Category Archives: anti banking

GOD AND MAMMON

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Ah. Giles Fraser. A BBC favourite, on the speed-dial for comment, with a guaranteed line of thinking that flows effortlessly into the BBC group-think. B-BBC’s Alan picks up on this here…

“Another little BBC programme just adding to the undercurrent of anti-capitalism, anti-banker rhetoric and whispers that are the cause celebre uniting the unthinking chattering classes and the great unwashed of the Socialist Workers Party and Occupy.

‘Ceremony and Society, Rev. Giles Fraser, the former Canon Chancellor of St Paul’s Cathedral, and David Rennie, Political Editor of The Economist, discuss the past and present importance of St Paul’s.’
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01f5hnx

The BBC likes to keep the anti-capitalist controversy on a rolling boil never allowing the subject to drop.

The programme is about St Paul’s Cathedral…but in reality it is a platform to allow Giles Fraser to declaim about ‘greed’ and Mammon and the City.

It is in itself a very interesting programme, just 14 minutes long. Rennie is from the left leaning Economist magazine but he speaks well and intelligently in an engaging manner. Fraser comes across as immature and student like….looking out over the city he proclaims ‘ Mammon hey!’.

He doesn’t do the cause of religion any service, in fact the opposite.

He explains why the British don’t like religion:

‘What St Paul’s stands for began after the English Civil war when the Church of England reinvented itself as a place of national togetherness. It shapes the national character…we don’t like ‘isms’, we don’t like any sort of ideology, we don’t do theology. We sit and pray together in a shared common space and that is what binds us together.
They don’t want to talk about theology…because that’s what killed people.’

So religion, at least deeply held views, kills?

Fraser goes on to say, disregarding his previous conclusion, that what we need is a more radical Church, one that goes back to its tenets and beliefs and makes demands of people….it shouldn’t just be a spiritual arm of the National Trust.

The Church should not be just a national place of coming together…a place of unity.
Christianity should be an act of rebellion creating a new narrative.

So back to the Bible then and its commands?

If he was a Muslim the BBC and the Government would be calling Fraser a radical or an extremist…someone ‘perverting’ the meaning of the Bible who doesn’t represent the true Christian community.

I’m not sure how a fundamentalist of any religion who wants to invoke the fundamentals of his religion can be called an extremist…unless the teachings of his religion are in themselves ‘extremist’.

Fraser of course doesn’t disappoint the BBC…he bashes the Bankers and capitalism demanding an ethical capitalism and the end to Individualism….Individualism which is ‘responsible for the way that morality has fallen apart in this country’.

Isn’t ‘Individualism’ meant to have been one of the great successes of Christianity? In fact it is Socialism that promotes individualism….with its take over of family and community responsibilities for caring for those around us.

Fraser says ‘Occupy’ has tapped into something wrong with our society…that banking and capitalism don’t work for the common good. Extreme wealth produces ‘moral hazard’…having a lot of money if bad for your soul…money is the Bible’s number one concern apparently.

I wonder where all the money comes from for the welfare fund and NHS…and all those coins that fill up the collecting plates in the churches or the success of the stock portfolios held by the Church…or paying the BBC license fee that pays his wage?

Where did the £147 million come from to build St Paul’s…or indeed the donations it seeks…‘Every gift from £10 to £1million helps to ensure that St Paul’s can continue to offer moments of peace, reflection, and prayer to all those who seek it, for generations to come.’

It seems God does not provide but the upkeep is from fleecing tourists for a £14.50 entrance fee.

I’m sure it’s all from ethically based Capitalists ….let’s hope they’re not just trying to buy their way into Heaven as the Tory Party ‘kitchen suppers’ are now out of bounds.

HANG THE BANKERS?

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The BBC narrative is clear. Bankers were solely responsible for the global financial crisis. Go a little deeper and the narrative refines itself even more alarmingly; Capitalism was solely responsible for the global financial crisis. If only the State could control things. Next, seize on every opportunity to nail this in the public psyche. Take this current onslaught against RBS Chairman Stephen Hester. His crime has been to abide by his contract – a contract put in place under the gaze of a Labour Government. Now, the BBC allows Labour spokesman Chuka Umunna to rage against the sheer iniquity of what HIS party facilitated in the first place! Mike Cunningham, one of my fellow writers over on A Tangled Web, tackles the issue here.

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THE STAR CHAMBER

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It’s a theme that the BBC has been hammering all year in as many programmes as possible; our financial woes have been created by the bad and evil and greedy Bankers. There was a remarkably one-sided discussion on the BBC this morning here, nice prime time slot and full of the usual tripe and hype about the alleged evils of the financial class. Funny how BBC experts all manage to agree on the substantive issue being promoted by the BBC, isn’t it? But the BBC is smart and in order to cover any allegations of bias they ran an item here suggesting that “bankers bonuses” were NOT the cause of the global recession. At 6.50am. You have to get up early to hear disssenting voices on the BBC!

From my own perspective, the bit of the BBC coverage that most alarms is the elephant in the financial room – namely the role of POLITICIANS in creating the circumstances that encouraged poor decisions by bankers. Gordon Brown’s role has been entirely sanitised by the BBC and it one could be forgiven for thinking that there was absolutely no political involvement when nothing could be further from the truth. The Dear Leader has been removed from the picture and all opprobrium is now heaped on the Banks.

The BBC also likes to retrospectively claim that it was essential to save the Banks but in fact some people (Including me!) argued then, and now, that no institution is so big that it cannot be allowed to fail. Banks that made poor decisions do not deserve to survive – but it was Labour that moved to prop up these failed entities with our cash and now the BBC whinges about how awful it is whilst insisting it was vital. Talk about conflicted!

I was invited to take part in a BBC discussion a few weeks ago on the issue of bankers. I explained my view – namely that Banks are only part of the problem, politicians have been just as bad if not worse, and that a bad bank should be allowed to fail. The producer decided not to proceed with me, you can figure why.

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