Secular and Catholic France grows evangelicals

"From a postwar population of around 50,000, French evangelicals are now estimated to number between 450,000 and 500,000. According to the Evangelical Federation of France (FEF), the number of churches has risen from 800 in 1970 to over 2,200 today." That's quite a big change. It looks like a lot of the growth is in Pentecostal style churches but not all. The Guardian article has a kind of comment overview:
For secular and Catholic France, a shock to the system: the rise of the evangelicals | World news | The Guardian. However, if you're interested in a bit more detail on the way the figures look, and you read French, then the article in Le Figaro is better: Le protestantisme en pleine mutation (if your French is rudimentary, the Google translation kind of works but is very stilted). The occasion is the 500 anniversary of the birth of John Calvin (in France, recall).

The internet is killing storytelling | Ben Macintyre - Times Online

I think that Ben McIntyre in this article, The internet is killing storytelling | Ben Macintyre - Times Online is drawing on an article last year:

In a remarkable recent essay in the Atlantic Monthly Nicholas Carr admitted that he can no longer immerse himself in substantial books and longer articles in the way he once did. “What the net seems to be doing is chipping away at my capacity for concentration and contemplation,” he wrote. “My mind now expects to take in information the way the net distributes it: in a swift-moving stream of particles.”
If the culprit is obvious, so is the primary victim of this radically reduced attention span: the narrative, the long-form story, the tale. Like some endangered species, the story now needs defending from the threat of extinction in a radically changed and inhospitable digital environment

I think it may have the hallmarks of a 'moral panic' article. (However it's probably quite a good teaching resource ...)

There are various holes in the argument. Like the fact that much of what is happening on blogs, twitter etc is storytelling: people are narrating their own lives and those of others around them. The point about long stories is less telling when we realise that the modern novel is -well- modern: I've just been commending the Confession of St Patrick to some students, pointing out that it doesn't take long to read; people didn't write 'War and Peace' -sized tomes before printing and the turn to the introspective conscience. At least the author recognises this in the last paragraph. It's really attention span he's worried about, but I think the jury's still out on that one: we need to work out what the new technologies are doing to our sensoria in dialogue with culture and it's too early to tell for sure; my guess is that ADD aside, we have the same attention capabilities, we just use them differently and there will be upsides and downsides to that.

In fact, it's worth looking at an article, by Jamais Cascio, published about a year after Carr's which responds to the concerns in much the same way, only in more depth and naming what may be becoming the change to our mental reflexes: fluid intelligence. Like me, he's concerned that it's too early to tell for sure. However, he goes on to make a few tentative explorations of the kinds of effects mind-enhancing drugs and technologies could have; this is important territory and, given the speed of change, not too early for some of us to be developing perspectives to be able to assess the matters as they present -without the moral panic reaction of 'new/different=bad'. He ends with this intriguing couple of paras.

The bad news is that these divergent paths may exacerbate cultural divides created by already divergent languages and beliefs. National rivalries often emphasize cultural differences, but for now we’re all still standard human beings. What happens when different groups quite literally think in very, very different ways?

The good news, though, is that this diversity of thought can also be a strength. Coping with the various world-histori­cal dangers we face will require the greatest possible insight, creativity, and innovation. Our ability to build the future that we want—not just a future we can survive—depends on our capacity to understand the complex relationships of the world’s systems, to take advantage of the diversity of knowledge and experience our civilization embodies, and to fully appreciate the implications of our choices. Such an ability is increasingly within our grasp. The Nöocene awaits.

Hmmmm. Noocene sounds a bit like there's an influence from Teilhard de Chardin: noosphere ...

A bright nuclear future?

I think I recall blogging about a number of these. Worth revisiting if you're beginning to think 'what the hey; surely nuclear must have a place at the table?' A bright nuclear future: true or false? | Jeremy Leggett | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk Here are some of my 'favourites':

This July, a heatwave shut a third of French reactors, because rivers became too hot to act as coolant. France was forced to import electricity from the UK.

6) Things got little better as winter approached. With almost one third of France's reactors out of service for maintenance and other reasons, France will have to import electricity at peak hours during the winter – for the second year running – to avoid the risk of blackouts.
...There were 1,767 leaks, breakdowns, or other safety "events" at British nuclear plants between 2001 and 2008. A Nuclear Installations Inspectorate (NII) report says about half were serious enough "to have had the potential to challenge a nuclear safety system".

9) A radioactive leak, undiscovered for 14 months, was found at Sellafield just before a visit by the prime minister. A board of inquiry concluded the leak went unnoticed because "managerial controls over the line were insufficient and there was inadequate inspection". Meanwhile, elsewhere on the site two containers of highly radioactive material went missing. The operator said it was most likely that "the anomaly lies within the accounting procedures".

Now while some of those are fixable, I'm still left concerned that human error or mismanagement could be a factor when the stuff we're talking about is so scary ...

Signs of the flesh

'Flexitarian' may be taking over from 'piscetarian' but what's most interesting is the move towards less meat eating. Come on Christians.... BBC NEWS | Magazine | The rise of the non-veggie vegetarian: "Mintel categorises 23% of the population as meat-reducers, people attempting to eat less meat, probably mainly for health reasons. Another factor is climate change - livestock rearing produces methane, which is 23 times more powerful than carbon dioxide in global warming terms, according to Lord Stern. It identifies 10% as meat-avoiders, people who plan to eat little or no meat but sometimes lapse, and who might well accept the ethical basis of vegetarianism.

'More than a quarter of people say they eat less meat than they did five years ago. There is a shifting change in the diet,' says Ms Gellatley. 'A third of our membership are meat reducers.'"

Individualism depresses us

As I hope many readers will know, the Christian gospel has a nuanced relationship to cultures: on the one hand it has adaptability and can, indeed should, find expression within human cultures. There are issues of identity, of communication and translation involved in that. Indeed, in some cases the gospel even acts to affirm and develop vernacular cultures (see Lamin Sanneh's work on the way that missions impacted west African culture). On the other hand the gospel drives critique of culture (and so campaigns to change things: suttee in India (William Carey being a big name there), or the slave trade).

This research indicates the psychological effects of culture with implications for social and individual health. The article sent to me by a colleague is this one Britain's 'me culture' making us depressed - Telegraph:

'Nations with greater individualism showed higher prevalence of anxiety and depression,' she said. She said that in contrast, the collectivist and conformist cultures of East Asian countries such as China and Taiwan seem to 'buffer' the inhabitants from poor mental health.

What we should notice here, broadly speaking, is that this is an affirm /challenge issue for the gospel: there is a great deal of Christian affirmation of taking individual and personal responsibility and of personal decision which works well with individualism. On the other hand we recognise that we are social beings both in creation and in redemption (solidarity in Adam and -at least potentially- in Christ) and that there is a huge streak of biblical stuff about being our neighbour's keeper and exercising and developing solidarity for justice and the common good.

So now, with this research emerging, we need to take on board how the balance of things affects aggregate health. Another cause to reflect on texts like that about causing 'little ones' to sin, perhaps ... ? How should Christians act and do mission and pastoral care to build greater and healthy solidarity without eroding right degrees of individual and personal responsibility; this is clearly now a missional question. Indeed, do we need to ask further questions about how this works? Who does it bear down most heavily on? Who does it marginalise most? How does paying attention to the most affected by it help us to understand the sinningness of our society?

And who'd'a' thunk it? It turns out we're more individualistic than the USAmericans ....

That said, there are some relevant questions from comments on the page. Predictably, for the Torygraph, a lot of questioning which is thinly veiled contempt for 'socialised' stuff and a riding of ideological hobby horses which is less convincing because of a conflation of individualism with matters such as freedom and government regulation.

The problem with individualism as an ideology is that it tends to hide social 'mentalities'. As a Christian, I do feel I have to challenge that particular act of elision: the appearance of 'principalities and powers' etc in the NT indicate a reality of social entities and collective spirituality which can be recognised as being spiritually significant. As some readers will recall, this is an area I'm doing some thinking and writing (when I've a moment or three) about, so this article has gone towards the resources for that. I hope that I'm going to be able to track down the research report on Science Daily.

MPs -still more to do

I just got an email I'd like to ask you to consider acting on. It reads in part:

Today many politicians are telling us to "move on" - the problem is fixed, the beast has been tamed.

I welcome Christopher Kelly's report - and urge MPs to take their medicine and accept his recommendations in full. But this crisis was the result of our failed politics - not the cause. And in truth, yesterday's broken system still stands.

The politicians have had their chance to change: but they've failed. I've just written a letter to the three Party leaders telling them that it's now time for the people to be given a genuine say in how our democracy is run.

If you're fed up with seeing MPs arguing over their second homes and the right to give jobs to their nearest and dearest, while our public services face severe cuts, people are losing their jobs and homes and struggling to repay their mortgages - then you should sign it too:

http://www.power2010.org.uk/notenough

We'll deliver all of the signatures to the Party leaders ...
Our politicians have shown us time and time again that they are neither able nor willing to clean up politics and renew our democracy. The fact that MPs cannot be trusted to have a vote on the Kelly recommendations says it all.

Join us in standing up to broken Westminster politics - join the thousands of people who have already told the politicians that their time has passed and that our future rests in our, not their, hands.

Send the politicians a message by co-signing my letter now:

http://www.power2010.org.uk/notenough

Now more than ever it is clear that if change is to happen - it'll be powered by us. Sign my letter now and join our rallying call for change.

Thank you,

Pam Giddy
Power2010

POWER 2010 | Kelly: Not enough

Methinks he doth not protest too much

As a sometimes protester who thinks that it is important we do have the right to protest, I'm concerned at some of the things I've been hearing about the policing of peaceful protest and the collusion of big business with police authorities in what appears to be a political agenda favourable to corporate interests and against those of ordinary people. Too worried? Well, when they came for the Anarchists ... you know how that story goes. See Mark Thomas' opinion piece here: Doth I protest too much? | Mark Thomas | Comment is free | The Guardian Salient points: "Many of those targeted by the police have committed no crime and are guilty only of non-violent direct action. So it is worth reminding ourselves that protest is legal. The very phrase "domestic extremist" defines protesters in the eyes of the police as the problem, the enemy. Spying on entire groups and organisations, and targeting the innocent, undermines not only our rights but the law ... Protest is part of the democratic process. It wasn't the goodwill of politicians that led them to cancel developing countries' debt, but the protests and campaigning of millions of ordinary people around the world. The political leaders were merely the rubber stamp in the democratic process. ... No police, secret or otherwise, should operate without proper accountability. .."
I think that's all reasonable, but we should recall that the price of freedom is constant vigilance and that this vigilance needs to be exercised towards those who are holding power and exercising police powers on our behalf. At the moment, in a post Twin towers collapse world, we need to be more than averagely vigilant.

The future Superpower rivals: China and India

I'm not sure, now I come to think of it, what defines 'superpower', but by most historical standards I suspect China ought to be so classified and India seems not far behind. Have a look at this opinion piece (admittedly written by an Indian, by the looks of it): Superpower rivalry, Sino-Indian style | Kapil Komireddi | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk The final paragraph says: "The Sino-Indian conflict will define the 21st century in a more complicated manner than the Soviet-American conflict characterised the second half of the 20th. So far, this clash has received very little attention in the west. In the not-too-distant future, people everywhere are going to have to pick sides. The troubled peace of today is necessarily a prelude to the impending war."
I suspect that there is a great deal of truth in this and we should begin thinking about it sooner rather than later. Not least, what kind of effect does this have on global Christianity and vice-versa? Both countries have not insignificant Christian minorities which are somewhat on the edge in terms of persecution, that is to say, Christians are tolerated officially but often suffer local persecution (think Orissa) or pressure for 'unregistered' activity. Such attitudes are likely to be imitated by 'client' states and perhaps actively promoted by the emerging superpowers. Of special interest might be Chinese interests in Africa which are already having 'destabilising' effects in Sudan and other central African states because China is far less likely than the west to link aid to human rights issues.

Nick Griffin attacked by BNP

Well, I thought that letting the BNP have the oxygen of publicity might be a chance for them to show what they're really made of and for their positions to be exposed to proper questioning. What I didn't expect was that the collateral damage might be the opening up of fissures within the BNP itself; see: Nick Griffin attacked by his own BNP supporters over Question Time | Politics | The Observer: "Griffin has claimed that he has dragged the party into the political mainstream. But the resulting backlash from those on his own side suggests many are uncomfortable with the BNP's attempts to cloak itself in more moderate terms."

The Pope's little bombshell

Well whatever the Pope's intentions, this certainly looked like crowing:
"In Rome, Vittorio Messori, who has co-written books with the Pope, said that the Anglican Communion was already losing followers because of female and gay priests." See: 400,000 former Anglicans worldwide seek immediate unity with Rome -Times Online: Of course, what no-one (well, hardly anyone) reports is the steady traffic the other way (me, and several people I've met at my college over the past few years). Perhaps 'we' should offer a special deal for the RC women ordained priests, their bishops and supporters (I blogged about it here)?

Any suggestions for what kind of deal to offer? ;)

Oh, and before you mention it: I don't blame the Pope; it's the logic of the position of papal supremacy that drives it.

Windows 7 set to break retail records -outrageous!

Why outrageous? Well, in the midst of this article: Windows 7 set to break retail records | Technology | guardian.co.uk is the clue: "Vista came in for heavy criticism when it was plagued with problems soon after its launch, but signs are encouraging for Windows 7 so far.
Reviews have been largely positive, and high street retailers say they anticipate strong sales of the software."
Basically the Windows product is not good software and the outrageous thing is that customers have to pay even more money to Microsoft to get a better version: MICROSOFT SHOULD BE GIVING THIS TO VISTA CUSTOMERS !
My operating system (Ubuntu) automatically offers upgrades every six months along with odds and ends of little fixes as and when. That's the way it should be.
Break the Microsoft quasi-monopoly: it's bad software and it's bad for document interchangeability.

BBC, BNP, QT, OK

Worth a read: BBC is right to allow BNP on Question Time, says Mark Thompson | Politics | The Guardian And my 'hear, hear' goes to:

Ben Bradshaw, the culture secretary, said: 'I have always thought we have to take the BNP on. I have always thought they condemn themselves as soon as they open their mouths. In a democracy where they have elected representatives not just at European level but at local level it is very difficult for a broadcaster to exclude them … We should not give these people the opportunity to claim they are being gagged.'

Out of body experiences -brain and selfhood

One of the stranger things to get reported and then subjected to religious and spiritual speculation is the OBE. He's some research that anyone with interest in new spiritualities and brain/spirituality stuff should check out (and certainly those of us involved in interface with new spiritualities are likely to have come across it): Out of your head: Leaving the body behind - life - 13 October 2009 - New Scientist And here's your whetting the appetite titbit: "Other brain regions have been implicated too, including ones close to the TPJ. The emerging consensus is that when these regions are working well, we feel at one with our body. But disrupt them, and our sense of embodiment can float away. This does not, however, explain the most striking feature of out-of-body experiences. 'It's a great puzzle why people, from their out-of-body locations, visualise not only their bodies but things around them, such as other people,' says Brugger. 'Where does this information come from?'"
Be aware as you read the article that the question doesn't get answered with experimental data: only speculations, some of which seem reasonably well-founded but the question isn't really answered. There are some who have a vested interest in mind or soul-body dualism who are very keen to interpret such data as we appear to have in such a way as to support the idea of a 'detachable' something which goes beyond the body. I'm skeptical -partly because it raises further questions about the means of sensing and the means of information storage and retrieval without a brain in direct contact; so an affirmative on this idea just opens up a whole can of worms. Not that such a consideration should foreclose the issue; just that it seems it complicates things. I'm also skeptical because a Christian view of personal wholism doesn't need to defend or even propose a soul-body dualism. The idea of the resurrection of the body would seem to indicate that if it were possible that soul or mind could exist independently of material support, then it is not a state to be desired or set too great a store by ...
I could say more but I'll leave it there -for now at any rate.

BNP accept non-white members

Well, actually, it looks like they're not going to contest the order to change the racist clause in their consitution concerning membership eligibility. Article: BNP's Nick Griffin bows to pressure to accept non-white members | Politics | The Guardian. However, this is probably right: "Shami Chakrabarti, director of Liberty, said the changes would do nothing to alter the BNP's political views.
'A shiny new constitution does not a democratic party make,' she said. 'It would be a pyrrhic victory, to say the least, if anyone thought that giving the BNP a facelift would make the slightest difference to a body with so much racism and hatred pumping through its veins.'"
I'd have thought that in practice it wouldn't change likely recruitment: I really don't see south Asians or Afro-Carribeans queuinng up to join. But then ... how would it be if about 2 million Asian Muslims joined ... and changed the party's consitution and aims and policies? He he he. Presumably Nick Griffin and his merry men would have to go elsewhere. In a way it shows that such a party can't probably legally continue to exist, not if people were really free to join it and did so: by conforming to the law racists contradict their own principles. That said, I'm not sure whether I prefer that they are forced underground or at least not-legally constituted or kept where we can see them ...

Post-Darwinism: The New Synthesis

Some readers may find this review article intriguing: Post-Darwinism: The New Synthesis :: William Grassie :: Global Spiral. This paragraph lays out briefly why I think it's important to those of us interested in the relationship between science and theology and taking interest especially in the recent selfish-gene wars: "It would be nice to have a simple theory of evolution, as Darwin has provided in his elegant algorithm, but the catechism of random drift, universal struggle, survival, reproduction, and differential selection just doesn’t hack it anymore.9 It is time to embrace complexity, symbiosis, multi-level selection, contextuality, and as we will see, even some aspects of Lamarckianism.10 Along the way we can banish the geneticist dogma of “selfish genes,” because genes do absolutely nothing by themselves. Indeed, it is equally valid and descriptively accurate to talk about “sharing genes."
The book it reviews sounds like it should be important to have a look at -especially the coda of the book (some of it, naturally, is quite technical).
The Book? Scott Gilbert and David Epel’s, Ecological Developmental Biology (2009)

Resident Theology: On the Curious Claim That People "Like Jesus" (But Not the Church)

Quite: "If one actually reads the Gospels, instead of assuming nice pretty pictures of a blue-eyed baby Jesus giggling his guts out in celestial bliss, it is clear that the man from Nazareth -- who lived an identifiable human life in the early decades of the first century in occupied Palestine -- is certifiably not in any discernible accord with what American culture 'likes.' In fact, he seems to stand squarely opposed to much of it."
Resident Theology: On the Curious Claim That People "Like Jesus" (But Not the Church)

Email disclaimers deserve this

With thanks to Ben Myers, Faith and Theology: Pet hate #162: quasi-legal email disclaimers. I've been told we legally have to put a disclaimer at the bottom of college emails. I hate doing so: mostly they are longer than the message and I consider that they state the bleedingly obvious -surely it's obvious that a message has intended recipients and that passing it on without permission is a potentially a breach of 'contract' and that it would be polite to point out if something has gone wrong with that and that we aren't going to maliciously pass on malware which is likely to corrupt our own systems. No doubt someone is going to tell me that it pays to be explicit. Anyhow, Ben Myer's version of these is a very tempting substitute:
"The message that you have just read might possibly be legally privileged and/or confidential and is intended only for the use of those to whom it is intended. We hope and insist that no recipient will ever forward, print, copy, scan, read aloud, film, choreograph, broadcast via radio or other media, podcast, vodcast, tweet, blog, translate into foreign languages, transcribe in crayon, versify in iambic pentameter, or otherwise reproduce this message in any manner that would allow any of the message to be viewed by any individual not originally intended as an intended recipient. If you are not the intended recipient, STOP IN THE NAME OF THE LAW. We beseech you in the name of the law: please don't ever copy, forward, disclose, speak of, print, report, joke about, or otherwise use this message or any part of it in any way whatsoever, never ever. If you received this e-mail by mistake, please read this disclaimer IMMEDIATELY, then advise the sender immediately, then delete this message, then empty the trash on your computer, then YOU MUST also use an appropriate software program to permanently erase all traces of the file from your computer's hard drive (and from any other hard drive or portable storage device where the information may be stored). Afterwards, it is strictly prohibited ever to mention, discuss, think of, or remember any of the contents of this message. If you do so, YOU MAY BE LIABLE for litigation or prosecution or indefinite detainment. If you were the intended recipient of this e-mail, you have entered into a BINDING CONTRACT with the sender, allowing you to be imprisoned, interrogated, tortured, exiled, lobotomised, forced to read Dan Brown, deprived of all human rights, and other possible measures that may be introduced from time to time. Thank you."

One of my colleagues has come up with a short version (which may not pass muster as a legal disclaimer) and which manages also to be an advert for Macs (clue: it's to do with which kind of system most virii are written for and I should point out that it is an observation that works for linux too).

Please don't roll back the state like this

I think Will Hutton is right in this respect: "the Tories have a problem. The public now knows that markets fail. Without the injections of capital, liquidity and guarantees for both sides of the banks' balance sheets worth some £1.3 trillion, Britain would now be in the middle of a depression more shocking than the 1930s. To argue that government is the problem just a year after an event like that is intellectually bewildering."
Quite so. A level economics, folks. However, let's also be aware that while the Tories consitute the deep blue sea, a Labour government still theoretically committed to the ID card state and stoutly refusing to honour its manifesto commitments to electoral reform and trying to forget the recommendations of its own commission on electoral reform is perhaps the devil of the proverbial phrase. I'm not happy about either likely outcome of the general election next year. We need not to move into a laissez-faire economy but also we need to pull out of soft-orwellian state surveillance and into a system of government that encourages citizen engagement.
See the whole article: Sorry, David, if you roll back the state, you invite disaster | Will Hutton | Comment is free | The Observer:

Evangelism between Muslims and Christians

Bishop Alan of Bucks gives us a useful introduction to the concord on evangelism which seems to have a common ancestry with the recent concordat between Christian and Muslim leaders in Bradford. It seems to me the Bradford concord (scroll down about half the page to get past the newsy personality stuff to the text of the agreement) has one thing going for it, namely the explicitising of an application of the golden rule in the form of not speaking about the other in a way that they would not recognise as fair.

Anyway, the Bishop helpfully sets out some of the reasoning behind the Leicester statement. You can see it here: Bishop Alan’s Blog: Evangelism between Muslims and Christians I think that the difficulty for evangelicals and their Muslim equivalents (I assume) would be point two: "Acceptance that it is God’s providence that both faith communities exist — a theology of “people of the book” or providence, in which believers feel secure enough about their faith to leave it to God to sort things out in the end."
Now, Bp Alan briefly and helpfully evaluates this:
"Positively, this does engage with reality and express tolerance in a way which is attractive to English people. It’s probably where most English people of all faiths and none actually are.
Negatively, it seems to require pure relativism, and requires work to engage with one’s own religion more seriously in its own terms rather than just as cultural identity."
I would add that it requires of those who have some element of exclusivism in their understanding of their religion /faith /spirituality (and that's not the same of being 'Exclusivist' necessarily -I speak from my own perspective in this respect) to pull back from that more than may be warranted. I think that my own nuanced (I hope) position which draws on Barthian insights still would find it difficult to feel easy with the kind of positive regard for other faith systems. Heck, I have problems with the my own religious institutions without having to be nice about other peoples'! What's more, my reading of the gospels seems to encourage us to be leery about religion when it becomes institutional. It should always be under judgement; so I don't want to enshrine religious acceptance in terms that speaks too positively of religious institutions and traditions. That's not the same as recognising, however, that God may not work through them and even make use of them in varying ways and to varying degrees. So while there may be a providential role, we have to recognise that may not constitute a ringing divine endorsement of religion/s. I would like to see this more cautious and 'judgmental' approach to religion more fully expressed in thinking about interfaith relations. I think that the Bradford distinctive mentioned above actually helps here.

For me, this means that the issues of conversion from one religion to another are not simple. Religion may be more cultural than relative-to-God. But that's not to say there is no connection either. There are cultural systems-called-religions which may witness more fully, consistently or effectively to important things but the wider cultural milieux in which they exist may mean that there is no once-for-all-ness about that.

In short, the Leicester background as Bp Alan presents it, seems to ask of me (and perhaps you) to agree that God wills Islam to exist. I'd rather be able to say that God permits it and may use it, but that its existence may testify as much to the failures of Christian discipleship and statesmanship in the seventh and eighth centuries as something that God calls into existence positively. I recognise that many Muslims may wish to hold an analogous position (and do -I've read and heard them). Part of the trick we have to pull off is to recognise this degree of mutually incompatible and, indeed, mutually 'offensive' claims. I think some Muslims at least would want to say something similar of Christianity albeit refracted through a supercessionist narrative.

You can bank on it

Nck Baines made some astute observations in the run-up to the Tory conference last week. It's here: You can bank on it � Nick Baines’s Blog. And this is something that I want to amen heartily: "his nettle still appears not to have been grasped. We are afraid to impose limits – even when ‘we’ own the banks by virtue of having bailed them out of the mire of their own making. And when we hear about the ‘poor’ or the ‘disabled’, we are not talking about ’shirkers’, ‘blaggers’ and ’spongers’. But, even if we were, couldn’t we describe the failure of the banks and their subsequent cap-in-hand rescue by the taxpayers as ’sponging’ (claiming money that isn’t theirs), ’shirking’ (responsibilities to those they damaged) and ‘blagging’ (claiming special rights and threatening government against squeezing with arguments about ‘incentives’ that only apply to them and not those at the bottom of society who don’t have the voice or the power to claim the same)?"
We are naming, I think, the ideological mote in the eye of global capitalism. It comes down to one rule for the rich, another for the poor. It expresses itself in unseen hypocrisies and double standards such as those noted by Nick above. The rhetoric of 'free trade' is used but the reality is of using quasi-monopolistic or creating such powers to disadvantage the poorest. So much for the much vaunted benefits of perfect competition which are used as the bit of economic theory to justify markets but then are discarded because the practice tends towards monopoly and oligapoly which doesn't work for the benefit of the consumer. In banking this is part of the problem: too big to be allowed to fail is not about competition but oligarchy. This is the corruption at the heart of our systems and it's part of the wider issue implicated in unfair trade, global poverty and even somewhat with climate change.