a blog by howard jameson @ gatheringgrace.org

The banks are making money again...

Some more than others, may be...

...but why am I reminded of those kids at school who would duff you over and then nick your dinner money?

This is ground control to Major Tom...

Very sweet this morning doing a really small Collective Worship with a Key Stage 1 Class and they were telling me in quite some detail about 40 years ago this morning Apollo 11 lifting off for the moon.

It felt strange to be telling them that I was their age exactly when I watched it live (just under two weeks short of my sixth birthday). One little chap knew a huge amount of detail (including the name of the third astronaut who remained in the Command Module) and was really excited by it all.

Bless...

Can we renew ourselves?

An interesting question here for Parliament. Several MPs spoke yesterday on the need for renewal, and for the new Speaker to bring this about.

I have to say I am not overly optimistic. I thought the allegations of Tory sleaze from a decade ago had disappeared, but we now realise they had simply been transferred to an equally unpleasant system of claiming "expenses".

I hope and pray (genuinely) I am wrong on this.

mea culpa (and several million others)

I didn't get to vote last Thursday. I had a rush of a day and remembered as I drove back from an evening meeting that I might still have a chance - but you know how it is, you get home and there's something to do or remember. I wish I, along with several million others, had registered their vote. I'd have rather voted Monster Raving Loony than see the smug BNP leader's face hailing some great victory.

I wish some of these people would go back where they belong - the sewer.

So if you are depressed or offended by their two Euro-seats (but boatloads more in terms of "credibility") then I share some of the blame...

Industrial heritage

Passing the once mighty South Wales industrial heartlands - coal and steel.

Not sure I would be cut out for a job here, but I can't imagine an economy can be healthy without them.

Expenses and houses

Oh boy, MPs up in arms, press having a field day, voters feeling ripped off. Something in all this sounds like the end of the last Conservative government as well - its almost as if after a period of power people become so focussed on them that they lose accountability. I hope I'm wrong.

My suggestion is that MPs adopt the system being piloted by the Church of England (or at least the way its being done). I too have to have a home in an area because I work there (happy for an MP to have a state provided home in or near a constituency plus residence near parliament for those who need to). I do not own the house, but live there for work - whether I have a home I own and rent out, or whether I save up and buy one later or whatever, is the commercial risk on the property market that everybody else has to take. If constituency boundaries change then the state buys a new house if necessary, and there are a reasonably fixed number of MPs, so once up and running the organisation of this must be simpler and more transparent than what we have at the moment. The flaw, of course, is that it limits the potential for making money by "obeying the rules", as they keep saying.

I would be more than happy for the state to own a housing stock in and around London with (like Clergy) a more or less standard definition of what is provided, but then for those who might, because of additional responsibility, have to entertain or have security have larger premises provided. The state would fund repairs and upkeep and would benefit from opportunities of changes in the housing market to buy or sell as needed. Carpets etc. for incoming residents would be from a limited pre-determined range, to avoid the unseemly lavishness with others' money.

Milage, entertaining and broadband would be acceptable claims, but little else. I once met a widow of a Clergyman who, when he was first ordained, had to take on a full time job because his Parish paid no expenses and they couldn't make ends meet - will the Junior Minister for whatever please consider him (or her) self bloody fortunate.

Priorities and prolonging stereotypes

I was reading a BBC News article about flooding in Northern Australia and I was feeling all compassionate, I really was, until I hit these words about half way down

Manager of the Albion Hotel in Normanton, Donna Smith, said a four-metre (12-feet) crocodile had been seen stalking residents and dogs in the flooded main street.

She also warned the town was expected to run out of beer in two days.

Some people have strange priorities!

Analysis of the recession so far...

So I believe we are now officially and statistically in recession. Robert Peston's blog seems to always find something else downbeat to publish, so I am trying not to think about it. Obviously I am now in a position of relative protection from the effects of the downturn - I don't think a Clergyperson has ever been made redundant, and my annual bonus should remain the same as last year's, although there would be signs that there is scary news around the corner when the Clergy Pension Fund is revalued and more money is needed to bolster the outlay. Obviously the fact that we are paid a pittance helps, but that's another story.

I have been keeping my eyes and ears open around the place as I meet and chat. According to the data from the 2001 Census this area has a much higher than national average self-employed/working from home types and of this category that I know most are in some form of service and support work which, I guess, might the first expenditure that a shrinking company might consider not outsourcing.

However I am suspicious about the degree of bravado when people are talking in public, although I hope I am wrong. Lots seem to have full order books, or a big project that will carry them through the next quarter or two, although nothing like that would help if many more of my local contacts have significant customers going bust before paying. One or two quiet conversations paint a different picture. Employers deeply anxious about their businesses, but primarily expressed in terms of the responsibility they feel for their staff.

I got the sense on our post-Christmas shopping expedition that there was almost a frenzy - people HAD to buy something in the sales as a sign of them tightening their belts without going without, as if that option was anathema. I listened to the radio the other morning and talks of a second "bail out" for the banks and renewed efforts to bolster the car-making industry. It seems that those who have been most profligate are getting support. Perhaps the idea of reaping what you sow doesn't apply to them, only to the rest of us who invested so much of our identities and security into their care.

Dawn of a new age?

Er...no.

He's not the Messiah, he's just a very naughty boy.

Whilst wishing him well, ultimately Obama is heading for a fall because (as we have seen with Blair and others many times over) a human leader cannot initiate and sustain the degree of change that the much talked about sense of hope requires.

Nicola (comment below) is right not to overlook the significance and importance of this moment on many levels, my concern is that the weight of expectation can create an unrealistic list of positive outcomes. This is all the more reason to pray for him, rather than to be cynical.

It was wonderful to hear reference to, for example, the need to seriously tackle poverty, and not with the naive neo-con idea that somehow wealth would trickle down - very difficult if those at the top are unwilling to share it.

Stuck for a Christmas gift?

Go on, treat somebody!