Interesting selection to identify the location of our church.
According to the late John Wimber, "faith is spelt R-I-S-K", though I'm sure Jesus doesn't mind if we call out to him when it's not an emergency.
25% of what I say is wrong. The trouble is I don't know which 25%
Interesting selection to identify the location of our church.
According to the late John Wimber, "faith is spelt R-I-S-K", though I'm sure Jesus doesn't mind if we call out to him when it's not an emergency.
The exit poll will be wrong. Even if its close on vote share, translating that into actual seats won will be incredibly tricky. There are several seats which, in current forecast, are neck and neck between 3 different parties, not just two.
Some projections are suggesting Labour won't even hit 40% of the vote. There has never been a UK government elected with less than 40% of the vote which has served a full parliamentary term with a majority of seats. It will be a landslide, but will it be a mandate?
The combined Conservative/Labour share is likely to be the lowest since 1918. What happens to Reform will determine whether this is a blip, or the start of a trend.
The Libdems could end up with a lower vote share than Jo Swinson's disastrous 2019 campaign, but 50+ seats, and everyone will hail Ed Davey as a strategic genius. Fair play to him though, you'd never get me on a bungee jump.
Though behind the comedy facade is a Liberal Democrat party who will sack you if you aren't hatey enough towards feminists.
But too many seats and Ed will end up as leader of the opposition. This will be a challenge: there has been a blatant non-aggression pact between the Libdems and Labour for the duration of the campaign. For an opposition in waiting, they aren't doing much opposing.
Campaign strategies in a nutshell: Labour - focus on 14 years of Conservative failure, make all the right noises but commit to as few specifics as possible, and don't answer any questions directly (especially about women). Conservative - started out by trying to set the agenda with a series of policy announcements, begging the inevitable 'why haven't you already done this, if its such a great idea?' riposte, ditched in favour of 'project fear' mode. Libdems - a stunt a day, tenuously linked to a policy proposal which they hope Labour will adopt once in power, studiously avoid attacking Labour.
Farage isn't that far off the mark on the Ukraine war: recommended reading is the chapter on Russia in 'Prisoners of Geography' by Tim Marshall.
If you're the only party that talks about proper control of immigration and border security, I guess its inevitable that you'll attract racists. 1.4m added to the UK population in the last 2 years is off the scale, its disappointing that Farage is the only leader prepared to say so.
Reflecting on the election campaign, here are the headlines that float to the service: soggy announcement, Normandy, betting, dodgy candidates, dodging questions, supermajority/meltdown. Notable that none of these are about policy, or the future of the country, yet these are the things which have been fixated upon by our media. With one or two glowing exceptions, our mainstream journalists are too shallow, or too lazy, to make the policy debates the central feature of their coverage, and to inform the public about what we're voting for.
And a deeper layer to that, the parties themselves aren't addressing the major structural and cultural issues we face, e.g. declining birthrate (linked to immigration, pensions, NHS, workforce, cost/size of the state, family policy, poverty), fatherless families (major contributory factor to criminality, mental illness, educational underachievement, poverty, gangs and youth crime), NHS reform (the NHS will absorb whatever money is thrown at it, and as new treatments become available, will carry on expanding as far as the government lets it. The work structure means that people can earn more as locums, or in the private sector, which in turn draws people away from NHS jobs, increasing reliance on locums/private sector in a feedback loop.)
There are parallels with the England football team. Our expectations are so high that governments are bound to underperform, and the pressure, structure and culture around politics is such that our politicians don't/can't perform to the best of their ability. Meanwhile people of genuine ability see how impotent politicians are, and how savagely they get treated, and quite understandably put their energies elsewhere. Dominic Cummings has been going on about this for a while. We look at the USA and think 'well at least we're not that bad'. Not yet.
The Labour Manifesto for 2024 was launched today, and here it is. 136 pages sounds like a lot, but when you strip out the photos and blank pages its not quite as scary as all that. But how scary are the contents?
The intro sets out the key beliefs and ideas behind the manifesto. There is a danger that, with so many lists, the casual reader might get lost:
Two Shared Beliefs
So Rishi Sunaks farewell note is out, 80 pages of Clear Plan and Bold Actions to deliver a Secure Future. There's also a Costings document.
What's In It?
Stop me if you think you've heard these policies before.
What's To Like?
If you forget for a moment that this is a party which has been in government for 14 years, there is plenty of good material in the manifesto. Lots of detailed plans for transport infrastructure, business and innovation investment and support, reducing spending waste within government and moving civil service jobs out of London. The cuts to tax would be welcome, if they're affordable, and not done by penalising the poor.
Sunak has always been a techie, so its good to see awareness of the world of potential online harms, and some attempts to protect children. Having said that, any decent secondary school already bans use of mobiles during the school day. The NHS section includes a lot on using technology to improve health access and outcomes.
There does need to be an overhaul of welfare, but in a supportive rather than a penalising way - there's no way of telling whether 'improved PIP assessments' will make peoples lives harder or easier. Again, after 14 years in office, why aren't they doing this already?
Some good aspirations in school - on phones, removing gender ideology, improving PE provision - though 2 hours of PE per week for every child will need more sports halls and pitches on land that was sold off long ago.
Its easier to read and digest than the Libdem manifesto, the writing is clear and punchy, and there is more specific detail on policy - though there's still far too many things which sound good, but are just aspirations rather than concrete proposals.
Good to see a continued emphasis on highlighting faith-based persecution, and ending modern slavery.
Quite a few good ideas on health, including expanded mental health support, much of which parallels what is in the Libdem manifesto. Good to see full implementation of the Cass review, which wasn't in the Libdem manifesto. Also good to see the use of proper language when referring to women, rather than allowing to be erased from NHS documents (though again, this is happening now, on their watch....)
What's Not To Like
Jeremy Paxman once ambushed David Cameron in an election interview by asking him how many food banks there were. In 2015, when the question was asked, the Trussel Trust alone (other food banks are available) gave out 1.1m emergency food parcels. The latest figure is 3.1m. There is no mention of food banks or food poverty in this manifesto anywhere, nor of the Warm Hubs which have helped people through the cost of living crisis, or the churches, faith groups and other parts of the charitable sector which have stepped into the holes in the welfare system. It's like none of this exists.
Manifesto season is here, kicked off by a 117 page beast from the Liberal Democrats 'For a Fair Deal' accompanied by a separate costings document.
What's In It?
A lot, there are 20 separate policy areas, each with dozens of policies and pledges. Health alone has 76 separate policies and actions that the LibDems want to implement.
The key message is that 'everything is broken', so "We must transform the very nature of British politics itself, so that we can fix the health and care crisis, get our economy back on track, end the appalling sewage scandal, and give people the fair deal they deserve." Key pledges include
What's To Like?
This is a proper manifesto, a programme for government, something the Conservatives have lacked for several years, and which (if the rumours are true) Labour doesn't have for the next few years. There is a clear focus on helping the vulnerable - children in poverty, new parents, the lonely, carers, supporting mental health. There is some support for families in the new parental leave arrangements and extra support in nurseries and schools for children in poverty. The environmental targets are ambitious, but this looks like a party which takes climate change seriously, as well as our responsibility to the wider world with the 0.7% aid pledge. This looks like a party which cares about the right things (mostly) and has lots of ideas about how to fix them.
There is plenty here to support - I wonder if the Libdems are playing the long game. During the Coalition years of 2010-15, most of the most popular and impactful policies (pupil premium, raising the lower tax thresholds, equal marriage) originally came from the Libdems. Given that Labour seem determined to have as few policies as possible, the Libdems will be hoping to see much of their manifesto become law, even if its enacted by another party.
What's Not to Like?
Size isn't everything. Some sections of this are highly focused, some aren't. The Defence section is a case in point, it opens Keeping our country secure should be the first priority of any government. On page 105. In section 21 of the document. So not your first priority then. It makes all the right noises but what does 'secure a fair deal for service personnel and veterans' actually mean? How is 'having an ambition to spend at least 2.5% on defence' a policy. Will you or won't you? Many of the bullet points in the document are aspirational, with no clear actions, outcomes, or measurable goals.
There are a lot of state solutions here. Many of the policies will involve additional laws, standards, targets, quangoes and government bodies. Police and Crime Commissioners will be scrapped, but otherwise the traffic is all the other way. This manifesto will lead to a more regulated society with more state interference, and more bureaucracy and waste spent on chasing targets.
Investing in more mental health support is great, supporting the decriminalisation of cannabis isn't, that will create more mental health problems in the long run.
There's no recognition of the hideous cost of family breakdown, both personally and economically. To be fair to Ed Davey, I don't expect any party to address this. But its the root cause of a whole slew of other problems - low educational attainment, mental illness, criminality, economic cost, even the housing market (couples who stay together need 1 property, couples who don't need 2).
Self-id for gender recognition, and legal recognition of 'non-binary genders' (?) will add even more confusion into a confused area. 'Ensure access to high quality reproductive healthcare' sounds like taking the side of the abortion industry, rather than asking whether 250.000 abortions per year is too high. And I don't think trying to export abortion around the world is something commendable. (Its ironic that liberal/left voices decry the colonialism of the past, whilst still assuming that Western values are superior and wanting to export them around the world to the benighted savages who don't see things as we do.)
There is no wrestling with the downside of immigration, and the pressure it puts on infrastructure and social cohesion. Yes we need immigration of working age people, as the birth rate of 'native' Britons is below the replacement rate (another issue that no party seems prepared to address). But 1.4m in the last 2 years is unsustainably high. If the centre/left parties don't even recognise this, they leave a void for more strident voices to fill.
The costings document amounts to less than 2 sides of A4 of actual figures. I've had to produce more detailed work applying for grants of £20k for my local church. This is not 'fully costed'.
Time permitting, reviews of other manifestoes will follow!
The Resurrection of Jesus is the cornerstone of
the Christian faith. Without it, the whole building collapses. If Jesus is not
raised, we are wasting our time. If Jesus died, and that was it, then “your
faith is in vain and you are still lost in your sins” (1 Corinthians
Do we just have to take the Resurrection of Jesus on faith, or is there good scientific and historical evidence for it?
Sources:
The New Testament is built around the
Resurrection – every book and letter shouts of faith in the risen Jesus. It was
all written by people who were convinced the Resurrection had happened: either
they were eye-witnesses themselves, or they had met other eye-witnesses and become
convinced.
The
Gospels are the key. These are the books which recount Jesus life, death and
resurrection in detail. The Gospels all agree that Jesus died and rose from the
dead – that’s why the 4 writers felt compelled to write about Jesus.
The fact that there are
4 Gospels, and not 1, is important. 4 identical accounts would look like a fix,
1 account only would be shaky. But 4 accounts which all differ in various
details looks genuine. If there was some
conspiracy between the gospel writers, they would have made sure their accounts
agreed.
The
New Testament itself was all written between 50 and 90AD, within 60 years of the life of
Jesus. Earliest fragments of the NT have been found that date to 120AD. With
other literature of the time (e.g. Roman), the earliest finds date to centuries
later. The archaeological evidence is sound.
If the resurrection was
a myth, a legend invented by Jesus followers, then it would need a much longer
gap from the life of Jesus to the creation of the written accounts. What’s
more, the 1st century was a culture well practiced in memorisation,
and passing on accurate details.
We can therefore take
the stories of the resurrection as genuine history, rather than a legend.
b)
Other literature:
Several non-Christian texts from the 1st
century mention Jesus, his life and death, and some mention the resurrection
stories. So the basic facts of Jesus life, teaching, death and resurrection are
confirmed by sources outside the Bible.
What
Happened?
Here
is what we know:
V
Jesus
was arrested
V
He
was tried and sentenced to death,
V
He
was executed by crucifixion.
V
He
was buried in a tomb
V
When
his followers went to pay their respects 2 days later Jesus body was missing
from the tomb.
V
Many
of Jesus followers then claimed to have seen Jesus alive, including some people
(like
V
The
early church was founded, by the disciples, on the belief that Jesus was risen
from the dead, and that he was therefore God’s chosen one.
Science
is based on this principle: the theory that best fits the facts is the one most
likely to be true. So what best explains these facts? Is it that Jesus was
raised from the dead, or something else?
Here are the other explanations that
people have offered
a)
Jesus didn’t die: he
fainted on the cross, then revived in the tomb and escaped.
But:
Ø
the
Romans were experts at crucifixion, and by the time he got to the Cross Jesus
had already been beaten and flogged, and lost a lot of blood.
Ø
The
spear in Jesus side (John
Ø By some fluke, even had Jesus survived the cross, he would be in no state to escape his embalming bandages, roll aside a massive stone, overpower a group of soldiers and appear to the disciples in a way that convinced them of his resurrection. A month in intensive care would have been more appropriate
b) Someone stole the body, which explains why it wasn’t at the tomb. But: who?
· The Jews or Romans would have produced the body as soon as stories of the Resurrection began to circulate, to quash the stories. But they didn’t. So, they didn’t steal it either.
c) The disciples were all hallucinating: they thought they’d seen the risen Jesus, but they hadn’t.
But:
V
Firstly,
they were in no condition to hallucinate. Though Jesus had taught them about
his resurrection, none of them believed him, and they all ran away. They were
finished. Hallucinations tend to be wish-fulfilment, but psychologically this
seems very unlikely with the disciples
V Secondly – too many
hallucinations. They were in all sorts of places, and all sorts of times, to
all sorts of people. The Bible reports 550 different eye-witnesses. This is
just too many people to have the same delusion.
V Again, if they had been
hallucinating, Jesus would still have been dead. But where was his body? It
would have been a simple matter to produce it, but nobody did.
3 Burning Questions
1. What actually happened to the disciples?
A ragtag bunch of fishermen, revolutionaries and
civil servants, whose leader had died as a criminal, suddenly began preaching that
Jesus was alive. Within a matter of weeks they had thousands of followers. They
change from a defeated and scattered group to a powerhouse of prayer, preaching
and community life.
One writer has said that for such a change to
happen, it would have needed an event with the power of a nuclear explosion.
It must have taken something amazing to do
this. The best explanation is the one the Bible gives – that they met Jesus,
risen from the dead.
What’s more, since then millions of Christians
have met Jesus personally, and had their lives transformed by him. The risen
Christ is still at work today, in our lives and in the lives of countless
others across the world.
2. Who was raised from
the dead?
The
man God raised from the dead wasn’t just anyone:
Ø
Jesus
spoke of himself as ‘one’ with God,
Ø
He
claimed the right to reinterpret God’s ancient laws
Ø
He
forgave people their sins – something only God can do.
Ø
He
spoke of himself as ‘the way’, and ‘the light of the world’.
In other words, Jesus claimed to be unique, he
claimed to be God, and he called people to follow him. When God raised Jesus from the dead, it was God’s seal
of approval on everything Jesus said and did. The resurrection is God’s
endorsement of Jesus words and claims, and God’s demonstration of his power
over death and sin.
3. So what?
The
resurrection of Jesus means that:
V
Jesus
is who he said he was; God in human flesh, the Lord and Saviour of the world.
The only right response to this is to obey and follow him.
V
Jesus
is God’s unique messenger. No other founder of a world religion has been raised
from the dead. Through the Resurrection,
God points to Jesus as the true Way to himself.
V God has acted decisively in history through Jesus, and at the end of history we will all be judged on our response to Jesus.
After outsourcing the scriptwriting duties on Dr Who to Stonewall, the latest license fee announcement has accelerated the push at the Beeb to find cheaper alternatives for writing work and show production. A whole range of charities, interest groups and organisations are in the frame, and here are some of the shows under consideration. There is a suspicion that the intern who created this list hadn't fully grasped the nature of the shows in question.
Escape to the Country: written by the inmates of HM Prison, Dartmoor
Married at First Sight: a new format with Islamic State
Would I Lie To You?: edited highlights of the Covid enquiry
Top Gear: the London College of Fashion
Masterchef: The Professionals: retro 70s cookery show presented by Bodie and Doyle
Strictly: the entire output of the BBC is turned over to the Chinese government.
Mrs Browns Boys: Gordon Brown narrates holiday pictures of his family.
Pointless: full coverage of the Covid enquiry
The Chase: written by the staff of HM Prison, Dartmoor
Blankety Blank: Keir Starmer talks about his key ideas.
The Great British Bay Cough: produced by Surfers Against Sewage