The General Election: tears or cheers ...

Just taken a step back and have been thinking, and praying, for all who lost their seat in parliament today as the results of this stunning 'the people have spoken' moment starts to settle down in my brain.

It is a day which will result in cheers for some, ambivalence for others, and will bring a great deal of sadness to many besides. So, as Clegg, Miliband and Farage bow out of leading their parties and British politics enters a new, and interesting, phase please spare a moment to think of all:

All who have lost their seats

The three leaders who are now stepping down

The families, the researchers, secretarial, and other staff who might find their lives, their jobs and their livelihood, greatly affected by today's results.

Behind every rosette stand many more people than just a candidate.

And we need to pay tribute to all who stand, even the rampant lunatics, because this is one of the joys of democracy - people have the freedom to stand, to put their views and have the people decide.

It's something we need to treasure and take pride in.

Please pray for our government that it might act with humility and have justice and mercy evident in its dealings.


Pax

The people have spoken

Hang On a Minute Lads, I've Got a God Idea

And it is with these (slightly modified) words from the Italian job ringing in my ears I realise that many, if not all, of the 'great ideas' I have come across over the past few weeks are actually anything but great. I've seen it in politics as Labour (you must remember them, the Party formerly known and spend, spend, spend) come up with a plan to save the world by cutting heating allowances for the top 5% of earners, and now vowing to continue with the family allowance restrictions. Whoo hoo - living out the legacy of the Bliar years and they swing from 'spend your way out' to 'save pennies - win the world!'.

The other two parties are not of course any better and if you want to see some good ideas just look at the deconstruction of state education that is the Academy system, and add to it the changes (actual, planned and imaginary)  to the GCSEs (or should I say 'iLevels' - thought it was something from Gove, not Jobs) and the popularist tosh from Cameron and Clegg and their ConDem Coalition.

Everywhere I look I see kneejerk responses to real situations and hear half-baked ideas from people who, with the education and opportunities they'd been gifted, really ought to know better.

I think one of the groups that used to be funded and run by the NHS who found themselves disbanded as the centre they were in was closed due to funding loss; they now meet in a church building.

I watch people who cannot feed their children and for whom, because often of circumstances not of their own making, have insufficient support and even less money visiting the local Foodbank (which is of course run by local Christians).

I visit people who are suffering from mental health issues and talk to mental health practitioners who are condemned to the same pain and frustrations as each other. One finds themselves looking at ways to pass on or reject those before them to keep what is an already overloaded caseload further increased; the other lives in their flat and smokes, drinks and slowly vanishes from this world because of the hopelessness of their situation. And once again, if it were not for those who open their church doors and welcome and visit and contact and care and pray - where would we be?

I've heard all the 'Big Society' talk - the passing back to the Church what was once their province as if it were a gift (you can see the same in congregations -  a microcosm of the world where those who 'could do better' are now being handed the running of congregations and told to be happy because it's 'collaborative') for which the Church should be grateful.

I am totally fed up with all the 'good' ideas both sides of my church walls - I've really had enough of the politicians who speak of growth, care, equity and yet take money (again) for various dodgy deals and turn a blind eye to those who have whilst proclaiming justice!

I am totally fed up with those who have no vision in the Church. Those petty, pathetic number crunchers who don't have, or foster, vision; what they want is goals, objectives and timescales they can hold people too not God inspired vision and courage. Where so many are visionary and bold (and thank God there are more of these than the spreadsheet Christians) the, often influential few, are looking to managed decline and light a candle before the shrine of sustainability, and this cannot be!

I've got a 'God' idea and it goes like this:

Be disciples and go into the world (the workplace, homes, the pubs and the clubs) and live out that reality and BE the difference. Let's stop making Church something we do for an hour or so every week and let's share the love.

Let us come alongside the broken, needy and helpless - clothing, feeding and housing the needy and  bless other who are doing it. For it doesn't matter who they are or why they are doing it - if they are doing it, then we should bless them and support them and encourage them and stand with them. As Paul says in Philippians 1.15-18:

'It is true that some preach Christ out of envy and rivalry, but others out of goodwill. The latter do so out of love, knowing that I am put here for the defence of the gospel. The former preach Christ out of selfish ambition, not sincerely, supposing that they can stir up trouble for me while I am in chains. But what does it matter? The important thing is that in every way, whether from false motives or true, Christ is preached. And because of this I rejoice.'

Today I'm thanking God for many works in our town and area, some (just a few) being:

Starfish - Soul Café - FoodBank - Signs for Worship - Encounter - Friday Friends

Leyfield's Community link - Tamworth Covenanting Churches - Community of St Chad

Who do you have to be thankful for today?

Who needs your prayer, money, presence to bless others today?

Stuff the 'Good' ideas in the bin

Let's return to 'God' ideas and be the blessing we have always been - just more so!

British Banking - We've got a scapegoat!

And the award for scapegoat for all the banking world's ills goes to:

(Not Sir) Fred Goodwin!

Yes indeed the public has spoken and the 'We are their leaders, we must follow them'government has responded by removing the knighthood from the former CEO of RBS (wow - TLAs abound) because this man, single-handedly created the whole of the worldwide recession. We can sleep easy knowing that the culprit has been named and shamed and that everyone can rest assured that it's big bonuses in the boardrooms and AAA ratings all round!

So what of the honours and privileges of the members of the Labour party who were at the helm during the gestation period of this worldwide recession? What of those in the other banks, trading in the markets and the finance world as a whole; are their hands clean? Of course the answer is a resounding 'No' but as one telephone caller on a radio phone-in aptly put it, "We can't get them all, but at least we've got some revenge over the bonuses at RBS!" Whoa, stop the bus - sirless Fred is no longer a part and, realising that things in the market can go up as well as down, look at the whole of his working life and there are indeed things that can be considered to have been 'services to banking'.

But sadly those Daily Fascist readers have taken up the cry and followed the tumbrel, pitchforks gleaming, like the good little folk that they are. I wonder if we might be able to pin the 'illegal, benefit-claiming, immigrants' on Fred too, would be a real bargain bucket then. Mind you, I have to ask how many of those baying for Fred's blood are doing so in the comfort of their interest, dividends and other benefits from others who haven't been named and shamed? Still the good thing about being righteously indignant is the ability to not have 'hypocrite' in the vocabulary.

And so our government make a popularist gesture that sends the message that beneath it all something is very wrong in the way that it thinks and operates. If there were illegalities then there would be a case for the unknighting but I haven't seen the man in the dock and so assume that what we have is good old error - which is human. Seems that some just aren't divine.

As for me - doesn't really bother me whether the man has three letters in front and a few behind his name - but it bothers me when we legitimise mob rule and seek to pacify the masses by a ritual bloodletting of one man - I just hope Cameron or Clegg laid their hands on the man and passed on the sins of the nations before the scapegoat 'scaped!

Pax

ps. I found this quote from Unite's David Fleming which says it all:

"It is a token gesture to strip Fred Goodwin of his knighthood, but one which will be well received by the thousands of workers who lost their jobs during his rule.

Nonetheless this will do nothing to bring job security to the staff across the banking sector who continue to work under a culture of excess and greed at the top. Action from the government is needed in banking reform, not simply empty rhetoric on knighthoods or shareholder activism."

I'd like to live in a world were we see justice, mercy and humility not sheer bloody revenge :(

Amnesia - a political necessity

Listening to the other Milliband yesterday I found myself wondering just how fast John Smith, Kier Hardie and William Beveridge were spinning in their graves. I also had a fleeting question over whether Ed was merely acting as warm-up man for David, an apparently better choice for leader than him (wonder if the unions are thinking that too. Always a problem when the block vote brings in the man you later realise you didn't want.)

I was amazed to discover that Labour are the panacea to all our financial ills, especially as it was the same Labour government that Mr Milliband was part of, whose financial mismanagement brought us to the place where many BaE employees lost their jobs as he was preparing to speak.

I was stunned to hear that we were going to reward the 'right people'. I really enjoyed the bit about, "An economy and a society too often rewarding not the right people with the right values, but the wrong people with the wrong values." and wondered where all those, excessively expensive PFI projects and the many Quangos and the like that came into being under Labour fitted in this assessment.

Mind you, those who wish to emulate Peter Rachman (for those of you who aren't familiar with the name, he was the king of the slum landlord with menaces business in the fifties and early sixties) will be taking heart as the threat of social housing only being given to 'approved' people. Always good when we can marginalise and people group, helps when we want to dehumanise them and later take them off to places from whence they never return (Holocaust Memorial Day 27th January).

I did agree that we are in the midst of a crisis that results from the promises made over the past thirty years and see the problems as a combination of greed, self coupled with the decline of the religious moral codes that previously shaped our nation.

Still, if we ignore everything about Labour's last go at governing and if Billy and Johnny (AKA David and Nick) can do enough wrong things, Labour might just get in next time around.

Now that's as frightening a thought as either of the present incumbents in government winning, isn't it?

Happy Wednesday.