Dear Prudence

This week at morning prayer we began to read the book of Daniel. The first half of the book is a fascinating and challenging story about people in exile at the mercy of a capricious despotic ruler. This morning I was struck by a particular verse which has stayed in my mind. To set the scene, in chapter 2 King Nebuchadnezzar has a dream and calls for his spiritual advisers, a rather motley crew of charlatans, to tell him what the dream means. To spice things up a bit the king insists that his 'wise men' not only interpret the dream but tell him what the dream is and if they can't then they will be torn limb from limb and their homes reduced to rubble. Of course the advisers can't meet the king's request and so the order goes out for all the wise men in Babylon to be put to death.

Unfortunately the king's decree includes Daniel and his mates. The chief executioner Arioch looks for Daniel and when he meets him this is Daniel's response:

Then Daniel responded with prudence and discretion to Arioch, the king’s chief executioner, who had gone out to execute the wise men of Babylon; he asked Arioch, the royal official, “Why is the decree of the king so urgent?” Arioch then explained the matter to Daniel. Dan 2:14

The words that jumped out at me were that Daniel responded 'with prudence and discretion'. Now I don't know what your response would be to being told that you are about to be torn limb from limb on the orders of a murderous tyrant but I don't think mine would be prudence and discretion. I'd have run for my life or failing that ranted and raved at the injustice of it all and probably thrown in a few accusations at God for allowing the situation to arise in the first place.

I think about some of the more irrational, unjust and, at times it seems, malicious decisions which our political leaders make, here's an example in case your wondering what I'm on about, and my gut reaction is to have a good rant about them. Thanks to social media it's quite easy to have a good rant and it's helped by the fact that our rulers don't have the power to order us to be torn limb from limb, though I suspect one or two of our MPs would quite like that option at their disposal. On reflection I find myself pondering whether prudence and discretion isn't the better response. For Daniel it opened up the way into the king's court and a place of influence for the common good.

What does it mean to respond in a prudent and discreet manner on Twitter I wonder?

Couldn't resist the sublime Siouxsie and the Banshees' version of The Beatles' Dear Prudence.

Teeth on edge

I heard some sad news yesterday. My wife was booking an appointment with our dentist and was informed he had left. Recently I had a very painful abscess under a tooth and he saw me twice within an hour of phoning the practice, carefully explained the problem and prescribed the appropriate treatment. There was no charge for the appointments and x-rays, though there are basic charges for my usual treatment. He was an NHS dentist. His practice has recently moved to new premises in the same village with the latest equipment, good parking, a comfortable environment and the clincher... free WiFi! What more could we ask for. He was brilliant and POLISH and as a family we are going to miss him. The good news is there is a new dentist at the practice and if she is anywhere near as good as him we will be very happy. She is also Polish.

We moved to our dentist's practice a few years ago because our previous dentist, who was British, had written to advise us that his practice was going private and he enclosed a load of bumf about our options for taking out private insurance. Call me old fashioned but I have a commitment to the National Health Service and am happy to pay my taxes so that people can access treatment free at the point of need. I recently had some gastric problems and again received excellent treatment from specialist physicians in a recently rebuilt hospital. The whole process from booking appointments, prepping for the procedures, the endoscopies and the after care were first class and again in a friendly comfortable environment that made an unpleasant procedure as bearable as possible. First class service on the NHS and don't ask me to list the number of different nationalities of those involved in my care.

A couple of thoughts. Yes, there are problems with the NHS. That's no surprise given the size of the organisation and the demands made of it. But as we seek development and improvement let us not lose sight of the jewel of the nation that we already have. Danny Boyle was right to celebrate the NHS at the heart of the Olympic Games opening ceremony. So let's stop selling it off on the sly piece by piece so that we have to pay again for what we already own.

And I want to say thank you to my Polish dentist for his friendly manner, his excellent treatment and for the contribution he has made to our family's well being and to the local community he has served. When I hear people moaning about immigrants swamping our country, read the pernicious propaganda distributed by UKIP and listen to politicians from the other political parties targeting immigration as the great ill of our age, it is my Polish dentist that comes to mind and I am ashamed of the quality and tone of our public discourse on this matter; it really sets my teeth on edge.




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A modest proposal

Like many people I was staggered to read a paper published in the Journal of Medical Ethics proposing After-birth Abortion or the killing of new born babies. This is the abstract summary of the paper:

Abortion is largely accepted even for reasons that do not have anything to do with the fetus' health. By showing that (1) both fetuses and newborns do not have the same moral status as actual persons, (2) the fact that both are potential persons is morally irrelevant and (3) adoption is not always in the best interest of actual people, the authors argue that what we call ‘after-birth abortion’ (killing a newborn) should be permissible in all the cases where abortion is, including cases where the newborn is not disabled.

It’s a chilling read and yet I can’t help thinking that all the authors have done is take the ethics of abortion to a cold hard logical conclusion. And the conclusion is this:

If criteria such as the costs (social, psychological, economic) for the potential parents are good enough reasons for having an abortion even when the fetus is healthy, if the moral status of the newborn is the same as that of the infant and if neither has any moral value by virtue of being a potential person, then the same reasons which justify abortion should also justify the killing of the potential person when it is at the stage of a newborn.

Two considerations need to be added.

First, we do not put forward any claim about the moment at which after-birth abortion would no longer be permissible, and we do not think that in fact more than a few days would be necessary for doctors to detect any abnormality in the child. In cases where the after-birth abortion were requested for non-medical reasons, we do not suggest any threshold, as it depends on the neurological development of newborns, which is something neurologists and psychologists would be able to assess.

Second, we do not claim that after-birth abortions are good alternatives to abortion. Abortions at an early stage are the best option, for both psychological and physical reasons. However, if a disease has not been detected during the pregnancy, if something went wrong during the delivery, or if economical, social or psychological circumstances change such that taking care of the offspring becomes an unbearable burden on someone, then people should be given the chance of not being forced to do something they cannot afford.

It is not surprising that the paper has drawn heavy criticism of the proposal, its authors, and of the JME for publishing the article. It is surprising that the editor of the JME should be shocked at the response to the paper. He defends publication and condemns the criticism, describing those attacking the paper as being engaged in a ‘witch hunt’. Julian Savulescu’s argument seems to be that it is justifiable to publish anything as long as it is presented as a reasoned argument:

However, the goal of the Journal of Medical Ethics is not to present the Truth or promote some one moral view. It is to present well reasoned argument based on widely accepted premises. The authors provocatively argue that there is no moral difference between a fetus and a newborn. Their capacities are relevantly similar. If abortion is permissible, infanticide should be permissible. The authors proceed logically from premises which many people accept to a conclusion that many of those people would reject.

So here is another reasoned argument which I trust the JME will publish. It’s not new and I am grateful to Philip James for reminding me of it. Jonathan Swift wrote A Modest Proposal in 1729 arguing:

For Preventing The Children of Poor People in Ireland
From Being Aburden to Their Parents or Country, and
For Making Them Beneficial to The Public.

Here are some excerpts from Swift’s proposal to give you a flavour of his reasoning:

It is a melancholy object to those who walk through this great town or travel in the country, when they see the streets, the roads, and cabin doors, crowded with beggars of the female sex, followed by three, four, or six children, all in rags and importuning every passenger for an alms. These mothers, instead of being able to work for their honest livelihood, are forced to employ all their time in strolling to beg sustenance for their helpless infants: who as they grow up either turn thieves for want of work, or leave their dear native country to fight for the Pretender in Spain, or sell themselves to the Barbadoes.

I think it is agreed by all parties that this prodigious number of children in the arms, or on the backs, or at the heels of their mothers, and frequently of their fathers, is in the present deplorable state of the kingdom a very great additional grievance; and, therefore, whoever could find out a fair, cheap, and easy method of making these children sound, useful members of the commonwealth, would deserve so well of the public as to have his statue set up for a preserver of the nation…

I shall now therefore humbly propose my own thoughts, which I hope will not be liable to the least objection.

I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee or a ragout.

I do therefore humbly offer it to public consideration that of the hundred and twenty thousand children already computed, twenty thousand may be reserved for breed, whereof only one-fourth part to be males; which is more than we allow to sheep, black cattle or swine; and my reason is, that these children are seldom the fruits of marriage, a circumstance not much regarded by our savages, therefore one male will be sufficient to serve four females. That the remaining hundred thousand may, at a year old, be offered in the sale to the persons of quality and fortune through the kingdom; always advising the mother to let them suck plentifully in the last month, so as to render them plump and fat for a good table. A child will make two dishes at an entertainment for friends; and when the family dines alone, the fore or hind quarter will make a reasonable dish, and seasoned with a little pepper or salt will be very good boiled on the fourth day, especially in winter.

I have reckoned upon a medium that a child just born will weigh 12 pounds, and in a solar year, if tolerably nursed, increaseth to 28 pounds.

I grant this food will be somewhat dear, and therefore very proper for landlords, who, as they have already devoured most of the parents, seem to have the best title to the children.

Swift concludes:

I profess, in the sincerity of my heart, that I have not the least personal interest in endeavoring to promote this necessary work, having no other motive than the public good of my country, by advancing our trade, providing for infants, relieving the poor, and giving some pleasure to the rich. I have no children by which I can propose to get a single penny; the youngest being nine years old, and my wife past child-bearing.

Swift as we know was a satarist, the Journal of Medical Ethics by contrast is supposed to be a serious scientific journal.

Bishops bully Bullingdon boys

If I was Rowan Williams I think I would be rather flattered by the picture published by The Sun today. Rowan is portrayed as a Lenin type figure from the old communist propaganda posters and comes across as rather dashing in a The Matrix meets Dr Who sort of way.



The picture accompanies a rather silly article by Trevor Kavanagh in which he claims that the bishops have bullied the Government by opposing its proposed welfare cap legislation. Kavanagh is The Sun’s former political editor and the piece is fairly typical of the fare he churned out throughout his time at the newspaper. Here’s a taste of what he wrote:

WHEN unelected bishops use the House of Lords to bully an elected government, it is time to wonder not just at their monstrous cheek, but why they are there at all.
Last week, they sabotaged a £26,000-per-family welfare cap on the grounds that it was "too harsh".

Millions of Sun readers would give their eye teeth for an income like that — equal to £35,000 before tax. Indeed, since many struggle to bring up kids on a far smaller income, they want to know why the cap was set so generously high. So do respected anti- poverty campaigners including Labour MP Frank Field, despite party leader Ed Miliband's opportunistic bleating.
Parish priests, poor as church mice on £22,000 a year, also ask why their prelates are so generous with other people's money…

But the point is not simply that plump, well-fed bishops are so out of touch with modern Britain.
Anyone witnessing the empty pews on a Sunday morning can tell the Church of England has long lost its moral compass. It has abandoned the moral codes that bound its congregations, choosing to "understand" transgressors rather than upholding the Ten Commandments. It has nothing significant to say to 21st Century Christians about jobs, education or the economy. Rather than confront these crucial challenges, it ties itself in knots with sulphurous rows about gay marriage and women bishops.

Under Marxist Arch Druid Rowan Williams, the Church has deserted the ecclesiastical battlefield and surrendered to muscular Islam.

Kavanagh was not the only one to attack the bishops and he refers to an ill judged piece written for the Daily Mail by George Carey former  Archbishop of Canterbury. Last week Carey opined:

When the Church of England bishops voted against the Government’s proposal to cap welfare benefits at £26,000 a year, I have no doubt they did so because they believed it was their duty to speak up for the very poorest in society — especially those voiceless children who, through no fault of their own, might suffer as a result.

As the bishops pushed for an amendment to the Government cap which means that families can still claim £50,000 a year in benefits, they must have known the popular opinion was against them, including that of many hard-working, hard-pressed churchgoers. They also knew that the case for welfare reform had been persuasively made, even if they didn’t agree with it. Yet these five bishops — led by the Bishop of Ripon and Leeds — cannot lay claim to the moral high-ground.

I say ill judged because both Carey and Kavanagh have chosen to ignore one basic fact; the bishops did not oppose the Government’s proposal to cap welfare. What the bishops did do was propose an amendment so that Child Benefit was not included in the cap. In an excellent piece written in The Telegraph Tim Stevens the Bishop of Leicester responded to Carey’s criticism:

Though he ceased to be Archbishop of Canterbury nearly a decade ago, Lord Carey, as a life peer, is entitled to express his opinions on issues of national importance. But the point of debate in Parliament is that we listen to each others views before making up our minds. Many Peers last Monday were persuaded to support the Bishops’ amendment by the power of the arguments they heard. This makes it all the more disappointing to me that Lord Carey was not present to hear them.

Yet much of what Lord Carey had to say this week accords with the views of the Bishops. Firstly, I and most within the Church have supported the principle of a reduction in the welfare budget. We have listened carefully to the arguments that a cap on benefits is necessary, even if we retain concerns about its application.

Secondly, we did not vote against the cap itself, even if we have questions about the principle. We agree wholeheartedly that work is the best route out of poverty and that reducing state dependency is an overall necessity. On all that we agree.

However, I disagree profoundly with the Government’s and Lord Carey’s view that our action in the Lords was about prolonging a culture of welfare dependency, or the implication that increased material poverty for some is a price worth paying to alleviate what some have described as the poverty of aspiration. Like others in the Church, I see the real effects of poverty on families and communities in my own diocese on a regular basis.

Child Benefit has always been a benefit paid to working and non-working families. It has not previously been means-tested and is payable to the main carer, to help with the cost of having children. For many it is a lifeline. And like access to the NHS, it has long been a central plank of this country’s universalist approach to social security. That universalism is now being eroded.

Much has been made of the principle of fairness in access to state support. But is it fair to children that a two earner family of any size with a household income in excess of £80,000 a year could still receive Child Benefit from the Government, yet under the welfare plans a child born to a large family with a benefit income of £26,000 would receive no financial support?
The Bishops’ amendment simply sought to exclude Child Benefit from the cap, to ensure that some financial support is still provided for each of the estimated 220,000 children who might otherwise be adversely affected.

Exempting Child Benefit will help prevent many children falling into serious poverty and could protect against family break up, or even homelessness.

This is hardly the raging of a group of Marxist militants seeking to destroy an elected Government. It is the reasoned argument of a small group of bishops who persuaded a majority in the House of Lords to support their amendment. Of course this has not stopped Kavanagh and his mates in the press railing against the bishops despite the fact that their basic premise is false, but then when has The Sun and The Daily Mail allowed the facts to get in the way of a good rant?

There was one journalist who went out of her way to stick up for the bishops. Victoria Coren wrote a piece in The Observer commenting on a Question Time discussion about the bishops and their amendment and commented:

The issue of the bishops blocking a benefit cap in the House of Lords was debated by everyone, on the panel and in the audience, purely in terms of whether or not they agreed with the "rebels". This reflects the way the story has been reported and discussed generally. It is as though the country has become so atheist, it has actually forgotten that bishops are men of God and the gospels.

They are talked about as rich men with no idea that £26,000 is a fortune for some, or leftie men being typically obstructive, or naive men who don't realise the coffers are empty, but never as Christian men who are perhaps just trying to say what they think Jesus would have said. I'm not saying I agree with them. I do think the benefits cap argument is riddled with false logic, and the surrounding debate pernicious when it encourages the working poor to blame their struggles on the non-working poorer, rather than, say, greedy banking practice and the governments that pave its way.

On the other hand, I'm as frightened as anyone by the idea of generations growing up who have never known waged income, or who might actually choose a life on welfare over an attempt to look for work. I'm not immune to a shudder at the thought of people sitting on their fat arses in front of Jeremy Kyle on the flatscreen, sharing a KFC bucket with their pit-bull half-breed, thumping their step-children and drinking my tax money.

But I'm not a bishop. It doesn't matter whether I think they're right or wrong; I think it's their job to do what the Bible tells them to do, ie look out for the needy, like the innocent children on whose behalf they raised the amendment, who might otherwise get lost.

The right-wing press that is so angry with the bishops has been complaining for years that Christianity (for better or worse, our national religion) is too weak and small a voice, that its values are not fought for. Now it's happening, they hate it. I think the problem they've got is that the New Testament, if read as an economic tract, is innately rather socialist. It's all sharey-sharey. Jesus wanted everyone to get a bit of bread and fish. He was all about the divvying up and the helping one's neighbour. So, if Christianity is going to make itself heard on tax-and-spend policies, it has got to lean towards spreading the spoils around.

There's not much the bishops can do about that. Their hands are tied. The gospels say what they say. If their lordships wanted to support the idea that handing out bread and fish is bad for people because it demotivates them from doing their own baking and fishing, they'd really have to leave the pulpit and get a job on a tabloid.

Contrast what Coren wrote with Carey's pension padding piece for The Daily Mail. In summing up the debate I leave the last word with her:

For the health of the debate, and fully to reflect the range of national opinion, it is vital that some people argue vehemently for reductions in welfare, or even the complete abolition of handouts. But it would be bloody terrifying if the church were among them.

He never said

On a day when there is much debate about the Bible and the values that underpin our society, I’m grateful to Ged Robinson for reminding me about this great song from Martyn Jospeh: He Never Said.

I predict a riot

Not long after the Brixton riots in 1981I happened to be in Keswick and heard a well known preacher proclaim that the cause of the riots was sin. He dismissed economic or social concerns, the racial tensions and problems with policing in the area. Sin is the cause was his message. In one sense he was right, sin was the cause. However, he chose to define sin purely in terms of personal sin and individual responsibility and dismissed the idea that there may be wider sinful structures at work in the situation. I found it somewhat ironic that here was a man whose ministry was based in one of the wealthiest parts of the city, where he served a large eclectic congregation, pronouncing on one of the poorest and most troubled parts of the same city.

I lived in Brixton following the riots and it didn’t take long to see at first hand some of the underlying issues behind the tensions in the community. On one occasion my parents witnessed a racial attack by a group of white men on a black man in the centre of town. The victim knew how to look after himself and got the better of the others only to be arrested by the police who turned up late to the scene and presumed he was the assailant. My parents tried to speak to the police as they had witnessed the whole incident and were told in explicit language to mind their own business. It was only when my father pointed out that he was a chaplain at Brixton Prison that the police began to take him more seriously. So worried was my mother that she asked me to take her to the police station a week later to find out what had happened to the young black man who had been arrested. It turned out that no one had been charged and the case was closed. 

All this has been brought to mind by some of the follow up to the riots in major cities across the land during the summer. I’ve posted on the riots before.This week the discussion about the riots and their causes has resurfaced and the Archbishop of Canterbury has contributed to the debate in an important piece written for The Guardian: Rioting is the choice of young people with nothing to lose. I thought of the Keswick preacher because following ++Rowan’s article several people on Twitter criticised him for not mentioning sin. I think ++Rowan mentions sin in his article quite frequently, though he doesn’t use the word explicitly because of the audience he is seeking to address. Here is his opening paragraph:

The Guardian's Reading the Riots reports left me with a sensation of enormous sadness. So much of what is recorded here reflects lives in which anger and depression are almost the default setting, thanks to of a range of frustrations and humiliations. Too many of these young people assume they are not going to have any ordinary, human, respectful relationships with adults – especially those in authority, the police above all. Too many inhabit a world in which the obsession with "good" clothes and accessories – against a backdrop of economic insecurity or simple privation – creates a feverish atmosphere where status falls and rises as suddenly and destructively as a currency market: good lives are lives where one's position within a fierce Darwinian hierarchy of style is temporarily secure. Too many feel they have nothing to lose because they are told practically from birth that they have no serious career opportunities.

He continues:

But because many of these people are damaged – by unstable family settings, by education delivered in almost impossible conditions, by what is felt as constant suspicion and discrimination – their way of releasing tension is destructive and chaotic. There is no point in being sentimental: they make appallingly bad, selfish, short-term choices.

The Archbishop is not excusing the actions of the rioters, he clearly condemns the choices made by those who took to the streets. However, ++Rowan goes on to question the values and priorities of a society in which these choices are made:

The question is why such choices seem natural or unavoidable to so many. We may well wince when some describe how the riots brought them a feeling of intense joy, liberation, power. But we have to ask what kind of life it is in which your emotional highs come from watching a shop torched or a policeman hit by a brick.

Nearly three years ago the Children's Society produced its Good Childhood report, a careful analysis of what young people thought constituted a nurturing environment to grow up in. Its conclusions were devastatingly simple. Young people need love. They need a dependable background for their lives, emotionally and socially; a background that helps them take certain things for granted so that they know they don't have to fight ceaselessly for recognition. We should be keeping a sharp eye on working practices that undermine this, and asking how law and society reinforce the right kinds of family stability by training in parenting skills as well as high quality out-of-school activity and care. We should be challenging an educational philosophy too absorbed in meeting targets to shape character. And we should look long and hard at the assumptions we breed into our children about acquisition and individual material profit.

In other words we are an idolatrous society whose worship of the gods of consumerism and money making are reaping their own particular fruits. If that isn’t sin then I don’t know what is.

The Archbishop is not content to sit on the side lines finger wagging like many of the commentators who spouted so much ill considered nonsense in the aftermath of the riots. Nor does he settle for platitudes and misty eyed optimism. ++Rowan presents us as a society with some hard edged truths which we have to face up to if we aren’t to see our inner city streets going up in flames every summer.

Demonising volatile and destructive young people doesn't help; criminalising them wholesale reinforces a lot of what produces the problem in the first place. Of course crime needs punishment, and limits of acceptable behaviour have to be set. The youth justice system has a good record in restorative justice that brings people up sharp against the human consequences of what they have done. We have the tools for something other than vindictive or exemplary penalties.

The big question Reading the Riots leaves us with is whether, in our current fretful state, with unavoidable austerity ahead, we have the energy to invest what's needed in family and neighbourhood and school to rescue those who think they have nothing to lose. We have to persuade them, simply, that we as government and civil society alike will put some intelligence and skill into giving them the stake they do not have. Without this, we shall face more outbreaks of futile anarchy, in which we shall all, young and old, be the losers.

This is the Archbishop doing his job. Speaking prophetically to a nation that needs to wake up before we drift into a state of perpetual anarchy.

Shared Ignorance

Having been out of the country for the last couple of weeks I watched the unfolding tragedy of the riots in England with dismay and not a little despair. As I had very limited internet access I was unable to comment, save for the odd tweet, and this was probably a good thing because it saved me contributing to the appalling drivel spouted across the airwaves and the digital media in the aftermath of the mayhem. Let me give a couple of examples.

On the Today programme I listened to a panel being interviewed about their take on the London riots. This panel included a middle aged single man who described himself as gay, childless and a conservative. He went on to say that he never visited schools except when they were used as polling stations. Nevertheless he felt competent to tell the listener that many of the problems in our society and a cause of the riots could be traced back to the feminisation of our schools under the last government. No evidence was offered to support his assertion, save his brief glances at the displays in the school where he went to exercise his vote. What qualified this man to share his ignorance with us on BBC 4's 'flagship' programme apart from the fact he had a mouth and was quite prepared to open it at the behest of the programme's producer? It was left to a local head teacher to explain the good work that was actually taking place in many of the local schools in the area in contradiction of the panelist's generalisations.

Later I tuned in for a spot of Test Match Special covering England v India only to discover there was a rain break in which another panel of experts, cricket experts, shared with us their take on the riots. This panel launched into a lamentation on the lack of team sport in general and cricket in particular as being a cause of the riots. One commentator informed us that if these lads had been in a cricket club they wouldn't have been on the streets rioting. The discussion ranged across the loss of sports fields and cricket clubs in areas like Tottenham, though they didn't offer any facts or figures to back up their assumptions and assertions.

It was left to the excellent Michael Vaughan to explain some of the facts on the ground in terms of initiatives and facilities being offered in some of these communities and it was apparent that his colleagues in the discussion were completely ignorant of what he was talking about. Perhaps if they spent less time quaffing claret and stuffing their faces with TMS cakes and a bit more time getting out into the communities to do some coaching and fundraising they might be better qualified to speak on this subject. No doubt the producer of TMS thought it a wizard wheeze to fill some air time with a topical discussion but all the discussion did was reveal that the commentators needed to stick to analysing Tendulkar's form rather than the state of inner city sports' provision.

I could list plenty of other examples of this sharing of general ignorance but you will have your own experiences from the last couple of weeks. When did political and social comment in the media turn into an extended version of Loose Women?


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Migration watch

In August 1972 the murderous dictator Idi Amin gave the Asian population in Uganda 90 days to pack their bags and get out of the country. Amin had accused the Asians of being bloodsuckers leeching off the Ugandan economy and stirred up the majority black African resentment against them. Some 50,000 Asians were forced to leave and of those about 30,000 who were British passport holders came to Britain. Many arrived with little money, having lost savings and businesses in Uganda, and they had hardly any possessions. 

Britain didn’t exactly welcome the Ugandan Asians with open arms. Cabinet papers disclosed in 2003 reveal that the Conservative government at the time tried to find a remote island where they could be settled. Ministers were worried about race relations and feared that the country would be inundated with immigrants from other African countries. The Ugandan expulsion took place only four years after Enoch Powell’s infamous ‘rivers of blood speech’. Yet, the influx of Ugandan Asians proved to be a positive experience for Britain with many of them establishing and building successful businesses and making a significant contribution to the community. This is a story of how our nation has been enriched by the presence of those who, however begrudgingly, we received in their time of need.

On Thursday the Office of National Statistics publishes a report on migration levels under the last government. Some organisations have already been given access to the figures including Migration Watch. I’d be surprised if you haven’t heard of Migration Watch and their Chairman Andrew Green as they tend to be quoted and interviewed whenever immigration is in the news. Now I don’t know why Migration Watch were given advanced access to the ONS figures but I’ve read how they have interpreted them and not surprisingly the Daily Mail ran the story. Green always claims that his organisation is simply presenting the facts and rejects any accusation of racism or being anti-immigration. However, I can’t remember one single story or statement produced by the organisation that presents immigration in a positive light, though there are a few rather grudging acknowledgements of the need for some population movement in and out of the country.

Green contributed an article on the ONS statistics, again published in the Daily Mail, and in it he rails against what he sees as a conspiracy to silence debate on the subject of immigration: Labour are accused of an immigration conspiracy and of gross incompetence; employers’ organisations of colluding to keep a supply of cheap labour; the middle-classes are guilty of enjoying exotic restaurants and cheap domestic help; the BBC is condemned for having a multi-cultural bias. Green praises the present government’s immigration policy although he warns the Conservatives that their Liberal Democrat Coalition partners ‘can be expected to make difficulties’. There is an insightful response offered on Migration Watch’s  and Green’s statements by Michael White. In his article, White dismisses Green’s claim that this was all a deliberate government conspiracy and challenges the spin that he has placed on the ONS findings.

My fear is that we are now trapped in a vicious spiral when it comes to public debate and political discourse on the matter of immigration. Our politicians seem convinced that taking the toughest of stances is a vote winner, despite the fact that businesses and universities are warning of the potentially damaging consequences of severe restrictions on immigration. I would cite the infamous Question Time debate (Oct 2009) featuring Nick Griffin of the BNP when the three main political party representatives tried to outdo each other in declaring how strong they were on this subject. It was the one part of the programme where Griffin looked at ease as the others scrapped over his turf. I hear virtually no one today in the political arena speaking positively about the benefits of immigration, nor of the contribution being made to the economy and wider society by those who have made this country their home.

So I wait to see what tomorrow’s Office of National Statistics report says about immigration and then I will watch to see how the facts are spun and selectively presented to fit the wider political narratives. But I’ll also be thinking about those in our communities who already face hostility, suspicion, resentment and violence because they are immigrants and I’ll be remembering these words:

‘You must not mistreat or oppress foreigners in any way. Remember, you yourselves were once foreigners in the land of Egypt.’ Exodus 22:21

Bible on the beat

I fell asleep last night with the radio on and woke to hear a news item on an Australian police force which has issued officers with their own Bible. This morning I did a quick web search and discovered the story is true. The New South Wales state police force is being issued with its own Police Bible. Christianity Today Australia has an account of the story and includes the following from the Police Commisssioner Andrew Scipione:

"I believe the Police Bible will impact on generations of Police officers to come ..... Every officer who graduates from the Academy in Goulburn is offered a Bible and I would like to think an officer who receives one of these special Police Bibles will one day sit in my seat. The Police Bibles are sure to outlive the current administration."

The Bibles were the idea of the police chaplain Rev Russell Avery who explains:

"Coming from the Air Force I saw how popular the Defence Force Bible is, and wanted our law-enforcement officers to have a similar option available to them."

The Bible includes a police prayer and articles about ethics, service and integrity as well as pictures of serving officers. Police force chaplains will issue the Bibles to officers and the initial print run is 3000.

I wonder what the most read passage of the Bible will be? What about this passage from John 7:44ff:

Some of them wanted to arrest Jesus, but no one laid hands on him. Then the temple police went back to the chief priests and Pharisees, who asked them, 'Why did you not arrest him?' The police answered, 'Never has anyone spoken like this.'

Other suggestions?

The other good thing about waking in the middle of the night was I got to hear Andy Murray winning his latest match in the US Open.

drop down dead drunk

Yesterday’s accounts of the OECD report Doing Better For Children make disturbing but perhaps not surprising reading for anyone concerned about children and young people’s welfare in the UK. Take for example this quote from the report:

"Underage drinking and teenage pregnancy rates [in the UK] are high. Drunkenness is the highest in the OECD. The UK also reports the fourth highest teenage pregnancy rate after Mexico, Turkey and the United States."

Drunkenness is the highest in the OECD. Two personal experiences from last week might help explain the context for these figures. Last Monday I was in Iceland buying some food and at the checkout noticed a display for 75cl bottles of Vodka: Price £5.50p. A little while later I looked at the front page of the local newspaper to discover that Duke’s, a Chelmsford town centre night club, was offering punters ‘£15 all you can drink’ nights – pay up front and drink the night away.

What these examples highlight are two factors that must have an impact on consumption of alcohol in this country; availability and cost. Lou Manzi the boss of Duke’s justified his pricing and availability policy in the following terms:

“None of us would seriously offer half-priced, discounted or all-in offers if we did not have to. It’s a matter of commercial survival like any other retail business.”

But the drinks industry is not just like any other retail business; it trades in a substance that can bring enjoyment but can also cause great harm, that is why the industry is regulated and there are laws governing the sale and consumption of alcohol. Don’t get me wrong, I am not against alcohol and enjoy a pint or a bottle of wine. I also recognise that there have been times in my life when I have drunk too much and I have seen the damage that alcohol has caused in broken relationships, violence, chronic disease and loss of life. In every parish I have served as a minister I can think of people whose lives were severely damaged if not ruined by drink. I married into a family of doctors and am all too familiar with the impact of alcohol abuse on the resources of the NHS.

Back in the 1970s I had a Saturday job in a Tesco store (in the days before it was seen as part of the evil empire). The drinks section consisted of a small part of one aisle with a few shelves stocked with a small selection of bottles of wine and cans of beer and larger. Today the drinks section in the average superstore takes up both sides of a whole aisle plus various other displays throughout the store. Those same stores have perpetual offers to encourage high volumes of sales, the classic being the 5% discount for 6 or more bottles of wine purchased. A few weeks ago I was shopping in a store and needed to spend over £50 to get a significant discount on petrol. I was a bit under the amount so added another bottle of wine to the shopping only to see the price drop below £50 once the wine discount was added so I added another bottle!

Two other factors to mention. In a bar with a colleague over lunch I observed three businessmen buy a bottle of wine which was then emptied into three large wine glasses. Not only were the glasses large, 250ml each, but the alcoholic content of the wine was high at 14%. I say high but actually 14% is fairly standard these days for a New World red, whereas not long ago 12.5% would have been the average. The same is true of the strength of beer and larger.

Four factors which provide the context for the OECD report: price, availability, volume and content. Yet, the saddest aspect about alcohol consumption in the UK is that so many people, including young people and children, seem to be drinking simply to get drunk and these factors serve that purpose. Why and what response can we make?

Right, I’m off to put the wine I bought on holiday in my cellar!

My post on teenage pregnancy and abortion can be found here.

Nicke Baines has posted a related blog to the OECD report here.

Church Mouse has commented on the OECD report here.