Journal: Philomena - not an easy watch!

I watched the film, Philomena, today. It's one of those films that relate to the 'Magdelen Laundries' and the actions of various members of the Catholic Church relating to the care of young 'fallen' and/or 'unrukry and wayward' young women.

The film featured harsh and bitter treatment of the young women at times but that want the worst bit, for it also pointed to the results of these young women's sin, the children, being effectively sold off to adoptive couples.

In 1952, Philomena Lee (played by Judi Dench) gave birth to a son in a 'mother and baby home'. Three years later that same child was passed on for adoption (with another child) and money changed hands. The institution was legal led allowed to do this because the mothers were made to sign a document passing all rights regarding the child to the order of nuns and the Catholic church. Seems to me that, having read other books on the subject, this was a nice little earner - but that's not the bit that causes me distress (even though it is distressing).

What gets my goat is the institutional corruption and deceit that saw all paperwork, save the legal transfer of rights, destroyed by the nuns. Add to this the fact that the organisation denied access to information that would have enabled morhter and son to be reunited when they came looking and you have sprinkles on the cake already bedecked with the cherries of sexual immorality and abuse. Is it any wonder that people distrust the Church (all and every brand of it) when our recent past is held up to scrutiny.

Add to this the remarkable film 'Spotlight' and the exposé of the sexual abuse covered up and buried, and the institutional suppression of the truth and the oppression aimed at those who sought to find it: and you have a picture of something extremely wrong in terms of Church and the discharge of the Gospel.

This is not a Roman Catholic issue alone, as happenings in the CofE and other denominations and groupings clearly demonstrate. Wherever there is power on offer, there are people who will abuse that power for their own gain and pleasure. What is tragic (and that's a polite word) is the fact that the Church (universal) has looked the other way and so permitted wrong to have happened and then covered it up - lying, using its institutional power and the pressure its members can impose on friends and family should they be rocking the boat - and so compounded their sin.

The Church is made up of flawed, fallible and potentially awful people. But evil does triumph and Jesus, the Christ, falls from the cross onto the floor impotent as the Church, stumbling and falling seeks to cover things up. The triumph is that there are good people doing good things and standing against evil inside and outside of Church.

The good (should that be 'amazing') thing is that there are people like Philomena Lee who maintain their faith in God, seeing past the flawed and fallible representatives of the church before them, to Worship God. A most uncomfortable and angst-filled, Anger-making film indeed.

Worth a watch,

Ho, ho, ho

Holy cow!

Been one of those Saturdays with paperwork rather than people have taken up all my time, but I've cleared away so much it has to be good - even if it's only because I won't have to do it again!

Was looking to having a quieter run into Christmas this year but once again I have almost as more stuff than time to do it in :-(. And that is destined to leave me knackered,

But hey ho, 2017 is getting filled up and 2018 is also starting to show signs of healthy engagement ahead. So what can I do but thank God for the day God, comment my sleep to Him and look forward to a great Sunday in prospect.

I get a telephone call from a friend ...

It's always nice to receive a call from a friend and so when I got one this morning from someone asking for 'Mr Bergh' I have to say that I was just a little bemused but this soon turned to concern when having asked who it was calling I received the reply, 'It's a friend!'

So I passed him over to 'Mr Bergh' who was then told that they'd rung to help him with the £3,000 he was owed over his car loan PPI. So I asked what his name was (apparently it was 'Richard' which struck me as odd as I didn't think that was a common name in Mumbai call centres!) and having discovered his name asked him how we'd met as I could quite place him as one of the people I counted as a friend.

Richard sidestepped this by telling me he was ringing to help me get back the £3,000 I was owed because of my car loan and so I asked him which car the loan was for and with which company. Oddly he didn't appear to be able to tell me about the car or the company concerned and went back to the 'recent changes in law means you are owed £3,000' tack. So I told him I'd be ecstatic to have that money returned to me and asked him which company had so naughtily taken this money - the response to this was that he needed me to tell him and so I agreed and said I would indeed tell him the name of the company if he could tell me the dates of the presumed loan (which he widened into 'some time in the past') or the make and model of the vehicle to which the loan related (which he couldn't). I asked him if he'd post the money to me as I didn't have a bank account at the moment but was expecting to be released from the secure unit I was currently held in shortly as the parole board was to meet in early September and I was certain that this time I'd be successful.

And then Richard hang up!

So if you're out there Richard, call me back, I need the money and you can never have too many friends (can you?).

Of course the other issue is that why, when we have taken the steps to make sure the cold call ambulance chasers and PPI refunders don't call us, do we still get these blinking nuisance calls? If you recognise the tale of woe above and wish to try and stop them then contact the Telephone Preference Service  - we did and to be honest it's not been that much help in stopping the autodialler and cold call calls.

Still - you can try.

ps. If you make a complaint they want you to know the name of the company, which is harder to come by than a cluster of brain cells at a UKIP conference, so little joy there methinks :-)

TV Licensing - Better than TV

I contacted the TV Licensing people today and during the exchange was asked for a contact number. As I was doing this for someone I had to try and work out a way forward and so I gave them my number which, only having ten digits, wouldn't go onto their system.

I was asked if the number was correct and after explaining that it was my own number was asked whether I'd got it right! I explained that the number was correct because I'd been taught it along with my name and address in case I ever got lost! I then suggested that perhaps she might like to add a zero at the end and this would mean she had the required number of digits and the telephone system would ignore the redundant digit - all would therefore be well.

"But it's not your number," said the helpful (but perhaps a little dim) person on the other end of the line and I can't put the number in if it's not yours! So I explained again and got no further forward and so, refusing the offer of adding my mobile instead, used the church number!

Firstly I wondered at what a completely naff bit of programming we, the general public, have paid for here in that it can't function without eleven digits? Another bit of rubbish with an equally awful VB front end (and perhaps a dispenser for peanuts when the operator gets it right - or am I thinking of something else here?). I suppose it might be a bit of 'error-trapping' to avoid input errors on the part of the call centre person (used it myself where names and the like could only be alpha, not numeric, which works well until Elizabeth 2 tried to buy insurance!!!).

Secondly I can't believe how rigid and unimaginative / responsive some people are. I had hoped that the press the blue button, then the yellow, now the red - job done type operations were on the decline but it seems that we might be a lot nearer 'Idiocracy' than I suspected.

I'd like to say that it made me smile - but to be honest, it didn't.

Happy Daze!