Listening to the stones

More austerity again today

There is so much concentration on reducing the benefit bill that that seems to be an end in itself rather than first and foremost finding ways to create a community/country that looks after people.

It seems the priority is having a lower balance sheet and all the austerity measures are mainly coming through the treasury rather than a broad set of policies of a healthier community across all government departments. There is a policy for lowering bills (by whatever means) but very little principle led policies across the whole government for a better way of living in community.

And the problem with the money driving the plan (look at our own presbytery plans) is that the distance between haves and have nots simply increases and the solutions move further away from us.

I really do fear what we are doing. We've hung onto the wrong indicator that being the size of the bill rather than the quality of our community.

Believing in each other

I was never good at statistics but I love using them. You can make something sound so dramatic with a good statistic. Or you can expose all your prejudices and fears with them.

Royal Statistical Society has just shown to what extent we do that.

Teen pregnancies: how many do you think there are in our broken and morally bankrupt society? 15% of under 16's become pregnant each year?

No!

0.6%

Benefit fraud: how much per £100 of benefits is fraudulently claimed? £24 per £100?

No!

70 pence per £100 of benefits paid.

And we could go on. The higher numbers are what the majority of the public believe is happening. The lower numbers are the truth.

Perhaps it is not so much about what we do that is morally bankrupt but rather our lack of trust in each other.

If

Christian Aid Week, New Members, Baptism... Here the gathering that might be able to tie together some of these strands:

There are 7 billion, 115 million, 500 thousand people on the planet today
and we hunger for hope
yet there is enough hope for everyone if…

There are 7 billion, 115 million, 500 thousand people on the planet today
and we hunger for justice
yet there is enough justice for everyone if…

There are 7 billion, 115 million, 500 thousand people on the planet today
and we hunger for equality
yet there is enough equality for everyone if...

if…
if…

let us gather as God’s people
in the unanswered question
and, incomplete as we are
as we gather round the waters of baptism
and hold those who profess their faith
and share our lives with the poor around the world

may we believe
there is enough faith in the world to renew it
love it
transform it
if…

Gun Control

I'm just looking at images from Boston's armed response to the search for the second bomber. It's off the scale: people have to stay off the streets (no wonder) shops closed and schools shut and no public transport system. Any bomber who is trying to hide will know exactly where their enemy is!

I wonder the total number of people shot in the US over the last few days by hand guns. Pressure cooker bombs we can't live with, but the scores of people shot in the time between the marathon and now, we can.

Why isn't there the equivalent political/social response that shows hand guns are just as unacceptable and even more dangerous than bombs? Why don't people get that?

Budget

I don't understand much of what the chancellor did today. I just hope he does.

The whole thing seems so fickle and is a balance between what sounds right (spun in such a way as that's all that seems right about it) and growing a right relationship with the people in communities and neighbourhoods throughout the country. It's never going to be easy and I am surprised he hasn't got greyer hair. And perhaps there is no solution to it at all. There is just the mucking through and the acceptance of circumstances outwith your control.

My comment is the line he has spun 'I'm going to level with people'. I know it's not and I am naive suggesting this but should that not be the first priciple of any politician to be honest? What have you been doing up to now if you haven't been level with us? I think we already know its always been a whole lot worse than you've been telling us. We're not daft. Why do politicians think we are daft and that we believe their propaganda. We're not and we don't.

But the church is in the very same situation and never ought to be found pulling the wool over people's eyes and be quite level with everyone about the faith and it isn't qute as straightforward and clear cut and certain as we'd have people believe. There is nothing black and white in faith. It is all grey.

Snow fair

Guys, come to our bit of Scotland if you want to avoid the snow. There's nothing here and there doesn't look as if there will be anything other than cold. The 'feels like' temperature is about -9 centigrade tonight but we can cope with that.

In truth, strange things are happening as we're continually getting the better version of possible weather options here in the West Coast of Scotland. Where it used to be snowy, it's now just grey and cold. When it used to be sunny it is just, you know, grey and cold. Okay it's not quite as monochrome as that but certainly we don't feel we've got any extremes, just lots of mediocre.

So why not immigrate? There's a lot of haggis about at this time of year too which is a nice variation to the horse meat beefburgers sold by some supermarkets. No one has to pretend here: no one knows what's in haggis, it might be horse, or sassanach who knows!

Benefits and Austerity

I understand the need to cut big bills. I understand the government looking at benefits. I understand that I don't need child tax credits and I', earning way less that the magic £50,000.

What I don't understand is some of the spinning used to justify certain cuts. There ought to be some theology in there to help politicians work out what is right to cut and what is right to increase.

For example, limiting benefit rise to 1% is something like a 73p increase on the benefit. It's capped at 1% because benefits should rise more than wages. But 1% of the average ways is rather a lot more than 73p. The spin doctors make up a headline we all agree with but the details are rather different.

Also it is spun to make it look everyone who lives on a benefit as someone who is on the fiddle is rather corrupt. You can do anything with statistics Political Scrapbook offers its own spin:

 Perhaps Iain Duncan Smith and his DWP spinners would benefit from some context. The £1.1 billion cost of fraud (a modest 0.7% of the total benefits spend) averages out to £59 across 18.5 million claimants.* In contrast, MPs were ordered to pay back £1.2 million in the wake of Thomas Legg’s inquiry into expenses, an average of £1,858 for the 646 members of the Commons.

According to a TUC poll the proportion of the welfare budget that is claimed fraudulently is 27%. It is actually 0.7%. The same poll tells us that people think that the portion of the welfare budget that goes on benefits to unemployed people is 41%. In truth it is 3%. (Independent Newspaper)

Again you can do anything you like with statistics but it does make us think again about our perception and reality. The bigger question is about what we can afford, and what we need to afford and how as a community (that's everyone) we support each other which more simply put but someone else: love your neighbour.

All in it together

I wouldn't like to be the chancellor. I wouldn't have a clue. It worries me why some people take on these impossible tasks while I run away from them. You are never going to please everyone and few people come away from budgets with a complete smile and in times of austerity then everyone needs to pull back. I understand all that.

But it does concern me more than all these things politicians who keep repeating mantra's like George Osborne's 'we're all in this together'. I don't know if he is trying to persuade himself it is true or thinks if he says it often enough then it becomes true but if we are 'all in it together' clearly some people are up to their necks in coping with the consequences of austerity and others are just paddling.

The integrity of a society is always seen in how the poorest are looked after and the bigger the gap between rich and poor, the more unhealthy the society is, the more insecure and the more frightened we are of each other. When the chancellor says 'we're all in this together' I suppose he is trying to say we are all having to make sacrifices which to some extent that is true but his sacrifices are never going to be on the scale of someone who is having to think about weekly budgets, what they can afford for Christmas, of when they know their child can't go on the school trip all their friends are going on. It just seems to show a lack of understanding of how big the gap between the wealthy and the poor is, the gap between those who can make choices and those who have so many fewer choices that they can make. It is not just a gap in the amount on money people have, but on choices, confidence, neighbourliness, health, education, opportunity etc. These are so much bigger and in my reading of the Gospel, and Jesus interpretation of God's Reign, so much more important to a society which longs to be based on decent values and right relationships. Since the values that separate us are as big a gap as anything then while we may be in something we cannot say we are in it together.

A Bitter Blow

Perhaps not everyone will be disappointed in the Church of England vote today that refused to agree legislation to allow women to become Bishops but perhaps most of us will. At least I hope most of us are.

It has always amazed me what Religion (and I use that work in the political sense) can get away with. When two-thirds of the Church of England want to have women bishops, but a small handful of laity choose not to, then the whole things falls. Traditions change. They always do. We don't keep things for ever and the stronger was hold on to things the more fragile we are. In the Church of Scotland the same is true. We've changed our traditions time and time again. We've had ministers who are female for 45 years, we've done away with slavery despite it being sanctioned in the bible, along with marrying divorced people to name but a precious few. Some would say, of course, that has been our downfall. But it hasn't. That comment comes from a bitter regret that things have changed and keep changing and we always find ourselves on new ground. The People of God are used to that: from Egypt through the Exodus and Exile and the journeys of Paul. It's only when we settled down and stopped finding ourselves on new ground that we developed claws that clung on to where we were and chose not to let go. That's been our downfall.

In the journeying and difficult times, when the 'traditions' weren't so certain, we were at our most creative. Things changed in those creative times and developed the Bible we have today and the idea of a traveling God not locked into a temple.

So I pray for our sisters and brothers in the Church of England tonight. It must be hard on so very many of them.

In giving

A dialogue for Sunday

A: It is in giving we find ourselves
B: for our giving defines who we are
A: the widow and her mite
B: soldiers and their lives
A: giving all
B: for the sake of all

A: It is in giving we find ourselves
B: for in giving we show the world what is important to us
A: what has worth and value to us
B: A mite or a poppy
A: it is a choice to give beyond what we can afford

B: It is in giving we find ourselves
A: we find ourselves beside those who have given everything
B: the soldier in the field
A: the mother by a photograph
B: the child with only memories

A: It is in giving we find ourselves
B: we find who we truly are
A: what we are prepared to give
B: what defines our values
A: we discover what we believe has worth
B: beyond just ourselves
A: but for others
B: This is who we are
A: not an individual seeking their own gain
B: but a community in remembrance
A: who has chosen a way of life
B: that says I give for other’s gain

A: And this is the truth
B: and this is love
A: and this is the cross
B: This is our remembrance

A: It is in giving we find ourselves
B: and may we find ourselves
A: here