Forgive the headline writers

I'm not sure that it was a good use of my time but, for my sins, I did it. I binge-watched all of the Church of England's parliament's (General Synod) two days of debate about safeguarding on Wednesday, which were summed up in media headlines in the BBC and for example the Guardian as "C of E votes against full independence for safeguarding against expert advice". 

This inevitably does not, nor could it represent, the careful and conscientious discussion of all the issues which actually took place in the debates. I noticed a number of points: one was the intense and prolonged silence that followed the relaying of comments by survivors of the abuse of John Smyth - which indicated for me the genuine engagement of the listeners with their suffering. The second was that the Charity Commission had raised problems with churches outsourcing safeguarding because trustees may not delegate their trustee responsibilities. The third was, I believe, that legal snags had been raised by the law firm, Veale Wasbrough Vizards (VWV). The fourth was the complicated situation of cathedral clergy who are also trustees with thousands of visitors as tourists, worshippers and choir schools. It's complex because cathedrals are independent from the central institutions of the Church of England and from dioceses.

All dioceses now have their own professional safeguarding advisors. The model of safeguarding which the Synod voted for (Model 3) retained this local layer, while working for Model 4 (central fully independent safeguarding). If you're interested, the relevant differences between the original (favoured) motion and as it was amended and eventually passed are shown below in paragraph (c). An additional amendment (d) was added.

9  ‘That this Synod:
(a)  thank all those involved in Church safeguarding, particularly the victims and survivors who give so generously of their wisdom and experience, often at great personal cost, and parish safeguarding officers who make sure that safeguarding is a priority in every level and all those who support them in dioceses;
(b)  affirm its commitment to greater independence in safeguarding in the Church of England;
(c)  thank the Response Group for its work for greater independence in safeguarding in the Church of England, endorse model 4 as the direction of travel, and request the lead bishop to engage with the relevant bodies with a view to implementation.’ 

9  ‘That this Synod:
(a)  thank all those involved in Church safeguarding, particularly the victims and survivors who give so generously of their wisdom and experience, often at great personal cost, and parish safeguarding officers who make sure that safeguarding is a priority in every level and all those who support them in dioceses;
(b)  affirm its commitment to greater independence in safeguarding in the Church of England;
(c)  thank the Response Group for its work for greater independence in safeguarding in the Church of England, and, noting the significant reservations around model 4 in paragraph 62 of GS 2378 and the legal advice from VWV dated 31st January 2025, endorse model 3 as the way forward in the short term and call for further work as to the legal and practical requirements necessary to implement model 4.
(d)  lament and repent of the failure of the Church to be welcoming to victims and survivors and the harm they have experienced and continue to experience in the life of the Church.’  

As is clear, the end destination of the amended motion is the same as the original; it was the question of the best road to reach it.

No one, least alone myself, can blame the headline writers for caricaturing rather than fairly characterising the discussions. However it is not fair to say that the Synod voted against full independence of safeguarding. They simply voted for staged greater independence, which obviously must feel like a failure to survivors but in my view is not. 

Andrew Brown has made an interesting comment on the debates. He comments on the flaws of the so-called best of independent safeguarding.

 PS Having watched more proceedings than I should have, I take my hat off and bow deeply to those friends of mine who have actually taken part in the arcane dealings of Synod.

Ruined Church?

Last night as I was going to sleep I saw a picture.  It was of ground covered with medieval masonry as if it was an ancient house recently struck by a missile attack.  The size and nature of the rubble indicated that it might have once been a church.  Then I heard a voice in my head, ‘Do you reckon, human being, that this church can be rebuilt?’

 

And I thought, ‘God knows! But I don’t believe it can be restored to the building it once was.  No amount of human plans and ingenuity would be sufficient to achieve that.’

Then the voice said, ‘Human being, call the wind to blow over these stones.’  

So I prayed, ‘Spirit, please come.’  Then there was a mighty wind, like an earthquake, which shook and seized the rocks — all but one.  That one great stone remained unmoved and stable, and I saw that it was the former foundation stone, the Cornerstone.  

And a voice came from the wind which addressed the shaken stones, saying, ‘See that you love one another; even as He has loved you, you are to love one another.’  And I looked and saw the stones, one by one, course upon course, coming together to create a new building around the great Cornerstone.  There was no longer need of laws and regulations to hold the  stones in place, because in their hearts they were full of love which bound them together.  I knew that this building was different from what it had been before, because its windows were clear, clear as crystal, so that everyone could see inside; its doors were always open.  It was as if there was music from inside, ‘All are welcome, all are welcome, all are welcome in this place.’  Finally I looked up and saw fixed in place a finial on the pitch of the roof.  It was the cross which I had first seen lying among the rubble of the destroyed church.  

And I remembered Jesus’s words to Simon Peter, ‘The gates of Hell shall not prevail against my Church.’

The British silicon valley?

Rachel Reeves

 You might have imagined that, having been privileged to study at both Cambridge and Oxford, I would have been delighted with Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor of the Exchequer (Finance Minister), when last week she announced plans to create a "silicon valley" type corridor between the two university towns. However having been born a Geordie and having spent seven years (including a further degree) north of the Watford Gap services, I'm not entirely a southerner.

Sadiq Khan

She claimed it would add £78 billion to the UK economy - so it must be a good thing, mustn't it? (BBC report 29th January). It reminded me of the Yes Minister episode about why the M40 had been built; the answer was because all the top civil servants wanted a quick route to the feasts at their old colleges. I suppose the proposal for a third runway at Heathrow Airport is connected to the unnecessary development of the already over-developed south of England, despite the claims it would benefit regions as far away as Scootland (40% south-east / 60% the rest). The one thing no doubt the rest of the country should feel grateful for is that Londoners will have to endure the extra air pollution and aircraft noise. No wonder, having done so much to clean up the city, the mayor, Sadiq Khan, does not share Ms Reeves' enthusiasm for the plan.

Instead of pouring further resources into the already well-resourced south, why does not this Labour government which benefitted so greatly from the double collapse of the Tory "red wall" in the north of England and of the Scottish Nationalists north of the border - and it was a matter of collapse rather than of a victory of ideology - why does it not capitalise on their regional advances and invest in those areas? Failure to will, I fear and predict, lose it much of the ground it gained at last year's election. 

There are other academic centres of excellence apart from the privileged élites of Oxbridge. For example, Manchester is at the forefront of technical innovation; Sheffield University hosts pioneering medical research. And further north Scottish universities are no less vigorous. Isn't it time that a Labour government sets the lead in affirming its commitment to levelling up in more than token gestures such as removing charitable status tax relief from private (aka public) schools? Invest in trans-Penine links between Lancashire and Yorkshire, put money (encourage investment in) into developing regional airports, promote northern universities? Forget about Cambridge and Oxford - they don't need more help to swim.            

Fires and tongues

Unsurprisingly the "apocalyptic" wildfires in Los Angeles have dominated our television news over the last few days. As well as being terrifying, they are of course very televisual. On Sunday we heard Emma Vardy reporting from the Golden Globes ceremony in Hollywood for the BBC; on Tuesday there she was in front of raging infernoes ripping through the houses of posh areas of the city. Quite a contrast! By now several stars of the screen have seen their mansions and villas go up in smoke.

Before

After

 

 

 

Apocalyptic is the adjective from the noun apocalypse, derived from the Greek word ἀποκάλυψις. We now commonly regard it as meaning catastrophic, even world-ending. Its original meaning is more unveiling, revealing or disclosing. Which is true of the wildfires as well as their being disastrous. And what do they reveal?

The news this morning informed us that a man had been arrested on suspicion of starting one later fire, though whether arson was involved in others is not known. I imagine the fire authorities have been too busy trying to save human life and extinguish the blazes to devote much time to forensic examination of the causes. But it doesn't take much to start a wildfire, especially if the conditions are favourable. As the good Book tells us: "So also the tongue is a small member, yet it boasts of great exploits. How great a forest is set ablaze by a small fire! And the tongue is a fire. The tongue is placed among our members as a world of iniquity; it stains the whole body, sets on fire the cycle of nature, and is itself set on fire by hell." 

Today I suspect St James might have qualified "the tongue" by adding "the internet", and in particular social media. "Look at the damage online gossip can do," he might have said. It's so easy, isn't it, to make a quick comment on your favourite social medium or to react thoughtlessly to an

unverified story, which has become all the more easy now with Mark Zuckerberg's removal of fact-checking from Facebook following Elon Musk's example on X (formerly Twitter). "And," St James might say, "look at the devastation an odd word, like an odd spark can cause."

Whether you're a billionaire calling a lifelong champion of abused women a "rape genocide apologist" or a disgruntled cleric without substantial evidence accusing a consistent advocate and initiator of safeguarding the vulnerable of "allowing abuse to continue", the damage caused can spread far and wide and deep. Control your tongue and your keyboard fingers!

2024 and 2025 - at the turn of the years

This post has been written on either side of the New Year.

Janus From Walltham Abbey

 There's a certain sense of frustration in being confined to a wheelchair as well as being physically cautious - a quality acquired after too many occasions lying on the floor after falls waiting for assistance. Fortunately we have great neighbours whom we have learned to call on, as the prescription, "Ring 999," usually entails long waits. The frustration is compounded by having the world mainly mediated through a screen or by radio. One doesn't need an algorithm to detect a certain uniformity of news narrative. I've observed that journalists often derive their news from other journalists' stories. As my father used to recite to us:"Great fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite ’em, And little fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum." (De Morgan, from his book A Budget of Paradoxes, 1872).

Looking back at my year, I consider this to have been vividly exemplified in the treatment of Archbishop Justin Welby. On Monday I commented:

"On 29th December, the Church remembered Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury. In TSEliot's play, Thomas preaches his last sermon on Christmas Day 1170. '...it is fitting on Christ's birth day, to remember what is that Peace which He brought; and, dear children, I do not think that I shall ever preach to you again; and... it is possible that in short time you may have yet another martyr, and that one perhaps not the last.' Four days later he is murdered in his cathedral by four knights who thought they were carrying out their King's wish - mistakenly." That couldn't happen today, of course, could it? No. Today it would happen by social and mainstream media (plus petitions) seizing uncritically upon a convenient pretext to impugn a good man's integrity and oust him from office in, as the admirable Bishop Rose Hudson-Wilkin described it, "the lynch-mob effect".

Looking back over my blog I see I was also much preoccupied with the debate about assisted suicide - which eventually came to the much altered House of Commons (following Labour's landslide victory in the July General Election). In the event MPs voted in favour of the second reading of the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill by a majority of 55. I concluded that it was one step on the road to a state-sponsored National Death Service. It remains to be seen how far its proponents will try to extend its boundaries.

2024 was trumpeted as the year of elections, and it was. Perhaps the largest in terms of population was in India where the party of the Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, lost its absolute majority. In the UK the Conservative Party which had been in power for 14 years was trounced having made itself almost terminally unpopular.

Entering Notre-Dame Cathedral

In France President Macron, despite a successful Olympics and a magnificently restored Notre-Dame Cathedral, in effect received a thumbs down when both the far left and the far right oustripped his centre party - and lastly came the big one: in the USA ex-President Trump won a whopping victory over his opponent, Kamala Harris, who was the Democrats' last minute stand in for President Biden, who had been deemed too elderly for another four years in office. If there is a trend in all these, it seems to be that incumbent governments had lost their voters' confidence.

Joanne Froggatt in 'Breathtaking' (ITV)

Highlights of 2024 for me were watching the Paris Olympics, celebrating a significant wedding anniversary with friends and family, and going to see Sheridan's The School for Scandal at the RSC in Stratford. We've usually hugely enjoyed their Shakespeare, but how would we like their Restoration comedy? As it happened, we loved it. Clever, colourful and great fun. On the small screen, along with half the country, I was gripped and appalled by Mr Bates vs the Post Office. Shocking that the post office masters and mistresses have still not received their due redress. I was disappointed that ITV's mini-series, Breathtaking, with its searing exposé of the treatment of healthworkers during Covid, has not received similar attention and that the cost and sacrifice of all the NHS staff who were at the front line of the battle on our behalf have not been recognised or compensated as they surely deserve. On a lighter note I've enjoyed Return to Paradise - an Australian daughter of the comedy Caribbean detective series Death in Paradise. It stars Anna Samson as Detective Inspector Mackenzie Clarke, who seems to be on the "spectrum" but, and probably because of that, is a brilliant if uncoventional detective. I'm glad to read that a second series is "under development".

Casting a long shadow over 2024 was the expanding conflict in Gaza and the even more protracted invasion of Ukraine by Vladimir Putin, plus civil wars in Sudan, Myanmar and doubtless other countries about which we never hear. Last year I wrote a poem on Holy Innocents' Day. 12 months later, I wrote another one on the same subject. I wonder whether I'll be doing the same in another 12 months.

Father pulling dead son after missile attack In Gaza - Channel 4

Searching the rubble after missile strike  - Democracy Now

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

The rabbi whose mother escaped death                                                 In the kinder transport comments,
‘We need to have compassion.’
His voice is full of sadness.
In only two months more than a year
Fourteen and a half thousand slain
And nearly a million homeless
Seeking refuge.

‘Children,’ he says, ‘should never be collateral damage.’
Yet here we are, ending December,
Gaza destroyed and the children
Crying from the blood-stained ruins
Of their once happy homes,
Hospitals raped of life-giving medicines,
Fatherless, homeless, no escape
From the invader’s insane juggernaut.

With privileged forewarning you escaped
To Egypt; while all the other mothers wept
Did you hear the wailing? Does your Son
Now hear? Or does he recline unmoved, no crying,
Away in a heavenly manger?
With the One who wailed, yes groaned at a grave,
Surely now together you both walk and weep
Among the desolated people whom he loves.

And where’s the old carpenter? Is he not
Unseen among the fathers and brothers
Where they heave the beams and throw aside
The smashed family treasures seeking loved ones
Crying cursing loudly their Herod of today
Who in his fury commanded this catastrophe?
No flight to Egypt now for them
The healer, builder, the mother are here.

As with your Son you walk unseen among the ruins
Surely now you tell him of the pain and the joy
Of carrying a child within you, and the protracted pangs
Of birth, and the agony, oh the agony as he dies,  
Surely you do not tell the mothers and fathers
Searching the rubble now that all will be well
That a joyful resurrection day will come
But with him and them you sit and weep. (Holy Innocents' Day 2024)

From Notre-Dame Cathedral, Paris

Like a beauty pageant contestant, I could wish for world peace in 2025. I suspect that is too big an ask, although it remains something I pray for because it's certainly proved to have been beyond the ingenuity of human politicians. I'm not sure whether the likes of Mr Elon Musk do anything to promote peace and justice (which of course go hand in hand). And so, beside removing myself from X which I have done in a vain gesture of protest, my wish for that rich overly ambitious South African is that he himself would take a ride on one of his rockets to Mars and stay there incommunicado. Another associated wish is that all the newly elected politicians, at least in this country, would prove themselves different from their predecessors and do better than their promises. As for the good old CofE, my wish is that a worthy successor to Justin Welby is appointed and that it should be a woman (from south of the city of Newcastle). 

Riccardo Muti's New Year message

Finally, the New Year's Day concert from Vienna was particularly good this year. The conductor was the 83 year-old Italian maestro, Riccardo Muti. The orchestra clearly like and respond to him. After the traditional orchestra wishing the audience a happy new year in unison, Muti's speech was short and to the point: "In my own Italian language on behalf of the Vienna Philharmonic I wish everyone three things: Peace, Brotherhood, and Love - in the whole world." To which a member of the orchestra responded, “Si!" And so do I.

What's it with Auntie and the C of E?

Occasionally, Auntie Beeb, that revered national institution, the BBC, gets a bee in her bonnet. And at the moment it appears to be concerning another national institution, the Church of England. One has to wonder why. Maybe it's to prove that the broadcaster is not the only organisation that has, or has had, failures in dealing with abuse.

For example yesterday the 'Today Programme' had another item about the Archbishop of York, Stephen Cottrell, and his perceived failure to deal with a former school chaplain, David Tudor, who had maltreated and raped students. The item was introduced with a short extract of an interview with th Bishop of Winchester, which was part of very long feature on Monday's 'World at One'. The guts of yesterday's items was the opinions of the BBC's favourite cleric, the hyper-articulate Giles Fraser who can be relied on to voice his dogmatically provocative views. Predictably he wanted the Archbishop out. He'd already campaigned for Archbishop Justin Welby's resignatiion. While I personallly dislike the pomp and circumstance of establishment, I don't believe either servant of the church merited the trial by media and petition to which they have been subjected.

So my question is this: why does the BBC never ask someone like Andrew Brown, the journalist who probably knows more about the Church of England, than any other, certainly than their own perfectly competent, Aleem Maqbool, to comment? Are they afraid he might puncture their proudly inflated thesis about the corruption of the CofE? Which he has done effectively, in a post on his blog, The Slow Deep Hover, 'In Defence of Stephen Cottrell'. "The basis of his defence is that he had no choice in law. He had inherited Tudor from two preceding bishops of Chelmsford, one of whom had granted Tudor the freehold. Since he had twice been acquitted of the offences that no one doubted he had committed, he could not even be suspended until or unless fresh charges were brought against him. As soon as that happened, in 2018, Cottrell suspended him. He should not be blamed for failing to do what was legally impossible....

"Sooner or later someone has to blow up the insatiable shark. The Church of England cannot be run by Twitter storms and petitions on Change.org. Time, effort, and money are all limited resources for a bishop, and to govern is to choose." (Incidentally all Brown's posts about the recent news concerning safeguarding are worth reading. He doesn't minimise its seriousness but does question the resulting conclusions.)

 

The Church of England is a complex and arcane creature. It's like no other institution, certainly not like a commercial company, or even like a government. Andrew Brown refers to the curious phenomenon of 'the freehold' - which means that it is a well nigh impossible for a vicar to be removed from his or her post, and it's not possible either for a congregation to vote their vicar out, however incompetent or uncongenial they may be. Sad but true.

Certainly the CofE needs reforming - that's something which the General Synod (its parliament) needs to attend to, rather than seeking ever more scapegoats for past failures. Ultimately, being the established 'state' church, it may be a matter the Government has to sort out. That might focus everyone's minds!

NHS and NDS

Well, on Friday the Commons voted in favour of the second reading of the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (aka the Assisted Suicide Act) by a majority of 55. Kim Leadbeater bravely introduced the Bill. There was silence in the chamber when the result was announced, but loud cheers by campaigners outside.

https://englishguitaracademy.com/

I wasn’t surprised. I was disappointed, but as Canute (or Cnut) knew you can’t turn back the tide. So when people express their sympathy, my honest feeling is that I'm relieved that the vote is over. I think I’ve done my bit to stem the flow, but maybe my job is done now. I’m sure the bill will be extended, despite the ‘cast iron’ safeguards. It will come to include the chronically ill, people under 18, even the depressed. The tide will continue to come in and unlike the sea it will not ebb again. 

So ironically the Labour Party which is rightly proud of having set up the National Health Service in 1948 will almost certainly be responsiblef for setting up a National Death Service. As Shabana Masood, Secretary of State for Justice, wisely warned, "The state should never offer death as a service." I fear we will come to regret Friday's vote in the long run.