bereavement – knows that the death of someone close makes the rest of the world disappear. A million may die, but each individual has a network of family and friends that is unique and irreplaceable. One death changes the whole world for a load of other people. Zimbabwe rightly disappears from view when your own child dies. When I read about the suffering in Zimbabwe, I don’t think of an amorphous mass of people who look the same; rather, I see the faces and hear the voices of particular people in particular contexts with particular challenges.

Obama is rightly telling people the truth: there is no quick fix and some people are going to suffer before things get better. There can be no hiding from that truth. But, we need to recover our ability to take a long-term view and re-shape the world slowly, step by step, at every level from the macro (government, banking, fiscal systems, etc) to the micro (looking after my neighbour who is suffering or in need). Obama sounds increasingly like one of the perceptive and brave Old Testament prophets.

The Cameron family will, I hope, withdraw from the world and grieve fully and properly for the loss of their son who was profoundly vulnerable during his short life. I hope they will be given the space to come to terms with the fact that the whole world has changed and other people can handle the Party and our economic challenges while they take the space to love and be loved.

Zimbabwe needs our love and anger and action. I hope many will give to the Archbishops’ Appeal – not because this is a tidy way of salving the post-colonialist conscience, but because the need is immediate and great and bigger than the niceties of my particular feelings about how they have got into this mess and who is responsible for it. My conscience or analysis does not matter a great deal to the parents of the child in Gweru who is not eating, not going to school and in danger of suffering from Cholera.

Every human being is made in the image of God and is infinitely valuable. Some of us have to hold the tension between the macro and the micro, but the shock of the macro (Zimbabwe) should never minimise the trauma of the micro (the death of one person such as Ivan Cameron-  RIP).