UK Current Affairs

Married Couple Or Just “Profound Friends”?

Samuel HooperLeave a comment

I didn’t go to Mass last weekend because I knew that all of the Catholic churches in Britain were going to read to their congregations a pastoral letter from the Bishops, exhorting us to fight against the government’s plans to legalise gay marriage in the UK. I don’t have time for that nonsense, and I don’t much care if this puts me at odds with official church teaching, because in 100 years’ time the church will agree with me. People that accept gay marriage and contraception will be looked back upon as latter-day Copernicuses, and those who frown upon it will be looked upon much like the Antebellum South. That’s just how it is, huff and puff about traditional values all you like.

I’m used to seeing cringeworthingly anti-intellectual arguments against gay marriage from my church, but this latest one from the Most Reverend Vincent Nichols, Archbishop of Westminster, really takes the cake:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/9147559/Gay-couples-are-just-lifelong-friends-says-Catholic-leader.html

Gay couples are, apparently, just lifelong friends who somehow got confused or duped into incorporating a romantic element into said friendship. Says the Bishop:

“I would want to say to them that I understand their desires, that I understand their experience of love is vitally important in their lives, but I would want to say to them that they are called in my view, in the Church’s view, to a very profound friendship in life … I would want them to be respected, but I would want them to have a vision in themselves that what they are called to is not marriage but a very profound and lifelong friendship.”

Good, well that’s sorted then! No need to continue this argument about marriage equality because gay and lesbian people are just good pals who got a bit confused after a few drinks.

Sigh.

The Daily Telegraph has a poll on the subject, which, as is so often the case, misses the point entirely:

It is not for Daily Telegraph readers to decide whether gay marriage in churches should be allowed. That is a matter that does, and should always, remain with the various religions and denominations. No one is suggesting that Vincent Nichols be frog-marched to the altar of Westminster Cathedral and made to bestow the Catholic sacrament of marriage on a gay couple. As long as the official church position is that homosexual unions are a sin, clergymen should and must not be required to violate their churches teaching in such a way.

However, neither does any one religion, church or denomination have the right to impose their particular standards for marriage – or dietary customs or anything else – on the population as a whole. The Catholic church can object to gay marriage and ensure that no such unions are sanctioned within the church, but beyond that it has no authority, spiritual, moral or otherwise, to lecture other people. And any claims to the moral high ground are roundly rebuffed by their tolerance of civil heterosexual unions, and their deafening silence on the topic of extra-marital affairs and the astonishingly high divorce rate.

I’ll leave it to Nick Herbert, the UK government Home Office minister to have the last word in this case:

“I don’t seek to dictate to the Archbishop what happens inside his Church, what standards he sets and what he seeks to do. It would be quite wrong for me or the state to do so. But equally I wonder why he should seek to dictate the institution of civil marriage outside of his Church which is not a matter for the Church.”

Amen.

Labour Party Balderdash On Jobs

Samuel HooperLeave a comment

Ed Miliband Jobs Guarantee

 

Good news, everyone. Ed Miliband has solved the youth unemployment crisis in Britain. I guess he was lying in bed last night and the ghost of Michael Foot visited him and told him what had to be done to make everything better again.

Once he and his merry band of super-competent cabinet colleagues are sworn in as the next government in 2015, everything will be fine. Rainbows will appear in the sky and bunny rabbits will hop across the land. We know this because, at the one-day Labour Party conference in Coventry today, Mr. Miliband unveiled his “real jobs guarantee”.

The nasty Conservative Party, of course, likes young people to be unemployed. It gives us right-wingers a kick to pay taxes so that people can receive Jobseekers Allowance indefinitely.

His plan – to give every young person who has been unemployed for 12 months or more a guaranteed internship with a company, paid at the minimum wage – would be paid for by another £600m arbitrary raid on bankers bonuses.

Miliband says:

“To business we say, we’ll pay the wages, if you provide the training … To young people: if you’re out of work for a year we’ll guarantee you the opportunity to work.”

The BBC article goes on to mention:

“Those taking part will be expected to turn up for work, as well as looking for a full-time job and complete training, or face “tough consequences” – including possible benefit sanctions.”

What other tough consequence could there possibly be for failing to turn up for work or complete the other requirements for receiving government benefits, other than to lose those benefits? Being scolded by someone at the Job Centre? Being sent a letter of disapproval? Anyway.

I almost don’t feel as though it is worth delving into the flaws in this dystopian policy, especially given the fact that Labour’s deputy leader, Harriet Harman, was apparently clueless when it came to how much the scheme would cost, and whether this cost would be fully met by their proposed one-time (but seemingly all-the-time) tax on bankers’ bonuses.

Nonetheless, a couple of points of rebuttal, just to go through the motions:

1.Guess what, not all “bankers” had a hand in bringing about the global economic downturn. In fact, a lot of people in quite a lot of industries, and government positions also had a hand in it. So when will the Labour Party get over trying to use banks as a piggy bank to raid at will to fund their latest scheme? Gordon Brown was either Chancellor of the Exchequer or Prime Minister for the decade leading up to the collapse, so how about we also arbitrarily add a 10% tax surcharge on all of his future income to help him atone for the consequences of his calamitous incompetence?

The time to extract penance from the banks was at the time of the bailouts, but it didn’t happen. The Labour government missed the opportunity. Businesses cannot plan for the future and grow and prosper if they don’t know if they will be hit by a new punitive tax at any moment to fund the latest socialist pipe dream. Should the country have extracted more of a toll from the financial sector at the time? Almost certainly. But we didn’t, and now it is too late, and we have Gordon Brown and his heirs and successors in today’s Labour Party to thank for it.

2. This policy is so vague as to be worthless. Mr. Miliband says that “saying ‘no’ is not an option”, but doesn’t outline the consequences of saying no. After never once having gotten tough before in their history, does anyone really expect that this Labour policy, if implemented, would actually have any real teeth?

3. Youth unemployment currently stands at around 22.5%, or 1.042 million people. How, exactly, is a future Labour government going to coerce enough firms to take people on in order to reduce this to 0%? The answer is, of course, that they won’t. And if they even come close, it will only be because they bully firms into taking on people to do non-jobs that are of no training value, just to help the government meet its target.

4. Go away, and come back when you have a real jobs policy or any kind of plan that will actually solve the problem of youth unemployment. And in the meantime, perhaps stop demonising the current government’s “Welfare to Work” plans, which are much more cost-neutral and much more likely to succeed.

On Gay Marriage And Ice Cream

Samuel Hooper2 Comments

Ben and Jerrys - Ice Cream - Appley Ever After - Gay Marriage

 

The Daily Telegraph’s aptly-named politics and religion correspondent, Will Heaven, huffs and puffs in his latest column that his favourite brand of ice cream dared to promote a social cause – in this case, that of marriage equality for gay and lesbian people.

Mr. Heaven has had quite enough of his favourite consumer goods telling him what to do or think, thank you very much. And he isn’t at all homophobic, we can tell, because at one point he writes:

“Reading that PR announcement made me want to bulk-buy Häagen-Dazs. Why? Not because I’m a crazed homophobe, but because I’m so irritated by my food telling me what I should believe.”

So not a crazed homophobe, check.

Will Heaven goes on to write:

“This kind of crass marketing technique has “Democrat” written all over it. They’re shamelessly using a delicate social issue to make money. It’s a very American style of Left-wingery – and that’s why I don’t think it will work here.”

Maybe it will work and maybe it won’t. But what I find more interesting is the fact that Mr. Heaven is so outraged that a company should take a public moral stance on an issue (though I do doubt that he would have been moved to write this piece if Ben & Jerry’s had, say, opposed the new UK high-speed rail link that will cut through the countryside, or maybe supported the decriminalisation of fox hunting – and I don’t know his views on those topics, just call it an informed guess) and seek to influence public policy by doing so, but has devoted zero column inches to complaining about the many ways that corporations and other special interests continually seek to influence public policy behind our backs and without our knowledge.

Through lobbyists and charity golf games, and exclusive parties where the great and the good from industry mingle with politicians to make their case for new laws that favour their own companies and industries.

Mr. Heaven is free to boycott Ben & Jerry’s if he doesn’t like the fact that they have decided to publicly support marriage equality. But is he familiar with all of the causes that his bank, his supermarket, and even maybe his employer actively support (through lobbying or cash donations) without making it publicly known? Or is it fine if they sometimes act against his interests and those of the general public, as long as they don’t have the gall to announce it on their product packaging?

Slave Labour, Or Earning Your Keep?

Samuel Hooper6 Comments

Welfare To Work - Job Centre Plus

 

Much hand-wringing in The Guardian today, as they continue their ideological crusade against the government’s Welfare-to-Work programme. This time, the cause for outrage is the discovery that several large charities also signed up to participate in the scheme.

In high dudgeon, the article demands:

“The question is, what were large voluntary sector organisations doing embracing such arrangements when people think of them as supporting the disadvantaged? Who is speaking up for disempowered and marginalised people, including the young, disabled and unemployed?”

Obviously, offering work experience opportunities to predominantly young, less affluent people with little prior experience of the workplace doesn’t count as “supporting the disadvantaged”. No, they are clearly much better supported when they are kept on welfare forever, with little to no hope of finding work. Note to Peter Beresford – helping people doesn’t always just come in the form of writing them a benefit cheque – sometimes equally important are the non-financial benefits that can be offered – such as work experience.

He goes on to comment:

“But this isn’t the first time that we have seen big charities behaving more like corporates.”

And:

“…many charities have lost sight of their traditional value-base, and become indistinguishable from the state and private sectors. They have become permeated by their personnel, ways of working and ethics.”

Remember, everyone. Capitalism = bad. Corporations = bad. Emulating a corporation or profit-making organisation, in any way (including striving to be more efficient, lower overheads or improve productivity) = bad. In fact we would all do well to remember the true intended beneficiaries of some of these third sector organisations – the people who work for them, not the people they claim to help and represent.

Continuing the theme, Iain Duncan-Smith (the Work & Pensions Secretary) embarked on a war of words with Simon Cowell when he lamented that perhaps too many young people see the only path to wealth and prosperity as being through entering TV talent shows and trying to “make it big”.

This is one of those rather eye-rollingly typically conservative comments moaning about the youth of today, and it received a predictable backlash from Mr. Cowell, the end result of which appears to be that Simon Cowell may take on an apprentice or two, and Iain Duncan-Smith has won front-row seats to the taping of the next episode of X Factor.

But joking aside – and ignoring for one moment the terrible thought of Simon Cowell moulding a group of impressionable young people in his own image – what exactly is wrong with the idea of workfare, and why do so many on the British left get upset about it?

The left wants to preserve an umbrella of universal, unearned benefits, for everyone. They were furious when the Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition government moved to put a cap on child benefit payments for households earning over £40,000 per year, because they (probably quite correctly) realised that if the wealthier segments of the population whose taxes fund this benefit then don’t also receive a portion of it back themselves, they will be much less inclined to support it, possibly leading to a slipperly slope where eventually it is abolished.

And in much the same way, we hear cries of “slave labour!” when the government tries to introduce what is actually a very sensible scheme to offer unpaid work experience to the long-term unemployed. Of course, the work is “unpaid” only in the sense that the companies taking on and training these individuals do not give them a paycheque – they still continue to receive their Jobseekers Allowance benefits courtesy of the taxpayer.

There is nothing kind or compassionate about leaving people to fester on benefits without helping them back to work. This government programme is voluntary, and has loopholes large enough to drive a truck through to ensure that those who can’t be bothered to attend their placements, or those who commit all but the most egregious of offences while on their placement will remarkably still keep their benefits nonetheless.

But despite being emasculated by these concessions to Labour scare-mongering, the Welfare-to-Work scheme will still provide valuable work experience for young people who, in many cases, have not had the opportunity to experience the workplace, thus helping to prepare them for a lifetime of productive self-sufficiency. This programme is designed to help people help themselves, and therefore it deserves the support of the so-called “compassionate” Left.

A Disservice To Our Military

Samuel Hooper1 Comment

British Prime Minister David Cameron (C)

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The Daily Telegraph’s Con Coughlin writes today about the terrible incident in Afghanistan where a US soldier went on the rampage in an Afghan village, killing sixteen civilians, including a number of children.

I read the piece with interest, but the author makes a couple of throwaway comments that I found quite disrespectful. At one point Coughlin writes:

“We all know that soldiers, without the proper training and discipline, can easily degenerate into a murderous rabble that terrorises the local population. We have seen this happen hundreds of times in Africa where armies are no different from the militias who rape, murder and loot at will.”

This is unnecessarily harsh language to use with respect to the armed forces. Are there countless cases where this has happened in various conflicts around the world, yes. But to suggest that the only thing separating the British or American armies from being a ruthless militia with no morals is essentially a PowerPoint presentation on coping under stress is rather glib. He then follows this up with the following:

“After six British soldiers were murdered last week in southern Afghanistan when they were blown up by one of the Taliban’s roadside bombs, it is easy to imagine the murderous thoughts of revenge their fellow soldiers are today feeling towards the Taliban. But the reason they don’t pick up their guns and walk into the neighbouring village and massacre every Afghan they can find is the strict training they receive before they are deployed.”

Excuse me? I’m sure that the fellow soldiers mentioned here are full of many feelings of sadness and anger following the deaths of their colleagues, but I would submit to Con Coughlin that as well as the fact that they received strict training before they were deployed, another reason that they don’t “pick up their guns and walk into the neighbouring village and massacre every Afghan they can find” is because they are decent human beings with the intelligence to understand not only that the general civilian population was not responsible for the deaths of their comrades, but that to do so would make them no better than the forces that they are fighting. To say otherwise, and to suggest that there is little to separate the vast majority of soldiers who are decent and brave individuals from the deranged Staff Sergeant who perpetrated this massacre is not only wrong, but frankly offensive too.

I also don’t think I am imagining things when I detect undertones of class-based superiority from the author, that maybe he views the British soldiers as slightly dim and uneducated, less capable of reason than the average, middle-class Telegraph reader, and therefore in need of this strict training to ensure that their baser, more violent instincts do not come to the fore under stressful circumstances.

It amazes me to observe the difference in tone in terms of how the armed forces are talked about in Britain compared to the United States. Such an article would never have been written by a commentator in the United States, where even President Obama’s apology to the Afghan people for the accidental burning of the Koran by US forces was met with strong criticism, so above reproach is the US military to some on the right.

Honestly, I don’t believe that either country has it quite right. In the United States, I admire how serving soldiers and veterans are acknowledged and given respect in public places such as airports (where they are allowed to stay in USO club lounges while they wait to board their flights) and sports games, where they are frequently applauded before the game. However, sometimes I feel that the almost-worship of the armed forces goes too far, with all returning soldiers being labelled “heroes” whether or not they have seen active combat.

In Britain, on the other hand, I don’t think that we do nearly enough to acknowledge the contribution that our military servicemen and women make for our country, projecting our nation’s force to implement our foreign policy objectives. Hence we see serving soliders being refused permission to stay at an hotel because of an unbelievable “no military” policy, and London’s most sacred war memorial being desecrated by the spoiled, self-entitled son of a rock musician.

But while both of our countries may have some way to go in terms of striking the correct balance in terms of how we view, treat and discuss these topics, I would hope we can all agree that there is a lot more preventing the good men and women of our nations armed forces from becoming mass murdering militias than the training that they receive, important though that may be.