Can Mammon Be Moral?

Bankers should see their job as a vocation and adopt higher ethical standards, the governor of the Bank of England has said. 

More on Mark Carney's thoughts here, in a BBC report on the 'Conference on Inclusive Capitalism'. The conference, pulling together people who own 1/3 of the worlds investable assets between them (the brain-watering sum of £30 trillion). The 'inclusive' bit seems to be how to share the wealth generated by capitalism with more people. It recognises that capitalism has an image problem, so I'm not sure whether the agenda of a more robust ethic is simple self-preservation, or a genuine concern to do what's right, because it's right, not just because it's of benefit.

Christine Lagarde of the IMF at the same conference: said the changes required both investors and the leaders of financial firms to "take values as seriously as valuations" and "culture as seriously as capital". "Ultimately, we need to ingrain a greater social consciousness - one that will seep into the financial world and forever change the way it does business," 

That would be nice, but it's not going to happen within the current system: how do you award bonuses for moral behaviour? And if you wanted people who valued morals as highly as money, then you wouldn't be employing people whose prime motivation was to get a bonus anyway. The bonus system gives the City leverage over its employees, for Lagardes words to come true, the bosses would need to abandon the power the bonus system gives them, and the workforce would need to become motivated by something entirely different. Capitalism is about making money. It spits out social consciousness like a bad taste. Unless you hard wire fair trade, living wage, etc. into the system through legislation and as a precondition of doing business, the system will carry on as it is. The UK governments failed attempts to persuade banks to lend more to small business as a precondition of state support is one small (by global standards) example of how difficult this is. Nudge theory is not going to work, moral responsibility simply will not 'seep into the financial world'.

Meanwhile in the world of mere mortals, Justin Welby is taking the first steps on deliving on his promise to compete Wonga out of business. With 7m people using high cost credit providers, the CofE is piloting a 'Credit Champions Network' in 3 dioceses. More details here, Looks like it will be an evolving thing, a huge challenge to take on, but exactly the sort of thing the church should be involved in. 

Christmas Gifts: Archbishop v Advertisers

There's a Justin Welby interview with money saving expert Martin Lewis due for broadcast this evening, which is already making the news. Here's some of it:

The archbishop said that if he suggested that people should stop giving Christmas gifts, no-one would listen.

"It's obviously not what Christmas is about but to be absolutely honest, there's not that much point in saying it because nobody's going to pay attention," he said.

He added: "Giving at Christmas reflects that generosity of God. So be generous in a way that shows love and affection rather than trying to buy love and affection," he said.

"You can't buy it, you can show it, and when you show it, it comes back at you with interest.

"Save up for the Christmas budget, be sensible, don't put pressure on your finances - don't make your life miserable with Christmas.

"Share love and affection with reasonable gifts that demonstrate you really care for someone. That makes for the best Christmas you could ever have."

The CofE daily bulletin also has some of the coverage. There is a relentless attempt by advertisers to define what Christmas is about, and of course their false paradise includes us spending more money than last year on stuff we never knew we could manage without. I hope the Archbishops voice is heard above the beeping credit card machines.

Welby vs Wonga

From an interview with Total Politics

His engagement in the financial world goes further still. A plan for the church to develop credit unions has been floated, with Welby proud that the church is “putting our money where our mouth is” in developing an alternative to payday money-lenders. The plan, he says, is to create “credit unions that are both engaged in their communities and are much more professional – and people have got to know about them.”

It will, he adds, be a “decade-long process”, but Welby is ready for the battle with the payday giants. “I’ve met the head of Wonga and I’ve had a very good conversation and I said to him quite bluntly we’re not in the business of trying to legislate you out of existence, we’re trying to compete you out of existence.” He flashes that smile again. “He’s a businessman; he took that well.”

It's quite something when an interview with the Archbishop of Canterbury is reported with headlines about a showdown with one of the UK's most toxic businesses (see also here and here), rather than about sex. Welby has already succeeded in changing the agenda. And if the Church can do something to dissolve the market for 6000% APR loans then maybe there are more worthwhile things to do than argue about bishops in dresses. 

It's worth reading the interview in full, it covers a lot of ground, and has a lot of thought-provoking stuff, including about safeguarding, politics, the monarchy, and the future of the church:

“People still tend to turn to the Church in pretty large numbers when something important happens: birth of children, bereavement, or on other occasions. Just before I became archbishop I did what we call a prayer journey through five cities: in Norwich, Coventry, London, Truro, Chichester, and in total over those five days 12500 people came. 

What that said to me was when we are actually very hospitable, when we do manage to give the impression of being signed up members of the human race, when we're not bossing people around too much there's a very strong response and all the churches I have been in, have been a member of, or for that matter have been involved in leading have grown, and I know an awful lot of rapidly growing churches. The Diocese of London numbers have grown 70 per cent over the last 15 years. You can do it. There's no reason.... my new adviser on evangelism, my old friend Chris Russell, is absolutely brilliant. What he says is they come in because it's community. When people find a community where they are loved and cared for they find that very attractive.”

Justin Welby: Banks, Service and Society

There's an excellent article by Justin Welby on the banking crisis and our response to it, summarised in the Independent yesterday. He makes several good points (quotes in blue):

 - The free market has failed, and always will, because it's got people in it (it is clear that rational market theory and its relatives have been undermined by the events of the past five years. Adam Smith’s general cynicism about the tendency of any group of business people, when meeting together, to create a cartel and ensure maximum profitability, has been shown to be justified, both in its own terms and as a general reflection (which he understood well) of the susceptibility of human-made systems to human failings.)

 - we had an economic blind spot to financial services, and came to rely on them too heavily. When you realise that betting shops are included as a 'financial service', that should ring a few alarm bells.

 - Financial services have served only themselves, and lost sight of a wider social purpose. Welby notes the failure of financial services to enable society to flourish -- what in Catholic social teaching is known as the “common good.” Much of the financial-services industry became essentially self- regarding, and one result was that small and medium-size businesses as well as poor areas were neglected, often unable to obtain credit.

Welby's prescription includes:
 - see banking as a utility (separated from investment banking) like water or gas, and treat it as such. 
 - avoid complex regulations - they tend to be hard to enforce, hard to follow, and serve as a job creation scheme for lawyers but not much else. 
 - have professional qualifications for the financial sector, including an ethical dimension: qualifications that enable people to reflect on their own conduct and examine their own consciences as a matter of self-discipline, in the same way as they seek to balance their book at the end of a trading day.

He concludes:
There are no simple answers to the current crisis in banking, but there are simple principles. They come down to saying that financial services must serve society, and not rule it. They must be integrated into the economy, not semidetached. They must recognize human fallibility, not assume the effectiveness of human imagination.

These three principles would work well for most organisations, including the church. A church which serves society, which is integrated into it, which recognises its own fallibility and doesn't assume it's right.

The 12 Tax Dodgers of Christmas

Ht 38 Degrees. High res version of this pic available for posters etc. here

The Rowan Williams quote that's not in the headlines

"We have to question what we mean by growth. The ability to produce more and more consumer goods (not to mention financial products)... sets up a vicious cycle in which it is necessary all the time to create new demand for goods and thus new demands on a limited material environment for energy sources and raw materials. The hectic inflation of demand creates personal anxiety and rivalry. By systematically depleting the resources of the planet, it systematically destroys the basis for long-term wellbeing."

Rowan Williams, as leaked to the Observer today. He's said stuff like this before, but such is our new media goldfish attention span that it's portrayed as news. The ongoing Eurozone crisis, and the global slowdown, is begging the same question: is consumer capitalism sustainable growth, or cancerous?

Of course, it shifts more copy for the Observer to headline on the Tory-bashing stuff about the Big Society. And it's much more comfortable for most of us to read about that, than about the Dark Side of our current economic model and spending habits. The psychological cost of consumer capitalism is epidemic depression, anxiety, insecurity and greed, the environmental cost is a planet that's wasting away. But if that's too depressing to contemplate, we can always buy more stuff to drown out the prophets.

There are also questions to ask about how the paper got hold of the quotes in the first place: it would be supremely ironic if it turned out to be a bit of marketing by the publishers.

Capitalism 2 Sport/Free Speech/Democracy 0

Here are the Olympic Rings.

I wonder what would happen if I put them into my blog title bar, or changed my Twitter avatar to a picture of the rings. A spell in prison looks like a possibility, with some draconian brand protection going on around the Ol****cs.

Meanwhile the engine noise at Formula One drowns out the sounds of protest and death in Bahrain, because it wouldn't do to let the sponsors down. Do Formula 1 and its bosses care? Do the drivers have a conscience, and how much contractual freedom do they have to exercise it?

Though at time of writing, there may still be time for Jeremy Clarkson and the boys to break into the pit lane and paint 'Free Bahrain' on the side of all the cars. Or for all the drivers to don 'Pray4Bahrain' t-shirts, to be unveiled at the podium ceremony. It's maybe a bit much to make parallels with the Hunger Games, but is it possible to win in such a way as to make a statement about the parameters of the competition?

The Unfamiliar Sound of the CofE Getting its Act Together

Update: good interview with Rowan Williams by the BBC.

The Diocese of London finally got on the front foot yesterday with this statement/action about the St. Pauls situation. Amongst other things, it notes the re-engagement of Giles Fraser in the process, and the appointment of Ken Costa to investigate reconnecting finance and ethics. Alongside came the Archbishop of Canterburys statement, which appears to endorse the 'Robin Hood tax' and speaks of the 'idolatry of high finance'.

Fraser first: good news, this enables the CofE to get one of its more media-savvy clerics back on the front line, to share duties with Pete Broadbent, Sally Hitchiner and others. It also, more importantly, may allow for the publication of the St. Pauls report into City of London ethics, which was due to be published last week until Frasers resignation. Since it was put together by an institute which he ran, it wouldn't have made sense to make it public at the time, but perhaps now it can be.

Ken Costa: most well known for his connections with Holy Trinity Brompton and the Alpha Course, Costa is also behind the excellent God at Work course/book, which seeks to help Christians reconnect faith and work in a number of practical ways. He's been quite busy of late, and his recent speech in the City of London about capitalism and morality is well worth reading, for a flavour of the kind of critique we might see more of from CofE sources:

Morality is both taught and caught. But that means it can also be forgotten and lost. Whatever the reality is, the perception is certainly that the financial world has forgotten or lost moral moorings, and there is deep public anger at this.

My feeling is that governments will not long be able to ignore or resist this anger, and will be compelled to respond to some of the more ambitious calls for intervention and regulation. And, well-intentioned as these may be, it is unlikely to be successful.

If you want a briefer version of his argument, try this piece in last weeks Financial Times. Costa is no anti-capitalist. He believes that a fundamentally capitalist economy can be redeemed, but only by recovering a sound ethical basis. I'm not sure I'm with him on that, but one step in the right direction is better than none. And, more importantly, he can make this argument in a way which makes sense to the financial and business sector, rather than in a way they can simply dismiss as a bunch of anarchists in tents.

The 'Restoring Trust in the City' initiative, which Costa was addressing, is looking at 'ethical behaviour' in the City, but to be honest it looks pretty weak. Any moral critique of mammon which doesn't mention the word 'justice', and have a pretty robust understanding of it, isn't going to float very far. We don't need codes of practice, we need justice and love in place of greed and individualism. That's where the Robin Hood tax perhaps comes in, depending on how the proceeds can be used.

By putting both Costa and Fraser into the mix, the Diocese of London looks like it's trying to have a foot in both camps (literally). Costa is a son of the City, Fraser is probably more at home on St Pauls steps than in its vestry. That could be a classic Anglican recipe for compromise, or it might actually be incredibly fruitful. Watch this space.

Wanted: A Proper Debate About Consumer Capitalism

Only in Britain. We've never been very good about talking about the things that really matter, and it's bizarre that, as we've finally become more open in talking about sex, death, religion and politics (well, maybe with the exception of death), we've also lost the taste for serious conversation. It's now been the best part of a generation since we had an ideologically based political party, and Karl Marx would have his work cut out identifying one opiate of the people from the many candidates: lottery, celebrity culture, mobile phones, shopping, social media, sex. Pretty much anything except religion.

And so it is that, when a protest about how our economic system is run, a chance to debate some of the fundamental things in our society, finally hit the headlines for seven days running, we blew it. Instead of a substantial discussion about the consumer society, vast city pay packets, our crippling dependence on the banks, what do we have? The pretty trivial issue of whether a Cathedral was right to close on health and safety grounds. Only in Britain could the chance of a fundamental debate over the foundations of our society be scuppered by Health and Safety.

What have we been talking about:
 - Should St. Pauls have closed?
 - Should Giles Fraser have resigned over something that hasn't yet happened?
 - Would Jesus be in the camp, or in the cathedral? Or neither?
and there is now the unedifying spectacle of Anglicans publicly criticising each other (though I guess that's what I'm doing now!), and groups with little sympathy for the CofE pitching in to rub salt in the wound.

There has been an opportunity this week for the church to speak about Jesus message, to articulate a biblical ideology of wealth, poverty, justice, and money. St. Pauls has, apprently, a report ready to be published on the morality of City of London capitalism. Provided it is presentable and well-argued, this is precisely the time to go public with it. There will never be more attention on St. Pauls and its views than there is now, and it could take the debate in a whole new direction.

After all, what should we be talking about?
 - Developing an alternative to a Western economy based on debt, and a global economy biased against the poor.

 - Looking at the crippling economic, social and psychological consequences of consumer capitalism, and the epidemic of debt, depression and social breakdown that has come in its wake.

 - A robust public ideology of justice ('fairness' sounds a bit too weak and whiny for the phenomenal greed and inequalities we are dealing with here), that refuses to be held to ransom by people threatening to take their business or tax receipts elsewhere, one which values justice, integrity and community higher than profit.

 - Revisiting the whole structure of work and family, which has changed out of all recognition in 2 generations. The 24 hour society, twin incomes to prop up inflated mortgages, a toxic mix of overwork for the employed and no work for the unemployed, the increase pressure to offload children to state-sponsored childcare, and an ossified and overpriced housing market. How did we get here, and is it where we want to be?

 - Whether the current 'hands off' government approach really holds any water: lecturing banks, energy companies and city bosses has so far failed completely. We are rapidly reaching the point (maybe we have already) where corporations are more powerful than governments. Can this be tolerated? Is there an alternative? Can business be humanised, can we find an alternative trump card to profit and economics, and if so how?

 - The debt crunch has revealed just how weak and vulnerable the Western economies are. That the Eurozone is now actively going cap in hand to China is deeply worrying. The final act of Western democracy, as the sun set on its empire, was to max out its credit card and turn to an oppressive, rights-denying, church-suppressing, web-censoring regime for help, promising to lobotomise its conscience in payment. (Gordon Browns greatest gift to the British people was his '5 economic tests' for entering the Euro, tests which would never be passed as long as Brown was Chancellor. History may smile upon him for this.) Is there a way to keep Britain from this route? Even if there is, what will a world look like where appeasement of China is the pre-requisite for doing business? What will it mean for the oppressed Chinese themselves, for the world to go silent?

 - Plus a whole stack of issues around trade, global poverty, the conditions in which many Western consumer goods are produced (including, probably, some of the tents outside St. Pauls and the clothing worn within it), global warming etc. All of which, at root, are moral as well as economic questions.

Sorry, this is a bit of a rant, but I'm so frustrated. Perhaps I should pack my tent for London and hope to catch the eye of a camera crew. Perhaps taking my dog collar would help.

A Tribute To Steve Jobs?

Fridays Guardian had a full page advert from Diesel, which read "The best way to forecast the future is to invent it. Thankyou Steve. Steve Jobs, 1955-2011" and ended with the Diesel logo at the bottom with a signature (the CEO?).

Is this....
1. Cynical exploitation of a mans name and death by a brand and a newspaper to make money/increase brand sympathy?
2. A fitting capitalist-style tribute to one of it's most successful sons?
3. Both?

High Street Good Samaritan

The most obvious translation of the parable of the Good Samaritan into the present day is the 'have a go heroes' who intervene when someone is getting beaten up by a gang. Here is a different version of the story, involving a man on the road from M&S to WHS.....

Whilst in Yeovil WH Smiths today I witnessed an elderly gent being accosted by the Talk Talk sales team (Safety in number). They enticed him into a conversation which it was obvious he did not want.

I left them to talk for a while, I was in no doubt this gent did not have the slightest interest in the product. The sales man was still keen to keep going.Enough was enough, I intervened, I asked the gent if he wanted to know more or be free to continue on his day. The gent looked relieved.

I asked to see a manger for WH Smiths, I think I spoke to the assistant manger (no introduction or badge). Who didn’t really appear even slightly interested, he said that the sales people on the door are arranged by head office, and that they had complaints before. With a little more pressure he agreed to speak to the sales people.

Save someone from a gang of robbers today! Thinking about Christian witness on the high street, maybe a far more effective and loving 'ministry' would be to replace the open air preaching/drama/dance/thurible juggling with teams of Good Samaritans who can loiter near the people with clipboards who prowl the pedestrianised zones and shopping centres, intervening to give people the chance to walk away if it looks like they're being pressurised into signing anything.

ht Yeovil Blog.

Do our Supermarkets Pay Suppliers a Living Wage?

The answer is probably 'no'. A new report just out highlights what high street brands are doing (or, to be more precise, not doing) to ensure that workers further back in the supply chain are paid properly.

Lets Clean Up Fashion 2009 has a summary of the state of the High Street, and a brand-by-brand breakdown of how the big names are responding to the challenge of doing justice by their workforce.

from the Introduction:
Since 2006, when our first Clean Up Fashion Report was produced, the world has changed.

Then, the consumer was king and the global economy was riding high. Now, the credit crunch has taken the sparkle from the high street – and led to some household names disappearing
from UK towns and cities (and from this report).

Workers and consumers in the UK have been feeling the pinch and turning to the low cost retailers to help cut their monthly budgets. It’s not just in the UK that workers are suffering the effects of the credit crunch: in countries from Cambodia to Turkey, Bangladesh to Honduras factories are closing and workers are losing even the paltry salaries afforded them by the garment industry. Those that have managed to keep their jobs are facing an increasingly insecure future as a result of economic and environmental crises.

The scandalous truth is that the majority of workers in the global fashion industry rarely earn more than two dollars a day in an industry worth over £36 billion a year in the UK alone. Many have to work excessive hours just to get this meagre amount and have no possibility to earn wages needed to properly feed, clothe, house and educate their families.

...For ten years brands have been promising both workers and consumers that living wages will be paid, despite evidence to the contrary. Workers have been told to wait while brands work out what a living wage is and how to make sure they don’t have to pay the cost. Consumers have been told not to worry – brands care and are doing the best they can. The problem is their best isn’t good enough and workers can’t wait any longer.

Whilst I'm here, on other business:
- good to see Cranmer is back, I was getting worried
- waiting to see the small print. It may be a mixed blessing for Anglo-Catholics. Wonder if FCA saw that coming? Best commentary by far (as always) comes from the Beaker Folk.
- very good sermon on thankfulness by Alison at our church on Sunday, listen online here. Slightly fuzzy, but good stuff.

Markets need Morals: Case Study 1, 'Young Writers' by Forward Press

'Markets need Morals', says Gordon Brown. I agree.




Last week our daughter came home with a letter (addressed directly to her, c/o the school) and a certificate telling her she'd won a poetry competition, and that her poem had been specially selected to be published in a special book. £13 to you the proud parents for a softback A5 book with the poem in, and bulk offers if you want to place orders for Christmas for the in-laws.

We were thrilled, and very proud. But something didn't seem quite right. We didn't recall, at the time she entered this competition, there being anything about buying a book.

The following day, we discover that lots of other people in her class have 'won'. It turned out to be every single one of them. This has happened before: another school known to us whose children entered the 'Young Writers' competition, and all 'won'. The book, when it arrived, was a huge disappointment in terms of the quality of the product, and the poems didn't seem to have been 'selected' on merit at all.

There are various things about this I'm not happy with:

- The misleading letter from Young Writers, claiming my daughters poem had been specially selected, when it wasn't.

- The letter addressed directly to our child, basically using the school to distribute a piece of marketing. Any communication through the school should be subject to the schools vetting, but it puts schools in a difficult place if the letters are addressed directly to the children.

- Taking something our child has done and selling it back to us is a particularly grubby bit of marketing. I thought marketing via children was illegal, and if it isn't, it should be. It's particularly cynical to play on parents and childrens feelings of pride - 'our child is in print!' just to make money. Some things are too precious to be traded in.

- The disappointment of the children, when they realise that they haven't 'won', and that everyone seems to have got the same prize.

It looks pretty lucrative: one selection of 'winners' is here - if each person on that list represents a print run of A5 booklets at £13+ a throw, then they must be doing quite well out of it. I tried and failed to find a place on the site which previews the books. No previews or reviews on Amazon either, where they come in at £19.99 a throw.

Forward Press, who have been publishing poetry from the general public for years, and they seem to be quite well thought of by the poetry-writing public. I hope this is an aberration. However, this thread on mumsnet suggests they've been doing it for a while, this thread mentions a similar tactic back in 2005, and this thread raises some important data protection issues concerning information about children held by the school.

What do people think?

Should Christians Boycott Tesco?

Stumbled across these comments by Sam Norton, reviewing the book 'Tescopoly' by Andrew Simms

"..(it's) a very thorough overview of the way in which Tesco functions
as a monopolist: one who has joined all the fields together until it is left
alone in the land. In many ways Tesco is simply a highly efficient corporation,
a (rare) example of world-class management in a British company. Yet it is
precisely the fact that it is so efficient, so effective in accomplishing its
aims, that it has had such dispiriting and impoverishing effects on our
communities.

Simms details the ways in which, through the use and abuse of its dominant
market position, Tesco actively harms those who supply it with goods, those who
work within its walls, and the communities within which it finds itself
operating.

For example, Tesco consistently pays its suppliers less than the industry
average, it is consistently late in paying invoices presented to it, especially
by the smallest suppliers, and, through the exercise of essentially bullying
tactics, it is able to 'borrow' more than £2bn a year from its suppliers for
free.

Internationally it suppresses wages in the third world and strips
communities of their dignity (I was astonished to read that in a farm in
Zimbabwe children are taught to sing "Tesco is our dear friend" in order to
impress the visiting potentates.)

My own concern is primarily with the impact on local communities in
England, and here Simms marshalls fascinating evidence. For every £1 spent in a
supermarket more than 90p leaves a local community; whereas the impact of a
'local box scheme' (ie locally produced and delivered vegetables) is quite the
reverse - for every £1 spent, £2.50 is generated in local wealth. In terms of
jobs, supermarkets undermine a community further: it takes £95,000 worth of
sales in a supermarket to sustain a single job, the figure for smaller stores is
£42,000.

Beyond this, the supermarkets, especially Tesco, support the use of casual
and unlicensed labour leading to what is effectively a modern form of serfdom.
Put simply the arrival of a supermarket chain in a town sucks money and
livelihoods away from the local area in order to agglomerate capital for
shareholders. Supermarkets impoverish communities in terms of income, social
life and common civility."

We have a local 'Tesco express', where at the moment we do a lot of our shopping, though we use a box system for veg, and a local dairy. Sam concludes that 'it is the duty of all Christians to boycott Tesco', though you'll need to read his whole piece to see how he reaches that conclusion.

Top Trumps on the Stornoway-Lewis Ferry

On Sunday the Beeb had an item on its main news programme about the first Sunday sailing of the Stornoway-Lewis ferry.

Operators Caledonian MacBrayne claim that they'd be breaking the law not to. According to the BBC report: "CalMac said it could be breaking equality laws if it did not run ferries seven days a week. It said religion or beliefs were not valid reasons to refuse to run the ferry.

Supporters of the service said it would be good for tourism. They said it would offer more flexibility to travellers.

As the ferry left Stornoway a crowd of several hundred gathered to applaud, and wave to those on board.

The local council for the Western Isles opposes the sailing, (e.g. here) so this is not just about a few religious traditionalists versus progress, CalMac seems to have gone against the will of the local people. That's much more than 'religion or beliefs'. It also strikes me that the Equality Act 2006 is a convenient place to hide: CalMac wouldn't be doing this if it didn't make them some money.

Their spokesman has at least recognised that they are 'reacting to demand' rather than simply doing the bidding of the law, though launching sailings with only 5 days notice is an interesting tactic. With only a few days notice, anyone from the island who wanted to protest about the sailing would have had to travel to the mainland on Saturday and lodged overnight, so the numbers of protesters at the port is immaterial. This seems to have been deliberately timed to get round local opposition.

Thoughts:
1. If the Equality Act means that observing Sunday as a day of rest is illegal, then there are a lot of us who would like to see that legal advice. If the Act really means 'every day must be exactly the same as every other' then that's pretty grim.

2. Given that folk can go pretty much everywhere else in the British Isles on a Sunday, is it really so bad that one part of it is allowed to do things differently? One argument made on the news report was that it was hitting business on the island, and that people were moving away. But is economics always the trump card?

3. Whose needs take preference here? The island is a home to its local population, but most of the CalMac demand (I imagine) comes from tourists. If local people want to have a day when their island isn't swarming with tourists, then what's wrong with that? Just because demand is there doesn't mean it has to be satisfied.

4. Humans aren't made to work 7 days a week, and a community day of rest is a good thing. It's for that community to decide how to observe that, not for commercial interests to decide it for them. Part of the original Sabbath laws was a recognition that there was more to life than work, it was a recognition that we're not slaves, we're human beings rather than human doings. Andrew Marr calls the late 20th century 'the triumph of shopping over politics', but Sabbath reminds us that there's more to life than merely earning and spending money.

5. Does 'religion or beliefs' have any standing at all in decision making, or are they trumped every time? And in this case, what counts as a belief? Isn't the dogma that the only bottom line is the bottom line a mere belief, open to challenge and dispute? Or does CalMac know that by painting its opponents as reactionary Puritans the vast majority of people will automatically side with the ferry company, as they hear the dog whistle sound?

the press release from Keep Sunday Special notes that CalMac is government-backed, and that their decision overrides the will of local people. Another report quotes a hotelier on the island who is now having bookings cancelled because folk can leave the island a day earlier at the weekend.

The danger in all of this is that it's just another 'church says no' story, which depicts Christians as fun-quenching killjoys stuck in the 18th century. It all depends on how you tell the story: are the Christians reactionaries opposed to 'progress', or beleagured underdogs fighting to protect a valued way of life against the march of capitalism?

Pass the Salt

An extract from Gordon Browns Guardian interview today
…private and public worlds have both shown themselves to be irresponsible. “The public realm and the free market realm are subject to inherent weaknesses that have got to be underpinned by having shared values that lead to shared rules,” he says, in some version, many times. Values, values, values, rules, rules, rules.

What are our ’shared values’? Hmmmm

- The expenses scandal rumbles on, latest allegation is that 50 MP’s claimed more for council tax than they were actually billed. The only 2 MPs to have quit parliament are the Speaker and a Labour chap who was set up by his own party.
Shared values: greed, secrecy, taking the public for fools, newspaper sales, censorship, troughing, pride, corruption.

- Formula 1 teams are threatening a breakaway because Max Mosley won’t allow them to spend as much as they want to. They’re portraying themselves as righteous but wronged. One of these teams was penalised for cheating earlier in the year, another accused of spying a couple of years ago.
Shared values: greed, sex, power, global warming, deceit, testosterone.

- Setanta Sports is running out of cash, and it looks like their arms race with Sky will be a short one. Riding the avalanche of cash which has stolen the soul of football are folk like Ronaldo, now the most expensive player in the world. After a season of protestations of loyalty to Man U, one of the games most notorious divers has followed the money.
Shared values: greed, winking, cheating, lying, devil take the hindmost, market share. Someone mumbled something about the ‘beautiful game’ but I couldn’t see it for the size of the price tag.

- As unemployment surges past 2 million, RBS’s Fred Goodwin has finally agreed to reduce his pension, under threat of legal action. He’s accepted a £3.7m increase in his pension pot, instead of the original £8.2m, having already pocketed a 7 figure lump sum.
Shared values: whatever I can get away with, greed, inequality, rewarding failure.

- The global total of ‘undernourished’ people has hit 1 billion for the first time, in the wake of the global financial crisis. There is still enough wealth to go round, but it’s not going round. Rich nations have defaulted on their commitments on debt and aid, as they have on commitments to reduce carbon emissions, a failure which will hit the poorest most. The rules favour the rich: for example rich nations have pre-ordered swine flu vaccines, whilst poorer nations can’t afford to.
Shared values: greed, global warming, death, out of sight out of mind, selfishness, consumer capitalism.

Basically if you have the money, you can set the rules. I’m struggling to think of a single area of life where the rules are set by those with the least power. Help me out here?

Brown is right: unless there is an alternative set of values to ‘all of the above’, the rules will continue to favour the immoral.

We had to chuck some bread the other day which had gone mouldy in the warmer weather. Before fridges and chemicals, salt was the most common preservative, and Jesus once told his followers to be the ’salt of the earth’. Of the two opposing forces, decay and preservation, decay is the natural state (see above). It requires an active choice to be a force of health and preservation. There is a sour taste of decay about the stories above, someone please pass the salt.

This is a cross post from Touching Base, my regular column on the Wardman Wire.

It's the Economy, Stupid, not Rowan Williams

At least one blogger has laid into Rowan Williams for being a 'Marxist', in the light of his critique of the crisis in the banking sector. Williams, and John Sentamu, are both singing from the same hymn sheet in condemning some City practices and calling for better scrutiny of the financial markets.

It turns out that Rowan Williams cites Karl Marx only once, and this is what he says:
"Marx long ago observed the way in which unbridled capitalism became a kind of mythology, ascribing reality, power and agency to things that had no life in themselves; he was right about that, if about little else." (emphasis mine)
(Ht Ruth Gledhill, Times main story here, and more quotes on her blog here)

So Williams says that Marx got just 1 thing right, and now he's a Marxist? That must make me a member of Al Qaeda, since I agree with Osama bin Laden on the existence of God. I must admit that Times headline really doesn't help "Archbishop of Canterbury speaks in support of Karl Marx" - that's not quite what Williams is getting at! But hey, now an army of the usual suspects will pile in, misquote Rowan without reading what he's actually saying, and the focus will switch.

So lets stick with the real story here. The Archbishop of York said to a group of bankers (you've got to love his guts - talk about Daniel in the lions den):

"To a bystander like me, those who made £190million deliberately underselling the shares of HBOS, in spite of its very strong capital base, and drove it into the bosom of Lloyds TSB Bank, are clearly bank robbers and asset strippers.

"We find ourselves in a market system which seems to have taken its rules of trade from Alice in Wonderland, where the share value of a bank is no longer dependent on the strength of its performance but rather on the willingness of the Government to bail it out, or rather on whether the Government has announced its intentions so to do."

and the real bomb:
"the President of the United States recently announced a $700 billion bailout plans for banks and financial institutions. One of the ironies about this financial crisis is that it makes action on poverty look utterly achievable. It would cost $5 billion to save six million children's lives. World leaders could find 140 times that amount for the banking system in a week. How can they now tell us that action for the poorest on the planet is too expensive?"

If you were planning to get enraged about Rowan Williams, don't. If you were planning to get enraged about media reporting, don't. If you were planning to get enraged about bloggers not getting their facts right don't. Get enraged about this. Bush can find hundreds of billions of dollars to bail out the banking sector, but not even 1% of this to stop people dying of starvation or for lack of clean water. If this doesn't show that capitalism is sick to the heart, then I'm Karl Marx.

Update: Thinking Anglicans has a good round up of links for this one.