the ouroboros & the media

The Ouroboros is a mythical serpent whose chief characteristic is that it eats its own tail in a never ending cycle of self absorption. I say it’s a mythical creature but I have discovered it is alive and well but living under another name, The Media.

Last night in a carefully timed move, clearly intended for maximum political effect, The Sun announced that it was going to be supporting the Tory party at the next election. To be honest I’ve never thought The Sun was anything other than a conservative newspaper if the utterances of its political correspondents are anything to go by. Anyway, what has followed has been a master class in self absorption. The BBC news ran the story as its main headline both late last night and first thing this morning: not the content of the Prime Minister’s speech, not the breaking news of the earthquake and tsunami hitting Samoa, nor any of the other important issues of the day directly affecting people’s lives, but The Sun’s decision to support a different political party.

The press followed the same agenda, discussing and analysing the significance of the switch in a feeding frenzy which can only reflect their own sense of self importance. On radio and T.V. pundits and commentators have been wheeled out to chat to each other about how significant the story is; a classic example of reporting the news being the news. This is where we are with political reporting, analysis not of what is said and done, the content, but of process; the medium not the message is what counts.

The media has been consumed in recent days with commentary on Andrew Marr’s question to Gordon Brown about whether he takes prescription drugs, asked on Marr’s Sunday morning BBC 1 politics show. Where did this question come from? It is becoming increasingly clear that the question derives from an unsubstantiated piece of speculation, put out on a blog, bounced back and forth across the internet and then spread through the Westminster village; innuendo masquerading as serious journalistic enquiry. It’s just one more example of the media feeding off itself and then regurgitating the content only to consume it again as it debates the appropriateness of the original question.

The broadcast media and newspapers constantly complain about the threat to their survival as viewers, listeners and readers turn to other sources for their news, information and comment. Well the media need not worry - at this rate they will eat themselves out of existence long before other forms of communication finish them off. Then the new Ouroboros will be no more than a mythical creature, just like the original.

entertaining angels

My son found this stone on Branscombe beach at the end of the summer holidays. I meant to post the picture yesterday to celebrate St Michael and All Angels, better late than never.

Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it. Hebrews 13:2

reading old age

Hope I die before I get old; the line from The Who’s My Generation often pops into my mind when I hear matters of old age being discussed. Roger Daltrey and Pete Townsend haven’t had their wish fulfilled, though their two chums from the band were not so lucky. Last week the High Court upheld the law that allows businesses to make employees retire at 65 without any redundancy pay. The case had been brought by Help The Aged and Age Concern and, although their bid was unsuccessful, the judge did say there was a case for raising the compulsory retirement age.

I’ve been thinking quite a bit about retirement recently. When I was ordained, clergy could receive a full pension after 37 years service and this meant I would get a full pension at 65 (2025). Then a couple of years ago the rules were changed and I worked out I need to keep going until I’m about 67. Sitting on my desk is the latest consultation document on changes to the Clergy Pension Scheme in preparation for a likely General Synod debate in February 2010 and suggestions include moving the pension age to 68 with a full pension after 43 years service. Don’t get me started on the challenges many colleagues face in buying a retirement home once they finish work and have to move out of their parsonage house.

Perhaps I need to be thinking less of My Generation and more about U2’s song Dirty Day and the line borrowed from Bukowski ‘The days run away like (wild) horses over the hill’. I can see my retirement disappearing over the horizon faster than I can say Additional Voluntary Contributions. Of course, what we stipendiary clergy are facing are the realities that most other employees must come to terms with, unless they happened to have bankrupted a major financial institution and headed over the hills with a massive guaranteed pension. The truth is that many people are looking forward to their retirement and old age, not in the hope of enjoying the golden years, but with genuine concern and even fear.

In July I attended a conference on the Learning Church with other colleagues from across the country including; Theological College and Courses staff, Continuing Ministerial Development Officers and Diocesan Adult Education Advisers. You might be tempted to think of one of Dante’s Circles of Hell and at times it felt like it. However, there were some highlights and one contribution in particular resonated with my thinking about retirement and old age.

James Woodward was until this year Director of The Leveson Centre for the Study of Ageing, Spirituality and Social Policy. In a fascinating session entitled ‘Reading Old Age’ James presented some reflections on what emerges when we listen to the voices of old age and how that can shape and challenge our theology. This was done by introducing us to four narratives drawn from his extensive reading in the United States while on sabbatical. The four stories made for challenging listening and offered much food for thought; here are some of the observations that I jotted down:

The Journals of May Sarton at Seventy: May is a poet and author who writes about the inevitability of old age and reflects on the unsolved, painful mistakes and reasons for shame and woe. Yet, May also comments that she is ‘more myself than I have ever been’. Constant themes are downsizing and uncluttering and the need for ‘nurturing thankfulness’.

The thing about life is that one day you’ll be dead; David Shields. This book is a biography of Shields’ own body and a narrative of his Father’s old age; much graphic physical detail and the challenge to listen to one’s own body and the wisdom that exists in it. There is a term used in the United States called ‘successful aging’, how do we judge what is fulfilling and what makes us happy? Man is a ‘pleasure seeking missile’ and we must resist giving in to the inevitability of how things should be. We need to live with the possibility of change as part of the narrative. ‘Everyone tries, no one wins, everyone dies’.

The Last Gift of Time – Life Beyond Sixty; Carolyn G. Heilbrun. Carolyn determined that she would end her life by the age of 70 and reflects on some key questions:

• Why is it good to be old?
• Can we be ourselves?
• What freedoms are there in old age?
• Will old age be conventional or unconventional?

The writer observes that the circle of friends in old age is enriched by a range of ages; she is challenged by the issue of memory and asks why so few can live in the present? Carolyn observes that in the last decades memory prevents us looking at what is in front of us in the present and she sees memory as a ‘useless distraction’. The author did take her own life which raises the question of how her suicide affects a reading of her book and what she left unsaid.

The Bill from My Father; Bernard Cooper. This is a memoir about the relationship between the author and his father. One day Cooper senior presented Cooper junior with a bill for all it had cost to bring him up and demanded repayment; the bill came to $1.7 million! Much of the book is a reflection on the horrors of the onset of dementia and the perpetual question of who shapes our story?

Four quite different stories connected by themes raised in contemplating old age and all of them remind us that we have a long way to go in our theology and praxis when it comes to this issue.

Munich

I can still remember the unfolding tragedy of the hostage taking at the Munich Olympics in 1972 and the disastrous conclusion to the siege when the Israeli captives lost their lives. The events of the attack and the ensuing slaughter are powerfully told in the documentary One Day In September. A few years later I read a book recounting Israel’s response, sending out Mossad agents to hunt down and kill those involved in the atrocity. Munich is Steven Spielberg's film portraying the activities of the assassination squad as they worked their way around Europe picking off the terrorists. Although the characters and the events are fictional the film claims that they are ‘inspired by real events’.

Munich is a long film, clocking in at nearly two and a half hours but it maintains an intensity and pace that holds the attention throughout. The unofficial assassination squad are a complicated group reflected in the casting; Eric Bana and Daniel Craig look like what I expect of secret agents, but the others including Ciaran Hinds are disarmingly ordinary. The group are far from the accomplished hit men of Bond films or the Bourne adventures and their first kill is a nervous, halting execution; the celebrations betraying their relief and exhilaration at success.

The film presents state sanctioned murder as messy, incompetent, questioning, depressing and ultimately futile. For every assassination of a terrorist the enemy hits back with the devastating slaughter of hundreds of Israelis. It’s a cycle of violence which reflects the tit for tat retaliations that characterise so much of the Israeli / Palestinian conflict. The agents question the morality of their actions and become the targets of other assassins; several are killed before the operation is concluded. The central character is left haunted not only by the Munich massacre but by the murders he has participated in and the fear that his own government is seeking to silence him.

Spielberg does risk accusations of propaganda in his depiction of the hit squad and one example is the way the film suggests that only the guilty were targeted. In reality the agents were not so discerning and at least one of their victims was an entirely innocent Moroccan waiter shot in Norway. This murder was one of the most shocking incidents I remember from the book and I can’t understand why it is omitted unless Spielberg didn’t want to sully the reputations of the Mossad agents.

Munich’s closing shot is a pan of the Manhattan skyline finishing with the Twin Towers in the background. The scene poignantly sums up a question raised by the whole film: ‘Is anything gained by the war on terrorism?’

billboard wars

A few weeks ago Manchester City fans put up a billboard proclaiming the news that they had pinched Carlos Tevez from Manchester Utd. Following Utd's fantastic defeat of City at the weekend, Utd fans have responded with the billboard above. The picture shows Utd's new signing Michael Owen celebrating his magnificent last gasp goal in the Manchester derby, which Utd won 4-3. Michael Owen joined Utd on a free transfer, City paid approximatley £25 million for Tevez; I wonder who got the better bargain?


Here's a photo of the original Tevez poster showing a rather disdainful Ryan Giggs looking down with the words Pity The Fool.

h/t the excellent Off The Post
Owen pic. Benny Smyth
Tevez/Giggs pic. Stephen Broadhurst

assisted suicide - a relative issue?

As a curate I played rugby for an old boys club. Each Saturday a converted van would draw up beside the pitch and the back would be opened. Inside sat a young man in a wheelchair, paralysed from the shoulders down and dependent on his full time carers to assist with his needs. This young man had broken his neck in the scrum while playing for the old boys and could only watch from his chair the game he had loved to play. The club did all they could to help him, along with family and friends, but not surprisingly occasionally he had severe bouts of depression and spoke about a desire to end his life.

The young man mentioned above came to mind when I first I heard the news reports of the assisted suicide of Daniel James the 23 year old paralysed rugby player. Daniel was taken to a Swiss euthanasia clinic by his parents in order to fulfil his stated desire to die. I can’t imagine what Daniel went through in the time following his accident, nor the pain and turmoil experienced by his loving parents, which led to the decision to end his life. I pray for them as they seek to live with the choices they have made.

Today new guidelines on the issue of assisted suicide have been published by the Director of Public Prosecutions, Keir Starmer QC. The publication follows many months of lobbying by assisted suicide supporters. Lord Falconer, for example, made a bit of a Charlie of himself recently when he rather arrogantly suggested that he knew better that the Archbishop of Canterbury what constituted Christian compassion when it came to this matter.

One of the most chilling contributions to the debate has come from Baroness Warnock, a trenchant supported of the legalisation of assisted suicide. Writing in The Observer last October she wrote Legalise Assisted Suicide, For Pity’s Sake. The first part of the article was a consideration of the legal implications of the James’ case and was a fairly straightforward rehearsal of the issues. And then came this statement:

But the more crucial argument is this: we have a moral obligation to take other people's seriously reached decisions with regard to their own lives equally seriously, not putting our judgment of the value of their life above theirs. Mr and Mrs James have sadly and dramatically carried out this moral obligation.

Why is it a moral obligation? What is the ethical framework within which Warnock expresses this obligation? Warnock’s argument is the ultimate retreat to relativism – there is no objective moral framework simply the belief that each person should be free to decide what’s best for them. I say belief but it seems to me to be nothing more than an assertion. No explanation is given as to the basis of this opinion and this is pretty worrying coming from someone who for so long has been involved in framing the debate and law on a wide variety of moral issues in our country.

I first studied Warnock’s approach to ethics as a student when I wrote a paper on the Warnock Report (1984). I was looking particularly at what the report had to say about surrogate motherhood but it led to a wider exploration of the methods and assumptions underlying the report’s findings and recommendations. My conclusion was that the report was characterized by a secular, utilitarian and technological world view. The report came out against surrogate motherhood but only on the grounds that there was a danger of commercial exploitation.

I shouldn’t have been surprised at Warnock’s article in The Observer. This is what she said in an interview for Life and Work, the Church of Scotland Magazine.

If you're demented, you're wasting people's lives – your family's lives – and you're wasting the resources of the National Health Service.

I'm absolutely, fully in agreement with the argument that if pain is insufferable, then someone should be given help to die, but I feel there's a wider argument that if somebody absolutely, desperately wants to die because they're a burden to their family, or the state, then I think they too should be allowed to die.

So let’s be clear. The reason for supporting assisted suicide/dying is that the person is wasting other people’s lives and wasting the NHS’s resources by continuing to live. A person’s worth is measured by nothing more than this. It’s one small step from saying that people have an obligation to die when they become a burden and another short step to saying that the state has an obligation to get rid of those who have become a burden. Let’s go all the way and make Soylent Green our blue print for the future. Soylent Green is the Charlton Heston film in which people were encouraged to embrace suicide so that their bodies could be turned into food for the masses.

But there is another way of determining a person’s worth. A person’s worth is not defined by their abilities or faculties but by the truth that they are created and loved by God and precious to him and we will be held accountable by God for how we treat them.

An initial response to the DPP's Interim Policy for Prosecutors in Respect of Cases of Assisted Suicide by the Church of England can be found here.

The Church of England's position on Assisted Suicide is set out here.

This is a re-working of an earlier post first published here.

goodbye Chas & Dave

A cultural body blow delivered today with the news that Chas & Dave are finally splitting up after four decades together. I saw Chas & Dave open for Led Zeppelin at Knebworth in 1979 when they led the rather damp punters in a lunch time cockney sing a long featuring many of their hits. Can't say it was the highlight of the event but it certainly warmed up the crowd. Following the death of his wife, Sue Peacock, Dave has decided to lay down his bass and give it a rest. As Pete Broadbent, the Bishop of Willesden, tweeted this morning:
'With Chas and Dave splitting up, there's only one word with which to start the day - Gertcha!'