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The Archbishop of Canterbury resigns.
Equal civil marriage hits the headlines and the Catholic Archbishop speaks out against it.
Sunday trading for the Olympics sparks fears of Sunday no longer being special.
It’s been a bit of a big week for the state church in England, you might say.

And I don’t often get a chance to legitimately use the word antidisestalishmentarianism in a blogpost, so it was too good an opportunity to miss to post something.

So I’m a member of the Church of England.  Not clergy, not even local church leadership team.  My Sunday role comes down to supporting the occasional Sunday school class, making the coffees, singing loudly, praying with my home groups, doing some of the readings and the intercessional prayers.  But I write this blog. As you may have read, I’ve met Rowan Williams, thought a bit about women bishops and whether faith and feminism can fit together, and posted various other Christian-themed articles. It’s my little outlet for sharing thoughts and ideas and engaging with others in faith, about faith.

Why does faith matter?
Even though “CofE” has a sort of tepid, bucktoothed spinsters, old men in dresses and rebuild-the-church-roof-by-holding-a-fair-on-the-village-green reputation, taking an interest in your faith is not just a question of the social side, that is performing rituals and going to the services.
It’s also about actually doing things for others, supporting each other emotionally, being a community, giving to the foodbank – the religion for atheists stuff that Alain de Botton talks about.  But it is not just that either.
Because if Christianity is true – if Jesus was who he claimed to be and did what those who witnessed it claimed he did – then this stuff really matters and explaining about Jesus to others, serving others and trying to live as if you are actually forgiven and part of God’s kingdom becomes the most important thing that anyone can do.
In brief, this stuff matters for every single one of us.

To put that into some context, Jesus said he came to fulfill the Law, that is, the rules for living given by God to the Jewish people.  He explained that we could never live up to God’s standards, but with his help we do and we’re good for God. Not withstanding this, we can – and should- try to be the best that we can.
So that’s why stuff that seems pointless to people on the outside is the stuff of such intense debate inside the church: women leaders? Divorce? Gay relationships? Euthanasia? Abortion? Stem cell harvesting?
Suddenly, if viewed through a prism of what is perfect in the eyes of someone that is the arbiter of what is good, it’s vitally important to try to get it right if we can.

Of the establishment, but not in control
At the moment the CofE is not making this case coherently.
It may not be in a place to do so – because it is the state church.  It has to deal with not being able to be the radical voice of good because it is also part of the voice of the establishment.
But I would say it is of the establishment, but it is not the establishment.
Not any more.
Everyone knows the origins of the Church of England if they know their British history – Henry VIII wanted to divorce his wife who had not produced a male heir and could not do so as a Catholic. In establishing himself as Head of the Church, as well as head of the State in a pre-democratic age, he linked the church and the state in a way that has continued (even despite the English revolution). This is about as establishment as you can get.
But it  is clear that the world is changing.
I suspect that it is neither the issue of same sex civil marriage nor Sunday opening that will ultimately change the role of the Church of England as a part of the establishment.
It is not really With our Queen as the head for sixty years, this has been maintainable.  But Prince Charles, the heir to the throne, has said he doesn’t want to be known as Defender of the Faith (the title taken by the Head of the Church of England) but as Defender of Faith. Does that mean he doesn’t intend to be Head of the Church of England?  And is it a requirement that the titular Head of the Church is a person of strong faith? What if they were not?  And if these things happen, is it disestablishment by default? There are almost certainly answers to these things being thought out in the church and by constitutional experts, but sometimes, as a member of the church, it’d be nice to know a bit more about where the hierarchy is leading us.

While some people seem to want to make the continued existence of faith schools the totemic issue (seemingly without really asking themselves why parents are happy to send their children to these schools and fight to do so rather than campaign against them), if the church was really such a strong voice in determining policy from the House of Lords, surely there would be no abortion act, no concept of civil marriage (the people not the church apparently owns that concept).

In fact, while it has been pooh-poohed in the press and I’ve found the comments of Lord Carey and others a bit too strident at times, it does seem to be getting harder to be a Christian in the UK.  Not because of the government – check out the warm words mentioned on Left Foot Forward‘s article on being a Christian country.
But more widely the stories making the press are those of Christians being told that it is not a requirement of their faith that they must wear crosses under their uniforms at work (it isn’t, but although there is undoubtedly something I don’t know about the case, replace this with turban or headscarf and think again about implication of the outcome of the ruling), that it is not a necessary part of the Christian faith to go to church on a Sunday (um, more tricky but thousands of years of practice suggest that this is as near to a requirement as we get in Christianity).
There is a careful balancing act going on in society, balancing the freedom of expression in the practice of one’s faith with the freedom to access goods and services without discrimination and it’s the evangelical Christian foster parents, the B&B owners that are finding out where the new boundaries are.  But recognising that it is about finding out what sort of society we are and how we want to treat each other, it is difficult to see people who are sincere in their belief that something is wrong, being held automatically held up as bigots if they are not immediately comfortable with the new normality.
So even though there are prayers at the beginning of the parliamentary day (although not now in Bideford (Devon)’s town council’s meetings) are 26 bishops eligible to sit in the House of Lords (Lord Spiritual) by right, there are also representatives of other faiths and people of no faith in the House of Lords appointed by the government of the day. , Britain is really no theocracy.   Far from it.

A public voice for faith
There are three complexities for the Church of England in acting as a public voice for faith in the UK.
Firstly, there is no unified Christian view of all the issues on which the gentle moral guidance of a faith which sees every individual as a valued child of God could legitimately play a role.  We shouldn’t worry about this – debate has always been part of faith (I recommend “God’s Philosphers“, a book on scientific thought in the middle ages and a brilliant explanation of how the world really was to anyone who thinks it was all brutal Papal suppression of thought and inquisition) and careful intellectual consideration of difficult subjects has actually been something that the outgoing Archbishop encouraged.
And in the twenty-first century, Christianity is not the only faith group with a view and a wish for a voice – if you can’t guarantee a single Christian view on an issue, imagine trying to get a view representing all people of faith.
The third problem is that, just when an inspired, calm and positive engagement is needed with the issues of the day there is a serious public debate in this country about whether religion should have a voice at all in the public sphere.
Richard Dawkins tried to define what being Christian meant, and claimed that as people in Britain didn’t live up to his definition, they shouldn’t self-identify as Christian and more importantly shouldn’t be taken into account when making public policy.
A view that Britain should be secular is presented as if this is a neutral position, that having faith communities involved is indulging publicly and unnecessarily favorably something that should only be part of private life.
But as I’ve set out above, if you believe it is true, then faith is who you are, it is how you live your life, it is part of being in the world not an add-on.

Some countries, like France, seem to manage to keep faith and state separate.  And yet, in a country with as determinedly a secular constitution as the USA and which has had serious court cases to uphold this (e.g. to ban prayer and Bible reading in schools in 1963), no one has yet become President without professing their faith.  Winning the Tea Party/ Conservative Christian Evangelical/ Southern Baptist vote looks to be a big challenge for the (Mormon) likely Republican Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney. Even when you separate state and religion, it has a way of making itself known.

What’s the future for the CofE?
As you may have gathered, I don’t think that gay civil marriage will directly lead to disestablishment of the Church of England.  After all, while marriage in the sense of a love match in front of God and the communmay be a Christian concept, the joining together of two individuals in law has long pre-existed this in England (although these days there’s fewer dowries and daughters used as peace tributes).  And I don’t think that extended Sunday opening during the Olympics will be the end of the church either – indeed, I think that the CofE’s line on this should have been about safeguarding the right to go to church on a Sunday morning rather than necessarily about questioning the 24 hour society that we’ve become.

But what about finding a new Archbishop?  I think Rowan Williams has been a good and subtle leader.  But then opinion on Rowan Williams seems to fall into three camps:

• he is a weak leader unable to contain the woolly Western liberals or the ardent Africans;
• he is a wise diplomat maintaining the broadness of the Anglican church and whose legacy is the ordination of women bishops some time in the next twenty years; or
• he is a wonderful thinker and theologian but that’s not the same as being a great manager of a big organisation.

Being head of the world wide Anglican community, a role that does not claim to be God’s representative on earth by right, the leadership of the church is a real challenge. I hope that they find the right man for the job.  And in twenty years…

But it is important to have someone speaking with the authority of scripture and the common sense to communicate in a way that is heard and respected.  So much wrong has been done in the name of God that now, more than ever, getting it right matters.

Finally, the pray for Fabrice Muamba campaign is one of those rare opportunities for the press to put faith in a positive light. To collapse at his age, in his seemingly amazing physical condition, on the pitch in front of all the fans was shocking.
If you have time, and there are of course many things that need prayer in this world, spare a prayer for him. In so many different ways, I wouldn’t want this to be the prayer that failed…

I wrote it to test out my skills at dialogue, plot, and some of the rules I’m applying in the world of my novel. Rules? I better explain.
I realised a while back that while I loved the literary fiction book I was writing, I’d literally lost the plot.

Oren will end up with Charlotte, Titch will die, but getting from where I’d got to to that resolution needs more time and care than I felt able to give it when I was realising that the genre I really enjoy reading and writing is actually YA aimed at boys!

So I started a new novel, reaching about 20000 words after NaNoWriMo. My hero is a teenage boy who ends up time travelling. But it’s easy to have a hero who is really a wizard, who is the son of a god, a prince, who suddenly discovers they’ve got amazing sword skills and where a magic potion heals all injuries within 24 hours.
In my book world, I decided to have real world rules apply.  My hero plays rugby so he can run and he’s tough, but if he gets hurt, he stays hurt.  There’s consequences to decisions and actions. The only “magic” is the time travel. But the question is why do things happen the way they do? And if you had the chance to change things could you resist doing so?

Writing my screenplay gave me the chance to see if real world rules can work in a fantasy/ sci fi situation. I think they can. So back to the novel…

So what’s new for 2012:
- I’ve tried and failed as yet to get excited about the forthcoming London Olympics.  It might be the greatest show on earth but for me it’s a few months of transport hell;

- My newest novel attempt has reached 28,000 words. Please ask me more about this!

- We have a whole bundle of health issues going on chez Rose22joh, and are praying for a swift and happy resolution;

- I can blog about the EU again if I feel the need – and there’s a lot going on that could do with some reflection.

- I’m TIRED!

So voila: this year’s offerings are likely to be on writing, politics, parenting, faith and of course feminism. Probably.

And the fact that my New Year post is up before February? I’m counting that as a win!

In a related issue, the Eurozone crisis raises interesting questions for politics students, and not just because they wonder if they’ll ever get a job after all their study to repay the cost of doing so.

Democracy, said Churchill, is the worst form of government excepting all others.
In my post a few months ago, I tried to explain how – once the political system of a country is propped up through the financial support of others – democracy becomes not just an issue for the voters of the country being propped up but for the proppers too.
Why is it thought to be fair and legitimate for the voters of one country to demand international subsidy but expect the voters of other countries to give it without comment or expectation?

This is globalisation in its real sense.
This is not just about multinational firms moving jobs around for the comany’s benefit – to take the most negative view of it.
Nor is it just about increased prosperity for all through the breaking down of trade barriers – to take the most positive view of it.
No, we need to realise that globalisation has already affected all of us, we are interconnected to a degree that we perhaps did not realise.  Our sovereign debt is owned internationally, and as such our obligations as global citizens to honour the promises made in our names to get the money that is now owed.
If we feel that this financial system and arrangements were made without our knowledge and consent, then there is an issue here.
What did we feel we were voting for at the elections we voted in?  If we didn’t vote at all, do we think we perhaps should have done?

Perhaps some people feel that those standing as candidates to represent us are only a limited selection, that everyone’s centered around a general acceptance of the way the world should be?  Well, that seems to be the guiding principle behind the Occupy protests, but within a democratic system, the proper way to secure change is to stand for election and get a popular mandate. Otherwise you are also just unelected, unrepresentative self-appointed people who believe you are right.
Part of the question we have to ask ourselves is whether our democratic capitalist system is in fact corporate capitalism and whether we’re happier with that than with all the other types of capitalism available.

So how should we feel about the installation of Mario Monti in Italy?

The thing is democracy comes in lots of different forms.  The list system used in Italy’s national elections allows the maximum party control and voters little- UK voters have some experience of this with the party list system chosen for use in the European parliament elections here. It is always possible to argue that the version of democracy used where you are or over there is insufficient or somehow less “pure” than the version you prefer. That’s why people are always able to insist that a referendum is better than representative democracy, or similar.

Mario Monti’s government is not designed to be long term, nor democratic. It is a government of specialists: a banker at the finance ministry, lawyers, professors, and (to Jim Hacker’s fictional horror) yes, civil servants. Because if you need to know where the levers of power are, you could do worse than use the skills of those who know. What his cabinet does not have is elected politicians.

As Papandreou showed in Greece, the problem that elected politicians have is two-fold. They feel beholden to the people that have elected them. They also frankly want to stay in power. These two factors must surely have been behind the odd decision to put to a referendum a decision taken at a Eurozone meeting. The point about representative democracy is that elected representatives sometimes have to take decisions that are unpopular, and the brave ones take them even when warned that doing so might put them out of power for a generation.

In Italy and in Greece, we are seeing the rise of the technocrats (albeit that the ones in Greece are elected). Without public accountability, you have to hope for benevolent dictatorship, putting your trust in experts. Experts can be amazingly blind to real world consequences – as “Yes Prime Minister” puts it- putting your trust in experts’ computer models is a risky business. And with so many EU countries only a generation or so from not so benevolent dictatorship, this must all feel very uncomfortable indeed.
And with the unfortunate comments from the German CDU parliamentary leader about the whole of Europe now speaking German… all I can say is while intellectually I endorse the need for strong leadership to keep the Euro and its economies from total collapse there needs to be a very limited time for this alternative.
So Churchill has it right. Democracy, in all its forms, is the least worst option. Let’s hope the technocrats include a few with a real understanding of political theory.

But the issue is a serious one.  The anti-capitalist “Occupy” movement which declares “we are the 99%” (as opposed to the top 1% of wealthy people) was granted permission to camp outside St Paul’s Cathedral in London, but now it seems the campers may have plans to abuse that hospitality – rather than a short, focused protest with a clear objective, there seems to be a random package of motives, an intention to stay indefinitely, the cathedral had to close for the first time since the Blitz in 1940, and the church authorities seem to find themselves in a position of possibly having to condone the use of force to get the camp removed.

Some of the campers have painted WWJD (What would Jesus Do?) on the side of their tents, and it is not clear whether this is being facetious, faith or a real theological challenge.
The Canon that has resigned sees it as the last one of these.  He gave sanctuary to the protesters who wanted to be in the City, and recalls the church as a radical force in society – giving voice and support to the poor, speaking out against injustice. In this way,

So what would Jesus do?

With much thanks to www.acts17-11.com for the quotations, a few thoughts.

1) Was Jesus really against money?
Jesus was famously poor but his backers were not – Mary Magdalene is never mentioned in
connection to a husband but evidently had some wealth of her own. Joanna was Herod’s steward’s wife and is listed by Luke as one of the women bankrolling Jesus’s mission, Matthew would’ve made money as a tax collector and Joseph of Arimathea owned a tomb and paid for Jesus’s burial.
Jesus’s disciples worked, several as fishermen.  Paul, Priscilla and others made tents.  They were earning a wage, not living off others. It is likely that the years between Jesus’s disappearance in the temple and his reappearance for his baptism in the Jordan, he worked as a carpenter like Joseph.

Jesus tipped over the money changers tables in the temple – but this was about the sellers selling access to God, an abuse of the relationship God wants to have with mankind, not a hatred of money itself.

Jesus also paid his taxes and advocated that others should too.

Jesus welcomed the pouring of expensive perfumed oil over him – a waste of an expensive product yes, but remember Jesus also ate good food and drank wine and slept in the houses of his followers, and was chastised by the religious authorities for doing so especially as his hosts were often the unclean and unpopular – but this was not a life defined by abstinence.

2) But it’s not that simple…
The problem is not money itself, it is the love of money that is the root of all evil.  It is the second of the two masters mentioned in the bible, the mammon the pursuit of which diverts us and separates us from God: Luke 16:13 (NIV):

“No servant can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money.”

We have to look not just at the life that Jesus lived.  We also need to look at what Jesus taught about money. And (according to www.advantagem-a.com) 43% of the parables concern money.

Look at the wannabe disciple in Mark 10:21-27,31 who thinks he has it all sorted and is ready to follow Jesus.  Jesus shows him, and others, that it is trust in God not worldly wealth that flips our values system on its head:

Jesus looked steadily at him and loved him, and he said, “There is one thing you lack. Go and sell everything you own and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.” But his face fell at these words and he went away sad, for he was a man of great wealth. Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, “How hard it is for those who have riches to enter the kingdom of God!” The disciples were astounded by these words, but Jesus insisted, “My children,” he said to them, “how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.” They were more astonished than ever. “In that case,” they said to one another, “who can be saved?” Jesus gazed at them. “For men,” he said, “it is impossible, but not for God: because everything is possible for God… Many who are first will be last, and the last first.”

In the Sermon on the Mount, he taught us to be like the birds of the air and the lilies in the field, trusting in the Lord to provide and not worrying about money.  There are people today who do live like that, and it is a real act of faith.  The cynic might say that in order that we can be reflections of God’s love and sustain them we need to ensure there is some money available.  We don’t know when the Kingdom will come, so we also need to be tentmakers to keep going until then…

Continuing on the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus was consistent, pointing out that it is not economic wealth that determines a person’s value, and that this counts for little in God’s eyes (Mat 6:19-21):

“Do not save riches for yourselves here on earth, where moths and rust destroy, and robbers break in and steal. Instead, save riches for yourselves in heaven, where moths and rust cannot destroy, and robbers cannot break in and steal. For your heart will always be where your riches are.”

The early Christians tried to get around the issue of money and provision for need by arranging communal living arrangements.  There’s no suggestion that this is necessary in order to balance the competing attractions of God and money, but the problem was shown right there at the very beginning via Ananias and Sapphira.  Their problem was basically being dishonest about money with God.  While my homegroup is about to do a study on Sapphira, I can’t help wondering at the moment whether Sapphira’s property sale would’ve been a non-issue if only she’d said actually we are giving you 10% rather than claiming untruthfully to be giving it all.

3) No one can say we weren’t warned…

At Luke 9:25, Jesus asks “What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet lose or forfeit his very self?”

Jesus further tells us – via the parable of the sower- that the thorns that overtake some of the seeds sown are tempted away by (Mark 4:18-19) “the worries of this world and the false glamour of riches and all sorts of other ambitions creep in” and (Luke 8:14) “the life is choked out of them, and in the end they produce nothing.”

We’re also warned about ignoring the poor at our gates via the rich man and Lazarus. When the rich man asks that his brothers be warned so that they don’t love money more and end up in a place of torment, Abraham tells him that “they have Moses and the Prophets, let them listen to them… if they will not, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead“.

And in the Book of Revelation 3:17-19, John’s vision of Jesus says:

“While you say, ‘I am rich, I have prospered, and there is nothing that I need,’ you have no eyes to see that you are wretched, pitiable, poverty-stricken, blind and naked. My advice to you is to buy from me that gold which is refined in the furnace so that you may be rich, and white garments to wear so that you may hide the shame of your nakedness, and salve to put on your eyes to make you see. All those whom I love I correct and discipline. Therefore, shake off your complacency and repent.”

Jesus was not unconcerned by poverty, but it was poverty of spirit that he sought to fix first: Jesus himself noted that “the poor will always be with you and you can help them whenever you want to” (Mark 14:7), but that his time on earth would be limited.
Essentially Jesus said that he was here to bring about God’s kingdom, not rule an earthly one.

4) The challenge to us all on money…

Again, www.advantegem-a.com has the questions ready for us:

1. Do not be like the rich fool who focused his whole life on accumulating wealth for his
retirement years, out of greed or worry, and miss storing up spiritual treasures for eternity.
Evaluate whether this might be the case in your life.
2. Are we really prepared to give up everything – our finances, our businesses, our careers –
to follow Christ if that is what He requires?  Have we truly counted the cost of discipleship?
Are we really disciples of Christ according to Christ’s definition?
3. Are we shrewd in our financial dealings to serve our own interests or God’s interests?
4. Are we faithful stewards of the financial resources that God has entrusted to our care for
His purposes?  How would we fare if the Lord were to return today and ask us to give an
accounting?

 4) And that’s all well and good but…
Jesus didn’t hold much truck with religious practices for show – the relationship with God through prayer and learning from teachers of authority and living God’s love with the seem to be more important that the fabric of the building.
I’m not sure he’d mind too much the camp, and if the protesters were motivated by righteousness and a sense of social justice and the value of all people rather than of money he’d probably positively support them.
But despite the church-based location of the protest, I’m not hearing a lot about these things, just that the capitalist system is broken and unfair.
I’m not hearing proposed solutions either, just the anger.

It’s good that we have the freedom to protest.
I’m not sure that camping out outside the cathedral really makes the point – it feels like picking on the cathedral as a weak point in the City.  Why aren’t they on football pitches, in leafy Hampstead, at Canary Wharf, in Westminster?  How is this location making the point effectively?

But I’m worried that the position of the Cathedral in getting involved in forceful evictions is in the worst traditions of “religion” and exactly what Jesus came to say that a relationship with God was not about.

I also found Boris Johnson’s “in the name of God and Mammon, go!” offensive.  He may have clarified that what he meant was that the camp should move on for the good of the economy and the wellbeing of the cathedral (tourist income, availability for worship) but it did feel as though he was claiming to be speaking for the Christian faith, and while God moves in mysterious ways, that would be one really perplexing move…

One final thought.  Even the poorest of those protesting are, through accident of location of birth, among the top 10% of rich people in the world.  If we’re really going to rethink it, we need to think globally about social justice and realise that we’re all God’s people.

At first I blamed the food.  All those mini chocolate cupcakes with little candy ghosts, strawberry-jam-blood marshmallow teacakes, pumpkin balls, themed jelly sweets… but actually he can still mainly take-or-leave junk food. (Long may this phase continue).

Then I thought it might be the costumes.  He’s just reached dressing up phase.  Now, I have some friends whose children I rarely see in normal clothes because they are really knights, space explorers, princesses, fairies, pirates… We’re not at the stage of refusing to leave the house unless in costume (perhaps helped by early establishment of the need to wear school uniform) but we now have a dressing up box, and the best thing is the full Harry Potter quidditch uniform, complete with cape, pads, gloves and Beckham-style number 07 on the back. I thought the broom he wanted was to go with the Potter get-up.
But no.  I was firmly informed that he had badgered his grandparents into buying one as a Hallowe’en witches broom and not to use to try to fly for sporting purposes. I guess we should be grateful for small mercies – apparently flying on broomsticks is not real so we don’t need to worry about attempted leaps off the trampoline.

Most children’s TV shows do a Hallowe’en special. All the magazines he wants to read do a Hallowe’en version with spooky things to make and do (as in furry spiders and greetings cards, rather than Ouija boards). Hallowe’en is clearly a big deal and something to be celebrated, right?
So what are we celebrating?
I asked my son and was informed that Hallowe’en is when all the leaves go brown and fall off the trees. Hmmm. Some confusion there.  But then we live in a world where so many people think Christmas is just a celebration that we’ve reached the darkest point of winter and want to be with loved ones. So why wouldn’t Hallowe’en just be about autumn?

Halloween used to be a folksy American thing, little kids trick or treating.  For some reason it was really big in Belgium when we lived there – presumably the legacy of so many US TV shows (but the Wittamer’s window in the Sablon really does need to be seen).

And now, suddenly, over the last 10 years here in the UK, Halloween has arrived.  Shops have aisles of cheap plastic tat.  We buy the aforementioned sweet things as self-defence in case of trick or treaters.  Supermarkets are asked not to sell eggs.  And we start to wonder what it is all for – why are we encouraging kids to dress up and go around the neighbourhood demanding chocolate with menaces?

I’m a bit of a sci-fi/ fantasy fan.  I’m a bit more drawn into the fan forums for Doctor who/ Torchwood etc. than I like to admit, own all the box sets of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and occasionally experiment with the shows my TiVo suggests (Being Human, Supernatural, True Blood, the Vampire Diaries, Ringer…) and I like murder mysteries.  But even I have to wonder, are we normalising the ghoulish, the supernatural and the downright unpleasant through this annual focus on darkness?  Like videogaming normalising violence against women, drug dealing and car theft, are we going to find that our children’s generation is more superstitious and drawn to scenes of horror?

I’m pretty sure that these days there’s nothing really connecting the plastic pumpkin celebrations to the origins of Halloween – to Beltane, All Saints and All Souls.  The celebration of skeletons and skulls has echoes of the Mexican Day of the Dead – but then a lot of things are a bit confusing to me that are involved in South American Christianity.

But as my church, like many, hosts its annual Light Party (bright colours, fun games and not a skeleton in sight), I’m left to wonder: you don’t get much more Christian as a society than the USA and yet our approach to Halloween originates there.  Is it something to be scared of?

There is not going to be a simple answer to this.

The rioting is spreading: it started in Tottenham, spread to Wood Green and last night’s news reported rioting, looting and arson in Oxford Circus, Hackney, Brixton, Clapham Junction, Hackney and outside London too, in Birmingham, Liverpool, Nottingham and Bristol.  In town this morning, there were rumours of problems at Blue Water shopping centre too. [Note: this was later proved to be just that, rumour!]

The spark that lit the tinder box of discontent was the police shooting of a young black man in Tottenham.  The IPCC is investigating, and the family is unhappy with the treatment and information they received.  To mark their concern, they held a church-led quiet demonstration.  They did not expect and they’ve said they do not want what’s going on at the moment.
But it doesn’t look like they get a choice.

While respected commentators like Darcus Howe set out one view of what’s going on (a response to the alienation and disaffection caused by excessive, intrusive and unfair use of stop and search),  this scale of violence seems to be more than just a reaction against the police.  It seems to be a rejection of all authority, including that of local community.
The resentment was there even among non-rioters interviewed on the news last night – the two young girls said that Oxford Street has been protected but “black” Tottenham had been left to burn. Well perhaps, but equally possible that Oxford Circus as a major tourist destination and economic crutch for London in difficult financial times would have enormous consequences rather than just the huge ones in the residential areas.

Everyone’s looking to understand what’s going on.
Is there a parallel with the 1980s? So far, the answer seems to be possibly.

The Guardian set the context in terms of social inclusion.  The coalition cuts, high rates of child poverty, the gap between the richest and poorest 10%, poorest social mobility in the developed world… these things lead to discontent.
And with the financial crisis worldwide and all mainstream political parties agreed on the need for deep public spending cuts including youth services, there’s not much political alternative out there.  And even if the rioters were old enough to vote, it remains to be seen if they would in any case.  That’s the problem with disaffection.

And it’s hard to show whether any of this is genuinely a motivation for the rioting and looting.  It’s hard to show that the kids on the street are doing anything more than socking it to “the man” and taking what they want in terms of sportswear and electrical goods.

I found this fascinating, from the comments on the Guardian website:

There’s a widespread myth that law and order is preserved by police, politicians and other forces of authority. Not true. Never has been. If we all decide to go out and chuck a dustbin through Argos’s window and help ourselves, it would take about 15 million coppers to contain it. We actually have about 150,000.

Law and order is kept by a collective acceptance of mutual goals. If, as a society, we look after each other, offer everyone a share and a stake in the common weal, maintain some semblance of a Rousseauian Social Contract, then the vast majority of people will mostly stick to the rules without ever needing to see a police officer. When people lose that sense of being looked after, no longer feel part of society, no longer feel like they have any kind of share in any kind of collective, the ties that bind begin to be broken.

Rioting, especially the type of vandalism and looting we’ve seen in London, is a sure sign that the social contract is unravelling around the edges. In the days and weeks and months to come, we shall see how far it has frayed.

The social contract at its simplest empowers the weak against those that can run faster and hit harder.  But even if the social contract is a bit frayed, the vast majority of people were at home, or at work, whether they were poorer or working class or not.  Some were being burnt out of their homes or livelihoods by the rioters.  Some are now without places to work thanks to the rioters. However much people might want to seek possible motivations, this is not acceptable. This is not right.

What’s shocking is the age of the rioters. Kids as young as 13 are reported to have been on the streets in Clapham with hoods up and scarves around their faces.  The police appealed to parents to be sure they knew where their kids were and to keep them at home.  You don’t know where your 13 year old is?  What kind of a parent are you????
But despite the outcry, we should remember that since time immemorial kids have disobeyed their parents and gone out whether its to play Knock Down Ginger or whatever.  I’d prefer it wasn’t hooded-and-masked robbery though.
But now with mobile technology, it should at least be easier for parents to track them down.

And we can’t really blame technology.  There’s been a lot made of the roles of Twitter and Facebook in enabling the Arab spring in the middle east this year.
The London rioting seems to owe a lot of its spreading to organised rioters using BlackBerry messenger – a secure system – and for reasons of PR if nothing else, BlackBerry needs to be seen to be willing to breach that confidentiality to help bring those people to justice.
But if that’s true it means there is a hard core plotting the spread of the riots.  This frees us then from the idea that this is completely spontaneous, as does the leaflet that “Political Parry” blogged about.

The Prime Minister came back from holiday, COBRA met (not a snake – Cabinet Office Briefing Room A, the place where the emergencies committee meets), and  has promised more police and more arrests.  Good.  Why not use water cannons as well, to disperse crowds (and put out fires too)?
Most of my friends on Facebook, especially those overseas, can’t understand why the army hasn’t been called in. The answer seems to be essentially that we expect people to pull themselves together and behave, and we don’t see ourselves as that sort of country. Whether the armed forces are available is another matter. As for what the press elsewhere in the world thinks, take a look here.

I mentioned the social contact earlier, and the difficult sell that the current generation in power needs to make to the next generation essentially that they won’t have it so good.
From a discussion at my church group, I offer the following points:
We shouldn’t kid ourselves that we didn’t know discontent was out there.  We should read “The Spirit level“.  We should read “Jilted Generation“.
We should understand that the “pay more get less” message that young people are not going to have it as good as the baby boomers does not go down well.
Nor does calling our kids feral – even if we think they are – nor saying that exam results are not worth the paper they are written on, insisting on squashing teachers into large class riot control schooling for all rather than recognising the talents and strengths of each child.
We should hug our kids, all of them, not just hoodies.  We should care enough to know where they are.
We should care enough to tell them no, too.
We should care enough to tell them that they’re not going to be footballers, win the X Factor or get the dream ticket on the lottery.  Getting on in life relies on education, and seizing the right opportunities – not the property of others.
We should – rather than lecture parents that kids are a “lifestyle choice” – allow parents the ability to spend time with their kids, teaching them to be fully functioning members of society, to spend time with family and with others in our community.  I just wonder (slightly facetiously) whether a few old ladies calling out “Jayden Jones, I know that’s you!  I used to wipe your nose at playgroup, is it still so runny that you need that scarf on over your face?  Take that hood off when I’m talking to you, it’s not raining out here!” might have made a difference.
We need recognise we’ve taught our kids to interpret their value through the morals of advertising “see this, you want it NOW. You NEED it NOW, it’s yours to take NOW and everything will be perfect!” No deferred gratification, no working to earn it being worth more.
We need to think about the sort of economy we want to be – in a few years a model based on cheap manufacturing in China or elsewhere in the developing world is going to fail because of those countries’ own demand for wages rises – and plan for that as well as for the sort of population we’re going to be… needing a place for younger people, yes, but older, more female too.

We should do all of these things.

We need to because the countering message is much more negative: you’re an obstacle to your parents, no matter how hard you work there’s 100,000 others out there who’ll try to best you, there’s nothing to look forward to, you’ll never get a fraction of the things you’re told are yours for the taking. You don’t have enough invested in this way of doing things to care if there are consequences and so for just a few nights, you can have power.

But whether or not there’s reasons, the actions of these kids are wrong. And criminal.
Violence of this type cannot and should not be condoned.
But the real solutions are likely to be long term attempts to improve social mobility, not something that can be sorted in a couple of days or weeks.
So do expect to hear the usual commentators out saying that a good dose of military service would give these kids a sense of purpose (yeah, because teaching them to use weapons professionally would so much improve this situation!)

Do think about taking a look at the police pictures to identify the perpetrators.

But above all, give thanks for the ordinary Londoners who have pitched in to help clean up, carried on with their lives and pray that tonight something other than anger and resentment and will prevail – a bit of hope and common decency would be nice. 

I’ve argued in a previous post that fat is still a feminist issue.  But I think what I’m realising is that the more size-zero obsessed the fashion world gets, and the more airbrushing the beauty industry does, the less I care.

I use the Eraser foundation, the one that Roberts and Turlington were advertising.  But I bought it because I needed a foundation at about the time of the half-price introductory offer Boots ran, and not in any real expectation that I would emerge from its use looking like a super model.  After all, cosmetic industry advertising is not based in reality, even with the warning “filmed using lash inserts” now appearing during mascara promotions.

Really, I know what I need in beauty products.
I need them to make me look less red skinned, less tired, with bigger feline eyes, redder lips.  I don’t expect to look like a rubber doll with shiny skin, nor for my skin to flake.  I’m not worried about wrinkles particularly because of my excess fat!  See, there is an advantage to being overweight.

I don’t have much time in the mornings – I want a haircut that can more or less shower and go, and moisturiser that either goes on in the shower or can be squirted on in a kind of dry oil form but without leaving the bathroom floor like an ice rink.  Leaving my make up until I get to work frees up a few precious moments in the pre-commute morning to help my son into his uniform.  Minimal hassle to me is key… but the proliferation of products like “bottom lash mascara” show that this is not the beauty industry driver.

The point is, by trying to get me to strive for something I know to be unrealistic, my reaction is to think, you know what? Sod it.

The case is made more clearly with fashion.

Just look what a men’s magazine – yes, aimed at men who tend to like a curve, rather than women who apparently don’t – did to Kate Winslet back in 2003. When you look at how slim show was in the first place, why does this sort of thing make any woman go I should try to look like that?
Surely the more natural reaction is to look, blink to reassure yourself you really are seeing that, laugh and go and eat a doughnut if you feel like having one?

The reality is I’m never going to be a size zero, I’m never going to look good in clothes designed for people that shape.  Even when I’m slim, I’m curvy.  It came as a shock when looking at some family pictures of myself aged 17, to realise that even then my skinny size 12 body would’ve been counted as plus-size in fashion world.  At more than three inches above average height for UK women, I’d also have been too short…

Magazines focused on fashion are a bit of a waste of time for me.  It’s not just that many of the items in the magazine shoots in Marie Claire and Elle etc. are designer items costing several hundred pounds, it is almost certain that they don’t come in a size bigger than a 14 at best.  Why should I care what an item of clothing that won’t fit me looks like on a woman half the size of me?  It’s not even sselling me a dream, it’s selling me a fiction.

So used am I to reading up on what looks good on curvy women, I’m never going to buy drainpipe trousers which squeeze the fat or, equally, tent tops which look like they are hiding more fat than may actually be there.   I know my own body well enough to know which style of trousers would cause camel toe, that any dress or top that has a fitted section over my bust will be enormous around my body if I buy it to fit on top.

That’s why I shop for dresses and tops at Pepperberry, despite my recent concerns – and for trousers, well, that takes a it more effort.  I have been known to buy them in Evans.
Take jeans, for example.  Even Evans isn’t too much help here because generally, if I get ones that fit at the hip, they hang off my waist.

I guess I have the American obesity epidemic and population size to thank that AG jeans and DKNY have a curvier fit so I can buy jeans there.  But we don’t go even every other year.  I’m intrigued by Little in the middle and PZI jeans too –  jeans designed to recognise that many of us have smaller waists but bigger hips and bums.  Great that they are available online to the UK, but there’s probably import tax to pay and what if they don’t fit?

In fact, the more divorced from reality the fashion industry makes its images, the less I feel like it is trying to talk to me.  I don’t feel like dieting, or sticking my fingers down my throat, I just feel meh.  If they want my disposable income, they should realise I have it and selling me something that won’t make me look or feel good is a bit pointless. And telling the potential customer that they’re wrong is doubly bad business.

And yet so many women fall for it.
I know I’m not perfect.  I’m not happy with myself either.  I look in the mirror and see a woman that’s fatter than I convince myself that I am, and that’s a sort of body dysmorphia.
We have anorexia, increased plastic surgery, teen self-harm on one hand, and junk food, comfort shorts, and super-sized ambulances to carry the cardiac arrest sufferers literally eating themselves to death on the other.
And if that weren’t bad enough, as Natasha Walter put it in “Living Dolls”, there’s a whole computer savvy generation coming for whom their point of reference for what is normal is pornography.  Fake boobs on scrawny body, talon nails and iron blond tresses.

Airbrushing?  Sometimes it’d be good to think we could just airbrush ourselves,  but… it’s not worth it.  It’s just selling stuff. Until we learn to accept ourselves, no matter what our flaws are,  we’re vulnerable.

So with 20 million accounts in 24 days, uptake of Google+ has been rapid to say the least.  You can see why the project has been created – it’s a bit Facebook style social network – including the +1 button which is a bit like “like“, a bit Flickr photo album, a bit Skype internet video call and a lot more bespoke (different people can see different things).
As Google is a cool brand, and generally a trusted brand, loads of people have apparently been less Luddite than me and jumped into the pool – but it seems I’m not the only one standing by the shallow end saying “yes, but is it safe?”

Online, I’m @rose22joh on Twitter and here on my blog.  It’s a pseudonym I’m happy with – if people want to call me Rose when commenting on posts or tweets, that’s fine by me.

On Facebook, I have to use my real name as a matter of user policy. It was one of the reasons it took me a long time to join – but I decided it was ok.
The connections I have on Facebook are people I know or have known personally, I don’t just randomly befriend people, or accept people I don’t really know.
I also maximise my use of privacy options.  I don’t need to be rose22joh on Facebook – if people want to find me there it’s because they’ve become friends IRL (in real life, not in Ireland!) so they know my name.
If it’s someone from my past, if they really want to they’ll find me by looking at mutual friends’ “friend” lists and guess.  I don’t HAVE to accept their request.  Not everyone’s accepted mine either (good for the soul to keep the ego in check).

Even my social media-phobic husband uses LinkedIn. “Everyone” does – at least everyone whose business depends on building and maintaining personal relationships.   It hosts bits of my CV – on the other hand simply Googling my name brings up bits of that, along with stuff that isn’t about me but about people that share my name.  That must be a complete pain for all those Sue Taylors, John Smiths and Muhammed Hussains.  At least by using LinkedIn I can be clear what is actually me!

The BBC article on this issue of identity talked about use of real names:
- preventing SpamBots (I use WordPress’s excellent companion tools on the nasty little critters which seem determined to try to sell me naked women and pharmaceuticals – those xxxriwphgergn@iutgboe.com addresses are a real giveaway);
- preventing Trolls (why do people waste their time that way, choosing to spread that patina of nastiness across the surface of the internet);
- benefiting advertisers (well, yes, obviously.  This is “no free lunch” territory – see below);
- making life difficult for those under oppressive political regimes (and this will surely be the tipping point – the internet represents a form of freedom in Iran, China etc. – but while the Tienanmen Square example doesn’t bode well…)

Essentially, using real names is a sort of nudge theory – being transparent and therefore known, you should behave better online.
But it is more than just that.  If you look at eurobloggers that blog in their real names (yes, I’m thinking about you Jon Worth and Joe Litobarski) - identity online can be part of building your personal brand and in the twenty first century. Generation Y gets that – and is, it seems, much more open with personal information than their elders.

But equally you can build a reputation on a pseudonym – now defunct blogger “Julien Frisch” preserved his anonymity until the end.
But blogger “Guido Fawkes” is now often in the mainstream media as Paul Staines.  That is probably in part because his role has become increasingly that of journalist rather than merely a blogger or “citizen journalist”.

One of the joys of the internet is the freedom to develop a whole new you: in fact that seems to be the major appeal of Second Life.  It enables people to be taller, thinner, prettier, an dwarf, a knight, a princess, a musician showcasing their soul, a DJ, a writer, someone with a voice.  For some people that becomes the real them – and so be it .  This is a world my great grandparents could not even have imagined.  There needs to be room for anonymity on the internet, but the internet is a big place.

Most users realise that they’re not getting something for nothing – the targeted advertising via Facebook and Google shows that clearly.  Most of us regard it as a price worth paying for the convenience of being where all our friends are online.

But there’s a responsibility in having access to so much personal information, and every development – making mobile numbers accessible on Facebook, handing over Twitter users identities to super-injunction owners – makes people reappraise just what information they put out there.

There needs to be room for anonymity on the internet, but the internet is a big place…

Bon nuit

Rose22joh