Category: Current Affairs

‘The best laid schemes of mice and men, gang aft agley’.

The title of the post is from one of Robert Burn’s best known poems, ‘To a Mouse’. In the aftermath of the Scottish Election debacle, Radio Scotland, Radio Clyde and other local stations had all kinds of informed pundits, public commentators, academics as political apologists, apologies for politicians but few apologies from politicians, all giving there take on what went wrong. With a court case threatened about one seat where a majority of 48 is a figure only 1/20th of the number of spoilt votes, the scale of the scandal is put into some perspective. And yes, whatever went so badly wrong – was someone’s responsibility, and needs sorted. The number of spoilt votes now exceeds the combined turnout for three constituencies!

But my day was made by one of the presiding officers, responding to email and phone-in suggestions that if people filled the voting forms in wrong it was because they were stupid. Not trying to hide her serious no’ pleasedness, she put aside the protocols of public discourse and suggested such people got right up her nose, made her blood boil and should be neither seen nor heard, and she’d like to have a (private and probably unrepeatable) word with them. After which she resumed her public persona and said. ‘People aren’t stupid. It was a new system. They simply made a mistake. And that can happen to anyone.’

Later, when the debate between stupid or mistake was taken out onto the streets, we got the definitive answer from someone whose career path, probably to our considerable loss, didn’t take him into politics. Asked whether he felt stupid, or had just made a mistake, one of the public declared with considered solemnity and self deference;

‘Naw. Ah juist made a mistake. (Momentary pause…..) It wis a stupid mistake, but!’

I love the wisdom, and forbearance of the Scottish public – and the creative use of grammar by putting a conjunction at the end of a sentence for emphasis. Guid rhetorical strategy, is it no’ juist? And I admire the ability of Scottish folk to spot patronising questions coming at them like a Henman passing shot, and returning them with the ego-deflating sharpness of an Andy Murray cross-court volley. Unfortunately as the answer above was delivered, the limitations of radio became obvious – it was unable to capture the millimetre or two movement of one eyelid. Guid on ye, pal!

But a country whose folk are hungry for change, with a history of political engagement and enlightened inventiveness, conscious of the opportunities that our own Parliament makes possible, – deserves better than the standards of political discourse and leadership so far shown. And for the next five years of Scottish Government to be reduced to horse-trading about who and which party’s interests can be preserved, is not only embarrassing, it is to reduce the expressed political will of the Scottish people to personal and party political ambition.

I think the message of the Scottish voters is neither fudged nor surprising. The message is – on track records so far, no one party is to be trusted with our future – maybe a hung Parliament with all its frustrations, is still an effective corrective to party interest, personal ambition, and narrow non negotiable agendas.

Going back to the man in the street quoted earlier, one of Burns’ most potent political poems, celebrates him and his answer. And the third verse of ‘A man’s a man for a’ that’ should give the Holyrood power mongers serious food for thought – and who knows even repentance!

Ye see yon birkie, ca’d a lord,
Wha struts, an’ stares, an’ a’ that;
Tho’ hundreds worship at his word,
He’s but a coof for a’ that:
For a’ that, an’ a’ that,
His ribband, star, an’ a’ that:
The man o’ independent mind
He looks an’ laughs at a’ that.

7 May 2007
Politics is for People
Years ago Shirley Williams (remember her?) wrote Politics is for People, a carefully reasoned, socially compassionate and morally intelligient plea for political processes and institutions that served rather than exploited, that gave due weight to social justice, that aimed at increasing and sharing more equally, the opportunities that arise from a country’s wealth and work. Some would say she was a failed politician – failed to get elected on two occasions, went into academia in Harvard, and is now Baroness Williams of Crosby, retiring from the House of Lords as leader of the Lib Dems in 2004. But that book was visionary in a reasoned and morally cogent way.

Politics is for people. Indeed. It seems a long way away – and I don’t just mean a long time ago – over twenty five years. It seems a long way away since politicians could write such a book and find that the public bought and read it as if its contents were genuinely meant. Contemporary political realities are more often junk food standard than organically sound.

The degree of self interest, party self-preservation, power at any price maneouverings, patronising spin, wheeling and dealing with large corporations and global companies, – oh and the odd military adventure based on balsam wood moral foundations to spread the gospel of democarcy western style in places where democracy has no cultural or religious roots. Politics is for people would now sound like spin, another polystyrene promise, used once and thrown away as disposable.

So what keeps us Christians from becoming cynical non participants in the political processes intended to make governments accountable? Why do we as people, bother about politics which seem to be less about people like us, and more about the politician, the party, the bottom line, whatever terminology best describes the dominant public perception of self-interested, not to be trusted politicians?

Why will I vote in our elections on May 3?
1. Because I believe in our capacity to do things right, to make fair decisions, to at least want a fairer society, even if it doesn’t always work out that way no matter how hard we argue and try.
2. Because I don’t believe every politician is in it for themselves, as if good people who want to make a difference were somehow absent from the hustings, and allergic to public life.
3. Because though a lot of political life is manipulative, unprincipled, power-mongering and at times exploitative – there are people in there who care, who want the voice of ordinary folk to be heard and their life desires given a chance. I’m with them – if I can spot them!
4. Because I don’t think I can claim to be a follower of Jesus, and ignore the possibility that my ballot paper, along with those of others, can make a difference to who become the decision makers.
5. Because I will pray for guidance, and I’ll use the commonsense and ethical passion God has given in casting my vote.
6. Because what I’m looking for is the candidate nearest to the values that underpin human flourishing and social compassion – and if they are good politicians – good as effective operator and good as principled person, then they have my vote, my support, my prayers.
And the question of which party they belong to will be largely secondary. The party manifesto is less important to me than the personal track record of getting stuck in on behalf of the people – listening to our voice, speaking our case, caring about local outcomes, and displaying unashamed bias towards those pushed to the edges.

And yes all the above is idealistic, even generalised, and lacking political sophistication – which is ok with me, cos I’m dead unsophisticated so I am.
3 May 2007
Composing, conducting and performing a human life…

The Russian cellist, composer and conductor Mstislav Rostropovich has died age 80. One of the finest cellists of the 20th Century, his playing so accomplished and passionate that major composers were prepared to compose pieces designed for his playing. In his own view, of all that he wrote and composed, the most important was the letter he sent to Pravda in support of Alexander Solhzehnitsyn in 1970. He campaigned on behalf of Andrei Sacharov, and publicly criticised the authorities of the old Soviet regime. He was persecuted and banished for that – but this noble, humane, composer, cellist and conductor embodied the spirit of freedom and resistance to totalitarianism and the abuse of state sponsored power. In 1991 he even joined Boris Yeltsin in facing down the Communist pusch and defending the pro-democracy movement as the old regime crumbled.

For me there is an almost metaphysical connection between the gifts of composition, conducting and performing music, and the gifts of composing, conducting and performing a beautiful and humanising life. As one young Russian said, ‘may his soul rest in peace and glory.’

29 April 2007
Christ have Mercy

Edvard Munch, at the time he completed his masterpiece ‘The Scream’, said he had tried to express the scream that echoes throughout creation. And the picture with its lines distorted around a distorted human face, conveys a disturbing and disorientating sense of unspeakable anguish. And the hands that frame the face are covering the ears, perhaps trying to shut out the noise of the scream, but unable to silence the inward scream that is the response to unimaginable pain. Yesterday, in the aftermath of the massacre of young students at Virginia Tech, someone said 2007 can already be called the year of the scream.

A blog isn’t the place for plausible explanations (none come to mind), nor the place to pinpoint blame (the killer, the gun culture, the video-game aneasthetising of violence); I want to scream. I want to protest at the waste, the tragedy, the cruelty of what has happened to so many young lives, and the devastation unleashed out of the blue on so many families and communities. I want to scream at whatever it is that drives one human being to kill so many with automatic efficiency and bypass any of the usual human restraints of conscience, compassion, satiated appetite for violence. And inside, like the rest of us, I’m sick. A University is a place of learning, of developing potential, of human activity focused on self-development towards usefulness as a human being, a place where people come to be changed by learning and knowing.

Lord have mercy

Christ have mercy

Lord have mercy

18 April 2007
Exclusive banks in an allegedly inclusive society

This from my AOL homescreen

A bank is to launch a "premier" branch where only the wealthiest customers will be allowed face-to-face services.

HSBC, which advertises itself as the "world’s local bank", is operating the service at Canford Cliffs in Dorset, where properties sell for up to £8 million.

From June, to be eligible to use the advisers at the branch, customers must have £50,000 savings, or a £200,000 mortgage, or a £100,000 mortgage and £75,000 salary, or pay a £19.95 a month "premier" account fee.

So how do we "serve God wittily in the tangle of our minds", and respond to this nonsense. Of the qualifying criteria to be treated as a human being by HSBC, I could, at a push, manage the £19.95 premier account fee. That’s £239.40 per annum in order to qualify for an encounter with a human face, and exchange conversation about ‘filthy lucre’ with a human voice. This is the bank that advertises itself as the ‘world’s local bank’!!

Now supposing I needed a loan, was worried about my overdraft, was on a low income and needed advice on how to make the best use of my local ‘world’s local bank’? Or supposing I was a pensioner on a fixed income – for me, not as daft or far off an idea as it used to be, huh? How did this bank ever dream up such an offensive idea as a ‘premier’ branch that offers only to the wealthy what any bank used to offer as part of the privilege of handling your money?

As a balancing act of social justice, would HSBC be prepared in underprivileged areas to make available debt and budgetting specialists to help people manage more effectively the little they have? In the spirit of the rules outlined above for the wealthy:

To be eligible to use the advisers at these branches customers must have less than £1000 savings, be unable to afford the deposit for a mortgage, or require Benefits help with the rent, qualify for tax credits, or be on a fixed or low income.

Aye right, Jim.

Dream on, son!

Not a snowball’s chance!

Why the scepticism though? After all, as the Wise Sage says, ‘He who gives to the poor will not want, but he who hides his eyes will get many a curse…He who closes his ear to the cry of the poor will himself cry out and not be heard.’ (Proverbs 28.27; 21.13). Does the Wise Sage mean us to text these texts to HSBC – and appeal to their long term self-interest???

13 April 2007
Amazing Grace

Regret, remorse, repentance – hard to find the right word to describe the emotional and mental legacy of John Newton’s years of slave trading. It’s too easy to take pot shots at him and mock the man who wrote Amazing Grace because he didn’t immediately see the reality of the evil under his nose and give up that involvement. But in this film Albert Finney captures with brilliant perceptivenes, the rough sentimentality, the emotional complexity, the sense even after decades that his part in the horrors of trans-Atlantic slavery compounded his unworthiness and self-loathing- so for me Newton and his tears of too late guilt was a crucial questioning presence in the film. Newton’s portrayal adds a dimension of pathos to the reality of structural sin, is a counterpoint to the power of institutionalised inhumanity whose default mechanism is greed, and whose interest is to frustrate every attempt at rehumanising the way our world is, especially if the argument implies economic loss. The interests of the Crown in the revenue from the colonies meant that the link was easily made between the movement for abolition, and disloyalty, even sedition, aggravated by the war with France. Some of this complexity was worked into the film and prevents it from being a pious and politically naive hagiography.

So, the film Amazing Grace, (complete with pipe and wind band with drums at the end! – a blatant anachronism I greatly enjoyed without embarrassment!!) – was well acted, with a script that almost entirely, but not quite, avoids the cringeable, and includes just enough of the spiritual burden of Wilberforce the serious evangelical, to make explicit the connection between political activism and inner piety. The relational network between Wilberforce and Newton, and Pitt, and Foxe, and Clarkson and Stephen, was a convincing mixture of political expediency, moral concern and radical risk.

The almost entire white cast made me uncomfortable – yet I wonder how else to convey the sheer weight of the political argument that had to be won, and to portray the pervasive ignorance of the brutal realities linked indissolubly to national self-interest. The truth is, the presence of African people in the circles in which Wilberforce moved would be rare – and the moment in the film when he has the chance to win the freedom of a slave in a game of cards was a finely observed piece of moral theatre – wasted for me by him returning to the gambling den to sing Amazing Grace! I could understand the bewildered outrage of those whose tavern singing was silenced by a Russell Watson soundalike!

The love interest seemed to convey the cliche that behind every great man there is a stunning redhead! The moment in the film when she convinces Wilberforce to take up the fight again, and to marry her, seems to make that a historical hinge point – well, since it is a film for general release that will do a lot of good by bringing Wilberforce back to our attention, as Barry Norman might ask, ‘And why not?’

I enjoyed this film. There is enough historical accuracy and detail to root it in the realities it tries to engage. At times it was very moving, and the scale of the issue, morally, spiritually and politically, is communicated with considerable and convincing care. Evangelicals were portrayed with just that amount of seriousness and involvement that seems justified by the facts – by the way the cameo portrayal of Hannah More was sharply observed – a compassionate snob with a sense of humour and an ethical edge to her piety.

Go see before it moves away from the big screen.

30 March 2007
When funny money isn’t funny

A City banker at Barclays netted £22 million last year

A City banker at Barclays netted £22 million in salary, shares and bonuses last year and owns stock in the group worth nearly £65 million, it has been revealed.

…

Bob Diamond, head of investment banking at Barclays, became one of Europe’s highest-paid bankers after receiving the multi-million pound pay package, which dwarfed even chief executive John Varley’s salary and bonus scoop.

…

Barclays, which is currently in merger talks with ABN Amro, said in its 2006 annual report that Mr Diamond was paid a basic salary of £250,000, with a £10.4 million cash bonus on top, plus £4.5 million in deferred shares, topped up with £7.7 million in cashed-in shares.

It also emerged that Mr Diamond owns shares in the group worth £64.9 million accumulated over his 11-year tenure at Barclays and is in line for a further bonus of up to £15 million next year, not including the 2.3 million shares he is set to gain in the group as part of an ongoing performance-related deal.

The above piece of nonsense (I mean in the sense of not making sense on any scale, register, or list of values I can find) is taken from here. The explanation given by Barclay’s is that Mr Diamond (the name’s appropriate anyway, is it no’ just? Well no actually, the whole story is not just!) – well anyway, Mr Diamond makes them a lot of money. Oh, that’s all right then. Now I could be accused of the politics of envy, and right enough, I didn’t get £22 million last year. But I can see no valid moral or socially responsible case that can be made to justify such institutionalised inequity. This one man’s salary would build a well equipped if modest sized school. Or is Mr Diamond’s contribution to our society really worth the equivalent of a year’s salary for 1000 trained nurses? And what would even half that salary achieve applied to any number of essential-for-life projects in developing countries?

I’m away to read Amos again – not that I don’t know what he says – I just want to read it out loud and hear him say it, ‘Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an everflowing stream.’

Then I’m going to read Matthew’s version of the Sermon on the Mount and consider the lilies……..and the birds….and then Luke’s much more in your face version, ‘But woe to you who are rich for you have already received your comfort.’

27 March 2007
Moderatorial hugs, touring buskers and carefully written prayers

Earlier this week I was in Edinburgh and several wee happenings came together to make it an interesting day.

I was in Edinburgh doing research amongst some of the personal papers of George Macleod, founder of the Iona Community, Kirk minister, Peer of the Realm, Peace activist and apologist, and, undoubtedly, a man of prayer. I was spending the time researching his prayers – an odd word for the process of literary and theological criticism, which involves reading, comparing, analysing, organising, of all things, written prayers. As if one man’s devotions should ever be the object of another person’s intellectual curiosity!

Many of those prayers were typed on A6 paper of the kind inserted in small leather bound loose-leaf folders in the days before they became ‘personal organisers’. Typed – complete with deletions, insertions, revisions. In several of them, like a palimpsest, you could trace the first draft, the corrections, the re-wording to capture the particular nuance of spiritual longing which guided the prayer towards completion. Macleod was passionate about the worthiness and worth of what was offered in worship, and therefore careful in the spiritual discipline of finding fit words, to speak the Word, of the Word, fittingly.

But later I called up another folder, this time his Peace sermons – and there was his address from the mid-80’s,to the Church of Scotland General Assembly, about Trident. The shaky but still bold scrawl of handwritten words, aides memoire scored into the paper, reminders for a nonogenarian clergyman outraged by the blasphemy of nuclear weapons and not wanting to be short of ideas. I thought about the current Moderator, the Right Reverend Alan MacDonald, a good friend and supportive colleague from my Aberdeen days, and a long time outspoken critic of nuclear deterrence as an acceptable policy, and one involved in recent protests at the renewal of Trident. And this on the day of the vote at Westminster. Well on the way home, walking down the Waverley ramp, who’s coming towards me but Alan – and I was given that most efficacious of informal sacraments, the Moderatorial hug.(Photo shows footwashing after a long march of protest against Trident, another sacramental act of political and spiritual critique).

Earlier I’d been in the sandwich shop near Greyfriars Bobby and had ordered a grilled Foccacio with chorizo, brie and black olives – and sat beside Jock (on an ex-church pew – complete with worn varnish and backside-numbing hardness), a pretty good busker, complete with guitar, black coffee, a Snickers and a good line in conversation. He’s off to a gig in – well, where else – Mexico – at the end of April. Somebody heard him sing, thought he’d be a good support act, and so off he’d go. Long way to go for a gig I suggested – ‘Aye but I love eatin’ Mexican – it’s the chillies’, he said. Fair enough. And I hope that, and much else, works out for him.

Then accosted by a young lad thrusting a flyer at me asking if I was interested in the concert. Not your usual big name rock stuff – no, Russell Watson and Kathryn Jenkins. Probably costs a fortune, so I declined pleasantly and continued the hike along Princes St to Waterstones – I have shop tokens remember? I’ve still got them!

So, a hug from the Moderator who mixes politics with religion as a way of being faithful to Jesus; touching and handling the prayers of Lord Macleod legible and still prayable with all their corrections; a blether with Jock about his trip to Mexico to do a gig; a concert I didn’t know about and might just decide to go to, a wee bookshop crawl albeit unsuccessful. Not a bad day – aye, and ‘we are being renewed day by day’, by the grace of Christ, encountered at times, in the people who walk into our lives and walk out again…, a’ the time!…..if we live witttily enough to notice.

17 March 2007
Rehumanising: a hand, perhaps, to hold

A boy holding an orange in his hands

Has crossed the border in uncertainty.

He sands there, stares with marble eyes at scenes

Too desolate for him to comprehend.

Now, in this globe he’s clutching something safe,

A round assurance and a promised joy

No one shall take away. He cannot smile.

Behind him are the stones of babyhood.

Soon he will find a hand, perhaps, to hold

Or a kind face, some comfort for a while.

Lotte Kramer (1923)

It’s the word ‘perhaps’, that gives this poem its poignant pull; and how it is placed between ‘hand’ and ‘hold’, then framed in commas – the punctuation device that insists you, the reader, pause. Perhaps = uncertainty…. who knows what life will bring this boy – but perhaps, just perhaps, he has not lost the human power to imagine the better when faced with the worst.

…‘a hand, perhaps, to hold,

Or a kind face, some comfort for a while.’

Few gestures rehumanise difficult moments more powerfully than the hold, the touch, even the reaching out, of a hand. Those moments in the gospels when Jesus at the bedside of the dying child ‘took her by the hand’, or when against all advice and "good practice" he practiced goodness, reached out to the leper and ‘touched him’; and when Peter started sinking in the maelstrom of a Galilean storm Jesus ‘reached out his hand and took hold of him’. Moments of precise, intentional, kindness and comfort.

One way of rehumanising our culture would be for us to find ways of being to those who need it, "….a kind hand, perhaps, to hold….". And for the community of Jesus’ followers the challenge is to demonstrate to a culture confused about how we can touch each other in non-threatening, non-exploitative ways, how to perform acts and gestures of spontaneous and embodied kindness and comfort.

…‘a hand, perhaps, to hold,

or a kind face, some comfort for a while.’

2 March 2007
Rehumanising

I’ve had a long standing relationship with Oxfam shops. Long before the word recycle began to exert some leverage on our throwaway habits, Oxfam was working hard at being honest broker, the middle man (sic) in transactions where they got stuff for nothing and sold it on for bargain prices. Books by the dozen, the occasional shirt (one suitably sombre tie needed while on holiday to attend a family funeral), a superb ratchet nut cracker more like a shifting spanner and a real mauler with almond shells, along with fair trade honey and coffee.

Bought another book the other day in the more upmarket branch in Hillhead, Byres Road! Poems for Refugees, originally published to raise money for the children of Afghanistan. I’ve enlarged the cover so you can see the sad beauty of this vulnerable, precious little human being. Her home – who knows? Her parents – maybe there, maybe dead. Her future – again, who knows. I took the book because of the picture – and also because of the poems – and mostly because something deep in my heart and spirit is simply not prepared to accept that this is the way it has to be for this child.

I used a rare word yesterday – I’d like to see it enter the common stock of everyday words. I haven’t looked it up in a dictionary, I’ve decided to define i for myself – to take it to mean what I think it means and should mean in the vocabulary of the 21st C!

Rehumanise (def): to restore human dignity to the dehumanised; to reinclude (another new word?) a person in the human community; to remove causes of dehumanisation.

Recently I’ve started to notice social situations, unhealthy relationships, institutional practices, political decisions, management styles, military protocols and commercial behaviour which undermine, deny, diminish, ignore, people’s humanity. This poetry book is essentially a protest on behalf of rehumanising practices. Its sections include

On Exile and the Refugee

On War

On Diversity

On Love and Loss

Consider for a second or two who you are, what you are – what matters to you –what you want from life –those you love and whose disappearance would deprive your life of an essential joy –

Think humanely, imagine and celebrate what it means for you to be a woman, a man, a child – and then look again at the book cover, at the bewildered uncertainty of this child, this small refugee human being, caught up in war, suffering God alone knows what love, and loss, and loss of love. Different from us but deeply, essentially, humanly, the same. And remember the rehumanising words of Jesus,’Let the children come to me, for of such is the Kingdom of Heaven’. So how come countries which claim any moral continuity with Jesus can impose political and economic sanctions which inevitably lead to large scale suffering for children?

Aye – I know there are political realities, that the world is complex, and a dangerous world becomes positively perilous when spiritual and theological reasons are given as to why such policies are wrong. But I can’t get the thought out of my head, that Jesus is on the side of this child, these children. And that the Word who became flesh, cherishes and comforts the vulnerable beauty that is a human being, made in the image of God.

27 February 2007