Press coverage of fundraising campaign

Our fundraising campaign for St Catherine's Church has been featured in the Billericay & Wickford Gazette and the Echo. See here for the Gazette coverage and here for the Echo's coverage. I also spoke on Sunday Breakfast with June Woolerton on BBC Radio Essex about the campaign last Sunday. To hear that interview, click here.

Urgent work is required to the Tower of St. Catherine’s Church Wickford as a result of ground movement caused by the long dry summer. This resulted in subsidence of the foundations in the North West corner of the church which caused a number of large cracks to appear in the walls and some stonework to fall. As a result, urgent safety and weather protection work costing £23,000 is required followed by the investigations needed to design a long-term solution to the problem.

A fundraising campaign to raise an initial £23,000 has been launched, but this is only the beginning of a much longer project to effectively underpin the church in order to prevent the regular recurrence of the issue. This first stage of the project will involve: removing or temporarily fixing loose stonework; undertaking temporary roof repairs and loose filling of walls for weather protection; removal of loose internal plasterwork; temporary covering of affected windows; and the reinstatement of the lightning conductor.

"Our churches are seeking to be at the heart of the community in Wickford but also need the support of the wider community in the town, particularly as we address the problems of subsidence at St Catherine's Church and the expense of maintaining this much-loved community building given the effects of significant climate change."

“Our recent consultation exercise in the Parish revealed that the churches in Wickford and Runwell are seen as contributing to the sense of community and are valued both for the support they bring to others and as centres for peace and prayer which provide a sense of Christian presence. Many local people have been baptised or married at St Catherine’s or have family members commemorated in the churchyard. For all these reasons, we believe many locally will want to support this campaign to ensure that this much-loved community building is repaired and secured for the future.”

Our fundraising campaign begins with a series of fundraising events involving Ladybirds Song Group, Rumatica Ukulele Group and a Quiz Night:

• Ladybirds Song Group: Saturday 21 January, 7.30 pm, St Andrew’s Church (11 London Road, Wickford SS12 0AN). The Ladybirds Song Group sing all over South Essex performing popular songs from the 1950s to the present. No tickets required. A retiring collection will be taken.
• Quiz Night: Saturday 4 February, 7.00 pm, 1st Runwell Scout Hall (Runwell Gardens SS11 7DW). £5.00 p/head. Tables of up to eight. Bring your own snacks & drinks (Tea and Coffee available). To book a table email StCatherinesQuiz@hotmail.com. Street parking in Church End Lane.
• Rumatica Ukulele Group: Saturday 11 March, 3.00 pm, St Catherine’s Church (120 Southend Road, Wickford SS11 8EB). A local band playing and singing a wide range of popular songs including rock, pop, country, swing, rock and roll. Enjoy a cream tea afterwards in the church hall.

Those wishing to contribute to this campaign, can send cheques made out to Wickford and Runwell Parochial Church Council to The Rectory, 120 Southend Road, Wickford SS11 8EB or phone 07803 562329 / email jonathan.evens@btinternet.com for the bank details to use for a bank transfer.

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Rumatica Ukelele Band - Sit Down.

Service, not prestige

Here is my reflection from today's Eucharist at St Martin-in-the-Fields:

The recent story in the press about Freemasons Lodges in Westminster reflects a continuing concern that we may live in a world where much business is done through exclusive networks; which could involve spheres of influence such as the so-called ‘Old Boy's Networks’ or specific organisations where opportunities may exist to exercise influence or seek favours. As there can be a lack of full transparency about such networks, rumours abound and there is no simple way to verify the facts of the matter.

Our Gospel story (Matthew 20. 17 - 28) suggests that 'in-crowds' and 'favours' were also a part of thinking and practices in Jesus' time. The mother of James and John asked Jesus for a favour, in the way that it is alleged favours can be granted in certain networks today. She wanted her sons to be privileged over and above the others in the group and used a private conversation to make her request.

What James and John were after was another perennial temptation for us as human beings; the desire for prestige, in this case, the request to sit on the right and left of Jesus in glory. Similarly it has been suggested that within networks of influence there may be pathways to prestige which are essentially open on the basis of birth, wealth or power.

Jesus calls this whole approach into question with his response to James and John. Today we would characterise what he says in relation to discussions of rights and responsibilities. Jesus says firstly that places of prestige are not available without sacrifice (i.e. no rights without responsibilities), in other words there is no entitlement because of birth, schooling, friendships, networks. What matters in the kingdom of God is service and sacrifice and these not for the sake of future prestige and glory, but for their own sake and for the love of others.

'Whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be your slave; just as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.’

Jesus turns the search for prestige on its head. Instead of the prestige of being first being the goal and the reward, those who are great in the kingdom of God are those who make themselves the least; those who are prepared to serve in same way as Jesus, by laying down their life for others.

James and John say they are prepared to do this but it is ultimately about deeds, not words, and their action in asking their mother to ask for a favour on their behalf clearly shows that they hadn't understood his teaching and practice at this stage in their relationship with him.

Where are we in relation to these issues? Are we chasing after worldly rewards and prestige; seeking it through favours or paying for prestige? Maybe, like James and John, we have brought the values of the world into the kingdom of God and are trying to follow Jesus for some form of personal gain?

Lent is an opportunity for self-reflection on these issues and provides us with the possibility of aligning of thinking, values and deeds with those of Jesus as we become the servants or slaves of others; in order that we serve instead of being served and give our lives for the sake of others.

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John Prine - That's How Every Empire Falls.

We don’t know where we’re going

I've appreciated Gary Younge's recent reflections on the Election result in The Guardian (click here and here). The following quotes align with my reflections following the result:

The Brexit vote revealed a fundamental division within our nation and the Election result shows that we remain a divided nation and don't know how to address that reality - 'When Big Ben called time on Thursday night, we saw clear evidence of a political realignment that the media and the political establishment had dismissed with hostility, and now regarded with confusion. We saw a polity that has lost touch with its people; a political culture unmoored from the electorate, and a mainstream media that drifted along with it. The election did not create that dislocation; it was merely the clearest and least deniable manifestation of it so far. We are in new territory. And we don’t know where we’re going.'

Brexit unleashed a wave of self-centred isolationism which is not representative of the majority within our nation and the Election result indicated a corrective to this - 'During the EU referendum, much of what was wrong with Britain was blamed on foreigners – either the faceless bureaucrats in Brussels who took our money at the expense of the NHS, or immigrants, who, it was claimed, took our jobs and plundered our benefits. But this time round, there was no one else to blame. There was a concern in that room in Wembley that Britain had become too harsh and unforgiving. One woman said she thought things had swung too far the wrong way, and that it was time to “make things fairer”. Another agreed. “We need to show people we care about them,” she said.'

'For far too long, cynicism has been the dominant force in British electoral politics, willing failure at every turn. When they saw large, engaged crowds, the political class and its stenographers in the media dismissed them. They did not appeal to people’s better nature because they assumed people did not have one. Mistaking morality for naivety, they presumed that people were motivated solely by self-interest – in the narrowest and most venal sense – and could not be moved by principle.'

'One of the most important lessons, and one that goes beyond our borders, from this result is that there is a response to the multiple pathologies of xenophobia, racism and rabid nationalism, bequeathed by globalisation, that does not demand pandering to bigotry.'

We are seeing a backlash to the unfairness of austerity cuts which have targeted those already poor whilst allowing those already rich to continue to make money - 'After the 2010 election, the Conservatives insisted on a period of austerity, claiming that it was necessary to repair public finances in the wake of the global banking crisis. The poor and the public sector have borne the brunt of these cuts – but after seven years, the pain of austerity has spread well beyond the very poorest ... As this sense of precariousness broadened to touch those who had never felt it before, and the desperation felt by an ever-widening cross-section of society deepened even further, we should not be surprised that there was an electoral backlash.'

'The print media are losing their influence in part because people receive much more information online nowadays but also because the right-wing press stopped try to report news objectively and began reporting news polemically (and, as a result, can no longer be trusted as an accurate source of news) - 'But while it was possible to see how most voters had formed their first impressions of Corbyn and May from the image presented by the media, what became clear to me while I was covering the campaign was that the impact of Fleet Street was not decisive. Thanks to the proliferation of online media sources, the decline in newspaper readership and weakening loyalties to established brands, the press does not have the same electoral clout it once did.'

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Deacon Blue - The Believers.

Ticking the box of our own self-interest

In all the analysis of the surprise and shock of yesterday's election result, three key influences to do with the process rather than the content of contemporary elections stand out:

First, polling is a distraction from the reality of what is occurring. Polling has provided the media with their primary source of news and debate throughout the election and, as a result, much of that debate and discussion has proved wholly irrelevant to the outcome. Lynton Crosby, who masterminded the Conservative's victory, has been quoted as saying, 'Ignore most of the opinion polls that you see in the newspapers, because they are so simplistic.' This proved true for Labour who were 'given false comfort by the national opinion polls showing the party neck and neck.'

Second, Crosby's strategy of negative campaigning, which is based on the politics of fear, has proved once again to be successful. In this case the fear was of 'the influence the SNP might hold over a minority Miliband government'; a fear which is a essentially unfounded but which, 'with typical shrewdness and ruthlessness, Crosby identified ... as a wedge that could be used against Labour, both in Scotland and in England.' Crosby has stated that, 'At its absolute simplest, a campaign is simply finding out who will decide the outcome … where are they, what matters to them, and how do you reach them?' (Andy Beckett). No-one has been more effective than Crosby at focusing on this simple truth.

Third, the continuing power of the predominantly right-wing press has been demonstrated. 'When Murdoch appeared before the Leveson inquiry he argued that the Sun’s “won it” headline had been “tasteless and wrong”, adding: “We don’t have that sort of power.” The election of 2015 might just prove him wrong.' The 'campaigning coverage of the Rupert Murdoch-owned Sun and the Times, Lord Rothermere’s Daily Mail and the Barclay brothers’ Telegraph titles has been a marked feature of this campaign ... the Sun, Murdoch’s biggest-selling title, was more virulently anti-Labour in this campaign than it was in the runup to the 1992 election when Neil Kinnock was depicted in a lightbulb on polling day.' 'With a party now in power whose only manifesto pledge on the media was to freeze the BBC’s licence fee, Murdoch and his UK executives can rest easy that they can do business again. Calls for a Leveson-approved press regulator are likely to diminish.' 'It is likely that whoever replaces Miliband as Labour leader will be even more wary of threatening Murdoch or any other press baron with increased regulation and the breakup of their empires.' (Jane Martinson)

Giles Fraser, as often, is both clear and honest in his reaction:

'Right now I feel ashamed to be English. Ashamed to belong to a country that has clearly identified itself as insular, self-absorbed and apparently caring so little for the most vulnerable people among us. Why did a million people visiting food banks make such a minimal difference? Did we just vote for our own narrow concerns and sod the rest? Maybe that’s why the pollsters got it so badly wrong: we are not so much a nation of shy voters as of ashamed voters, people who want to present to the nice polling man as socially inclusive, but who, in the privacy of the booth, tick the box of our own self-interest.'

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Patti Smith - After The Gold Rush.

Perception and reality in press and politics

There is an interesting comparator from Buzzfeed which is currently circulating on social media. In a survey carried out by Ipsos MORI last year, 1,015 British adults aged 16-75 were asked questions about population and social issues in Britain. These perceptions are then compared with national statistics and the results show that everything we think we know is wrong.

Why might that be? Some will argue that national statistics don't reflect reality. There may be an element of this, for example, unreported crime is (understandably) not included in national crime statistics but is nevertheless real for all those affected by it. However, the inadequacies of statistical measurement (of which there are many) are unlikely to explain the fundamental mismatch in perception that a comparator like this indicates.

For me, media and political debate in the UK plays to our perceptions (and, therefore, prejudices) far more than it does to the reality revealed through the statistics we collect locally and nationally. We need to remember that our press is not balanced or neutral but, taken as a whole, predominantly right-wing. All opinion mediated to us by press and politicians is edited opinion reflecting (consciously or not) the editor's perceptions and stances. Where our press is predominantly right-wing, that also means that the majority of mediated news is presented from a right-wing perspective. This is in addition, to the more evident manipulation of statistics for which a politician like Iain Duncan Smith has rightly been criticised.

The result is that political policies are formed, not by the closest thing we have to reality on the ground (which is, for all its inadequacies, the statistical information we possess), but the discussion of this by press and politicians who are coming at this not from a neutral perspective but from a specific party political perspective. This means, ultimately, that many political policies are not evidence-based and address perception rather than reality; this being a primary reason why they don't deliver what the politicians introducing them say they will deliver.

The gap between perception and reality forms a significant part of Owen Jones' Guardian piece at the weekend entitled It's socialism for the rich and capitalism for the rest of us in Britain. This, before you point it out to me, comes from a left-wing perspective - it is, therefore, an important counter-balance to the overall right-wing bias of the press.

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The Jam - News of the World.       

The News of the World as soap opera (2)

In my post 'The News of the World as soap opera' I argued that the popular press' focus on feeding our baser selves with a daily diet of reality, action, sex, violence and the trivial has led, in time, to the creation of an ongoing reality celebrity soap opera which forms the substance of the redtops, celebrity mags, reality TV, and online chats/tweets encompassing as it does the 'who has been seen where', 'who is with who', 'who has broken up with who', 'who has attacked who', and 'who has cracked up and/or rehabilitated' of the real (and, sometimes, manufactured for money) lives of celebrities, entertainers, politicians, sportstars and victims of serious crime. For this reason I suggested that Hackgate, rather than diminishing in any way this celebrity reality soap opera, will only feed it as its participants become part of the story.

In today's Guardian, John Kampfner also argues that Hackgate won't drain the trivia out of everyday life:

"As the old saying goes, you get the journalists, the MPs and the coppers you deserve. How many people were complaining about greed when bankers, BBC executives and many others in private and public life were lining their pockets? How many people were indulging in celebrity pap, enjoying the gossip being fed to them at the expense of serious news? Far more than a healthy society would admit.

Why did newspapers plunge towards the lowest common denominator? Because their product sold in a difficult market, and still does. How would the tabloids fare if they put the latest massacre in Syria on their front pages? The redtops are not exclusively to blame. Rarely does a so-called serious paper miss the opportunity to follow up on a celebrity story, sprinkling their reports with irony to help their more knowing readers digest more comfortably. I read them as assiduously as the next person ...

Over the past two decades some people did complain about iniquities in society; some journalists investigated wrongdoing. But far from finding out too much, unearthing corruption and assorted wrongdoing, our media is far too pliant. And the readers, it seems, were not that fussed either, at least while the going was good, while consumerism anaesthetised the brain ...

... the financial crisis, MPs' expenses or phone-hacking and the Murdochs? Each of these scandals attests to the corrosion of the public realm. None of these scandals can satisfactorily be addressed by themselves. They grew out of the same root.

Seriousness needs to be pursued and protected. It cannot be magicked into life by august committees, as each crisis unfolds in our public life. It ultimately comes down to our own individual choices and priorities."

If we feed ourselves a diet that is shallow, superficial and self-centred, we should not be surprised when society becomes ...

Hello! We are the shallow people,
reflections of our fitness ratings,
shining the surface of our existence,
selling our lives to seek significance.

OK! we are on heat, on fire,
hyper cool, yet full of desire.
Bad and wicked are terms of approval.
Bums and tums are there for removal.

Ultra-slim celebs shed baby weight,
the best bikini bodies we celebrate;
airbrushing or anorexic,
eating disorders are so photographic.

Narcissus is our role model;
made in Chelsea , such a fit young man,
lightly tanned and with a wicked four pack,
we know that he is Essex!

We are pissed off, falling over,
stumbling in the dark.
Drunk on celebrity chardonnay,
technology sated, intoxicated.

We think we are such foxy ladies
sexy, sultry sods.
We are hung over, hearing voices,
kissing the porcelain god.

We are off our heads,
out of our skulls,
out of our minds,
we decline.

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The Kinks - Dedicated Follower Of Fashion. 

The Black Rain (4)

The following, which is taken from 'Signs of hope and some positive proposals in the global financial crisis' by Rev. Robert Morrison and which I understand to have been issued by the Christian Association of Business Executives (CABE), has some interesting resonances with my earlier posts in this series; here, here and here:

"There is a great difference between our times and the great civilisations of the past. Economic cause and effect is now linked at the speed of fibre optics, fuelling feedback loops of spin and commentary, not least in the hothouse of 24 hour media expectations. They are constantly turning bad news into head lines news and that just undermines confidence across the globe. It creates a profound sense of despair and despondency or just denial and disbelief. But there is no point in pretending it’s not as bad as it really is. It would be unethical for governments to cover up the truth and no one wants to live in a dictatorship like contemporary Zimbabwe or Stalinism, where the truth is constantly denied and the press controlled or suppressed. But even in a free press environment, news is a commodity that makes some people rich and others poorer. The commodity of information is owned by someone and serves their ends and self interest. This is not conspiracy theory, but a fact. Public watchdogs are needed to challenge the distortion and exaggeration of particular stories or just lazy journalism which uses the defence that good news doesn’t sell newspapers. What kind of society would not want to report and celebrate good news and success as an encouragement to others and to rejoice the heart? What kind of journalist is incapable of turning good news stories into commercial successes?"

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Delirious? - Kingdom Of Comfort.