Going Beyond the Universal Credit - The next steps in welfare reform

2012-01-14T14:49:00.002Z

The current government has launched the largest reform of the UK welfare system since 1945. The British welfare system developed out of the Centuries old Poor Law in the early 20th Century. From 1945-1950 it was transformed from a limited and conditional system into a universal safety net to protect people 'from cradle to grave'. The system grew steadily more expensive and under the 1979-97 Conservative government conditionality and limits were re-introduced in an attempt to control costs. The Labour government of 1997-2010 introduced various new benefits and dramatically increased spending but also continued introducing means testing and attaching conditions to welfare.

Now means testing is perfectly sensible as far as it goes. However, it also leads to a significant unintended consequence. The means testing of various branches of welfare (JSA, ESA, housing benefit, council tax benefits and tax credits) involves people steadily losing welfare income the further their income goes above a threshold until they get nothing. For each extra pound they earn they lose, say, 20p of benefit. But millions of people are on 3 or 4 benefits at the same time. Losing 20p or so of income from each benefit and paying taxes means an effective tax rate of 90%+. In other words if someone on benefits gets a job they can find themselves no better off that being on welfare, and can even end up with less money. This welfare trap hits millions of people. Our standard suite of unemployment benefits involves JSA, council Tax benefits and Housing benefit. That is enough that if a person gets a job for a few hours a week they will lose all the extra money they earn and possibly more.

This is especially true for those with marginal, part-time or temporary employment prospects. The risk with any such work may be that a person may end up both with less money, and being thrown out of the welfare system, meaning that if their job ends or they find themselves incapable of completing it they may face re-applying for a range of benefits, a process taking months and involving climbing a mountain of bureaucracy. For those in difficult financial situations the stress of the risk of this occurring provides a significant incentive for people to actively avoid part-time or marginal work that does not provide an assurance that the person will be propelled well beyond benefits. But these marginal and temporary jobs are very important because they keep people in contact with the jobs market allowing them to maintain skills and experience, and to provide them with the basic sense of control over their own future that is essential to maintaining the morale to keep slogging away finding a real job. Hence the welfare trap is a particular problem precisely for those people from the most deprived and welfare dependent communities and backgrounds.

The Universal Credit was a centre plank of the Conservative manifesto in the 2010 election. The idea is to solve this problem by combining all benefits into a single payment that would then have a single 'withdrawal' rate to make sure that for each pound of extra income earned welfare recipients kept at least some of the money, or as the slogan put it 'making work pay'. Allowing people to keep some of their benefits for a while when starting work, and removing benefits steadily in a manner insuring people always have a financial incentive to do an extra hour of work. The estimated extra cost of this is £3 billion a year upfront but will hopefully pay for itself in the long term by ensuring people always have an incentive to be seeking any work they can, keeping them in contact with the job market, maintaining skills and experience and hopefully meaning over time more people move from welfare into work permanently.

This is an ingenious solution to the welfare trap that exists for earned income. This welfare trap comes about through the fact that the system is a hodge-podge of different responses to particular problems. The overall effect of all these solutions was never considered holistically and hence the dramatic perverse incentives were not noticed and a system that is meant to not just keep people alive but also empower them to improve their own situation can become for many a system that traps that at a level just above subsistence. Those on welfare find themselves in a situation totally different from that facing most people. Working harder and 'earning' money often does not bring the prospect of increased income and security but at best working harder for the same money, or at worst facing greater poverty and stress. The Universal Credit attempts to correct this situation, ensuring that the welfare system acts as a trampoline not just a safety net and always involves an at least quasi-normal relation between working harder and having more money

It is possible to go beyond the reforms that make up the Universal Credit and and structurally improve the welfare system even further using the same principles and , making it even more of a springboard. There is not just a welfare trap in Income, there is also a less well known (and admittedly less significant) welfare trap in savings. In addition to the income means test there is also a savings mean test that is applied. For many benefits if you have cash savings of more than £16,000 then you cannot access welfare. In particular there is a standard £6,000 threshold, below which one receives full benefits and then for each £250 of savings one has over the threshold the person loses £1 a week of benefit income. This is quite reasonable. If people have considerable cash savings it is reasonable that they draw on these rather than getting help from the government. The problem is the upper threshold of £16,000. As one'sone's income suddenly drops to zero. For example, someone who is unemployed with savings of £15,000 can receive around £102 a week in welfare. Someone with £16,500 in savings will receive nothing.

This means that if you are in a position where you have some cash savings, but not considerably more than £16,000, say in the £6,000-£20,000 range, and you think you may need to access welfare at some point in the short or medium term then you have a strong incentive to not save any of the money you earn. You are better off spending it all, knowing that if you lose your job or your income you will then be able to safely access welfare, rather than saving the money, both forgoing buying stuff now and risking that you would just have to spend it all and then access welfare, leaving you in exactly the same position after considerable stress in the intervening period.

This is socially damaging in the long term. For most people wealth is empowering, it gives people security and a control over their own life. Once people have a bit of wealth it makes it easier to get more wealth and stand on their own two feet going onward. More widely there is a strong correlation between wealth and social mobility, health, and a whole other raft of statistics. From a financial perspective people having some wealth in turn makes them less likely to need to access welfare or government support in the future. As with the income welfare trap it is also those with little wealth, or otherwise marginal financial situations, who are in most need of encouragement and support in gaining this security and safety net whereas in reality through our welfare system they are the ones being particularly discouraged.

This issue also applies to considerable numbers of people. Especially because in our society wealth is even more unequally distributed than income, and this distribution has been becoming more and more unequal over the last several years. There is an easy way to solve this problem though, and by using the mechanism already built into the welfare system, without the need for dramatic re-engineering, like the Universal credit. Two simple steps would largely remove this problem: firstly, increasing the ceiling for benefits withdrawal from £16,000->£26,000 and slightly adjusting the withdrawal rate to a loss of £1 a week in income for each £200 of savings over the threshold. These two steps would largely remove the cliff-edge, leaving only a small step. For example, current unemployment benefits are about £135 a week for a single person. As savings increase from £6,000->£16,000 this reduces from £140->£100 and then falls straight to £0. Under these changes as savings move from £6,000->£16,000->£20,000 welfare income falls from £140->£90->£40 and only then falls to £0.

This approach reduces the size of the drop by more than half, while also allowing people to get considerably further clear of Broke before it kicks in and hence significantly reduces the disincentive to save money. It does also maintain a reasonable upper limit, avoiding dragging more and more people into the welfare net, and also avoiding a situation of needing to process claims for a few pounds a week of welfare. These limits are always a compromise, but I think this would be a far better compromise than the current one. It also should not cost that much money. Steepening the withdrawal slightly from £1 for every £250 to £1 for every £200 would save some money. Also for a number of people it would mean placing them on a smaller amount of weekly welfare, rather than forcing them to wear down their savings until they go below £16,000 and then putting them on a larger weekly sum of welfare, making the overall increase in cost minor.

The way to look at this is like this: The welfare system and public services are the way we redistribute wealth. They provide access for all citizen to services and support that would normally require each citizen to have considerable amounts of money to buy. The top 10% have 100 times as much wealth as the bottom 10%. But it has been calculated that the wealth that would be required to buy the bundle of public services and welfare that each person has an entitlement to is about £100,000. This is the common inheritance we give to each citizen, and that reduces the disparity in wealth to 10:1. Like I said, real wealth is empowering and gives people security and chances. These reforms would shape this common inheritance to ensure that, like real wealth, it also acts to empower and secure people; acting as a springboard not just a safety net.

Another possible reform in relation to the savings means test for welfare relates to the definition of 'savings'. This encompasses financial savings apart from equity in a property. This produces a sizable distortion though in favour of those who own housing against those who rent. In other words if you have £20,000 in savings and use the money to rent a property, you have no access to welfare; if you use that money to get £20,000 of equity in a house so you don't have to rent you do have access to welfare. This makes sense in terms that wealth bound up in a house is obviously not wealth that can be used to pay bills and buy food and support a family in a time when money is short. But in terms of fairness it cannot really be justified. There are ways for people who's wealth is in housing equity to contribute that money against the cost of welfare which don't involve kicking them out of their homes. For example in terms of some amount of housing equity above a certain minimum, say £20,000, passing over to the government according to a tariff related to the amount of welfare received. The government would then get that share of the equity when the house was sold, or when the owner died in a manner similar to private equity release schemes. This would be an admittedly slow burning way for home owners to contribute towards welfare, in the same way that those without housing equity would have to. But over the long term it may be worth it for the government, and would even-out a significant disparity between homeowners and non-homeowners and even go some of the way towards meeting the cost of the reform to savings means testing outlined above.

A third important structural improvement to the welfare system would be to overhaul the point which a partner's income affects a person's eligibility for welfare support. I will now explain what that means in English. I've already mentioned the Means test that is used to check eligibility for welfare both with reference to savings and income, and how this can produce severe disincentives for people on welfare to work or save. The means test doesn't just take into account the income and savings of the person applying for welfare, but also that of their spouse or partner. Again, in principle, this is quite reasonable. Of course in situations where one partner has considerable money or income they should support their partner once their eligibility to contributory welfare runs out rather than relying on the state indefinitely. The problem comes in the details. The means test is currently set at an absurdly low level. A partner's savings are assessed as the same as the applicant's savings and the threshold for income is only about £8,000. This basically means that if a partner has any job or savings then a person cannot access welfare beyond the time limited contributory benefits.

This is not just a point of academic interest. One area where this hits quite savagely is in respect to one of the government's current welfare cuts, which was voted down in the House of Lords and discussed on Newsnight only this week. This is a proposal to limit Contributory ESA to 1 year. Now, ESA is the main benefit given to people who cannot hold down a job due to sickness or disability. It is meant for people who are too ill or disabled to go through the ordinary Job seekers program. Like JSA it effectively acts as a general income for people while they are out at work. Until now though, unlike JSA, contributory ESA has not had a time limit. The government is attempting to introduce a 1 year time limit, after which people will either move onto Income-tested ESA or lose support.

The government argues that contributory JSA is limited to 6 months, so why should the equivalent for those Sick or Disabled and out of work, ESA, be different? And points out that there is still Income based ESA to support those with no financial resources. The problem first comes because the connection between ESA and JSA is tenuous at best in this instance. JSA is meant to be distinctly short-term. For many ESA will be extremely long-term, even with the government's most optimistic assumptions, meaning that it becomes that much more important that it does actually provide a family with a sufficient income to survive over the long term. But mainly it's because, as I said, the government's definition of financial resources is frankly laughable. Any family with a Sick or Disabled member that also has either any savings or a partner earning almost any money will get no support. Firstly, this creats a quite savage work disincentive for families with a disabled or Sick member. Secondly, families with a sick or disabled member already have a poverty rate double that of other comparable families and, thirdly, the individuals within these families on average have costs 25% greater than a non-Sick or Disabled person. The considerable and additional financial pressure of this measure will hence almost certainly push most of the three hundred thousand households affected into poverty, or push them even deeper therein if they are there already.

I am a (extremely small) part of a campaign to lobby against these and other proposed cuts to support for sick and disabled people, something I've written about before here (at length) and here (at considerably less length). Among a few other things this campaign has focused on opposing the introduction of this time limit to contributory ESA. The government has repeatedly responded that Income based ESA will still be there for those who fail the means test and they are right as far as that goes. But the real issue is that the means test itself is fundamentally broken, particularly in regard to savings and the level of a partner's income allowed. If the means test for ESA was set at a sensible level then limiting contributory ESA would be an entirely reasonable policy. But it's not and so it isn't. Unfortunately this gives the whole argument a slightly false character, because the issue under discussion isn't the real issue. In the long term it would be far better to properly consider and overhaul the means test with relation to both savings and the partner's income, certainly for benefits solely relating to the sick and disabled but also (though with less urgency) more generally.

A review could consider ideas such as introducing a taper with relation to partner income, as has been suggested with the Universal credit and with the savings means test in order to counter the extreme work disincentive this creates. Also, calculating a separate means test threshold for sickness & disability benefits like ESA, taking into account the estimated average 25% higher costs experienced by families with a disabled or sick member and the likelihood that disability benefits will be claimed for much longer periods than the Dole, to ensure it does guarantee a sustainable income for families who have to struggle with the reality of a member who is disabled or suffering from long term sickness.

All these ideas are ways of making our welfare system work better through structural change rather than just spending ever increasing amounts of money. Even if these ideas are dismissed as rubbish I very much think this approach is sound. We must holistically consider the structural effects of each piece how we administer and deliver our welfare system and the unintended consequences and side effects it can produce, rather than just looking at the needs each benefit is meant to cover. This gives us the chance to come up with new ideas to shape the whole system for the better and ensure it fulfils its potential and purpose to act not just a safety net but also as a springboard to support people to build a better life for themselves. The Universal Credit is a good start but the government should be already be looking to go beyond it to the next reforms that can shape our welfare system for the better.

Christmas & Family

2012-01-06T21:12:00.005Z

Merry Christmas! (I know this is a bit late. But my excuse is it is still within the 12 days of Christmas. Just. And hence still technically Christmas. Oh, and happy Epiphany as well.)

Christmas is the great stereotypical time to spend time with your family. I am lucky that my family have always got on well together without much stress. I've always really enjoyed Christmas getting together, as much now I'm an adult as when I was little. I know for some people Christmas and other family occasions are not as relaxing. And that is very sad. It is a rupturing of what family means at a time when we remember a very special family.

Thanks to the good works of a friend whenever I think about what family means I will always think of a line from a certain Disney Film. "Ohana" in Hawaiian, "means family, and family means no-one gets left behind". Family means a commitment to one another, to care, to sacrifice, to have patience and compassion, to not give up on one another on the basis that there is a responsibility that cannot be put to one side. The difference between family and other relationships is that if someone is family then the bond is one you're not allowed to give up on. Family may annoy you, they may irritate you, there certainly may be times when you don't like them, but if they're family you're stuck with them. And so you do whatever you can to get along, to mend relationships and get to a situation where you can enjoy your time together because you are stuck with them anyway, so you may as well. This is in a strange way the same as Love, but different. Love also often means commitment. It generally also means a whole lot more as well, but not always. It's true that you don't always even like the ones you love, sometimes you can even hate them at times.

Family is a commitment. A commitment that we don't necessarily choose. That usually means blood. The most common basis for that sense of commitment and relation is a blood relation. The common saying is "you choose your friends but your family you're stuck with". The nuclear and extended family are the historical basis of human society, the glue that holds society together, that cares for children, cares for people in their old age, and makes sure that almost everyone has someone who is obliged to care about what happens to them. It is the environment in which we are formed, and the original and most essential human social bond and organisation. It is not surprising our wider social, moral and religious ideas are widely constructed by expanding analogy to it. Blood family bears the advantage that we share experiences and genetics, meaning we have a good chance of being quite like each other and having some sympathy for one another. Sadly it doesn't always work, but it is at least a start.

Family isn't just blood. The rituals by which we add to blood family have always been the most serious in human society. Marriage has always been considered so important because it means two people committing to becoming family to one another, and the traditional language surrounding marriage borrows overwhelmingly from our understanding of what family means. Adoption is another traditional means of grafting onto family, and the issues about the blood family, adopted family and identity of the person are so deep because the family bond is crucial to our identity. In the modern day nuclear families have become more complicated. In addition to the traditional archetype of husband, wife, children some familes have single parents, un-married parents, divorced parents, sometimes with new partners and step-children. A lady I know spends Christmas with her mother, step-dad, step-dad's ex-wife and step-dad's ex-wife's new partner and various respective children. Now these families may be as happy or unhappy as traditional family arrangements, but certainly they often introduce complications that must be overcome because their differences from the standard archetype introduce difficulty in defining who is and is not family, and who has responsibility for the commitment that brings.

Family does not just mean blood family though, not even with its various graftings and extensions through rituals like marriage and adoption. There is also the family of choice. The families we make. The people we informally adopt as family throughout our lives. Often, and especially in the hectic modern world, we may find ourselves away from our blood family and unable to draw directly on the network of love, support and familiarity that family offers. If we're less lucky we may not even have a family that offers that. But people do have the most wonderful capacity to build entirely new families for ourselves by simply adopting people as family and extending that bond of support and commitment. Unlike blood family these families usually carry no social sanction or recognition, and are often not even explicitely stated, though those involved generally implicitly understand. They are voluntary, but all the more wonderful for that, being something we choose and build ourselves, rather than are merely given at birth. They may come about through an individual act of generosity, through some shared extreme experience, shared ideological or social association or just through the enduring commitment of deep friendship with its shared respect and affection. In their best moments they may be as permanent as blood family. But even when they are often more temporary they are defined by a relative permanence of commitment and responsibility, which goes beyond whether you find a person fun or useful in this or that particular moment. They provide a well of support, of rest, of belonging, of understanding, of home and a supply of people who will always care, always listen, always try to help, always be available if at all possible, always say yes unless there is a damn good reason to say otherwise. They are crucial to surviving in a difficult and complicated life in situations cut off from the families we grow up in, and if we do not have them we often struggle, while sometimes not even knowing the reason why.

These families we choose for ourselves may often mirror blood family in various ways. We talk about someone being like a brother or sister, or even Mum or Dad to us. These families are often based around people living together, through the way this throws people so closely together. These families of adoption are also more alike our blood family than we perhaps at first care to admit. The family we adopt are not entirely random or free. In life we are thrown together with certain people, with whom we may choose to build that bond or not. But generally which people we come across is dictated by circumstances we do not control. On the other hand, really, all family is the family we choose. Blood provides a strong motivation, and a social expectation, that we will treat certain people as family, but really nothing can force us to hold and to honour that commitment of compassion and respect, of Love and devotion that defines people as family. In the end that is a choice and a decision we make and hold to, whether consciously or subconsciously. Our society is sadly littered with the examples where people have not chosen to make and honour that commitment, even to those who do share close relation, and the damage and hurt this causes over entire lives.

Talking about family being a choice we make brings me back to Christmas, where we traditionally gather as families to share time together, and hopefully remember that most special family of the Nativity. Because the Nativity very much means a Family of choice, of adoption, with much more in common, in many ways, with the messy, modern arrangements of so many nuclear families today, than the neatness of the traditional archetype. There was no blood between Mary and Joseph, only a previous commitment he did not have to honour, given the circumstances, and a duty of kindness and compassion. There was no blood between Joseph and the baby he adopted as family and raised as his own, only a choice that was thrust upon him to take him as family and make that commitment for the rest of his life. There was blood between Jesus and Mary, but not the decision to conceive a child, or the assurance he was shared with another who had already committed to that child, only the choice to accept a responsibility, and bear the distance of knowing the baby she bore was not just her son, but had a destiny and responsibility that would take him far beyond her and even take him from her well before his time. This was a family that almost as soon as it was brought together was forced into life as political and religious refugees, forced to flee to a alien country, having given birth in difficult conditions far from family and home.

Nativity means a family that only existed thanks to the choice made by Mary and Joseph, in the strangest of circumstances, as they both said Yes to the chance God had sent them, and the Love and commitment they gave to making that family a reality from that moment on. For me one of the most amazing things about the Nativity is not just the miracle of God become Man. But particularly the way that in doing so, in placing himself physically in the hands of a young peasant girl and her uncertain fiance in a dirty, poor stable, God took on our aching vulnurability. Putting himself utterly in the hands of human weakness and fragility and relying on the choices they made. The fact that the family of the Nativity was this uncertain, mixed family of choice and adoption just increases the vulnurability and contingency around the coming of God into the world in flesh. God took on not only the weakness of human flesh, and the danger of sinister human political machinations, but also the vulnurability of human emotions and the choice taken to build a family outside usual expectation. That God would show that trust in human nature and rely so utterly on the choices individual humans made, that is a miraculous affirmation of the human emotion & spirit in the same way that God entering taking human flesh is miraculous affirmation of the physical world we dwell in.

The most emotionally hitting illustration of this sense of vulnurability that came with the Nativity in that distant stable that I have ever experienced came in an email I received on November 25th a few years ago. At the time I was an occasional volunteer at a Night-shelter for homeless refugees in north Coventry. Refugees and asylum seekers generally can't access the homeless shelters because these are funded by government welfare and refugees and asylum seekers can't access welfare. Usually without family or connections in the places they end up in, struggling with physical or emotional trauma and without the legal right to seek work or access welfare they often end up homeless. A lady called Penny ran a shelter in a previously abandoned North Coventry terrace house, providing a safe, dry, warm place to sleep and a free dinner and breakfast each day for homeless refugees and asylum seekers. The place ran on a shoestring and donations of food, and the support of volunteers from the local community and from the University, where I got involved. Volunteers were responsible for looking after the place over the evening, sleeping there overnight, making sure nothing went wrong, getting people up, serving breakfast and getting people out at the right time. It was pretty unpleasant throwing people out at 8am, when it was cold and raining and you knew they had nowhere to go all day but wander around outside, but it was sadly necessary to keep the place running. The refugees were from Eritrea, Congo, Iran, Iraq, Kosovo and various countries across Africa. They were mostly Male with the occasional woman, usually from somewhere in Africa, and usually the most quiet, usually the most scarred by what they had experienced. In the many dirty conflicts across the world women are generally most vulnurable. Penny sent out a few emails every month to ask for volunteers and arrange a rota. One year in November in the end of month email to prepare the next rota Penny left a note.

"Hi everyone,

I hope you are all have a happy festive season, Christmas, new year, winter solstice. Here is the rota for January. Please can you arrange a swap if there is a problem with the date. PLEASE LET ME KNOW YOU HAVE RECEIVED THIS ROTA, it saves me making lots of phone calls. If you know anyone else who would like to volunteer, I am doing some training for new people on Wednesday 17th Jan at 6.30pm. Please ask them to let me know they are coming.

And to finish on a Christmas note, we currently have a woman who has just arrived from Nigeria staying the week-end before she goes to
claim asylum in Croydon on Monday. Her name is Mary and she is 8 months pregnant. That's true.

best wishes to you all,
Penny"

What world was that baby born into? And what opportunity did that world offer that baby and its mother: Single, far from home, refugee, homeless, destitute? How similar in some ways to that world Jesus was born into in a dirty stable far from home. But there is one crucial way that it it is a different world, and that is directly the fact that Jesus was born into our world two thousand years ago. Because that Nativity wasn't just the birth of one family of adoption of a teenage peasant girl, her fiance and the unique baby that God had given to them. Nativity also means that we all, all humanity become family to God by adoption in its deepest sense. Through his birth and then life, death and resurrection that came from it he covered us over with his Holiness, washed away our Sins and folded us in with his Holy Spirit. We became children by adoption, with the right to refer to God as Father, and a relationship fundamentally defined by the enduring Love and consistent commitment that defines family. We become family to one another, us to God & God to us, and brothers and sisters in Christ with the duty and responsibility to one another that comes with that.

The story of the world has been the gradual moral expansion of Love from family to clan, tribe, nation eventually to theoretically encompass all mankind and even our duty to other species and the environment. Moral commands like 'Do not murder' have been present across all forms of human society. But they have always historically been limited within certain communities, while those outside, whether of a different nation or race or religion, could be killed without moral sanction. Most originally hunter-gatherer communities would have lived in separated extended families, each with their own hunting and gathering lands. Moral commands would only have applied within that extended family and others known through inter-marriage or commerce, with other people seen as alien and different. Slowly those standards were applied more widely. This mirrored the expansion of human society from family to clan to tribe to people (the words for tribe and clan themselves are literally derived from words for family) and even more expanded human societies: nations, countries, Empires have historically been scattered with symbolic references to family.

The expansion of moral prescriptions (like do not kill), the moral commitment of Love, and the idea of family from blood family to clan, tribe, nation and then the whole world have gone hand in hand. The development of the great Universal Empires of the ancient world, Hellenistic, Roman, Chinese, Indian brought the first idea of the whole world as part of one universal community. But although these communities expanded the idea of moral notions like 'Do not Murder' they were only a shadow of the true fulfillment of what family should mean, with minimal negative moral boundaries on behaviour, like forbidding killing or stealing, but without an idea of the positive, constructive fulfillment of the bond and commitment of family.

But it was the Good News of Jesus Christ that for the first time transformed the idea of a global community based on law and order into that of a family based on love and commitment. The Bible never quite explicitely tells us to love everyone, but it does tell us to love our neighbour, and tells us our neighbour must be whoever is in need; it tells us to love our enemies as well as those who do us good. It tells us to give, to lend, go the extra mile and turn the other cheek, without boundary or restriction and practice radical forgiveness, forgiving the seventy times seven times that any family will tell you is necessary for when imperfect people are glued together inseparably through that family commitment and know they have to make things work. We are called to love one another as God has loved us, as a father to a child, and to love one another as Brother and sister and spread that message to the whole world, with the simple practical acts of feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, giving thirsty people a drink, that go with that radical message and make it a reality; as they must do for any family to be real. We are called to build a worldwide community, Church, that should be a well of support in a manner that exactly mirrors those families we choose. This is nothing less than the expansion of our notion of Family, in its true meaning of a choice of Love and continuous commitment, to the whole world, to reflect the Love God has for us all and the duty we all have for each other. It is the commitment to build a complete world where nobody gets left behind, and all are looked out for and cared for, because we take it each as our positive commitment to do so. So that child born in north Coventry in Winter to a refugee mother would also have a family.

And this is not just an ideal; it is a promise through God's Spirit and power. Before this would have been unimaginable, but through the power of God's spirit, the birth of God as man as Jesus Christ, the family of adoption of Jesus, Mary and Joseph and the Good News of radical Love that Jesus lived and taught it becomes both a possibility and an eventual certainty. God's Holy Spirit gives us the power to extend Love to all humanity, despite our deep personal fallibility; the instruction of what that means in our individual lives and choices; and a vision of what that could achieve if we also make the choice to join that family and make that commitment the same way Mary and Joseph did in Nazareth a long time ago.

And that is what, for me, we remember and celebrate at Christmas. Through gathering together in our own families, and sharing gifts and hospitality, the tokens of the love, commitment and patience that is the fundamental meaning of family, we celebrate the bonds that give meaning to our lives, through the choices we make to commit to one another whether due to blood or the experiences we have shared. We remember the unique family of the Nativity, forged through the choice of Mary and Joseph, and the wonderful birth of the Christ-child; and we remember how through that birth we are all adopted as family of God, children of God and brother and sister to one another, if we choose to make that commitment; and through God's power we have the chance and duty to make real that bond for our all mankind as well, positively building a complete family of all mankind where no-one is forgotten or left behind. Something worth remembering.

We will Remember them . . . . .

2011-11-11T20:14:00.003Z

We Will Remember Them.

Since the War to End all Wars there has been:

The Russian Civil War, the Soviet-Polish War, the Turkish-Greek War, the Irish War of Independence, the Irish Civil War, the Chinese Civil War, the Italian-Ethiopian War, the Spanish Civil War, the Chinese-Japanese War, the 2nd World War, the Arab and Zionist Rebellions, the Guerrilla War resisting the Soviets, the Greek Civil War, the 1948 Israeli-Arab War, the Kashmiri Conflict, the Korean War, the Malayan Emergency, the Invasion of Tibet, the Algerian War, the Vietnam War, the Guatamalan civil War, Angolan War, the Rhodesian War, the Namibian War, the 6 day War, the Cambodian Civil War, The Northern Irish Troubles, the Naxalite Insurgency, the Bangladesh Liberation War, the Yom Kippur War, the Ethiopian Civil War, the Lebanese Civil War, the East Timor War, the Chad Civil War, the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan, the Chechnyan Conflict, the Salvadoran Civil War, the Iran-Iraq War, the Falklands War, the Ugandan Bush War, the Sri Lankan Civil War, the first Infitada, the Afghani Civil War, the Gulf War, the Yugoslavian Wars, the Somali Civil War, the Nepalese Civil War, the War in the Congo, the Kosovo War, the Liberian Civil War, the 2nd Intifada, the War in Afghanistan, the Iraq War, the Ivorian Civil War, the Sudanese Civil War, the Lebanon War, the Mexican Drug War, the Somali Civil War, the Gaza War and the Libyan War.

We Will Remember Them.

In the World today conflict continues in Nigeria, Colombia, India, Afghanistan, Somalia, Iraq, Chechnya, Kashmir, Yemen, Mexico, Congo, Sudan, Burma, and Syria.

We Will Remember Them.

And that is only the instances of major armed conflict. It does not begin to list all the one-sided 'wars' across the world fought by states and governments against un-armed civilians, often with more force, more equipment, more ferocity (and with the loss of more lives) than even the most thorough or barbaric conventional War. Because of language, because of race, because of politics or religion or money or fear, or for no reason at all. A few of their names are well-known to us: Holocaust, Armenian Genocide, Cambodian Killing Fields, Rwandan Genocide, Sarajevo. So many more are not.

And we remember all those wars fought by states or governments or terrorists or criminals or a single Bully who uses force to crush scattered people, or a few people, or just one person alone, with bombs or cells, or secret police, or torture, or camps, or prisons or bullets. We remember each individual who gave his or her life for freedom or dignity or to save another or just lost it for no reason at all. Raoul Wallenberg, Witold Pilecki, Józef Adamowicz, Janusz Korczak & countless, countless others, whether known to the World, or known to one or a few grateful or heartbroken souls, or known Only to God. Even if we cannot, we rest in the faith that God remembers them.

We remember them. Those who gave their lives to defend our peace & freedom and those who gave their lives to defend our Brothers and Sisters in countries around the world.

"For no greater love has a man than this, that he should lay down his life for his brother" John 15:13.

And We remember those who had their lives taken, despite the best efforts of so many to defend them. We remember each individual, and we remember the millions of people, known only as a place and a people. Though we cannot save them now, we can honour their lives and their sacrifice as we can through simply remembering them and by giving our all to build a better world, in our own homes, in our own countries, and across the world, so no more names and places are added to the list that must never be forgotten.

We will remember them.

Amen.

The Reality of 'Ethical Experience'

2011-10-25T00:37:00.003+01:00

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Good & Evil, Right & Wrong, Morality, Ethics; these make up a huge part of what it means to be human, to be a thinking, rational & emotional being. From the rules of politeness and decency in our small personal interactions with others, in the struggle between good guys and bad guys that fills our entertainment and our view of history, in our personal ethical choices or lack of them as consumers, our political discussions dominated by arguments about fairness and social justice, to our awareness of great moments of good and evil in our world. Considerations of morality make up a huge part of our mental landscape, our daily lives and our culture and we all have a keen sense of right and wrong, even if we only deploy it in reference to the good we do and the wrong other people do to us. And moral judgements and issues range from the almost entirely trivial to the most unbelievably important issues in the world.

We almost all understand morality, and the basic nature of right and wrong, even if we disagree about some details. Ethics is an immensely practical affair; as universal, commonplace, and often feeling as fiercely real as the physical rocks and trees and other things of the world we live in. We way we 'work out' morality is also equally practical. We see 'moral' value and right and wrong in the world around us in the same way we see colours. We don't reason it out from logical first principles like abstract mathematics. Even small children or the makers of children's TV can be better people and teach clearer moral lessons that the most wise of moral philosophers. There is no connection between how much you have studied Ethics and how ethical you are.

Despite this though too much reasoning about Ethics and Morality seems to approach the subject as though it were abstract mathematics or metaphysics. Starting from first principles and abstract definitions philosophers work out ethical systems and then apply them, fully formed, to real experience; often finding real experience a disappointment when it does not measure up to the neatness of theoretical vision. But this is the totally wrong way to do it. Maths has some very particular features. We all understand very basic mathematical notions like space and number, but once we go into almost any detail quite precise study is needed to go any further to even be able to imagine the possibility and understand the concepts of more advanced ideas. No-one, or almost no-one, just trips over the ideas of group theory or set theory, or differential equations unless they have them painstakingly explained. In complete contrary to this, one meets and experiences the ideas of good and evil everyday without the need for much explanation. These ideas are given and transparent in a way that experience of our ordinary world is, and experience of morality is, but Mathematics, Metaphysics, and even the abstractions of Science are not.

Like I said, there is no such connection with studying philosophical Ethics and experiencing Morality, or even knowing what is the moral thing to do. All we can say is that people who study ethics have a better grip of the principles and 'laws' behind every-day moral awareness and decision making, but they are certainly not generally any better at doing it. This is totally unlike Maths, but there is something it is very like. And that is the relationship between ordinary experience of the world and natural science. In the ordinary living world we act, we live, we see, we hear, we feel, we experience and do a whole host of other things entirely competently without understanding the physical principles behind them, and neither do we need to have their concept explained to us to experience them.

Even if we talk about studying natural Science what this gives you is an understanding of those principles that lie behind such experience, but you don't in any way need it to live and experience the world and even amass knowledge about it. Understanding physics doesn't make you a good walker, understanding optics doesn't help you see better, understanding Newton's laws on gravity isn't essential for bungee jumping. (Note this is definitely not to say that understanding those scientific laws cannot help with these activities. Considering our analogy that would make studying ethics particularly pointless if true.) But there is the same fundamental relation between Ethics and moral experience as there is between experience of the physical world and Physics, Chemistry, Biology.

At this point the obvious counter-argument to my analogy to the natural sciences is that objective scientific principles can be read out of nature, tested, measured, confirmed, whereas moral principles are less accessible. This is obviously true. I certainly don't claim that moral and physical knowledge are the same, but neither are they as different as they perhaps appear. We are so used to knowing so much about every facet of our world, but not so long ago this was not the case. Going back further than a few centuries the physical world, as much as the moral, was a confusing mass of phenomena, in which for a very long time it proved impossible to latch onto any firm principle, before light began to truly dawn in the 16th Century. Coming from the opposite direction there is a surprisingly widespread and accepted consensus on fundamental ethical truths and values (if often wildly differing applications) both across our society and all human societies. These two facts belie attempts to establish a crude dichotomy between the idea of a physical world from which one can read off, objective confirmable laws and a moral in which we have only subjectivism, relativism and personal opinion.

What I think this all means is that the reality of 'Ethical Experience' has to be put right at the centre of any investigation into morality. We can deny whether Ethics and Morality has any fundamental and essential reality. We can argue over the details of our moral intuitions and experiences, like ten people giving their ten different eye witness accounts of the same car crash. But we cannot deny the reality of that ethical experience, of the experience of value we 'see' in others, of our intuitive reactions to ethical situations and new ethical ideas, and the, again, different feelings and judgements that come through learning of great moral heroes or villians, or of the way people have morally acted in extreme situations.

Ethical Experience, the basic substance of moral intuition and experience is given to us, it is something that forces itself on us as we go about our ordinary lives, whether we want it or not, and as such it bears a totally different relationship to us and our understanding than rationalist abstractions like Mathematics or most philosophy. And it is this basic ethical experience in every part of our lives that must be at the fundamental basis of any attempt to understand morality, good and evil, or our concepts of meaning, Good and value in the world in general, in the same way that our experience of the physical world must always lie at the basis of our scientific theories.

As far as studying Ethics goes this means that we must attempt to clarify our ethical and moral understanding by studying closely the vast quantity of data that reveals itself through this reality of ethical experience, in its many forms from the trivial and everyday to the vast and truly profound. I think that what this means is that it would be wise, instead of adopting the rationalist, abstract and systematic approach of Mathematics, to approach Ethics with more of the empirical, practical and even piecemeal spirit of natural science. By analysing the structure and nature of Ethical experience we will not at first give a conclusive yes or no answer to the massive moral issues that plague our society but, like with natural science, by advancing over the world we experience inch by inch with a fine tooth comb we should be able to build up our knowledge in a more secure manner, as on a sure foundation, rather than racing to build our house only to find it rests on sand.

I believe that a piecemeal, one bit at a time, approach could give a better hope of understanding each individual and differing part of our ethical experience in its own right. We need a descriptive approach to Ethics that looks at our lived ethical experience and from that attempts to describe and understand what morality is like, and only from that builds up to the abstract laws that define and explain that moral reality. Rather than a prescriptive approach that starts with a particular metaphysical bias, whatever that may be, and attempts to force our experience to conform to that, discarding bits where they do not fit. Only the first, bottom up approach, can do justice to the messy, real nature of ethical experience. The second, top down approach can only ever whitewash over the beauty, detail, richness and colour of that Ethical experience that makes up such a large part of our human life, whatever the particular metaphysical bias it chooses to start with. And hence only the first approach can be a complete basis for any truly thorough attempt to understand the role morality plays in human existence. And examples of the second, despite their undoubted wisdom in this or that instance, should be generally rejected as insufficient.

The Giant Blind Spot of Human Rights NGOs - By Ziya Meral

2011-10-08T13:20:00.001+01:00

The Persecution of people on the basis of their religion is one of the largest, most serious and most widespread forms of Human Rights Abuse in the World. But it receives far too little attention from Human Rights campaigners because these campaigners and organisations are overwhelmingly European or North American and hence are overwhelmingly secular. They are either ignorant of religion or just don't particularly care, compared to almost any other cause. This blinds them to the suffering faced by hundreds of millions of people.

Ziya Meral says it much better than I could . . . .

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/ziya-meral/the-giant-blind-spot-of-h_b_991304.html

The one thing that he doesn't say explicitly (though he does hint at it through his examples) is that it is overwhelmingly Christians being persecuted, hundreds of millions of them. This is something we should all be aware of, and something that gets even less exposure than religious persecution generally. This is because most Christian or Christian-heritage countries have strong religious freedom, while most Non-Christian countries, whether Atheist, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist or other, don't. And even in the 'Christian' countries where persecution does occur, it is generally authoritarian governments persecuting Christians and churches who they view as a threat to their control.

(By saying this I don't mean to detract from his main point that we ALL are biased towards carrying more about human rights violations against people like us, and ignoring ones against people unlike us, rather than on the objective basis of how bad things are. And this is something we should all be consciously aware of. Christians are just as bad at this as anyone else. But it is right to note the largest actual real-world example, the collective blindness among almost organised human rights advocates towards persecution on basis of religion, and the fact that by far the largest real-world example of this is the frequently horrifyingly violent persecution of Christians around the world. )

The UK Needs an Economic Growth Strategy . . . . so here it is! (2nd half)

2011-10-04T22:57:00.000+01:00

This is a continuation of Part 1, found below. Basically, it's widely admitted that our economy is faltering and the government needs to do more to boost growth. I think it needs to do this, but in a manner that stays within the plans for cutting the deficit that is current government policy, the so-called Plan A. I've tried to cover every major area the government could act on to boost and secure long term growth in our economy, to give the (also so called) Plan A+. If there's anything I've missed or where you disagree with me, let me know. What do you think?

6) Radical Tax Reform.

Spending money efficiently is one side of the equation. Raising it efficiently is the other. 40% of UK GDP goes through the tax system every year. With £600 billion a year going through the tax system how efficiently this is done makes a difference of many billions of pounds a year. Because tax rates are so high their application to some economic areas but not others can have a powerful effect, distorting price structures and skewing economic activity on no particular rational or even deliberate basis. Almost all other public services in the UK have been thoroughly critiqued and over-hauled numerous times over the last 50 years. Our tax system, on the other hand, has not. As it is not something that is tangible, and because it so directly involves money, which means with any change the losers shout a lot more loudly than the winners, there is a powerful incentive to not look at it too closely, and to not change it. This is the so-called tyranny of the status quo. This means our taxation system is a mix of what is practical with layers of historical accident and political expediency plastered on top.

This is not necessary though. IFS, the renowned think tank, has conducted a comprehensive assessment of the UK tax system, recently published as the Mirrless Review, looking at how the tax system could be designed to raise revenue with the minimum distortion to the economy while still retaining most of its traditional structure, and while achieving objectives of redistribution most efficiently. It outlines significant changes to Income Tax, VAT, Corporation Tax, Council Tax, Business Rates, Capital Taxes and the taxation of savings and financial services. These would remove numerous distortions thus saving the economy several billion pounds and raising billions more in additional revenue. They would also cohere remarkably with many of the other measures I have mentioned. Changes to Income Tax and NI would complement deregulation saving businesses hundreds of millions in costs; the over-haul of council tax and business rates would complement planning reform driving more efficient use of land and property; rationalisation of green taxation would cut the cost of Green Policy; a Financial Activities Tax would cut the cost of finance for businesses while making it more expensive for individuals to get into debt. In fact the possible effects of these changes are so considerable, especially with our current deficit crisis, that I mean to go over them in detail in a future article.

7) Secure Radical Banking reform.

The ease of access to money makes a huge difference to the real economy and in a modern economy the circulatory system that disperses the supply of money is the banking system. The global recession was begun by a credit crunch that unsurprisingly most badly hit the heavily indebted developed economies. This disaster was compounded by the necessity of investing vast amounts of public money 'bailing-out' some of the major banks. To secure a reliable stream of finance for businesses, to ensure a healthy financial sector (a significant part of the economy), and to ensure that the disastrous bailouts are never repeated, radical banking reform is an essential pro-growth measure.

The government's program of banking reform has three branches. The Bank Levy to raise extra tax from the financial sector, to disincentives the riskier forms of funding in major institutions. The 'Merlin' agreement to go some way to reigning in bank bonuses and securing lending to the real economy, and the Vickers Report to reform the structure of the banking industry. This report has recommended the 'Ring-fencing' of major banks, separating retail banking from investment banking. Retail banking is storing saving and lending money from and to individuals and businesses, what most of us think of as banking. Investment banking is the more high-octane, esoteric end of banking, investing in funds, shares, Derivatives, CDO's, currency and commodity speculation etc, often involving large amount of money being bet for very brief periods to secure very low margins of profit, but done over and over again making vast amounts of money very fast. Separating investment and retail banking will remove the risk of having to bail-out investment banking in order to secure the essential retail functions they are attached to. It would also incentivise major banks to shift emphasis onto retail banking and away from investment banking, due to the implicit government guarantee attached to retail and not investment banking and thus should increase the flow of funds to retail banking and thus reduce the cost to customers, i.e. the wider economy. It is essential these measures should be pushed through and implemented. There is also a possible argument that more needs to be done to reform accountability and transparency in pay and bonuses in the wake of the decidedly mixed impact of 'Project Merlin', but I don't have anything particular to say about that.

8) Secure Greater Investment: Including Green, Big Society and Regional Investment Banks.

One of the issues consistently raised as holding bank the economy is the difficulty small and growing businesses face gaining finance and investment, especially in developing industries and more deprived areas. Various proposals have been made to help rectify this problem by setting up various small, dedicated investment banks that would be commercial banks, initially funded by the state, that would be focused on leveraging funds to invest in certain industries or areas. The government has already committed to establishing a Green Investment Bank and a 'Big Society' Investment Bank. The first would be focused on investing in green technologies, especially for power generation, and the second would focus on investing in social enterprises and socially responsible projects.

Various think tanks have suggested setting up regional investment banks to help fund private sector growth in particular regions. They would focus on financing sustainable growth in their particular region, with the suggestion that people in those regions would be more willing to place their savings with such a bank, knowing it went back into financing the economy in their own region. This would follow a similar model used with success in various European countries such as Germany. One question these ideas bring is how would these banks be initially financed? There has been considerable discussion among government about whether the Green and 'Big Society' Banks should be true Banks, able to borrow and lend and leverage their initial capital. There has been reluctance to let them do this for fear these debts would be added to general government debt. This seems a slightly odd objection though. When the bailouts occurred the government and ONS started quoting (for the first time) a figure for government debt specifically excluding financial interventions, and this figure has been used as the 'proper' national debt ever since. There's no obvious reason why such a distinction couldn't be made for these targeted investment banks, assuming they would pass into mostly private ownership as their success occurred.

Quantitative Easing has been suggested as a further, more radical solution for funding. The Bank of England has already run £200 billion of Quantitative Easing, basically printing money electronically. The BoE's previous scheme involved buying government bonds from various banks. There are question marks as to whether this actually worked though. Banks largely took the money to bolster their assets, rather than actually increasing lending, a phenomenon Keynes called 'pushing on string'. With the economy struggling so much again there have been calls for further QE. The problem with QE is that it also raises inflation, which is already high at 4.5%. One possible proposed solution is to engage in more limited QE but aim it more directly at the economy. A £50 billion QE program could be lent directly to businesses through a government investment agency, either a new fund or the government's existing network of regional development agencies, or more radically using it as original capital for the 'Big Society Bank', 'Green Bank' and a network of regional investment banks that could then leverage out that money to raise further finance. This would hopefully have a greater economic impact but because of the smaller over-all amount of money a considerably smaller impact on Inflation.

9) Boost Government Investment +£5 bn
(Possible Business Investment +1£bn. Possible Science Investment +£1bn).

The measures so far outlined involve cutting costs to the economy, boosting the efficiency of public sector spending, boosting the supply of finance and lending to the economy and loosening monetary policy. All possible within the confines of the spending cuts and tax rises of the Coalition's Plan A, without any problem. Slightly more difficult policies that start to scrape up against the edges of that plan are also possible though. It is widely agreed by economists that government Investment is by far the most economically efficient from of government spending when it comes to boosting the wider economy, both in the short term and in improving the long term capacity for growth. In particular most of the loss of output in the recession came from a collapse in private Investment. If the government is going to undertake any financial stimulus at this point as the economy struggles then it makes a lot of sense to do it through boosting Investment.

The government's original spending plans contained some £17 billion of cuts to investment, about a 25% cut. This is somewhat understandable politically, as people don't tend to complain about possible future construction projects not happening, compared to schools and hospitals having their budgets cut. But economically it's silly. The government is already talking about straining every sinew in Whitehall to bring forward infrastructure projects to begin as soon as possible. But it's still rejecting boosting the spending available. This makes no sense. If there are identified projects that would boost the economy, in transport infrastructure, power generation, etc, then they should be begun now, especially if it makes the difference to the economy falling back into self-reinforcing recession. The government could increase investment by £5 billion each year to 2015, boosting the economy now and our capacity for growth in the years to the future.

Obviously pulling back on spending cuts threatens to break the confines of Plan A. But not directly. The government has two 'Plan A' fiscal targets that it has committed to meeting. Firstly, balancing the structural, current budget; And secondly, debt falling as a percentage of GDP, both by 2015-16. The structural, current budget is the budget excluding 'cyclical' spending (the result of short term increases in unemployment caused by economic slump), and excluding investment. In other words the government can increase Investment spending without affecting this target. Obviously increasing investment spending risks missing the target for debt to be falling as % of GDP. But if the extra spending boosts growth and hence GDP, especially if the economy is teetering on the brink, then it may actually help hit that target both in year and through boosting the capacity for growth in each year to come.

There are other possibilities for boosting our core capacity for growth. Instead of, or in addition to, boosting state investment the government could take measures to boost private investment, such as increasing the generosity of tax credits offered for investment, in the hope this would encourage cautious firms to invest. Another suggestion has been boosting the Science budget, regarded as key to future innovation, development, research etc. Currently it has been protected in cash terms, meaning a roughly 10% real cut to 2015. It could be protected in real terms (a relative boost of £800 million) or increase it further (by say £1 billion). Both of these measures would possibly boost long-term growth, but they are more difficult because they are both current, rather than investment spending and hence risk both of the government's targets, unless they contribute a significant boost to GDP over the next 4 years.

10) Rush Increase in Personal Allowance to £10,000.

If increasing Investment spending is not enough there are one final group of possibilities for boosting growth, and that is increasing government spending or cutting taxes. But obviously this goes straight against the confines of Plan A. But there are ways of minimising the danger of missing those essential government targets while supporting demand and confidence in the short-term. Research indicates that the most effective forms of stimulus are investment and tax cuts directed at poorer workers, as the poorer you are the higher proportion of your income you spend rather than saving and hence the more money actually spreads into the economy.

This offers an obvious solution to stimulate the economy in a manner that coheres with the Coalition's already stated aims. That is raising the Personal Allowance for income tax to £10,000. Now there is no space in the financial calculations, but the government could still push on with this extremely popular policy. They inherited an allowance at £6,500 and they've already increased it to £8,000, but they could announce in the Autumn financial review that immediately from 2012 the allowance will go up to the £10,000 target. They could also use the mechanism, used before, of reducing the 40% rate threshold by an equivalent amount so the top 15% (in income) don't benefit. This would give a £400 tax cut to millions of working households and cost about £9 billion. (Or if they don't think they can afford that raise the allowance by £1000 giving everyone a £200 tax cut and costing £4.5 billion.) I would also suggest at the 2012 budget following this cutting the top rate of tax from 50%->45% (assuming the forecasts for its revenue are accurate), in order to remove the possible damage caused by this uncompetitive rate of tax.

This would give a roughly £10 billion stimulus to UK consumption, which could give consumption the shot in the arm it needs to avoid collapse and, due to its crucial role to supporting the economy in general, the wider economy as well. The question is how this can be justified without breaking apart the essential constraints of Plan A. Firstly, the government currently has some leeway on this. Last estimates state that the government will hit its target a year early in 2014, and by 2015-2016 will overshoot it by 0.6% of GDP, about £8 billion. The government could formally abandon this aim to hit the target a year early, shift its aim to 2015, and spend that putative £8 billion overshoot now. It could also commit to making up the £10 billion committed now through the proceeds of the radical tax reform already outlined; immediately beginning the preparations needed to merge NI and Income Tax and bring in new House Value Taxes, A Business Land Tax, and Financial Activities Tax in 2014; to replace taxes currently on land, property and financial services, boosting revenue in time to hit the government's targets with new, economically efficient, rationally designed taxes, replacing the rubbish we currently have. Other moves could include looking again for cuts to such areas as generous benefits for the elderly that have so far escaped the axe.

All this would act essentially as not so much a genuine fiscal loosening but only a net shift of tax rises, from the start/middle of the Plan to nearer the end 2014 or so, when hopefully the economy will be in better shape to supply the tax revenue necessary, and doing so in manner that coincides precisely with the Coalition's already stated promises and objectives. These calculations also ignore any hoped for stimulus effect. If the economy is on the edge of decline these measures may be enough to hold it steady, and in that case the £10 billion (hopefully temporary) fiscal damage would do much less damage than a genuine second economic slowdown. The government has made much of denying charges of economic dogmatism, claiming there is 'flexibility' in its plans. Well, if that is true now is certainly the time to use it. Some government spokespersons have characterised this flexibility by saying the government would allow the natural stabilisers, rising welfare spending due to unemployment, falling taxes, etc, caused by a slowdown to occur. But this is to have everything backwards. What point is there spending more money to slow the economy's descent once it has started falling? Surely it is better to spend the same money now to try to stop it from falling in the first place? (If we are currently convinced that we will have to spend the money one way or the other.)

11) One final thing: Co-ordinated International Action.

This last heading is so obvious that it almost doesn't need mentioning. The major threat to our economy currently doesn't come from our own spending cuts but from the poor state of the world-wide economy. A rising tide lifts all boats. A receding tide leaves everyone stuck in the mud on the bottom. The largest cause of instability in the world economy today is the Eurozone debt crisis. Since the initial bold moves in May 2010 there has been no solution worthy of the name to come out of the Eurozone as the crisis deepens and deepens. Either Greece must be allowed to default, or it must be given the money it needs for as long as it needs it until it can restore growth. There is no 3rd option, and the failure to whole-hearted commit to one or the other, or indeed both, is what is doing the most part of the damage. Markets are forgiving of a good plan or a bad plan. What they scare at is prevarication, hesitation, being told things that everyone knows to be unsustainable nonsense, or the obvious sight of no coherent or credible plan at all. And bits of each of these is precisely what the EU has given them to the point where it is actually threatening the entire world economy.

So, firstly, the Eurozone nations need to get off their backsides and commit absolutely unequivocally to one of these solutions f they want to protect the Euro, or they must eject Greece as soon as possible. Secondly, the USA's politicians need to come down to planet earth, admit that the fear that the USA will be unable to repay its debts is the biggest threat to their recovery, whether that comes from future unsustainable spending, or madmen bringing their country to the edge of default in the here and now. Agree a serious long-term deficit reduction plan that includes both major tax rises and spending cuts and start to take a systematic look at the economic health of their country, rather than promising simplistic, magical solutions whether of one off stimulus bills or pointless tax cuts. To be honest in both cases politicians need to admit that it is their incompetence that has allowed things to get so bad, and that they need to massively shape up.

If that wasn't enough miracles to be hoping for at once: thirdly, Global leaders should agree a massive global, selective stimulus, re-balancing plan, whereby surplus, or low deficit, fiscally stable countries boost spending and their deficits and high-deficit, fiscally unsustainable countries cut theirs. Ideally by sufficient amounts to equal the reduction in demand in countries like the US, UK, Greece, Ireland, Portugal etc; or if this can't be achieved, by as much as possible. Now obviously the UK government does not get to decide whether these do or do not occur, so it is perhaps slightly unfair to file them under the heading of a growth plan. But it can certainly throw its considerable international weight behind calling for them, and hence perhaps offer some of the global leadership that has been so sorely lacking recently.

Conclusion

With that I think that I have covered about every single major area of policy that the government could and should cover. In fairness in many of these things are stuff the government is already trying or considering doing, but many are not. None of these things are particularly esoteric, but they will all annoy someone and involve fighting political battles, but the government cannot afford not to. If the economy tanks again they will go down with it, and so will we all (to a degree). But follow through on all these areas and the government will put us in the best economic shape to face the 21st Century we can be in, for better or worse. But what do you think? Do you agree or disagree? And do you think there are any obvious areas I've missed?

The UK Needs a Growth Strategy . . . . so here it is! (Part 1)

2011-09-26T17:13:00.002+01:00

It's pretty widely accepted that the UK economy is in trouble again. There's been no 'double-dip' recession so far, but the economy is flatlining. We've had growth of only 0.2% over the last 9 months, and the forecasts are equally grim for the next months. Inflation remains high at 4.5%, consumer and business confidence is rock bottom, consumer spending is flat and the mini-manufacturing boom of the start of the year has vanished. Internationally the world is in even worse trouble. The EU is still neck deep in a sovereign debt crisis that it seems incapable of getting itself out of, the US has downgraded its previous growth since the recession, and even China and the other leading emerging economies are struggling. Having blown their reserves getting through the first crisis they are fighting even higher Inflation than us and, with eerily familiarity, the first signs of credit drying up in economies become dangerously dependent on cheap money.

All is not yet lost though. The British economy is not yet going backwards, but it is barely moving forward . It's like a car whose engine is grinding away but doesn't quite have the power to push it up the hill. But it hasn't stalled entirely. The reason growth has ground to a halt is the over-hang of the incredible levels of debt that built up until 2008. Businesses, the financial sector, households have all been plowing money into paying off debts rather than increasing output, for the first time in 20 years. And the government has been straining every sinew to cut the deficit, and bring the explosion of public debt under control. This is important, and indeed essential to future prosperity. We have had a debt crisis, we need to reduce our debts. But underlying growth is needed so we can pay off our debts.

The government's original economic strategy was to focus on getting the deficit under controls, thus securing confidence in the UK's ability to control its debt and through that secure the low interest rates essential to our tentative recovery. Beyond that, Monetary stimulus would improve liquidity and lending, the devaluation of the pound would boost manufacturing and exports, and tax hikes on consumption and financial services would raise extra money while further encouraging the economy to rebalance away from consumption, debt and banking towards manufacturing and exports. Business investment and export trade would provide the fuel for the economy to steadily rebalance itself and pay off debt allowing it to move onto a more balanced and stable long-term footing.

'Expansionary fiscal contraction' hasn't quite worked out the way it was hoped though. International conditions have deteriorated dramatically and confidence has collapsed. With the whole world sinking Business investment and Exports just can't provide enough boost to push growth along. No growth risks the economy sinking back into self-reinforcing recession. It means no extra money to pay off private debts and not enough extra jobs and profits to increase taxes, cut spending and close the government's deficit. There are, thankfully, at last signs that the government is properly facing up to the reality that they need to do more to encourage growth and that deficit reduction alone, while necessary, is not sufficient to ensure recovery. Especially with International conditions so poor. Plan A has proved insufficient. So what is the alternative? Well, there are two main points of view on that one. Either Plan B, Or Plan A+.

Labour and left-wing sources have called for Plan B 'to support jobs and growth'. Unfortunately what they mean by this seems to just be more government borrowing and spending, and more debt, rather than facing up to the more complicated issues slowing our economy. They blame the slowdown in the recovery on the government's spending cuts. I still think this approach is rubbish. Overall Britain has the 2nd largest private and public debts of any country. We need to beat this as fast as possible or we will never get back to truly stable prosperity. Devotees of 'Plan B' seem to have a belief in the almost magical power of government spending. They seem to think that what is in reality merely a slower rate of growth in nominal state spending is entirely to blame for all our economic woes; but the massive convulsions shaking the world economy in Europe, the US and elsewhere, not to mention rampaging inflation, and the drag caused by households and businesses ploughing money into paying off their own debts, is totally irrelevant. This is plain nonsense.

They also cheerfully ignore the reality that Britain could face rising interest rate and collapsing economic credibility. We have to worry about the supplying our deficit as well as the demand for it in the economy. Our struggling economy increases the case for a higher deficit to support private demand, but it also simultaneously increases difficulty in funding that deficit, cancelling this argument out. This is not just some right-wing scare story. We have almost the highest deficit of any country but yet thanks to our commitment to taming that deficit in the next 5 years we enjoy interest rates almost the lowest in the world for both public and private debt. It is correct that we were never in as bad shape as Greece or Ireland. Nor has our political system been as dysfunctional as America's. But when even countries like Spain and Italy are facing interest rates of 6% it becomes impossible to deny that Britain could have faced similar problems, if strong and determined action hadn't been taken. A higher deficit might have helped cushion the fall in growth thus far, but it may also have pushed interest rates up enough to counter any beneficial effects, or even worse.

In addition, regardless of its intrinsic merits, having committed ourselves to this plan to abandon it would hit confidence hard, as a frank admission of failure. Our current relatively privileged position rests on global confidence in our government's plans, whatever they may be. To dramatically change direction would quite probably shatter that confidence, thus bringing about the result it was intended to avoid. There is another alternative to a Plan B of increasing borrowing and debt. That is what has been called Plan A+. This regards Osbourne's program of deficit reduction as an essential basis for stability, but accepts the argument that deficit reduction alone is not enough and that it needs to be 1 wing of government policy complimented by an equal 2nd wing, a push for growth. A major drive across the entire range of possible government policy to improve the UK's supply side economic efficiency and productivity and thus improve growth through measures other than just crudely increasing demand. So what would a full Plan A+ look like?

Here under 10 broad headings I outline the steps the government could take to give the UK the boost to growth is so desperately needs.

1) Complete Measures to ease Planning Restrictions.

One of the Government's key pro-Growth measures is a radical overhaul of the regulation surrounding getting planning permission for new construction and development. Business leaders have long identified restrictions on planning and development as a major brake on growth in the UK. Official guidance on planning decisions now spans thousands of pages and it is reportedly slower and more expensive to gain planning permission for major projects than in almost any other European country. According to some reports between twice and ten times more expensive. The government has committed to massively cutting down regulation, from thousands of pages to 60, while simultaneously localising decision making and abandoning central targets and planning quotas. For the first time a presumption in favour of (sustainable) development is being introduced. It is estimated that our slower and less responsive planning system costs the economy £3 billion a year relative to the average of our competitors. If reform could deliver benefits of even a part of this figure it would be a significant economic boost.

2) Even-handed Business & Employment de-regulation.

The Labour years from 1997-2010 saw a vast explosion in the quantity of regulation surrounding Businesses and Employment. From the Social Chapter to the Equality Act the government imposed a vast range of new requirements around environmental issues, health and safety, employee rights, anti-discrimination measures, etc. All these impose costs on businesses and especially small businesses that lack the capacity to spread the costs across a large turnover. Labour never found a problem they thought they couldn't regulate into submission, often in a haphazard and expensive way. The government should hold a wide-ranging review on all regulations on Business and Employment seeking to save the economy Billions of pounds a year through time and expense saved by reducing this burden.

There is a right way and a wrong way to do this though. Some right-wingers figures have recently campaigned on this front against the introduction of the latest Working Time Directive, which extends employment protection to temp workers. This is to take the wrong approach though. We don't need one class of workers who are cossetted and one group that lack even basic protections, whether that's between permanent and temporary workers in employee rights, or between public and private workers with the issue of pensions. What we need is comprehensive approach that works out what is a decent minimal level of protection and support that should apply to all workers, but which minimises the cost in time and expense to employers. Some amount of regulation and worker protection is an essential feature of a decent country and economy, but too much of it can backfire. Regulation that makes it very difficult to fire permanent workers will also reduce the willingness and likelihood of hiring workers, thus protecting those in a job at the expense of those without one, and encouraging employers to hire temporary staff with more flexible conditions. On a large scale this may even have detrimental social effect, introducing division between those workers who are so secure and those who aren't, as has actually happened in some European countries. Another argument is that extensive regulation does give protection we would like to have, like good services and lower taxes, but when the country is broke we accept that this may require paying more taxes and getting less services than we'd like, equally it may mean having less regulatory protection for a while as a cost of getting our economy back to a stable position.

3) Reign back on and re-target 'Green' Polices.

There is a growing focus in government on bringing in 'Green' policies that are aimed at reducing our Carbon emissions over the next 20 years to hit various targets to combat Global Warming. Largely this consists of subsidising renewable energy and attempting to raise the price of energy generally to make renewable energy competitive, and to spur investment and research into these fuels. Unfortunately this is forecast to lead to a significant increase in fuel and electricity bills, particularly hitting those most energy intensive businesses, generally manufacturing and industry, to the tune of billions of pounds. This obviously goes right against our need to rebalance our economy. It may also prove largely futile if our efforts merely lead to industry relocating to countries with cheaper energy. 'Greening' our economy, like a strong welfare state is something that relies on general prosperity to fund it. They cannot be opposed. The public will not accept green measures that cut their standard of living, and Green measures that hit the economy will not last past the damage they cause. Environmentalists must abandon any policy plan built on such a basis. But the public can and do embrace Environmentally friendly measures when these measures work with them and make life easier. The massive growth in recycling coincides with government taking steps to make recycling easy, not with people being threatened into it. Also environmental targets must be feasible. We are currently signed up to strong theoretical targets for emission reduction that look good but like almost every other country we are on the way to missing by a clear mile.

This is all clearly ridiculous. But the government can take action to change these features. It could soften our targets for Emission reduction somewhat, leaving targets that are still strong compared to where we are at the moment, but which we have a cat's chance of hell of hitting, rather than just sounding nice, and then make sure we really hit them. It should cut the cost of Green policies by reducing ridiculous levels of subsidies on certain renewable energy sources, like feed in tariffs for solar energy that are more twice the general cost of electricity. It should abandon a restricted view of what is acceptable renewable energy, and concentrate on what is practical, embracing nuclear as a relatively cheap and non-carbon intensive source of power, as well as off-shore hydro and wave, while abandoning its Quixotic obsession (if you'll excuse the pun) with Wind energy, which is expensive, ineffective and a total eyesore, even if very Green. It should focus efforts on helping households and businesses save and reuse energy, through programs to insulate homes, like the 'Green New Deal' and re-use heat and energy in industrial processes rather than just raising the price of energy until no-one can afford it. These measures would cut the cost of green policy and focus it towards saving energy, and thus cutting costs for homes and businesses and increasing their efficiency rather than pricing them out of energy.

4) Continue pursuing Public Service revolutions in Justice, Health, Education, Welfare.

The current Coalition government is currently pursuing major reform in almost every one of our major public services. These reforms have the possibility of dramatically increasing the effectiveness and efficiency of our public services at the time we need it most. In our Justice system, the government is attempting a rehabilitation revolution. If even moderately successful this could cut serious sums of money off the massive costs to our economy from crime, as well as the expense of locking up an ever expanding number of people. In Education, Britain has slipped down the international league tables for basic Maths and English skills, and too many of our schools are average rather than excellent. Businesses frequently complain about the standards of basic skills of high-school and even university graduates. The government is expanding spending on apprenticeships and technical education, and attempting a revolution in Schools, giving many schools extensive freedoms to run themselves while nationally improving the quality and rigour of qualifications. In Welfare the government is transforming welfare to alleviate the welfare trap that many people find themselves in and incentivise employment and work. These measures will hopefully cut welfare spending and encourage into jobs. In Health the government is transforming the NHS in order to help is make an unprecedented £20 billion of savings and improve productivity in one of the largest organisations in the world. Improving productivity in these vital services would be worth billions to the economy a year and with the continuing likelihood of there being little extra money to spare they are vital to driving improvement in these essential public services that our economy relies on so heavily.

5) Continue efforts to improve Public productivity: procurement, quangos, PFI etc.

The Public sector in Britain generally consists about 40% of our economy, and over the last 3 years since the recession it has made up 50%. How efficiently this money is spent makes a huge difference to our economic performance and our capacity for growth. It is estimated that if public sector productivity had grown at the same rate as private sector productivity over the last several years then it would add 0.5% to our annual growth. There are various the ways that government can boost the general productivity of public sector spending.

The current government has launched reviews of procurement led by Philip Green, to look at the opportunity to use central government's spending power to gain better economies of scale in procurement, and this has outlined £3 billion of savings that could be achieved by co-ordinated action. There has been a 'bonfire of the Quangos', operationally independent but publicly funded bodies that Labour set up in vast numbers. Dozens of these bodies have been abolished or merged, or their functions returned to the relevant government departments, with the best estimate for savings at around £1.5 billion a year. The spending cuts themselves have led to a massive drive to save money in back-office functions, in attempt to make cuts while sparing highly visible 'front-line' services as far as possible. Both central and local government are making huge efforts to save money by merging and cutting back office functions between departments. This is estimated to save £6 billion a year by 2015.

PFI has been another area the government has attempted to gain better value-for-money. PFI is a program where the private companies build major public infrastructure projects, like a school or hospital, and the public sector rents them back for a fixed period after which they become public sector property. It is possible for PFI to deliver good value for money, but Labour went at PFI like a drunk let loose in a wine cellar. A government investigation has suggested that the public sector got only £50 billion worth of assets for a £200 billion commitment and on average PFI were 50% more expensive than conventional government borrowing. In an attempt to recoup some of these huge costs there has been growing calls for a massive across-the-board re-evaluation of all PFI contracts. The problem is that these companies have legal contracts, so even if the government does decide the contracts were insanely generous then they cannot force companies to re-negotiate. If companies refuse one other option is to levy a windfall tax specifically on those companies deemed to have made excessive profits from PFI. This is still a remarkably complicated move though. Either way it is done it is possible that serious drive in this direction could save £1-2 billion a year in costs on these projects.

(That's 1-5. I decided to cut it up for time constraints and to keep it short. I hope to be posting entries 6-10, from tax reform to allowance rushing shortly, so please come back soon.)

God Bless you, George Monbiot. You've never been so right!

2011-08-31T00:10:00.005+01:00

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George Monbiot does speaks a lot of total rubbish. But, My God, when he's right, he's right.

On the Guardian website he's making a point I've thought true for years.

That academic knowledge and research is painfully restricted from the wider public by a high wall of ridiculous prices for books and journals.

That academic discussion and research, much of it funded by every single taxpayer, is kept hidden and restricted for the benefit of journal publishers and academic institutions, locking that information within small and incestuous 'professional' academic circles, much to the detriment of our entire wider society.
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Academic publishers make Murdoch look like a socialist
Academic publishers charge vast fees to access research paid for by us. Down with the knowledge monopoly racketeers

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/aug/29/academic-publishers-murdoch-socialist
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Only he says it far more eloquently (and well informed) than I ever could!

It's good to see a mainstream journalist giving both barrels on such a nerdy and niche, but I really think quite important, issue. So Good on you George Monbiot, Guardian hack that you may be. Keep fighting the good fight.

And if you're interested in the spread of knowledge and discussion in our society do give his article a read.

We have Nothing to Learn from these Riots!

2011-08-14T23:26:00.005+01:00

And there is a very simple reason for that. Because all the pious, boring observations trotted out by commentators and politicians are all things that we damn well should have known already!

Of course mindless, idiotic, destructive, unbelievably selfish and heartless destruction , theft and violence is totally unjustifiable or excusable regardless of other factors. But then we should already know that!

Of course there exists an underclass in our society, dangerously detached from the respectable mainstream of our society, ghettoised geographically, educationally under-qualified to compete in a globalised world, and utterly let down by a society that has simultaneously preached mindless consumerism and an open contempt for the traditional moral and spiritual values that kept communities together despite poverty and social neglect. But then we should already know that!

The gross failure of the education system when for poorer communities, the lack of stable families and male role models, the sneering contempt at every single common social institution from the liberal 'elite'; the inter-generational worklessness reinforced by pockets of bad education, low skills, crap environments, widespread reliance on welfare, and geographical isolation from jobs and investment. The collapse of an actual sense of community among 'communities' caused by the decline of the social institutions that have traditionally bonded together; the 'progressive' doctrines that tell people that any possible reason excuses them from their own actions and out-and-out expects them to fail; the empty consumerism and nomadic nature of modern economic life, crude multiculturalism & constant immigration, damaging economic disruption and a political culture that just does not listen, does not pay attention and would rather mouth the same platitudes over and over again than face up to the reality that stares them in the face.

None of this should come as a surprise to anybody. All of these factors have existed for years and have been clear and obvious for as long for anyone who actually bothers to see. None of them have suddenly become true over the last few weeks. In fact they are largely unrelated.

Despite the blase generalisations that have come from so many people, the rioters and looters were not all particularly poor, unemployed, cut off from society, or from broken homes. They were not all 16-19 year olds with good prospects cruelly cut short, rioting as a response to the ending of EMA or the increase in tuition fees; nor were not all Black people rioting as a response to police oppression and racism. Many of them had jobs, qualifications, prospects, money, and already owned much of the stuff they then went on to steal. Plenty of people poorer than them didn't steal and riot, plenty of people unemployed didn't murder and rob, plenty of people with fewer qualifications or prospects, or from worse home, kept their dignity and honour and didn't go on a violent rampage.

I would like to learn a lesson from a friend of mine and avoid falling into hyperbole. So I'll say that, for me, the 2nd worst thing about these Riots is that for a few days, or weeks if we're lucky, these issues will be aired. Various commentators and politicians will pull them out and dust them off and trumpet them in connection with the disturbances we've suffered, regardless of whether there's any actual real or direct connection involved. Everyone will have an opinion about their favourite left wing or right wing explanation, almost all based on nothing more than personal hunches and a complete absence of actual data.

But then after a few weeks the media focus will move on. The politicians and commentators will pontificate about some other subject that has been pushed into the news and this will all once again sink back below the surface of our national conversation, to fester and spoil, invisible in plain view, while our leaders and commentators mouth the ideological platitudes that are so much easier and more satisfying than facing up to the difficult reality of issues that no one on the political divide has any easy solution to.

Hopefully this time will be different. Hopefully the politicians and media will not just move on but will take a concerted and realistic at the problems that dog many of our communities. Maybe they'll actually be motivated to try something different rather than mouth the same irrelevant platitudes that press the right ideological buttons but have so little do with what is actually going on in people's lives. To be honest I'm not that hopeful, but it would be wrong to be entirely cynical and despondent. It is precisely that gnawing cynicism that gets us into this situation and then leaves us stuck there.

Because the truth is we can change even these seemingly intractable problems for the better. It all comes down to the choices people make, both in the short term and the long term. Whether they take the hard choices and face up to the uncomfortable reality we have to deal with as individuals and a society, or the easy choices, either for themselves or us all, and try to sweep it all under the carpet once again and hope it will magically just go away.

Only time will tell. But we can all do our part, if we just have the will and determination to take some responsibility for the world we live in, both individually and socially.

Dear Father, we pray . . .

2011-08-11T00:20:00.005+01:00

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For those who live in fear,
That they may find courage,

For those who live in Darkness,
That they may find Light,

For those who live in Anger,
That they may find Peace,

For those who live in hatred,
That they may forgive.

In Jesus's name we ask this,

Amen.

An old prayer of mine, from about ‘04.

How to Fight for Electoral Reform.

2011-07-29T00:23:00.001+01:00

In my previous articles I looked at the main reasons for the dramatic failure of the 'Yes' campaign for reform to the Alternative Vote in 2011 and then I suggested a better replacement for pure FPTP now AV has been so thoroughly electorally discredited. That covers want went wrong before, and what we should try to achieve in the future.

So what's left?

Well, how we actually achieve that goal in the future, and make sure we don't just repeat the absolute thrashing of 2011. What tactics and strategy should be used to finally achieve the dream of electoral reform?

I have become more and more convinced due to the election results in 2005 and 2010 that our electoral system is inefficient, unresponsive and broken, concentrates power in an arbitrary manner, and fails to respond to the plural reality of the modern world. I also think that there is a relatively simple adjustment that can be made to it to bring it up to date, while still maintaining the vast majority of the tried and tested principles and structure that are such an ingrained part of our national and political culture, and have helped make Britain the longest lasting and most stable democracy in the world.

I am a conservative and a Conservative. But a conservative is not opposed to all change, rather he supports measured change, considered change, evolutionary change, change that goes with the grain of human nature and most of all change that is necessary and possible without just making things worse. I have come to believe that electoral reform, done properly is both necessary to make our democracy suitable for the 21st Century, and possible without losing what is best about our long-standing system. A conservative also knows the importance of practicality. Good intentions alone don't do anything unless you have the practical means of making them happen. No-one can fault the devotion and patience of Electoral Reformers, but their tactics have been awful. The 'Yes' campaign "was an epic clusterfuck of a campaign which will go down in the annals of political incompetence" in the words of one of its senior activists. In fact a future campaign for reform couldn't go far wrong if it just did the exact opposite of everything done by the AV Yes campaign.

The 1st thing is to realise that a fundamental change of strategy and tactics are needed. The cause of electoral reform has to be one of the most longstanding and least successful causes in UK political history. The Electoral Reform Society, the UK's largest and oldest supporter of reform was founded in 1884. It has been fighting the same battle totally unsuccessfully for 130 years. Along with the Joseph Rowntree Trust it had a major role in the Yes campaign in 2010-11. These groups provided much needed money for the campaign. But beyond that though they imported a downright damaging mindset that profoundly handicapped the Yes campaign.

The skills needed to run a pressure group are very different to the skills needed to run a political campaign. And the ERS is not even a particularly successful pressure group. Pressure groups need to inspire a particular group of supporters and keep them involved. National election campaigns need to rapidly build as a broad a coalition as possible and provide a clear and compelling narrative about why they are the choice that will most benefit people. A pressure group must grab as much attention as possible in an public arena crowded with many other calls on people's attention, as well as simple apathy. A referendum campaign has to win a binary choice. It is Yes vs No. Any future campaign for reform must move away from the ERS, pressure group model that has failed so comprehensively over many decades.

Electoral reformers shouldn't be thinking like an unsuccessful pressure group, they need to think like a political party. And also they need to appreciate the importance of political parties, and how they can be used to effect change. The Yes to AV campaign had some idea about building an anti-politics campaign that would set itself against political parties and politics as usual. This approach was rubbish. It straight and away alienated the very people most experienced and professional in political campaigning. and with power and influence in British political life. Like a political party they need to be able to appeal to as wide a range of people as possible from different ideological and political backgrounds and tie them together temporarily around a belief that electoral reform is a cause for them. It also needs to be ruthlessly practical in reaching out to people.

It must think about political parties in another sense as well. The facts are that our political life is overwhelmingly conducted through political parties, as much as they are also generally somewhat distrusted. When people want cues about political decisions they don't look to celebrities or entertainers, they look to political figures, media commentators, etc, they trust. These people set the tone of debate and commentary. Politics in Britain is conducted on a shoe-string, but what resources there are, are overwhelmingly held by political parties as well, both in terms of money and also connections to the media, experience of campaigning, and standing nationwide networks for disseminating ideas and encouraging volunteers.

Political unbalance crippled the Yes2AV campaign. It deliberately sold itself as a left-wing, progressive cause and made deliberate attempts to even portray AV as an anti-Conservative measure. At a stroke they successfully managed to alienate 43% of the electorate. They also managed to alienate many more people who didn't want to support a political stitch-up designed to permanently exclude a particular party from government. It also allowed its media presence to be dominated by Liberal Democrats far too much.

This allowed the No campaign a completely clear run of right of centre voters and even motivated many to get out and vote against. This was absolutely fatal when the left-wing vote was also thoroughly split. Any future campaign for electoral reform should put deliberate effort into pumping up a Conservative Yes campaign and UKIP Yes Campaign as much as possible, as well as among Lib Dem and Labour voters. The clear truth is that electoral reform will never happen without the support of many right-wing voters. (For a first hand account of how the Yes campaign deliberately ignored even the Conservative Yes organisation. See here)

This is also important because any future chance for reform is most likely to come about due to action by a political party. The 2011 referendum occurred because Gordon Brown opened a window in the Labour party, and the Lib Dems got themselves in a position to exploit it when a hung parliament occurred. This means that a future opportunity for reform may occur as soon as 2015, and reformers should be working towards that eventuality. The other thing is that an opportunity for reform will only most likely present itself if one of the two main parties opens itself up to reform. As long as both parties are opposed to a referendum, then they can maintain a solid front against any attempt to negotiate for one. The best chance then is to persuade either Labour or the Conservatives to at least support a further referendum on electoral reform, though this may be too much of a long shot. At best, it will require another hung parliament, with the Lib Dems in the driving seat.

This work should also be done starting years in advance, building a constant presence, however large or small, and seeking to influence the terms of debate through these crucial drivers of the political weather and discussion. Efforts should go into both lobbying and building support among the MP's, MEP's, Lords, Councillors who hold a vast amounts of power and influence among these parties and also persuading ordinary activists and members, as well as figures in the media and think tanks. These are the politically active people in our country, and the best hope for reform success must involve getting as many of them as possible onside, regardless of their particular party affiliation. Also because they are among the few people interested in politics enough to listen to arguments about reform outside the context of an imminent referendum.

This is the uphill struggle the Yes campaign faces. The Lib Dems and Minor Parties are already solidly behind reform, for obvious reasons. Labour and Conservatives do very well out of the current system though. This means roughly 65% of the electorate have very little incentive to support change. One way that this can be countered is by stressing the dangers of FPTP to both sides as well as the way specific reforms such as AMS cohere with the principles they consider themselves to be proud of, such as fairness, while being aware how members of these parties conceive these values differently. Elements of these parties may support change to a more stable proportional system as an insurance rather than the more dramatic shifts of FPTP. For the Conservatives the ghosts of 1997 and 2005 should raise a powerful argument against FPTP, as does the way FPTP continues to totally disenfranchise large right-wing minorities like UKIP For Labour, the ease with which the Conservatives have dominated UK government over the last 130 years despite being a minority compared to the broad agreement along the left for much of that time, can only raise question marks against FPTP. Reformers can also appeal to Labour 'progressive' principles. This attempt was one of the few successful parts of the AV yes campaign, that managed to build an, initially, impressive Labour Yes campaign out of almost no traditional Labour support for reform, although it was later lost in the general chaos and incompetence of the Yes campaign.

But support among political leaders and activists alone will not a referendum victory make. It is obviously also extremely important to lodge the ideas of reform in the minds of the wider public. The general public is even less interested in electoral reform that political activists though. Because of this it may be wise, outside a referendum campaign, to concentrate on discrediting FPTP in the eyes of the wider public rather than actively promoting an alternate system. Support for an actual separate voting system is worth building among a wide range of poltical activists and parties as far in advance as possible, but among the general public this is almost certainly impossible, requiring too much detail. However, even if reformers could just manage to lodge in the public consciousness a couple of ideas about how FPTP is an unfair, broken system it would build a much stronger platform to persuade them of an alternative in any future referendum campaign, which would hopefully have some support from activists and political groups across the political spectrum ready to go for any campaign.

The crucial feature is to make electoral reform relevant to people. In the jargon of campaigning it needs to be 'Retailed'. That means instead of presenting people with an abstract argument and cause break it down into simple examples of issues people actually care about, both of how the old system is broken and of how the alternative (which for me would preferably be AMS) would be better. This is what the No campaign successfully managed to do with its arguments about the cost and complexity of AV, and what the Yes campaign singly failed to do. And again it is something that should be done years in advance. FPTP has the massive advantage of incumbency. A Yes campaign for reform needs to take a clear two part message. Firstly, demonstrating why FPTP is broken, and then explaining how AMS will solve this problem. It is not just enough though to take reform, and take something people like, and tell them the two are connected. There has to be a plausible and simple logical connection between the two such that their mind's will naturally slide between the two, even for someone not paying that much attention.

Again this was one of Yes' main failure in 2011. Messages about the expenses scandals and ending seats for life look superficially clear and resonant with a cynical electorate but they failed the connection test. The Yes campaign never explained (because there was no obvious link) how AV was meant to achieve these miracles and so they made little progress with the electorate. On the other hand the No campaign's arguments plausibly, clearly and simply connected to AV and so were more successful at sticking in the electorate's minds.

The third crucial feature is to work with the general conservative bent of the public. If it was not obvious before the massive AV No vote, the public is reflexively conservative about constitutional change, especially any one they don't easily understand the rationale and argument for. A Yes campaign for Reform should seek to work with this rather than against it. Stress should be put on how reform actually strengthens the familiar principles and arguments used in favour of our electoral system. Obviously this won't be possible with all such traditional 'principles' but where possible it should be tried, to counter the unfamiliarity proposed in any change. An example would be that AMS would actually increase representation by electing Labour MP's where enough people vote Labour or Conservative MP's where there are Conservatives or etc. Rather than giving large numbers of voters no representation on arbitrary geographical grounds.

The next point is not to do your opponents work for them. This is largely a tactical point to consider during the election campaign. The side that wins will be the side that more clearly gets their message to the electorate. Relentlessly push the clear positive advantages of change, relentlessly slag off FPTP. Every single message should follow a clear formula, FPTP bad because X, PR better because Y. Do not spend valuable time arguing about the minutia of your opponents claims. Don't waste time discussing their arguments to the point where it crowds out the points you are trying to make, especially when media coverage is scarce and the public's attention distracted. All a No campaign has to do is generate enough reasonable doubt in the public's mind. A Yes campaign has to not do what their opponents would want them to do, which is to get bogged down in precisely the manner the Yes campaign for AV did. I can only repeat the ridiculousness of the latter stages of the AV campaign. The NO campaign wanted to portray AV as an expensive Lib Dem fix, so the Yes campaign treated them to the ridiculous spectacle of a chorus of leading Lib Dems talking about nothing apart from how much AV would cost. A text-book example of what not to do.

Be aware of what your opponents will do. Any future Yes campaign has the advantage of the experience of the AV campaign, and especially the reaction of the No campaign. Under any future referendum, for AMS for example, it is likely that very similar No arguments will be used. Other obvious arguments against a semi-PR system can be anticipated. The argument about Cost, possibly about complexity, about there being more hung parliaments, etc. A Yes campaign should already have pre-prepared and tested plans and responses to the main likely arguments, ways of countering them and re-directing the debate back to the areas a Yes arguments want to hold it on. They know what didn't work for the Yes campaign in 2011, and hence what to do differently, both in terms of debate and in terms of messages in the future. Generally speaking a No campaign will try to make the argument about anything rather than the issue of the actual features of FPTP vs AMS (or another alternative) because they know that FPTP just doesn't stand up under scrutiny. Yes campaigners must do whatever they can to shut down other issues and direct any debate back to teh failures of FPTP and teh advantages of AMS (or another alternative). That is their winning ground.

The final point is a positive one. The circumstances will be better. The circumstances in 2011 were almost uniquely bad for Reformers. It is highly likely that a future referendum will take place in more favourable political weather. This is certainly not a reason for complacency, but it is a reason for hope. This is doubly true if Reformers do learn the lessons of 2010-11 and make sure they are better prepared and better planned for any future referendum. With a combination of a broad political coalition and a clear set of anti-FPTP, pro-AMS reform lines to take there is every reason to hope that we will see Electoral Reform in this country within the next decade.

Love Is . . .

2011-07-12T00:11:00.005+01:00

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Love is patient; Love is kind; Love does not Envy; Love does not boast; Love is not arrogant; Love is not rude. Love does not insist on having its own way; Love does not get irritable; Love does not resent; Love does not rejoice in evil; Rather Love rejoices in Truth. Love bears all things; Love believes all things; Love hopes all things; And Love endures all things. Love never ends.

Love is the meaning and purpose of a human life. Everything else is a tool, a means, a method, a stalling tactic. we eat so that we may have strength, we breath so life goes on, we study so we know more so we can achieve more, but all these are merely means to the end of having the chance, the opportunity, the possibility to Love; whether we love our life itself, the Universe we inhabit, the joys and wonders we experience, or discover, or learn to understand, the other unique human beings we meet, the God Almighty who gave us all this. And gave us all this to Love.

But what is Love? St Paul gives us a description that takes the breath away, that stills the voice, that rests perfect. But it is a list of features, rather than an essential definition. Love comes in many different forms, we can love another human being , as a friend, as a lover, as family; or we can love a piece of beauty or music or calm or expression, or we can love a sensation, like the taste of chocolate chip ice-cream, or we can love a subject and be driven to learn more, understand more, know more of the thing we love. Or most mysterious of all we can Love God, who we can never clearly see, or truly know, but people like me feel utterly drawn to none-the-less.

All these Loves are different, as many and diverse as there are different individual possible objects of Love. But still they are all very much the same. The Greeks famously had three different common words for what we simply call Love. And it is important to recognise how Loves can be different. But also to realise that they all have so much in common. Though one may be a thing of little importance, whereas another can define an entire life, or shake the whole world.

All Love has so much in common, though still each is utterly unique, to the person loving and the being loved. What it always is is the utterly deep appreciation of the value of the thing loved. This leads to care, this leads to kindness, this leads to constant devotion, this leads to boundless optimism.

Love is not just a feeling and Love is not just a commitment. In fact if it is any one thing it is a realisation. But really it is all these things and more. It is utterly unique and it is totally universal. It can involve your whole being; body, mind, heart, and soul. And Love binds you together as one being, just as it binds you tightly to the thing you Love.

For in Love a person sees through the stuff that makes up the world and catches of glimpse of what lies beneath it: the endless, bottomless well of value, the beauty, the wonder, the perfection hidden inside every ordinary thing whether anyone else sees it or not. And he doesn't just see it, he falls head first into it. And the world is then filled with light. William Blake said "To see a world in a grain of sand, And a heaven in a wild flower, Hold infinity in the palm of your hand, And eternity in an hour." A single flower can be enough reason for an entire life's devotion if someone truly sees the wonder that is contained in it. A single sight of beauty can leave you transfixed for hours.

Love is revelation, Love is the one thing that is truly transcendent; Love is true prophecy because in Love the person sees utterly through the skin of things, through the ordinary everydayness of the world, into the Truth that lies hidden just out of ordinary reach. Love is to pierce through the world of objects, everyone more of the same, to see through it, beyond it, to see what it truly is.

The world can be grim and dark, the world can hurt, the world can wear you down, the world can seem bleak and grey and miserable. But just a little bit of Love shines through all that and fills the world with light that all the darkness in the entire world can not overcome. Love makes the utterly ordinary and even boring extraordinary. Love makes a bunch of noises a piece of music, love makes the fall of night a beautiful sunset. Love makes you realise in all the darkness that good will certainly win out in the end, that Heaven is real, because through Love we experience it, and that evil will never destroy all that is good. Love is solid and real in the world even when everything else slides into dust.

To Love another person is to truly live. It is to see them as they truly are, the bright Image of God. For in love you see the infinite beauty in their eyes, the infinite nobility in their soul, the infinite possibility in their life if only they chose to do it. And you see the sheer perfection, sometimes for just a moment, even though on an intellectual level you know that they have flaws like everyone else. For a moment you cannot see the flaws at all. You just see the kindness, the generosity, the wisdom, the dedication, the gentleness, the patience, the elegance, the warmth, the intelligence and the laughter. You see the one you Love as we all should truly be, were we all not fallen, and you realise why Life is sacred.

To know someone loves you is the greatest thing in the world. To see someone's love for you written over their face in a moment is that greatness and wonder captured in a single frame. To be standing there unaware, and then to turn and see them looking over at you with that incredible, indescribable, unforgettable, unmissable look, which says more perfectly than anything else could ever say, I Love you. That look unique, in that moment, between them and you. Who knew a human face could express so much. Like they had seen a perfect diamond before them, a perfect sunrise, a perfect . . . something. And it takes your breath away. And you would live in that moment forever if you could.

Love gives you strength. Love makes you sacrifice. Love means you can endure more than you ever thought you could. Love means that the cold and the dark don't touch you because Love transforms every situation. Even a boring or dull task with someone you love becomes a source of joy and laughter and an experience to cherish, because you are sharing it with them. Love is incredible because uniquely love is not something about yourself but is utterly about the those you love, and so it connects you more deeply and more truly with the Universe we inhabit than anything else can. Love gives you strength to give and to sacrifice, even if they do not Love you.

Love drives you to great things, Love gives you bravery and strength you never knew you had. Love alone can make you sacrifice anything and everything for something you have realised is of great value. Love gives true heroism, courage, nobility, wisdom and without it none of these things really exist. Love makes you realise what truly matters and Love drives you to do something about it, because Love makes every obstacle and danger seem like a tiny thing compared to all the wonder.

Love may not be grandly expressed; Love may not burn brightly for all to see; Love may be unspoken; Love may be a quiet thing, but it is no less wonderful for that. Love goes on and on. You may not feel, but you may still Love, in your commitment, in your dedication, in your kindness, in the actions that you do. And that is Love to.

Love can hurt, and if you trip and fall Love can lead you to do terrible things. Love can bring great pain, it can be fragile, and it can break, and then it can hurt more than anything else. "Sometimes it last in love, but sometimes it hurts instead". Love can lead to great loss that cannot be healed, even with time. It can only be slowly forgotten.

But to Love is to realise that the risk is worth it. To realise that to feel great loss means that you had something wonderful, if only for a while. Otherwise it would not hurt so much to see it gone. To Love is to realise that it is better to have stood on the peak of the highest mountain and seen the Sun for a few minutes than to have spent all your life in the valleys in the shadows, never knowing what could be possible. Love is a light that even its pain and darkness cannot put out.

Love is the meaning of the Gospel and the Law and the Prophets. Love is the 1st and 2nd Commandment. Jesus talked about the pearl of great price that a man sells everything he has to hold that pearl and is happy, the treasure in a field that a man sells everything he has and owns just to buy that field. He speaks about the reckless joy and abandon of Loving something and truly knowing it matters, whatever that may be, and that is his description of the Kingdom of Heaven and God.

Christians argued for Centuries about the importance of Faith, and Works, and Gifts of the Spirit, and Knowledge. But in a few lines St Paul bats them all aside. If I speaks prophecies and do wonders and speak in tongues but do not have Love, it is nothing. If I have all faith, but do not have Love, it is nothing. If I do all works, but do not have Love, it is nothing. If I know all things, but do not have Love, it is nothing.

St John says it even more briefly: God is love.

God is Truth and Being and the only thing that is truly solid and real in a world of shadows. But far more than all that God is Love. and as St John also says whoever Loves is truly of God.

And with that I don't know what else to say. Nothing can truly describe. Yet if anything is worth writing about it I would say that Love is.

The Future For Electoral Reform (a better alternative than AV)

2011-06-23T19:09:00.002+01:00

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After the recent referendum on AV a quick consensus has formed that Electoral Reform is off the political table for a generation. This is a consensus between opponents of reform and even, bizarrely, most supporters of Reform, who seem to have suffered a massive collective loss of nerve.

I, personally, could not disagree more.

Over the medium and long-term the time is ripe for for change, regardless of the result of the recent referendum. Reform failed in 2011 due to a combination of temporarily awful political circumstances, the presentation of a weak alternative and gross incompetence on behalf of the Yes Campaign. None of these circumstances need recur, and it is highly likely that the long-term trends will continue to strengthen and strengthen the argument and need for change, as they have since the 1960's. The decline of the two party vote, the rise of the Lib Dems and of the minor parties, the increasing inability of FPTP to properly represent the democratic wishes of the people of Britain. None of these things are going away anytime soon.

What is needed though is for the Reform movement to pick itself up off the floor, knock itself hard on the head and make sure it learns the lessons of 2011. Only if it honestly admits that it got things horribly wrong and commits to changing can there be hope of success in the future. The Electoral Reform movement needs a dramatic modernisation, like Tony Blair's refounding of New Labour or David Cameron's modernisation of the Conservative Party, to achieve its aims in an age where politics and campaigning are professional and serious businesses. It needs a thorough reconsideration of both Aims and Methods.

In this article I consider the aim for reformers by suggesting what I consider to be the best achievable alternative to FPTP. And a superior alternative to AV. In a following article I will suggest some ideas about a change in tactics and strategy that I think reformers need if they are to actually achieve their goals within a generation, and avoid repeating the disaster of 2011.

The massive 2011 vote against AV doesn't have to kill hope of reform for a generation. But it quite probably has put paid to any hope for change to AV itself for at least that long. Or to put that another way, any hope for change within the next two decades can only exist on the basis of abandoning AV. Good, I say. AV was adopted mostly because it was what was on offer, and it only became what was on offer for reasons of Labour Party convenience. AV was capable of solving at most one of the numerous problems with the current system, and in a manner that had the potential of making other problems worse.

It did have one particular advantage though that should not be forgotten in its tidal wave of defeat. It was quite similar to the current system. This made it an achievable reform. And this is my first criterion for a candidate for replacing FPTP. A further attempt at change should be focused on a similarly achievable reform, sufficiently similar to the current system to be recognisable as operating on similar principles, and sufficiently different to AV to seek distance from its calamitous defeat. Regardless of the problems with FPTP the massive No vote shows there is considerable public sympathy or at least overwhelming familiarity with its principles. Any proposed alternative must work with this familiarity rather than against it.

It should also not be based on the same principles as AV i.e. preferential voting. This means not only AV, but also the other alternatives to FPTP that have been seriously proposed by reformers, namely STV and AV+. AV+ was the system recommended by the Jenkins commission on reform in the late 90's. It is AV with an additional top-up of PR apportioned seats. It is a remarkably complicated change, as one would perhaps expect from a committee, and should be rejected for that reason and for being largely reliant on AV.

STV is the long-time preferred alternative of the Electoral Reform Society, Lib Dems and most other UK reform groups, and is currently used in Ireland. It is AV in multi-member constituencies, which unlike AV gives largely proportional results. STV is the preferred system of a majority of reformers. However, regardless of this, it should be abandoned, at least as a medium term aim. The staggering defeat of AV means that its central mechanism is politically discredited for the foreseeable future and because it requires voters to accept change to preferential voting and much larger multi-member constituencies, in reality, like AV+, it is too large a change to be sellable at once.

Both the reform movement's concentration on STV for decades and the strength of its conversion to AV in the previous year can be explained by its obsession with preferential voting. Most organised reformers are just convinced of its superiority to simple majority voting, regardless of other considerations. However, it has been rejected in the AV for now. It would appear to be a change and complication too far and, quite frankly, it is not worth sacrificing the chance of achieving real improvement by other means, merely out of a quixotic attachment to the wonders of preferential voting.

Where does this leave us if we've already rejected FPTP, AV, AV+ and STV? Except in Acronym hell. Another option worth mentioning is Closed List PR. This would be a very simple system where you just vote for a party, and then the votes are counted and seats portioned out to the parties equal to its percentage of the vote. This is the only true PR system. However its side effects are so awful that it is generally rejected even by hard-core PR enthusiasts. Basically the problem is that voters have no control over who is actually elected, and there is no geographical connection between voters and representatives or sense that representatives represent everyone, rather than merely those who voted for them. It is hence a massive leap from the current system, though it does bear the award of being the joint simplest system with FPTP. Though from the opposite side of the spectrum.

So, ignoring Closed-list PR, AV, AV+, STV and FPTP, what is possibly left?

The answer to that is very simple. It's more proportional than FPTP, maintains constituency links, is a modest change from FPTP, is widely used by many European countries and within the UK itself, makes every vote count and is relatively simple compared to AV or STV but would still have given single-party government from our more decisive of recent electoral victories.

This system is the Additional Member System (or AMS). In particular in a form I like to think of as FPTP+.

It is a combination of our current FPTP system used for UK General Elections and the Proportional Representation D'Hondt system we use for European Elections. It would work like a combination of the two, producing a composite system that hopefully maintains the main advantages of both, while smoothing away their most stark problems.

The way it would work is simple. Most MP's would be elected the same way as now, one per constituency under FPTP, with every bit of the country having a constituency MP. In addition to these ordinary constituency MP's there would also be top-up list MP's. Parties would gain a number of these MP's in proportion to their share of the vote, taking into account those MP's already elected in the constituencies. The system works like our current FPTP system, but the top-up list MP's act to dampen the extremity of its results. Guaranteeing a degree of proportionality and ensuring that if you get enough votes you will get seats.

An AMS election would be simple. Each voter gets a ballot paper with two sections. One where they vote with a cross for whatever candidate they want to be their local constituency MP, exactly as now, the other they vote for the party they support, which goes towards deciding who gets the list seats.

In particular for the UK I would recommend the following arrangement. I would suggest keeping a House of Commons at its current size of 650 MP's. Of these 500 would be constituency MP's and 150 list MP's. List MP's would be allocated by the D'Hondt system based on the list vote, taking account of the number of constituencies already won. List MP's would not be based on the vote over the entire country. Rather I would suggest multi-member list constituencies across the country based on the UK regions used for European Elections. These could be subdivided to give list constituencies of an appropriate size of 5-8 MP's. I would also suggest allowing candidates to stand as both constituency and list candidates at the same time. I think of this particular arrangement of AMS as FPTP+.

That's phrasing it technically. Basically it would be the same system currently used for Scottish and Welsh devolved elections. Just with a higher proportion of constituency MP's to list MP's than they have.

I believe this system has a number of immediately apparent advantages.

Firstly, to go back to the point I mentioned above, it is familiar. It's two 'parts' are systems already used UK wide for General and European elections, and together they are used in almost exactly this way in Scottish and Welsh elections. It is also the same system used by Germany and a number of other European countries. As a change from FPTP it would be modest, and I believe, achievable. Indeed it would be down-right familiar in considerable parts of the country. Everyone would still have an MP elected in the normal way, albeit in somewhat larger constituencies. But they would merely also have further MP's elected to represent their area. On a practical note, it can be seen straight-away that this completely negates two of the major arguments used recently against AV. Unlike with AV it would be impossible to argue that AMS was an unpopular, marginal system only used in one major country, as was argued, with some basis, against AV.

Secondly, it would also be much harder to argue that the system was complicated or alien, as it is used widely in Britain both in total and in its constituent parts without difficulty. There is even the example of a English speaking Commonwealth Nation, which has already successfully switched from FPTP to AMS: New Zealand. Any argument that the system was complex could be answered by saying that the Scottish and Welsh have no problem with it.

Thirdly, unlike both AV and FPTP a degree of proportionality is guaranteed. This system will always produce as or more proportional results than the pure FPTP we have now, unlike AV. There will thus be no incentive for a No2AV, Yes2PR type vote as there was with AV. Almost all supporters of change should have no problem of principle supporting this change, even if they would prefer an even more proportionate option still.

Fourth, it would make every vote count. Whether your candidate wins or loses at the constituency level you still have an incentive to cast a vote at the list level, knowing it will go towards securing representation for your party of choice. Equivalently on the political party side, it will give parties an incentive to campaign even in no-hope areas, knowing that they need to maximise their vote to gain vital list seats. I believe this is superior to FPTP and also AV. AV made 'every vote count' by allowing people to put their 2nd, 3rd 4th choice towards influencing a result in a constituency, probably for a party they didn't want anyway though, but at least hated slightly less than some other party. FPTP+ gives every voter a chance to influence the over-all result in favour of the party they actually want to win seats. This would also obviously solve the problem of tactical voting in a better way than AV, by allowing people to cast an effective list vote that will reveal the true relative level of party support and still vote in their constituency election.

Fifth, this would also solve the problem of safe seats. Unlike the rubbish the Yes campaign for AV was putting out, the problem with Safe Seats was never that they existed. If voters in a seat consistently vote for the same party then good for them, that is their business. But that if you were in such a seat and didn't support the majority party then you may as well stay at home or vote for any other party, or even the party you hated or whatever. It would have no impact on the national election or result. As far as having any impact went you were effectively disenfranchised. FPTP+ gets rid of that problem, unlike AV, by allowing you to cast a list vote that will actually go to securing election for the party you support even if there is no point turning up to your constituency election.

Sixth. FPTP+ is more resilient to another of the core arguments against AV. Anti-AV campaigners made a lot of the idea that AV violated 'one person, one vote', by taking account of some people's 2nd and further preferences but not others. This issue does not exist under an AMS system where everyone has two votes, in effect, and everyone's two votes are taken into account in the same way.

These are all particular advantages to FPTP+. However, I think there is a more general advantage to this system, that trumps anything offerable by pure FPTP or AV. Electoral systems are fundamentally about representation. Turning people's opinions and votes into the suitable representation in parliament and in our government and laws in the most effective manner possible.

This is the point where I have a confession to make. I classified my opinion in the AV referendum as NO2AV, YES2PR. Despite this, and the fact I classify myself as a reformer, I do not actually support true proportional representation. A true PR system would have distortions just as great as our pure FPTP system. I classified myself as as No2AV, Yes2PR supporter because I want more proportional representation than our current system provides or guarantees. A pure PR system arguably provides fair representation in terms of numbers in parliament, but it does not in terms of decisions taken and rewarding co-operation and cohesion. Tiny minorities can have disproportionate power by holding the balance needed to gain a majority, which can be as distorting as disproportionate numbers in parliament.

Also, and there's no polite way to phrase this, marginal ideas should be marginalised. Any political cause, no matter how ridiculous, will find some people to vote for it, and no matter how excellent, find some people to oppose it. In a democracy more popular ideas should be privileged over less popular ones in terms of representation, with popularity acting as the only democratically legitimate proxy for the quality of those ideas. Majoritarianism does this. It also provides an incentive for groups to work and stick together, to attempt to appeal to as large a swathe of society as possible, and stretch over a broad range of ideological ground. It discourages and punishes splits, extremism and focusing on appealing to narrow sectional interest. This is as it should be. 1 idea held by 30% of the population should have more representation than ten ideas each held by 3% of the population.

However, I believe there must be some limit to this. A decent number of votes should lead to some representation, even if it is weighted down compared to its raw proportion of the vote compared to more popular parties. This is because strict numerical proportionality is not in of itself the most important thing. It is far more important that you have some representation and only roughly in terms of scale how much that is. For example, the Liberal Democrats are grossly under-represented compared to their share of the vote. But its voters are represented roughly because they do have a decent sized block of MP's and if that number changed by ten or twenty more or less it would not dramatically change those voters' representation. However, if that number of MP's were to fall dramatically or vastly increase then I imagine that would affect it noticeably. UKIP, on the other hand, is entirely unrepresented despite having the support of a million people, and thus these voters are arguably far more shortchanged than the mere numerical under-representation of the Liberal Democrats.

Majoritarianism for the sake of majoritarianism is just unsustainable. In terms of legitimacy the argument for it is non-existent. Just how small a percentage of the vote are majoritarians prepared to have a single party government elected on? Is 35% not too low already? Would they really rather see a majority government elected with 33% or 30% or 25% of the vote than see a coalition or minority government?

Perhaps unusually for a Conservative I am worried neither by hung parliaments nor by Coalitions. Under any system apart from one rigged to produce extreme majoritarianism they are an inevitable and natural feature, which can work in a situation populated by realistic adults, both as voters and politicians. Both the current Coalition and the SNP government in Scotland decisively answer the case against coalitions and minority governments (while also conveniently demonstrating that FPTP does not guard against Coalitions, nor AMS make single-party government impossible). Those who say Coalitions are un-British are historically short-sighted and ignorant and far too willing to ignore the fact that even when we have not been governed by formal Coalitions we have been governed by internal party coalitions that have often been just at fractious and difficult. The historical argument that Britain does not do hung parliaments is a symptom of our historical short-sightedness, and general belief that no events before 1939 ever actually occurred. From 1885 to 1945 Britain only had single party majority government for 9 out of 60 years, with the rest taken up by a mix of minority and coalition government.

My fundamental problem with FPTP is not that it is not strictly proportional, but really rather that it is arbitrary. Its majoritarianism occurs on no consistent or rationally explainable basis. And it neither weights down less popular parties nor rewards more popular parties consistently. A consistent majoritarianism would always weight down parties compared to more popular ones and weight up parties compared to less, however popular or not they were. This is fair to all parties because they all have the same strong incentive to secure more votes. FPTP doesn't work like that though. It is totally inconsistent. It is a system where the Lib Dems may get 17% of the vote at two elections and 9 seats at one election and 48 at another. A party's vote may go down and its seats up, and then next election its vote go up and its seats down. A party may get 31% of the vote and 166 seats, another 27% of the vote and 209 seats, and another 25% of the vote and 23. A party may get 170,000 votes and receive 8 seats and another at the same election get 5 times as many and receive none. Or at one election the lead party receives 35% of the vote and a 3% lead over the next party and receives 360 seats, a clear majority, and the next the lead party has 36% of the vote and a 7% lead and gets 306 seats, a hung parliament. And I could go on.

The reason and traditional rationale for this is that our general elections are not just one national election, rather they are 650 or whatever individual constituency elections. And our system is a relic of when this was in fact the case. Now it is clearly not though. A general election is largely a mechanism for determining the national composition of parliament. This, in turn, is largely denominated in terms of party lines. Our current system only extremely roughly reflects this reality though. And in the fact it does as well as it does is largely coincidence. At times it has done a better job and at times a worse one.

This leads to another fact about representation. The problem with FPTP and also AV is that they are only capable of adequately conferring representation on an individual constituency basis. And on this level arguably AV does a better job. But this is largely irrelevant if both fail on the national stage. I am a liberal Conservative who currently lives in a consistently Labour seat. But I do not feel entirely unrepresented just because my MP is a Labour party drone for the simple reason that my views are partially represented by Conservative MP's elsewhere, even though I am not in their constituency. Representation is both national and local.

In Britain, perhaps to a peculiar extent, representation really is also local. We value the independence of our MP's, and praise it where it is especially found, and we cling with pride to the notion that our MP's may owe their candidacy to a party, but their election is solely in the hands of the particular voters of that constituency. We also rightly cherish the closeness of that connection, as well as the magnanimous notion that an MP must represent all his constituents rather than merely those who vote for him. A mark of this is the manner in which MP's are only allowed to be referred to in parliament as 'the honourable member for x'. Their name is unimportant, all that is important is that they have been chosen to represent a particular community, and from this they gain their authority. This sense is so deeply ingrained in our political psyche that it would be wrong to derail it. We also correctly take this sense of connection to be stronger the fewer people a representative is responsible for and with closeness of geography and culture.

On these clear principles the top-up, multi-member list constituencies would in fact bring representation far closer to most people, by giving relatively local representation to the 60% of voters largely shut-out in any one region. A mostly unseen problem with the current system is that even most of the proportionality it does get comes through massive divergences in overwhelmingly disproportionate results in different regions. Most UK regions are, within themselves, massively dominated by a single party on a minority of the vote. It is only the vast demographic differences between different regions that produce even vaguely proportional results nationwide. FPTP+ addresses representation at this level. It's top up seats will elected Conservatives in Scotland, Labour members in the South and Lib Dems almost everywhere, meaning Conservatives in Scotland will no longer have to look to MP's far to the South, nor Labour voters in the South far to the North, nor the millions of Lib Dem voters to a few distant and scattered islands of representation around the country that few of them have actually had a chance to influence or vote for.

What we need then is a system that contains both the key intuitions behind proportional representation and majoritarianism. That can ensure representation that is both tied to individual voters as closely as possible, and tied to the wider national opinion. In other words a semi-proportional system. Only STV or AMS can deliver this, and AMS is both closer to the traditional British model and less discredited than STV (for the foreseeable future). Sub-regional multi-member constituencies would be large enough to provide a close link to the national share of the vote, while also being close enough to have some sense of connection and identity to the areas they cover, in addition to the 500 constituency MP's who would oversee constituencies not unrecognisably larger than they are currently.

AMS in the form of FPTP+ would improve representation at every level, enfranchise voters across the country who are or would be excluded by FPTP or AV, and update our electoral system for a more pluralist and connected age. It is a modest and simple addition and improvement on FPTP and remains true to its principles that, despite their shortcomings, are so familiar and built into our understanding of politics and democracy. In many ways it is a thoroughly conservative proposal for reform. And although that may not commend it to some people, I believe that places it in a long, successful and unequaled history of steady, peaceful, evolutionary improvement that has helped make Britain one of the most long-lasting and peaceful democracies and best governed countries in the world.

Nobody Left Out In The Cold - minimum acceptable compromise on Disability Cuts

2011-06-10T22:41:00.002+01:00

Take a good look at the above picture. It is called 'Left Out In the Cold', and it is by and stars disabled artist Kaliya Franklin lying on a British beach on a freezing cold day, just out of reach of the wheelchair she needs to get around. It represents the almost certain consequence of the Government's planned cuts to support for the long-term sick and disabled. Deeply vulnerable and disadvantaged people left just out of reach of the vital financial and care support that they need to lead safe and dignified lives as part of our society, despite the disadvantage of their illness or disability.

I have already written about the full range of Cuts to support for sick and disabled people at some length here. If you're thinking of clicking on that link I apologise in advance for the length. It's long. Unfortunately the scale and range of cuts, and the general public ignorance about this issue means it has to be long to cover the subject even vaguely properly. I would still honestly reccommend you read it though, or at least look up something else on the issue. It's extremely unlikely you've even heard of the main planks of welfare that support Sick and disabled people, unless you, a close friend or a family member are Sick or Disabled. But this is such an important issue you really need to. They are an absolutely essential life-line for literally millions of people in this Country and they are deeply threatened by the Government's planned cuts. If I still haven't convinced you to read more about it, don't worry, this will be mercifully short.

The main facts that everyone should know are extremely simple. Even before the Recession and any of the cuts to support for Sick and Disabled people families with a Sick or Disabled member were twice as likely to be living in Poverty and had an unemployment rate running at 50%. The Sick and Disabled are facing the entirety of the squeeze on public services and taxes that everyone else are experiencing, whether cuts to council services, education, healthcare, public sector job losses, housing benefits cuts, rises in VAT and National Insurance, surging fuel prices and Inflation and stagnant wages. This on its own is probably enough to drive already struggling and vulnerable households into Poverty or just deeper in.

Incredibly though above of and On top of this general financial squeeze they are also facing additional swingeing and targeted cuts to the extra support available to Sick and Disabled people totalling some £5 billion a year. Employment Support Allowance (ESA), Disability Living Allowance (DLA), the Access To Work Fund, the Independent Living Fund. All are facing significant cuts and restrictions. These cuts and changes will make it considerably harder for Sick and Disabled people to move into work. They will take a segment of our society that already has a Poverty rate DOUBLE that of everyone else and push hundreds of thousands more into Poverty. DLA, for example, is being cut by 20%, far above the average 11.5% cuts facing the Public Sector. They are fundamentally unjustifiable on this basis alone. Dry figures are certainly not all there is to this though.

Suffering a severe, long-term illness or disability is one of the most difficult things to live with of any of the disadvantages in people can face. Almost by definition it robs people of so many advantages the rest of us take for granted including too much of the ability to take part in society. It is often painful, almost always fundamentally exhausting and draining and always stressful for the rest of a sick or disabled person's family. It often makes life constantly more of a struggle than for well people. It also leaves a person open to a constant flow of minor indignities and general ignorance from a society where many people are still totally clueless about how to relate to disabled and extremely sick people in a human manner. I could, of course, go on; the difficulties faced by disabled and long-term sick people are as various as the possible mental and physical conditions and the unique individuals that must live with them, but I'm sure you understand the general idea. The truth is for many families and invididuals who struggle with these problems the effect of these cuts will be to pile stress, fear and struggle, both financial and emotional, on already difficult circumstances above and beyond that faced by any of their able-bodied and mentally well fellow citizens.

I'm an optimist about human nature. I don't think politicians are deliberately trying to drive some of the most vulnurable people in our society into poverty, harship and despair. I just think they're ignorant. But the truth is there none the less. And it is centred on three massive issues that the Government must be forced to compromise on. I get the idea that some cuts will fall on the Sick and Disabled. Cuts will always fall on those already struggling because, quite frankly, that's where the money is being spent. If the Coalition compromises on these three issues though they will have a defensible, if harsh, platform. Without compromise though they are leading an organised public Outrage.

Issue No.1 is DLA. Disability Living Allowance is a universal benefit designed to help people with the extra costs of care or mobility that comes with being disabled or seriously ill, put by one study at 25% higher than the living costs faced by a non-disabled person. And is only available to the most disabled and ill. Being disabled or sick is an expensive business. Whether it's expensive home modifications, mobility equipment, prescriptions, taxis because public transport or driving is impossible, tuition support, personal care or god alone knows what else. DLA is not an out-of-work benefit, it helps many people who are sick or disabled stay in work as well as others who cannot work. DLA is an almost model benefit. It is heavily targeted at the most Sick or Disabled (see here for some of its restrictive conditions), it helps large numbers of people into useful employment, it has the lowest fraud rate of any piece of welfare. Despite this the government has announced they are going to entirely redesign it. In theory to improve it. They have been stunningly vague about how they are intending to improve it, but they have very clearly stated they want to restrict it massively and cut spending by 20%, save £2 billion. This is a massive cut, pure and simple, masquerading as a redesign.

DLA is already restricted to the very Sick and Disabled, massively restricting it further like this, and prioritising achieving a certain saving over need, will leave many people without vital support. A simple compromise would be to readjust the figure for Savings to £1 billion, a 10% cut. This would be in line with the general cuts across the Public Sector, it would still be a considerable cut, but it would maintain the integrity of DLA. It would be a total that is far more likely to be achievable without taking support away from those with truly serious need. It would give a chance to reform DLA, if that is truly what the government wants to do, without basing the changes around the need to make deep savings, giving the chance to actually improve support.

The 2nd and 3rd issues are the Employment Support Allowance. This is the benefit that supports the living costs of those people too Sick or Disabled to work, or to fulfill the requirements for the Dole. No.2 is the government's plans to restrict contributory ESA to 1 year, for around 90% of claimants. This move is supposed to save £1.5 billion. On the surface it seems reasonable. Contributory JSA is limited to 6 months, so why should the equivalent for those Sick or Disabled and out of work, ESA, be different? There is still Income based ESA to support those with no financial resources. The problem comes because the connection between ESA and JSA is tenuous at best in this instance. JSA is meant to be distinctly short-term. For many ESA will be extremely long-term, even with the government's most optimistic assumptions. Also the government's definition of financial resources is frankly laughable. Any family with a Sick or Disabled member that also has either any savings or a partner earning almost any money will be deemed to be not eligible for any ESA. Ignoring the quite savage work disincentive this creates for families with a disabled or Sick member, as I already said families with a sick or disabled member were already twice as likely to be in poverty as other comparable families before these cuts, and the individuals within these families on average have costs 25% greater than a non-Sick or Disabled person. The considerable and additional financial pressure of this measure will hence almost certainly push most of the three hundred thousand households affected into poverty, or push them even deeper therein if they are there already.

Compromise is easily possible here to. This measure is meant to save £1.5 billion a year, by taking £90 a week of ESA away from hundreds of thousands of people who would otherwise be eligible. As previously discussed, this is an awful ideas that will drive many families already struggling financially, and with Sickness and stress, into the ground. There are various possible compromises though. The Labour Party has suggested limiting Contributory ESA to 2 years. This would avoid catching a considerable number of families, but would still leave most with the same problem, just somewhat later on. Another possible compromise is based on the structure of ESA. ESA is made up of two parts in theory, a £65 a week basic element and then a £25 or £30 additional element that everyone gets. Those effected by this cut would be receiving the £25 additional element. The compromise is to remove the additional element after 1 year. This would save around £0.5 billion a year and while still leaving families with some ongoing support. Under this regime they would still almost certainly wear down both savings and suffer and struggle financially, considering the high-levels of costs they generally face. But it would leave them with some support, and would be a change there would be some chance to adjust to, rather than the immediate removal of almost all income. There are also other options that would deliver some savings to the government, without the same harsh risk of leaving many families facing near destitution if their Sick or Disabled members do not find work within a year.

The 3rd Issue is the nature of the assessments for ESA itself. These have been roundly, widely and very strongly criticised by everyone from the Citizen's Advice Bureau, one of the experts who actually designed the system, the government's own review of the system, and pretty much every single person who has experienced it. It has been particularly criticised for failing those with mental health disabilities. It's not hard to see where the criticism comes from. The assessments are a tick-box exercise scored on a computer, with all the flexibility and individual consideration that description suggests, and often not even conducted by relevant medical personel. The evidence that the system is broken is overwhelming. Appeal rates run at almost 40%, of which about half are upheld. The acceptance rates for ESA are also frankly unbelievable with 2/3rds of applicants being found 'Fit for Work', even some who have then literally died the next day. The sense that this is all motivated by financial rather than medical need is overwhelming when the government has already announced how much money it expects to save from this whole exercise.

This final issue desperately needs change. The government must recognise the serious problems with the assessment process and commit to sweeping changes to meet these serious issues. They could start in worse places than implementing the reccommendations of their own Review. Changing the assessments in a direction of bringing in a genuine holistic assessment of an individual's capabilities, rather than a tick-box exercise, with proper recognition of the distinct circumstances faced by those with mental health conditions or just highly variable long-term conditions.

I entirely understand and appreciate the need to cut spending in this country considering the £155 billion deficit we have. I'm the last person who would argue against that. But like that does not justify any old cut. Families with long-term sick or disabled members already face some of the worst poverty and social exclusion in our society, without even mentioning the obvious pain and suffering that so often comes with these conditions, and the huge stress it places on individual and families. A lot of cuts are unfortunate and down-right difficult, but they do not involve the risk of fundamental damage to our most basic social duty, provision for those who just cannot provide for themselves. Neither is this a partisan issue. many of these problems were started by Labour and are now being continued and in some cases intensified by the Coalition. There is plenty of failure to go around, and plenty of scope for minds to change and governments commit to do better. These compromises I have mentioned would 'cost' the government around £2 billion a year. They are the absolute minimum acceptable if we are to live in a decent and supportive society. This still leaves around £3 billion a year of cuts directed at support for the disabled, above and beyond the wider financial squeeze being imposed on society. Surely more than enough of a reduction to be borne by possibly the most disadvantaged and vulnerable section of our society.

The final question then is what can people do? Many things. I wrote to my MP for the first time today. On its own this won't change anything. But it is an essential part of making sure politicians are aware of the depth of feeling about this issue. And that this is something that cannot just happen quietly. Another important thing you can do is just to get yourself informed about what is happening. And if you have the chance get others informed as well. The greatest danger is just that so few people know about these cuts, because sadly the sick and disabled do not have the loud supporters, friends in the media or noisy ability to defend themselves shown by more high-profile but less vital issues. Though it is inspiring to see the grassroots movement that has emerged (largely online) in a few months to campaign against these measures. 'The Broken of Britain' is a great collaborative group that attempts to raise the profile of this issue and bring disabled, sick and well and able-bodied people together to campaign against these cuts. 'Diary of a Benefits Scrounger' is a great blog written by a wonderful lady called Sue Marsh, who herself suffers from serious Crohns disease, and explains these issues much more eloquently (and briefly) than I could hope to. Both of these have a lot of information on what people can do to help. There are also a load of other resources online.

There is also some time, since many of these changes do not come in until 2013 or later. There has even actually already been some success. Under great pressure the government has already decided to review the decision to remove mobility allowance DLA from those in care homes, and in the last day has announced a public review into ESA. This is hence a crucial time to increase the pressure on them to reverse these cuts and secure proper support for long-term sick and disabled people in our society permanently.

But it will require people like you and me to get off our asses and get informed, get aware and look out for the opportunities to do whatever we can to make sure these disastrous changes are not allowed to just happen around us.

Many thanks to 'Broken of Britain' and Kaliya Franklin for the above Picture.

How could Electoral Reform Fail so Badly?

2011-05-25T00:56:00.005+01:00

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It is not very controversial to say that the results of the May 5th referendum on the Alternative Vote were disastrous for the cause of Electoral Reform in the UK. Almost everyone in the UK was surprised by the scale of AV's defeat and this has been followed by an immediate consensus that electoral reform is off the political table for at least a decade, if not a generation. For reformers, after 80 years of campaigning and finally getting the referendum they had dreamt and hoped for, reform is now, cruelly, even further away than before.

This would seem an odd time then to talk about the future of electoral reform. But in reality now immediately after its big defeat is precisely the time that the Electoral Reform movement and supporters of reform generally needs to take stock, think clearly about what has happened and plan for the future. And there is no such thing as a perfect certainty when it comes to politics and the future. With boldness and a serious willingness to really reconsider both means and aims anything is possible.

First it is important to face up to the reality of what happened, what went so wrong, and what really needs to be avoided from 2011 to make sure next time is extremely different. So this is what I try to do in this article. In my next article I set out what I believe to be a better option for achievable electoral reform than AV, and argue how we can apply the lessons outlined here to give a better chance that option can be achieved as soon as possible, however long that may be. Just a quick note. If at any point I make rude comments about electoral reformers, I mean the core of leaders of pro-reform organisations, politicians, media commentators and the rest of the small group of people who frame and direct the public image and fight for electoral reform, rather than supporters of electoral reform generally, of whom I am one.

So what happened? And what went so wrong?

2 weeks ago the UK held its first ever referendum on the subject of electoral reform. This represented the 2nd closest Britain has ever got to ditching First-Past-The-Post as its electoral system. The 1st being when a switch to AV and STV was narrowly rejected by parliament after a lot of argument and numerous votes in the 1920's. The particular chance of electoral reform on offer was of course the Alternative Vote. This was rejected by 68%-32% on a 42% turnout, or in other words by 13 million votes to 6 million. It is hard to over-estimate the scale of the thrashing. AV lost in every region of the UK and in 430 out of 440 counting regions. Equally telling is the fact that in the tiny number of areas AV did pass in it squeaked through with around 55% of the vote, only gaining more than 60% in a single London Borough. In contrast it was defeated by margins of 70-30% in literally hundreds of areas. Most UK regions did even contain a single voting area that supported AV.

Personally I was broadly neutral on the question of AV or not. I remain massively unconvinced that AV would offer a significant improvement on the current system in terms of results or the problems of FPTP. Neither do I think its introduction would have been the end of the world. AV could be summarised as a system that is slightly better than FPTP in some areas and slightly worse in others. At best it would solve 10% of our problems, at worst it would occasionally make them slightly worse. That said, in one sense it is a deep shame that AV was defeated so badly, because it discourages the thought of considering further ideas for reform, and gives the resemblance of a mandate for the current pure FPTP system, something that system does not deserve. In a weird way though I'm glad AV was destroyed so badly. I'm glad because the result was decisive, thus forcing the defeated party to admit clear and straight defeat. The worst of all possible worlds would have been a close result on a low turnout, whether for Yes or No. Such a result would have only fuelled bad feeling about any change or lack of it and damaged the credibility of the result. It would have led to an orgy of blame with the losing side looking for any chance to excuse their defeat by blaming a technicality or their opponents misdeeds. The sheer scale of the result luckily means that the defeated side was left with no option but to give way gracefully(ish).

The second silver lining, from my point of view, is that even when Electoral Reform does come back onto the political agenda it is highly unlikely that pure AV will be the alternative option. This is good because I don't think AV is significantly better than pure FPTP for Britain, nor solves the problems that pure FPTP brings. It is a step sideways, the illusion of reform without actually solving the serious issues with the current system. I think it was said best by a journalist, raging against the progressive majority's failure to vote through AV, who complained that FPTP was a "broken, majoritarian voting system that disenfranchises millions of voters and puts power in the hands of a hundred thousand or so "swing" voters in "Middle England" marginal seats". To which his solution was to introduce a broken, majoritarian voting system that disenfranchises millions of voters and puts power in the hands of a hundred thousand or so "swing" voters in "Middle England" marginal seats, albeit slightly fewer millions and slightly more "Middle England" swing voters. Right.

My general lack of interest in the alternative vote to one side, I think Electoral reformers made a big mistake in their approach to the referendum that has the capacity to seriously damage the hope of reform over the next years if not understood and overcome. Starting on entirely pragmatic grounds I think that whoever was running the YES campaign owes supporters of reform an apology, for monumentally cocking up the 1st decent chance for reform in 80 years.

The scale of AV's defeat means it may have been impossible for the best campaign in the world to have won for a YES vote. The circumstances were very adverse, but they certainly could have done a lot more with them and given the cause of reform a much stronger platform from here on. Now it is really easy to be wise with hindsight and blame the Yes campaign after it lost but there's more going on here than that. There have been numerous serious explanations about just how bad the Yes campaign was, most damningly by senior members of the national Yes campaign who felt unable to speak up before the vote itself, and feel crushed by how their efforts were thrown away. (For example, here, here, here and particularly here.) Even from miles away I can rattle off the top of my head 4 things the Yes campaign were obviously doing wrong.

Firstly, running a cosy, smug, left-wing campaign by guardian readers for guardian readers. The Yes2AV campaign made almost no effort to reach out to right-wingers, running a campaign opened by Ed Miliband, Caroline Lucas, and involving almost no attempt at political balance. This was an astonishing failure. Especially when they had an ace in the hole in the form of UKIP and its charismatic front man Nigel Farage. They could have used these to devastating affect to counter the solid Conservative No campaign among right-of-centre voters. They didn't almost certainly out of the liberal-left's general distaste for UKIP. They'd rather run a campaign by 'progressives' for 'progressives' and lose. Particularly remarkable was the comparison with the relative role given to the Green's Caroline Lucas, despite the fact that UKIP gets about 3 times as many votes as the Greens. The Yes campaign's seeming approach could be summed up by a short conversation I had with a friend. I said the Yes campaign was cocking up by failing to engage right-wingers. He said why should they bother when right-wingers were a minority and would just vote No anyway. My jaw dropped.

In fairness he was technically right on one thing. Identifiably right-of-centre parties gained 43% of the vote in the last election, which leads me to my 2nd point. If the Yes campaign were going to be so stunningly complacent as to write off almost half of voters they needed to make absolutely sure they had the other half locked down so tight they could hardly breathe. This again they failed to do. Right from the start it was clear to anyone with half a brain that Labour voters would be crucial to securing or defeating AV. They were the vital swing voters. Especially if the Yes campaign was planning to not bother with right-of-centre voters they needed to make damn sure they secured the support of the vast majority of Labour supporters.

One way to do this would be to make the referendum a vote on David Cameron, they barely mentioned him. The other way would have been to make sure they had almost all Labour MP's, CLP's and other senior figures on board. Again, they failed. They almost went out of their way to antagonise Labour MP's with their main message, which, bizarrely, was that MP's were lazy and corrupt and AV would make them work harder and be more honest. This understandably didn't fire up Labour MP's, Lords, Councillors and other party figures to throw their weight behind the Yes campaign. Once it became apparent that NO2AV had secured a considerable chunk of Labour support (let alone a majority of Labour MP's), combined with the Yes campaign's wilful neglect of right-wing voters, it was obvious they were going to lose.

The 3rd bizarre error was failing to reach out to as many voters as possible. Beyond their choice in problem 1, they failed to utilise the opportunities they have available to them. They and the NO campaign were both offered one free mailing to every house in the UK. The No campaign eagerly took the opportunity, producing a slick and compelling leaflet. The Yes campaign decided to just not bother. The No campaign launched one of the biggest political ad campaigns in UK history, with billboards around the country and vast quantities of online advertising. Yes2AV barely bothered. Yes2AV did manage to produce a TV political broadcast. It was absolutely bizarre. It contained voters going around harassing MP's through megaphones, who were portrayed as lazy, corrupt caricatures. It barely mentioned any real positives of AV, only vague nonsense about AV making MP's work harder with no back-up explanation and claiming it would have avoided expense abuses. It failed to make a genuine case for AV, it failed to make any case as to why FPTP was broken. It assumed voters were idiots. It may as well have promised them that AV would make diamonds rain from the sky.

The 4th failure was doing their opponents work for them. The Yes campaign spent far too little time genuinely making a case and clearly pushing the positive improvements of AV, or the glaring problems with FPTP. They spent far more time trying to rebut their opponents case and thus cemented it in the public's mind. It failed to pick a single message and stick to it, apart from the nonsensical line taken in their broadcast. The No campaign, on the other hand, desperately wanted to make people think that AV was expensive so the Yes campaign spent huge amounts of time arguing the toss over how expensive it was. The electorate, seeing the debate through a thick fog of apathy and other concerns, just heard that AV was expensive. The No campaign wanted to make it a referendum on Nick Clegg and the Lib Dems in general. So the Yes campaign obligingly filled the latter stages of the campaign with Lib Dem Cabinet ministers complaining about how mean the No campaign was, and to cap it off Ed Miliband publicly refused to share a platform with Nick Clegg. Thus making sure everyone knew the yes campaign thought Nick Clegg was important. Brilliantly done. These failures combined with the genuinely difficult circumstances the referendum was held in meant AV was doomed, and visibly so.

Apart from these pragmatic issues I think that electoral reformers made a serious strategic error in their more long term approach. The vast majority of reformers did not want AV before the referendum was called. For what I believe are very good reasons. In fact numerous individuals and organisations had been downright scathing about it. As soon as the referendum was called though most of them moved as one to pushing AV and doubling back on their previous opinions. In of itself I don't blame them for this. AV was all that was on offer. But that was precisely the problem. The electoral reform movement is built on an extreme point of principle, whereas AV was the result of some pretty seedy political bargaining. In particular Gordon Brown's death bed conversion to reform in 2010, in a late attempt to cosy up to the Lib Dems, all while holding out the one type of electoral reform that could possibly actually INCREASE Labour's already bloated electoral advantage. Pro-AV campaigners were caught between a rock and a hard place. Support AV too strongly and they just looked hypocritical, given their recorded objections to it. Damning it with faint praise was also not really an option, as that would just help speed it to defeat. Faced with this choice they went with the 1st option and just looked like hypocrites. There was a 3rd option though.

This 3rd option was No2AV, Yes2PR, that tried to reconcile the difficult choice facing reformers from a different direction. Arguably No2AV, Yes2PR fails the golden rule for political messaging of simplicity. But simplicity is only one half of the rule. The other is clarity. And in terms of clarity No2AV, Yes2PR, from people who had always supported PR, was miles ahead of the seeming hypocrisy of criticising AV right up until the point where you start trying to sell it to the electorate as a solution to everything from political corruption to skin disease.

In the long term the Yes2AV campaign also took a particular approach that will make a future campaign for PR in the future that much harder to win. Core Yes2AV arguments repeated ad nauseam by major pro-reform figures could be used just as well as arguments against PR. Yes campaigners made a huge amount of arguing that MP's should have support of a majority of their constituents. PR in multi-member constituencies works on precisely the opposite basis. Yes campaigners spent ages arguing that safe seats were the work of Satan, and trumpeting AV's relatively trivial reduction in their number. PR would institutionalise safe seats in vaster numbers than we currently enjoy/suffer. In any campaign for any PR-related system it will be trivial for the anti-reform side to pull out the recordings and quote of people and organisations making these arguments from this campaign and play them against the same people making presumably the opposite arguments in favour of PR. At which point they will look like double, hypocritical, duplicitous weasels, and their case will be even weaker.

But was No2AV, Yes2PR ever really an option? I have spoken to many people who think not. The plan of Yes2AV then Yes2PR seemed to be secure AV, and once it had been demonstrated change is possible, then shift over again to some form of PR, presumably STV. Would this have really happened though? Having gone through all the efforts of securing AV, there would certainly have been no further change for a few elections, to give AV a chance to bed in. That's 10-15 years at least. Even then, the above problem I outlined applies whether AV passed or not. Certainly the electorate would consider the job done and the subject closed for years to come. More crucially, though Ed Miliband and part of Labour could just about support AV there is no constituency in the Labour party for PR in any form. Because despite all the guff about a 'progressive majority' Labour knows it needs a majoritarian voting system to govern on a minority of the votes, in reality even more than the Conservatives do. Having achieved AV Labour would have no incentive to support further change, and without the support of one of the two major UK parties it would just never happen. Yes2AV then Yes2PR supporters would have been Ed Miliband and Nick Cleggs's useful idiots and nothing more.

But doesn't the opposite apply even more so? Doesn't it follow that a No vote to AV dooms electoral reform even further? And thus it was worth throwing the reform movement behind AV? I believe the answer is No. Or at least could have been No but for the poor choices of many reformers. Firstly, as I said, a Yes vote would effectively shut down any further move for reform for at least a few elections, to give AV a chance. That's 10-15 years at least. Which is oddly roughly the same time period that a No vote has now shut down any further chance of reform for. Assuming AV is not actually your preferred endpoint then a No or Yes vote was actually rather irrelevant to the possible time-table for further change. Also whereas with FPTP intact there is a small constituency in Labour for some change with AV introduced there would be almost none, reducing even further the support for more reform, whereas now the current discontent within Labour can be leveraged into further support for different efforts at reform. The fact is that regardless of a Yes or No vote the situation in parliament and country will still be the same. Lib Dems will support PR, and Conservatives and Labour will oppose it. That overwhelming arithmetic is true regardless of whether we have AV or FPTP, and whether the referendum delivered a Yes or No vote. I think there is no strong argument that either a No or Yes vote should logically increase the probability of further reform happening more quickly.

Furthermore, AV is without doubt an arbitrary majoritarian system where vote share bears no direct relation to share of seats. Pure AV has far more in common with FPTP in terms of outcomes than it does with any proportional system. On face value and by all logical criterion a vote for AV is a vote for AV, and a vote against it is a vote against it, nothing less and nothing more. But here is the point where pro-AV'ers cry, "But conservative anti-reformers will/have take/n the chance to declare a No vote a vote against reform in general". Well, no shit. Of course they will. That's their job, they do what it says on the tin. Anti-reformers, not being idiots, as has been conclusively shown, will take any chance to discredit reform and lock down the debate. They would cry exactly the same whether a No or Yes vote. A Yes vote would be a mandate for AV, meaning there is no need for further reform they would have cried. A No vote is a vote against all reform and for the current system they now cry, even though anyone with two brain cells can see that doesn't at all logically follow and certainly wasn't on the ballot paper.

The good question is not why are anti-reformers trying their best to oppose reform given whatever circumstances that occur. But why, just like in the referendum, are pro-reformers eagerly parroting their illogical lines and doing their work for them as vigorously as they can? It is truly mind-boggling. It is the first and simplest rule in the book that you do not repeat your opponents' messages for them. Especially if they are superficially convincing. You certainly don't run around out and out confirming them to the deep detriment of your own cause. If anti-reformers claim a vote against AV to be a vote against reform, the correct answer is, quite simply, "No it isn't". This response, "No, it isn't", has the benefit of being clear, simple, true and blindingly obvious to anyone who takes two seconds to actually think about it honestly. The total myth that a vote against AV is an out-and-out mandate for the current system and a vote against any other reform is the most thorough block to any further hopes for reform in the foreseeable future imaginable. So why, oh why, are reformers some of the loudest people repeating this nonsense to all and sundry who would possibly listen?

They resemble a child having a tantrum throwing its toys out of the pram. One can almost see them folding their arms crossly and pouting at the electorate. Quite frankly though this approach fits with the general head-in-the-clouds attitude of too much of the Yes campaign. For too many of its leaders and supportive commentators it's not about working practically to effect change for the better in our country, it's about how wonderful, enlightened and progressive they are and how their genius will lead a grateful and progressive majority into the promised liberal land and now we've rejected their offer we're all doomed forever.

This silly response to the defeat of AV has the risk of turning a defeat into a disaster. But it is and was entirely avoidable. The reform movement could have taken an entirely different stance. Instead of mortgaging the future of Electoral Reform to the campaign for AV (and then doing it really badly), thus risking the current fall-out in a defeat that was always likely to happen, and for which there is no evidence that even a yes vote would have hurried any actual change to a PR-based system, they could have taken a principled stand against AV and FPTP. They could have let Nick Clegg and Ed Miliband and all the other greasy politicians fight it out over AV and put their muscle behind a principled No2AV, Yes2PR campaign. Such a campaign could have used the golden opportunity of the referendum, with the biggest media focus on the subject of electoral reform ever, not to suicidally line up behind a voting system they didn't even want but rather to use the opportunity to build awareness about a PR system and why they think a PR-based system is both superior and distinct to both AV and FPTP.

This would actually have increased awareness about PR, rather than burying all thought of it under a vast AV vs FPTP bunfight. It would have made a NO2AV victory even more inevitable, but it could have raised a profile such that it was seen as a joint victory of supporters of PR and FPTP, rather than a victory of FPTP'ers against all reform. By sharing in this victory PR supporters would then have both raised awareness about PR and created a situation where they could sell a narrative that a No vote reflected a vote for PR as much as a vote for FPTP and hence move the debate onto a discussion about the merits of FPTP vs PR systems rather than having a situation where a No vote on AV can be used to tar all electoral reform with the same brush. It could have left a platform for a second attempt at reform in the next parliament from a position of strength, as a separate debate between a majoritarian system and a proportional one, rather than the sterile debate we have seen recently between two majoritarian systems, and with the credibility of reformers intact. Admittedly this would still be a long shot, but I do not believe on any scenario it could have produced a worse result in the long term than either that we have experienced, or any one that was likely given the circumstances.

That finishes my argument about what went wrong. For the lessons I would draw from this, the shorthand version is just the opposite of the errors I have criticised here. The longer version I will explain in my next article on the Future of Reform. As well as what I believe is a better model for achievable reform and the strategy the electoral reform movement must take to see this achieved as soon as possible, offering both a superior alternative to both FPTP and AV and valuable lessons for any future campaign from the AV debacle of 2011.

It doesn't matter if you're YES or NO! Remember to VOTE Today!

2011-05-04T21:12:00.005+01:00

The Campaigns may have been Crap!
The Claims may have been Outrageous!
The Politicians may have been as Annoying as ever!

You may be YES! You may be NO!

But none of that matters. . . .

Just make sure you get out Today and VOTE!

Because it's extremely important!
Because it's you only get so few chances!

And because you just know someone stupider Will!

Polls open 7am-10pm.

The Royal Wedding: Verger Cartwheels with Joy down Westminster Abbey! Literally!!

2011-04-29T18:46:00.003+01:00

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Yes! This is awesome!

And Congratulations to Prince William and Kate Middleton, Duke and Duchess of Cambridge!

God Bless you both! And give you a long life of Love and Happiness Together!

It was a beautiful day and a beautiful ceremony. The best of British pomp, ceremony, Christian and Royal Tradition. It was great to see so many people coming together for an event. Kate looked absolutely beautiful. And both Kate and Prince William looked very happy. Amen to that.

And in the some of the most beautiful words ever written in any language. The words of St Paul.

1 Corinthians 13.
The Way Of Love.

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have total faith, enough to move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away everything I have to the poor, and even if I sacrifice my life, but have not love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will fade. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when everything is made complete, the partial will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. But when I became a man, I gave up childish things. For now we see as through a glass, darkly but then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.

So for now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.

Happy Easter!

2011-04-24T14:17:00.002+01:00

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Just under 2000 years ago today a lady called Mary from a small town called Magdala went early in the morning to a rough rock tomb to tend the battered body of her murdered friend and teacher and to say goodbye one last time. She was soon followed by an unremarkable rural fisherman called Simon Peter and a young man called John. What they found there that morning changed the world forever more than any other single event in the whole history of mankind.

That is the remarkable truth of the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, who we call Christ. From the good news these three people brought, on that quiet morning so long ago, Empires and Continents and Centuries and Millenia have been transformed. It has transformed the lives of people from every imaginable time and place, culture and race, nation and language; and today a community of more than two billion people spread across every country in the world exists devoted to those words. A community transformed by the living God, the man Jesus who reaches out from the pages and experiences of countless books and people to transform lives then and now and tomorrow.

It has transformed my life too.

It has challenged, formed, taught and inspired me. And always given me the strength to continue when times are darkest. It has given me a King, a Lord, a teacher and a friend I could never have imagined. And if there is any richness in my soul, wisdom in my mind, or nobility in my character, I can only give the credit where it is deserved, to my experience and friendship with the Risen Lord Jesus Christ, who is alive and reigns forever over all the world; and is as close as a prayer, a word, a thought to being right by your side, each and every day since two utterly unremarkable men and one woman brought back the news that a Tomb was empty. And nothing has ever been quite the same ever since.

Happy Easter Everybody!

God Bless you and keep you.

Good Friday.

2011-04-23T13:33:00.010+01:00

We have entered Easter through Palm Sunday almost a week ago, and then the journey of Holy Week until finally the grief of Good Friday, the start of Easter. This is possibly the most emotionally powerful day in the whole of the Christian calendar, the culmination of the entire story of Jesus’ life and ministry, of the entire story of the Bible, the day they murdered my Lord, the day everything changed.

Good Friday we name it. And that may indeed seem a strange name to people who first see it. Good Friday. The day our Lord was murdered. The day we committed the most terrible crime in history. Jesus, the perfect man, who loved so greatly, was killed for a crime he did not commit. “We preach Christ Crucified, which is foolishness to the Jews and a stumbling block to the Gentiles”.

But Good Friday it certainly is. As I always thought, Just crazy enough to work. Good Friday we name it. Good Friday? The day that Jesus, our Jesus, our Lord God Almighty, our Christ was murdered, this day we name good Friday? Yes, we do, and how could it be any other way? A strange thing it may seem, a true paradox, as is the true mystery, the wonder, the mixed joy and sadness that defines our human life.

But the most perfect name. Elegant, precise, transcendent. Good Friday. The most simple and positive of all descriptions. A good man, a good day, a good deed, a good life; a Good Friday. Any more elaborate description would merely make obvious the total inability of description to do any justice. Far better to leave almost entirely unsaid, to be seen, to be felt, to be experienced. So the reality can shine through. Nothing said apart from all that needs to be said. Good Friday, the very definition of Goodness, the day everything changed.

On the cross of our pain God Almighty gave up his life, was tortured to death, suffering pain we can hardly imagine, for a crime he did not commit, for he so loved the world, so loved the world he gave his life, and did not lift a finger, forgave even those who murdered him, loved even them, to save all men forever from their sins. Jesus Christ, who loved us so much, emptied himself out on the cross, to become the less than the least of men, butcher's meat. Another unseen victim of casual brutality and oppression.

This is the day we celebrate, the greatest of days, the greatest of achievements and in thinking of that cross we weep, yet we also laugh. And how could it be any other way? God took all the pain and weakness and sadness and evil of the world onto him. On that cross of death and tree of life our greatest hope mingled with our greatest pain, our deepest darkness mixed with our most shining light. A paradox indeed, the paradox of all the nations of all the mystery and the strangeness and the wonder of human life.

Christ died on the cross to take away the sin of the world and so he perfectly represented all the pain that sin has caused, took it onto himself suffering it himself, so he suffered as have all his children. As he shared our life he shared our pain, so just as through sharing our humanity our pain could truly flow to him, so in that sharing, his divine power, to overcome all death and fear and hate and pain and weakness, could truly flow to us. So we need never fear those things again.

Just as during his life Jesus healed the sick and the lame, gave hearing to the deaf, sight to the blind, even raised from the dead, to heal physical bodies so in his own suffering on the cross he healed all the souls of the world. As during his life he preached how even the least of sinners is held in the love of heaven, so in his death he became the least of people, became one with them, one of them, and won eternal glory for heaven even as he descended into Hell.

So Christ came to become one again with the least of God’s children, lest we forget in our joy their pain, and to remind us that we may not rest easy in our joy until even the least of God’s children are rescued from that pain forever. Since his people suffered pain here on earth, in his salvation of mankind Christ suffered pain also, as he took all of mankind onto him. To remind us that even in our most terrible pain, joy, salvation, is assured forever by that sacrifice.

And so the cross of our pain became the tree of our life: God’s pain, our Life; So Satan can not be forever victorious and hope will live forever. His body broken to give life to many, his blood shed to forgive all sin. So pain and joy intermingled, so from the death of the one perfect human, Life was given to all the Imperfect humans who ever live. His life lost to slay death, his blood shed to wash all clean, his love to cure all the hate in the world: to ensure Love would never be overcome. So pain and joy mixed on that cross, Christ’s pain, our joy: Good Friday indeed. And how could it be any other way? So as God’s children feel both pain and joy so Christ, as he took onto himself them all, felt pain to bring joy to all men.

The salvation of Mankind must have come through both terrible pain and eternal joy. For any other way it would not have been the perfect thing, the eternal thing it is. Christ took all mankind onto himself so how could it not have been in pain? For that would have abandoned all the pain of the universe, would have left all those who suffer excluded from the taking onto himself the gathering in of God’s children onto Christ’s perfection in that moment. His pain then was to remember all men, even the least, all the worst suffering so that they may know that God is with them and lives along side them.

And how could it have been in pain but not in joy, for it was the greatest of victories and the day that death was overcome forever and God revealed himself on earth ready to undo all that had been done since the Fall of our shame, unpick the threads of fate, so ill woven.

We remember now that pain God suffered on the cross at Calvary for our salvation, so that he could be one with his children as he was in Eden, it is as though time run in reverse on that fateful day. For as God walked in the garden of Eden in the evening just before he confronted Adam and Eve and told them of the coming of death into the world through their sin, so Christ walked in Gethsemane in the evening before he gave himself up to death to bring Life forever. Just as our first Mother and Father hid themselves in shame before the sight of God after their disobedience, so Christ trembled in fear before the coming pain, but still submitted himself to that same pain, to bring glory to God and salvation to mankind. At the end, returning to the beginning, so that God may once more walk in the garden beside us in the evening.

Many Thanks to D_m_i_t_r_y's photostream for the incredible picture of the Crucifixion.

I don't care whether you're for YES or NO. For God's sake please actually go out and vote in the AV referendum on May 5th!

2011-04-16T18:23:00.006+01:00

We are now rapidly approaching the 5th May and the long awaited referendum on whether for elections to parliament we should switch from First-past-the-post (FPTP) to the Alternative Vote (AV). I would like to say that national conversation has been buzzing with the excitement of quite possibly our biggest constitutional change for a century. I would like to say that campaign has been dominated by thoughtful and accurate but accessible explanations of the different mechanics and likely effects of switching to AV or not. But, they would be an utter lie!

Sadly, the truth is that the AV campaign has so far almost entirely passed the public by. Without the scale and widespread organisation of the main political parties the campaign has just not had the bulk necessary to seriously enter the national consciousness or disturb the thoughts of most of the population. The Yes2AV and No2AV campaigns have been chipper and enthusiastic but thus far largely ineffective. With disaster in Japan, War in Libya, Politics at Home, Local and sub-national elections their message has been largely crowded out.

On the other hand this is quite possibly a good thing as the AV campaign has been almost certainly the worst political campaign I have ever seen. Both sides have barely even tried to wade into the complexity of explaining the somewhat technical differences between FPTP and the proposed AV system. Instead preferring to throw a vast wave of heavily emotive sheer rubbish at the electorate in the hope some of its sticks. It has been truly awful, with a particular low point from the No side with their Vote No or the Baby gets it line of argument only just beating the Yes campaign's repeated massive non-sequiturs that AV will make politics fairer, MP's work harder, expenses lower and is apparently a more 'modern' system, all without explaining precisely how or why these miracles will occur; not to mention end safe seats (no it won't), make every MP have the support of 50% of his constituents (no it won't), end tactical voting (no it won't) and make election results more proportional (actually in direct contradiction to ending safe seats). Not to mention simultaneously claiming that it will harm the BNP and also help smaller parties (connect the dots between those two if you can). Both sides have also managed to scrape the barrel when it comes to chasing celebrity endorsement rather than discussing to issues and more widely planning the man rather than the ball.

The campaign over AV has been even worse in quality than our last general election, which was itself a new low. In case you have forgotten that campaign was largely occupied by an argument over making £6 billion of cuts between two parties who were planning to cut £80 billion and £50 billion respectively, shortly followed by an unbelievably silly and impressively short lived personality cult based on one semi-decent TV performance that then fizzled out even before election day two weeks later. It was pretty grim, but it has been surpassed in sheer balloon-faced stupidity by this AV campaign (from both sides).

It gets worse though. Largely due to the bizarrely low profile of the AV campaign itself, and also, I think, due to the crass, irrelevant negativity of the two campaigns, there is a record low engagement with this important constitutional change. At this stage in the campaign Yes and No are roughly equal in the polls, leading to the possibility we could see major constitutional change with the support of perhaps 12% of the electorate. I call that pretty grim. Lest you think I am exaggerating let me explain myself.

Turnout in general elections is about 2/3. Turn-out in devolved, local and European elections is commonly about 35%. I have seen nothing to convince me this referendum has a higher profile than the concurrent local and devolved elections. And see every reason to believe it will be lower. People are used to local elections, they are somewhat aware of them as they come along with reasonable regularity. They are also spurred by the high-profile of party politics. The AV, as a non-party political one-off, has none of these benefits. I was recently shocked to discover the people in my office between them knew almost nothing about AV and cared almost less. These are highly educated people working in one of the UK's top universities. I would put them in easily the top 20% of the country for expected general political awareness and engagement, and they were barely aware a referendum was even happening. In places where there are local/devolved elections I expect turnout to be slightly lower than for those, where there are no local elections I expect turnout to be even worse. All in all this means we can expect a turnout somewhere between 20-30%. On the higher end of that if we're lucky, the lower if we're not. Combine that with an expectation that the result will be close, and we have AV defeated or accepted with roughly 11-16% of the electorate.

This is dire, you have to go back to the mid-19th Century to find a time when such a small percent of the population got to decide the direction of our constitution. Though, embarrassingly, this time the problem is due to apathy rather than legal restriction. It will be a terrible shame if such serious an issue that so affects us all were decided by a thin majority on a tiny turnout. Something that would quite possibly lead to a crisis of legitimacy for the new or retained system, stuck without any real democratic mandate. It will certainly leave a legacy of bad feeling and mistrust about such change. It is in all our best interest, whether win or lose, for as many people to be involved in this crucial democratic decision as possible.

This is the reason for the headline of this article. It doesn't matter whether you are for AV or against it. Please, please go out and vote on May 5th! If you don't have an opinion then get one. If you know nothing about the issue then please take a small amount of time to get yourself at least reasonably informed. Whatever the case MAKE SURE YOU GET OUT AND VOTE!!!

Prophetic Witness

2011-04-07T21:08:00.008+01:00

"And he has spoken through the Prophets" - The Nicene Creed

Prophetic Witness is something that we are always called to.

It is not something that imperfect man can do at all times but it is something we must always be open to the opportunity for. Fundamentally it is describing the nature of God to a world that does not know him, and relating this nature precisely and practically to our present world. It is the meaning of the Kingdom of God and the saving of our troubled world.

As I start it is important to say what it is not. It is not telling the future. Rather it is speaking and living the Truth, especially the Truth that is not being spoken by anyone else.

The meaning of Christianity is God who transcends all reality, in perfection, in value, in power, who is totally beyond all our reality but holds it in his hand in a manner we can never really describe even remotely properly. But this power and transcendent wonder breaking into our fragile world and our lives of its own choice and transforming it utterly beyond the ability we, part of that imperfect reality, have on our own.

This is the purpose and duty of prophets and prophetic witness everywhere, whether big or small, or famous or unknown. And it applies to both the religious and non-religious, of any faith or none; both the brave, strong and outspoken, and the quiet, meek and calm; in both extraordinary and entirely ordinary situations and it can come upon a person suddenly, or it can come slowly, through through, study, prayer or experience, until it becomes so strong it just bursts forth. Because fundamentally it is not the property of one faith or tradition or community, rather it is our common human inheritance.

I believe that this common inheritance is best described by the example and teaching of the man we know as Jesus Christ, so excuse me explaining it a bit further in those specific terms for a while.

It is what Jesus Christ taught. He taught that the Kingdom of God is at hand, the breaking into our world of the total power of God and its ability to transform our world beyond all recognition, and our ability to play a part in this transformation, through trusting in God’s power and moulding our lives by the incredible truth he taught.

This was the truth he taught, the possibility of utterly raising our sights beyond the compromises and justifications of a fallen world, like a single shaft of light shining suddenly into a dark room. Of acting utterly differently, of bringing something of God’s perfection into the world and thus transforming it, at first for one instant and at one single point, but then more and more and spreading out, as the light fills the darkness, until the whole world shines more brightly. No longer resting content with hatred, of lies, excuses, of half-measures, cop-outs, justifications and fundamentally, imperfection.

The revelation that no evil, however small, can be accepted forever; and that while we can improve ourselves at all we must do so, for any evil however small, a lack of care, of compassion, poisons the world we share and that we must always act to do more, to give better, to always improve the world and never add to its evil. The rejection of the idea that goodness is a matter of doing just enough to qualify, and then sitting back and being smug, however high that bar is set. And the knowledge that with God’s gift we have the capacity to make that choice to do better each and every day.

This is possible because through the example and teaching of Jesus Christ we are given a glimpse of a reality that comes from utterly beyond our world and from beyond our control, a true revealing of something completely new that thus enriches the possibilities our world as a miraculous, spontaneous creation.

This is the nature of prophetic witness. Found in Jesus Christ and his teaching, but also in Prophets, Saints, Martyrs, visionaries, heroes and good men and women anywhere, in any moment, whether religious or not, that challenges the previously accepted limitations with the sight of a higher and better possibility, previously unconsidered, and thus changes and enriches the world.

I believe that it consists of constantly attempting to step outside our environment. But by this I mean something very specific. I do not mean escapism, seeking to run away from our reality. In fact, precisely the opposite. I mean to be deeply rooted in your environment, to be acting in direct response to your environment, but to be seeing beyond its horizons and describing what you see, and how that can enrich the world.

Christianity was born in Prophetic Witness, a challenge to the socially accepted standard of that period, and I believe if it is not such a witness, then it is inevitably nothing. Such a witness is an unavoidable response to being in the world, but not of such a world. It can take many forms, and be of great and small sizes, but all share these basic elements: to be in a world and to try and see outside of it in such a manner as to be still be able to speak to it, by still being in a position to speak so it may hear you. And it is also to step out of a world in such a manner as to drag it with you as you go, all for the purpose of taking it closer to God, the foundation of that truly is, the unity of all that is valuable, the one who is Love itself. It is to be utterly concerned with man because one is utterly concerned with God.

This may be in the most un-obvious and silent of ways as well, but it is unmistakably so. Some of it is taken in the modern phrase, to speak counter-culturally, or, in what is apparently a Quaker phrase, to speak truth to power. But not just the holders of political or financial power, also the cultural, the moral and the social assumptions, whether those working in a single room or across an entire world. It is open to anyone, just as the Prophets of ancient Israel were unremarkable men in every way apart from the fact they were willing to stand up and face rejection, ridicule and violence to speak the full word of God honestly, boldly, and defiantly, of his love and compassion for all and especially the weakest, to a society that just did not want to hear it.

Prophetic Witness, whatever our position, whatever our platform and possibilities, is to be a voice in the wilderness, one way or the other, to speak the words everyone else does not want to hear because it calls always to do better, to try harder and to be more loyal to our duty. It is not to be puffed up with pride in doing so however, for there is more joy in heaven at one sinner who repents than at ten righteous men, but rather to humbly exhort and gently persuade, with patience and love, although this may sometimes be with anger and frustration as well.

When true it often costs the prophet more than it gains him. It is something that has a place every time an accepted wisdom about the state of the world comes to the fore and it consists of challenging that wisdom by living or being or just speaking of another way. It is existential for such a person lives and is a different person to the world around him and as such is often challenged (physically) by that world, even as he challenges it morally. Speech is important, because it leads the transmission of ideas, but it is only one part of a person’s expression, and hence only one part of prophetic witness, which is occurs with the whole of the human being. As such a person’s actions, their choice of tone, their decisions, their attitude, may be prophetic as well. So often we communicate most powerfully not through words, which are often cheap, but in the actions we take and choices we make that cost us. It can be speech, action, attitude, thought, choice, song, liturgy, Art or anything else.

Such a person can say something new and unheard of, maybe by only a little bit, but decisively so, or he can say something old, which is being forgotten, either way as long as he speaks distinctly to the voices around him. I for one become more and more convinced that not only is change not always for the good but that there is nothing more conservative than moral absolutes, although it is something that we speak about today mostly in the mealy-mouthed terms of social justice. I prefer the 3000 years old language of Amos, "let justice flow like a river, and righteousness like a never failing stream"

It is to look to a better world that does not yet exist and act as though it were both a right, with the certainty of a current reality, and a possible thing for our world today. This can be constantly possible for us by acting with our hands in this world but keeping our sight and our inspiration not on this world but rather on the New Heaven and New Earth, on the vision of the Kingdom of God revealed by Jesus Christ and by the Scriptures and the visions and the sacraments and the Saints and the Martyrs and testified to by all the prophets of every kind who stand up in their heritage, whether consciously or not.

Prophetic Witness then means presenting a better, challenging alternative to the conventional language of discussion around us, in whatever way, and whether through speech or through action or just the way we live our lives. It is a constant challenge, one that constantly costs us and one we are called to, both to challenge the fallen society we live in with a little bit of God, but also, existentially, to stand aside from the prevailing discourse, however we must, and place our soul a little bit closer to God, for the purpose of bringing in his kingdom by being a bridge between it and our society and world.

It means not taking the evil of the world as an excuse to do evil ourselves, but rather to place one’s feet not in the world as it is, that cannot last, but in the world that truly exists and remains forever unchanged, the world as it must be, as truth and goodness are the real Being. It is of the closest and most real union with God that is possible in this life, and of the truest meaning of religion, for it is to become a mouthpiece for God's words that would not other be being spoken. It is the possible choice of all people.

It is something that we can and must do, and, I believe, uniquely through God we are capable of doing this, through his grace that gives us the power to step outside the world's totality and speak, for we have seen the New Heaven and the New Earth and the New Jerusalem and the Lamb is who is above them all “and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only begotten Son of the Father, full of Grace and Truth”.

The Phrase 'Feminist Hero' is used too often these days. . . But not for Veena Malik!!!

2011-03-26T14:38:00.013Z

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And can I get an AMEN!!

In fact, not just that. Can we get Veena Malik a Bafta, an Oscar or

just jump straight to Sainthood.

I just hope it doesn't cost her. . . .

It is incredibly sad that I have to say that and it be a genuine fear. But with recent events in Pakistan it is all too possible.

A fantastically brave and courageous woman.

Her utter refusal to be cowed by open bullying (and implicit violent threats) is an inspiration for human decency and tolerance.

God Bless and protect her. It gives me hope for Pakistan and humanity generally.

I'm a Tory and proud of it. But still, these Sickness and Disability Cuts are Wrong!

2011-03-20T18:15:00.010Z

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The news for the last year has been dominated by the argument about public spending cuts: how soon, how deep, and what to cut? Between the recession and the previous Labour government, Britain has been left with a £155 billion public annual deficit: 11% of GDP, 22% of government spending, £425 million a day, £5,000 a second. Whatever way you phrase it that is a butt-load of money. The arguments about cuts dominated the general election last year and continues to motivate newspapers, press releases, broadcasts, rallies and riots. There is a general consensus that some cuts are necessary but no agreement about how much or what should be cut. The Labour party were planning £50 billion of cuts pre-election and the Coalition have promised £81 billion. Either way this is also a lot of money and won't happen without valuable services being unfortunately restricted or cancelled entirely.

I'm a conservative: by choice, by temperament, by experience, and by Party. When it comes to debt and the deficit I am a hard-liner. I think we should get our debt and deficit down as fast as possible given the health of the economy and the limits of practicality and morality. I believe this is the most sure and responsible way to ensure our future economic prosperity, by taking the hard decisions now. One of the core reasons I voted Conservative was because they promised to bring the deficit down faster and harder than Labour did, and were the first party to have the courage to stand up and say that serious spending cuts would be needed. Not the easiest message to take to the people in any climate. I'm also proud the Conservative Party took the lead in the election in promising to increase our spending on International Aid to the UN target of 0.7% of GDP, despite the immensely challenging economic climate, something Labour never managed in a decade, as well as ring fencing the NHS, protecting the schools budget and reconnecting the state pension to earnings. All while facing up to the fact that these choices mean harder choices must be made elsewhere. Generally I entirely agree with these priorities and the choices the government has made.

There is one glaring exception to this though. One area where support for some of the most vulnerable people in our society is being severely slashed, contrary to these principles I've mentioned, and that is the support available to long-term sick and disabled people. Starting with the previous Labour government and now the Coalition services and welfare that provide essential support for the long-term sick and disabled are being cut by a total of £5 billion a year. Just for some comparison that is equivalent to the money raised by the government's Banking levy and the removal of child benefit from higher rate tax payers combined. These are extensive cuts across the range of support given to sick and disabled people including Employment Support Allowance, Disability Living Allowance, the Independent Living Fund, Access to Work, as well as Housing, Council Tax and Health and Social Care (Don't worry if you don't know what those are, I'm going to explain). And their stupidity is being compounded by a choice of language and lack of communication that is just scaring people for no good reason. People are getting the impression that the government is not listening and does not care. Now, I'm an optimist, I genuinely think that politicians, even most of the ones I strongly disagree with, are really trying to do the best for the country. I think they do care, but they are currently not giving that impression to too many of the more vulnerable people in our society.

There has been opposition to all sorts of cuts. We've had outraged campaigns against selling forests, increasing tuition fees, removing child benefit from the rich, cutting housing benefit, public sector pensions, closing libraries, raising VAT, cutting EMA, Higher Education, the British Film Council, the Future Jobs Fund, defence, the police, councils, and almost everything else. I pretty much support all of these policies (give or take a few details). I even support some cuts the government have given up on including ending free milk for under 5's, something called Bookstart and re-designing NHS Direct to save money.

This does not mean that it is acceptable to just hack away at random though. Cuts must be restrained by two minimum principles. Firstly, and obviously, what is good for the economy; and secondly a basic level of service and support for those most vulnerable in our society. This is a matter of sheer morality, but also a matter of political honesty. Before the election British politicians, almost as one, united to try to partially conceal the scale of the challenge of cuts and tax rises that would be necessary to bring the deficit under control, whether using the Coalition's plan or Labour's weaker one. Implicit and explicit promises were made that basic standards of welfare and support wouldn't need to be compromised. Nor is there any need for them to be. Even under the Coalition's program the cuts amount to reducing total public spending by 2% a year. It is rather a matter of choosing, admittedly difficult, priorities.

It is very easy to be NIMBY about cuts. To claim to support cuts in theory but oppose cuts in practice whenever they are to a service or money that I benefit from or care about. There has been a huge amount of this since the election, an orgy of special pleading from those representing almost every imaginable group affected by public spending, on occasions brilliantly coupled with complete loss of perspective. The Labour party is currently making an art-form out of combining these features: Supporting some cuts and tax rises in theory while opposing all specific examples in practice, with occasional, uncontrollable outbursts of total, balls to the wall hyperbole.

This is categorically not one of those issues though. Out of all the cuts and policies I mentioned above this massive, badly planned assault on support for disabled and long-term sick people is by far the most serious. Far more than any of those things these are cuts to essential services, supporting basic financial security and opportunities in our society for some of its most vulnerable and disadvantaged members. These are essential, basic elements for a civilised society more so than any of those other things. I think if you oppose cuts to any of those things, if you consider them a bridge too far, then you must oppose cuts to disability and long-term sickness provision even more, as a priority above them.

Suffering a severe, long-term illness or disability is one of the most difficult things to live with of any of the disadvantages in people can face. Almost by definition it robs people of so many advantages the rest of us take for granted including too much of the ability to take part in society. It is often painful, almost always fundamentally exhausting and draining and always stressful for the rest of a sick or disabled person's family. It makes life constantly more of a struggle than for well people. It also leaves a person open to a constant flow of minor indignities and general ignorance from a society where many people are still totally clueless about how to relate to disabled and extremely sick people in a human manner. Not to mention more objective stats like the fact that disabled people are the most likely of any group in society to be living in poverty (twice as likely) and to be unemployed (50% are). I could, of course, go on; the difficulties faced by disabled and long-term sick people are as various as the possible mental and physical conditions people can suffer with, but I'm sure you understand the general idea.But that is enough vagueness. What is it that I am actually talking about?

Two main things. There are two main pieces of welfare that support those who suffer from serious long-term illness and disability in the UK. The first is the Disability Living Allowance (DLA). This is a universal benefit, meaning its open to anyone indefinitely regardless of personal income or other economic circumstances. It is designed to help people with the extra costs of care or mobility that comes with being disabled or seriously ill, put by one study at 25% higher than the living costs faced by a non-disabled person. And is only available to the most disabled and ill. Being disabled or sick is an expensive business. Whether it's expensive home modifications, mobility equipment, prescriptions, taxis because public transport or driving is impossible, tuition support, personal care or god alone knows what else. DLA is not an out-of-work benefit, it helps many people who are sick or disabled stay in work as well as others who cannot work.

The 2nd main piece of welfare for disabled and ill people is the Employment Support Allowance (ESA), which replaced Incapacity Benefit in 2008, which itself replaced the previous Sickness Benefit. DLA is a universal benefit designed to help with the extra costs associated with being disabled and is paid regardless of income or work position. ESA, on the other hand, is similar in many ways to the dole, Job seekers allowance (JSA). It is meant to provide the money needed for living, to those who don't have a job, and has a contributory form that is universal, but rationed by NI contributions, and an income based form that is means tested. Whereas JSA gives an income to those who don't have a job but are looking for one, Sickness and then Incapacity Benefit were designed to provide a minimal income for those who are incapable of working due to physical or mental disability or long-term sickness. It is paid at rates somewhat higher than JSA (about £90 a week), recognising the fact that it is not meant to be strictly temporary, and that it is not trying to incentivise people to get a job and that disabled and long-term sick people suffer higher costs (see above).

Sickness and Incapacity benefit were criticised for effectively 'parking people on benefits'. The criticism ran that once someone had been designated to ill to work they were effectively left on welfare from then on, and not supported or encouraged in any effort to get back into work. There were also accusations from both left and right, though never seemingly actually backed up by evidence, that first Margaret Thatcher's government and then Tony Blair's had massaged politically sensitive unemployment figures by subtly moving people onto Sickness benefit, and thus off the unemployment figures. And thus of course also leaving them there until they retired.

In response to these criticisms the Labour Party introduced ESA in 2008 for new claimants as unable to seek work for medical reasons, and also with the intent of, at some point in the future, reassessing all the people already on IB and Sickness Benefit, in order to weed out those people possibly placed their for convenience of the figures, rather than absolute need. The new benefit, ESA was deliberately modelled after JSA. It was designed to radically change the focus of support for the sick/disabled from one that supposed they would remain inactive (as far as paid work goes), to one whereby the presumption was most people would be supported and encouraged to gain work. This can be seen from the change of name, from Sickness/Incapacity Benefit to Employment Support Allowance, a far more dynamic, employment focused name. Unlike the old benefit ESA is divided into two parts along the lines of this presumption. ESA claimants are either placed in the work-activity group or the support group. The support group are people considered so ill/disabled and entirely unable to work that they are just supported as before without any expectation that they will meet any further conditions. A lot of people on ESA are placed in the work-activity group though. This is for people who are assessed as too long-term ill or disabled to fulfill the work-seeking requirements for JSA, but still capable of some 'work-related activity'. These people are then placed on a specialist program, with some similarities to that faced by JSA claimants, meetings with advisers to discuss strategies for trying to seek work, undergoing training etc, but with a higher degree of support and specialist help, specifically designed to support those who are long-term ill or disabled into work. Because of the change in assumption this is the largest group of people on ESA. The assessments are deliberately skewed so that anyone capable of any 'work-related activity', which may range from great to small, should go onto the work-activity group, rather than being placed into the support group.

In theory ESA is a good idea. There is a gap in provision between those who are sufficiently well and able-bodied to seek work with only the help given by jobcentres, and people who are so disabled/ill that they are totally incapable of taking and holding down a job. Done well, with suitable structure and support, ESA could fill the gap and have a valuable role in supporting those people, who could benefit from more intensive help, into work thus supporting their income, independence, and in the long term saving the public money by getting people off welfare and into paying taxes.

That is the theory but the theory relies on a number of fundamental assumptions. Firstly, that people who apply for ESA are being steered into the group that would most benefit them, whether rejected and placed on JSA, or the work-activity or support group. Secondly, that the support in place is actually any good, and sufficiently personalised and thorough to actually help people. Thirdly, that there are actually jobs for long-term ill/disabled people to go into and employers willing to take a risk in employing them. Unfortunately, in practice, none of these three conditions are actually happening, together producing a significantly botched operation.

Firstly, there is widespread criticism of the manner in which the new beefed-up work capability assessments are taking place, so far for new entrants but soon also for people already on IB or Sickness Benefit. The work-capability have been outsourced to company called ATOS. David Cameron at one point talked about assessments being carried out by a specialist squad of mental health professionals, nurses, physiotherapists, doctors and others to holistically determine what people were capable of and have them assigned appropriately. This just did not happen. The assessments are a computer tick-box affair, conducted by a single person, who may indeed be one of those groups of professionals, but certainly not all of them. For example people with mental health disabilities have been assessed by physiotherapists. Not that the specialism of the person in question really matters because it is a computer tick-box exercise determined by the ability to do a series of basic motor and mental tasks. The evidence of doctors or consultants who may have known and treated an ESA applicant are not accepted as evidence, and there is seemingly little to no accommodation for the fact that many long-term sick or disabled people have conditions that vary considerably over time, meaning that their ability to perform tasks on one day over a period of a few hours may in no way reflect their health and capability over the long term or their ability to hold down a job.

Don't take my word for it though. The Scottish branch of the Citizen's advice bureau labelled the assessments "deeply flawed" and creating "unnecessary misery and hardship", with examples of people labelled as 'fit for work' including the terminally ill, and those suffering from advanced parkinsons, heart failure and severe mental illnesses. They also noted that some people were being found too well for ESA but too sick to fulfill the requirements for JSA and so were just falling into a gap with no welfare support at all. Professor Paul Gregg, a welfare reform expert and one of the men who designed ESA, said that the tests were a "total mess", "badly malfunctioning" and that, quite simply, "the system did not work". What is more the government's own review of the process, the Harrington review, recommended no fewer than 20 changes to "every stage" of the process, many of them representing deep and cultural change to the whole process, and labelled it “mechanistic, impersonal and lack[ing] empathy”. Further evidence of the level of problem with the tests and decisions is the rate of appeals. Appeals for ESA decisions have sky-rocketed compared to the previous system. Around 40% of those found 'fit to work' appeal and around half of these appeals are upheld, overturning the original decision. The thing is though, these official reports, although telling, do not reveal the true extent of the problem. The impact of the need to go through the assessments, the stress involved, the fear of losing all financial support and security for people already struggling with the huge stress and difficulty of serious illness and often poverty, and the sheer exertion of going through the testing procedure for people struggling with very severe illness, fatigue and pain are all deeply damaging. The final element of this whole issue that has not exactly inspired confidence for those who have to go through it, is the fact that the government had already announced how much money that were going to save by people being moved from ESA to JSA, before the assessments had begun: £1 billion a year. This gives people the impression that the numbers of people assessed into the categories could be being driven not solely by need or individual circumstance but by a pre-defined target for savings, rather than people's health and well-being.

Secondly, the support available to people placed in the work-activity group has been criticised at some length. If you talk to almost anyone who has been on the dole, they will have horror stories about the support available at jobcentres for people seeking work. It does not seem that these issues have gone away for the support available for those on ESA. Except for healthy, able job-seekers it does not matter so much, as they can and should be able to do a lot on their own. For those on ESA in various levels of sickness and disability they, by definition, require a much higher level of personalised, tailored and effective training and support, which it does not seem they are getting. This is understandable, real, personalised support is expensive, but without it there seems to be little point to ESA it seems likely that it will achieve considerably less than it is hoped, while putting many disabled and sick people involved through serious stress, difficulty and physical exertion that absorbs a considerable amount of their very limited supplies of personal energy for little gain.

Thirdly, to be quite honest, there just are not the jobs out there. In a period of near full employment ESA could have an important role helping well-qualified and experienced people back into work and thus opening up a substantial new group of skilled and experienced labour. In current circumstances though, with unemployment at 2.5 million and 5 unemployed to every vacancy, there is just too much competition for many disabled people to stand much of a chance. There are so many well-qualified people applying for almost every job that no employers have any serious incentive to take someone who is a risk, even if they are skilled and experienced, since this risk may mean extra cost, and at a time when so many companies themselves are struggling this kind of social generosity is far from their minds.

So unfortunately on all available counts there are serious flaws. One of the remarkable things about this process is the numbers that have come out for the success rates of those applying for ESA. Of new claimants, 64% have been found 'fit for work', 26% have been placed in the 'work activity' section of ESA and 10% are placed in the Support group. These figures are only believable if one thinks that 2/3rds of people who apply for ESA are entirely well, which contrasts with the evidence that even some people suffering from serious or even terminal illnesses have been rejected (see above). These figures are also vastly different to those that have come from the first pilot re-assessments of people already on IB. The results of these have been 30% placed in the support group, 40% in the work-activity group and 30% have been found 'fit for work' and rejected from ESA. Oh, and for both these sets of figures, about 1/3 of those found 'fit for work' appeal with 40% (ish) of those appeals being successful. The numbers for those rejected are considerably lower, as would be expected since these people have already been through a previous assessment process. The divergence in the other figures has no obvious explanation though.

Of the £5 billion annual savings the government is hoping to gain from cuts to disability support £1 billion comes from removing people from IB or ESA and putting them on Jobseekers Allowance. Another £1.5 billion also comes from ESA, and was announced in the October Comprehensive Spending Review. ESA has both contributory and Income based versions. One is open to people of any income, as long as they have made sufficient National Insurance payments. The other one is only available to those with no savings, income or partner working. Both have, until now, been unlimited in time. You are on it for as long as you need to be. It was announced in the June budget that from next year contributory ESA for the work-activity group would be limited to one year. This mirrors the 6 month limit to contributory JSA, after which it is only possible to get the Income version if you pass the means-test. There is obviously some logic in this, if people have assets or other income then it seems somewhat reasonable that they should consume those before being supported by general society. There are real problems with this though. Time limiting contributory JSA is justified in a circumstance where it is expected that JSA is only a temporary measure anyway. For many of the long-term sick and disabled ESA they will need the support ESA gives permanently. There is some parallel that this change has only been made for those in the work-activity group, as it is hoped that this will help them into some work. Whether the work-activity group will succeed cannot be known in advance though and it seems likely that the exit rate will still be well below that for the dole. It is wrong to base policy in advance on this when we don't yet know if it will work.

The other issue is that, as I said, even now households with a disabled or long-term sick member are the most likely to be living in poverty of almost any group. Not to mention the considerable range of other stress and personal difficulty that sickness/disability bring that is not institutionally comparable to being merely unemployed. There are other issues as well. Incomes ESA is not open to those who have a partner who works or have savings. This does not take account of the fact that families where one member is disabled/sick and another works suffer severe strain due to the need for care and support for the disabled/sick family member and the considerable additional costs that often come with being long-term sick/disabled. This all combines to put a massive strain, both emotional and financial, on such families that is not there in the equivalent situation with a family where one person in unemployed but their partner is not. As I said, these families are already twice as likely to be living in poverty as any other group. The low level of income somone can have and still render their partner ineligible to receive ESA, combined with the additional costs of being disabled, means that vast numbers of these families containing the estimated 300,000 people this will effect will be pushed down into poverty by this change, if they are not there already.

There is also the issue of the wisdom of de-capitalising those who are already poor, through this country's very strict asset limits on means tests, though this applies more widely than just ESA. Savings provide a cushion giving people confidence and meaning they are both less likely to need state support and also once they end up needing support they are more likely to be able get back to financial stability. Demanding people consume almost all savings before accessing welfare means that they are more vulnerable and likely to need help in the future because they are less able to cushion further future financial shocks without state support. It also arguably doesn't save that much money in the long-term, as it merely means those on welfare consume their savings and then require even more state support than otherwise. This is emphasised for something like ESA where people are likely to be on it for a long time, and there is already so much stress and difficulty and vulnerability to deal with anyway. There is also a massive bias in favour of having wealth in the form of owning a house. The equity on a house does not contribute to the means test. So you can own a £1 million house, and have no cash savings, and receive full welfare, or you can have £17,000 in savings, but only rent, and not be able to receive any welfare. Of course there should be some requirement to use one's savings or assets before receiving welfare, but the limits for this are currently set too low and too harshly, as well as being entirely arbitrarily biased in favour of house ownership.

Moving on from the disaster that is current and recent policy surrounding ESA, £2 billion of the cuts that are being made are occurring to DLA. Here the issue is considerably more simple. The Coalition revealed in the June Budget they are planning to cut £2 billion a year from DLA by re-designing the entire benefit as Personal Independence Payments (PiP). They are planning to massively tighten up the entry requirements and thus cut the costs by 20%. This is a bizarre decision. It has been dressed up in some language about making the payments more targeted and individualised, so they act to empower to choose how to support themselves better. This is bizarre because that is precisely what DLA already did, and they haven't at all explained how they are going to improve it. What is more DLA is already quite possibly the best designed benefit there is, without the legitimate problems that did lead to the introduction of ESA. DLA is already only open to the most sick/disabled, who are able to demonstrate specific additional costs caused by their disability they need help with. It is universal, meaning it doesn't affect work incentives, and actually supports many people to stay in work and has the lowest fraud rate of any benefit, at 0.5%. The fact that the first thing that was announced was the amount of money to be saved, rather than any information about what principles eligibility were to be tightened on, means that the whole thing looks overwhelmingly like it has no basis at all apart from just cutting costs, rather than being an actual plan for reform like ESA (however botched), and without real thought about the impact it will have on people. The only up side is that the changes aren't meant to start until 2013, so there is some time to campaign against this yet.

The other cut to DLA has been more targeted than the above transformation, but no less bizarre. With DLA you can money towards additional costs for supporting mobility or personal care. The government has proposed removing the element involving mobility costs from those disabled people in care homes. These people are often the most disabled, hence they're in care homes, and the money for mobility support may be the only thing that provides them with some mobility and independence to travel outside their care homes. This cut will save £160 million a year. It seems entirely indefensible as it stands. There is some confusion in the CSR document itself. At one point it mentions cutting mobility support for those people in care homes where that supported is being provided by the home. On this reading the measure is only avoiding double payment. It, however, does not mention this at any of the other points the cut is mentioned, nor has it been mentioned since then in any reports of the issue, nor has the government at any point explained what it actually means by this.

The last two cuts that have been reported are to two further programs to help the long-term sick/disabled. The first is the shutting of the Independent Living Fund. This is a £360 million fund that provides extra money to some of the most disabled people and their families to help them stay and live and be cared for in their own homes rather than having to go into care homes. This fund has been shut from this year and is to close with little explanation. The final one is something called the access to work scheme This scheme provided grants to employers who were considering hiring a disabled person to help cover the costs of any alterations to the workplace or equipment they may need to buy specially so the disabled person could do their job. This has not been cut by an explicit figure but what has happened is the fund has considerably restricted the range of items they will provide grants for, thus leaving those costs on the employer and making them less likely to take on the cost of hiring a disabled person in the first place That gives the complete list of cuts to specific support for the sick and disabled. It amounts to about £5 billion a year, not including the lower spending on the Access to Work fund that there hasn't been an figure given for. It also does not include the general welfare cuts in Housing benefit, Council tax benefit, and restrictions to Healthcare and Social Care, due to general cuts, which will all of course also affect disabled people, especially those large numbers already in poverty.

I entirely understand and appreciate the need to cut spending in this country considering the £155 billion deficit we have. I'm the last person who would argue against that. But like I said that does not justify any old cut. Families with long-term sick or disabled members already face some of the worst poverty and social exclusion in our society, without even mentioning the obvious pain and suffering that so often comes with these conditions, and the huge stress it places on individual and families. A lot of cuts are unfortunate and down-right difficult, but they do not involve the risk of fundamental damage to our most basic social duty, provision for those who just cannot provide for themselves. Alan Bennett recently equated closing some libraries with "child abuse". He is an idiot. Philip Pullman labelled a plan to remove the 25% of the funding provided by the government from a charity that sends free books to children an "wanton destruction". He is a moron. Both of these cuts and many others are a damn shame but they don't risk real damage to the lives, chances and financial security of some of the most vulnerable people in our society. These cuts to disability support do though and that is why they need to be opposed.

No matter how right-wing you are support for the sick and disabled is among the most worthy of causes a government can pursue. They come under the heading of the deserving poor if anyone does. This support is also a basic religious principle in Christianity and other religions. The Bible talks at great length about God's wrath and anger against those who do not care for those who cannot support themselves, most commonly mentioning 'oprhans and widows', but meaning any who are vulnerable and disadvantaged in our society.

The cut to DLA is some 20%, which is also about what the whole package of cuts represents to general disability support through the welfare system. This is an unjustifiably high percentage. The whole £81 billion program of cuts amount to 11.5% of government spending. Any budget that is reduced by less than 11.5% is being relatively protected, any by more than this cut relatively hard. If disability support was being cut by less than this, or even 11.5%, then it would be vaguely justifiable, as part of a contribution right across government to cut spending. But it is being cut by a lot more than this. Of all the areas of government spending support for the disabled and long-term sick should be first in the line to be protected and ring fenced. The fact the government has ring fenced health, schools, International Aid, EU contributions and state pensions and, to a lesser extent, defence, proves it can be reasonably done. 20% cuts mean that the government is targeting disability and sickness support for cuts rather than protecting it. This is totally unjustifiable. On top of this there is also all the issues with ESA that are not directly connected with the money, but still resemble more of a train-wreck than a solid program for reform. Even if these difficult changes to cut costs were being done in order to plow that money back into better support elsewhere, whether in more individualised support or to help carers or some other improvement, then it could also be justified to an extent. But the figures plucked out of the air as targets before any analysis of need, among other things, makes this seem to be purely a money saving drive in an area where there is urgent need.

If cuts do have to be made there are numerous things that could be done to increase people's confidence in the process and reduce the possible negative impact on people. No rationale has been given for replacing DLA, which is one of the better designed benefits. The government must give a clear explanation for any changes they make to reassure people. They should also reduce the amount to be cut from DLA to at most 10%, which would be in line with general cuts, without specifically targeting DLA. The cut to mobility support for those in care homes must be reversed except where the government can clarify and guarantee that those costs are already being supported elsewhere by the government. There must be some change to the restriction of contribution ESA, whether extending the time to 2 years (instead of 1), or after 1 year putting people onto a lower level of support instead of eliminating it entirely, or reforming the rules around the means test for Income ESA. Ideally other cuts would be also reconsidered, especially as things like the ILF and Access to Work are meant to enable people to live independently and hold down a job, both things the government claims it wants to put at the centre of its policy towards supporting sick and disabled people. To its credit Labour put down an amendment to the Welfare and Disability Bill that contained many of these proposals. The ideas I outlined would still result in cuts of around £2.5-3 billion. Surely more than enough of a reduction to be borne by these supports by possibly the most disadvantaged and vulnerable section of our society.

The final question then is what can people do? Many things. The first is get yourself aware of what is possibly happening. The greatest danger is just that so few people know about these cuts, because sadly the sick and disabled do not have the loud supporters, the friends in the media or noisy ability to defend themselves shown by more high-profile but less vital issues. Though it is inspiring to see the grassroots movement that has emerged (largely online) in a few months to campaign against these measures. 'The Broken of Britain' is a great collaborative group that attempts to raise the profile of this issue and bring disabled, sick and well and able-bodied people together to campaign against these cuts. 'Diary of a Benefits Scrounger' is a great blog written by a wonderful lady called Sue Marsh, who herself suffers from serious Crohns disease, and explains these issues much more eloquently (and briefly) than I could hope to. Both of these have a lot of information on what people can do to help. There are also a load of other resources online.

There are always things people can do, whether writing to your MP, to make sure politicians know the strength of feeling about this, signing petitions, informing others, writing to newspapers and generally raising awareness. There is also some time, since many of these changes do not come in until 2013 or later. There has even actually already been some success. Under great pressure the government has already decided to review the decision to remove mobility allowance DLA from those in care homes, and in the last day has announced a public review into ESA. This is hence a crucial time to increase the pressure on them to reverse these cuts and secure proper support for long-term sick and disabled people in our society permanently.

A Modest Proposal For Christian Unity

2011-02-27T19:04:00.012Z

(The first half of this piece is my article on The Importance of Christian Unity. I would recommend reading that first if you haven't already. It also has the slides I used when giving both halves as a presentation. (It can also be found directly below this article on my blog))

I've now explained why I think this issue is so important for Christians. But I don't want to finish with just a vague appeal. In the spirit of personal commitment I also want to talk about the practical problems of achieving Unity. Fundamentally the change we need to see is in our hearts rather than in the external world. Not because external change is unimportant, but because only from our hearts can this change be achieved and sustained as a reality. There is no point just fiddling with external structures if we ourselves do not change.

However, with the scale and complexity of the problem we must also consider how to drive and effect this change in the meantime. The task is huge but with God's grace nothing is impossible, and certainly not something so close and dear to his will and heart. In this I believe there are broadly three areas that we must be constantly aware of.

The First thing is to recognize who our friends are. I'll explain what I mean.

One question that I haven't answered yet is who I'm including as Christians who could or should be reunited in One Christian Church. I don't think it's possible to give one binary answer to that question but rather to talk about those who are closer or further away from us in unity and doctrine. Most fundamentally, to be a Christian is to be a follower of Christ. The Bible says clearly that "no-one can say Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit". This makes it clear that the Holy Spirit works within all those who confess Jesus Christ as Lord and recognises them as Christian (in some basic sense).

Those who worship God as their Father and Jesus Christ as Lord form a group in humanity clearly recognisable as differentiated from those of other religions and ideologies. Even in the bad old days of sectarianism this was recognised, with those who confessed Christ, but were considered to get serious things wrong, called heretics, in difference to those who weren't Christians, who were labelled infidels. In fact it is possible to go further than this. Almost all denominations recognise the possibility of those who, as the Catholic Catechism states, "through no fault of their own do not know the Gospel of Christ" also through the grace of God reaching eternal salvation, whether or not they have ever even heard the name Jesus Christ.

It is definitely possible to be more precise than this vague statement about "Jesus is Lord" though. All the 4 major Christian families I mentioned before: Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant and Non-Trinitarian share in this heritage, that Christ is Lord and God is our Father. Taking out the Non-Trinitarian grouping though, which is the most different, both internally and to the others, we are left with Protestant, Orthodox and Catholic. These three groups constitute Trinitarian Christianity and share a huge common heritage and similarity compared to which their differences are, truthfully, small and often downright invisible to those from outside their communities not versed in the history of the conflict.

Most basically we share the concept of the Trinity, a belief in One God in Three persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. We share a belief that the man Jesus of Nazareth who walked in Judea 2000 years ago is also God Almighty, the Son of the Trinity. We believe he is both fully God and fully man; that he is the single most important man who ever has or will live, and that he came to bring eternal salvation to all mankind. We share a common, complete Scripture, the Old and New Testaments of 66 books and we believe this Holy Bible is the authoritative and divinely inspired word of God. We trust in Jesus' Apostles to have recorded and transmitted the truth about Jesus and we take their interpretation as authoritative. We share our fundamental standard of prayer: the Lord's Prayer, and the three historic creeds (Nicene, Apostolic and Athanasian), with their detailed description of Christian doctrine; the two fundamental sacraments of Baptism and Communion as necessary to the Faith, and various other ceremonies such as Marriage and Burial. We all share a historical basis in Judaism, as well as at least 400 years of history, a joint heritage of early Christian Saints and Holy Men, the folk memory of the persecution of the early Church under the Roman Empire, and the eventual victory of Christianity. We share core theology of the role of the Holy Spirit in bringing strength and truth, of salvation through faith in Jesus Christ, and of the importance of Good works to faith, and the mission of all Christians to "make disciples of all the nations" and to make the Kingdom of God a reality on this earth. And I could go on for some time.

This Trinitarian Christian community numbers about 90% of Christians. There is a further subset of this group though that shares even more than this. All Orthodox, Catholics and some Protestants share a common heritage of how Christians should be organised based on the Apostolic succession. We share a belief in the importance of the threefold ministry of Deacons, Priests and Bishops; the Apostolic Succession of Bishops in a line going back to the Apostles and Jesus himself and the importance of Tradition (with a big T) as a source of doctrine and interpretation. (As well as doctrines such as the real presence, veneration of Saints, Liturgy, etc, etc.) And this further subset makes up about 70% of Christians. It is also possible to go further and identify which group within this diversity are closest to each other, and have the most in common down to a fineness. But we would be here forever and it is multidimensional question, so as I mentioned before there is no one clear measure to rank people by or standard to judge with.

Now, I do not by any of this mean to make little of, minimise or ignore the differences that do exist between Christians and Christian groups. These issues are often serious, important and deeply felt. But rather to put these differences in the context in which they truthfully exist. Genuine dialogue and work towards reconciliation cannot occur on the basis of ignoring differences or abandoning one's own beliefs, but rather in being honest and open about the differences and the similarities that do exist between groups, and neither ignoring or minimising either. We will never move forward without a genuine willingness to change and compromise and no church or person within the body of Christ is perfect. We all have our sins and our mistakes, in the past and today, and without the willingness to admit this there can be no progress. But this does not mean that we can start the journey by abandoning the Truth we currently hold. You never get anywhere by watering down or avoiding the Truth because that is the very thing that we seek to unite around.

What we must do though is take the Truth that we have and work with our whole hearts to see what grounds we can agree on. To see where we can be united, on the basis of our common heritage and our common goal to do the will of God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, rather than looking for excuses to be disunited, to ignore one another and to relapse into stereotypes and self-righteousness. I say this because there is no dogma in any major group that is against respectful and open dialogue and an honest, heartfelt desire to search for common ground and Christian Unity. Such a thing would go directly against core Christian values to go and seek the wanderers and those who are lost.

Also, there is no point baulking at the scale of the whole task and thus doing nothing. Rather each group can and must start with their neighbours, those other groups nearest to them. God does not ask that we solve all problems ourselves immediately. Rather that we do what we can and with others and God's grace solve them eventually together.

The 1960's were the start of a great time for Ecumenism, and saw, for the first time in Centuries, the stirrings of a movement towards unity between various Christian groups. This movement began at this time, and not at any other, not because of any dramatic change in doctrine in the groups involved, but rather a change of the heart, a new desire to see what unity could be achieved. And in many ways the results were impressive.

In 1965 for the first time in 1000 years the Pope, head of the Roman Catholic Church, and an Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, head of the Eastern Orthodox Church, met and rescinded the excommunications that had followed the Great Schism 965 years before, and pledged to work to closer unity. In the 1970's there were historical meetings between the Pope and the heads of the Oriental Orthodox Syrian, Egyptian and Assyrian Churches, which resulted in joint theological statements on the nature of Christ, despite 1600 years of division between them at least theoretically because of this issue. In 1999 the Lutheran World Federation and the Roman Catholic church both published the 'Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification', affirming that officially Lutheran and Catholic teaching on justification through faith are compatible, thus at least nominally solving the theological rift that was one of the main causes of the Reformation. This document has also been affirmed by the World Methodist Council.

There has also been less high-profile work between Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox, between Catholics and Anglicans and between Anglicans and Methodists. Among Protestants, who are by nature more fragmented, there have been moves to unity in creating and strengthening umbrella organisations and communions of mutually recognising Churches, of Lutherans, of 'Reformed' Calvinists, and of many other groups. As well as Unity Churches uniting protestant denominations on the same territory, such as the URC here in England. Anglicans, particularly, may be surprised to know they are part of the Porvoo Communion, in which the Anglican churches of Europe are joined with the Lutheran national churches of the Baltic states, which share the similarity with Anglicanism of being Protestant, national Churches which maintain Bishops. They're also in communion with the Saint Thomas Malankara Church of India, the Philippine, Independent Church and the Old Catholic Church of Utrecht. Who knew, eh?

The point about all this though is that it has been achieved through a process of looking again at those issues that divide us, with an open mind and heart and with a desire to come together, and by seeing through the emotional baggage around the issues seeing that fundamentally we believe and hope for the same things. It involved admitting that we made mistakes in the past, not compromising doctrines, but admitting that in the past we allowed emotional, political and cultural issues to drive our separation rather than necessary issues of difference in doctrines. This then gives the opportunity to correct these mistakes, and also to use these bridges which have been built as a basis for further work pulling us towards each other and bridging the divide further, through admitting that the divide is essentially not as wide or deep as we previously thought. It shows what can be done.

The Second thing I think is important is a reunion based on convergence at all levels of faith, both on the personal, the level of individual churches, the levels of structure and worldwide. Again, I will explain what I mean.

So far I have talked about reunion as seeking unity between denominations, what I may call horizontal unity. It is quite theoretical though, but there is also practical or 'vertical' unity. In almost all parts of the world these days there are multiple Christian churches and groups active and visible in the same area, the same country. This brings chances for working towards practical (or vertical) unity. By this I mean independent groups in the same area looking to work together towards common goals and ends, to come together for services, to share ideas and to make each other part of their lives in that local area. Groups don't have to agree on everything to work together, they can do so on the common ground they do have. An example would be the 'Churches Together' movement in the UK. Other examples could be working together to fight poverty, promote fair-trade, peace in the Holy Land, or to work together to stand up for the rights of Christians against aggressive secularism. The local Anglican and Catholic diocese of Coventry can't declare themselves united as one, independent of the actions of the whole Anglican and Catholic churches. But, they and other groups can care for each other and act and work together and be united in action and fellowship in practice and through sharing experiences grow in trust, come to regard each other as part of the same family, and realise that we share more of the same aims and ends than we thought.

This applies to individual churches within denominations as much as between them. They can be as good at ignoring one another as we can between denominations. It also applies to sub-church Christian groups that may be active in various areas. (In Universities in Britain CU's and chaplaincies for example, and there are plenty other examples.) It is also important to talk about Christian unity at an individual and personal level.

I take inspiration from something Thomas Merton said. That the first step towards Christian Unity, towards ecumenism, is to regard all fellow Christians ecumenically. Unity starts in the heart of the individual, for as long as we regard other Christians as necessarily better or worse solely because of their group then we will remain disunited. From our heart all change can come, but if our hearts are not changed then we cannot change the world. Specifically we can regard our brothers and sisters, even from different groups, as a part of ourselves, as Christ surely did, such as their hurts are our hurts and their griefs are our griefs. This means taking that little extra time to go out of our way to support and care for each other, rather than resting in easy apathy. Unity is, as I said before, not really about belonging to the same institution, but rather about having the care and compassion for another that is the what community truly is. This is what drives unity and the search for unity, even at the church-wide and institutional level, and holds it together, and without which institutional unity is am empty shell that will inevitably collapse.

It becomes apparent to me as I travel through life that, as someone once said to me, Christians have no trouble with ecumenism at a personal level. We can and do mix with other Christians, as we can and do mix even with respectful unbelievers, and welcome them into our communities, and despite differences in stated belief, we can and do contribute to one another in Love and fellowship. Thus we mutually acknowledging Christ in our hearts and our actions even if we believe there are areas where other Christians do not entirely understand with their heads. This truth can be expressed across all levels of thought and dispute if we have the will. This is not something that we can manufacture but, like all Love, comes by God’s grace. It is however essential; we must look for the heart in our brothers and sisters and love them as such. From this we can heal the greater, more solid, more institutional hurts and divisions that trouble us. (Merely one reason why this can happen being that a respectful and trusting atmosphere is an absolutely essential prerequisite for convincing anyone that they are in fact mistaken, as the admissions of the mistakes made in the past that I described above make clear.) The end result we seek is for all Christians to see and love one another the same and from this act and organise together as one body. Ecumenical man is thus the end we seek, but it must also be the means and the start from which we can continue.

The Third thing I think is essential is an inclusivity of diversity in worship and culture.

Any community can only exist through a compromise between width and depth, between a width of definition, a range of people who can qualify as members, and depth, certain defining features that restrict membership. A community without width would be empty, or at best filled by one person and hence not a community. A community without depth would not be defined in any way and just be an arbitrary collection of people and hence also not a community.

There is a very ancient drive in the Church to realise a unity through everyone doing the same thing, something that can be seen in the original strife that tore it asunder. But I believe this is to look at it wrongly. God makes all men differently, so that they might compliment each other and be enriched by each others' skills and talents. All together we should be greater than the sum of our parts. This surely logically means that each different person comes to, approaches God, in different way, as best suits their different nature. This alone, as well as the wide differences in culture, mean that different people’s expressions of worship of God will always be different. This is the fundamental basis of how God has made us, by our diversity adding ever new richness to creation. And I believe the Church, as the New Humanity in its entirety must reflect this created diversity.

I believe the only way we can reach unity is not in seeking one uniform culture of religion for all the world but rather to allow the differences in people and peoples to create a rich tapestry of religion without abandoning its fundamental truths and thus to benefit from the interweaving of each element of the pattern. That is, unity not of everyone looking and doing exactly the same, but rather unity in devotion to Christ and conscious, spiritual identity and recognition with one another in our diversity. If history has taught me anything it is that not allowing this rich tapestry to weave itself only leads to people breaking away from the whole.

To go back to St Paul's metaphor of the Body of Christ: "Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ." In fact the whole 1 Corinthians 12 says it far more eloquently than I am capable of. But it is clear what he means: "There are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit distributes them. There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord. There are different kinds of working, but in all of them and in everyone it is the same God at work" Just as the diversity of parts of the Body add to the capacity and ability of the body so the diversity of the Church adds strength to the Body of Christ. But they are all part of the same body through their interdependence and their purpose and devotion to the same goals. It is not something we should be afraid of. God's way has always been to use our diversity to build greater things. It would have been simple at Pentecost for the Holy Spirit to make all the people understand the one language the disciples spoke, but rather the Spirit chose to make the disciples speak many languages, so they may reach out to the people there in their diversity.

The important distinction here though is, crudely put, that between Culture and Dogma. Dogma being the specific metaphysical truths that we hold and Culture being how we celebrate and express them. It is the greatest sorrow of our past that cultural differences have been allowed to break our communion and tear apart our unity. To put it another way, we may each express the Love that we feel in different and diverse ways as long as it is still the same love that drives us, and the same dogma. The Church today is a broad enough body, culturally, I believe, for anyone to find a home somewhere, but this has, to date, brought a scandalous array of disunity. We have enough genuinely serious disagreements about dogma without letting culture stand in our way as well. There are of course non-negotiables, depth, to such a Christianity but there must also be an unprecedented width, if we are to achieve the hope that we hold. Diversity of culture can be nothing but an enriching factor in our life and religion, though it can be very hard to distinguish and disentangle from the dogma, the depth, which in the end cannot be compromised on.

We should not see different preferences of style and worship as either competitive or exclusionary. We must be willing to give space for different types of worship and organisation wherever possible, or in other words there should be an assumption in favour of tolerance in those things that are inessential to true doctrine. There must be room for both Quaker style silence, and Charismatic joyful worship, both Old Orthodox Church Slavonic and Charismatic spirit-led praise. These are not opposed, there is joy and exuberance in Orthodox culture and worship at times and solemnity in charismatic churches, though maybe at different times and places. These can all occur in different churches and streams, organizations or orders, within the same church. We must achieve a state whereby one type of worship is not looked down upon by another, along as we have correct dogma and as long as that type of worship is done well. There should be enough churches in a world such that within the same city there could be one dedicated to High Church and one to low church worship of every shape and stripe. Obviously this could only be possible in larger population centres but it should be an ideal that we constantly seek to pursue and people must not be scared of recommending someone to a different church which they will do better at. I have seen just as many people leave the church who have would have preferred and gained more from a higher style of worship as a lower, and that is merely within the Church of England.

The Church of England deals with this issue by tolerating a range of churchmanships: Evangelical, Liberal, Anglo-Catholic, helped by its position in the middle of the church’s spectrum and its necessarily inclusive nature as the state church. The Roman Catholic church despite its central control has an impressive diversity appeared through the various and manifold different and different types of orders, congregations and rites under its jurisdiction. These give a range of different types of worship and style that would otherwise be lacking. Also its sheer size gives a range of different national styles and strictness of organisation across the world. Protestantism deals with this by just splintering and thus providing a whole range of options. This diversity is both unavoidable and a good thing, in of itself, but we must try to achieve it within unity rather than at the cost of unity. We do not have to think certain practices are optimal in all cases to allow toleration of them, as they may prove optimal in certain cases and for the specific purposes of bringing people closer to Christ. A presumption of toleration means seeking the minimum possible arguments over which division may be necessary or possible, except where absolutely necessary in terms of true doctrine.

There is even possibility for using our diversity for the cause of Unity. Different types of churches often concentrate more or less on different levels of practice, doctrine and structure. Hence different churches have different things to teach and offer on various different levels of concentration and emphasis. The fact that different churches and groups have traditional confidence and heritage in certain areas (for example the Salvation Army with social action, the Orthodox Church with the witness of the Church Fathers) mean that they are capable of taking these expertise and offering them to the wider church both as an offering of that heritage and because their confidence at that level gives them a greater ability to reach out, because they have something to offer, not only to request. This is one method by which our differences can in fact be useful to help towards union. By enacting such an approach across all levels we can also have a situation where all groups can come to the table with something to offer, rather than merely wanting to receive and we can balance the strengths and weaknesses held by different Churches and groups. Obviously in this case though organizations in of themselves do not do anything. It requires individuals, with the grace of God, to lead from within by showing the way of possibility This is a process that must occur at every level, but with Grace individuals can act at whatever level they are and act to lead first then and thus pull other levels and people with them.

Lastly,

Despite my optimism here I don't think that all the theological and cultural divisions between us can or will be dissolved any time soon. There are some deep and seemingly insoluble differences, some of which do not even go along denominational lines. Some have said that the biggest divide in Christianity today is between liberal protestantism and the Catholic/Orthodox more conservative teachings on the role of women, homosexuality and sexual morality. But what we can do now is to be constantly working together towards unity, and see where this will lead us. There are plenty of things to be done, from the state we are at now, on the theoretical level, and if we reach an impasse there on the practical level. It is said that the divisions between the Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox have largely been resolved, and similarly between the Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic Churches. Sadly, due to recent decisions, there seems to be more distance between the Anglican and Catholic churches than there has been for generations, but God never closes a door without opening a window, and it seems at the same time the Anglican Church has never been closer to unity with the Methodists.

A great deal can be achieved merely by switching to more inclusive language and approach. The 2nd Vatican Council saw a change to referring to non-Catholics as fellow Christians and those in partial communion, rather than as schismatics and heretics. This change and the personal commitment of Pope Paul VI, opened the door to the reconciliations I mentioned above. A similar move to consider all Christians as part of the One Church, even if wrong in certain theology and only in partial communion would give a greater capacity to build bridges. We are those who follow Christ and there can be room within the Church for all those who are on that path.

A wider Church must have an inner core of what we would consider total Orthodoxy, but it may also have an acceptance of those who have not reached that more perfect core and an understanding that all who honour the Lord Jesus and the One God stand essentially with us and can work to the same ends of love and community. And, that it is easier to convince those further away from entire truth in doctrine and practice by reaching out to them in friendship, rather than merely rejecting them. There is no sense in treating those with whom we agree in 90% of things, and share history and foundations, like they are total strangers. This is not to undermine orthodoxy in the slightest but rather to insist on treating theological differences in the same sense as we treat other failings, as something to be redressed by Love and companionship and true witness of the truth and the Love of God, rather than as excuse to ignore one another.

Should we reach a point where the differences between us come down to differences of principle that cannot quickly be overcome I believe there is a final possible model for fostering unity. Accepting that all Christians of apostolic Churches belong to the same One Church, even though communion may be impaired and partial at times, we have a further possibility for unity within the Churches of the apostolic succession. For example, within Apostolic Christianity (if I may call it that) there are several metropolitan sees of great importance, such as Patriarchates of Jerusalem, Antioch and Alexandria, each of which are claimed by various churches and traditions. We share the ridiculous situation of there being 7 Patriarchs of Alexandria and 5 Patriarchs of Antioch. There are also countries and areas where one of the Churches is historically and demographically overwhelmingly dominant. With a recognition that we underlyingly are part of the same One Church, but impaired in communion and disagreeing over details of practice and doctrine, could come a nominal recognition of the primacy of certain occupants over these historical seats and the acceptance that they hold over-all responsibility as safe-guard and nominal head of Christians in those areas. For example, the Coptic Patriarch in Egypt, the Orthodox Patriarch of Constantinople. We could establish agreement that the nominal head would not interfere with the internal organisation and practice of the other denominations, but would take responsibility for the over-all spiritual leadership of Christians and representation of the community. This could be conducted in a similar manner as the current positions as primus inter pares (first among equals) and senior elder of the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople within the Eastern Orthodox Church, or the Archbishop of Canterbury in the Anglican Communion or the Coptic Pope among Oriental Orthodox.

Further, Christian minorities in territories dominated by one Church could agree to look to the dominant Apostolic Church for nominal leadership, and recognition of their position as senior branch of the Christian Church in that territory. The Orthodox community and Catholic Church in France for example. These processes would be at least a small step forward, and would give the possibility of building common institutions and fostering shared loyalties, in however a weak form, and act as another gentle encouragement in the direction of closer collaboration, respect and reliance, and thus a model for closer unity, however tentative at first, all without requiring immediate compromise on deeply felt differences of doctrine and principle. I think it would do great good for Christianity if we could just stand beside one another and proclaim the brotherhood and unity of all Christians together. Even if it does not lead to any more administrative unity than a growing truce and limited recognition between Christian groups.

That is the last idea, so to speak, that I have. So just a few final words. I think this is all so important because I really think that our disunity and lack of care for one another we weaken our witness to Jesus Christ because people do not believe us when we talk about love when we cannot even love each other. What purpose then do we serve anymore? Did Jesus not say that it was better for a man to lose his hand rather than keep it and risk losing his immortal soul? So how can we reverse this thing, how can we redeem ourselves? Well, I believe the path is clear, there is only whether we are brave enough to take it. “Let your light shine before men”, Jesus said, “so that they may see the good things you do and praise your Father in heaven.” So let us begin. If Christianity and the Christian hierarchy means to lead the world its actions must match its words. Not to mention the fact that in a world where we are under pressure around the world as never before, from aggressive secularism, from militant Islam and from other threats.

It will require compromise, and eventually a willingness to accept when other's were right and we were wrong or misguided, implicitly, and probably also explicitly, and a willingness to work above and beyond those things we normally do but I believe it is more than worth it. We can build such a community, based on boundaries of membership but with a radical inclusivity of different ways of expressing a shared truth, which can give us strength in depth that we cannot now imagine; and behind all of which we can behold the incredible community and unity of the three persons of the Holy Godhead: of Father who is above all, of Son who walked and walks among us, and Holy Spirit who dwells within us, and the Church empowering us forevermore. It can not be done by any one man or group but only by the deeply felt and wished and worked intent of all Christian men and women everywhere, but I believe that in the Grace of God and the Inspiration of the Holy Spirit it is not too much to imagine.

And there is always the need for pioneers, a leader who can be followed and with the Grace of God that leader could be anyone and at anytime in any place. When we look at the great heroes of the faith what marks them out is precisely their ordinariness, they do not stand out and there is superficially evident reason why they and not some other should be chosen. The only thing which marks they out is the fact that they did have that faith in God and did act, which is something that is open to all of us.

I do not expect for a second for everyone or even anyone to agree with the ideas I have described and am entirely open to a completely different plan or idea. I do however hope to open up a discussion of these issues as something that desires actual practical thought and work rather than being placed in the box of things that are a nice idea theoretically but we don’t really think are in any way possible in the real world now or in our lifetime.

Amen.

The Importance of Christian Unity - A Cry From the Heart!

2011-02-11T02:22:00.011Z

(This is the first half of a two part talk I gave about Christian Unity. The 2nd half can be found here on A Modest Proposal of Christian Unity. The slides I used when giving this as a presentation are at the bottom of this post.)

Some of you are hopefully aware that a few weeks ago was the official Week of Prayer for Christian Unity 2011. The idea of this week is what it says on the tin, a period where Christians will devote themselves to praying for God's grace in achieving unity and fellowship among all Christians, as Jesus intended and prayed on the night before he died in the garden of Gethsemane.

Christian Unity is something I feel very strongly about. It is impossible to seriously doubt that Christians are divided, and that once we were united. We were together when Jesus was here, and after he left us the Bible tells us that "all the believers were together and had everything in common" and that they "broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts". But over time that unity and love between them was broken. Over the two thousands years since then the Christian community grew and grew beyond all imagination, across centuries and continents, until today there are Christians in every country in the world and 30% of humanity at least identify as Christian. But sadly this unity and love and closeness we once had is now gone.

If you wanted to make a list of the different types of Christian you could start with breaking them down into Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox and Non-Trinitarian. Each of these groups number in the hundreds of millions, and internally bear various similarities of origin and structure. But even these are families of organisations bearing certain similarities rather than single christian communities. The Roman Catholic church is the closest, constituting 95% of the Catholic strand, but even here there are other groups. The Orthodox can be broken into Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, and Church of the East, the first two of which are themselves communions of a number of, generally, nationally organised Churches. The Protestant strand is famously disunited, being constituted of hundreds to thousands of organisations, from a huge number of individual independent churches to world-wide families of Churches such as the Anglican Communion. Non-trinitarianism is a vague term for a range of 'churches' who reject the traditional Christian theology in various ways, including Mormons, Christadelphians and extreme 'Liberal' Theology. They are disparate and generally widely different though united by their rejection of the Trinity, and by all being a relatively modern offshoots from the other Christian groups.

This gives the most basic breakdown of the wide range of groups and organisations that claim descent from the Church founded by Jesus Christ, and are based on the joint declaration that 'Christ is Lord'. It is however the most basic of explanations. To properly list all the organisations that fill up these categories would take an encyclopedia all on its own. It would take another one to explain all the (generally far smaller) groups and individuals who don't easily fall into any of these categories.

With the passing of 2000 years and the journey through civilisations, languages, continents and the troubles of war and politics, it is not surprising that some differences and arguments would have emerged between a body that now numbers 2 billion people. But there is more to the division than a natural floating apart. At times and in places it has been marked by a brutality, a disregard for others, arrogance, xenophobia and hatred, and too often sectarianism masquerading as principle. Some of its greatest divisions have grown almost by accident, for reasons that few can recognise even today, but have then gone on to grow into chasms that has led to so much trouble and pain.

Looking back through history our greatest hurt and damage has so often come about not because of any action by those who hate us and Christianity but by our own disunion and inability to work together and love one another. Arguably our greatest loss, the conquest of the Middle East by the Muslims, 1300 years ago, would not have been possible if it were not for the fact the native Christian populations welcomed the Muslim armies, because it freed them from their Government, which had persecuted them because it belonged to a different Christian faction. And so the land that is now Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Syria, Jordan, Palestine, Turkey, Iraq, which were once Christian, were lost, and are now overwhelmingly Muslim countries.

Civil Wars are always the most brutal, and for centuries our divisions have led us to do terrible things to each other, and to entrench hatred between nations and peoples. And in doing so we have disgraced the Gospel and reduced the power of our witness. Our message is lost and the world laughs at us. Once upon a time people said about us, these Christians "look how they love one another", but now they say, these Christians, how can we listen to them when they cannot even agree with each other? How can they talk about how we need to love when they cannot even love each other? And they ignore the name of God and Jesus Christ because we fight among each other.

I have a great belief in the importance of Christian Unity. It has always been something I have thought about a bit ever since I became old enough to understand that we were divided. I couldn't understand why. But it was not something that bothered me a great deal, I just got on with life, went to Church, sang, prayed, thought, played, studied and grew from a child to an adult. Then something happened. Firstly, I had begun reading more about the historical events of our splits and divisions, and how many seemed so ridiculous, and how even at the times of the splits themselves, no one involved had meant such lasting divisions to happen. I also had begun hearing about the persecution of Christians around the world, who lived in countries less fortunate than ours, where they could not worship God in peace. And that made me think.

And then it was Christmas of my 1st year at University, and I was at home, and I was washing my hands, of all things, and my mind was wandering, as it does from thing to thing. I was thinking about my faith in a vague kind of way, but then suddenly my thoughts accelerated tumbling from topic to topic and then in an instant I was hit by a profound religious experience. A message from God hit me like a punch to the chest and for just a second my mind opened with perfect clarity, the breath caught in my chest and my eyes saw straight through the room around me. In that instant I was utterly convicted of my sin, I felt it in every part of my body. It was the strangest thing, it felt like my body was pulling apart into pieces, like I had lost several limbs all at once and I felt the loss. And it came into my mind from somewhere precisely what the pain was, and precisely what the sin was I was convicted of. The pain was the pain of the Body of Christ divided. It was the pain of Jesus Christ felt from his body being torn apart and his children being separated and distant from each other in their hearts. And what was that sin I felt fully convicted of in that moment? It was the sin of Convenience! The sin of neglect! I had never broken from my brothers and sisters; I have never encouraged division or sectarianism; I had never operated from an assumption that my kind must know best about everything, or that someone else could have nothing to offer because he was different to me. I had done nothing.

And that was precisely my sin. I had done nothing. I had made sure I was alright, but I had not lifted a finger to heal the division, to bridge the chasms that lie between us. But that is not enough. Jesus told us the tale of the Good Samaritan, of the men who walked by on the other side, and the one man who took the time to cross over and repair the damage that had been done. But all my life I had been walking by on the other side, without realising it. Unlike the priest and scribe in that story I had not even noticed the man lying on the other side of the road as I walked by. But this was not just a message that I needed to hear; It is a message we all need to hear. We are lucky these days that we have largely put an end to sectarianism, contempt and hatred between different Christians, unlike in the bad old days. But we still suffer from the curse of apathy, of just not caring or being interested. And this is almost more deadly because it is so invisible.

All Christians and all Christian churches and organisations have been guilty of this in different times and in different ways. To be insular is a constant temptation, because it's just easier. To make ourselves so busy with what we here are doing, and not think about what lies outside. But this is not a sustainable or a noble thing before God. God is the Lord of the whole world, of all humanity. He is actively concerned with all people, and especially with the children of his word. we must be actively concerned as well. passive recognition is not enough. In the divine trinity God is a community of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and a community that is always engaged in a mutual dance of Love (for want of a better expression). It is not three parts static and apart, each concerned with its own projects, but three persons utterly joined in a single mission and will, whose thoughts are never apart. Isaiah talked about a time when all the people's of the Earth would come together to live beneath the throne of God on Mount Zion. A similar vision of the Christians of the world can be seen in Revelation. The fact that Jesus' thoughts turned to praying for unity among his disciples on that night before he died shows how important it was to him, that he would devote those last precious free minutes before he was handed over to torture and death. Jesus was looking beyond his death and resurrection to the life he knew his people must have after he no longer walked among them to teach them and guide them.

He also prophesied about the danger of disunity while he was alive: "A house divided against itself cannot stand". And from the history of the Christian community, where, as I said, so often damage came about not because of the actions of our enemies but because we are either fighting amongst ourselves or just ignoring one another, we know this prophecy to be true. If we look later in the Bible, we see the model of unity that existed under the Apostles. After Jesus left they tried to carry as they had when he was there: sharing everything, being close as a family, being intimately concerned with one another, breaking bread together. Later on as the Christian community spread around the eastern Mediterranean we see the concern among its people and leaders to maintain this active unity and concern as far as possible. St Paul and St Peter, Barnabas and the others, all travelled constantly between the communities, and wrote to them when they could not travel despite the difficulties in that primitive time, with few good roads and no postal service (for a start). They organised charity and help when there was shortage of food or other things, they were constantly on their mind and in their actions. And in the letters from the Apostles that have come down to us we see their concern, their care, "for I would have you know how hard I work for you".

Obviously this sense of closeness, this profound knowledge and love with the whole Christian community will decrease in intensity as that community grows. A level of closeness possible among a group of friends who fit in an upstairs room will not be possible among a community scattered around the eastern Mediterranean; a closeness possible then will not be possible among a worldwide community numbering in the billions, and neither does it need to. But what is needed is the same will, the same love and determination to care and to know as much as we can. God doesn't ask that we do everything, know everything, care for everybody, or do anything we just cannot do. But he does ask that we do everything we can do.

These statements may seem exaggerated, hyperbolic even, but I believe they are fundamentally correct. We are called by Christ to be perfect as our Father in Heaven is perfect. Now there is a statement that should qualify as hyperbole if any ever should. But the truth is that nothing less is necessary. We must always be scanning the horizon, looking out for where our help and care may be needed, because as soon as we do not then we miss something and then it is so easy for someone to slip between the cracks and be lost and abandoned with their problems, without anyone to help them. And suddenly We find that we have walked by on the other side without even realising it. The distance and the distrust that lies between us profoundly weakens our ability to support one another and our ability to fight for the Gospel because we do not work together. It is without doubt a sin, and as long as a single sin or injustice remains in the world and we are not fighting it then the New Jerusalem remains always just beyond the horizon.

I have always been confused by the attitude some Protestant groups take to Christian Unity, whereby they do not seem to feel that the lack of visible, institutional unity, of one organisation across the world, is a thing to be worried about. Some of them seem to actively like having different scattered denominations of all types, due to the protection it gives to diversity. They talk about a unity of belief, such that as long as we share the same fundamental beliefs it does not matter that we can not join together under the same leaders and structure. But this is so strange. We take for granted in other areas of life that we need joint organisations, joint leadership to join together to solve our problems. Across our world we have the United Nations to try to forge unity between the nations, among our continent we understand that European Union relies on joint institutions and shared responsibility to co-ordinate and make sure that there are no gaps for people and communities to fall down alone without anyone to help them. If everywhere else in our life we acknowledge that together we are stronger how much more true in our faith, when unity is so much at the heart of God's will for us.

St Paul spoke about the nature of this unity that was needed in words more poetic than any I can hope to produce. The Body of Christ is a body of many parts, none of which can deny the other. Thinking about our own bodies it is clear that the body is only really a body, only acts as a body, when it acts with a synthetic unity and purpose that stands over and above its individual elements, and as far as all its elements inter-relate and depend. A body is not just a clump of cells each acting on their own, although it is made up of this, and it does not act as a body in the action of each of its organs on their own. As important as each of these is. My heart pumping, lungs breathing, stomach digesting hand moving, another hand moving etc, do not act as a body in as far as they act individually and in isolation. They only act as a body as far as they form an interdependent system, where each has its purpose, and all their action is to the higher purpose of being an instrument to do and express the things I want them to do, which stand over and above their individual actions and purpose.

In the same the Church, the Body of Christ that Paul so movingly describes, only acts fully as that Body in as far as its acts together in unity, connection and interdependence between its elements to the greater goal, that of making the Kingdom of God Jesus described the constant reality and truth of life on this earth so that the Lion can lie down with the Lamb the swords are beaten into ploughshares and everything is made alright.

Some Christian groups of Churches may not wish to focus on the work of building unity because they are fully engaged in evangelism. But this is to have the whole thing the wrong way round. The work of faith and of the Gospel can never be a choice between working to draw other Christians closer and working to draw non-Christians closer, just as it can never be a choice between physical acts of charity and good deeds, and converting souls to God. It must of course be both and all of them. The Gospel is God's remaking of all creation. There is no corner or thing it does not effect. we can not decide to work for one part but not another for the Kingdom of God involves all the elements. Though the different parts of the work will of course be different, just as feeding the hungry is different to preaching Jesus Christ, each is as essential as the other. Indeed the gospels themselves describe a plan for Christian mission that focuses first on reconciling the people of God before moving beyond that; first to the Jews, and then to the Gentiles.

For these and other reasons I think that the fight for closer Christian unity and fellowship is absolutely essential and profoundly urgent. We are divided by chasms of apathy that we do not even see because we are so used to them being there and the cost of this is daily incalculable, and directly against the intentions and wishes of God Almighty. We are called to Love our enemies, and at least to love our neighbours, but we cannot even love our brothers and sisters, with whom we are as close as parts of the one great Body. How doomed then are we. We are meant to be a family, but we are sadly torn apart. And like the tearing apart of any family the damage is often invisible but still powerful and long-lasting. Except we cannot just move on and try to forget and build a new family for ourself. This one is all we got, so we've got to make it work, despite the pain and difficulty so far.

Of course true Unity is not all being nominally part of the same organisation, as much as I think that is a powerful part of it. It is the care and compassion that draws us constantly closer to each other and means we are always looking out for each other such that a hurt on one is felt as a hurt to everyone. Jesus said it as "Love your neighbour as yourself"; Centuries later John Donne said "no man is an island, complete on its own", but both say essentially the same thing.

It is so tempting, even if one thinks about this at all, to be overwhelmed by the state of the problem. The distance between us cross millenia, and span the world. Where does one even start to bridge such a chasm? Each on our own we can not, but we must always remember that God does not ask that we heal all the world alone, only that we do all that we can. If we can only firmly turn our faces towards and place our feet on the path of constantly working to closer unity and care, step by step, and encourage other to do so, to overcome the barriers that are littered by history and apathy between us, one by one, then eventually, through the grace of God, we will arrive at our destination. It requires each one of us individually makes this decision to change our mindset so this is at its centre, to do our individual part, of what we can, to draw and hold us together and thus to imperceptibly, person by person, change the direction of flow and assumptions that shape our world. This means it is even more important for us each to make the choice ourself. No raindrop thinks that it is itself responsible for the flood, no one drop of water dictates the flow of the river. But if we change their direction one by one then eventually the river flows in a new direction. It requires making this a foremost priority in our minds and what we do, and a relentless determination that it is an important thing that we cannot ignore. And this is so easy to do, it is a choice that we can make and there are so many small things that we can do to do our part in achieving it.

You will have to excuse me for stopping there for now, having left myself in rather woolly territory. The reason I wrote this was because I do actually have some 'practical' suggestions about how we can at least begin to achieve this, and good intentions be turned into something concrete despite the immense issues and difficulties we face. But I've already gone on for quite a while so I want to leave it there for now and return to this in another article. The practicalities are essential, but without a call to the heart first, to explain why the whole thing is so important then they will not do any good, which is why I've started with this. What I want to do is to stir up thought and discussion about this, at least a little bit, and hopefully thus to do my tiny part in redirecting the river. I don't for a second suspect that I've got it all right about this. So if you disagree with me do please leave a comment. I truly believe that it's not the talking or even the arguing between one another that is the problem, it's when we stop talking, it's when we close our mouths and our minds and turn our backs on the issue entirely.

Update
Here are the slides I used when giving this as a presentation. http://bit.ly/hCFrY4 They're relatively basic, mostly constituting the full text of quotes I use and some illustrating pictures.

All Night Entertainment for the Lords.

2011-01-18T12:46:00.002Z

.
This is quite funny*.

Labour Peers in the House of Lords are currently having a mass collegiate filibuster to delay the AV referendum bill by endlessly discussing trivial amendments between themselves without anyone from the Coalition saying anything.

They know they can't beat the bill, because the government outnumbers them. But the AV referendum is meant to happen in May. But it takes quite a while to get ready to hold a nationwide referendum, so if the Labour Peers can hold up the bill long enough there won't be enough time to prepare for the referendum, and they'll have to delay it. This would be quite embarrassing and annoying for the government.

So the government's got them debating 24 hours a day (including through the night) until they give up. They're quite elderly though so they've laid on refreshments, food, wine, beds, talks, board games, bridge and toothbrushes to keep them going.

Ahhh, the wonders of Democracy.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-12212666

(* I obviously mean in the shaking one's head in sheer wonder, better to laugh than cry sense rather than HAHAHAHAHA that's hilarious.)

"Weak" Secularism.

2011-01-12T01:45:00.008Z

Sometime ago I posted an article called "Weak" Democracy. This described my idea about what is sufficient for a way of organising society to hold democratic, moral legitimacy. Here I describe an analogous concept concerning the role of religion in society, and the extent to which it is necessary or desirable to exclude particular religious or ideological opinions from the public sphere (for a society to have fair, moral legitimacy), and also why this is important.

“There is no such thing as a right to pretend something you oppose doesn't exist, and no such thing as a right to be shielded from the fact that most people reject your values. So nonbelievers simply do not have a right to live in a society free of religious sentiment. And public displays of religious sentiment - the Ten Commandments, Nativity sets in public parks, the phrase "Under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance - are a straightforward First Amendment issue. Freedom of speech, which is not, I believe, limited only to individuals. Government agencies and bodies have it too. The public exercises of religion listed above involve an absolutely trivial expenditure of public resources and don't infringe on the rights of non-Christians in the slightest. Opposing these exercises is not about protecting the rights of the minority but about suppressing the rights of a majority, using the courts because opponents have failed to make their case on its merits. But public displays of religious belief send an exclusionary message. Maybe. But the last time I checked, messages of all kinds were protected by the First Amendment. Even exclusionary ones. And if you find yourself being excluded, maybe you might even ask whether you're on the right side of the issues. You'd feel differently if you were in the minority. I've spent a total of two years of my life in Islamic countries. If you're expecting me to buy into the idea that it's a violation of my rights to have the majority express a different religious sentiment, you have definitely picked the wrong person.”
Professor Steve Dutch: Some Issues Where Liberals are missing the boat.

The above passage by Professor Dutch precisely encapsulates my beliefs on Secularism. I support Secularism. The Secularism that means giving each member of society a level playing field and avoiding all use or threat of force against them, or the restriction of basic opportunities on grounds of their faith or belief, is a good thing and an essential element of society. The same is true of avoiding every type of discrimination on grounds except the direct defense of that same society from immediate force or the threat of immediate force; and the obvious discriminations we make daily on grounds of immediate merit.

This Secularism is about respecting the dignity of each person and that their potential to contribute to society is based on their fundamental and basic identity as an individual human person and not on the basis of belonging to any privileged group, whether defined by heritage or belief. This Secularism is based on the understanding that honest and good men may disagree about complicated issues without one being either evil or stupid, and that it is not the nature or even the coherence of the beliefs one holds, nor the backgrounds one identifies with, that makes a man good or evil, or competent or incompetent, but rather the specifically moral actions he takes and the words he speaks and the knowledge he holds and the merit for the task he outwardly displays.

The idea is to accept that each man holds his conscience in good faith and make as much accommodation for the fallen, fallible but essentially decent nature of humanity as possible. From this basis, and an appreciation of human dignity, secularism wishes to avoid forcing any man to become a martyr because of his conscience. To not force any man to give up his chance for opportunity because of what he believes or who he is. In other words, to construct a society with the least force must be deployed as possible, on the basis that ideas are the correct means to combat ideas, words the correct means to combat words and force only correct when absolutely necessary to combat force or the immediate threat of force. This is a pacifist notion, only desiring to use force when it is most necessary, to restrict other immediate force or threat of force, and to utilise different methods the rest of the time.

On the other hand, Secularism that is based on banning anything that may be of religious inspiration or association specifically from the “public sphere” is neither desirable nor necessary. It is the repression of cultural expression that serves no purpose apart from to harass a majority or minority. Culture and belief are almost universally things which have public expression written into their nature. A person’s beliefs should affect how they think and act and as far as a person or group has a public life the expression of a person’s or group’s religious or cultural identity will be public.

Furthermore a majority in a society, or even a minority with a position of authority has the right to express their belief or culture within the fabric of that society. There is no theory of the state or government that says everything it does or associates with must be acceptable to all members of that society, as long as it does not use force, threat of force, or discrimination of opportunity then those of different opinion have no grounds to object on the basis of a lack of moral legitimacy.

The difference between these two types of Secularism, the first I call "weak" secularism and the second "strong", is simple. It is the difference between what they are trying to achieve. My idea here is that the driving good behind secularism, and much secularisation that has occurred in society, is not that removing religion or other ideologies from a position of prominence or privilege in society is a good in itself, but rather that it is a good as far as it provides opportunity and space for all persons's to flourish and fulfil potential as their conscience dictates they must. It is the principle of minimising the force needed to maintain society and maximising the space for opportunity it holds. It is also a pluralist notion, to trim ideologies back to create as much space and freedom for merit and individual potential to flourish and shine.

Weak secularism is based on a mutual respect, and a desire to give each the space to express oneself. This applies both for an established and majority faith and belief for a different or individual faith and the different or individual faith for the majority faith or belief, even if it is embedded in society and the expression of that society. This respect and tolerance goes both ways. Each admits the other the chance to pursue opportunity and human flourishing as they believe they must. It seeks to maximise the possibility for expression, whether minority or majority, whether official or unofficial.

The 2nd, on the other hand, claims to seek to provide space for public expression and flourishing by restricting that same expression and flourishing. It, hence, seeks to restrict what expression may be acceptable just as much as any establishment of religion or another ideology. Its attempt is not to maximise freedom for all, which is the basis of a good secularism, but rather to restrict it. It hence fails as a basis for a society built around a core of eternal moral truth of seeking peaceful co-existence between people, that is seeking to build a society that provides all space, and works with the nature of human beings.

It must also be noted that this applies to other ideologies as well as religions. As far as a way of organising society restricts potential for development for those who hold certain (metaphysical) views it is not secular, regardless of public religious content or not. In this model the old Soviet Union was less secular than today's Britain, because in the first you must hold to certain official ideologies and pieties to be allowed space in society, whether Marxism or the rule of the Communist party, whereas in the 2nd you do not. This is despite the official atheism and 'Secularism' of the first and the Established Religion, and Bishops in the legislature, of the 2nd.

The point is that restricting one type of expression is only a good as far as that expression is directly restricting another. Beyond that it is just restricting expression for the sake of it and thus directly opposed to the creation of as free a society as possible, with as much opportunity as possible for all. This is the true aim that makes so much secularisation a good thing, not the underlying removal of religious content and expression itself. And it is only when we realise this true nature about what is good about the phenomena that we can realise precisely what to do to maximise this.

Dealing with the Deficit (5) - Is the Coalition's Plan "Progressive"? Is it Fair?

2011-01-05T02:33:00.003Z

On being Progressive, distributional impact, fairness, cabbages and Kings (and why the sea is boiling hot and whether pigs have wings - well, not really.)

This article follows on from previous articles outlining the economic arguments around the Coalition's budget plans, introducing the structure of the public finances and the plans for reducing the deficit, looking at the feasibility of closing the deficit by cutting military spending and an analysis of the taxation changes. This is the final article on the distributional impact and fairness of the government's plans. I've separated them out to try to keep them shorter.

"Progressive", "Fair".

These are undoubtedly the words that have come to define politics in Britain over the last couple of years. Not necessarily in terms of actual policy enacted, but definitely in terms of the language of our political discussion. We argue about whether policies are wise, whether they are affordable, whether they are right, but more and more we have come to argue about whether policies are fair or progressive. It has been one of the changes wrought by the 13 long years of Labour rule. Today these terms are thrown around like cheap confetti by almost every party and politician of whatever hue or stripe as basically synonymous terms. This widespread usage by completely opposing politicians to describe contradictory policies may give you the impression that these terms are largely meaningless. And you would be right. But the question is, can we save any precise meaning at all from this avalanche of linguistic abuse?

'Fair' is one of the first words that any child learns, as any parent or child can tell you. A sense of things be fair or unfair is one of the most basic of human judgements, and arguably the basis of much of our moral sense. Like all such terms though it has no clear, definable meaning. We all think we know fair and unfair when we see it. Roughly, it means equitable, in proportion with what is right. It is, in other words, a value judgment. In other words, referring to various policies as fair, is little more than declaring you think they are morally right and/or a good idea, i.e. it conveys almost no actual information, since we generally assume that if someone is pushing a policy they think it is good/right. It would be bloody odd if politicians were pushing policies they personally thought were a load of immoral rubbish. Referring to a policy as 'fair' is generally useless. But what it can do, at best, is to imply a certain, not only efficient but also, moral judgement about the effects of a policy. But beyond that it's pretty empty.

'Progressive' is a slightly different (but equally annoying) kettle of fish. It has become, if anything, even more prominent than 'Fair'as a political descriptive. It sadly lacks 'Fair's basic and understandable connotations. It is a technical term, just one with a vague definition. For a while after I heard it first it confused me because I had no idea what it meant. From context I could only tell that it seemed to mean 'good' in a vague sense, but I could not at first work out anymore than that. So I spent some time studying it. Taken literally progressive means to to support progress, but that is little more than a tautology. No politician claims to be opposing progress, any more than motherhood or apple pie. So where did this word come from? The answer is that it came from America, and it became more and more popular first among Labour supporters and politicians in the 1990's to describe themselves, and then among others. As far as I could tell from some study these people seemed to use it to mean Socialism without the state ownership of industries (since that has been discredited since the 1970's). More generally it has come to mean fluffy and friendly and kind and good, and most importantly: us, as opposed to them. On which basis it was also appropriated by first the Liberal Democrats and then more recently even the Conservatives, and particularly the current Coalition government.

In defence of some of those who use it though. There is one area where the term progressive can be said to have a precise meaning. That is, in reference to fiscal policy. In particular, taxation. A tax is progressive if it hits the rich harder than the poor. This originally could mean just in terms of the amount raised. these days however it generally means as a proportion of income. That is, for a tax to be progressive it must take up a higher percentage of the income of the rich than the poor, rather than just a larger cash amount. The opposite of this is regressive. To give some examples: Income tax is progressive, because it is charged at higher rates the higher your income is; VAT is more or less neutral, because rich and poor pay at the same percentage rate; The BBC licence fee is regressive, because it a flat amount charged regardless of income, and thus obviously takes a higher proportion of the income of the poor than the rich.

In extension to this financial system or policy of spending and taxation is progressive if it enhances the opportunity or chances of the least advantaged in society, generally in terms of redistributing money from the rich to the poor in society, or at least hitting the rich harder than the poor in percentage terms. And is in this sense that we can analyse whether the Coalition's deficit reduction plan is progressive, as the Chancellor claimed, first at the June budget, and then at the CSR. This was an important point, after the Conservatives campaigned claiming Progressive credentials, and also to the Lib Dems

This is a big question. Is it possible to have major deficit reduction plan of tax rises and spending cuts that is also progressive, in the sense of hitting the rich proportionately financially harder than the poor? Or, in other words, how does the government's deficit reduction plan impact people differently across the income distribution.

On the one hand the government has raised taxes on the rich and taken efforts to protect core areas of progressive spending on health, education, welfare and international aid, as well as for children and pensioners. On these grounds it claims its plan is progressive. But this has been strongly contested, to say the least, by other groups. The analysis of the government's plans has been divided into two separate sections. We have had distributional analyses of the impact of the changes in terms of taxes and benefits, and then separately the estimated impact of the spending cuts. These can then be combined to give the over-all impact of government's deficit reduction program by income decile of the population (the poorest to richest tenths of the population).

My personal view has always been that the government has tried quite hard to make sure that we are "all in this together" in the sense of the pain of deficit reduction being shared across the population. But that it would be almost impossible for any significant deficit reduction plan to actually impact the rich harder than the poor, without being mostly consisted of crippling tax rises. If I had to guess I would say that the government's plan will likely hit the poor two to three times harder than the rich. Because our system is so progressive anyway, meaning that the least well off benefit more from welfare and rely more on public services, and pay less in tax, pretty much any attempt to reign back what the state does will hit the poor harder in proportion to the rich. That is, although the rich will contribute more to the deficit reduction plan in terms of cash this will still consist of a smaller portion of their income, due to the disparity in income, and the extent to which government spending is slanted to benefit the less well off, and that raising taxes on the rich is actually quite hard because they pay high taxes already.

Analysis of the distributional impact of the government's spending plans breaks down into two sections: Welfare and Tax changes, i.e. direct cash transfers, and departmental spending cuts i.e. estimated value lost from services received. The first of these is relatively easy to estimate, as it involves actual cash transfers, whether in terms of welfare or taxes. The second is somewhat more dubious, as is involves estimating the value people receive from public services in terms of a cash value, and then guessing how spending cuts may have affected this cash value.

The first off the blocks to attack the government's claims of the progressive nature of its deficit plan was the IFS. The Institute of Fiscal Studies has actually been around for 35 years, but has recently seemed to appear into the media consciousness. It is a think-tank that produces work looking at the details and effects of the financial and distributive effects of policy. Since the Coalition took government its pronouncements on the impact of government policy have, for some reason, been received by the media with a degree of trust and authority generally reserved for Holy Writ. This slight oddity to one side though, it is true that the IFS' research is generally very good. And an excellent starting point.

The IFS produced a report on the distributional impact of the Tax and Welfare policy changes by income decile, but not the impact of the public spending changes. The most relevant graphs is below. It shows the impact of all the the tax and welfare changes proposed by the government up until the CSR in October, apart from the CGT rise and the Child benefit changes.

That means by income decile from poorest to richest the changes will mean a hit on income of:

Decile	Impact (£/year)	Impact as % of net income
1(poorest)	-£600	-5.5%
2	-£750.00	-5.0%
3	-£800.00	-4.5%
4	-£850.00	-4.3%
5	-£800.00	-3.5%
6	-£900.00	-3.6%
7	-£1,000.00	-3.2%
8	-£1,000.00	-2.8%
9	-£1,200.00	-2.6%
10(richest)	-£3,750.00	-4.5%

From the graph it is clearly visible that by income decile the changes are somewhat regressive across the income distribution from the 1st-9th deciles, though the richest 10th do take a particularly large hit. It is solidly progressive in reference to the amounts involved, but not progressive enough to make it progressive in terms of the percentage hit to income.

The picture does change slightly when looking in reference to expenditure by decile, particularly for the 1st decile but not substantially. It should also be noted that the proposed changes to child benefit and the tax hike on CGT were not included, due to the difficulties of modelling this. These changes would obviously hit the rich, making the over-all package more progressive. But probably not enough to completely change the over-all picture.

Now this is all pretty uncontroversial as an analysis. The government's defence of them though is based around a couple of points. Apart from the elements not included, GCT and Child Benefit, they argue that just looking at the static figures of forecast changes in net income at one snapshot in time is to miss the point. The government is reforming the welfare system and the public services to prioritise spending and structures in such a manner as to help people get themselves out of poverty and to improve their situation over time, rather than just giving them welfare to alleviate their poverty. A major part of this is the planned 'Universal Credit' that the government will bring in, which is not included in any of these figures. The government claims this will combat the poverty trap and make it easier for people to get themselves out of poverty by 'making work always pay', and involve a £2 billion initial increase in spending. Other investments include the Pupil premium and plans to invest funds in early years education and support rather than higher benefits.

How outrageous you find these figures will depend on various things. They are at least relatively unequivocal. That much cannot be said for the second part of a distributional analysis. This is the attempt to look at the relative impact of spending cuts and, ideally, to give this a monetary value so the "progressivity" can be measured and compared. For this we must turn to a set of studies fronted by the Trade Union Congress and the Fabian Society. Following the final plan outlined at the CSR in November they released their final analysis of the distributional impact of the spending cuts. As may be expected from the TUC, it came out with some pretty lurid headlines:

"Spending review will hit the poorest 15 times harder than the rich"

that were repeated by some of the more gullible parts of the media. Fortunately though, once one dives behind the figures it quickly becomes apparent that they are nonsense. I will now explain why.

The initial figures they give are these:

Decile	Impact (£/year)	Impact as % of net income
1 (poorest)	-£1,913	-29.5%
2	-£2,164	-18.5%
3	-£2,124	-15.0%
4	-£2,019	-11.7%
5	-£1,914	-9.6%
6	-£1,865	-7.6%
7	-£1,727	-6.2%
8	-£1,627	-4.9%
9	-£1,560	-3.8%
10 (richest)	-£1,506	-2.0%

They get these figures by taking the amount given for spending cuts by assuming we receive the implicit monetary value for public services equivalent to the money spent on them, divided by the number of people in the population, and this is our total income, in addition to the money we directly receive as income in welfare, wages, rent, pension etc. They then simply work out the amount the spending cuts represent of this and deduct it. That gives the impact/year figure. The figures vary because it is slightly more complicated than total public spending divided by population, as you can work out that the benefit of some spending disproportionately accrues to certain income deciles. For example, the richer you are the less likely you are to use state schools, or some spending, such as social housing, obviously mainly benefits the poor, etc.

Luckily though, this approach is bollocks. For two central reasons.

The first of these reasons is the assumption that we directly experience a cut in public spending as an equivalent decrease in the value of public services received. Or, in other words, that it is impossible to make public services more efficient, that quality of service is directly linear to money spent, that all public spending is at perfect, maximal efficiency. This proposition, once actually stated, is so ludicrous that once clearly stated it requires little more argument against it.

This is not at all to say that public spending cuts will not effect the value of services that the state is capable of providing, they will. But certainly the effect of any cut in spending is not directly linear. If Doctors take a 10% pay rise, this does not necessarily mean they heal 10% more people than before. If they take a 5% pay cut, it does not mean they achieve 5% less. Just as if a company manages to cut costs, as they often do, this does not mean the value of the products or services they offer declines by the same amount. After a decade of splurging growth in public spending under Labour it would be odd if there were not some room for greater efficiency in the £700 billion of public spending. Or if, now faced with the unavoidable reality of shrinking budgets, the combined ingenuity of public sector workers were not now able to find some way of saving money now it is truly necessary, more than before when it was not. Equally ridiculous is the assumption we all gain linearly from the increases in government spending. I support the Coalition's commitment to raise International Aid to 0.7% of GDP, a commitment worth £2.7 billion. But I still don't think we each are £50 a year better off because of this change, as stated in the TUC's ridiculous calculations.

The second of these reasons is that even if accept the actual figures for the impact of the spending cuts on our 'real' total income, the percentage figures they most prominently give, and on which their headline claim is based, are the wrong figures. By that I do not mean that someone's calculator is broken, or that someone has failed to carry a three somewhere. These are the correct answer to various sums, it's just those are the wrong sums. These are the wrong whole set of numbers. They have been substituted for the set that should have been used because they give better headlines. They are a statistical sleight of hand. The reason for this is that these figures have been derived by calculating a theoretical 'real' total income based on actual explicit income and the implicit cash value of our access and average use of public services. The cash figures for the impact are the impact on this real total income, since obviously spending cuts, unlike tax changes, do not effect actual explicit income at all. However, the percentage figures for the impact have not been calculated in reference to this total income including the value of public services, but to just ordinary explicit income (the actual wages, salary, pension investment income etc people receive). This is wrong.

It is not only wrong it is also ridiculous. Taken at face value it claims that a 11.5% cut in public spending produces a 30% fall in income for the poorest 10% of people. From which it is trivial to calculate that a 50% cut in public spending would cause a 128% fall in this group's income. That is, according to this model, they would not only have no income at all, they would owe money each year, even after they had paid taxes and before they had spent any money. Even though they would actually still both have their explicit income and half the implicit income they had before. This is obviously nonsense.

The correct calculations would have been to calculate the loss as a percentage of total real income, as this is what it is a loss from, which then brings us back to the realm of sanity and percentage decreases below 100. And the report does actually helpfully contain these figures. So why have they not been used in the headlines figures?

The answer is simple: political point scoring.

Because the figures for total income are much larger, and much more equal (because benefit from public services is much more equally distributed than income), the percentage fall for each group when expressed properly is much lower, and is lower for the poorest groups most of all, because their implicit income represents such a larger proportion of their total real income. This means that when calculated properly the ratio between the impact on the richest and poorest, i.e. how many times harder the poorest are hit than the richest, is a much smaller number. The real numbers are these:

Decile	Impact (£/year)	Impact as % of Total Income
1 (poorest)	-£1,913	-8.7%
2	-£2,164	-7.2%
3	-£2,124	-6.5%
4	-£2,019	-5.7%
5	-£1,914	-5.0%
6	-£1,865	-4.5%
7	-£1,727	-3.9%
8	-£1,627	-3.5%
9	-£1,560	-2.9%
10 (richest)	-£1,506	-1.7%

Ratio of Impact from Poorest to Richest: 5

And those numbers do not look nearly as impressive as the previous numbers, though they are still clearly regressive across the income distribution.

In fairness to the TUC and their leftist stooges at the Fabians, it is very difficult to calculate a clear total for the impact of the spending cuts. There is a clear urge to have some actual numbers to use, rather than vague intuitions and emotional appeals, but there are real difficulties in working out the numbers properly. If one scrolls to the bottom of the IFS presentation on the impact of the tax/benefit changes I provided, one gets their own take on the difficulties of doing this. They use more words, but essentially they go well you can try this model, or you can try this model, but they're all a bit rubbish so we're actually just not going to bother even trying. The TUC may have been wiser to heed this (implicit) advice. They would also have been more moral not to try to massage the figures for their own political purposes. Bad Trade Union Congress.

With these figures it is also now possible to combine them with the tax/benefit figures to get total estimated figures for the impact of the Coalition's deficit reduction plan in cash and percentage terms. These final numbers are:

Decile	Total Reduction in Cash terms	% of Total Income
1 (poorest)	-£2,513	-11.1%
2	-£2,914	-9.5%
3	-£2,924	-8.7%
4	-£2,869	-8.0%
5	-£2,714	-7.0%
6	-£2,765	-6.6%
7	-£2,727	-6.1%
8	-£2,627	-5.5%
9	-£2,760	-5.0%
10 (richest)	-£5,256	-5.7%

Ratio of Impact: 2

As you can see these figures are again clearly regressive in percentage terms, but the ratio between the impact on top and bottom has come right down to about 2:1. This is probably about as accurate as we are likely to get. It is probably then somewhat of an underestimate in terms of the actual impact on people, because the poor have so much less anyway, any hit is going to hit then relatively harder, as they have so little to spare. So perhaps throw in another unit to our ratio of impact: 3:1.

(At this stage I would like to congratulate myself that these figures of 2-3:1 are pretty much exactly what I predicted at the start. And I promise I did not work these numbers out beforehand.)

So, the government's deficit reduction plan is certainly not progressive in strict fiscal terms, even taking into account the clouds of dubiosity around the calculations for the impact of the spending cuts. Can it, however, be defended as fair, or indeed right?

As much as this is probably not a strong surprise by this point, I would strongly say yes.

Considering the scale of the UK budget deficit, some 22% of all public spending, it was pretty much always going to be impossible to produce a serious deficit reduction plan that would be simultaneously progressive. The only fiscally progressive things in the short term to do in this stage would be to either not tackle the deficit at all or to rely on a massive package of tax rises. Neither of these options is actually a good idea in the medium to long term. Massive tax rises would seriously damage the UK economy's ability recover from the recession and grow solidly into the future and act as a significant drag on economic activity on an ongoing basis. Failing to tackle the deficit just mounts up huge quantities of debt, pushing the cost of spending into the future and compounding it and acting as an equal drag on the economy and government in the future. Pain delayed in either manner is pain increased, but just stretched out.

Our ability to pay for public spending has dramatically decreased, it only makes sense in that circumstance for our public spending to considerably decrease as well. Such a path now allows us the chance to get the UK economy and public finances back onto a sustainable path and to ensure prosperity into the future, including the ability to raise spending and welfare again.

The other point worth making is to stress that these reductions are not the end of the world either. Over-all public spending is being reduced in real terms to the level it was in 2005, as a percentage of GDP to the level it was at in 2003. In neither of these years did Britain resemble some Victorian wilderness with the poor in workhouses and children down mines or up chimneys. Neither is there any reason to believe Britain will descend into any of the more lurid fantasies of various figures on the left over the next few years. Furthermore, although these changes represent on close inspection somewhat fiscally regressive shift in policy it must be remembered that on the wider view this is only a minor adjustment on the massive face and slant of public service provision and taxation. British public spending and taxation is currently progressive to the tune of hundreds of billions of pounds a year, and after all these changes are completed in four or five years it will still be progressive to the tune of hundreds of billions of pounds a year.

Realistically the Coalition has gone to considerable lengths to ensure core progressive spending survives the cuts relatively unharmed. Schools, NHS, Welfare and International Development, arguably the most important progressive areas of spending have all been protected to some extent. ID has gone up massively, the NHS and Schools have flat-lined and welfare has received cuts of only 8%. Taken together as a block these combined areas of spending will go from about £390 billion to about £375 billion over 4 years. Changes in emphasis like the Pupil premium and the Universal credit are also being brought in to better focus sparse resources in a manner than will help those that most need it.

In a highly progressive system, as we have, significant fiscal retrenchment is always going to hit the poor, as they are the ones that overwhelmingly benefit from the system. But if that retrenchment secures the public finances, keeps down debt and avoids damaging the recovery in a manner that lays a strong basis for prosperity in the future it may still be in their best interest in the medium to long term. And this is progressive in the most important and literal meaning of the term. There are of course certain minimum standards of care to be upheld, and I am certainly not saying that the Coalition's plans are perfect. But I believe they represent a serious, balanced and bold course of action, facing up to hard and complicated choices, to restore our public finances and economy as quickly as possible while safeguarding our progressive welfare state as far as possible.

It is a common complaint of governments and politicians that they are too timid, too insistent on doing what is popular and too scared to take risks. That cannot be said for this government. They are being bold on all fronts, possibly to the point of downright recklessness, leading a dramatic program of deficit reduction while simultaneously majorly reforming almost every branch of the state and constitution. If they manage to pull off 2/3rds of it they will go down in history as one of the most innovative and successful governments we have had; if they achieve it all it will be a downright miracle.

Either way these issues, and most of all the Government's £110 billion deficit reduction plan will dominate political life and discussion in the UK over the next few years and profoundly affect the lives of everyone in the country. For the reasons I have given through this series I broadly support this government and the actions they are taking. I hope I have also managed to explain both some of the details, and some of the arguments behind those details, of this most vast, extraordinary, detailed and important of political plans.

What Christmas Means To Me

2010-12-24T19:24:00.006Z

Just as my town is to this house, just as this country is to this town, just as this world is to this land; just as the sun is to this planet, just as this galaxy is to our sun just as the universe is to a galaxy, so is God to all the universe. He is so much greater than all we see here, though all that we see here around us and above us and below is undoubtedly within him, carried safely within him. Still, though being so vast he could hold the very universe in the palm of his hand, and supporting and sustaining all that is. Still, in the midst of all this, though he alone is great and holy and eternal, and the world is a small and sinful place, still he came and was born to a young girl, in a stable where only animals saw his birth.

God is greater than anything and everything, yet he made himself nothing, made himself entirely weak, entirely dependent on human hands, because he loved us so much. We see so many Christmas scenes, so many little statues of the nativity, that it is easy to forget what it really is.

Throughout all human history man has attempted to reach out to God, to know him and to be as One with him. To this end we have tried everything through the ages. We have built vast churches, temples, cathedrals and shrines; made beautiful Art, sculptures, paintings, murals; wrote songs, chanted, written classical symphonies and oratio, hymns, carols, strummed guitars and rock worship songs; formulated liturgies, services and prayers, given sacrifices, performed rituals, lived as hermits, prayed, fasted from meat, for a time, until the point of death; lived in caves in the desert, and caves on distant islands; wore hairshirts, sackcloth and ashes, habits of wool, elaborate robes; burnt incense and shared bread, kept vigils, entered trances, whipped ourselves into frenzies, meditated for years on end; danced and sung, begged, kept silence, built great institutions, spanning continents and centuries, held laws and statutes, raised leaders, revered prophets, revered saints, told stories and legends, crafted myths and philosophies; read books and nature, wrote and studied books after books for lives after lives, preached, taught, spoken and listened and listened, argued and argued; done works of charity and love, taken poverty and hoarded great wealth, travelled vast distances and changed the world, fought wars and conflicts, taken life and given life and given up our own life, loved and hated, hoped and trusted and clung on for lifetime after lifetime over century after century.

But for all our learning, studying, writing, speaking, listening and arguing we know and comprehend all but nothing about the depth of God who is infinite Truth. For all our praying, sacrificing, worshipping and ritual we barely brush the edges of his greatness. For all our meditation, prayer, fasting and solitude we barely approach his essence. For all our good deeds and acts of charity and sacrifice to be holy we only come to realise how perfect, how Holy, how infinitely far beyond us and what we can conceive, he truly is. For all our mysticism, philosophy, frenzies and ceremony we barely glimpse him as through a thick mist.

And our greatest efforts could barely begin to approach God. But God came down and was born as a tiny baby in a lowly stable. And the fullness of Almighty, Infinite God was held tight in the arms of a virgin girl, and Invisible and Unseen God was seen clearly by those human eyes, and God who requires nothing from us received everything he needed in milk and warmth from that girl; And God who can not be known was known by those there. And All of God who encloses the whole Universe was enclosed in her arms. God who is so far away was no distance from her arms; God who no one fully knows was known by her, and raised by her and taught and loved by her. And he grew and he walked amongst us and we could see him and touch him and speak to him face to face, and we knew him. And he taught us in plain words and ate with us and was there, and he was a friend.

God descended from his distance and came into the world as a man, and the whole world is sacred, because the Lord God experienced it. Thus this earth of matter is sanctified, because God descended into it. Not because it is God, but because it is a created thing and still God grew up from within it like a plant from the withered ground.

Without a doubt the two greatest deeds of God are the birth of the Universe and the birth of Christ. The first creation and the new creation. And the One Creation is much like the Other. Through the Creation of the Universe we know of God at all, as St Paul says, 'the whole world sings of the glory of God'. In the new creation we know of God perfectly, as his perfection enters a damaged world. The Universe is vast and great and magnificent, but in new creation God,who is greater and vaster than all the Universe, is born into it, as the tiniest part of it.

One Life grew and lived and loved and died and rose again. So we are all reflected and sanctified by the life of Christ, who shared our body. One Life who is greater than all life and all things, is born among us. We who are beings may see Being, asleep in a manger, and we who love, may hold Love in our arms, a babe in a stable by an inn.

Christ grew up among us like a flower from dead ground. He was born beautiful and grew and lived in love, and for a long time he was silent, but in later days he spoke out, but he died, but God raised him to greater glory, transformed into eternity, and he sits at the right hand of the Father. Like this the Universe was created, beautiful, and grew in beauty, but for a long time it was silent. Now in these later days have awoken the voice of the children of God among it. But in the end it will come to destruction, but it will not pass away, but be transformed by God in to greater glory, to dwell, sanctified by him and with him forever. He gave us the sign of the Christ, so we may know, and never fear again.

“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only begotten Son of the Father, full of Grace and Truth”

The Universe is a mystery, but God upholds it and secures it and sustains it. And God is wrapped around everything that is and hold it within him, yet still he came within and was held within himself. God who is beyond all Understanding upholds the Universe, which is an infinite mystery to us all, which yet again God was within, tiny, perfect, and so we have a Wonder containing a Mystery containing that same Wonder.

And that is the most beautiful thing in the world.

Merry Christmas.

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