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Why did the rioters riot?

This was a question that was asked a few times at Greenbelt this year and one speaker, Richard Wilkinson had the right answer.

The questions came up  today again with the news that the youngest rioter to face prosecution was given a sentence today having stolen a £50 bin. Of course he shouldn't have done that. No one condones that but to ask why it was done offers a quite simple answer: he thought he could get away with it.

This doesn't fit in with the austerity measures, the government, the recession, the debt crisis or even dysfunctional families. Nor does it fit with David Cameron's wrath on rioters who must face the full force of the law and then some. The 11 year old did it, as all the rioters did, because he thought he could get away with it.

Which is exactly the same reason the MPs (including th MP with all that wrath) took every expense they could and pushed the rules on that, and it is exactly why the bankers gambled on all those billions of pounds (those same bankers who today are trying to scare us because they will take the hit with new legislation). They did it because they thought they could get away with it. Exactly the same. Exactly.

Only those with power and money did get away with it with jobs in tact and a few billion pounds worth of bonus to boot. Why was the full wrath of the law not brought on MPs and bankers? Where is the gospel justice?

Why should the devil have all the good camera shots?

With the riots down south not as bad last night as it has been over the weekend there has been a clear reaction to it all: twitters coming together to clear up the mess. Something like 90,000 have been involved in that.

To me that's how to defeat violence. It may not stop it. That's a different thing. But to defeat something you show that it has no life by bombarding it with the opposite reaction saying: "This doesn't have a place, nor does it have momentum, or long life."

You do something that has more power to change things, something that is more long-lasting, that has more integrity, something more decisive and counter-cultural. I want the cameras to show just as much clean-up as looters because that's the real news: people making choices against what hurts and that more people want that by a long shot than the minority who would do down their own community and their own people and their own neighbours, but it doesn't seem as photogenic. Why should the devil have all the good camera shots?

 

Feed the hungry

Apple now have more cash than the US Government.
Phone hacking is exploding all over the place and uncovering what we all presumed was just a way of life in newspapers.
Press Complaints Commission head resigns which does suggest that the PCC wasn't very good at doing it's job. We knew that.

We've not very good at organising this society of ours.
And Jesus aid: Feed the hungry, love your neighbour, do to others as you'd do to yourself.

The best bit is when Jesus get's doing to doing kingdom stuff he never mentions making disciples of the church or get people to think in the same way as you. He just says: do stuff that loves people into life.

So when 5000+ people are hungry, feed them. That's about all you need to do. The kingdom happens. It's honest, loving, graceful, generous and doesn't need newspaper investigations, PCC, massive debt crises, or anything that's tripping up our world at the moment. 

How simple does it need to be?

 

 

Dial S for Scandal

All the phone hacking scandal in the UK comes as a bit of a surprise. Not the fact that it has been going on but how people are now so scandalized by it all. I just presumed it was a given that phones were hacked and I presumed it was a given that the press complaints authority was less than useless mainly because they policed themselves. Duh!

But a line was certainly crossed and then every politician was scandalized and for once in the history of self-righteousness, there was consensus politics in parliament. When you've got newspapers that are just titillation and scandal, why do thinking people, intelligent people, buy them?!?! What's going on? And worse, why do people believe what they say?

Clearly we are such big lovers of gossip but none of us want to be caught gossiping. But whenever we buy these kinds of paper, then that is just what we've been caught doing. And the Good Book has a few comments to make about that... This kind of lifestyle and the kind of society it builds is as far from the kingdom as... well as Rupert Murdoch owning BSkyB (at the moment).

Nothing about us... without us...

...is for us.

I was at the closing of the Poverty Truth Commission in Glasgow today. It was one of those days that change you and how you see things, when you see so much good going on and you realised how much good there was still to do. And all the good is done despite what is taken away from people. I came away realising (again) poverty is so nothing like what we imagine. It is never a single issue, and always more complicated and chaotic than you can imagine. And it is never what we can do for people but what we can do with people.

It is so true that there hasn't been a programme yet invented or will be invented that will solve issues like this. It is always the relationships built. The commission was not made up of the 'technical' experts with theory but the experts who lived in poverty with others willing to hear and be changed and create positive relationships. Clearly these experts were way ahead of any programme coordinator.

David Lunan who was a commissioner said:

"Of course the problem is not poverty, it's wealth. As long as we live in, and even applaud, a culture in which money is the bottom line, the top line and the front line, there will always be people having to live below the poverty line. The Poverty Truth Commission is teaching us a new way to listen, and relate to one another, and make critical decisions; and its legacy will change how we think"

I just want to know what some of our major politicians weren't asked to sit for the two hours and listen to real poeple tell real stories. Policies would be very different if they did that every so often.

Go to the website. You'll be changed. This has been such an important thing to have  done. I hope others will do it. You can.

A little to the left

Who cares about the wonder of the world after Japan's earthquake? The images of the tsunami devastation leaves you speechless.

But also the sheer size of what happened also leaves you with few words to say. Japan moved 4 metres to the west, that's 13 feet.

Sat Nav is now going to have to be recalculated because of that.

The earth was shifted on it's axis by about 13 cm (more than 6 inches) and the ocean depth changed by about 1 metre (3 feet).

I've been reading a book about finding places of depth/God/meaning in the world and it comments that we are so busy thinking about where we've come from and also where we are going we have no time to think about where we actually are now. It takes a slower pace to find where we are.

The movement of Japan just makes you pause a bit in our fast living to reflect a moment on the greater powers and bigger picture: to notice those things bigger than ourselves. The size of the shift of the world's plates was enormous but still slow compared to us. Lent: slow down to see what is really big and happening around us, for us, because of us.

...and the woes

Of course, in good traditional biblical style, if you bless, you need the woes too. Who would you add?

Woe to you bankers...

Woe to you chancellors...

Woe to you abusers...

Woe to you oscar nominees...

Woe to you hackers...

Woe to you sexist sport's reporters...

At last, some sense

I got a reality check the other day when the bankers bonuses came up again and were described as the wages of over 300,000 nurses.

I'll just say that again. This years bonuses in the UK could fund over 300,000 nurses.

You you wish to hear that one more time...?

And at last the boss of RBS (Royal Bank of Scotland) has said a large number of people in the banks are paid more than they are worth. Some sense at last as long as he now does something about it which will be the difference between never trusting bankers again and putting all out money under the bed.

BBC2 tonight at 9pm is broadcasting a programme with some interesting interviews from bankers and bosses that conclude that the banks aren't too big to fail as they were at the banking crises but are now too big to save.

In term of justice and gospel values and the way of living rightly in the world, it strikes me this is a crux question becasue when it comes to money and savings and pensions etc we tend to bend the rules becasue 'it's too big to come under the same rules as loving neighbour.'

And the good news...

Never going to watch the news again. Tonight's headlines:

• Coldest winter for 100 years (that's since records began)
• Civil War about to break out in Ivory Coast
• Food prices set to rise higher than ever leading to riots
• Last year globally it was the 2nd warmest year ever
• Fuel prices going up and up
• Economies are so fragile all the price rises from fuel to cotton to grain that we won't be able to spend our way out.

And Jesus said...

Well actually, Jesus said quite a lot about rebalancing and hurt and redistribution. If heaven isn't maiking it happen then it happens the way the prophets said it would: if you keep going the way are then just watch the consequences.

I'm going back to being a conservative evangelical fundamental literalist (or even just one of these). So much easier to just wash your hands of everything of this world and not care but focus instead on the next.

Pity Jesus didn't do that. It would be so much easier if he did. Rather he got involved with life as it was for folk as they were. And that's the good news headlines.

 

VAT (Value Added Theology)

Blimey: after fuel duty increase on Jan 1st and the addition of the VAT rise today petrol is now £1.24 a litre here. That's a lot. It perhaps tells us more about ourselves, lifestyle than anything else: priorities, what we see as valuable, how we see as the basic needs of our lives.

I was given a couple of book recommendations today. One was the top selling Kindle/Amazon science book (I'm not going to advertise it) which is a critique (polite way of saying it) against the ideas of global warming and CO2. I haven't read it, but will.

I'm not one who has turned green overnight and jumped on a band wagon but I do believe petrol prices going up this high and the obvious (possibly natural, possibly human made) climate change that is happening (everyone knows it is continually happening and we needed major climate change a few million years ago for our species to evolve) does call us surely to take stock, count up the cost of our living and  choose to live more lightly.

That's not based on the arguments for and against. It's based on our humanity. It's based on theology: of taking what we need to have enough to bless others which is the beatitudes and recognising that's what we need for life: enough that we can bless others.