Month: December 2025

A peaceful Christmas to all

The full stomach aching with turkey, stuffing, pigs-in-blankets and well-roasted sprouts; good cheer and bad cracker-jokes. The warm, comfort of sinking into a chair and into yourself – this is peace and joy, albeit brief an confected, but peace and joy for the moment.

Do you ever think of others, in unhappier lands? The joy of Christmas is  hard to find where war or disorder are running over your home. Peace is an illusion.  (“the nature of War, consisteth not in actuall fighting; but in the known disposition thereto, during all the time there is no assurance to the contrary.“) We are happy here in Britain, which is rare in this world.

The song sung two decades ago to raise money for the Communist-induced famine in Ethiopia begged us to ‘Pray for the other ones’ and it is a good thing. It does not call upon us to feel guilty as our joy when others have none, though we may have taken it that way. To pray for them – we should indeed.

To feel guilty though – there is no sense. You, settling full into your sofa, are not causing any suffering to others. Indeed, your day’s excess may have helped them – guzzling on chocolate indirectly helps  the growers in West Africa (the only person it hurts is yourself.) The ‘consumerism’ and ‘conspicuous consumption’ lamented from many a pulpit encourage international trade and prosperity. We can deplore the separation of the individual from God and reflecting his love for our neighbours, and consumption can have that effect, but the consumption itself is a positive thing for the financial health of others.

The odd thing about a secularised Christmas is that it has gathered around it still a mythology of purpose drawn from Christian faith – peace and goodwill to all men are Christian ideas, and somehow the custom of secular celebration has absorbed these into its matrix. If a giant turkey, a raft of bad jokes and a silly film on the telly reconnect even the most heathenish to their neighbour and unite society, then it has done well.

I do weep for those entering a harsh Russian / Ukrainian winter without sufficient warmth or shelter, or who have no home in a war-shattered city by the Dnieper or the Nile or the Levantine coast, and for the forgotten millions in the bloody turmoil of the anarchic Congo or Sudan, and those countless elsewhere who have not been able to grasp such prosperity as to let them eat. If I can in my little way work to make the world a better place where some sustainable peace comes then I will. Maybe the blessed rest from toil over Christmas will light an idea or two, or maybe not. One thing is that I will not regret my Christmas nor the peace and joy it brings, and neither should anyone.

See also

Bishops in jealous rage

As usual, the bishops of the Church of England are wrong. The Church Times headline, ‘Bishops rebuke Tommy Robinson’, suggests they are jealous, not zealous. Mark records:

John answered him, saying, Master, we saw one casting out devils in thy name, and he followeth not us: and we forbad him, because he followeth not us. But Jesus said, Forbid him not: for there is no man which shall do a miracle in my name, that can lightly speak evil of me. For he that is not against us is on our part.

Bishops may giggle that the carol concert Mr Yaxley-Lennon organised last weekend was not the half-million who gathered for his Unite the Kingdom rally, and only attracted a thousand people. A thousand? A vicar would weep with joy to have half that number in church praising God.

It as as expected. The observation all those years ago in Yes Prime Minister stil holds: “Nowadays, politicians want to talk about moral issues, and bishops want to talk about politics”.  They are both inadequate to the task, for the most part.

I was not at the carol concert. I read the evangelists’ accounts though: of worship, joy, of broken young men lead towards healing – all things the Church of England has forgotten about. God be praised for the work of his inspired servants.

I have read elsewhere of young men of rough voice made to feel unwelcome in church. It has echoes of past times – in the 18th century the Church of England became exclusively a place for the upper and middle classes, prompting the Methodists and Congregationalists to serve the labouring classes, and so it seems today. Come to think of it, going around several of our local congregations, I have barely seen anyone not in the middle-class bubble: the Church should be praising those who preach Christ to those we have not been welcoming. Instead, it is “rebuke”.

The bishops of the Church of England are internally institutionalised – stuck in an echo-chamber of committees and functions. If they look up from the agenda, set down the coffee and open their eyes, they might see an uninvited guest in the room, sitting unacknowledged in the corner weeping, his hands and side pierced and freshly bleeding.

The Church of Scotland when institutionalised to death in the reigns of King Charles I and II set out to attack dissenters who wanted to worship. Prayer meetings had to be held on lonely hillsides, weapons concealed for defence: it was called The Killing Time; and only ended when those dissenters took over the Kirk in Good King William’s time – and that began the Kirk’s most successful, most inspired period.

Why then did the grand men of the Established Church reject this initiative to reach out to lost men? Because they believe it is not sincere perhaps. Are they sincere? Because they disagree with the politics of the man who started it, or his former politics?

The clergy are happy to joint services with the Papists – they who worship Mary, giving her divine honours, and are devoted to idols – and that is all right apparently. Some hold services with Mohammedans who deny Christ completely and war against Christianity. This is thought a minor peccadillo. However a political difference concerning immigration policy – that is the breach for them. The Church must welcome the stranger, they say. Aye, but they actually reject working-class men.

Bishops have thrown out huge amounts of the Gospel truth in pursuit of a baseless secular philosophy, but they now take a single line about welcoming strangers and hold it fiercely as a way to reject an expression of the Gospel. In every pronouncement I see a gnat strained out and herds of camels swallowed with glee.

So ‘Bishops rebuke Tommy Robinson’. Well, I rebuke the bishops.

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Books

A plague upon your inquiry

A pantomime of handwringing, echoing our pantomime of handwashing. The COVID inquiry drives on to ill-thought destinations. They will find facts, which is a worthy thing. The fault comes at the end, in conclusions and recommendations, and worse still, in politicians as they have inappropriate reactions to those recommendations.

The terms of the Covid Inquiry are written so that they appear to be drawn widely, but in fact the terms are constrained narrowly: “The Inquiry will examine, consider and report on preparations and the response to the pandemic.” It is looking at what the Government and the devolved administrations did or did not do. The Inquiry may not examine what the lockdown and the commercial shutdown did to us all. The bankruptcies, the mental health problems, the malicious killing of enterprises and the sapping, morbid fear caused to the weaker members of the public – all this is incidental to an inquiry examining minutes and ministers.

Perhaps the coronavirus epidemic could have been slowed if we had all had our front doors barred shut, as in the Great Plague?  Perhaps, but we would have starved to death and gone mad, as in the Great Plague. No matter – that is not the Inquiry’s remit.

I do remember every bit of the Covid scare. First there were reports of a plague sweeping the Orient. Will it come here; will it not? Then bodies started filling morgues in northern Italy – in those ski resorts which hire illegal labour from Hubei Province. It looked for a moment as if this was the new Black Death (also a gift from China to the world). Now we tend to think of Covid-19 as just another ‘flu, but back then, with the virulent strains in ascendency, it was a deadly disease. A reaction was expected, and the short, sharp lockdown we were promised seemed just the medicine; but instead it became a long, killing lockdown; a harm in itself.

I recall the Israeli Health Minister appearing on television, or on YouTube at least, urging the fit and healthy to carry on as before and just to “take care of grandma”, to avoid infecting the vulnerable and let the population reach herd immunity. He was sacked soon after that. He was right though. We nearly ran the same strategy in Britain, but doom-mongers and dodgy statistical projections commanded the imprisonment of the population.

Be in no doubt: Covid-19 is still amongst us and while to most, who have contracted it before or been vaccinated it has turned into a snuffle, for others it is still deadly. We are not locking down now, thank goodness. Let the bureaucrats loose though, and who knows what they would demand.

It is disturbing to see the process of government opened up to daylight. Much of it should be. The mystique is lost, to see how so much is entrusted to fallible men with little understanding – but that is the reality. Actually the disturbing aspect is that honest, if flawed, politicians and officials may have been discussing matters in confidence, which encourages frankness. To see all the laundry aired in public might will them less daring, less innovative in the future. That disease has made more things its casualties than we could have dreamed.

The inquiry will grind on. It will find fact, which is good. I cannot fault the members of the inquiry for that.  However there it should stop.

They will be good at ascertaining fact. They are not qualified to make recommendations for action. This is a complicated life, and a contortionism of an economy, which is why it works so well. Many people in their various fields of life can look at the facts displayed naked before them and reach conclusions based on their own experience, which no one else will have. The members of the inquiry have their own expertise, and no understanding of other fields impacted. They should take the last evidence, publish what they must; and then close the book and fall silent.

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Books

Rachel the Reiver

A lady should not put her hands in a man’s pockets. It rarely ends well.

Each shop that closes, each pub calling closing time, and that is fewer pennies coming into the Treasury and more going out to feed the swelling dole queue. You know it too, Rachel.

(Civil servants have reported a ghostly  figure of a lady passing through corridors and an unearthly weeping  sound chilling the bones – the haunting is easily explained by cross-referencing the Chancellor’s movements.)

We understand reivers in our family. An ancestor hanged many of them in the wild days on the lawless border (the one Swinney wants to bring back). Once you get to see inside the tax system, you can see there is little difference between taxmen and thieves: maybe that is why the police leave thieves alone these days, as it would otherwise be hypocritical to arrest tax-dodgers. We tolerate tax collectors until, well – Rachel, you have passed the limit.

Crime doesn’t pay, they say, Rachel: I don’t know about that, but tax doesn’t. The more you take, the less money come in. You promised the loonies in your party that you would soak the rich and they lapped it up – well who’s Laffer now?

You are will open-mouthed glee closing down shops and pubs and farms – punishing those who are not rich enough to stash their cash abroad.

Many friends are moving abroad, and suggested that I should do. I won’t: the people there are, well, foreign. The money is abroad already, and it does not need me to look after it. Where would I go? America has no culture to speak of, and their ideal of a historical monument is one built last year. France has Rachelesque tax rates and Italy much the same for those few who actually pay them. In the Gulf they treat women like cattle not goddesses. Switzerland is a delight, but I would want to know that the arrest warrant has been lifted, or wee, libertarian Liechtenstein. Sorry Rachel, you are stuck with me, and we are all stuck with you, for the next few months anyway.  At least you’re not Angela.

While you and Starmer the Farmer Harmer are there, you can but look at a deep, black hole widening beneath your feet and in your little metropolitan bubble you will never understand why.

Once our fellow countrymen in Ireland dreamed of finding gold by following the Little People to their homes – Rachel, you could listen to the wisdom taught by one of the Little People:

Coming from a financial background, I decided to spend some time analysing our nation’s fiscal history. I wanted to know, when it comes to our Government’s revenue, how much does in fact come in. I can tell the House that, since 1955, tax receipts, with limited variation and remarkable consistency, have averaged 36% to 38% of GDP. In spite of the vast differences between Labour and Conservative Members in our approach to setting tax rates, the average tax take has been remarkably similar under Governments of both parties. There appears to be a natural ceiling to what any Government can extract from the pockets of its hard-working taxpayers.

I don’t want to have to think about you. We are after all running into Christmas: a time of peace, goodwill, freezing grannies and bankruptcies, followed by the skiing season. If I cast you a glance, I hope it will be to see you saying goodbye.

See also

Books