BBC keen to push the socialist wing of the Anglican Church here with NO counter voice being given. Any chance to portray the Coalition as being unreasonable is given the full treatment with any idea of balance thrown out the window.
CLERICAL FOLLY
Bookmark the permalink.
A true little scenario.
Unwaged parents have third child. Wife adsvised to have no more due to problems with birth of number three.
Not too long after out pops number four and move to larger house ensues. Still happily unwaged.
Mother of wife works at DWP and estimates that would need a wage of £35000 a year to equate to benefits.
Time to taper benefits per child steeply or say no cash benefits for a third child claimed for with a birth date after 9 months and a day from the announcement.
The clerics are right it is not the children’s fault, but why should the state subsidise more than two?
I believe such a benefits change would also quickly reduce the number of children “born into poverty”
The clerics are right it is not the children’s fault, but why should the state subsidise more than two?
Why should the state subsidise any?
Yes but where would the Labour party get its next generation of core voters from?
Pakistan.
The bishops, the Children’s Society, some London Councils, Ed Balls (all the critics), all given their say in that article before the spokesman for the DWP finally gives the other side of the argument – in the last three (out of 21) paragraphs. That can safely be called a biased article.
‘Sunday’ with William Crawley gave over the last eight minutes of the show to an interview with one of the bishops, John Packer, Bishop of Ripon and Leeds. There were no counter voices, which is typical of ‘Sunday’.
Packer is a very political bishop & the BBC often gives him a platform. He intervened in the 2005 election to “urge parties to avoid stoking fears about asylum seekers during the campaign”, and the BBC published a report about that. His intervention during the 2010 election (calling for cuts to fall on the wealthy, the safeguarding of foreign aid and a commitment to green policies) also got a report to itself.
Bishop Packer’s line with William Crawley today amounted to “won’t somebody pleeease think of the children!”
Imagine all the people, living in harm-money….
Or the anthem of the Occupiers, Give Fleas a Chance.
As I sit here in the Maternity Unit playing with my Lap-top thing to pass the time : I’ve got to say that’s the best thing I’ve read so far.
Oh excuse me ! The doctor wants a word with me.
Well I never, it’s sextuplets.
I’ll have to have a word with that chap who doesn’t believe in God – what’s his name ?
Oh yes, the Archbishop of York.
He may well be able to sell one of them off and allow me to enjoy my full benefit entitlement and spend it on what’s important :
Carlsberg Special Brew.
God Bless and God Bless the BBC.
As I’ve commented before, the CoE is an institution which has almost completely hollowed out and, like an enormous diseased oak tree with completely rotted insides is tottering to its death. The BBC has little time for it unless the upper reaches of the hierarchy are mumbling the pieties of socialism and anti-capitalism (and, of course, warmism).
It doesn’t really matter because, in the real world, nobody pays any attention to the CoE, not even on religious matters where its authority has crumbled in its inchoate chase down-market for diversity and ecumenism.
The rot set in when it stopped believing in God. Still runs some good schools.
Off topic, but am I alone in seeing the irony in the Archbish of Canterbury trotting off to Zimbabwe to complain about Mugabe confiscating the cathedrals and appointing his own bishops?
The CofE is a useful tool for the cause. Behold one inherent danger of an established State Church.
Let this be a wwrning to those who support a state religion: religion doesn’t influence the stete. The state eats the religion.
This is my Thought For the Day..unless Sacks, Blue or Atkins are on, I will reflect on no other!
I agree. Constantite made Christianity compulsory whilst still a pagan, and made sure the church’s head honcho lived round the corner so he could keep an eye on him. And Blair appointed Williams to Lambeth Palace……
Got wind of this on the 8am news bulletin…nothing about Gadhaffis boy and slumberparties with Mandy at the LSE only a few years back though.
The Sunday Service that followed was absolutely Godawful…praising the St Pauls lot, celebrating diversity and hey…God is a gas is he not? Trendy Wendys under the Reverend Blue Jeans dire shepherding.
Got to be CofE…even Danny Baker quotes a few lines of scripture on occassion. This lot today on the Sunday Service rather thought the Tower of Babel as being infrastructural investment, creating lots of jobs for the Jews…and the Pyramids likewise I`m sure.
Still, 43 languages in your primary schools…our children ARE in Need, but instead they get Pudsey making an arse of himself in 43 languages…and cheridee …or cough up or the bear gets it being all that anyone will ever need to know in them
I turned on Radio 4 this morning only to catch the opening of a service from a CofE church in North London. It started with a hymn in a language I couldn’t recognise or understand. Today is the feast of Christ the King but for some reason, this took precedence over the hymn Christ is the King. I then listened to the vicar’s intro for a few minutes – posted below – in which the earnest reverend informed us that the local school had 46 languages (as if it is something to boast about). However, we also discovered that the school doesn’t have pupils. It has learners. And the suburbs used to be monochromely white! 😀 . I’m afraid I could not endure any more of this feast of cliche and former Labour government slogans so I switched off there.
Sunday Worship; Faith in the Suburbs, from John Keble Church, Mill Hill
Choir: Moto umewaka leo, God’s fire is burning in my soul (Lambetj Praise)
Welcome, Canon Chris Chivers, Vicar:God’s fire is burning in my soul. That song from East Africa introduces our
worship this morning. You might think it’s an unexpected place to start. But
then again suburbia these days never quite conforms to the stereotypes
people hold.
North London to most perhaps conjures up an image of classic middle-England: shears clipping privet and the twitching of net curtains, shears. Like all stereotypes there’s some truth in it – at least historically. Certainly the dormitory character of the communities to whom we relate here at John Keble Church remains – and the sight of the parish emptying, commuters piling into the local tubes and overland stations each weekday morning, is as powerful as their massed return and dispersal into thousands of flats and houses at night. But whereas when the church was consecrated exactly seventy-five years ago it served a monochromely white, commuter suburb, now the diversity is amazing. At Deansbrook, the primary school across the road, forty-seven first languages are spoken by parents and learners. Europe’s largest synagogue is close by. The newcomers are most often African Pentecostals or Muslims. But these days we’ve pockets of some of the severest urban deprivation in London too. Here at the church we have worshippers drawn from across Africa, Asia and Europe.
The Reverend Steven Young continues:
Today, on the feast of Christ the King it’s this global nature of his rule and
reach that we acknowledge and he stories of our suburb’s citizen’s reveal this. …
And not to be outdone in the Labour slogans department, the Beeboid Corporation added its own synopsis:
… Faith in the suburbs: worship from John Keble Church, Mill Hill, north London, celebrating the diversity and vibrancy of suburban faith, the back-bone of the church in Britain. …
Those made of sterner stuff than I can listen to the whole 40 minutes here:
Listen now
Millie
I quite liked the intro – new hymn, didn’t know what language.
But them the vicar went into his spiel. I turned off – why did he want to celebrate 40 different langiages in a local school ?
I think it should be called the “Church of Not-England”
I well remember my parents gathering stamps for the Mill Hill Fathers and their missions.
To think that this church is in the same region?
Let`s hope a few decent Christians from Egypt, Syria will get out of those coming hell holes fast and return the favour, and starting with this worthless church-Feast of Christ the Five a day Co-ordinator, replacing his old gospel with the fresh one of the Reverend Dawn French anyone?
I for one will marry all the female ones fro ten minutes if that helps…and concoct civil partnerships for the others should I have to!
Maybe we could get Lambeth Palace or St pauls to warehouse them all…God knows they`re not being used by Christains at the momemt are they?
The Church of England thought that if it no longer believed in such things as the virgin birth, the resurection or the creation, that they would somehow attract more people to the pews. What they forgot was that by doing this they actually ripped the heart out of the whole meaning of Christianity – “Faith”.
The CofE no longer cares for spirituality it is just a left wing pressure group.
“Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn’t argue with that; I’m right and I will be proved right. We’re more popular than Jesus now; I don’t know which will go first – rock and roll or Christianity.”
John Lennon
If immigration , diversity or the older buzzword multiculterism is so beneficial, why dont these religous leaders and the BBC encourage immigration into Africa ?
I have booked a holiday to Egypt in March, cheap flights to Luxor and back from Amman in Jordan (to see Petra). Otherwise – basically backpaking as usual.
Hopefully it will be calm in Egypt. But I have already decided to give Cairo just one day. Luxor to Cairo on the overnight train that stops near the Pyramids, duck across to the Egyptian Museum. Then overnight bus to Sinai/Red Sea – I really don’t want to spend any more time than I have to in Cairo, don’t want the begging and the harassing and the rip-offs.
As I have been reading about Cairo, I have learned that the Coptic Christians are 10% of the population. Egypt itself was “Christian” for several hundred years. So I think I would like to visit the Coptic quarter.
I hope I get to see it, there is much to see there. But it sounds like going into the East End of London, solo, as an old geezer – only more so.
Maybe I could get the BBC to sponsor me – then I’d be safe