Making Parenting Pay

It seems New Labour hasn't lost its appetite for outsourcing parenting. Ed Balls announced today a policy (yes, a policy) of 25 hours free childcare for 3-4 year olds where 'all' parents are working. This extends the free nursery care introduced by the last Labour government.

Last week the Libdems offered to let the state cook the main meal of the day for all infant school children. This week Labour are offering to relieve us of the burden of being with our own children so that we can get out to work.

Hello? Parenting is the most significant work that anyone with children will ever do. Yet again politicians send the message that earning money matters more than raising your children. But not to worry, the Big Friendly Government will do it for you. Politicians go on and on about making work pay, how about making parenting pay? Shouldn't it be more rewarding, in every sense, for parents to invest in their children rather than being bribed back into the workplace? Home is a workplace too.

If Labour really do want to put £800m into family support, then how about something really useful: parenting skills courses for first-time parents, with regular refreshers/peer support as children grow older, to equip parents with the skills they need to raise children well. Then there wouldn't be so much need for the state to step in at a later stage to provide the hot meals and safe/supportive environment that some children never experience at home. It also empowers people to do a better job themselves, rather than extending the client base of the state at the expense of family life.

Ed Miliband 'I am...a person of faith'

Update: more on this from Fraser Nelson in Fridays Telegraph.

Here's part of Ed Milibands speech from Tuesdays conference

...It is this upbringing that has made me who I am. A person of faith, not a religious faith but a faith nonetheless. A faith, I believe, many religious people would recognise. So here is my faith. I believe we have a duty to leave the world a better place than we found it. I believe we cannot shrug our shoulders at injustice, and just say that’s the way the world is. And I believe that we can overcome any odds if we come together as people.

That’s how my Mum survived the war. The kindness of strangers. Nuns in a convent who took her in and sheltered her from the Nazis, took in a Jewish girl at risk to themselves. It’s what my dad found when he came to these shores and joined the Royal Navy and was part of Britain winning the war.

Now of course my parents didn’t tell me what career to go into. My late father, as some of you know, wouldn’t agree with many of the things I stand for. He would’ve loved the idea of “Red Ed.” But he would have been a little bit disappointed that it isn’t true. My mum probably doesn’t agree with me either, but like most mums is too kind to say so. And look when I was younger I wasn’t certain I wanted to be a politician. But I do believe the best way me for to give back to Britain, the best way to be true to my faith, is through politics. Now that is not a fashionable view today. Because millions of people have given up on politics, they think we’re all the same. Well I guess you could say I am out to prove them wrong.

That is who I am. That is what I believe. That is my faith.

and it's obviously a key passage for him, because he returns to it to close the speech:

Who can come up to the task of rebuilding Britain? Friends, it falls to us, it falls to us, the Labour Party. As it has fallen to previous generations of Labour Party pioneers to leave our country a better place than we found it. Never to shrug our shoulders at injustice and say that is the way the world is. To come together, to join together, to work together as a country.

It’s not some impossible dream. We’ve heard it, we’ve seen it, we’ve felt it. That is my faith.

One nation: a country for all, with everyone playing their part. A Britain we rebuild together.

So, translated, what is Ed Milibands faith? It's not in God, or anything supernatural, but here's my attempt state his creed:
 - Vocation: we are here to make the world a better place (though he talks of this as a 'duty' rather than a 'purpose')
 - Justice: the key principle of social order, aka Fairness
 - Hope: people have the power to do anything if they work together.

I'm not sure how coherent this is - e.g how the two stories about his family relate to these three statements. I'm not sure whether this an attempt to connect with the faith vote (though I doubt all atheists will be pleased at the way this maps the 'faith' territory), or just an interesting way of expressing himself.

For me the content falls short of the headline - is this it? They're all good principles, though unfortunately a couple of them sound a bit karaoke - make the world a better place, overcome the odds, did I hear the sound of Louis Walsh? Which leaves the justice one, which is curiously weak in its phrasing. Miliband comes from socialist stock, which had a strong and explicit faith and creed: he seems to have inherited the framework, but filleted the content.

I was listening to this on the radio with my son in the back seat, and after trying to explain to him about parties, leaders and elections, he asked 'which one's ours?' I said at the moment I had no idea, there's nobody I really want to vote for. And after that speech, to be honest I'm no clearer. A lot of us would love to be convinced by our politicians, and are finding it increasingly frustrating that they don't manage it. But I think we also know that the Hero Leader is a myth, they don't exist. Maybe, therefore, Miliband is right when he focuses on working together, but to work together you need a shared vision and goals, One Nation needs to be more than a slogan, it needs to win hearts and minds.

What would the Rabbi say to the Spin Doctor?

Just had a very good few days at Spring Harvest in Minehead, 2 questions buzzing round my head:

1. Would Jesus have called Derek Draper to be one of his disciples? At SH we've been looking at the story of the call of Matthew the tax collector, among other things. Collaborator, crook, thief, traitor, probably had people beaten up for non-payment, generally an unpleasant guy. Everyone else would have pilloried him, Jesus called him. And he changed.

Who else's name could you put in there?

2. Why did the BBC pull the 'religion' programme in Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle on Easter Monday? It's now being shown tomorrow night, and timetabled nicely so that you can catch the first episode of the new Ashes to Ashes. Lee is the man behind 'Jerry Springer, the Opera', but the series has been one of the treats of the early spring, on the whole both very funny and very thoughtful, though some of the skits have started to get a bit Chris Morris. The fact the Beeb didn't want to show the religion episode on the Easter weekend suggests they were a bit wobbly about the content.

On Spring Harvest itself, more in a couple of days, it's interesting to read what Dave Walker thought of it all.

Labour Minister "Faith communities offer a rich resource"

It appears that Labour is now prepared to 'do God', following the departure of devout Mr Blair to sort out the Middle East (that went well). As Ruth Gledhill reports, Stephen Timms (financial secretary to the Treasury) has given a major speech on how the government can work with faith groups. Here's a bit of it

What I want to argue today is that the faith communities offer a rich resource of hopefulness which, in progressive politics, we need to tap into and draw upon. The faith communities have not always been seen as the natural allies of progressive politics. Indeed, in the United States, there has been a powerful alliance between Christian organisations and conservatism. We saw that alliance loosening with the election of Barack Obama.

Faith communities have a great deal to offer us, not least in their resource of hopefulness, as we build a new politics based on hope to respond effectively to the challenges we face. They can form the basis for a broad coalition of hope.

There is a twofold challenge here. A challenge to progressive politicians to show they recognise faith-based perspectives and contributions as valid and mainstream, rather than irrelevant and marginal. That means recognising that faith cannot be relegated to the private sphere – and as IPPR has already argued – addressing faith literacy in central and local government, so that officials can deal intelligently with input from faith communities. And it means thinking hard about identity, recognising the part faith plays, and getting beyond ‘We don’t do God’.


And a challenge to faith communities and their members. To recognise that, in democracy, people are entitled to hold strongly divergent views. It is right to work with people you disagree strongly with on very important subjects, in order to make real in a community the hope which faith instils.

full speech here. The whole thing is worth a read, and not just because he gives a free plug to Street Pastors. Of course, 'he would say that wouldn't he', being a Christian, but the point is that Labour ministers haven't been saying this sort of thing until quite recently.

The timing is interesting: with Dubya leaving the White House, Timms talks about faith groups working with the progressive agenda rather than against it, and Obama becomes Exhibit A in this regard. He also cites Desmond Tutu, Tom Wright and Pope Benedict, as well as several examples of faith communities making a practical difference on the ground.

There are also some headlines, on page 2 of the report, from a Tearfund survey suggesting a strong rise in church attendance last year - no sign of it on their main website as yet.

Quote of the month so far

In case you missed it

"We need a reboot not a bailout, as the man said. It’s time to think different. The fantasy that the answer to one housing Ponzi is another is profoundly barmy. Debt fuelled growth is problematic. It makes everybody feel good for all the wrong reasons.

The wealth is like fairies in Peter Pan — fine as long as you believe it really is wealth, but every time a house is undersold, a fairy dies. It’s certainly no substitute for hard work, added value, goods and services. Borrowing to bailout has to be paid for by future taxation.

If we must borrow heavily off our children, perhaps even our grandchildren, as the UK did to defeat fascism in the 1940’s, at least let it be for a rational and worthy cause, not just more of the same."

Bishop Alan, on the credit crunch, Labours record, and critical bishops.

A Moral Duty to Spend Money?

Woolly Thinking
Woolworths was heaving with bargain hunters yesterday, duped by the news stories of a big sale, and the sign in the window of 50% OFF EVERYTHING. If your eyesight was poor, you might miss the 'up to' hidden in the corner, and then wonder why there were virtually no half-price items in the store. In fact, the standard discount was 10%, some of which was the VAT cut.

Our appetite for deception hasn't been dulled by the debt crunch. If anything it's become even more acute. One seller in the market yesterday called out 'you'll never see these prices again' and I wanted to stop and ask him if he was telling the truth.

The Answer to Debt Is..... More Debt
But this pales into insignificance compared to the rabbit hole that is our economic policy. Here we are in a debt crunch (yes I know it's called the 'credit crunch' but the word 'credit' is marketing sophistry. It's debt) brought on by irresponsible lending, unsustainable levels of consumer debt, a house price bubble, and reckless borrowing at levels never seen before in the UK. So what shall we do? I know:

• The government should borrow at levels never seen before in the UK.
• Reduce interest rates, making it less painful to get into debt, whilst penalising those who've been responsible and saved money.
• As businesses struggle for cash, plough billions into the banks, the same banks who got us into this mess and last year gave bonus awards the size of an African country.
• Pass legislation on sustainability and a reduced carbon footprint, and at the same time yank every economic lever possible to raise levels of resource consumption by the general population

These are the kind of solutions that makes homoeopathy look scientific. Okay, within one story they make economic sense, but is the story the Wealth of Nations or Alice in Wonderland? Is there any society in history which has made it the moral responsibility of its citizens to spend money? There is such a desparation to re-clothe the naked Emperor which is our consumer debt society, and quickly, that surely we should be a tad suspicious. Where are the people asking fundamental questions about the system itself?

2 examples:

- after the short-term pain, a fall in house prices will once again enable a family to own a property without both parents having to work full time and shove their kids into (government sponsored) childcare to make it possible. At least, it will until you get clobbered with university fees. Families are suffering now because owning a home puts you at the limit of your financial resources, so if anything gives then there is no slack. But we have waited for the bubble to burst messily, rather than questioning how big it was allowed to grow in the first place.

- Where too are the voices which, when total consumer debt overtook annual GDP, reminded us that debt is money that doesn't really exist, that isn't really yours, and that one day you have to pay it back?

Soul Destroying
A story is told of a Himalayan mountaineering expedition, where the Western climbers wanted to make quick progress. For three days they walked quickly, though the sherpas seemed reluctant. On day 4 the sherpas sat down and couldn't be moved. One climber asked the sherpa translator what was happening, and he replied: "after walking so fast for 3 days, they are now waiting for their souls to catch up with their bodies."

Maybe this recession, painful though it is for impatient Westerners, is the same thing happening on a national level. We have been rushing ahead of capacity - of our personal capacity, and that of the economy and the planet. It's time to stop and let everything catch up. Maybe as we stop we'll get the time to think, reflect, and adjust.

The danger of the pre-Budget report, the interest rate cut, and the Christmas sales, is that they perpetuate the headlong rush for debt-and-spend that is the UK consumer lifestyle. We rush past the shivering, naked Emperor, and are too busy shopping to wonder why we ache, and feel distant from ourselves.

Spend or Save?
Meanwhile we plaster a terrorist attack on a rich hotel in India across our front pages, but when twice the number fall in Nigeria, nobody hears, whilst 5,000 infants a day die from preventable water-borne diseases. One estimate puts the cost per head of clean water & sanitation at £15. That's under $40billion for all 2,500,000,000 people in the world who lack either clean water or proper sanitation, which is the same as the rise in government borrowing from 2008-9. At what point did this kind of maths start adding up?

In blog threads about faith, it's not long before people like me are taunted for believing in sky fairies and the like. But which Christmas makes more sense, the one where we spend, or the one where we, and others, are saved?

this is a cross post from Touching Base, a column hosted by the Wardman Wire.

73% of Americans Didn't Vote for Obama

80% of eligible adults registered to vote.
Of these, 64% voted
Of these, 52% voted for Barack Obama
Which means that 26.6% of US adults voted for him.

Lest us Britons be smug, at the last election
61.4% of electors voted
of whom 40.7% voted for Tony Blair
which means that 26% of UK electors voted for him.

and in 2007, exactly 0.0% of us voted for Gordon Brown.

All of which makes (incredible to say) Hazel Blears' comments about engagement in the political process very timely. Unfortunately, this bit is the only section of the talk that anyone is blogging about, wonder why....

This brings me to the role of political bloggers. Perhaps because of the nature of the technology, there is a tendency for political blogs to have a ‘Samizdat’ style. The most popular blogs are right-wing, ranging from the considered Tory views of Iain Dale, to the vicious nihilism of Guido Fawkes. Perhaps this is simply anti-establishment. Blogs have only existed under a Labour Government. Perhaps if there was a Tory Government, all the leading blogs would be left-of-centre?

There are some informative and entertaining political blogs, including those written by elected councillors. But mostly, political blogs are written by people with a disdain for the political system and politicians, who see their function as unearthing scandals, conspiracies and perceived hypocrisy.

Unless and until political blogging ‘adds value’ to our political culture, by allowing new and disparate voices, ideas and legitimate protest and challenge, and until the mainstream media reports politics in a calmer, more responsible manner, it will continue to fuel a culture of cynicism and despair.

Christian blogs take note. It is easier to attack than defend, and there are several popular Christian blogs which are more Rottweiler than sheepdog.

'People Want to Know What Values You Bring': Grave Dave Cameron's Vision and Values

What makes Cameron tick? Last week I looked at the vision and values of Gordon Browns speech, now its 'Dave's turn. Except this was more grave than Dave. When Nick Clegg compared David Cameron to an Andrex puppy, he was partly right. Camerons speech to the Tory conference was certainly very long (65 minutes), but it certainly wasn't soft.

(Full text of the speech is here, quotes below are in italics. )

Strangely, in pragmatic political times, we've had two strong 'values' speeches. Brown was heavy on duty, service, and especially 'fairness'. Cameron was even more explicit:

(people) want to know whether our politics, and let's be frank, whether our politicians - are up to it. In the end, that's not really about your policies and your plans. Of course your plans are important… so people want to know what values you bring to big situations and big decisions that can crop up on your watch.

and so he told us. There were some clear inconsistencies between his stated values, and what he actually proposed to do, but we'll come to that later. But lets look at those values:

1. Responsibility:
For me, the most important word is responsibility, not a libertarian free for all, but personal, civic and corporate responsibility to others 'that's what this party is all about'. There was a superb section where he nailed Miliband (interesting that he went after Miliband and Johnson, the 2 Labour pretenders, as well as Brown), turning 'there's no such thing as society' back on Labour:

David Miliband said that "unless government is on your side you end up on your own."
"On your own" - without the government.
I thought it was one of the most arrogant things I've heard a politician say.
For Labour there is only the state and the individual, nothing in between.
No family to rely on, no friend to depend on, no community to call on.
No neighbourhood to grow in, no faith to share in, no charities to work in.
No-one but the Minister, nowhere but Whitehall, no such thing as society - just them, and their laws, and their rules, and their arrogance.
You cannot run our country like this.

Responsibility and society go hand in hand: " we will only be a strong society if we are a responsible society." Responsibility recognises that there are other factors than just what I want, or what suits me.

That was cashed out later on in terms of benefit reform, the behaviour of politicians, and being able to admit to failure. Irresponsible bankers were fingered for the economic crisis, and 'fiscal responsibility' was put at the core of economic policy.

2. Family:
"I'm a forty-one year old father of three who thinks that family is the most important thing there is." That line came early on, and family featured at the top of the Broken Society section, and how we fix it. Cameron was clear "If you want to know where the change will be greatest from what has gone before. It is our plan for social reform. be as radical in social reform as Margaret Thatcher was in economic reform." So the biggest change the Tories will bring is social change, and at the centre of that is family policy.

Why? Because "family is the best welfare system there is (and)... commitment is something we should cherish as a society." There was a hint at other things too - the broken family structure in the background story of those in prison, so hopefully Cameron has more to say than just this. His 3 proposals to strengthen families were: flexible working, backing marriage in the tax system, and 4,000 more health visitors.

I'm sorry, but if that is the engine room of the most radical social reform since Roy Jenkins, then then that's a bit weak. Very weak. Health visitors are fine so far as they go, but there is so much more that can be done to support families in terms of relationships support, parenting skills etc. (though see this).

At least at the core of this there is a vision of a "stronger society". Whether 'conservative means' can achieve 'progressive ends', is another question.

3. "Leadership, character, judgement"
In a full frontal attack on Browns 'this is no time for a novice' jibe, Cameron spend a long time spelling out an alternative view of leadership. I couldn't work out whether "thinking before deciding is good" and "go with your conviction, not calculation" (said within 4 sentences of each other) were mutually contradictory. But Camerons argument was that it's what you've got, not what you've been through, that makes you a good leader. Experience, if you've not learned from it, is a hindrance not a help.

Part of Cameron's leadership is a commitment to teamwork - he carefully namechecked all the major players in his team (even David Davis, remember him?), and it's striking to note that the shadow cabinet currently looks like a better team than the real thing, with several of the most talented Labour MP's on the back benches (Clarke, Milburn, Blair), or having done so much to annoy people that they're damaged goods (Balls, Byers, Mandelson, Reid, Blair again, etc.). There is a strength in depth to this opposition team, and Cameron does seem able to bring the best out of them. To have bound the notoriously independent IDS into part of a cohesive unit is an achievement in itself.

4. Within this there was a lot of talk about right and wrong.
"The popular thing may look good for a while. The right thing will be right all the time." Cameron applied this to Afghanistan, law and order and family policy. Someone commented afterwards that it was a bit of a Daily Mail speech, and perhaps that's right.

Cameron's rights and wrongs were a fascinating blend of old and new Conservative: sound defence, patriotism, the Union and fiscal conservatism, alongside gender equality, social justice, green politics and international development. Though the Tory tree logo gets its share of bashing, it's quite a good image for where the Tories find themselves: strong roots in one tradition of thinking, but trying to draw on them for something leafy and fruitful in the present.

5. Religion (not)
As if to prove Theos wrong, all the leaders have avoided religious references: Brown made a fleeting allusion to the Good Samaritan, Clegg made a joke, and Cameron invoked God only to show us how angry he was. Aside from the reference to faith in the Miliband attack, that was it.

6. Walking the Talk
Early in the speech Cameron said "it's not just about your values... the best you can do is tell people...how you make decisions" and he went on to set out 14 statements which were, basically, value statements. He seems a little confused about what 'values' are, but at least he's got some.

However, how he applied those values was a little confusing. Family policy, as I've noted, looks rather weak, and Tory solutions on both the NHS and schools were pure free market: publish information, reduce regulation, and open the thing up to more competition. Cameron stated that for the NHS people want an 'informed choice'. No David, we want a good doctor at our local hospital. When you're ill, you don't want to excercise your right of choice, you just want to get better. There has to come a time when we stop being consumers, but it didn't sound like it would happen under this leader.

On hearing the speech, it came across as a strong statement of the kind of leader Cameron would be. On reading it, I'm slightly more confused. There are so many value statements here, and so many vying for top spot: responsiblity, family, leadership, change, "Conservative values", mending the broken society, deciding on the basis of thought-through process, deciding on the basis of gut instinct, and so on.

Earlier in the conference Cameron went for a jog, slowed to a walk as he neared the hotel, then speeded up again when he saw the media. His speech was an attempt to portray himself as a man who wouldn't stop running, even when it got painful, even when it didn't look good to the media. There seems to be a gap between Camerons values, and how they work themselves out.


And finally....
And despite the occasional nod to 'quality of life', none of the leaders yet has gone after the big issue: is a consumer society powered by credit a sustainable one? In fact, can it be a 'society' if it's based on consumption? This lies at the core of green issues, banking, social justice, international development, mental health, social cohesion and so much else. There's no point in fixing the roof whilst the sun is shining if the foundations are built on sand.

What is Mark Brewer Doing?

For detective work on why Mark Brewer is issuing libel threats, then the 2 best blogs for background at the moment are:

http://asingleblog.wordpress.com/

http://www.ministryoftruth.me.uk/tag/j-mark-brewer/

especially the latter. Brewer is trying to get SSG (a UK charity) declared bankrupt in the US, which (it's claimed) he can't legally do. The charity commission in the UK is aware of what's going on. My concern is that various creditors, and people who are look for compensation through the USDAW action, will be denied what's due to them. My guess is that the libel threat was to silence blog reporting of the SPCK/SSG saga, so that nobody looked into it in any detail. That worked well then.....

The links on asingleblog suggest that Brewer is ploughing hundreds of thousands into a campaign to run for elected office, though (see comments below), that seems to be history. I shall probably leave the dot joining to other people - my main goal in blogging about all this in the first place was to draw attention to what has happened to Dave, find a way of salvaging the story he's been telling, and to support him, and all 3 have been achieved.

Those Hard Working Families

My latest Touching Base column is now online at the Wardman Wire. It deals with those creatures of political myth, the 'hard working family', and why the term doesn't do families any favours. Here's a snippet:

the ‘hard working families’ rhetoric is always used in economic debates. Outside this, families seem to barely exist, except when they’re trying to get their children into a local school. But what both of these are about is money: the better the child does at school, the more they’ll earn and the more tax they’ll pay, and Labour has been very keen to gear schools to the modern economy. At one level, that’s great, but at another you do have to wonder whether it’s being driven by childrens well-being (at an all-time low), or by £££££ signs.

Likewise the hard working family (lets call it the HWF) is first and foremost an economic unit. It’s not about love, companionship, raising children, building community, or any of that stuff, it’s about the money.

We had a government leaflet through our door a few months ago, which basically said ‘why stay at home looking after your kids when you could be out working - look at all the different people who are queueing up to take the little darlings off your hands!’ The overall message of the thing was ‘work = good, parenting your own children = bad’.

for the rest go here.

Moral, But No Compass: Reflections

I've posted some thoughts on the recent report 'Moral, But No Compass', on the role of the Church of England in delivering state welfare services, over at the Wardman Wire. For the full article, go there, but here's a bit of it:

A First Reaction
My initial response to the first news headlines on Moral but No Compass was ‘oh no, my church is whining at the government‘, but the report is actually very good, and deserves to be read and mulled over by both Church and State.

Welfare Delivery by the Church?
The reason for the report is the increasing encouragement from central government for the Church to be involved in welfare delivery. In seeking to understand the policy environment, the Von Hugel Foundation discovered that policymakers had no information on the Church of England, and a very limited understanding (and lumping together) of ‘faith groups.’ Alan Wilson, Ruth Gledhill, and Thinking Anglicans (also here) have already done a good job of responding to the main points and summarising comment from elsewhere.

a) Does Government understand the Church? Does it want a Glove Puppet?
The report speaks of national and local government failing to understand what motivates the Church. I remember a Q&A session with the Director of Education in one northern local authority: when asked how the Church could partner with them, his answer was effectively ‘you can promote the council’s education policy‘, and he couldn’t think of anything else. There was no recognition of the Church’s centuries of experience in education, its work with children and families, and the contribution it was already making in local schools.

Speaking to a councillor at the same authority one day, I realised a couple of minutes into the chat that it wasn’t really a conversation, he was simply asking loaded questions to get a ‘vicar supports council policy’ answer out of me. This was all in a Labour stronghold, and the principle attitudes towards the church seemed to be mistrust or co-option, rather than partnership and engagement. It must be said that here in Yeovil, a LibDem council, attitudes are more positive, though the labyrinth of agencies, partnerships, funding streams etc. means you have have a certain amount of time and energy to find your way through it. Equally, there are likely to be examples of positive and negartive examples in local authorities across the country.

It’s interesting that a recent government consultation on ‘violent extremism’ floats the idea that Further Education chaplaincies can play a role in tackling extremism on campus. It’s not easy to see whether this is seen as partnership, or chaplaincies becoming an informal agent of the state in low-level counter-terrorism!

go here for the rest: on whether the report lets the church off lightly, and the interface between prophecy and practice

(cartoon from ASBO Jesus)

Rhetoric and Reality

I've posted elsewhere a cluster of quotes from various government ministers on the positive impact of faith groups and churches on society. There are also several regional reports on the impact of the church and faith groups (see below).

However, though Gordon Brown, Hazel Blears, the Home Office and various Ministers of State seem to be queueing up to praise faith communities, a new CofE sponsored report paints a very different picture. 'Moral, but no Compass' is due out on Monday but Ruth Gledhill has put up some snippets. The Government is keen to co-opt faith groups into promoting its agenda (for example, a recent consultation on 'tackling violent extremism' suggested that FE college chaplaincies might have a role to play in what is, effectively, low-level counter-terrorism), but doesn't seem quite so keen to understand where we're coming from. The snippets paint a picture of a government which lumps faith communities together, doesn't understand them, and focuses on fringe communities rather than mainstream churches like the CofE. For example:

We encountered on the part of Government a significant lack of understanding of, or interest in, the Church of England's current or potential contribution in the public sphere. Indeed we were told that Government had consciously decided to focus its evidence gathering almost exclusively on minority religions. ... Three separate government departments admitted to possessing no evidence based on the Christian churches, despite one having proactively commissioned new research to underpin its faith-based agenda. The Office of the Third Sector could not conceive why such an evidence base might be necessary, despite ministerial claims of taking faith communities seriously.

There are plenty of examples of research, commissioned by churches and Christian groups, into the impact of Christians in welfare and public life. Faith in Rural Communities, Faith in Wales, Faith in Englands Northwest, and Daily Service (a report into faith groups in the SW) all give an evidence base for the work of faith groups - the vast majority of them churches - in community, welfare, regeneration, voluntary work etc. Faithworks also have a good number of case studies on their website.

Quoting from the report again:
Based on our interviews with politicians, government officials and people in the faith communities themselves, we can only conclude that the absence of a 'churches' evidence base is grounded in a judgement that churches are not worthy to have even a modest role in government schemes. Such a judgement contrasts strongly with public declarations by Ministers that all of civil society is welcome to the public service reform table and that the government's agenda is for all faiths rather than for a few.

Ruth's post links to a Times report and leader, the full version of 'Moral, without a Compass' is due out on Monday. This could be interesting.....

Whipped

From the Mail on Sunday, on Harriet Harman's tactics at the Embrology Bill vote last week:

When Ms Dorries addressed the House and urged Labour MPs to support her, Ms Harman arrived, apparently to ‘spy’ on her. She stood by the Speaker’s chair, hands on hips, watching MPs like a hawk – exactly how Labour’s Whips operate.

Moves to cut the abortion limit to 22 or 20 weeks were rejected by much bigger margins than had been expected. Ms Dorries believes that Ms Harman’s campaign was one of the main reasons for the surprise result.

‘The tactics used to defeat my proposals were disgraceful,’ said Ms Dorries. ‘Ms Harman ran a fully-fledged whipping operation in all but name. This was supposed to be a non-political debate but she has politicised it.

‘The case for reducing the time limit for abortions to 20 weeks is irrefutable both on moral and scientific grounds. We are not giving up on this. From now on, the gloves are off.’

Ms Harman last night denied she had acted improperly. ‘It is deplorable that people who lost the argument now attempt to cry foul,’ she said. ‘It was a free vote and I worked with others to ensure that as many MPs as possible voted for the status quo.

‘We won because we had the most persuasive arguments. It is totally untrue that there was any kind of whipping operation.’

Stop. Rewind.

"I worked with others to ensure that as many MP's as possible voted for the status quo"
"it is totally untrue that there was any kind of whipping operation."

How can both those statements be true? Whipping is working with others (the team of whips) to ensure that as many MP's as possible vote for the governments line. Which was the status quo - Gordon Brown said so a couple of days before. It was their bill, for goodness sake.

Picked up elsewhere: Nadine Dorries, Cranmer, Peter Ould, all comment on this story. (also a v interesting post on the abortion topic at Transfattyacid) The stats show that 80%+ of the Labour party were persuaded to vote one way and 80%+ of the Conservatives were persuaded to vote the other. I can also never work out why 500+ people get to vote on a debate that only 100 of them were present at - when you see the debates on this bill, the chamber is mainly empty, yet everyone gets to vote. What if we did general elections the same way: don't bother listening to the arguments, just turn up on polling day. That's democracy!

The Ostrich Position Demonstrated

A spokeswoman for the Department for Children, Families and Schools said: "We do not agree that there has been a breakdown in the family - 70% of families are headed by a married couple...
"And a recent BBC poll suggests that three-quarters of people in Britain are optimistic about the future of their families, 24% higher than when the same question was asked in 1964."

That's in response to this story about a family law judge making the, not wholly original, argument that breakdown in family life is at the root of many of our most serious social problems.

So there's an opinion poll that's higher than it was 44 years ago - that must mean everything is alright then. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH! How about extracting your heads from whichever orifice they are inserted in and engaging with reality ?

What does New Labour think of Sharia Law?

Cranmer thinks he knows.

http://archbishop-cranmer.blogspot.com/2008/02/sharia-law-and-hypocrisy-of-new-labour.html

Points 8 and 9 show that the government has already been looking for ways to accomodate sharia law on finance and marriage. That they let Rowan Williams get roasted alive without a murmer, but do all this on the quiet, is hypocrisy of a staggering order.

Christian Blog Awards

Dave Walker has the full run-down of winners at the recent Christian Blog awards, so rather than me putting all the links here, go and see his site instead.

Besides, I'm too busy listening to Gordon Browns speech to the Labour conference and totting up the number of Bible references: suffer the children to come to me (slightly scary thought!!), and the parable of the talents are the main ones so far. 'No injustice can last forever' (he's just said that, in a section on human rights) is a profoundly Biblical thought. However, as with many politicians, and in fact plenty of preachers too, there's a question of whether Brown is expounding the meaning of the texts, or just using them as pegs to hang his ideas on. Probably both.

You heard it here first

This blog doesn't usually get into the murky world of political personalities - not because I agree with the ranting secularists (and even some Christians) who say that Christian faith and politics don't mix, but because so much of it is gossip and second hand news from political pundits. It's so annoying to get a political story on the news and then spend 10 minutes listening to the 'political correspondent' or someone else tell you what's going on, or what the Chancellor said in his budget, or what the PM said at x or y speech, rather than hearing the politicians say it in their own words.

But today is the day that Tony Blair is confidently predicted to be stepping down, and one 'heavyweight' has not yet ruled himself out of the leadership contest. Clarke, Reid, Straw, Milliband and so on have all stepped back, and Michael Meacher seems to be the only candidate to take on Gordon Brown. But wait, what about Charles Clarkes' partner in crime in launching the '2020 vision' website a couple of months ago to debate the future of the Labour party, TB's neighbour in the North East, frequently tipped as a future leader of the Labour party, conveniently out of the front line of politics for almost the whole of the Iraq war, and who hasn't yet ruled himself out of standing for the leadership?

Step forward, Alan Milburn MP.