Forbidden Bible Verses — Titus 2:9-10

The three-year Lectionary that many Catholics and Protestants hear in public worship gives us a great variety of Holy Scripture.

Yet, it doesn’t tell the whole story.

My series Forbidden Bible Verses — ones the Lectionary editors and their clergy omit — examines the passages we do not hear in church. These missing verses are also Essential Bible Verses, ones we should study with care and attention. Often, we find that they carry difficult messages and warnings.

Today’s reading is from the English Standard Version Anglicised (ESVUK) with commentary by Matthew Henry and John MacArthur.

Titus 2:9-10

⁹ Slaves^[a] are to be submissive to their own masters in everything; they are to be well-pleasing, not argumentative, ¹⁰ not pilfering, but showing all good faith, so that in everything they may adorn the doctrine of God our Saviour.

——————————————————————————————————————————–

Last week’s post discussed Paul’s instructions to Titus about younger men’s behaviour and how Titus was to show the best example to them.

As John MacArthur says, there really is no effective evangelisation technique other than personal witness through a transformed Christian life (emphases mine):

There is almost an infinite number of strategies, methodologies, techniques – of varying kinds of sorts that have been developed to try to win people to Jesus Christ.  The goal is noble.  The desire is right.  The task is in fact the primary task of the church.  But I am frankly constantly amazed at how much time, how much money, how much effort – manpower – is spent on these evangelistic strategies on the programs, events, crusades, media campaigns, millions and millions of dollars, and literally whole lifetimes of people.

But as I searched the pages of the New Testament, I cannot find a strategy for mass evangelism.  I cannot find a strategy for literature distribution.  I certainly can’t find a strategy for media campaigns.  I can’t find a strategy for anything really other than a very simple New Testament plan for evangelism.  There is no scheme given here for how to capture the attention of the masses.  There is only a plan given for how to capture the attention of individuals.

You see, the New Testament plan, while it certainly involves the preaching of the gospel on the part of those who are gifted, is primarily a plan for personal witness, personal evangelism … 

That, I believe, is what the apostle Paul is conveying to Titus to be disseminated to the churches in Crete.  The only scheme the New Testament knows for evangelization is personal, apart from the proclamation of God-called and anointed and gifted preachers.  And, by the way, statistics bear out the importance of personal witness. Approximately ninety percent of all people surveyed as to how it was that they came to know Jesus Christ pointed to a personal witness, a friend, a relative – somebody whose life impacted their life.  Less than ten percent of the people who come to Christ come because of something other than a personal witness. 

The world of work, as we see from today’s verses, is no exception.

I really wish I had known about Matthew Henry and John MacArthur when I was working, because reading their commentaries on Paul’s instructions about work would have changed my attitude towards my employers immensely.

It’s too late to redress the balance now, as I am retired.

However, if you have children or other young relatives, please make sure they know about Paul’s instructions to employees. Employees are serving the Lord at all times — through being submissive to their superiors. Offending a superior is offending the Lord.

I have been very guilty of that. Don’t let the young people in your care make the same future mistakes that I did.

That said, as this is about the many slaves who existed at that time, this is a difficult post to write.

However, MacArthur presents slavery to us as it was in biblical times:

Now in the strategy, as it develops in chapter 2, Paul works his way through the family, doesn’t he?  The older members of the family and the younger members of the family have responsibility to live in ways that are going to have evangelistic impact.  One group remains – we’ve already talked about older men and older women and younger women and younger men, and now we come to the last category in the households of ancient times – slaves, verses 9 and 10.  And he says regarding them, “Urge bondslaves to be subject to their own masters in everything, to be well-pleasing, not argumentative, not pilfering, but showing all good faith” – and here’s the reason – “in order that they may adorn the doctrine of God our Savior in every respect.”

Families in ancient times were usually comprised of the older and the younger, and that would include very frequently grandparents and sometimes even aunts and uncles.  And the younger would be parents, children, cousins – whoever else might have been in a very large and extended household. But also, as a part of the ancient household, were the slaves, or the servants.  The word is douloi; literally refers to “one who is under submission, under bondage.”  We’re all very aware of the fact that the Roman Empire basically depended upon slaves for all of its labor.  They were a very essential part of life in ancient times. They made up the labor force of the Roman world.  It is true that many slaves were mistreated, many of them were cheated out of what was rightfully theirs. They were abused; they were beaten; some of them were killed; they were brutalized.  But on the other hand, others were loved, others were cared for, others served even after they were given the opportunity for freedom, voluntarily because they so loved their families that they had come to be a part of.  A slave was allowed, of course, to marry and have his own family, and very often a landowner would give him his own little house and his own piece of land. And that way those who had much could take care of those who had less.

Now the issue in this passage is not addressing the condition of slavery.  It is not discussing what kind of situation the slaves might have been in.  It simply says that if you are one you have an obligation to so live your life as to draw attention to the saving power of God demonstrated through you.  Slavery was a part of life in the Old Testament. It’s a part of life in the New Testament.  Scripture regulates it very carefully, and if you remember the commentary I wrote on Ephesians, you can go back and read the section on Ephesians 6; and there I have done a rather full treatment of slavery as it’s outlined in the Scripture as to how it is to function.  It is really nothing more when properly designed than an employer/employee relationship, which is part of the whole structure of society.  Serving someone could be very beneficial – if you served well and your master treated you well, just as being employed by certain companies can be a tremendous benefit because of how they care for those who work for them.  Slavery in the ancient times could be a very beneficial element of society because it allowed for folks who had resources to give those resources to those who worked for them and thus allowed them to have the dignity of work, to make a living – prosper.

In fact, some Old Testament slaves loved their masters so much that at the Jubilee Year, the fiftieth year, every fifty years they could all be free and go back to their original families; they wouldn’t do that.  They refused to go back because they loved the families of which they were a part.  They had a custom. The slave would get up against a door or a post, and his ear would be held against the post, and his master would drive an awl through his ear and pierce his ear, and that was the way a slave said, “I serve freely and willingly.”  There’s nothing wrong with that kind of willingness.  There’s nothing wrong with service.  In fact, Jesus Himself said, “I came not to be served but to” – What? – “to serve and to give My life a ransom for many.”  And Jesus said, “It’s not the one who lords it over you who is the greatest, it’s the one who serves.”  There’s a marvelous dignity before God in work and service.

And then the Lord and the apostles used slavery as a motif for spiritual instruction by likening the Christian who belongs to Christ and serves Him as “a slave,” and therefore dignified and elevated and exalted one who serves.

And so, there’s no concern here in this text about revolution or rebellion or equal rights or equal freedoms.  But rather the responsibility that if you are an employee and you have someone over you, you are to conduct yourself in such a way that makes very evident that your life has seen the transforming power of God.  There’s much instruction in the New Testament about how employers, masters, bosses and leaders are to act. But the instruction before us has to do with the servants because in general, you remember now, when the church came together, Paul said to the Corinthians, “There are not many noble and there are not many mighty.”  And it seems to me that the greatest influx of Christians came from the lower echelons of society.  And it was very important for them to conduct themselves in an appropriate way.

In another of his sermons discussing slavery, MacArthur said that it was common to find high-ranking slaves, e.g. accountants, artisans, emissaries and others we would not think of as being in that category.

Paul says that slaves — or servants or bondservants — are to submit to their masters in everything; they are to be well-pleasing and not argumentative (verse 9).

Henry’s commentary introduces this subject as follows:

Servants must not think that their mean and low state puts them beneath God’s notice or the obligations of his laws—that, because they are servants of men, they are thereby discharged from serving God. No; servants must know and do their duty to their earthly masters, but with an eye to their heavenly one: and Titus must not only instruct and warn earthly masters of their duties, but servants also of theirs, both in his public preaching and private admonitions. Servants must attend the ordinances of God for their instruction and comfort, as well as the masters themselves. In this direction to Titus there are the duties themselves, to which he must exhort servants, and a weighty consideration wherewith he was to enforce them.

Henry discusses submission and a pleasant nature:

(1.) The duties themselves are these:—

[1.] To be obedient to their own masters, v. 9. This is the prime duty, that by which they are characterized. Rom 6 16, His servants you are whom you obey. There must be inward subjection and dutiful respect and reverence in the mind and thoughts. “If I be a master, where is my fear, the dutiful affection you show to me, together with the suitable outward significations and expressions of it, in doing what I command you?” This must be in servants; their will must be subject to their master’s will, and their time and labour at their master’s disposal and command. 1 Pet 2 18, Servants, be subject to your masters with all fear, not only to the good and gentle, but also to the froward. The duty results from the will of God, and relation in which, by his providence, he has put such; not from the quality of the person. If he be a master, the duties of a servant are to be paid to him as such. Servants therefore are to be exhorted to be obedient to their own masters. And,

[2.] To please them well in all things, in all lawful things, and such as belong to them to command, or at least as are not contrary to the will of their great and superior Lord. We are not to understand it either of obeying or pleasing them absolutely, without any limitation; but always with a reserve of God’s right, which may in no case be entrenched upon. If his command and the earthly master’s come in competition, we are instructed to obey God rather than man; but then servants must be upon good grounds in this, that there is an inconsistency, else are they not held to be excused. And not only must the will of God be the measure of the servant’s obedience, but the reason of it also. All must be done with a respect to him, in virtue of his authority, and for pleasing him primarily and chiefly, Col 3 22-24. In serving the earthly master according to Christ’s will, he is served; and such shall be rewarded by him accordingly. But how are servants to please their masters in all things, and yet not be men-pleasers? Answer, Men-pleasers, in the faulty sense, are such as eye men alone, or chiefly, in what they do, leaving God out, or subordinating him to man; when the will of man shall carry it, though against God’s will, or man’s pleasure is more regarded than his,—when this can content them, that the earthly master is pleased, though God be displeased,—or when more care, or more satisfaction, is taken in man’s being pleased than in God’s, this is sinful man-pleasing, of which all must take heed. Eph 6 5-7, “Servants, be obedient to those that are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, with singleness of your heart, as unto Christ. Not with eye-service, as men-pleasers (who look at nothing but the favour or displeasure of men, or at nothing so much as this), but as the servants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart; with good will doing service, as to the Lord, and not to men;“ not to them chiefly, but to Christ, who requires, and who will reward, any good done, whether by bond or free. Observe therefore, Christian liberty comports well with civil servitude and subjection. Persons may serve men, and yet be the servants of Christ; these are not contrary, but subordinate, so far as serving men is according to Christ’s will and for his sake. Christ came not to destroy or prejudice civil order and differences. “Art thou called, being a servant? Care not for it, 1 Cor 7 21. Let not this trouble thee, as if it were a condition unworthy of a Christian, or wherein the person so called is less pleasing unto God; for he that is called in the Lord, being a servant, is the Lord’s freeman, not free from that service, but free in it; free spiritually, though not in a civil sense. Likewise also he that is called, being free, is Christ’s servant; he is bound to him, though he be not under civil subjection to any; so that, bond or free, all are one in Christ.” Servants therefore should not regret nor be troubled at their condition, but be faithful and cheerful in the station wherein God hath set them, striving to please their masters in all things. Hard it may be under some churlish Nabals, but it must be aimed at as much as possible.

Some will wonder, as did I, who Nabal was?

Wikipedia has the story of Nabal:

According to the 1st Book of Samuel Chapter 25, Nabal (Hebrew: נָבָל Nāḇāl, “fool”^[1]) was a rich Calebite, described as harsh and surly.^[2] He is featured in a story in which he is threatened by David over an insult, and ultimately killed by God.

Henry discusses an employee’s speech and general demeanour:

[3.] Not answering again; not contradicting them, nor disputing it with them; not giving them any disrespectful or provoking language. Job complained of his servants, that he called them, and they gave him no answer; that was faulty another way: Non respondere pro convitio est—Such silence is contempt: but here it is respect, rather to take a check or reproof with humble silence, not making any confident nor bold replies. When conscious of a fault, to palliate or stand in justification of it doubles it. Yet this not answering again excludes not turning away wrath with a soft answer, when season and circumstances admit. Good and wise masters will be ready to hear and do right; but answering unseasonably, or in an unseemly manner, or, where the case admits not excuse, to be pert or confident, shows a want of the humility and meekness which such relation requires.

That is so difficult. It was for me, anyway.

However, MacArthur says that our superiors and our colleagues are our mission field:

Now there is a very important text.  If you’re an employee today that becomes the most important evangelistic field you will be on.  That is your place of evangelism.  That’s your ground.  That’s your mission field.  And “in all things you are to obey,” Paul says, “those who are your masters.” And you’re not to do it with some kind of “external service.” That is, doing duty with a reluctant attitude, and keeping an eye on the boss so you can work when he’s watching.  And you don’t do it just to “please men, but with a sincere heart you fear the Lord.”  What does that mean?  You have a healthy fear that God may bring chastening if you don’t render the service that He’s asked you to render.

You say, “Why in the world is God so concerned about what I do on my job?”  And the answer is because it has evangelistic implications.  Because if you are a Christian then you are demonstrating Him.  And some kind of ineptitude in that demonstration will depreciate someone’s perception of what He is like …

You say, “But I’m on that job; that man is my boss.”  But that job is nothing more than a means by which you can live out the power of God in front of unbelievers, who in seeing your life can be drawn to conclude that God is a saving God and therefore attractive to them.  That’s why you’re there … Your concern shouldn’t be whether you get promoted or a pay raise. Your concern should be, What is the Lord going to say in regard to evaluating my service, and what will be its reward? … And the Lord is not a respecter of persons, and no matter what level of job you may be at in your company, with God if you don’t do what He wants He will “without partiality” deliver some consequences.

Look at Ephesians now, chapter 6; another parallel and equally provocative text.  In Ephesians 6, and verse 5, we find similar words: “Slaves, be obedient to those who are your masters according to the flesh.” That is your human bosses according to the flesh. And your obedience should be rendered “with fear and trembling.”  Why?  Because you’re doing it out of the sincerity of your heart as to Christ …

In verse 9 he says you are “to be subject to your own masters in everything,” and then he adds, “to be well-pleasing,” “to be well pleasing.”  In other words, you are seeking to please the one in authority over you.  The word for “well-pleasing” is an interesting word. It is used only by Paul in the New Testament, with one exception – Hebrews 13:21.  And every single time Paul uses it – listen to this – it always means “to be well-pleasing to God.”  It always means “to be well-pleasing to God.”  So let’s assume that that’s what it means here. And it’s echoing Ephesians 6:5, “You do your work as to Christ, as to the Lord, and not to men, knowing that whatever good thing each one does he’ll receive back from the Lord.”  The same thing was in Colossians 3:23.  So you do it excellently. You might go to work and attain a certain level of excellence for the sake of your promotion, your income, the security of your job, to please your boss.  But what kind of work would you do if the Lord Jesus Christ Himself were your employer?  Well He is.  That’s the point.  Give Him complete satisfaction.

Employees should not pilfer but demonstrate good faith — fidelity — so that in everything they may adorn the doctrine of God our Saviour (verse 10).

The temptations of the stationery cupboard come to mind. In my later years of employment, one place where I worked ordered the bare minimum of stationery supplies, e.g. one box of staples and a pack of five Post-it Notes. A former colleague of mine at an earlier employer worked for the Ministry of Defence in the 1980s and said he and the other employees had to request a chit to present at the stationery room, manned by a seasoned Army veteran who was the only one allowed in. Everyone else had to go to the window and present their chits. If you needed staples, he would hand out one strip. If you needed pencil leads, he would hand out three.

Henry says:

[4.] Not purloining, but showing all good fidelity. This is another great essential of good servants, to be honest, never converting that to their own use which is their master’s, nor wasting the goods they are entrusted with; that is, purloining. They must be just and true, and do for their masters as they would or should for themselves. Prov 28 24, Whoso robbeth his father or his mother, and saith, It is no transgression, the same is the companion of a destroyer; he will be ready to join with him. Thus having such light thoughts of taking beyond what is right, though it be from a parent or master, is likely to harden conscience to go further; it is both wicked in itself, and it tends to more. Be it so that the master is hard and strait, scarcely making sufficient provision for servants; yet they must not be their own carvers, nor go about by theft to right themselves; they must bear their lot, committing their cause to God for righting and providing for them. I speak not of cases of extremity, for preserving life, the necessaries for which the servant has a right to. Not purloining, but showing all good fidelity; he must not only not steal nor waste, but must improve his master’s goods, and promote his prosperity and thriving, to his utmost. He that increased not his master’s talent is accused of unfaithfulness, though he had not embezzled nor lost it. Faithfulness in a servant lies in the ready, punctual, and thorough execution of his master’s orders; keeping his secrets and counsels, despatching his affairs, and managing with frugality, and to as much just advantage for his master as he is able; looking well to his trusts, and preventing, as far as he can, all spoil, or loss, or damage. This is a way to bring a blessing upon himself, as the contrary often brings utter ruin. If you have not been faithful in that which is another man’s, who shall give you that which is your own? Luke 16 12. Thus of the duties themselves, to which servants are to be exhorted. Then,

(2.) Here is the consideration with which Titus was to enforce them: That they may adorn the doctrine of God our Saviour in all things; that is, that they may recommend the gospel and Christ’s holy religion to the good opinion of those that are without, by their meek, humble, obedient, and faithful conduct in all things. Even servants, though they may think that such as they, in so low and inferior a condition, can do little to bring repute to Christianity, or adorn the doctrine of Christ, and set forth the excellences of his truth and ways, yet, if they be careful to do their duty, it will redound to the glory of God and the credit of religion. The unbelieving masters would think the better of that despised way, which was every where spoken against, when they found that those of their servants who were Christians were better than their other servants—more obedient and submissive, more just and faithful, and more diligent in their places. True religion is an honour to the professors of it; and they should see that they do not any dishonour to it, but adorn it rather in all that they are able. Our light must shine among men, so that they, seeing our good works, may glorify our Father who is in heaven.

In discussing verse 10, MacArthur gives us a new vocabulary word, a synonym for pilfering:

Verse 10; this is very interesting, “Not pilfering.”  Or as the Old English word says it, “peculating.”  You never hear that word anymore. Try that on your friends; it will amaze them.  It basically means “to separate.”  It means “to take something from here and lay it over here.”  It came to mean “embezzlement, taking out of the till” – the petty cash – “something for you, taking out of supplies more than you’re supposed to use” and taking it home.  It means “to separate something out and lay it aside.”  It was a euphemism for quiet, stealthy thievery.

Now remember, all the trades and all the arts and all the professions in ancient times were in the hands of slaves, just like businesses are today.  I mean, there are bosses, but the bosses are not handling usually the stuff that makes the operation work.  And as in ancient times, every conceivable mode of trickery was used.  That’s where that old expression “he knew the tricks of the trade” came from.  Those ancient trades developed skilled thieves who knew every angle to steal, to embezzle.  We have it today – the misappropriation of money, petty theft, falsifying expense reports, stealing goods, juggling records.  The same word, by the way, is translated in Acts 5:2 and 3 in regard to Ananias and Sapphira that “they held back.”  You remember they sold a piece of ground and said, “We’re going to give it all to the Lord,” but they embezzled a little.  They held it back.  You’re not to do that.

Ananias and Sapphira died suddenly, a recompense for their sin of holding back what they promised to the Lord.

Demonstrating a transformed life in the workplace is essential for Christians, especially when they tell others about their faith. They must live up to their professions of faith:

You can … be in there talking about Jesus all the time and humming hymns during your break, looking spiritual and reading Christian books. And if somebody finds out you’ve been taking money out of the till, or you’ve been doing your private correspondence at the expense of the company, or you’ve been raising their phone bill for your own private use, or you’ve been fooling with the books and stealing money, it won’t matter what you said. They will conclude that your God is not a God who transforms sinners into saints, and thus God is dishonored.  You see, everywhere we are as Christians, beloved, everywhere we are, we are for the purpose of evangelism.  That’s why we’re there.  “Thou shalt not steal,” is basic as a moral code, but how much more essential is it in the life of one who is there for the very purpose of evangelization?

A Christian worker will be useful in making sure the Word of God is not dishonored and that the opponents are put to shame having nothing bad to say about Christians and that the doctrine of God is ordained in every respect when they are submissive, excellent, respectful, honest, and one last one – loyalty … and he says that in verse 10 in these simple words, “But showing all good faith.”  The word “faith,” pistin, is better translated here “faithful-ness.” That means “trustworthiness, reliability, and loyalty.”  I love the word loyalty, and very rarely do I ever hear anybody use it.  You know, we used to talk about that when we were athletes.  I participated in athletics in a time when loyalty was everything, in a time when the team was the issue and not the individual.  And there was a time when there was loyalty – loyalty to even a company, loyalty to somebody that you worked for or alongside, loyalty to a marriage partner, loyalty to a friend.  I don’t think anybody talks about loyalty. I don’t think they know what it means anymore, with everybody out for himself.

That little phrase in verse 10, “Showing all good faithfulness,” needs to be understood.  The word “showing,” the Greek verb endeiknumi, means “to give ample evidence,” “to give ample evidence.”  Paul uses this word always in the sense of “providing evidence.” Give evidence that you can be trusted, that you are loyal, that you are faithful.  What a marvelous virtue that is.  How are we going to reach our society?  And our society is in deep trouble, isn’t it?  We need salvation.  We need a God-given, powerful sweeping of the salvation message across this country, but my fear is even if it’s swept across this country, people wouldn’t believe it because of what they see in Christians.  Isn’t it sad? …  Because Satan knows how to devastate the integrity of God and Christ by associating fanatics, murderers, perverts, adulterers, fornicators, thieves, liars, with Jesus Christ.  And then what’s going to make anybody believe that ours is a saving God who turns sinners into saints?

Now all of these virtues have a noble purpose.  As you are submissive, excellent, respectful, honest, and loyal here’s what’s going to happen. The end of verse 10, “You will adorn the doctrine of God our Savior in every respect.”  You’re going to, you’re going to make our God who is the saving God attractive.  “Adorn” is the word kosme. We get cosmetics out of it.  It’s a word basically that means “order.”  It’s used of “arranging something, putting something in proper order” – “symmetry, beauty.”  Cosmetics are designed to make one beautiful.  Here it also could be used in the sense that it was often used in ancient times in the arranging of jewels in a setting – a large brooch or necklace or ring or a bejeweled crown with beautiful, magnificent jewelry arranged in wonderful symmetry and order so that it became wonderfully attractive.  A Christian at work, a Christian in the job, a Christian just being a Christian – submissive, excellent, respectful, honest, loyal – makes God look good, makes Him attractive.  It’s going to confront sinners with the ugliness of who they are, isn’t it?  By contrast.

And when you say, “Our God is a saving God,” they’re going to say, “Well, you are different.  You, you’re sure different.”  That’s how we have to live if we’re going to be effective, because people are watching us and they’re concluding that there’s something wonderfully attractive about us, or that we say we know God but we deny it. And that allows them to dishonor the Bible by discrediting it – to speak against us and be justified in doing it, and to look at God and say, “I don’t see anything particularly attractive about Him.” God is so continually dishonored, is He not?

Interestingly, in concluding with MacArthur’s sermon, our vicar said something similar this morning in his own sermon:

We have to be lights holding forth the Word of life in a crooked and perverse and dark generation. 

And that includes the workplace.

May everyone reading this have a blessed week ahead, especially at work.

Next time — Titus 2:15

UK news you might have missed: the Summer 2023 edition

Newspapers’ features pages are a treasure trove of unusual news items and somewhat of a welcome break from the depressing developments plastered on the front page.

A few features articles follow, along with other items from magazines, all from the summer of 2023.

The ‘boomerang smoker mum’

Britain’s middle-aged mothers are returning to an old pastime: smoking.

On July 16, The Telegraph‘s Lucy Denyer wrote about ‘The rise of the boomerang smoker mum’, featuring a photo of her with this caption:

Lucy is one of a number of ‘boomerang smokers’, who thought they’d chucked the habit only for it to come back.

She explained the nostalgic allure of cigarettes:

It was the sunshine that did it. Something about the warm summer afternoon, a buzz of conversation in the air and the prospect of an evening with friends in the garden ahead sent me into the newsagents to come out with something I haven’t bought for a good 15 years or so: a packet of cigarettes.

Or rather, a packet of tobacco, some rolling papers and a lighter – because something about the prospect of a cigarette felt far less transgressive if it was a roll-your-own number. I was never a heavy smoker.

Social smoking, mostly – nights out with friends at university and in my 20s; out to dinner, in the days when people still considered it acceptable to smoke indoors and light up after the cheese course.

I stopped when I had children, didn’t smoke at all for years … Until that evening a couple of months ago and my illicit purchase. 

More mothers with older children feel they can now return to one of nature’s greatest stress busters (emphases mine):

I’ve had perhaps one a day, usually completely sober, often as a means of escaping from the office for a few minutes, and to deal with the escalating stress levels of a house move that involves two new schools for my children. I’m not the only one.

As I hit my mid-40s, I’m suddenly noticing a whole plethora of similarly aged women who have taken up again a vice they thought they’d ditched years ago. “I’m 56, I’m starting a new career, I’ve chopped my hair off – and frankly sometimes I feel like a cig, so I’m going to have one,” declared one acquaintance last weekend at an evening party in a friend’s garden, where a surprising number of middle-aged women were puffing away.

“I always have Sobranies, Silk Cut or a packet of Vogue Menthol Slims to hand for whenever I fancy,” admitted another friend – who, it should be noted, sings semi-professionally.

“In fact, I’ve literally just gone to the effort of buying the Vogues online – they source them from the Baltics or somewhere – and I had to buy six packs as only bulk purchasing was allowed. You can have a pack if you like!”

I’ll probably take her up on it. There’s even a name for us midlife restarters: we are the boomerang smokers, who thought they’d chucked the habit but who’ve seen it come back to them.

And frankly, as vices go, it doesn’t seem that harmful – the odd gasper at a party is surely better than a line of coke, or popping some unknown pill after dinner.

… frankly, right now I find that having a quick smoke is a fast and effective stress reliever. 

“Smoking has a really good effect on me and chills me out unbelievably,” agrees one friend, who has only recently started smoking again and is now enjoying two or three rollies a week. “After a long, tough day and dealing with children, I want to sit down and relax – and these days a gin and tonic doesn’t do it but a cigarette does. It’s an instant hit, and when I’ve got loads to do it’s not going to wipe me out and stop me being able to do all that stuff like having a few drinks would do.”

We also agree that, now we’re out of the intense young child-rearing phase but our offspring are not yet quite into the independent young adult stage of life, we’re juggling heavy work and family loads, and running several different calendars in our heads simultaneously, so having a cigarette feels like much-needed “me time”.

“Just sitting in the garden in the five minutes before school pick-up, maybe watering the plants, with a cheeky cig – it makes me feel like I’m doing something for me,” says another friend.

“It’s a bit sad, I know. I think this is my midlife crisis.” I know how she feels. Hopefully we’ll all grow out of it soon. In the meantime, I’m nipping outside to roll up a cig.

That is why many women smoked in the 20th century, particularly in the 1950s and 1960s. It was a quiet, solitary break for mums at home.

Ethical questions surround avocados

On August 19, The Telegraph‘s Roland White asked ‘Air miles, drug cartels and dead bees: is it time Millennials gave up their avocado on toast?’

He is old enough to remember when the avocado was a novelty fruit in Britain. Today, he says:

Even in the steadfastly old-fashioned Wiltshire village where I live now, my children have avocado on toast for breakfast.

However, eating avocados presents an ethical dilemma:

… this week there was a new development in the world of avocado worship.

Amazingly, drug cartels have become involved with avocado growing:

After news that Mexican drug gangs have been profiting from the business, the London-based El Pastor chain of Mexican restaurants announced that it was offering “cartel-free” avocados, guaranteed to be untainted by crime and mob violence. The El Pastor supply chain is monitored to ensure that no money gets to the drug-runners.

Avocados are referred to as “green gold”, with farmers in Mexico being forced to take up arms to defend themselves against drug cartels. It is fast becoming a “conflict commodity” like blood diamonds from Africa. In fact, so lucrative is the fruit that Mexico – by far the world’s largest producer with control over 30 per cent of global production – is dedicating ever more acreage to avocado plantations. But with greater spoils comes greater threat from organised criminal gangs who extort protection fees from farmers …

But it’s not the only country mining the wildly profitable avocado seam. Colombia – already engaged in mortal combat with cocaine cartels – has seen its avocado production skyrocket, so much so, that it’s now the world’s second largest producer. Much of south and central America is in on the game – for the UK and much of the EU, the Hass avocados in supermarket aisles most likely hail from Peru – but this devotion to avocado farming does have devastating ramifications. 

However healthy and lauded avocados are, growing them is not necessarily environmentally friendly:

… Illegal deforestation and logging comes naturally in attendance as an increasing amount of land is cleared to meet the breakfast demands of wealthy westerners …

Aside from violence, racketeering and deforestation, in 2015, New York Magazine reported that so much water is required for Chile’s avocado plantations that the rivers and groundwater stores are being drained faster than they are being replenished. Across the Americas and up to California (the US being the 13th largest producer), the water demands of avocado farming are causing some to call the practice unethical.

We learn about the history of this creamy tasting fruit:

The avocado certainly took its time to reach us. It was known in central America as far back as 10,000 BC as the ahuacatl, which became a euphemism for testicles (in much the same way as we say “plums”). The Spanish explorer Martín Fernández de Enciso is credited as the first European to sample the fruit. “That which it contains is like butter,” he wrote, “and is so good and pleasing to the palate that it is a marvellous thing.”

Despite this enthusiasm, the avocado wasn’t exactly an instant hit. “The fruit’s popularity was slow to spread, only being cultivated in the US at the end of the 19th century,” says the Larousse Gastronomique. “It did not reach French recipe books until the 1950s”.

We British had to wait until 1968 before avocados became widely available. It was a time when the country was opening up to new foods, partly under the influence of writer Elizabeth David. Among the imports she championed was the avocado.

Millennials made the fruit their own:

Nobody has embraced the avocado more than the millennial generation, born between 1981 and 1996. Perhaps they were influenced by the 1982 children’s book Avocado Baby, in which an avocado diet gives the young hero almost Popeye-like strength.

According to the Hass Avocado Board, a US-based marketing group, millennials spend 5 per cent more on avocados than any other group; 80 per cent of millennials bought an avocado at least once in 2018.

Strangely, the ethics behind avocado growing does not seem to bother them:

And it is here that we must reluctantly enter the divisive and somewhat baffling world of the culture wars. Millennials are renowned for their political activism, but a rigid devotion to social justice and a fancy for avocado on toast (which can set you back around £14 at some cafés) is not entirely compatible.

There are another environmental issues here, too.

Bees have to be shipped in to pollinate the plants:

In September last year, Piers Morgan was in typically robust form as he skewered a representative of Animal Rebellion. Billions of bees, he said, are flown into California to help pollinate avocado crops, and many of them die. “Billions of bees get slaughtered so you can have your avocados,” said Morgan, denouncing the “total hypocrisy” of the campaigners.  

Then there are the air miles required for transport:

And let’s not forget that an avocado in the UK must first be transported across the globe. A 2017 study by the Carbon Footprint Ltd consultancy claimed that a pack of two avocados had an emissions footprint of 846g of CO2 – double that of 1kg of bananas.

Australians have said that millennials would be able to save up to buy a home were it not for the amount of money they spend on avocados:

Australian property developer Tim Gurner made headlines in 2017 by suggesting that more youngsters could afford property if they didn’t have such expensive tastes in food.

“When I was trying to buy my first home, I wasn’t buying smashed avocado for $19 and four coffees at $4 each,” he said.

He was echoing remarks by the Australian author and demographer Bernard Salt. “I have seen young people order smashed avocado with crumbled feta on five-grain toasted bread at $22 a pop and more. I can afford to eat this for lunch because I am middle-aged and have raised my family. But how can young people afford to eat like this? Twenty-two dollars several times a week could go towards a deposit on a house.” In response, young hipsters said they were spending money on avocado treats precisely because they would never be able to buy a home.

It mystifies me that avocados are not grown in Europe. Surely, Spain’s climate would be conducive to avocado groves? Perhaps the environmental factors are too important to ignore and that’s why it hasn’t been done.

Vegan snacks: disappointing

I felt sorry for Roger Watson of Country Squire Magazine who wrote ‘Vegan Gaslighting’, published on August 9.

Here he was, on a train, readying himself for a long day of travel, only to meet with a disappointing railway snack box:

I was travelling between Hull and Manchester Airport recently on a TransPennine train. As I was in first class, and a trolley was wheeled on at Leeds, the trolley lady offered me a snack box. I was flying to Dublin from Manchester later that afternoon (not in first class) and I accepted along with a cup of tea.

Excitement mounted as I fought my way into the snack box past an array of tamper-proof stickers.

Would it be a ham and pickle sandwich along with a few chocolate digestives? Would there be cheese and biscuits, a scone and clotted cream? Would there hell!

Everything was ‘vegan friendly.’

Imagine my disappointment.

He reviewed the contents of snack box in detail:

There was a bag of crisps, but not proper salty crunchy ones made from potatoes which I thought, last time I checked, were suitable for vegans. There were some ghastly lemon (yes, lemon!) and herby flavoured corn chips, a bag of unadulterated peanuts (that one might feed a monkey with) and a flapjack (things were looking up) and a chocolate cookie.

I stored the flapjack for later consumption (an old habit from military field exercises) and downed the peanuts in one mouthful, imagining they had salt on.

The crisps were truly awful, tastelessness tinged with lemon and mixed herbs. They lacked any kind of satisfying crunch. They just snapped in two and, being salivary enzyme resistant, rolled about in the mouth, before painfully going down the hatch.

The chocolate cookies deserve their own paragraph. I think the mixture was three of sand, one of cement, half of sugar and a sprinkling of cocoa powder. They crumbled, but not in a nice way. Imagine smashing a brick and putting a handful of what results into your mouth. The only difference would be that the crushed brick would taste nicer and be twice (at least) as nutritious …

“The flapjack?”, I hear the astute remainder ask.

I thought there was not much that the vegans could do to spoil a flapjack. How wrong I was. A flapjack without butter is just oats and syrup.

Yuk.

Watson points out that vegan spreads and low- to no-alcohol drinks are standard fare now at business dos:

I attend receptions frequently in my line of business and, increasingly, we are assured on the invitation that all the food served will be ‘suitable for vegans’. Likewise, the alcohol.

He rightly asks:

Why is the strange preference for vegan food among an estimated 3% of the population dictating what the rest of the population increasingly has to suffer?

I can assume only that this is an ESG initiative, designed to make us ‘healthier’, somehow. Let’s not forget that most vegan offerings are UPFs, ultra-processed foods. UPFs often lead to obesity, because the body does not need to digest much, leaving one hungry after a short space of time.

Obesity: a modern history

On August 19, The Spectator‘s Theodore Dalrymple, a retired prison psychiatrist writing under a pseudonym, asked ‘Are we prepared for the end of obesity?’

He was writing about the new ‘miracle’ drug, the injectable appetite suppressant Ozempic, which, so far, has allowed those lucky few taking it to drop several pounds in weight a week. I am looking forward to finding out how much weight they put back on after they stop treatment.

In any event, Dr Dalrymple answered a few questions about obesity, ones I’ve had since childhood:

Sixty years ago, my biology teacher told me (so it must have been true) that after the war, some Americans were so delighted that the restrictions on food had been lifted that they ate capsules containing a tape worm so that they could eat to their heart’s content without getting fat. This, of course, revolted me, as it was intended to. I never forgot what she said.

Twenty years later, I was to see the future of the world, at least as far as obesity and type-II diabetes were concerned, on the island of Nauru. There, the inhabitants had suddenly become very rich, thanks to the mining of phosphate rock, and went from a strenuous subsistence to wealthy indolence in a matter of years. With nothing much else to do, they ate and drank enormously, grew fat, suffered from diabetes and died early.

This was the fate of much of the western world, give or take the indolence, especially, though not exclusively, in the English-speaking part of it. No doubt the relatively reduced culinary tradition of the English-speaking world made it susceptible to obesity because quantity had long been a substitute for quality where food was concerned. There has been a peculiar historical reversal also: where once an embonpoint was a manifestation of wealth, obesity became, at least statistically, a marker of poverty.

He ends his article with another childhood memory:

What of the cultural effects of a drug for obesity? In my childhood, my mother had a book by a man called Gayelord Hauser titled Eat and Grow Beautiful.

Eat and Grow Beautiful is available on Amazon. There is a tantalising lack of information about the book, editions of which were published in 1939 and 1953, but GoodReads says:

Dr. Benjamin Gayelord Hauser (1895–1984), popularly known as Gayelord Hauser, was an American nutritionist and self-help author, who promoted the ‘natural way of eating’ during the mid-20th century. He promoted foods rich in vitamin B and discouraged consumption of sugar and white flour. Hauser was a best-selling author, popular on the lecture and social circuits, and was nutritional advisor to many celebrities.

As for Ozempic — semaglutide — Dalrymple sees trouble ahead:

When the patent runs out, of course, the price will plummet, but other, even more effective drugs are said to be under development, that will be likewise expensive to begin with. But can it be very long before someone advocates the use of semaglutide prophylactically, in childhood? It is an appetite suppressant and it will prevent them getting fat. Is not prevention better than cure? At least a quarter of children in Britain are now obese: think of the misery and ill-health that could be forestalled by only one injection a week!

Demand for semaglutide in the private sector is bound also to rise, and woe betide any private doctor who refuses to prescribe it for his well-off patients living with obesity who can afford to pay for it themselves – unless or until its long-term use is shown to have deleterious effects. Then the patients will turn on their doctors with the full force of their tort lawyers; they will even say that their doctor did not sufficiently warn them of the one possible serious side-effect so far associated with the drug, acute pancreatitis, a dangerous and unpleasant condition. If, as so far seems unlikely, other serious side-effects come to light in the course of the years to come, the doctors or the drug company, or both, will be sued for lack of foresight.

Far better, then, to purchase a copy of Eat and Grow Beautiful.

This year’s Edinburgh Fringe cancellation

In 2022, long-time comedian Jerry Sadowitz found his Edinburgh Fringe gig uncermoniously cancelled.

This year, it was the turn of screenwriter and comedian Graham Linehan, who has been speaking out in the gender wars debate for the past few years.

Most Britons under the age of 70 have enjoyed Linehan’s television sitcoms, the most famous of which is Father Ted. I’ve seen most Father Ted episodes three times over the years, and they always raise a chuckle. That said, his Black Books is legendary. I’ve watched both series twice, often viewing multiple episodes during an evening.

However, Leith Arches decided to cancel Linehan’s gig, saying that they are an ‘inclusive’ venue, a way of saying he is on the wrong side of the gender debate. He was able to get it rescheduled elsewhere, but that venue also cancelled. In the end, Linehan performed at Holyrood, in front of the Scottish Parliament building.

On August 19, The Telegraph published his first-person report, ‘My cancellation has trapped me in one of my own sitcoms’:

There’s some steep irony in being a sitcom writer and then experiencing 48 hours where you feel like you’re living through an episode yourself. Five years ago, when I could still secure work in television, I took obscene delight in putting my characters through various forms of social torture. Now, I can’t help feeling that some sort of karma is playing out. Being a character in one of my own shows is not as fun as it sounds.

I was gearing up for a gig – only my fifth or sixth time trying to tell jokes in front of an audience. As someone more used to being behind the scenes, each gig shows me at the thin limit of my abilities as a performer, but I had some extra complications that made the experience even more fraught. The show had already been cancelled twice: first by a venue that was happy to advertise that it would be hosting a “cancelled comedian”, but then baulked when it realised exactly who that cancelled comedian would be; and then by our second choice. I heard about this second cancellation after I had cleared security at Gatwick. I was off to Edinburgh for literally no reason … 

Now, frazzled, I walked towards the stage, placed right in front of Holyrood on the orders of the brilliant feminist strategist Marion Calder for maximum symbolic value. I was met not with the glare of a spotlight, but an array of cameras and a soundtrack of passing cars. My live experience is limited, but this was hopefully the first and only time I would deliver a punchline while being circled by a pigeon. 

I tried to dive into my act, but the weight of the past few days – the past five years, really – hung over me. The shorthand of the issues at hand – the concerns over children’s health, women’s rights, fairness in sports, erasure of women – have become more familiar to me than any comedy routine …

I stepped off the stage. As a protest, it worked great. But as comedy, meh. And I am so very tired of protesting, and I miss comedy so very much.

The Telegraph‘s columnist Michael Deacon observed:

So, in the name of “inclusivity”, Mr Linehan was excluded. And, when he tried to take his show elsewhere, a second arts venue excluded him, presumably on the same grounds. He ended up with no choice but to perform his show in the street, in front of the Scottish parliament …

Such an attitude is chillingly authoritarian. But not only that, it’s impractical. Because if asked, I suspect, most people in this country would agree that biological males should not be playing women’s rugby, or taking part in lesbian speed-dating.

To be truly inclusive, then, arts venues will have to exclude most of the population.

However, most comedians in Linehan’s cohort have moved with the times, as it were. They’re still gainfully employed on television and on stage.

On August 22, scriptwriter Gareth Roberts explained it all for The Spectator, ‘The endless hypocrisy of the comedy class’:

Personally I find TV panel shows pretty unbearable. They’re like being at a student party full of lairy smartarses you don’t know, and probably wouldn’t want to. But now a clip from one has, in the journalistic parlance of our time, ‘resurfaced on social media’ …

This particular eruption from the deep comes from the Big Fat Quiz Of The Year 2008, the fourth edition of the annual Channel 4 institution … Jimmy Carr is the host, and the three teams consist of a variety of comedians and presenters: Michael McIntyre and Claudia Winkleman, Sean Lock and James Corden, and Dara Ó Briain and Davina McCall. 

2008 may seem like ancient history to the young, but all of these people – with the obvious exception of the late Sean Lock – are still around and still working. If anything, they are more prominent now. Interestingly, there are few visual clues, apart from the comparative youth of those featured, to suggest that this was filmed any time other than yesterday. A TV clip from 1972 would’ve seemed like an archaeological wonder in 1987, but everything on the cultural surface has seized up in this century. Under the surface it’s a very different story.

Because my, this clip demonstrates how the tunes of these people have changed. The question is about a man who ‘announced he was going to have a baby – but what was unusual about the whole affair?’ …

All the comedians on the panel joked about the absurdity of the situation. The article has the YouTube clip, if you want to see it.

However, said comedians stopped joking about things like that, which is why they are still performing and Graham Linehan isn’t.

Gareth Roberts continues:

What’s astonishing about this clip is that it’s proof that these people knew exactly what a woman was about five cultural minutes ago, and found the idea of pretending not to know hilarious.

Dara Ó Briain has been quite the empty space to his former friend Graham Linehan in this regard. James Corden (full disclosure, the guest star in two episodes I wrote for Doctor Who shortly after this) has been conspicuously compliant with every new and fashionable ideological wheeze, as we can see demonstrated here.  

At times in the last ten years, I have felt like I am going mad. People I knew or worked with in this milieu, who were far more un-PC than me, suddenly changed lanes, leaving me where I’d always been but somehow a pariah. Ironically, I was mocked in the noughties by colleagues for being a bit humourless about identity-based banter that I considered ‘nasty’ and bad form.

Now some might point out that times have changed. Oh indeed they have, and don’t we know it. But there are still two sexes, and no man can get pregnant. It is ludicrous to pretend otherwise, and ludicrous ideas are funny.

Of course, these people know this now, as they knew then. Everybody does. And this is the crux of this matter …

… some of these same people hooting and howling in this clip have gone far further than that. They swallowed the big bitter pill of genderism … Either they celebrated it, or they pretended not to see it. 

This is because a few years after this particular Big Fat Quiz, a small cadre of well-placed cranks, empowered by Californian tech giants, did a quick sprint through the institutions, public and private. The comedy ‘industry’ – supposedly so daring and edgy and outspoken – said nothing. Almost to a man, they merrily complied.

Wow. It would be great reading more about that. Who was involved from California? What did they say? This seems to be the root of ESG, doesn’t it?

I hope Gareth Roberts has more on that topic. I’m all eyes.

————————————————

Here ends the summer news many might have missed. It’s hard to believe that autumn is just around the corner.

Mastering relationships for lifetime happiness

Yesterday’s post was about the secrets of successful long standing marriages, based on best-selling author Mark Manson‘s survey of couples who have been in wedded bliss for ten years or more.

I wonder how many of those couples are churchgoers.

As far as marriage goes, God gives nearly all of us the opportunity to marry at some point in our lives. For one of my classmates, that was the age of 50. For another classmate, that was at age 65! Both are well-adjusted professionals with pleasing personalities and a variety of interests, I might add. I’m not sure what took so long, but perhaps they just hadn’t met the right partners.

There is always hope for the blessing of marriage, God’s finest institution.

But, how do we get there?

This post gives us the initial steps and explores more of Mark Manson’s no-holds-barred pearls of wisdom.

Although he is a secularist, much of what he says might as well come straight from the New Testament. Our Lord set the ultimate example of asking God’s forgiveness on those who mocked and crucified Him.

The importance of forgiveness

Some of us have gone through excruciating experiences in life. Those horrible things might have started early in life — e.g. child abuse — or later, perhaps the murder of a loved one.

Ideally, we should be forgiving and forgetting, but the latter might take some time.

Manson’s article, ‘How to Forgive (But Not Forget)’, begins with the true story of an American incensed by what happened on 9/11. In his fury and desire for revenge, he murdered a Sikh who managed a filling station. The murderer was sentenced to the death penalty, but, at the trial, the victim’s brother pleaded for clemency in the hope that the perpetrator would feel remorse. As a result, the judge reduced the sentence to life in prison. Sure enough, remorse came and the man met the victim’s brother who said that he and his family had already forgiven him of his heinous crime.

Fortunately, not all of us go through what this Sikh family did. Unfortunately, many of us find it difficult to forgive people close to us for much smaller things.

Manson says that it is important to learn how to forgive (purple emphases mine):

… like a muscle, the ability to forgive needs to be exercised and grown over a long period of time. And just as our physical muscles keep our physical body healthy and strong, forgiveness can keep our emotional bodies healthy and strong.

Forgiveness is choosing to not let negative events of the past define how you feel about someone or something in the present.

Forgiveness has all sorts of mental health benefits. It increases feelings of happiness and decreases feelings of anger and grief.⁵ It helps alleviate anxiety and depression.⁶ It improves your relationships.⁷ And it makes you less self-conscious or insecure around others.⁸

… Developing the ability to let go of resentment and forgive is therefore a fundamental tool for your sanity toolbox. There’s a reason why pretty much every religion espouses it.

True. And that is why forgiving others is what God wants us to do.

Forgiveness should entail forgetting, but, depending on the circumstances, that might not come immediately.

Forgiveness might also entail keeping our distance from the person who hurt us. It’s just common sense:

Important point: Forgiving doesn’t necessarily mean forgetting. If someone screws you out of a bunch of money, that doesn’t mean you have to go loan them your car the next day. You can forgive them while still maintaining that boundary of “over my dead body” when it comes to a loan or finances. Similarly, you can forgive someone and still remove them from your life. Hell, the person doesn’t even necessarily know you forgave them. You can just forgive them for your sake and move on with your life.

The point of this is to say that forgiveness is a purely psychological process. It doesn’t necessarily have any real-world repercussions (unless you want it to) …

That said, forgiveness is far easier said than done. And it’s not necessarily a cure-all. I’ve forgiven some people in my past, but I can still get uncomfortable and peeved when dealing with them. I still sometimes want to avoid them. Sometimes my baggage pops back up and I have to go through the forgiveness process all over again …

But for smaller relationship matters, the ability to forgive and move on is critical for maintaining a healthy and happy relationship with the people you care about.^{9, 10} Even if … the anger is still lingering, what matters is that you do not let yourself or the relationship be defined by it. Because if you do, then it’s the express train to toxic relationship land with little to no return service.

Manson has developed a five-step plan to achieve the ability to forgive, called SUE ME, based on the angry American retort, ‘So, sue me!’ He says saying that alone means forgiveness is in order:

The five steps of SUE ME are:

1 Separate the action from the person

2 Understand their motivation

3 Empathize

4 Mark your boundaries

5 Eliminate emotional attachment

Let’s take them one by one.

For separating the action from the person, he says, in part:

This separation of the action from the person is crucial to reaching any sort of closure with anyone in your life. Everyone—and I mean absolutely everyone—does bad things in their life. But very few people in this world are bad people.

In Christianity, this is often described as, “Love the sinner, hate the sin.” Many other religions have their own versions of this concept. Most religions are built around some central tenet of unconditional forgiveness. And that forgiveness begins in separating the action from the person.

… In that sense, any “bad person” is constantly moving, changing and evolving—or at least has the potential to. Therefore, it’s this focus on the potential for change or evolution—the possibility for new beliefs and actions—that is at the core of forgiveness.

Understanding someone’s motivation is essential, if only to recognise that the person who hurt us has probably been hurt themselves. In other words, hurt people hurt people:

As a general rule, people who do hurtful things do so because they are hurt themselves. Few people in this world are sadists. Most people who appear to take some sort of pleasure in hurting you or others are most likely compensating for the pain that they feel …

Some examples:

• • A woman who cheats on her husband does it because she feels lonely and ignored and the cheating was merely a cry for attention to know someone cared.
  • The man who cheats on his taxes does so because he’s terrified he won’t be able to provide for his family.
  • The dude who stole your phone feels justified as he’s grown up in poverty and been screwed over by a corrupt system repeatedly throughout his life.

Whether these reasons are true or not is beside the point. The point is that no one thinks they’re being evil. Everyone feels justified in what they are doing—otherwise they wouldn’t do it!

Also, you might say, “Okay, but feeling lonely and ignored doesn’t give you permission to break the trust of your marriage.” You’re right, it doesn’t. But we separated the action from the person, remember? These are not excuses. They are simply explanations. And before you can forgive someone, it helps to understand why they did what they did.

Because without understanding someone’s motivation, it’s impossible to empathize with them. And when it comes down to it, forgiveness is ultimately a form of empathy.

He acknowledges that empathy is difficult:

Empathy is a whole skill unto itself. Empathy means you take whatever pain motivated that person and you imagine that you have that same pain yourself.

You imagine the confusion and horror of seeing your workplace shut down and lay everybody off. You visualize that pain and stress of struggling with an addiction. You challenge yourself to feel whatever adversity you can imagine they’ve gone through and then pretend you’ve gone through it yourself.

It’s hard to do. But it’s arguably one of the most important of all human skills. Our empathy is one of the only things that separates us from animals. It’s what gives us a foothold into morality. It’s what fills life with a sense of meaning.

If you really want to boil it down, empathy is forgiveness and vice-versa. If forgiveness is the ability to see the person as a multi-faceted and complex human being, empathizing with them is what gets you there. When you no longer see the wrong action as the totality of their character and merely one small resultant part of their character, you’ve reached a state of forgiveness.

Setting boundaries afterwards can also be difficult, if we know the person well. A stranger we can ignore, but:

… If it’s a friend, it can be a bit harder. If it’s family, it’s really hard …

I’ve written a lot about boundaries over the years, but here’s the quick and dirty version:

• • Set rules. Define which behaviors you will and will not accept.
  • Decide on consequences. If someone breaks one of your rules, what are the consequences?
  • Communicate the above calmly and compassionately.

Personally, if it’s a tricky relationship, I wouldn’t bother communicating anything to the person who offended me. I would try to avoid them.

Ultimately:

What’s important about boundaries is not necessarily the result. Some people will respect your boundaries, some will not. What is important is that boundaries give you a clear sense how to manage each situation with this individual, no matter what happens.

As for emotional attachment:

The final step of forgiveness is to let go of the emotional attachment that you’ve developed around hating this person’s guts for so long. Let the hatred and anger wash away, let the visions of revenge and misfortune die. It’s not helping anyone, least of all yourself.

Yes, the emotions will still rise in you around this person, but simply let them go …

That’s all good advice, but what happens when we need to forgive ourselves?

The process is actually totally the same. Sue me … Separate the action from the person—I did an awful thing but I’m not an awful person. Understand my motivation—what was the insecurity or ignorance that drove me to do this thing?

Empathize. Okay, this is honestly probably the hardest part of forgiving yourself—not only getting at your true motivations, but really, how much stuff do you blame yourself for that [which] was not your fault?

When we’re children, we have a propensity to internalize and blame ourselves for all of the … awful things that happen to us. We then grow up and carry around that shame and guilt, often without realizing it. It can take years of therapy and inner work to finally undo it.

But once you do, the process is no different. Because next you must empathize. Many of us struggle to empathize with ourselves—or rather, have compassion for ourselves. Here’s one cute trick: that thing you’re mad at yourself for, pretend your best friend did it. What would you say to them if they were upset about it? Would you judge them? Criticize them? Berate them? Probably not. You’d probably have compassion and sympathy. What would you say to them? Now, try saying that to yourself.¹³

Make boundaries – in this case, make rules for yourself, i.e., “The next time I’m drinking, I will not call my ex,” or, “When I become a parent, I will never do what was done to me.” Regrets are only regrets if you haven’t learned something from them. Take your pain and create rules from it.

And finally, eliminate the emotional attachment. Hating on yourself is tiresome and overrated. There are so many better things to do with your energy. Let it go and instead of obsessing on the vision of who you were, focus on the vision of who you could be.

Then take a step towards that. Then another. Then another. Then don’t ever look back.

Developing emotional intelligence is vital

Harnessing one’s impulses and not acting on them is vital in life, for our own well-being as well as our relationships.

The term emotional intelligence (EQ) came about in the 1980s and by the end of the 1990s spread to the human resources departments of large companies. Employees began going to EQ seminars to learn how to develop this trait and were evaluated on it in their annual reviews.

The following rather reminded me of Paul’s two letters to Timothy, especially the verses in my most recent post, 2 Timothy 2:22-26:

²² So flee youthful passions and pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace, along with those who call on the Lord from a pure heart. ²³ Have nothing to do with foolish, ignorant controversies; you know that they breed quarrels. ²⁴ And the Lord’s servant^[a] must not be quarrelsome but kind to everyone, able to teach, patiently enduring evil, ²⁵ correcting his opponents with gentleness. God may perhaps grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth, ²⁶ and they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil, after being captured by him to do his will.

Manson gives a secular version of this in ‘5 Skills to Help You Develop Emotional Intelligence’:

He gives us the five elements of EQ:

1 Self-awareness

2 Self-regulation

3 Motivation

4 Empathy

5 (Good) values

He adds:

… think of someone in your life who:

• • Seems calm yet in control in stressful situations
  • Takes responsibility for their actions instead of blaming every mishap on others
  • Expresses—rather than offloads—their emotions
  • Listens to you and makes you feel heard
  • Genuinely cares about the world and tries in their own way to make it a better place

That is an emotionally intelligent person. And if you’re not there yet, you can become one too.

The thing with emotional intelligence is, it permeates every aspect of your life. Being emotionally intelligent is associated with academic³ and professional^4,5,6 success, financial stability,^7,8 fulfilling relationships,⁹ life satisfaction,¹⁰ as well as better physical and mental health.^11,12

Practising self-awareness involves a degree of possibly painful soul-searching, most of which requires silence and a break from worldly distractions:

When you lack self-awareness, trying to manage your emotions is like sitting in a tiny boat without a sail on top of the sea of your own emotions, completely at the whim of the currents of whatever is happening moment by moment. You have no idea where you’re going or how to get there. And all you can do is scream and yell for help.

Self-awareness involves understanding yourself and your behavior on three levels: 1) what you’re doing, 2) how you feel about it, and 3) the hardest part, figuring out what you don’t know about yourself …

Removing distractions from your life—like, you know, turning off your damn phone every now and then and engaging with the world around you is a nice first step to self-awareness. Finding spaces of silence and solitude, while potentially scary, are necessary for our mental health.

Other forms of distraction include work, TV, drugs/alcohol, video games, cross-stitching, arguing with people on the internet, etc. Schedule time in your day to get away from them. Do your morning commute with no music or podcast. Just think about your life. Think about how you’re feeling. Set aside 10 minutes in the morning to meditate. Delete social media off your phone for a week. You’ll often be surprised by what happens to you.

We use these distractions to avoid a lot of uncomfortable emotions, and so removing distractions and focusing on how you feel without them can reveal some kind of scary [stuff] sometimes. But removing distractions is critical because it gets us to the next level.

At first, once you actually pay attention to how you feel, it might freak you out … It’s important at this point to not judge the emotions that arise.

… Whatever emotion is there has a good reason to be there, even if you don’t remember what that reason is. So don’t be too hard on yourself.

Once you see all the icky, uncomfortable stuff you’re feeling, you’ll begin to get a sense of where your own little crazy resides.

… And it’s only by being aware of it that I can ever react against it.

Now, just being self-aware is not sufficient in and of itself. One must be able to manage their emotions too.

Managing one’s emotions comes next. The mental health issues post-pandemic have been many, we are told. My concern is how professionals are going to advise young people in particular how to cope with their emotions.

Manson says that we cannot control our emotions as such. He says we can only manage them:

People who believe that emotions are the be-all-end-all of life often seek ways to “control” their emotions. You can’t. You can only react to them.

Emotions are merely the signals that tell us to pay attention to something. We can then decide whether or not that “something” is important and choose the best course of action in addressing it—or not.¹³

Anger can be a destructive emotion if you misdirect it and hurt others or yourself in the process. But it can be a good emotion if you use it to correct injustices and/or protect yourself or others.

Joy can be a wonderful emotion when shared with people you love when something good happens. But it can be a horrifying emotion if it’s derived from hurting others.

Such is the act of managing your emotions: recognizing what you’re feeling, deciding whether or not that’s an appropriate emotion for the situation, and acting accordingly.

The whole point of this is to be able to channel your emotions into what psychologists call “goal-directed behavior”¹⁴ …

He says we should also be able to motivate ourselves. Writer’s block is one example. Don’t wait for writer’s block to disappear, just get on with writing — anything — and see where it takes you:

This is what I call the “Do Something Principle” and it’s probably one of the simplest yet most magical “hacks” I’ve ever come across. The Do Something Principle states that taking action is not just the effect of motivation, but also the cause of it …

When I need to be motivated, I just do something that’s even remotely related to what I want to accomplish and then, action begets motivation begets action, etc.

When I don’t feel like writing, I tell myself I’ll just work on the outline for now. Once I do that, it often makes me think of something interesting I hadn’t thought of yet that I want to include and so I write that down and maybe flesh it out a little.

Before I know it, I’m halfway through a draft …

If you don’t feel like anything motivates you, do something. Draw a doodle, find a free online coding class, talk to a stranger, learn a musical instrument, learn something about a really hard subject, volunteer in your community, go salsa dancing, build a bookshelf, write a poem. Pay attention to how you feel before, during, and after whatever it is you’re doing and use those emotions to guide your future behavior.

And know that it’s not always “good” feelings that will motivate you, too … Sometimes I’m anxious that what I’m writing won’t resonate with people. But for whatever reason, these feelings often only make me want to write more. I love the challenge of wrestling with something that’s just a little bit out of my reach.

As we deal with our own EQ, we must also focus on being more perceptive of others’ emotions, too:

But the whole point of developing emotional intelligence should ultimately be to foster healthier relationships in your life.

And healthy relationships—romantic relationships, familial relationships, friendships, whatever—begin with recognition and respect of one another’s emotional needs.

You do this by connecting and empathizing with others.¹⁶ By both listening to others and sharing yourself honestly with others—that is, through vulnerability.

To empathize with someone doesn’t necessarily mean to completely understand them, but rather to accept them as they are, even when you don’t understand them. You learn to value their existence and treat them as their own end rather than a means for something else. You acknowledge their pain as your pain—as our collective pain.

Relationships are where emotional rubber hits the proverbial pavement. They get us out of our heads and into the world around us. They make us realize we’re a part of something much larger and much more complex than just ourselves.

And relationships are, ultimately, the way we define our values.

Manson says that EQ can be used for good or bad uses. A conman would score highly in EQ because he knows how to manipulate his victims.

Therefore, we should ensure that we use EQ for good:

… emotional intelligence is meaningless without orienting your values …

Conmen are highly emotionally intelligent. They understand emotions quite well, both in themselves and especially in others. But they end up using that information to manipulate people for their own personal gain. They value themselves above all else and at the expense of all others. And things get ugly when you value little outside of yourself.¹⁸

Ultimately, we’re always choosing what we value, whether we know it or not. And our emotions will carry out those values through motivating our behavior in some way.

So in order to live the life you truly want to live, you have to first be clear about what you truly value because that’s where your emotional energy will be directed.

And knowing what you truly value—not just what you say you value—is probably the most emotionally intelligent skill you can develop.

Honesty is the best policy, especially in dealing with ourselves. That in some ways is trickier than dealing with others. We can generally see others’ faults before we see our own.

For me, reading and understanding the New Testament got me through a lot of this process, much of which had been resolved years earlier. However, most people haven’t spent the last 14 years doing a deep dive into the gospels and epistles twice a week.

I will leave it there for now and come back to the next stage — love — tomorrow.

Chris Bryant’s targetting and pursuit of Boris Johnson

Yesterday’s post, ‘The Venn diagram link between Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage: Chris Bryant MP’, has background information on the Labourite who managed to relentlessly target and pursue the former Prime Minister out of office.

Having reviewed Bryant’s back story and more recent years in the House of Commons, we now come to 2022, when Boris’s ‘parties’ in No. 10 became the subject of statements and debates in Parliament.

On January 22, 2022, allegations appeared suggesting that if Conservative MPs did not support Boris, who was still in post at the time, Government funding would be cut off from their constituencies.

As Chris Bryant made the allegations, I have reason to doubt their veracity. GB News reported (emphases mine):

The senior MP who heads the Commons “sleaze” watchdog has warned Government attempts to pressurise Tory MPs seeking to oust Boris Johnson are illegal.

Chris Bryant, chairman of the Commons Standards Committee, said threats to withdraw public funding from MPs’ constituencies amounted to “misconduct in public office” and should be referred to the police.

He said there were even allegations the Prime Minister had been directly involved as he battles to save his job ahead of a keenly-awaited report into lockdown parties in Downing Street.

Sorry, I find that hard to believe.

An anti-Boris Conservative MP was also stirring the pot on the subject:

His intervention came after William Wragg, the senior Tory MP who first raised concerns about attempted “blackmail” by No 10, disclosed that he is to meet police to discuss his claims.

Mr Bryant, who is a Labour MP, said he had spoken to “about a dozen” Conservatives in recent days who had either been threatened by Government whips with having funding cut from their constituencies or promised funding if they voted “the right way”.

The Guardian reported what Bryant had told the BBC:

“I have even heard MPs alleging that the prime minister himself has been doing this,” Bryant told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme. “What I have said to all of those people is that that is misconduct in public office. The people who should be dealing with such allegations are the police.

“It is illegal. We are meant to operate as MPs without fear or favour. The allocation of taxpayer funding to constituencies should be according to need, not according to the need to keep the prime minister in his job.”

He described the government’s levelling up fund as “an open opportunity for government ministers to corruptly hand out money to some MPs and not to others”. The fund has been a source of controversy. Two councils in England represented by Tory ministers have received funding despite being among the least deprived fifth of local authorities nationwide.

Downing Street has said it will not launch its own inquiry into Wragg’s claims, despite calls for it to do so. A No 10 spokesperson said it would only open an inquiry if it were presented with evidence to support the allegations.

Too right.

I suspect that Bryant’s beef was that Conservatives were doing something positive to help deprived areas, such as Teesside, which had suffered under decades of Labour domination.

The Sue Gray report on Partygate was also due around that time:

The blackmail allegations are just one source of acute pressure on No 10. Johnson also faces calls for transparency over the Sue Gray inquiry into the Downing Street parties. The opposition has asked that the full evidence be published after it emerged that the report was likely to just be a brief summary of findings.

Labour and the Liberal Democrats called on Friday for all accompanying evidence – including emails and witness accounts – to be released alongside the report’s publication.

When asked whether the prime minister should step aside over the more than 15 parties alleged to have taken place, several Conservative MPs have said they will wait for the report’s findings before deciding whether to back him or not. If they are unsatisfied, he could face a no-confidence vote.

The report is expected to be ready at some point from the middle of next week, according to government sources.

Subsequent news stories reported that, unbeknownst to most, Gray, the senior civil servant said to wield much power, was already in talks with Labour’s Sir Keir Starmer about becoming his chief of staff. Of course, she had been given a pass, so to speak, and is still headed towards that job.

Incredibly, Bryant was given an accolade on June 29 that year, having been proclaimed a ‘worthy winner’ of the Civility in Politics Award.

Guido Fawkes has the story (emphases his):

Congratulations to Chris Bryant, joint winner of the 2022 Civility in Politics award. Last night he took home the gong alongside minister Robin Swann [at the time, Minister of Health in the Northern Ireland Assembly], with judges claiming Bryant stood out in a crowded field for his “praise and support from across the spectrum“:

As Chair of the Standards Committee Chris has been responsible for marshalling commitments from people across the political spectrum to hold those in power to account, striving to maintain standards and facilitate scrutiny, of his own side as well as others.

Bryant has an unrivalled record of thoughtful and reflective conduct in office. He is a worthy winner. Here are just a few examples of his upstanding behaviour:

This April, in the spirit of bipartisanship and civility, he declared [Brexit negotiator Lord] David Frost “an idiot”:

Who was the idiot that negotiated it? https://t.co/arCfbMdQeY

— Chris Bryant (@RhonddaBryant) April 13, 2022

Then just six days ago, Bryant again reached across the aisle to mock Frost after the by-election results [Tiverton and Honiton, now with a Lib Dem MP]:

Now do tell us, darling, how it would have been different if you had been the Tory candidate. Such a shame you didn’t feel the need to put yourself up for election. 😞 https://t.co/EftzWL84QV

— Chris Bryant (@RhonddaBryant) June 24, 2022

Who could forget the moment he stormed out of the Commons after, according to multiple chamber eyewitnesses, telling [fellow Labour MP and Speaker of the House Sir Lindsay] Hoyle to “f*ck off”:

To be fair to Bryant, he did eventually return a week later to apologise. No doubt this sealed the deal for the judges yesterday as they handed him a trophy for his efforts. Commiserations to the nominees who missed out this time, including Wes Streeting and Tom Tugendhat. It must be tough to lose an award recognising standards and civility to a man who had to refer himself to the standards commissioner…

Indeed. What hypocrisy.

I had no idea who votes in this award and never heard of it until 2022.

According to a September 27, 2019 article from The Guardian, it was launched that year, the paper says, ‘for courtesy and decency amid anger over Brexit’:

The annual Civility in Politics prizes will be given out to politicians who have shown courtesy and decency through their work, with categories of bridge-builder of the year and campaigner of the year.

It appears to have come about amid anger over Boris Johnson’s premiership, too:

The Labour peer Lord Wood, one of the figures behind the awards, said: “Everyone agrees that politics in the UK is facing a crisis of trust and a crisis of civility.

“As divisions and bitterness mount in the continuing debates around Brexit, we strongly believe that politics must respond not by mirroring these trends, but by resisting them.

“These awards are a small attempt by a group of people in public life – of different and no political persuasions – to shine a spotlight on politicians who argue their case with decency and civility, and are able to engage with people across the divides that threaten to scar our country.”

The launch follows a dramatic week in British politics in which Boris Johnson sparked fury among MPs for his continued description of legislation to block a no-deal Brexit as a “surrender bill”.

The award’s website shows the full list of 2022 award winners. There was a Bridge Builders award won by the Local Government Association’s Civility in Public Life Programme, a Campaigner of the Year won by Nazanin Ratcliffe’s husband Richard and the Daniel Stevenson award given posthumously to David Amess, the Conservative MP stabbed to death in October 2021.

Returning to Chris Bryant, he also played a role in Liz Truss’s downfall on October 19, 2022, in the fracking bill vote which led to her final 24 hours as leader of the Conservative Party, although she stayed on as Prime Minister until Conservative MPs voted in Rishi Sunak as the next party leader.

You can find out more about that vote in the second half of this post and this post, which mentions Chris Bryant alleging that bullying occurred in the division lobbies. The vote was initially said to have been a vote of confidence in Truss’s premiership, then, in the closing arguments, it was announced that it was simply a vote on fracking.

Bryant also appeared on Sky News, still pressing on with his story:

However, there was another photo which portrayed something calmer. Photos are forbidden in the voting lobbies, but, somehow, these got through:

Sir Lindsay Hoyle looked into the matter and reminded members that photography is forbidden in the voting lobbies.

On November 1, Guido gave us the results of Hoyle’s investigation. By then, Truss was on gardening leave.

The only person in trouble appeared to be Chris Bryant:

Lindsay Hoyle has concluded his investigation into the events that took place in the division lobbies on October 19, when the government called a vote of confidence in itself in response to a Labour Opposition Day motion on fracking.

According to reports at the time, many from Labour MPs, it was claimed there had been verbal bullying and physical manhandling. Tory MP Alex Stafford was reportedly manhandled into the ‘correct’ voting lobby by Therese Coffey and Jacob Rees-Mogg. 

Contrary to all those reports, Hoyle has found no evidence of any of this that night. A statement read to the Commons this morning concluded “that atmosphere was tense… but there is no evidence of any bullying or undue influence placed on other members.

While some members thought physicial contact was being used to force a member into the lobby, the member concerned has said very clearly that this did not happen.

In fact the only person the report does find against are Labour MPs like Chris Bryant, who took photos in the lobby and tweeted them out – a breach of Commons rules. The man who judges others on standards comes a cropper again…

A short time later, Guido posted again, ‘Will Chris Bryant Correct the Record?’, which said:

Chris Bryant is the chair of the Commons Committee on Standards. It is his job to uphold standards in the House and oversee investigations into other members for breaking rules. While confronting Boris at the Liaison Committee in 2021, Bryant slammed the then-PM for failing to correct the record:

When a minister lies, they should correct the record, I presume you agree… It seems that you very rarely correct the record. Why is that?

On the evening of Wednesday 19 October, Chris Bryant stood up in the Commons and told MPs the following as a matter of fact:

As you know, Members are expected to be able to vote without fear or favour and the behaviour code, which is agreed by the whole House, says that there shall never be bullying or harassment of Members. I saw Members being physically manhandled into another Lobby and being bullied.

On the BBC later that night he ramped up this rhetoric, saying what he saw was “clear bullying”.

Today’s report by the Speaker, summarising the testimony of those involved and with a good vantage point, rejects this claim entirely.

Lindsay Hoyle says, “While there was some physical contact between Members, there is no evidence from our investigation that this was any more than a gesture of comfort”.

Will the ever-virtuous Bryant follow his own advice and correct the record forthwith?

Even then, Bryant still insisted he was telling the truth in this Twitter exchange. Christian Calgie, by the way, has since graduated from Guido and moved on to The Express:

Less than three weeks later, Bryant had a go outside of Parliament, at Kate Andrews, The Spectator‘s economics editor, who was on the BBC’s Question Time panel.

On November 18, Guido wrote:

Chris Bryant, incumbent winner of the civility in politics award, is currently hectoring Kate Andrews, one of the country’s most prominent female economic voices. Taking to Twitter, Chris Bryant complained that the BBC hadn’t accompanied her Question Time appearance with a mention that she “is part of the Institute for Economic Affairs, which is notoriously secretive about their funding.” 

Guido included a link to Bryant’s tweet then continued:

Two quick points, Chris:

1. 1. She isn’t “part of the Institute for Economic Affairs” – Kate left the IEA almost three years ago.
   2. The BBC did mention it, in their graphic announcing the night’s lineup.

Guido included the Question Time graphic of Andrews, which clearly stated:

Was Associate Director at the Institute of Economic Affairs think tank

Bryant was still angry.

Guido went on …

The one-man standards arbiter strikes again…

UPDATE: Bryant doubles down

… and included this Twitter exchange between the MP and Andrews:

Andrews’s IEA page is blank. Bryant posted a screenshot of it and wrote:

You might want them to remove this.

She replied, pointing out that it had no content and the date listed was 8 July 2016.

She added:

It is one thing to make a mistake. This doubling down is much worse. I look forward to your correction.

I have no idea how that ended.

A couple of weeks later, on December 6, Guido told us that Bryant was giving a lecture at the University of Westminster in his capacity as the 2022 Civility in Politics winner:

Chris Bryant is giving a speech at the University of Westminster this evening on “truth, honesty and integrity.” In full, the ‘Civility in Politics 2022’ winner will talk on:

• • The importance of truth, honesty and integrity in public office and in news reporting
  • The role of algorithms in filtering news & their distorting effect on the truth
  • How news providers stir up hatred and drive divisive agendas to generate clicks and the advertising revenue which follows
  • Why it is essential that news publishers are bound by robust standards on accuracy – the integrity of our democracy relies on it

Chris Bryant should pause the pontificating until he spends some time on introspection…

Since Bryant won the civility in politics award – the irony of which Guido detailed here – he’s not stopped putting his foot in it.

A month after winning it he was forced to apologise for false claims he’d made in Parliament, the outcome of an unprecedented legal challenge that saw his parliamentary privilege come unstuck. Not just a minor false allegation – accusing Christopher Chandler of money laundering and being a Russian spy…

As Chris lectures students on how “news providers stir up hatred and drive divisive agendas”, he may want to think about his description of Liz Truss’s new batch of ministers:

It feels like pretty much anyone with a brain, a conscience and a work ethic has been purged from government either by Johnson or Truss. It’s an empty vessel of a government – loud, noisy but dangerously vacuous.

When he turns to “the importance of truth, honesty and integrity in public office”, he will surely mention his recent smearing of Tory MPs by falsely claiming – on the floor of the House – he had witnessed bullying in the voting lobbies the night of the fracking vote. He is yet to correct the record…

On the topic of calling on news publishers to be “bound by robust standards on accuracy”, he may choose to mention how even the BBC managed to show him up when he accused them of failing to mention Kate Andrews “is part of the [IEA]” when she appeared on Question Time last month. Of course she isn’t, and he didn’t back down when this inaccurate bullying of a female columnist was called out…

Anyone wanting to watch the speech can reserve a spot here. Guido, for one, will be giving it a miss…

As if all of that weren’t enough, the year ended with Bryant getting a knighthood!

Guido has the honours list made public on December 30. Bryant was rewarded for political and public service. This makes him Sir Chris Bryant.

Leader of the House Penny Mordaunt did not appreciate Bryant’s allegations about corruption on Thursday, January 19, 2023 during Business Questions, over which she presides. He began with slurring the Levelling Up funds, which have been used in the most downtrodden parts of the country that had been consistently voting Labour until 2019:

In the 18th century, a Government Minister used to stand at the entrance to Westminster Hall at the end of the parliamentary Session and reward MPs who had voted loyally with the Government throughout the year with dollops of cash. Now, I am not trying to give ideas to the Government, and I hope that everybody would accept that that is utterly corrupt. I also happen to think that the operation of the levelling-up fund and of the towns fund is completely corrupt, because it is not based on need, it is not based on the poorest communities in the country and it is not based on levelling up. It is discretionary and it is competitive, which rigs itself deliberately against the poorest communities in the land, as we have seen over the past 24 hours. Can we have a debate in Government time on corruption in the operation of slush funds in this country?

She replied:

The hon. Gentleman is the Chair of the Committee on Standards, so he will be very able and equipped to investigate this further.

He shot back:

Really? That’s great.

Hardly a civil reply.

Mordaunt said:

It is his Committee; he can do what he likes. I would just say this to him: first of all, we have a number of funds. We have the levelling-up fund, the community ownership fund—

Bryant fired back:

Corrupt.

Mordaunt named more funds. After each one, Bryant said:

Corrupt.

She closed their exchange with this:

There are many, many funds. The hon. Gentleman is saying that they are all corrupt. They are all available to view on gov.uk, and you can see where funding has gone.

I would also say to the hon. Gentleman that these bids are not assessed by Ministers; they are assessed independently. They are scored and it is transparent. Good feedback will be given to those who did not progress in this round. Quite often, what happens is that bids that are not successful in one round are successful in successive rounds, because those areas that needed improvement have been done.

Finally, I would say to the hon. Gentleman, because of the way in which he has put his question, that he has slight form in accusing people of doing things that on investigation they have turned out not to have been done. It was very recently that he accused one of my colleagues of manhandling somebody who turned out not to have been handled at all. I would just urge a little caution in how the hon. Gentleman makes such accusations.

On May 23, Bryant hoped to be in for a new plum, prestigious job, that of a rector at an Oxford college, in this case, Exeter College.

Guido told us:

According to Guido’s scholarly source, the Labour MP is on the final shortlist of candidates to become the new Rector of Exeter College at Oxford University, and apparently interviewed all day Monday for the position. Bryant hasn’t announced any plans to stand down, so this would come as a surprise…

Guido decided to ask Chris how the weather was in Oxford yesterday. Bryant, never typically lost for words, clammed up and has since been dodging Guido’s calls. After agreeing to talk yesterday evening, he changed his mind. Today he was otherwise engaged in Windsor for his investiture as a knight bachelor of the realm. A bauble traditionally dangled at the end of one’s career…

Guido contacted Exeter College, but they had no comment other than confirming that the new rector would take up the post in September 2024:

September 2024 would be an ideal jumping off point for an MP who doesn’t fancy another gruelling election campaign…

Chris and Guido have been sparring partners for two decades. We were once even neighbours. He had a cancer scare recently, and no one would blame him if he has decided that next year, at the age of 62, there might be more to life than politics. If it is true that he is standing down, we wish Sir Chris well…

It seems that Exeter College didn’t like the cut of Sir Chris Bryant’s jib. On June 27, Guido informed us that he didn’t make the cut (purple emphases mine):

Sir Chris Bryant has sadly missed out on the Rectorship of Exeter College, Oxford. As Guido reported last month, Bryant was on the final shortlist of candidates for the £105,000-a-year role, and was hoping to take up the post after stepping down from Parliament next year. Instead, one of the other three candidates, Major General Dr Andrew Roe CB, has been selected. Roe is Chief Executive of the UK Defence Academy. Guido hears Bryant was seen as “too controversial” a figure, so the Governing Body voted for Roe instead. There are plenty of other Oxford rejects walking around SW1, Chris…

In yesterday’s post, I covered most of what Bryant said about Boris in the June 19 debate about Harriet Harman’s Privileges Committee condemnation of him to the extent that MPs agreed not to give the former PM a former members’ pass to the parliamentary estate, which is highly unusual.

The Privileges Committee then came up with a separate report, alleging that some MPs were trying to obstruct their work. They held a debate on that on Monday, July 7. Bryant, having relinquished the chairmanship of the Privileges Committee in 2022 because he had already decided Boris was guilty, wisely did not appear at the debate, although his name came up several times.

However, we can see more ‘civility’ from the Labour MP in the following video, when he grilled the Prime Minister on why he was not showing up at two consecutive Prime Minister’s Questions. This is from Tuesday, July 4, when Rishi Sunak appeared before the Liaison Committee, comprised of the heads of the various select committees. Bryant still heads the Standards Committee:

Bryant also had a go at Rishi over the special report from the Privileges Committee on the MPs who were allegedly obstructing their work on bashing Boris. Guido says:

While it might not have matched the box office value of Boris’s appearance last year, Sir Chris Bryant did at least provide some light entertainment at today’s Liaison Committee hearing. The Civility in Politics winner grilled Rishi over his poor attendance at PMQs – he’s missing the next two appearances – and kicked up a fuss over the Kangaroo Court’s report … Rishi hasn’t actually read the full 30,000 word report, though Guido can hardly blame him. There was also some confusion over which report Bryant was actually talking about in the first place: the 30,000 word doorstop, or the 14 page whinge about the Court’s critics. Bryant thought the latter was only 3 pages, for some reason…

Bryant bashed Rishi for not having read the ‘full report’, saying it was only three pages long, and for not voting to censure Boris.

Guido had more on this in a subsequent post, along with this video:

Guido tells us how Bryant got things wrong once again:

The heated exchange between Sir Chris Bryant and Rishi Sunak today led Bryant to get muddled with his facts in his attempt to condemn the PM.

Whilst bashing Rishi for failing to pay Parliament – and specifically the Kangaroo Court Privileges Committee – sufficient respect, Bryant claimed that Wes Streeting had made the vote, even after attending the same charity event as Rishi that evening. Wes did not vote on the Privileges Committee’s report…

He gave Rishi a further telling off by claiming the report was only “about 3 pages long” – making the fairly significant oversight that the report is, in fact, fourteen pages long. Looks like Sir Chris Bryant should correct the record…

Guido stepped in to help the mistaken MP:

The Report itself is 4 1/2 pages long. There is also a cover page; a copyright page; a contents page; an Annex to the Report (4 pages); minutes of the Committee (1 page) and a list of reports to the Committee (1 page). https://t.co/1JSQYPHmRE

— Chris Bryant (@RhonddaBryant) July 4, 2023

Then Guido left the perfectly pious MP with a question over lockdown parties, asking Bryant if he had attended one himself:

Did you attend a lockdown drinks party in Rosie Winterton's parliamentary office Chris Bryant @RhonddaBryant?

— Guido Fawkes (@GuidoFawkes) July 4, 2023

HMM!

I do hope that the answer to that question is in the affirmative. Time will tell.

If so, Bryant should be dragged through the same seemingly endless — and career-damaging — process that he applied to Boris Johnson.

Hypocrisy, thy name is Chris Bryant.

The Venn diagram link between Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage: Chris Bryant MP

If one were to ask what the Venn diagram link between Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage is, most people would say ‘Brexit’.

However, there is another, perhaps greater one: the Labour MP Chris Bryant.

Boris

Chris Bryant volunteered to recuse himself from the select committee he chaired, the Privileges Committee, because he was so biased against Boris Johnson that he could not reasonably conduct the Partygate inquiry, having already decided that Boris was guilty. Harriet Harman assumed chairmanship of the Committee. Bryant, incidentally, still chairs the Standards Committee.

This is what he had to say on Monday, June 19, 2023, when the Committee’s motion to sanction the MP, who had already resigned rather than face a 90-day suspension from the Commons. That day, MPs — with the exception of seven — denied him a former members’ pass to the parliamentary estate.

This comes from Hansard (emphases mine):

May I first thank my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman)? I should probably thank her more than anybody in the Chamber because the wisest thing I have ever done in my political career has been to recuse myself from chairing the Committee. She has done an absolutely admirable job. I also thank all the Committee members—as has often been referred to, the Conservative members in particular. I will not go into the other matters that, for other reasons, the Committee Chair referred to, about privilege and whether this should be referred back. I simply point out that I know all the Conservative members of the Committee because they are also on the Standards Committee. They do a wonderful job every single time.

The former Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs [Theresa] May), was right to say that it is very difficult to sit in judgment on your colleagues, including your opponents. That is not actually any easier than sitting in judgment on people who have sat on the same Benches as you or have been in the same party as you. But let’s face it: Boris Johnson lied. He said the guidance was followed completely. It wasn’t. He said that the rules and guidance were followed at all times. They weren’t. And I take the plain meaning of his words. You do not have to investigate any further—just the plain meaning will do. He said he had repeated assurances. He didn’t. He misrepresented the facts as he knew them. Meanwhile, people died in isolation, lost their livelihood—we often forget that bit—or missed out on a wedding or another very important moment in their family life because they abided by the rules. They thought that the big truth of the pandemic was that we were all in this together. That is why there is visceral anger. I hear it often from those who think that some people did not abide by the rules and that those were the people who wrote the rules.

This is not a single instance of accidentally mis-speaking either. Many Members have said that of course that happens. We have a proper process, which we have had since 2007, for a Minister to correct the record. Interestingly, the only time Mr Johnson corrected the record as a Minister was when he said that Roman Abramovic had been sanctioned and realised that he had not been sanctioned. So a Russian oligarch is perhaps more important than other matters. Yes, Mr Johnson was careless—reckless, you could say—about the truth, but far, far worse than that, he deliberately, intentionally and with knowledge aforethought sought to cover his tracks. It was a pattern of behaviour, a string of lies. And I do not much care for the version of the debate today which says, “Oh, it was all junior officials and they should be thrown under the bus” or “It was the fault of the police because they did not bother to report it or deal with it.”

Conservative MP Lia Nici, the only out-and-out Boris defender that day, intervened:

I thank the hon. Gentleman most graciously for giving way. Actually, it was not just about junior unelected officials. Where were the senior managers in this? Where were the line managers in this stopping this happening? Does he know?

Bryant replied:

The thing is that, sometimes when you try to take the spade off somebody when they are digging the hole, they are absolutely determined to take it back and bring a pitchfork and a JCB to the process as well.

Mr Johnson says he has been brought down by a witch hunt, but in all honesty the only person who brought down Mr Johnson was Mr Johnson and I suspect he knows that. I think that this House feels that he should be ashamed of himself and that will be what it concludes later today, but I fear that he remains completely shameless.

Is the sanction proportionate? Of course, it is very difficult to sanction somebody who has already taken the option of running away from this House and from facing the music here or for that matter in their constituency. But that is still important. What we debate today is not an academic matter. That is not a criticism—

Later, he discussed the Committee’s process:

I just want to say a few words about the process. The House has always claimed, as the Leader of the House [Penny Mordaunt] said in her excellent speech, exclusive cognisance; that is to say, apart from the voters and the criminal law, the only body that can discipline, suspend or expel a duly elected Member of the House is the House of Commons in its entirety. I still hold to that principle. It is why any decision or recommendation to suspend or expel a Member that comes from the Standards Committee or the Independent Expert Panel has to be approved by the whole House. It is also why the only way to proceed when there is an allegation that a Member has committed a contempt of Parliament, for instance by misleading the House, is via a Committee of the House and a decision of the whole House. That is why we have to have the motion today and had to have the Committee on Privileges. It cannot, I believe, be a court of law. It has to be a Committee of the House. I do not think some commentators have fully understood that, including Lord Pannick and some former Leaders of the House.

I say to those who have attacked the process that they should be very careful of what they seek. There are those who would prefer lying to Parliament to be a criminal offence, justiciable and punishable by the courts, but that would drive a coach and horses through the Bill of Rights principle that “freedom of speech and debates or proceedings in Parliament ought not to be impeached or questioned in any court or place out of Parliament.”

So I am left feeling that those who attack the process simply do not believe that there should be any process for determining whether a Member has lied to the House. As I have said before, I kind of admire the personal loyalty, but I dislike the attitude because it is in effect an excuse for appalling behaviour.

Conservative MP Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg intervened to say this was a ‘political’ process, meaning one biased against a Conservative MP.

Bryant then tried to implicate Rees-Mogg in it:

… Mr Johnson had, I think, more than £250,000-worth of representation provided by the taxpayer.

The membership of the Committee was agreed by the whole House when—I think I might be right in saying this—the right hon. Gentleman was Leader of the House.

Rees-Mogg shook his head:

indicated dissent.

Bryant had to backtrack:

I am wrong; I apologise. However, it is certainly the case that the whole House agreed that membership, fully knowing everything that had been said up until that moment. Three members of the Committee had sat on a previous case in relation to Mr Johnson that came to the Standards Committee. The Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards had found against Mr Johnson, but we, the Committee, found in his favour. I therefore do not think that this was in any sense a biased Committee …

Nigel

Nigel Farage has, rightly or wrongly, alleged that a statement Bryant made in the Commons could have prejudiced his bank against him:

I mentioned in my post on bank account closures in the UK an article from the Daily Mail:

Mr. Farage speculated that the “establishment” was targeting him due to his role in campaigning for Brexit during the 2016 referendum on British membership of the EU. He also suggested that his reputation had been smeared by Labour MP Sir Chris Bryant, who last year used parliamentary privilege to claim that Mr. Farage was paid more than £500,000 by the Russian state through his appearances on Russia Today in 2018. He vehemently denied this, saying: “I didn’t receive a penny from any source with even any link to Russia.”

Bryant’s background

Despite his egalitarian pronouncements over the past few decades, Chris Bryant benefitted from a solid middle class upbringing which allowed him to attend Cheltenham College in Gloucestershire. The boys school is known for its classical, military and sporting traditions. Earlier, Bryant’s father was posted to Spain for five years (occupation unknown) in the 1960s, where the boy became fluent in Spanish.

After finishing his studies at Cheltenham College, Bryant read English at Mansfield College, Oxford. He was also a member of the Conservative Party and was an office-holder in the Oxford University Conservative Association. Bryant left the Conservative Party in 1986, after completing his undergraduate studies at Oxford.

Bryant then went on to earn a degree in theology at Ripon College Cuddesdon, a short distance away from Oxford. He was ordained a deacon in 1986 and as a priest in 1987. His position as a cleric took him to Latin America and service as a youth chaplain in Peterborough.

He left the ministry in 1991, believing that his sexual identity was incompatible with the priesthood.

From there, he entered the world of politics and had a meteoric rise in London. He worked as the election agent for Frank Dobson on his 1992 re-election as MP for Holborn and St Pancras. (Keir Starmer is currently the constituency’s MP.) In 1993, he became the Local Government Officer for the Labour Party and was elected to Hackney Borough Council, where he served the Leagrave ward until 1998.

During that time — between 1994 and 1996 — he was also the London manager of Common Purpose. He was also the chairman of the Christian Socialist Movement.

In 1996, he became an author, penning two biographies of Labour politicians, one of Sir Stafford Cripps and the other of Glenda Jackson, the former actress who died just a few weeks ago.

In 1997, the year Tony Blair swept into No. 10 with an astounding majority, Bryant had run unsuccessfully as the Labour candidate for Wycombe in the Home Counties. In 1998, he became the Head of European Affairs for the BBC.

From this, it is obvious that Bryant had cultivated important and powerful connections during his lifetime.

His entry to the House of Commons as an MP was no less notable. He returned to his home nation of Wales to run as the Labour candidate for Rhondda (pron. ‘Ron-tha’) in the 2001 general election. He was not the favourite to win the local Labour Party Association selection, yet, he did. Incredibly, he won the seat in that general election with a majority of 16,047, one of the largest in the country.

It should be noted that Tony Blair was considering Bryant for a Cabinet position until someone brought to his attention photos that the young MP had taken of himself and posted online with a crude invitation for a date.

Speaking authoritatively, not always accurately

The first article I bookmarked about Bryant was one written by the journalist son of Margaret Thatcher’s Chancellor, Nigel Lawson.

On Monday, August 12, 2013, Dominic Lawson wrote an article for The Independent, ‘Sorry, Chris Bryant — but who was it who wanted these Polish workers in the first place?’

At this point, we had had a coalition government of Conservatives and Liberal Democrats since May 2010, with David Cameron as Prime Minister.

Dominic Lawson pointed out where Bryant, a big promoter of the EU, got his facts wrong about our top supermarket chain, Tesco (emphases mine):

… Over the weekend he gave the Sunday Telegraph paragraphs of a speech he was to deliver the day after the paper came out, in which he attacked “unscrupulous employers whose only interest seems to be finding labour as cheaply as possible, [who] recruit workers in large numbers in low wage countries in the EU, bring them to the UK….and still not even meet the national minimum wage.”

Mr Bryant specifically accused Tesco of “moving their distribution centre in Kent” to facilitate such nefarious practices. He went on to accuse the clothing firm Next of a similar sort of abuse: “Last year they brought 500 Polish workers to work in their South Elmshall warehouse for their summer sale and another 300 this summer…they get to avoid Agency Worker Regulations, so Polish temps end up considerably cheaper than the local workforce.”

Within 24 hours of the publication of these remarks, Bryant was frantically retreating. Tesco pointed out that it had no distribution centre in “Kent”, but had moved one within Essex, to Dagenham. It added that “we work incredibly hard to recruit from within the local area, and have just recruited 350 local people to work in our Dagenham site.” A spokesman for Next said that if Bryant had taken the trouble to contact the firm beforehand, it could have told him that “agency workers from Poland cost us exactly the same as local agency workers and our existing employees. For clarity, the nationality of workers in no way affects their rights under Agency Workers Regulations, a fact Mr Bryant should have been aware of.” Next’s spokesman was presumably referring to the fact that Bryant is the Shadow Minister for Borders and Immigration, and therefore ought to have gained a rudimentary understanding of the law in such matters.

Actually, it’s even more reprehensible than that. More than almost any other politician, Bryant had been an advocate of the enlargement of the EU within a single market and a single currency – the lynchpins of a system which encourages the freest possible mobility of labour across the old national borders. From 2002 to 2007 Bryant was Chair of the Labour Movement for Europe, and for two years before that was Head of European Affairs at the BBC (some would say that these two roles were indistinguishable).

Bryant now says that it had been a “mistake” of his (and of the Labour Government for which he served as Minister for Europe under Gordon Brown) to have “allowed people to come to the UK immediately from day one” when some of the Eastern European countries, including Poland, were admitted to the EU. Yet that is an empty apology in the context of his current complaint about Next’s employment of Polish agency workers: even a delay in freedom of movement for Polish labour following EU accession would have been temporary, and they would certainly now be free to come – as indeed will Bulgarians and Romanians from January of next year.

Now we are getting to the heart of the matter, in terms of British domestic politics …

While it is commonly said that Ukip is a magnet for disaffected Conservatives, its message is no less appealing to Labour’s working class core vote – as Bryant clearly recognises. Gordon Brown was intensely discomfited by this truth, when he was challenged by an irate Labour voter, Mrs Gillian Duffy, during the 2010 general election campaign: “All these Eastern Europeans what’s coming in: where are they flocking from?” …

Since Chris Bryant is still – so far as we know – a firm supporter of greater British integration into Europe (including membership of the European single currency), he has no principled argument against what he termed in his leaked speech “the negative effects migration can have on the UK labour market”. Instead he is reduced to crude soundbites – sometimes called “dog whistle politics” – desperately trying to persuade the electorate that he is a nationalist in matters of employment: for example in April he declared “it would be nice sometimes when you go into a British hotel if the receptionist was British.” I imagine some hotel receptionists might have their own opinions about Mr Bryant …

Yes, it is a sensitive issue, which is exactly why politicians such as Chris Bryant –a vigorous critic of errant newspapers – should check their facts before wading in; or as the BBC’s Evan Davis put it to Bryant in an excruciating interview on the Today programme yesterday: “The main lesson from this is that you don’t pre-release bits of speeches that are half-baked, sloppily drafted, then recoil from them the next day.”

We can only add to that magisterial rebuke that not only has Tesco done more for employment in this country than any here-today gone-tomorrow politician will ever do; the firm’s allegedly reprehensible commitment to keeping its input costs down is inseparable from its ability to keep output costs at a minimum. In other words: keeping British families’ food bills as low as possible at a time of squeezed finances. There’s another thing that Tesco manages, which Bryant finds so difficult: it doesn’t promise what it can’t deliver.

In 2015, he had a hypocritical go at singer-musician James Blunt, who had served in the Army during his youth. Bryant was the Shadow Minister for the Arts at the time:

… he suggested in January 2015 that too many successful artists such as “James Blunt and their ilk” had been educated at private schools, and that he wanted to see more encouragement for the arts for people from a variety of backgrounds, even though Bryant himself attended a private school. Blunt said that Bryant was a “narrow-minded ‘classist gimp’ who was motivated by the ‘politics of jealousy'”; Bryant responded by claiming that Blunt should not be “so blooming precious” and that he was not “knocking [his] success” but attempting to draw attention to the lack of diversity in the arts.^[27]

Talk about pot and kettle. I cannot think of anyone more ‘precious’ than Chris Bryant.

Exacting standards not so exacting

Chris Bryant is known for his exacting standards of MPs.

Yet, he himself is not quite the pious ex-priest he professes to be.

In May 2020, he was appointed to two powerful committee positions. Why the aforementioned photos did not disqualify him is a mystery. On May 6 that year, he became the Chair of the Commons Committee on Standards. On May 20, he was made Chair of the Commons Committee of Privileges, a post he held until he recused himself when Boris Johnson’s Partygate case came up for enquiry. Harriet Harman succeeded him on June 24, 2022.

In October 2020, Dan Wootton, who was working at talkRADIO at the time, interviewed Bryant about coronavirus policy.

Guido captured the heated exchange from October 9, during which a petulant Bryant stridently called Wootton a ‘nut-case’ for advocating herd immunity, something the scientific community had always done … until 2020:

Guido told us (red emphases his):

TalkRADIO’s audience were treated to a classic politician/interviewer bust-up last night as Dan Wootton took Chris Bryant on over Wales’ impending two-week “fire breaker” lockdown, which saw the Rhondda MP kicked off the interview after calling Wootton a “dangerous” “nutcase”. It wasn’t long before the feud resumed on Twitter…

You believe we should surrender to the virus which means additional unnecessary deaths plus the overwhelming of our NHS. I talk to my local physicians all the time. You’re just a loudmouth Trump-lite.

— Chris Bryant (@RhonddaBryant) October 19, 2020

Despite SAGE’s own top scientists espousing herd immunity just a few months ago, Bryant tried mocking Dan, repeatedly saying “so you subscribe to herd immunity?!” While it’s fair to point out issues with the so-called Barrington Declaration as Matt Hancock did last week, Bryant avoided that ever tiresome duty of an MP to debate the points civilly, merely resorting to abusing Wootton:

You’re a nutcase, a complete and utter nutcase and you’re dangerous as well

Bryant is getting increasingly short-tempered, and it is not as if he had a long fuse to begin with…

The next day, Guido followed up on the story in ‘Chris Bryant’s Standards Committee Chairmanship Called Into Question’:

Gossiping MPs are questioning the propriety of the Chairman of the Committee on Standards, Chris Bryant’s abrasive interview with Dan Wooton on Monday. After Wooton referenced the Harvard, Oxford, and Stanford epidemiologists behind the Great Barrington Declaration, and advocated “Focused Protection” of the vulnerable as a superior alternative to national lockdowns, Bryant lost his temper …

The vehemence has raised eyebrows in the House of Commons. Backbench MPs called it an “ablist slur” that should not be coming from the Standards Committee Chairman in such a public forum. One MP tells Guido:

I am absolutely stunned that somebody in the position of chair of the Standards Committee who would deliberate on standards of other MPs could possibly use such offensive terminology, which even in its slang sense would anger many people with mental health issues.

After losing out at last year’s Speakership election, Bryant’s stock is falling further with MPs…

On December 9, 2020, he voiced the f-word at fellow Labour MP, the new Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle, who, according to The Sun, is his ‘long-time foe’:

The spat interrupted one of Boris Johnson’s answers during PM’s Questions.

An MP who witnessed it told The Sun: “He was standing in the doorway at the back of the Labour benches and chuntering.

“The Speaker told him to be quiet and then said he should not be positioned there as he was too close to others who were sitting in allocated seats.

“Bryant disputed this and the Speaker insisted he move, to which he threw his hand in the air and said, ‘Oh f*** off’.”

Mr Hoyle was furious and shouted: “We’re not having that disgraceful behaviour.”

Another MP also claimed Mr Bryant swore.

Mr Bryant denied swearing but last night refused to comment as he did not want to escalate the row.

A Tory MP who witnessed it said: “It’s pathetic. I understand there has been a long-standing issue between them.”

The pair have long been known to dislike each other. It came to a head last year when they both stood in the election to become Speaker.

The Daily Mail reported that Hoyle would not escalate the matter: party loyalty, most probably. You can be sure if a Conservative MP hurled the f-bomb, that would not have been the end of the story:

Sir Lindsay – who has the final say on all behaviour in the chamber – is not expected to take any further action, viewing it as a matter for Labour. But a party source said they were not pursuing the case as it was a ‘matter between the chair and an MP’. 

There have been long-running tensions between Sir Lindsay and Mr Bryant, with the latter finishing runner-up to the Speaker in the battle to replace John Bercow last year.  

Guido Fawkes has the video of the incident:

Guido reported:

… he mouthed “f*ck off” at the Speaker and flounced out of the room. While Bryant denies he swore, multiple MPs have told Guido he “definitely did”.

Newport MP Jessica Morden [also Labour] then dragged Bryant back to the Chamber to apologise to the Speaker. Following a short exchange, Sir Lindsay said the conversation should take place later. As Bryant continues to deny it, the Speaker is still waiting for an apology.

What is making the matter a gossip magnet in the parliamentary tea room is that Bryant is Chairman of the Standards Board. MPs are a little irritated existing rules mean goings on in the Chamber cannot be referred to the Standards Board. If this had happened elsewhere on the estate it would have been. With this and his mental health slur last month, the man supposed to uphold standards continues to see them slip…

On June 30, 2021, Bryant owned up on television to not following his own exacting standards. MPs must declare trips they have made. Most of them are financed by others. Bryant waited two years to declare a 2019 trip to Poland, paid for by the British Council. Hmm.

Here is Guido’s scoop from June 29:

Chair of the Commons Standards Committee Chris Bryant has had to refer himself for a Standards Committee investigation after failing to declare a holiday two years ago. The correspondence shows the Standards Commissioner began the inquiry after Bryant alerted him to the error in his register of interests; regarding an overseas visit to Poland in August 2019, arranged and paid for the British Council. Whoops…

The Commissioner finds that Bryant breached paragraph 14 of the members’ code of conduct. A usually fastidious Bryant wrote to “apologise profusely for the delay… for which I have no excuse” and says he is “determined that this lapse will be my last”. Given his recent apology for swearing at Sir Lindsay, MPs may begin wondering whether Bryant is an appropriate chair for the Standards Committee…

On June 30, Bryant owned up to the omission on the BBC, implying it was but a small matter, easily rectified in the records. What if Boris Johnson had done that?

Guido included a video and wrote:

Following Guido’s scoop yesterday that Standards Committee Chair Chris Bryant has had to refer himself to the standards commissioner over failing to declare a paid-for trip to Poland in 2019, PoliticsLive raised the story during today’s programme. Bryant told viewers, “our rules are too complicated, but frankly I’m just an idiot because I forgot – I’ve no excuse whatsoever.” Very perceptive…

It would be almost excusable if Bryant weren’t so critical of other MPs’ standards.

To back up that claim, here is another 2019 story. On April 11 that year, WalesOnline reported the incredible sums of money Bryant made on his London properties:

Labour MP Chris Bryant made £649,500 in gross profit selling two London flats the taxpayer helped pay the mortgage interest on.

When the rules changed preventing MPs from claiming mortgage interest, the Rhondda MP rented out the penthouse he owns for around £3,000 a month and claimed £84,350 from the taxpayer to rent a different property to live in himself.

Campaigners have demanded MPs who have made profits from selling homes they’ve benefited from taxpayer support to run pay back the cash.

Mr Bryant insisted that he had not profited from the taxpayer as he had owned a home in London before he became an MP and had paid the deposit on it himself.

Mr Bryant’s windfall came to light as part of a Mirror investigation into the profits MPs have made from their taxpayer-subsidised homes a decade on from the Westminster expenses scandal.

These are the properties on which politicians reclaimed thousands of pounds in mortgage interest payments at public expense under the discredited old expenses system.

Under parliamentary rules they are entitled to keep the money. But with trust in politicians still low after the expenses scandal and the ongoing Brexit shambles, critics told the Mirror that if they want to regain trust they should hand the money to the Treasury …

On October 16, 2021, the day after the Conservative MP David Amess was stabbed to death, Bryant received a death threat. A 76-year-old man in Wales was arrested ‘on suspicion of malicious communications’.

I mention that only for balance. No one should be threatening others with violence.

I will have more on Chris Bryant tomorrow, mainly focussing on his role in Boris Johnson’s downfall.

The breathtaking hypocrisy of MPs on their refusal to grant Boris a former members’ pass

On June 23, I wrote about the House of Commons voting against giving Boris Johnson a former members’ pass to Parliament.

The hypocrisy of MPs voting to refuse him a routine privilege is breathtaking.

The Hansard debate is here. Excerpts follow, emphases mine, with news updates since then.

Penny Mordaunt, Leader of the House, led the debate. Her opening statement ended with this, a response to Plaid Cymru’s Liz Saville Roberts:

The right hon. Lady brings me to my closing remarks on why what we do this afternoon matters, whichever way we decide to vote, or not to vote. The real-world consequences of a vote today may seem to come down to whether the former Member for Uxbridge has a pass to the estate. Our constituents may not appreciate why we are focused on contempt towards the House as opposed to contempts that they may feel have been made against them: the lockdown breaches themselves, which grate hard with those who sacrificed so much to keep us all safe; for others, the creation of a culture relaxed about the need to lift restrictions; for others, wider issues such as the debasement of our honours system. But we would be wrong to think that there is no meaningful consequence to our actions this afternoon.

The Committee of Privileges, in its work producing this report, did not just examine the conduct of a former colleague but sought to defend our rights and privileges in this place: the right not to be misled and the right not to be abused when carrying out our duties. As a consequence, it has also defended the rights of those who sent us here and those we serve. I thank the Committee and its staff for their service.

This matters because the integrity of our institutions matter. The respect and trust afforded to them matter. This has real-world consequences for the accountability of Members of the Parliament to each other and the members of the public they represent. Today, all Members should do what they think is right, and others should leave them alone to do so.

Well, in the event, only seven MPs, of whom six Conservatives, voted against the motion.

Not surprisingly, most MPs weighed in against Boris in this late afternoon debate that extended until the end of that day’s session, around 9:45 p.m.

Only Conservative MP Bob Seely raised a question about Tony Blair’s spurious reasons for going to war with Iraq. This intervention occurred when the Shadow Leader of the House, Thangam Debnonaire, spoke:

I want to make a brief point. I am voting in support of the motion and I did not vote in support of Owen Paterson, but I remind the hon. Member that we got rid of Boris Johnson a year ago because we lost faith in him, because he was probably not telling the truth. I am also an Iraq war veteran, and the reality is that when Tony Blair lied and lied and lied, you lot covered up for him.

Former Prime Minister Theresa May gave her speech at 5:02 p.m.:

I do not intend to dwell on the events covered in the report of the Committee of Privileges or its conclusions. It is a rigorous report and I accept its findings. I do wish to comment on the role of the Committee, the role of this House and the importance of today’s debate and vote for our political life, this Parliament and our democracy.

It is not easy to sit in judgment on friends and colleagues. One day we are judging their behaviour, the next day we may be standing next to them in the queue in the Members’ Tea Room. I know that it is not easy because, as Prime Minister, I had to take decisions based on judgments about the behaviour of friends and colleagues—decisions that affected their lives and, potentially, their careers. But friendship and working together should not get in the way of doing what is right.

I commend members of the Privileges Committee for their painstaking work and for their dignity in the face of slurs on their integrity. The House should, as the Leader of the House said, thank all of them for their service and for being willing to undertake the role. Particular thanks should go to the right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman) for being willing to stand up to chair the Committee when the hon. Member for Rhondda (Sir Chris Bryant) rightly recused himself. This Committee report matters, this debate matters and this vote matters. They matter because they strike at the heart of the bond of trust and respect between the public and Parliament that underpins the workings of this place and of our democracy.

Let us consider the pious Mrs May. One week after this debate, on Monday, June 26, The Telegraph tweeted that she, too, had attended a party during lockdown on the parliamentary estate. As we can see, Guido Fawkes got there first:

pic.twitter.com/w6dKCDNgdL

— love dogs (@plymdoggroomer) June 26, 2023

Guido posted that Theresa May attended an event on November 24, 2020, two weeks before the one in Deputy Speaker Dame Eleanor Laing’s office which Bernard Jenkin MP attended: the December 8 birthday party for his wife Anne, Baroness Jenkin. Anne is wearing the white coat and was also present, allegedly, at the November 24 event:

Theresa May Attended Anne Jenkin’s Lockdown-Breaking Celebration Party Event https://t.co/8Yme4tg4Ug pic.twitter.com/AEDlUxBHNE

— Guido Fawkes (@GuidoFawkes) June 26, 2023

Guido has more photos and more on the story (emphases in red his):

Bernard Jenkin’s “cowardly” silence hasn’t deterred Guido from digging deeper into the Jenkin’s parties. Yes, you read that right, parties – plural. Guido can reveal that Anne Jenkin’s lockdown-breaking birthday bash in Eleanor Laing’s office wasn’t an isolated event. Just two weeks prior, when the country was in an even stricter lockdown, she hosted a “(socially distanced) party”…

At the time, lockdown regulations made clear “you must not meet socially indoors with family or friends unless they are part of your household… or support bubble”. There was no such thing as a  “socially distanced party” permitted, and “everyone who can work effectively from home must do so”. There was no justification for an indoor social celebration – even if it was a ‘work event’.

The party concerned a support group for women MPs, Women2Win, which was celebrating its 15th anniversary:

Perhaps this is why Charlotte Carew Pole, director of Women2Win, has become unwilling to speak to Guido. Despite initially responding receptively, after the topic of conversation became apparent she seemed to suffer immediate amnesia. All she could say was that she didn’t run Women2Win’s social media and that she couldn’t remember any details. Although Charlotte insisted she would get back to Guido, she never has…

Guido did manage to get through to two other attendees of the celebration, held as a hybrid event in Policy Exchange’s Westminster offices. Theresa May was there in person, as Boris Johnson and David Cameron addressed the event via zoom. The hybrid event could arguably be a “work event”. It was certainly a live-streamed public event.

More problematic is that the event was followed by celebratory drinks described as a “birthday party” and Theresa May stuck around briefly for a few pictures – though apparently left swiftly and Guido has seen no pictorial evidence she had a lockdown-breaking drink. Whilst one of Guido’s source insists masks were worn at all times, the private photos differ from the publicity photos…

Baroness Nicholson pictured on the left (top photo) has no drink, whereas Anne Jenkin (on the right) has a drink in hand. In publicity photos everyone is masked with no drinks in hand. One attendee insisted it wasn’t a party, although they did describe it as “joyful” and “a celebration, definitely”.

The Telegraph article stated:

Theresa May is under pressure to clarify her involvement in a “socially distanced party” she attended during the second full lockdown.

The former prime minister was pictured taking part in an event held on Nov 24 2020 to celebrate the 15th anniversary of Women2Win, a Tory pressure group she co-founded with Baroness Jenkin …

The Guido Fawkes website reported that Mrs May participated in a hybrid discussion in person at the headquarters of the Policy Exchange think tank, before staying to pose for a number of photographs.

A social media post on the Women2Win Instagram account posted shortly before the event read: “When Anne Jenkin and Theresa May founded Women2Win 15 years ago, there were 17 Conservative women MPs.

“Today there are 87 and we think that deserves a (socially distanced) party.”

The Guido Fawkes report went on to claim the panel was “followed by celebratory drinks described as a ‘birthday party’”.

Mrs May was reported to have left prior to this, and is seen socially distancing from other participants in pictures from before and after the discussion.

There is no suggestion Mrs May broke any Covid rules. In its original article, Guido Fawkes wrote: “The hybrid event could arguably be a ‘work event’. It was certainly a live-streamed public event.”

A spokesman for the former prime minister declined to comment when approached by The Telegraph.

There is no evidence that Boris Johnson broke Covid rules, either, including at the surprise birthday ‘party’ his wife Carrie organised. His cake stayed in its Tupperware container and Boris was photographed socially distancing from Rishi Sunak and others there. It lasted only a few minutes.

Moving away from Mrs May, with regard to Baroness Jenkin’s birthday party on December 8, which Dame Eleanor Laing hosted in her conference room on the parliamentary estate, we learned that another Conservative MP, Virginia Crosbie, was in attendance. Pictured below are Baroness Jenkin, Virginia Crosbie and their hostess, Dame Eleanor Laing:

Lockdown Drinks in Eleanor Laing’s Office Was Joint Birthday Party for Baroness Jenkin & Virginia Crosbie https://t.co/Fx9zxB4NdA pic.twitter.com/4KTIgDRcmW

— Guido Fawkes (@GuidoFawkes) June 26, 2023

The aforementioned Telegraph article said:

It came as a ministerial aide to Matt Hancock, the former health secretary, apologised “unreservedly” after attending a drinks party also said to have involved Baroness Jenkin.

Yes, here is a photo of Hancock and Crosbie during their time at the Department of Health and Social Care:

At the time of the party Virginia Crosbie was Health Secretary Matt Hancock's PPShttps://t.co/Fx9zxB4NdA pic.twitter.com/L1xx2rDmBA

— Guido Fawkes (@GuidoFawkes) June 26, 2023

The article continues:

Virginia Crosbie, the Conservative MP for Ynys Môn and Mr Hancock’s parliamentary private secretary during the pandemic, is alleged to have co-hosted the event with the Tory peer on Dec 8 2020, the date of their respective 54th and 65th birthdays.

A ban on socialising indoors was in place in London at the time of the reported gathering. It has come under additional scrutiny after her husband Sir Bernard Jenkin, who was allegedly present, sat on the privileges committee of MPs that recommended Boris Johnson, the former prime minister, be suspended from Parliament for 90 days.

Ms Crosbie said: “The invitation for this event was not sent out by me. I attended the event briefly, I did not drink and I did not celebrate my birthday. I went home shortly after to be with my family.

“I apologise unreservedly for a momentary error of judgment in attending the event.”

Sir Bernard has denied attending a drinks party and an ally has said no rules were broken.

Let’s look at the party Theresa May attended for Women2Win, at which Baroness Jenkin was present:

This "celebratory event" was definitely not essential or exempthttps://t.co/8Yme4tg4Ug pic.twitter.com/mYZCcS4IO6

— Guido Fawkes (@GuidoFawkes) June 26, 2023

Now let’s look at the joint Baroness Jenkin-Virginia Crosbie birthday party on December 8:

In the WhatsApp invitation from Anne Jenkin, the party is described as “joint birthday drinks“. It was both Virginia Crosbie’s 54th and Anne Jenkin’s 65th birthdays on December 8, 2020. Why let a little thing like lockdown get in the way of having a party?https://t.co/Fx9zxB4NdA pic.twitter.com/e9TyArkPGL

— Guido Fawkes (@GuidoFawkes) June 26, 2023

Guido suggested via tweet that this might be a case for Inspector Columbo:

Virginia Crosbie says she went to event on her birthday to which she was invited for drinks but didn't drink. Eleanor Laing claims it was a business meeting. Bernard Jenkin said it didn't happen. Anne Jenkin – who invited everybody – is pictured at second event with a drink. pic.twitter.com/QDEUppoKHz

— Guido Fawkes (@GuidoFawkes) June 26, 2023

Guido’s post was, rightly, quite pointed:

In the WhatsApp invitation from Anne Jenkin, the party is described as “joint birthday drinks“. It was both Virginia Crosbie’s 54^th and Anne Jenkin’s 65^th birthdays on December 8, 2020.* Why let a little thing like lockdown get in the way of having a party?

Guido should say that on the list of MPs invited, there are three current cabinet minister’s names and the name of one former PM. Guido has managed to speak to only one of those names. She got her SpAd to deny her attendance after claiming she couldn’t remember. The others are refusing to comment.

The obvious thing for the Metropolitan Police to do is the same they did with the suspected attendees at the Downing Street parties. Send a formal letter inviting them to pay a Fixed Notice Penalty or risk more serious consequences in Court if they deny attending and the evidence shows otherwise. As Bernard Jenkin sanctimoniously reminded us on the Privileges Committee: no matter how high we are, none of us are above the law…

*We are aware that date per the text message was a Tuesday not a Wednesday. We have other meta-data evidence confirming the time and place was Tuesday evening December 8, 2020.

Six hours after Guido broke the story, Virginia Crosbie issued a written apology:

Six hours after we broke the story… https://t.co/h7KvQdZqgI pic.twitter.com/hvxW4hXsp4

— Guido Fawkes (@GuidoFawkes) June 26, 2023

What are we to conclude from a written apology? Boris Johnson made several apologies in the House of Commons but to no avail. The kangaroo court went after him anyway.

Therefore, why should it be any different for another MP? Is the only difference that Boris was Prime Minister?

Boris believed that civil servants were telling him the truth — that he was not breaking the rules with these brief leaving dos and the equally brief surprise birthday party.

All of these MPs should be investigated.

Fortunately, on Thursday, June 28, Guido Fawkes appealed for help from insiders to expose them:

drag them all, show no mercy

— alfiethreetimes (@alfiethreetimes) June 28, 2023

Guido’s accompanying post lays out the ways that people in the know can contact him and his team in safety.

He warns that he has heard of more lockdown violations by MPs, including Dame Eleanor Laing:

Since we broke the story about Anne Jenkin’s party in Parliament, we have been getting snippets of tips about other lockdown legislators’ lawbreaking parties in Westminster. We know of other parties held by Deputy Speaker Eleanor Laing in her offices on other days. We know of other MPs attending those parties. We also know of other parties held elsewhere. Guido believes that there is a cover-up being quietly organised by senior MPs who realise that on this issue “We must all hang together, or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately.”

This is a call for information to add to our dossier. If you have evidence, invitations via WhatsApp or emails, better still photos. These parties were not held in total secrecy. Staff in Parliament will have known…

Sources are anonymous (unless you want credit). Who is on the fiddle? Who is lying? If you know “the line” is a lie, ask yourself why you got into politics; was it to cover up the truth or to tell it?

At least one member of the public thinks the Speaker of the House Sir Lindsay Hoyle should investigate the do that Deputy Speaker Dame Eleanor Laing hosted:

https://twitter.com/paynter_peter/status/1673416068574900249

https://twitter.com/paynter_peter/status/1673502623528353793

Someone else noted that another gathering in Boris’s Partygate was very brief, a leaving do for his adviser Lee Cain. That brief event was different to the joint birthday party gathering:

Also worth noting that Lee Cain was a spontaneous goodbye and speech to work colleagues as opposed to a specific ‘birthday’ celebration, pre invited and mixing of households not at work together

Whichever way you cut this cake (😉) I expect Bernard will be due an FPN and on the…

— Baa Ram Ewe 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿🐑🐷🦃🚜 (@ShepherdWales) June 26, 2023

Now let’s look at the conclusion of Theresa May’s speech about the Privileges Committee report:

As MPs, we are in some sense leaders in our communities, but with that leadership comes responsibility. We each and every one of us bear the responsibility to put the people that we serve first, to be honest with them and with one another, and to uphold the standards of this place. We all know that in the rough and tumble of parliamentary debate between people of opposing views there will be exaggeration, careful use of facts and, in some cases, misrepresentation, but when something is said that is wrong and misleads the House, we are all—not just Ministers—under an obligation not to repeat it and to correct it at the first opportunity. Above all, we are all responsible for our own actions. Beyond that, this House has a responsibility to ensure that standards are upheld by showing that we are willing to act against the interests of colleagues when the facts require it. In this case, I believe they do.

The decision of the House on the report is important: to show the public that there is not one rule for them and another for us; indeed, we have a greater responsibility than most to uphold the rules and set an example. The decision also matters to show that Parliament is capable of dealing with Members who transgress the rules of the House—if you like, to show the sovereignty of Parliament. Following an unsettling period in our political life, support for the report of the Privileges Committee will be a small but important step in restoring people’s trust in Members of this House and of Parliament.

I say to Members of my own party that it is doubly important for us to show that we are prepared to act when one of our own, however senior, is found wanting. I will vote in favour of the report of the Privileges Committee and I urge all Members of this House to do so—to uphold standards in public life, to show that we all recognise the responsibility we have to the people we serve and to help to restore faith in our parliamentary democracy.

Oh, the irony!

The next MP to speak was Labour’s Harriet Harman, who chaired the Privileges Committee investigation after the head of the Committee, another Labour MP, Chris Bryant, recused himself because he was so anti-Boris.

She accused Boris of deliberately misleading Parliament. How could she or any other MP know that unless they had eyes into his soul, as Elizabeth I once put it:

The evidence shows that, on a matter that could hardly have been of more importance, Mr Johnson deliberately misled the House, not just once but on numerous occasions. The evidence shows that he denied what was true, asserted what was not true, obfuscated and deceived. It is clear that he knew the rules and guidance: as Prime Minister, he was telling the country about them nearly every day. He knew that there were gatherings: he was there. He knew that the gatherings breached the rules and the guidance. Yet he told the House that the rules and the guidance were followed in No. 10 “at all times”.

Misleading the House is not a technicality but a matter of great importance. Our democracy is based on people electing us to scrutinise the Government, and, on behalf of the people we represent, we have to hold the Government to account. We cannot do that if Ministers are not truthful. Ministers must be truthful; if they are not, we cannot do our job. It is as simple and as fundamental as that. The House asked the Privileges Committee to inquire into the allegations that Mr Johnson, who was then Prime Minister, misled the House. That is the mechanism—the only mechanism—that the House has to protect itself in the face of a Minister misleading it. We undertook the inquiry, scrupulously sticking to the rules and processes laid down by this House under Standing Orders, and following the precedents of this House.

At that point, a Boris supporter, Jacob Rees-Mogg, who was Leader of the House under his tenure, intervened:

I wonder whether the right hon. and learned Lady could say something of her own position in relation to the precedent set by a judicial Committee of the House of Lords, when a decision in which Lord Hoffmann was involved was set aside not because he was biased, but because of the perception of bias. In relation to her famous tweets, how does she think she met the Hoffmann test?

Harman defended her position:

I am happy to answer the right hon. Gentleman. I was appointed by this House in the expectation that I would chair the Committee, with no one speaking against it. After the tweets were brought to light and highlighted, as I am concerned about the perception of fairness on the Committee—I agree that perception matters—I made it my business to find out whether it would mean that the Government would not have confidence in me if I continued to chair the Committee. I actually said, “I will be more than happy to step aside, because perception matters and I do not want to do this if the Government do not have confidence in me. I need the whole House to have confidence in the work that it has mandated.” I was assured that I should continue the work that the House had mandated, and with the appointment that the House had put me into, and so I did just that.

She also mentioned Theresa May, whom the Opposition always defends, possibly because the former Prime Minister did her best to thwart Brexit, even though she made it appear that she was on-side. May is also soft on illegal immigration, which also pleases the Opposition parties:

Like the right hon. Member for Maidenhead, with whom I share a great deal—including, it turns out, a necklace—I thank every member of the Privileges Committee.

Yes, both MPs wear what are called ‘power necklaces’, huge things slung around their necks.

This is the one that Harman was wearing when she gave her speech:

Far from flattering, although The Telegraph‘s fashion writer seems to like them. This is from March 23, complete with photos:

As statement necklaces go, Harman’s is peerless. That oversized gold chains are ultra-fashionable this season is the least of it: of far more significance is the symbolism. You don’t need a GCSE in cultural studies to know that chains are a symbol of bondage, or that prisoners are shackled by them upon their arrest. “It radiates justice like the chains on Marley’s ghost in A Christmas Carol”, one Twitter user noted, while others compared it to the spider brooch worn by Lady Hale in 2019, when the supreme court ruled that Boris Johnson’s proroguing of Parliament during the Brexit crisis was unlawful. Well-played, Harman. Well-played.

It’s a pity that the paper didn’t mention May’s Wilma Flintstone neck pebbles.

Let’s look at Harriet Harman for a moment.

On May 26, 2022, while Boris was still PM, Labour appointed Harman in Chris Bryant’s place to investigate Partygate:

Labour to Appoint FPN-Loving Harman to Lead Investigation into Boris https://t.co/HpbcedzVm2 pic.twitter.com/IwgxUwEezO

— Guido Fawkes (@GuidoFawkes) May 26, 2022

Guido told us that Harman was hardly above receiving fines herself:

… The vacancy was created when Chris Bryant stepped down because he didn’t want the investigation to look biased. Guido’s not sure whether any Tory in the country is going to accept Harman’s judgements as politically neutral…

If Labour goes ahead with the bizarre appointment, not only will the PM be judged by someone equally as biased as Bryant, having called for the PM to quit, it’ll be one of the few Labour MPs who’s racked up more Fixed Penalty Notices than Boris. As Guido pointed out when Harman accused the PM of breaking the laws he made, she was charged with three speeding offences during her time as a minister…

Guido posted the penalties from 2003, 2007 and 2010.

On May 30, 2023, Guido alum Christian Calgie alleged in The Express that Harman received reports on Boris from one of her relatives via marriage:

Alex Chisholm, Permanent Secretary for the Cabinet Office, is related to Privileges Committee chair Harriet Harman, the Express can reveal.

The familial tie is yet another link between the top Government department at the heart of the Partygate saga, sparking new questions about the neutrality and independence of the civil service.

Last week, top Mandarin Alex Chisholm passed Boris Johnson’s diaries over to both the Met Police and Thames Valley police amid allegations from Government lawyers that visits to Mr Johnson’s grace-and-favour mansion Chequers had broken Covid rules.

The Cabinet Office then handed the diaries over to Ms Harman’s Privileges Committee, which is investigating whether the former PM “recklessly” misled Parliament over lockdown parties.

A few weeks earlier, on May 12, Guido posted that Harman had been in touch with the then-senior civil servant Sue Gray, who, although she was supposed to be impartial, had allegedly agreed by then to become an adviser to Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer. Impartiality?

Sue Gray Was In Contact With Kangaroo Court Chair Harriet Harman During Partygate Probe https://t.co/YU2dvIc9v7 pic.twitter.com/lt41tQSZNT

— Guido Fawkes (@GuidoFawkes) May 12, 2023

Guido wrote:

Chief Partygate investigator-turned Labour Chief of Staff Sue Gray was in personal contact with Privileges Committee chair Harriet Harman while Gray was still a civil servant. According to Sky News, Harman made frequent, direct contact with Gray in the early stages of the Kangaroo Court’s Partygate probe, claiming privately “I just speak to Sue”. A Privileges Committee spokesperson insists this is all above board:

The chair with the full knowledge of the committee has had regular contact with a number of ministers and officials in the Cabinet Office to discuss matters such as the provision of documents to the committee, the identity of potential witnesses and the welfare of civil servants who may be affected by the inquiry.

They also stressed “the privileges committee is not relying on evidence gathered by Sue Gray“. Just like how she ‘wasn’t’ working on the Partygate probe after opening talks with Labour – until it was revealed she was, after all…

Starmer claimed Richard Sharp being appointed to the BBC was corrupt because he was helpful to then PM Boris on an unrelated matter when the role was being discussed. Gray being appointed to Starmer’s office however is not corrupt despite when the role was being discussed her being helpful to the man who wants to be PM in getting rid of his most potent campaigning opponent. Completely different.

Going back further, to August 2019, weeks after Boris became Prime Minister, Harman was having none of his new position and said she should be a caretaker PM in order to prevent a no-deal Brexit:

Latest: Harriet Harman tells allies she will serve as compromise caretaker PM in bid to stop No Deal Brexithttps://t.co/lO1eCL9CwT

— Tom Newton Dunn (@tnewtondunn) August 15, 2019

We knew then how anti-Boris she was.

One month later, she decided to put her name into the ring to become the second female Speaker of the House, following news that John Bercow, who began as a Conservative but then revealed his left-wing, anti-Brexit stances during his tenure, was standing down.

On September 13, Guido posted the full list of MPs wanting to succeed Bercow. As he was technically a Conservative, a Labour MP would have to succeed him. Of Harman, Guido wrote:

The (self-described) ‘Mother of the House’. Pitching herself as ‘continuity Bercow.’ That will go down well with Remainers but is unlikely to pick up much Tory support…

Guido had his finger on the pulse even at that early stage:

Harriet Harman has the most sophisticated operation and the most support from the Labour benches. Another serious contender at this stage is Deputy Speaker Lindsay Hoyle.

Well done. Hoyle was duly elected Speaker several weeks later.

In the meantime, Harman appeared to allege that the Commons never had a woman Speaker, which it surely did in the 1990s with Betty Boothroyd:

Harman was even an MP when Boothroyd was Speaker:

Betty Boothroyd rules that “stupid cow” is unparliamentary language! 👏👏👏 pic.twitter.com/UWxrRknJfl

— Harriet Harman (@HarrietHarman) February 27, 2023

By November 4, former Labour Party member, Daily Mail journalist and Glenda Jackson’s son Dan Hodges tweeted that Harman’s campaign had been a disaster:

This Speaker election has become a disaster for Harriet Harman.

— (((Dan Hodges))) (@DPJHodges) November 4, 2019

This was Harman’s pitch that day, which did not go down well:

Later that afternoon, Harman signalled to the then-Father of the House, then-Conservative MP Ken Clarke, that she was ending her candidature:

https://twitter.com/tompeck/status/1191413009442385924

In the end, Labour MPs carried Sir Lindsay Hoyle from their benches to the Speaker’s chair, a longstanding Commons tradition going back to when an elected Speaker did not want to take up the post.

Moving closer to the present, on December 7, 2021, The Sun‘s political editor Harry Cole, another Guido alum, tweeted that Harman would not be seeking re-election in the next general:

HAT’S OFF: Harman has confirmed @thesun’s story overnight that she is standing down from parliament after 40 years… – exc by @kateferguson4 https://t.co/N8qkAlCNJa

— Harry Cole (@MrHarryCole) December 7, 2021

That is why she was so determined to get Boris. She wanted to leave a lasting legacy.

On March 17, 2023, Guido posted that Harman seemed to have come to a conclusion even before grilling Boris as part of her investigation. Fairness?

What is really motivating Harriet?https://t.co/CaF6lQEuRm pic.twitter.com/pK0pKZtMTi

— Guido Fawkes (@GuidoFawkes) March 17, 2023

When Harman interviewed Boris on March 22, she told him that Sue Gray would not be a witness:

Harman says "Sue Gray is not a witness"https://t.co/F7vmvYM1EU pic.twitter.com/jcS9Mbyjjn

— Guido Fawkes (@GuidoFawkes) March 22, 2023

Boris reminded Harman of her biased tweets against him:

pic.twitter.com/HUfDdHBZdp

— The Right Angle (@EuRollout) March 22, 2023

Guido has a full rundown of the Committee’s grilling of the then-MP, who was by then no longer PM, along with these videos.

Note Harman’s power necklace:

Harman even brought up a speeding metaphor:

16:50 – Whilst berating Johnson’s assurances, Harriet Harman asked “if I was going at 100mph and I saw the speedometer saying 100mph – it would be a bit odd, wouldn’t it, if I said somebody assured me that I wasn’t?”. A peculiar choice of metaphor – coming from Harriet. Would this be the same Harriet Harman caught speeding twice, banned from driving for seven days and fined £400?

The anti-Boris Conservative MP Charles Walker, who is another MP not standing for re-election, asked Boris if he thought he was up before a kangaroo court:

Boris gave him a polite response.

The Mail‘s Sarah Vine, Michael Gove’s ex-wife, thought that Boris had done admirably:

Thursday's Mail: Harman's Face Was Thunder. Boris Was As Agile As A Cat. #TomorrowsPapersToday #DailyMail #Mail pic.twitter.com/sL8oWpT5As

— Tomorrows Papers Today (@TmorrowsPapers) March 22, 2023

However, there is a long-forgotten past to Harriet Harman, one that my British readers remember and one that I mentioned in my 2011 post, ‘More on the Fabians, the Frankfurt School and society today’:

– Sanctimonious politicians whose minds are in the gutter.  In my 2010 post on the Fabians and Labour politicians, I wrote that they presented themselves very well on television and radio interviews.  Between 1997 and 2010, they articulately pointed out the shortcomings of British taxpayers who smoked, drank and ate too much.  If we were not guilty of any of those, then we consumed too much electricity and gas.  We drove too much.  We didn’t get enough exercise.  We didn’t read to our children enough.  The list was endless.  But did you know that one of these MPs, Harriet Harman, in an earlier incarnation as legal officer in 1978 for the organisation now called Liberty, wanted to lower the age of consent to 14 and to decriminalise incest? British readers should also note that at that same time Patricia Hewitt — later a Secretary for Health (!) under Tony Blair — was the general secretary for what was then the National Council for Civil Liberties (NCCL):

It also defended self-confessed paedophiles in the press and allowed them to attend its meetings …

In NCCL’s official response to the Government’s plans to reform sex laws, dubbed a “Lolita’s Charter”, it suggested reducing the age of consent and argued that “childhood sexual experiences, willingly engaged in, with an adult result in no identifiable damage”. It claimed that children can suffer more from having to retell their experiences in court or the press.

What I did not know until 2014, was that Harman’s husband, Jack Dromey, who died in 2022, had chaired the NCCL in the 1970s. In 2014, he was still a serving MP and remained so until his rather sudden death.

On February 28, 2014, Guido reported on a story in The Sun, which appeared during the Leveson inquiry:

… Earlier this week Jack Dromey insisted:

During my time on the NCCL Executive, I was at the forefront of repeated public condemnations of PIE and their despicable views. I was then the first to argue that paedophiles could have no place in NCCL.

Today’s dark revelations in the Sun cast doubt over the credibility of that denial. While Dromey was sitting on the NCCL executive, general secretary Patricia Hewitt put her name to a press release arguing that it was acceptable to have sex with children as young as ten. Recipients of the press release were urged to contact Hewitt for further information.

Not only that, Dromey personally attended a meeting where the minutes of which show:

It was agreed that our evidence should propose that if a partner in a sexual relationship was under ten, s/he is presumed incapable of consent. If the partner is over ten and under 14, there is a rebuttable presumption that no consent was given, but the defendant should have to prove that the child consented and understood the nature of the act to which consent was given.

Which means that, far from taking a public stance condemning PIE as he told us earlier this week, Dromey was actually a member of the executive which called for the weakening of child sex laws. Hewitt has ‘fessed up and apologised for her actions. Is Dromey’s denial still really entirely believable?

A few days later, on March 1, 2014, The Independent featured an editorial by Joan Smith, ‘PIE controversy: Harriet Harman has got this one wrong’:

Between 1978 and 1982, Harman was legal officer of the National Council for Civil Liberties (now Liberty). Her husband Jack Dromey, who is Labour’s shadow police minister, chaired the NCCL in the 1970s; Patricia Hewitt, who was later a cabinet minister, was its general secretary. The links between the NCCL and an organisation called the Paedophile Information Exchange have been known about for years, and are a stain on its reputation.

The problem for Harman, Dromey and Hewitt isn’t that they were advocates of sexual relationships between adults and children when they were at the NCCL. It isn’t even an NCCL press release in 1976 calling for the lowering of the age of consent to 14 – a terrible idea, but not one supported only by paedophiles at the time. It’s that the origin of the attack seems to have blinded them to the fact that they might actually have something to apologise for.

Hewitt broke her silence three days ago and admitted she “got it wrong” on PIE, but Harman’s tardiness in acknowledging the organisation’s poor judgement has kept the story on the front page. She was defensive on BBC2’s Newsnight programme, and didn’t express regret about the link until the following morning.

… there was a collective failure at the NCCL to kick out a very nasty bunch of people. Harman’s defence – that any legal organisation was allowed to affiliate to the NCCL – suggests a lack of proper governance. Yesterday a Court of Protection judge confirmed that he resigned in 1979 when he discovered that representatives of PIE were speaking at NCCL meetings at the London School of Economics.

Harman has many talents but she also has a patrician testiness which doesn’t respond well to being challenged. I can understand her revulsion at having to admit that the Mail has a point, but I’m also surprised the story hasn’t blown up before now. The brightest people make mistakes, even if it’s a matter of failing to notice something or act robustly enough.

That’s what Harman, who went to work at the NCCL after PIE affiliated to it, should have acknowledged. Instead, she has played into the hands of a newspaper which wants its readers to believe the appalling smear that the Labour Party is stuffed with covert supporters of child abuse.

Incredibly, in 2013, Guido received a tip about an adult social media item that Jack Dromey ‘favourited’. Dromey was the Shadow Minister of State for Policing at the time. We can only be grateful that the hand of providence prevented these two MPs from doing more harm to our nation.

Jack Dromey died in January 2022:

https://t.co/irsJdZgah4

— movingfasternow (@movingfasternow) January 8, 2022

Guido posted Sir Keir Starmer’s statement and this:

The Shadow Minister for Immigration has passed away at the age of 73. According to Press Association: “Labour MP Jack Dromey died suddenly in his flat in Birmingham on Friday morning, a statement issued on behalf of the 73-year-old shadow minister’s family said”. Condolences to Harriet Harman and the entire family. Rest in Peace.

So this is the woman who conducted the investigation on Boris for short leaving dos and a surprise birthday party that lasted only minutes:

Fit for the job?🤨😒 pic.twitter.com/HpsHhiZOx6

— 💋Poodle™ (@notamused666) March 17, 2023

This is a story of hypocrisy beyond belief.

And it is not over yet. Harman and her Privileges Committee MPs issued a second report today, Thursday, June 29, 2023, which will be debated in Parliament next week.

It is about those MPs who objected to Boris being investigated for Partygate and being hounded out of office as an MP. Yes, he resigned, but only because they recommended an unheard-of 90-day suspension which would no doubt have triggered a petition in his constituency for a by-election:

READ IN FULL: Kangaroo Court’s Special Report https://t.co/nKBFrlJ25H pic.twitter.com/Ve81KYGzi0

— Guido Fawkes (@GuidoFawkes) June 29, 2023

Here is part of the detail:

A special report from the Priveleges committee wants the House of acknowledge and condemn the pressure on members over the Boris Johnson inquiry- suggesting it’s deeply unfair when the House itself called for the inquiry. The Annexe has their egs of pressure pic.twitter.com/bmeYKqwF81

— Anushka Asthana (@AnushkaAsthana) June 29, 2023

Guido says the Committee did not want any opposition to their dark doings:

The Privileges Committee manifestly was not obstructed from going about its business by public criticism, they just didn't like it.

— Guido Fawkes (@GuidoFawkes) June 29, 2023

Here is a readers’ exchange from Guido’s post, which omits the link to the report, or maybe it will be added later:

Reader A (in response to Reader B): … it lacked all the components of a fair trial that allow the social and cultural legitimacy of banning direct criticism of a judge and jury during a trial.

You are giving a p3d0 apologist the same social gravitas as a Judge. Have a think about that.

Reader B: Fine. Then a motion should be put to the House arguing that she is not a fit and proper person, and allow her to argue her case in defence. Otherwise, you are conducting your own witch hunt. Have a think about that.

Reader A: Yes I thought about it, and like the MPs in question are simply pointing out the absurdity of the Committees own view of themselves as above and beyond the demos, to the extent they feel they are above negative comment. That is the actions of a despot not of an organ of a democratic institution.

If they were adults secure in their objectivity and the logic and fairness of their rulings they would just laugh it off. The fact they have acted like this shows that not only are they hugely nervous about the foundations upon which they have cast their ire but also their own viability to be there in the first place. Paging Bernard Jenkins.

You don’t seem to have thought about the long term issue for trust and fairness of having someone as morally and intellectually compromised as Harman as a chair.

I could not agree more.

Yet, this is where we are. Harman’s investigation was supported by the four Conservative MPs on it. Their loathing of Boris clouded their judgement.

Will the other Conservative MPs ever be investigated for their lockdown breaches? And what about Labour? When Sir Keir and a few other Labour MPs were in Durham campaigning during a time when socialising was forbidden in April 2021, no one did anything, certainly not Durham Constabulary. Nothing to see here, move along.

Sadly, it seems that the only goal in this egregious process was to bring Boris down — and Brexit down with him.

More to follow next week.

John MacArthur on work: a command, an example, a way to glorify God

In the UK, polls have showed that Britons, particularly younger ones, have no intention of working.

The latest Government findings came out on January 22, 2023. The BBC reported (emphases mine):

Most of the 2.7 million “inactive” people under 25 are students, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS). The majority of them don’t want a job.

This was also true in 2021, as CityAM informed us:

Data from the Office for National Statistics shows of the 13m Brits who are not looking for work, over half said they were doing so because they did not want to work.

In 2015, a student posted the following message on The Student Room forum. Granted, she sees the possibility of owning her own small business but only just:

I’m 22 now and it’s slowly dawned on me that I have no intention of working/having a career. I find most work boring and I am simply not inspired by the rat race. I think I want to be a small business owner and a stay at home mother.

It seems with feminism most women just aren’t looking to go down the ‘small job, husband and babies’ route anymore. Am I the only one who doesn’t want to work…at all ?

Maybe a small online store or something and a husband and kids. Nothing more (?)

Anyone else ?

The benefits balloon stretches back at least to 2013, possibly earlier. On April 24 that year, the Conservative MP Iain Duncan Smith, the then-Secretary of State for Welfare and Pensions said:

Around 1 million people have been stuck on a working-age benefit for at least three out of the past four years, despite being judged capable of preparing or looking for work.

Ten years on, The Spectator reports that real figures show that five million Britons are receiving out-of-work benefits. Their figures have been disputed, but in November 2022, the magazine’s editor Fraser Nelson explained how the data were put together. For now, this is the message:

How can 20 per cent of people in our great cities be on benefits at a time of mass migration and record vacancies? It’s perhaps the most important question in politics right now, but it’s not being given any scrutiny because the real figures lie behind a fog of data …

Every month, an official unemployment figure is put out on a press release – and news organisations are primed to cover it. It’s normally about 1.2 million looking for work: the problem, of course, is so few Brits are actually doing so …

The true benefits figure is not to be found on a press release, but buried in a password-protected DWP [Department for Work and Pensions] database with a six-month time lag …

The five million figure ‘seems to be incorrect,’ Full Fact said in their email to us. ‘According to the most recent statistics, there are around 1.5 million people claiming out-of-work benefits.’ But the real figure is more than three times higher – but rather than reply to them, I thought I’d write this blog for anyone interested …

DWP data is now on Stat-Xplore, a versatile open data tool. The password bit is deceptive: you can bypass by clicking ‘Guest log in’ to find an Aladdin’s Cave of data. Look at the dataset ‘Benefit Combinations – Data from February 2019‘. Click Table 5, then click ‘Open table’ to get the numbers …

Nelson has posted graphs and a map to illustrate his figure of five million.

He concludes:

To fail to match up 1.2 million vacancies with at least some of those on out-of-work benefits is not just an economic failure but a moral one. But to solve a problem, you need to recognise a problem. Officially counting all five million people on out-of-work benefits would be a good way to start.

Living a life of idleness, however, is nothing new.

St Paul grappled with the same problem two millennia ago when he planted a church in Thessalonika (present day Saloniki).

The following passage, 2 Thessalonians 3:6-12, is one example of his command to work:

Warning Against Idleness

⁶ Now we command you, brothers, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you keep away from any brother who is walking in idleness and not in accord with the tradition that you received from us. ⁷ For you yourselves know how you ought to imitate us, because we were not idle when we were with you, ⁸ nor did we eat anyone’s bread without paying for it, but with toil and labour we worked night and day, that we might not be a burden to any of you. ⁹ It was not because we do not have that right, but to give you in ourselves an example to imitate. ¹⁰ For even when we were with you, we would give you this command: If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat. ¹¹ For we hear that some among you walk in idleness, not busy at work, but busybodies. ¹² Now such persons we command and encourage in the Lord Jesus Christ to do their work quietly and to earn their own living.^[d]

John MacArthur explains why we must work in ‘Work: A Noble Christian Duty, Part 3’, from July 19, 1992.

There were reasons why some in the congregation were not prepared to work:

As we have said in the past … they perhaps have been influenced by some of the Jewish background of the scribes who thought that anything other than studying the law was an unworthy way to spend your life.  They surely were affected by the general Greek attitude that work was demeaning and sordid and base and low and belonged only to slaves and not to freemen. 

And they probably had had those predispositions somewhat exaggerated by virtue of the fact that someone had come along and told them that they were already in the day of the Lord and the return of Christ was imminent and there probably wasn’t much use in doing anything other than evangelizing and studying the Word of God.  And so they had given themselves to that happily because of their disdain for work anyway.  Problem was, at least long term, if you can call several months long term for the Thessalonians in that Paul had dealt with it when he was there.  Several months later, when he wrote them the first letter, he dealt with it, and here he is writing a second letter and dealing with it a third time.  They didn’t want to work.  It was beneath them. 

Homer, the famous Greek writer, had said that the gods hated man.  And the way they demonstrated their hatred was to invent work and punish men by making them work.  This kind of philosophy being existent in that time, it found its way into the lives of those people and thus, when they became converted, it found its way into the church.  Becoming a Christian doesn’t change everything immediately.  We will always have residuals of our past, and we will always to one degree or another be affected by our culture.  And so here in this church in which so many good things had happened, a genuine conversion, a genuine godliness, they were not slack in spiritual service, they had a work of faith and a labor of love, and they did it with patience and endurance because they hoped in the return of Christ.  They worked hard at ministry, but they didn’t want to do the jobs that they had to do in the world, at least some of them. 

And so Paul was dealing with a church that had its spiritual life on target and was doing well, excelling spiritually, but they had this one problem that dominates the church in terms of its conduct, and that was that there were people there who didn’t work.  They then became a burden on everybody else, and it wasn’t that they couldn’t work, it wasn’t that they had a physical disability, it wasn’t that there wasn’t a job available, they refused to work, seeing it as beneath them or not a priority for those engaged in kingdom enterprises. 

MacArthur cites American statistics on work from 1980 to 1991:

I suppose 25 years ago, a situation like this would have struggled to be relevant in our time then because America was a hard-working country 25 years ago.  In fact, the American work ethic has always been hailed as sort of the supreme work ethic of the industrialized world.  We have always sort of set the pace for productivity and enterprise – up until more recent years, that is.  Last year, Charles Colson and Jack Eckerd, who heads the Eckerd Company, which operates drug stores in other parts of America, they wrote a book and the title of their book is Why America Doesn’t Work.  Now, that’s really a new thought, a new concept for our culture, for our society.  The subtitle is, “How the decline of the work ethic is hurting your family and future.”  The future of America is changing dramatically.  There are other nations that are putting us to shame in terms of work habits and a work ethic. 

In their book, they point out that we have in America declining rates of productivity, the loss of competitive position in some world markets, and workers who aren’t working.  And they concluded it is a bleak picture.  And I suppose they ask the right question, the question we would all ask at that point:  What has happened to the industry and productivity that made this country the marvel of the world at one time? …

We have an ethical malaise all the way from the jet set corporate leaders down to the person working at the bench.  The whole concept of work has so dramatically changed, it no longer has a transcendent motive.  There’s no longer something beyond me to make me perform at a certain level.  Thus, the meaning of work has been sapped from everybody from the top to the bottom, to some degree.  Obviously, some people still work harder than others. 

A 1980 Gallup Poll conducted for the Chamber of Commerce found that people still believed in work-ethic values, 1980, they still believed.  That’s over ten years ago.  Eighty-eight percent said working hard and doing their best on the job was personally important.  But were they doing it?  They said they believed it, it was still sort of in the air in 1980, but were people working hard?  1982 survey came along.  In that survey, it was reported that only 16 percent said they were doing the best job they could at work.  Eighty-four percent admitted they weren’t working hard – 84 percent.  So you can see they were still holding on to a residual ethic that didn’t translate into how they functioned, which meant that it was somebody else’s transcendent value, somebody else’s ethical value imposed on them externally but not truly believed. 

Working hard, they said, was important but they weren’t doing it, so how important was it?  Eighty-four percent also said they would work harder if they could gain something from it.  And now you can see that the ethic is not transcendent, the ethic is utilitarian.  It’s all tied in to what I get out of it, what’s in it for me.  And that’s part of the cynicism of our society.  That’s part of the direct consequence of the 60s’ moral revolution, which is a rejection of transcendent values. 

God is not an issue in anything.  He is not an issue in the way I conduct my sexual life, He is not an issue in my marriage, He is not an issue at my job, He is not an issue in education, He is not an issue anywhere.  God is not an issue; therefore, there is no value beyond myself.  So whatever is enough to get me what I want is enough.  It is a kind of societal economic atheism.  In fact, psychologist Robert Bellah calls it radical individualism.  Surveying 200 middle-class Americans, this UCLA professor discovered that people seek personal advancement from work, personal development from marriage, and personal fulfillment from church.  Everything, he says, their perspective on family, church, community, and work is utilitarian.  It is measured by what they can get out of it, and concern for others is only secondary. 

Down to specifics, James Sheehy, an executive with a computer firm in the upper echelons of the work strata, saw first-hand how this kind of utilitarian value was affecting work.  He wanted a better understanding of the expectations and psyche of younger employees.  Looking at what the future held, what kind of people were going to come up in this generation to work in his company?  What would they be like?  So he decided the best way to find out was to spend his vacation taking a job in a fast-food restaurant.  He wrote most of his coworkers were from upper income families, they didn’t need to work but they wanted extra spending money.  He watched and listened as his coworkers displayed poor work habits and contempt for customers.  His conclusion was, “We have a new generation of workers whose habits and experiences will plague future employers for years.” 

He writes, “Along with their get-away-with-what-you-can attitude and indifference to the quality of performance, their basic work ethic was dominated by a type of gamesmanship that revolved around taking out of the system or milking the place dry.  Theft, skimming, and baiting management were rampant and skill levels surprisingly low.  The workers saw long hours and hard work as counter-productive.  ‘You only put in time for the big score,’ one said.”  After recounting his experience, Sheehy concluded, “Get ready, America.  There’s more of this to come from the workforce of tomorrow.” 

Doesn’t sound too good if you happen to be an employer, does it?  A recent Harris Poll showed 63 percent of workers believe people don’t work as hard as they used to.  Seventy-eight percent say workers take less pride in their work.  Sixty-nine percent think the workmanship they produce is inferior, and 73 percent believe workers are less motivated and that the whole trend is worsening and the numbers are going up. 

Imagine. If people felt that way in the 1980s, and it is probable that Britons also did at the time, we are now into a second generation of people who don’t care about work, with a third generation on the way.

MacArthur says:

The more and more people demand recreation and idle time, the more corrupt they will become.  The two go hand-in-hand.  An escalating pornographic, sinful, wicked culture is sped on, the slide is greased, by a shrinking commitment to work.  And we fill up all that time with things that feed the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, and the pride of life. 

He lays out why work is a God-given command:

Now, our society may not have a choice but they have to accept this, but as Christians, we can’t accept this.  The Christian faith does not accept a utilitarian work ethic.  The Christian view of work is transcendent.  That is, it escapes me and my world and directs its attention toward God. 

… First, work is a command from God.  Six days shall you labor.  God commands us to work.  Secondly, work is a model established by God for it was God who worked for six days and then rested on the seventh, and God, of course, is the worker who continually sustains the universe.  Man, being created in the image of God, then, is created as a worker.  Thirdly, work is a part of the creation mandate.  In other words, what I mean by that is it is the role of man.  Stars shine, suns shine, moons shine, on the earth plants grow, animals do what they’re supposed to do, rocks do what they’re to do, mountains do what they’re to do, water does what it’s to do, clouds do what they’re to do, and we do what we’re to do.  As Psalm 104 says, all of creation moves in a normal course and part of it is man rises, goes to work until the setting of the sun.  It is creation mandate.  It is how we contribute to the processes of life in God’s wondrous creation. 

Work is a command.  Work is established as a model by God.  Work is part of the natural creation.  Fourthly, work is a gift from God.  It is a gift from God.  It is a gift through which we glorify Him and the wonder of His creation as we produce things, putting on display the genius of God who created us, in all of our abilities.  It is a means by which we can glorify our Creator.  Just as the beast of the field gives me honor, as Isaiah said, and just as the heavens declare the glory of God by what they do, and we sit in awe of them, so man declares the glory of God, the wonder of His creative genius by doing what he has been given the ability to do.  Work is a gift from God, not only to glorify Him but to give meaning to life.  Work is a gift from God to give us something to do, which avoids the idleness that leads to sin …

Work is a gift from God also to provide for needs.  Work is a gift from God so that we can serve each other.  And lastly, in the Christian work ethic, work is to be done as if the boss was the Lord Himself.  It says in Colossians chapter 3 and Ephesians 6 that we’re to work as unto the Lord and not men. 

So the Christian faith does not sanctify the kind of attitude we’re seeing in our own country toward work.  In fact, as I said, 25 years ago, this message may have seemed a bit obscure when America was working productively.  Now it seems to be rather on target for we are suffering today with some of the things that Paul faced in the Thessalonian church.  But as Christians, we have to establish the standard. 

I often watch BBC Parliament, not because I love MPs or the Lords, but in order to gain a better insight in to what they are doing to us, the British people.

The number of Opposition — Labour, Liberal Democrat, SNP — MPs who complain that the Conservative government isn’t giving enough handouts, when clearly it is, as we can see from the aforementioned statistics, is mind-numbing.

Moving to MacArthur’s and his congregation’s personal experience, and still tied in to that, this is what happens when work is suggested:

It is an aberrant unbeliever that doesn’t work.  The tragedy of those people, the real tragedy, is that they are so deep in sin and so deep particularly in the sin of drunkenness and irresponsibility and immorality that they have put themselves in the position they’re in.  And I again say I’m not talking about people who are genuinely in despair, and I’ve seen those people all around the world.  But there is a mass of people who shouldn’t eat because they will not work. 

We see them here at the church.  They come by and they want money and they want food and we suggest work and they leave.  I was told today by one of the gentlemen in our church, serves with the police department, that they will hold a sign – they’ve tracked them – they will hold a sign, “I need work, homeless, need work,” and recently in one of the shopping centers just a couple of days ago they were tracking to find out what was going on.  None of them got jobs but they were averaging $15.00 an hour in donations.  One policeman told me he went by and offered a lady a sandwich purchased at a fast food place and she said, “What’s this?” and he said, “Well, it says ‘homeless and hungry,’ so I’m just giving you this to eat.”  She put it in a bag and he said to her, “Well, aren’t you hungry?”  She said, “I’ll eat it when I get home.” 

So you need to be careful about that.  Sometimes the car is parked around the block and the stash is growing in the back of the car.  Just have to be careful because there are people who don’t work because they won’t work, not because they can’t work.  And if you don’t work and won’t work, then you don’t eat, that’s what the Bible says.  There needs to be an opportunity for you to earn your own food and you need to take that opportunity, and again I want to say this:  It may be that in some cultures there is not enough work to go around and that a person couldn’t do enough work to really make the whole living, then in generosity and charity and love, we make up the lack, but we don’t feed the indolence. 

Even our blessed Jesus encountered a crowd of this type. After He had fed the Five Thousand, they returned the next day for another miraculous meal. They became angry when He refused them and said that He was the bread of life, which is infintely more important, then and now. John 6 has the story.

MacArthur interprets the episode:

Jesus, you remember, in John chapter 6, fed the multitude and it was a large crowd.  We talk about feeding the 5,000 but it says 5,000 men, so wherever there are 5,000 men, there have to be 5,000 women, at least, and throw in a few thousand mother-in-laws and grandmas, sisters and aunts, and throw in 15,000 kids, at least, and you’ve got a crowd somewhere between 20 and 50 thousand.  It could have been a massive crowd and Jesus fed them all.  You remember He had those five little cakes, five loaves, they’re actually little barley cakes, and two pickled fish and He just created food.  And I’ll promise you, it was the best lunch they’d ever had because it bypassed the world …

Now, do you realize when He said no to breakfast, I really believe that their anger was turned on Him because in an agrarian society like that, they had to work with the sweat of their brow to produce their own food.  They didn’t go down to some market and flip out food stamps or a check or a credit card or whatever it is, they didn’t go to a fast food restaurant.  If they didn’t work that day, they didn’t have the food to eat.  And not only a matter of preparation, but a matter of provision.  And so when Jesus – when they saw Jesus make food, they thought they had just found the Messiah who would bring the ultimate and eternal welfare state.  “We don’t even need food stamps, just show up and He passes it out.  And you don’t even have to get in line to collect it, they serve it.”  And when time for breakfast came, they were there and he left, and I think their anger and hostility turned on Him because they knew then what He could do but He refused to do it.  He could have done it for us as well, but He knows the value and the benefit and the purpose of work.

Concluding on Paul’s message to the Thessalonians, MacArthur says:

So here were these Thessalonians and they wouldn’t work.  And so he says if they don’t work, don’t let them eat.  That will help them get the message.  That’s survival. 

In our world, able-bodied people, believers or not, should be made to feel guilty for depending on the taxpayer for their daily bread. As The Spectator‘s Fraser Nelson said above, it is a moral issue.

Whether we like it or not, work is the order of the day. We must provide for ourselves to the fullest extent possible.

Looking back at Benedict XVI’s papacy — part 1

May Benedict XVI’s soul rest in peace with his Lord and Saviour.

Before going into little-known facts about the former Pontiff’s life and influences, below are news items about his papacy (April 19, 2005 – February 28, 2013), reflecting his thoughts and attitudes towards Christianity.

World Youth Day 2005

In August 2005, Benedict addressed the young people attending World Youth Day. He hoped for ecumenism, not through plans and programmes, but through a deeper belief in Christ through the gifts of the Holy Spirit:

We cannot “bring about” unity by our powers alone. We can only obtain unity as a gift of the Holy Spirit. Consequently, spiritual ecumenism – prayer, conversion and the sanctification of life – constitute the heart of the ecumenical movement (cf. Unitatis Redintegratio, 8; Ut Unum Sint, 15ff., 21, etc.). It could be said that the best form of ecumenism consists in living in accordance with the Gospel. I see good reason for optimism in the fact that today a kind of “network” of spiritual links is developing between Catholics and Christians from the different Churches and ecclesial Communities: each individual commits himself to prayer, to the examination of his own life, to the purification of memory, to the openness of charity.

Address to young Poles

On May 27, 2006, Benedict addressed Polish youth in Krakow.

His address was excellent. It explored the notion of the family home, which can only exist in a house built upon faith in Christ. The allegories are wonderful:

… Jesus is here with us. He is present among the young people of Poland, speaking to them of a house that will never collapse because it is built on the rock. This is the Gospel that we have just heard (cf. Mt 7:24–27).

My friends, in the heart of every man there is the desire for a house. Even more so in the young person’s heart there is a great longing for a proper house, a stable house, one to which he can not only return with joy, but where every guest who arrives can be joyfully welcomed. There is a yearning for a house where the daily bread is love, pardon and understanding. It is a place where the truth is the source out of which flows peace of heart. There is a longing for a house you can be proud of, where you need not be ashamed and where you never fear its loss. These longings are simply the desire for a full, happy and successful life. Do not be afraid of this desire! Do not run away from this desire! Do not be discouraged at the sight of crumbling houses, frustrated desires and faded longings. God the Creator, who inspires in young hearts an immense yearning for happiness, will not abandon you in the difficult construction of the house called life.

My friends, this brings about a question: “How do we build this house?” Without doubt, this is a question that you have already faced many times and that you will face many times more. Every day you must look into your heart and ask: “How do I build that house called life?” Jesus, whose words we just heard in the passage from the evangelist Matthew, encourages us to build on the rock. In fact, it is only in this way that the house will not crumble. But what does it mean to build a house on the rock? Building on the rock means, first of all, to build on Christ and with Christ. Jesus says: “Every one then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house upon the rock” (Mt 7:24). These are not just the empty words of some person or another; these are the words of Jesus. We are not listening to any person: we are listening to Jesus. We are not asked to commit to just anything; we are asked to commit ourselves to the words of Jesus.

To build on Christ and with Christ means to build on a foundation that is called “crucified love”. It means to build with Someone who, knowing us better than we know ourselves, says to us: “You are precious in my eyes and honoured, and I love you” (Is 43:4). It means to build with Someone, who is always faithful, even when we are lacking in faith, because he cannot deny himself (cf. 2 Tim 2:13). It means to build with Someone who constantly looks down on the wounded heart of man and says: “ I do not condemn you, go and do not sin again” (cf. Jn 8:11). It means to build with Someone who, from the Cross, extends his arms and repeats for all eternity: “O man, I give my life for you because I love you.” In short, building on Christ means basing all your desires, aspirations, dreams, ambitions and plans on his will. It means saying to yourself, to your family, to your friends, to the whole world and, above all to Christ: “Lord, in life I wish to do nothing against you, because you know what is best for me. Only you have the words of eternal life” (cf. Jn 6:68). My friends, do not be afraid to lean on Christ! Long for Christ, as the foundation of your life! Enkindle within you the desire to build your life on him and for him! Because no one who depends on the crucified love of the Incarnate Word can ever lose …

My friends, what does it mean to build on the rock? Building on the rock also means building on Someone who was rejected. Saint Peter speaks to the faithful of Christ as a “living stone rejected by men but in God’s sight chosen and precious” (1 Pet 2:4). The undeniable fact of the election of Jesus by God does not conceal the mystery of evil, whereby man is able to reject Him who has loved to the very end. This rejection of Jesus by man, which Saint Peter mentions, extends throughout human history, even to our own time. One does not need great mental acuity to be aware of the many ways of rejecting Christ, even on our own doorstep …

Dear friends, what does it mean to build on the rock? Building on the rock means being aware that there will be misfortunes. Christ says: “The rain fell and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat upon the house … ” (Mt 7:25). These natural phenomena are not only an image of the many misfortunes of the human lot, but they also indicate that such misfortunes are normally to be expected. Christ does not promise that a downpour will never inundate a house under construction, he does not promise that a devastating wave will never sweep away that which is most dear to us, he does not promise that strong winds will never carry away what we have built, sometimes with enormous sacrifice. Christ not only understands man’s desire for a lasting house, but he is also fully aware of all that can wreck man’s happiness. Do not be surprised therefore by misfortunes, whatever they may be! Do not be discouraged by them! An edifice built on the rock is not the same as a building removed from the forces of nature, which are inscribed in the mystery of man. To have built on rock means being able to count on the knowledge that at difficult times there is a reliable force upon which you can trust.

My friends, allow me to ask again: what does it mean to build on the rock? It means to build wisely. It is not without reason that Jesus compares those who hear his words and put them into practice to a wise man who has built his house on the rock. It is foolish, in fact, to build on sand, when you can do so on rock and therefore have a house that is capable of withstanding every storm. It is foolish to build a house on ground that that does not offer the guarantee of support during the most difficult times. Maybe it is easier to base one’s life on the shifting sands of one’s own worldview, building a future far from the word of Jesus and sometimes even opposed to it. Be assured that he who builds in this way is not prudent, because he wants to convince himself and others that in his life no storm will rage and no wave will strike his house. To be wise means to know that the solidity of a house depends on the choice of foundation. Do not be afraid to be wise; that is to say, do not be afraid to build on the rock! …

Dear young friends, the fear of failure can at times frustrate even the most beautiful dreams. It can paralyze the will, making one incapable of believing that it is really possible to build a house on the rock. It can convince one that the yearning for such a house is only a childish aspiration and not a plan for life. Together with Jesus, say to this fear: “A house founded on the rock cannot collapse!” Together with Saint Peter say to the temptation to doubt: “He who believes in Christ will not be put to shame!” You are all witnesses to hope, to that hope which is not afraid to build the house of one’s own life because it is certain that it can count on the foundation that will never crumble: Jesus Christ our Lord.

No more limbo

On April 20, 2007, the Catholic Church finally did away with the teaching of limbo, where the souls of unbaptised infants notionally went instead of going directly to be with the Lord. Reuters reported:

In a long-awaited document, the Church’s International Theological Commission said limbo reflected an “unduly restrictive view of salvation”.

The 41-page document was published on Friday by Origins, the documentary service of the U.S.-based Catholic News Service, which is part of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Pope Benedict, himself a top theologian who before his election in 2005 expressed doubts about limbo, authorized the publication of the document, called “The Hope of Salvation for Infants Who Die Without Being Baptised”.

The verdict that limbo could now rest in peace had been expected for years. The document was seen as most likely the final word since limbo was never part of Church doctrine, even though it was taught to Catholics well into the 20th century.

Before that declaration, rumours had been circulating that Benedict had opposed the teaching of limbo when he was Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger. Tradition in Action has the excerpt from the 1985 book, The Ratzinger Report, further excerpted as follows in his own words:

Limbo was never a defined truth of faith … Baptism has never been a side issue for faith; it is not now, nor will it ever be.

Fear from modernisers about Vatican II

In July 2007, Benedict stated that he wanted Latin Mass — the Tridentine Mass — to be more widely celebrated.

Modernisers — Vatican II supporters — were worried, as the Washington Post reported on July 21:

In making two controversial decisions this month — opening the door to wider celebration of the Latin Mass and asserting the Roman Catholic Church as the one true “church of Christ” — the Vatican insisted that no essential Catholic belief or practice had been changed.

Pope Benedict XVI and other Vatican officials stressed their decisions’ coherence with the teachings of the Second Vatican Council, the international assembly that ushered in a series of reforms during the 1960s.

But the pope also made clear his conservative understanding of the council, stressing its continuity with the church’s traditions, rather than the innovative and even revolutionary spirit that many believe the council embodied.

Some observers thus view the recent decisions as an effort by Benedict to correct misunderstandings of Vatican II and its teachings — an effort some say could undermine the council’s legacy …

On July 7, Benedict issued a papal decree making it easier for priests to celebrate the Tridentine Mass, or Latin Mass, which had been the traditional form of the liturgy until Vatican II made Mass in local languages the norm.

In a letter to bishops accompanying his decree, Benedict dismissed any “fear that the document detracts from the authority of the Second Vatican Council.”

Rather, the pope affirmed the “spiritual richness and theological depth” of the Missal — or text that guides the Mass — approved in the council’s wake, which “obviously is and continues to be the normal form.”

But Benedict also noted that the newer Missal had been widely misunderstood as “authorizing or even requiring creativity, which frequently led to deformations of the liturgy which were hard to bear.”

Three days after that decree, the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith decreed — with Benedict’s approval — that the church established by Christ exists in its complete form only in the Catholic church, though other Christian denominations can be “instruments of salvation.”

“The Second Vatican Council neither changed nor intended to change this doctrine,” the Vatican explained, suggesting that any understanding to the contrary was due to “erroneous interpretation” …

The article explained that Benedict was of the continuity school, which says that both the traditional Mass and the Vatican II version can co-exist:

Interpreters of Vatican II have long been divided between those who stress the continuity of its teachings with traditional Catholic doctrine and those who characterize the council as a dramatic break with the past.

Benedict, who as the Rev. Joseph Ratzinger was deeply involved in the deliberations of the council, is a longstanding member of the continuity school.

2007 Advent address

Benedict gave an address to a general audience at the Vatican on December 19, 2007 about the meaning of Advent and of Christmas.

Excerpts follow, emphases mine:

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

In these days, as we come gradually closer to the great Feast of Christmas, the liturgy impels us to intensify our preparation, placing at our disposal many biblical texts of the Old and New Testaments that encourage us to focus clearly on the meaning and value of this annual feast day.

If, on the one hand, Christmas makes us commemorate the incredible miracle of the birth of the Only-Begotten Son of God from the Virgin Mary in the Bethlehem Grotto, on the other, it also urges us to wait, watching and praying, for our Redeemer himself, who on the last day “will come to judge the living and the dead” …

Each one of the invocations that implores the coming of Wisdom, of the Sun of justice, of the God-with-us, contains a prayer addressed by the people to the One awaited so that he will hasten his coming. However, invoking the gift of the birth of the promised Saviour also means committing ourselves to preparing his way, to having a worthy dwelling-place ready for him, not only in the area that surrounds us but especially within our souls.

Letting ourselves be guided by the Evangelist John, let us seek in these days, therefore, to turn our minds and hearts to the eternal Word, to the Logos, to the Word that was made flesh, from whose fullness we have received grace upon grace (cf. Jn 1: 14, 16).

This faith in the Logos Creator, in the Word who created the world, in the One who came as a Child, this faith and its great hope unfortunately appear today far from the reality of life lived every day, publicly or privately. This truth seems too great.

As for us, we fend for ourselves according to the possibilities we find, or at least this is how it seems. Yet, in this way the world becomes ever more chaotic and even violent; we see it every day. And the light of God, the light of Truth, is extinguished. Life becomes dark and lacks a compass. Thus, how important it is that we really are believers and that as believers we strongly reaffirm, with our lives, the mystery of salvation that brings with it the celebration of Christ’s Birth!

In Bethlehem, the Light which brightens our lives was manifested to the world; the way that leads us to the fullness of our humanity was revealed to us. If people do not recognize that God was made man, what is the point of celebrating Christmas? The celebration becomes empty.

We Christians must first reaffirm the truth about the Birth of Christ with deep and heartfelt conviction, in order to witness to all the awareness of an unprecedented gift which is not only a treasure for us but for everyone. From this stems the duty of evangelization which is, precisely, the communication of this “eu-angelion”, this “Good News” …

Reconciliation for Vatican II opponents

On January 24, 2009, Benedict reconciled four prominent Vatican II opponents to the Church, reversing a previous excommunication from years before:

In a gesture billed as an “act of peace,” but one destined both to fire intra-Catholic debate about the meaning of the Second Vatican Council and to open a new front in Jewish/Catholic tensions, the Vatican today formally lifted a twenty-year-old excommunication imposed on four bishops who broke with Rome in protest over the liberalizing reforms of Vatican II (1962-65).

Ironically, news of the move came just one day before the 50th anniversary of the announcement by Pope John XXIII of his intention to call Vatican II.

The four bishops had been ordained in defiance of the late Pope John Paul II in 1988 by French Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, whose Priestly Fraternity of St. Pius X clung to the old Latin Mass after Vatican II and also expressed deep reservations about both ecumenism and religious freedom. Lefebvre died in 1991.

The four prelates involved are Bernard Fellay, superior of the Fraternity of St. Pius X; Alfonso de Gallareta; Tissier de Mallerais; and Richard Williamson. Their legitimacy as bishops has never been in question, since under Catholic law, Lefebvre was a legitimately ordained bishop and hence any ordination he performed is considered “valid” but “illicit.”

Advice about the 2008 economic crisis

At the end of February 2009, Benedict told Catholic clergy why the economic crisis of 2008 happened. The Cleveland Plain Dealer featured an editorial by Kevin O’Brien:

Pope Benedict XVI is soon to publish an encyclical commenting on the errors that have led the world to the current economic crisis.

In a public address last week to members of the Roman clergy, he tipped his hand, saying the church must denounce “fundamental mistakes that have been shown in the collapse of the great American banks.”

He said the current global financial crisis is a result of “human avarice and idolatry that go against the true God and the falsification of the image of God with another god — Mammon.”

Accept or reject the theological construction as you will, but few would disagree that human avarice is what started us down the progressively darkening alley that our financial institutions and our government travel today …

Regulations aren’t enough. They never will be. What’s really needed is something the government cannot compel: morality in the marketplace.

That’s the fetter that capitalism needs. Oddly enough, it’s the same fetter that government needs …

The solution to the clear problem of immorality in business is not to be found in government. The solution is in ourselves, and in moral standards that our declining culture has worked for 50 years to declare irrelevant.

The culture is wrong about that, but I’ll bet the pope gets it right.

The encyclical, Caritas in veritate (“Love in Truth” or “Charity in Truth”), was signed on 29 June 2009 (the Feast of Sts. Peter and Paul) and released on 7 July 2009. The Pope criticised the economic system:

where the pernicious effects of sin are evident

and called for a renewal of personal morality and ethical responsibility.

The Church was always African

On March 19, 2009, Benedict went to Africa to address the Special Council of the Synod for Africa in Yaoundé (another copy here).

He discussed the history of the Church, which has its roots in Africa — not Europe:

Dear Cardinals,
Dear Brother Bishops,

It is with deep joy that I greet all of you here in Africa. A First Special Assembly of the Synod of Bishops was convoked for Africa in 1994 by my venerable predecessor, the Servant of God John Paul II, as a sign of his pastoral solicitude for this continent so rich both in promise and in pressing human, cultural and spiritual needs. This morning I called Africa “the continent of hope”. I recall with gratitude the signing of the Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Ecclesia in Africa here at the Apostolic Nunciature fourteen years ago on the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross, 14 September 1995 …

Dear friends, at the beginning of my address, I consider it important to stress that your continent has been blessed by our Lord Jesus himself. At the dawn of his earthly life, sad circumstances led him to set foot on African soil. God chose your continent to become the dwelling-place of his Son. In Jesus, God drew near to all men and women, of course, but also, in a particular way, to the men and women of Africa. Africa is where the Son of God was weaned, where he was offered effective sanctuary. In Jesus, some two thousand years ago, God himself brought salt and light to Africa. From that time on, the seed of his presence was buried deep within the hearts of this dear continent, and it has blossomed gradually, beyond and within the vicissitudes of its human history. As a result of the coming of Christ who blessed it with his physical presence, Africa has received a particular vocation to know Christ. Let Africans be proud of this! In meditating upon, and in coming to a deeper spiritual and theological appreciation of this first stage of the kenosis, Africa will be able to find the strength needed to face its sometimes difficult daily existence, and thus it will be able to discover immense spaces of faith and hope which will help it to grow in God.

The intimate bond existing between Africa and Christianity from the beginning can be illustrated by recalling some significant moments in the Christian history of this continent.

According to the venerable patristic tradition, the Evangelist Saint Mark, who “handed down in writing the preaching of Peter” (Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses III, I, 1), came to Alexandria to give new life to the seed planted by the Lord. This Evangelist bore witness in Africa to the death of the Son of God on the Cross – the final moment of the kenosis – and of his sovereign exaltation, in order that “every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Phil 2:11). The Good News of the coming of the Kingdom of God spread rapidly in North Africa, where it raised up distinguished martyrs and saints, and produced outstanding theologians.

Christianity lasted for almost a millennium in the north-eastern part of your continent, after being put to the test by the vicissitudes of history …

American convert receives sacraments at Vatican

On April 6, 2009, the National Catholic Register reported on a young wife and mother from California who received multiple sacraments from Benedict at the Easter Vigil Mass that year. Hers is a fascinating conversion story, but I have included only the beginning and end:

Heidi Sierras has been selected to represent North America and be baptized, confirmed, and receive first Communion from Pope Benedict XVI at the Easter Vigil in Rome.

Sierras didn’t grow up with any particular faith background. Marriage first introduced her to the Catholic Church. Now, after 2 1/2 years of Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults preparation, the Ceres, Calif., mother of four will enter the Church during the Easter Vigil at St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. She recently spoke with Register senior writer Tim Drake about her anticipation for the trip and what led her to the Church …

‘It’s hard to describe how I feel. I feel very honored and amazed. It’s hard to put into words how incredible this will be.

‘My husband and two older children (my son, who is 11, and daughter, who is 9) will be traveling to Rome as well, and will receive Communion from the Pope. My daughter was to receive her first Communion in May. They allowed her to receive first Communion beforehand so that she could receive from Pope Benedict, as well.

‘In addition, there will be 30 other people from our parish, St. Joseph’s Catholic Church in Modesto, Calif., going to Rome, and the priest, as well. Because our priest will be gone for the Easter Vigil, our bishop is coming to our parish to baptize those who are coming into the Church. There will be 35 people coming into the Church. So, in some ways, everyone is going to benefit from us traveling to Rome.’

2009 Easter Vigil sermon

This is Benedict’s sermon that Heidi Sierras heard at that Easter Vigil Mass, excerpted below:

During the Easter Vigil, the Church points out the significance of this day principally through three symbols:  light, water, and the new song – the Alleluia …

At the Easter Vigil, the Church represents the mystery of the light of Christ in the sign of the Paschal candle, whose flame is both light and heat.  The symbolism of light is connected with that of fire: radiance and heat, radiance and the transforming energy contained in the fire – truth and love go together.  The Paschal candle burns, and is thereby consumed:  Cross and resurrection are inseparable.  From the Cross, from the Son’s self-giving, light is born, true radiance comes into the world.  From the Paschal candle we all light our own candles, especially the newly baptized, for whom the light of Christ enters deeply into their hearts in this Sacrament.  The early Church described Baptism as fotismos, as the Sacrament of illumination, as a communication of light, and linked it inseparably with the resurrection of Christ.  In Baptism, God says to the candidate:  “Let there be light!”  The candidate is brought into the light of Christ.  Christ now divides the light from the darkness.  In him we recognize what is true and what is false, what is radiance and what is darkness.  With him, there wells up within us the light of truth, and we begin to understand.  On one occasion when Christ looked upon the people who had come to listen to him, seeking some guidance from him, he felt compassion for them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd (cf. Mk 6:34).  Amid the contradictory messages of that time, they did not know which way to turn.  What great compassion he must feel in our own time too – on account of all the endless talk that people hide behind, while in reality they are totally confused.  Where must we go?  What are the values by which we can order our lives?  The values by which we can educate our young, without giving them norms they may be unable to resist, or demanding of them things that perhaps should not be imposed upon them?  He is the Light.  The baptismal candle is the symbol of enlightenment that is given to us in Baptism.  Thus at this hour, Saint Paul speaks to us with great immediacy.  In the Letter to the Philippians, he says that, in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, Christians should shine as lights in the world (cf. Phil 2:15).  Let us pray to the Lord that the fragile flame of the candle he has lit in us, the delicate light of his word and his love amid the confusions of this age, will not be extinguished in us, but will become ever stronger and brighter, so that we, with him, can be people of the day, bright stars lighting up our time.

The second symbol of the Easter Vigil – the night of Baptism – is water.  It appears in Sacred Scripture, and hence also in the inner structure of the Sacrament of Baptism, with two opposed meanings.  On the one hand there is the sea, which appears as a force antagonistic to life on earth, continually threatening it; yet God has placed a limit upon it.  Hence the book of Revelation says that in God’s new world, the sea will be no more (cf. 21:1).  It is the element of death.  And so it becomes the symbolic representation of Jesus’ death on the Cross:  Christ descended into the sea, into the waters of death, as Israel did into the Red Sea.  Having risen from death, he gives us life.  This means that Baptism is not only a cleansing, but a new birth:  with Christ we, as it were, descend into the sea of death, so as to rise up again as new creatures.

The other way in which we encounter water is in the form of the fresh spring that gives life, or the great river from which life comes forth.  According to the earliest practice of the Church, Baptism had to be administered with water from a fresh spring.  Without water there is no life.  It is striking how much importance is attached to wells in Sacred Scripture.  They are places from which life rises forth.  Beside Jacob’s well, Christ spoke to the Samaritan woman of the new well, the water of true life.  He reveals himself to her as the new, definitive Jacob, who opens up for humanity the well that is awaited: the inexhaustible source of life-giving water (cf. Jn 4:5-15).  Saint John tells us that a soldier with a lance struck the side of Jesus, and from his open side – from his pierced heart – there came out blood and water (cf. Jn 19:34).  The early Church saw in this a symbol of Baptism and Eucharist flowing from the pierced heart of Jesus.  In his death, Jesus himself became the spring.  The prophet Ezekiel saw a vision of the new Temple from which a spring issues forth that becomes a great life-giving river (cf. Ezek 47:1-12).  In a land which constantly suffered from drought and water shortage, this was a great vision of hope.  Nascent Christianity understood:  in Christ, this vision was fulfilled.  He is the true, living Temple of God.  He is the spring of living water.  From him, the great river pours forth, which in Baptism renews the world and makes it fruitful;  the great river of living water, his Gospel which makes the earth fertile.  In a discourse during the Feast of Tabernacles, though, Jesus prophesied something still greater:  “Whoever believes in me … out of his heart shall flow rivers of living water” (Jn 7:38).  In Baptism, the Lord makes us not only persons of light, but also sources from which living water bursts forth.  We all know people like that, who leave us somehow refreshed and renewed; people who are like a fountain of fresh spring water  …  Let us ask the Lord, who has given us the grace of Baptism, for the gift always to be sources of pure, fresh water, bubbling up from the fountain of his truth and his love!

The third great symbol of the Easter Vigil is something rather different;  it has to do with man himself.  It is the singing of the new song – the alleluia.  When a person experiences great joy, he cannot keep it to himself.  He has to express it, to pass it on.  But what happens when a person is touched by the light of the resurrection, and thus comes into contact with Life itself, with Truth and Love?  He cannot merely speak about it.  Speech is no longer adequate.  He has to sing.  The first reference to singing in the Bible comes after the crossing of the Red Sea.  Israel has risen out of slavery.  It has climbed up from the threatening depths of the sea.  It is as it were reborn.  It lives and it is free.  The Bible describes the people’s reaction to this great event of salvation with the verse:  “The people … believed in the Lord and in Moses his servant” (Ex 14:31).  Then comes the second reaction which, with a kind of inner necessity, follows from the first one:  “Then Moses and the Israelites sang this song to the Lord …”  At the Easter Vigil, year after year, we Christians intone this song after the third reading, we sing it as our song, because we too, through God’s power, have been drawn forth from the water and liberated for true life.

Catholicism ‘a positive option’

In April 2009, Benedict said that the Catholic Church was ‘a positive option’:

“Christianity, Catholicism, is not a collection of prohibitions,” the Pope said. “It is a positive option.

“It is very important that we look at it again because this idea has almost completely disappeared today.

“We have heard so much about what is not allowed that now it is time to say: we have a positive idea to offer.”

2009 survey from the US

Benedict visited the United States in 2008.

On May 17, 2009, a poll of Americans’ views of the then-Pope and moral issues was published. Despite the constant negative media coverage of his trip the previous year, a Knights of Columbus-Marist College survey showed that Americans in general and Catholics in particular had a positive view of Benedict.

By a nearly 3:1 margin — 4:1 among Catholics — Benedict was seen as being ‘good for the Church’. Americans were eager to hear him speak on not only moral issues but also, and more importantly, his message of hope and love in Jesus Christ as Saviour.

Margaret Thatcher’s 2009 visit

On May 27, 2009, former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher visited the Vatican:

Margaret Thatcher met Pope Benedict XVI at the end of his weekly general audience today.

The 83-year-old former British prime minister, who led the country from 1979 to 1990, had earlier in the day laid flowers at the tomb of John Paul II.

An Anglican, it was Baroness Thatcher’s second visit to the Vatican in less than two years, leading some to speculate whether she is thinking of joining the Church. During her previous trip, she also visited John Paul II’s tomb to pay her respects. According to those who were with her at that time, she made it clear in her characteristically loud voice that it was thanks to John Paul that Soviet communism was brought down. 

Baroness Thatcher also met Paul VI back in June 1977.

Call to laity

On May 28, 2009, Benedict issued an appeal to Catholic laity for ministry:

The Pope called on the laity to become more aware of their role when he inaugurated Tuesday an ecclesial conference for the Diocese of Rome on “Church Membership and Pastoral Co-responsibility.” The conference is under way through Friday.

“There should be a renewed becoming aware of our being Church and of the pastoral co-responsibility that, in the name of Christ, all of us are called to carry out …”

John Cardinal Newman beatified

On July 2, 2009, Benedict XVI announced that John Cardinal Newman would be beatified:

Cardinal Newman, the Anglican vicar who shocked Victorian Britain by converting to Roman Catholicism, is a step closer to becoming the first English saint for 40 years …

It follows the recognition by the Vatican of the healing of an American man with a severe spinal condition as a miracle which came about as a result of praying to the Cardinal.

A second miracle is needed to recognise Newman as a saint.

The beatification took place on September 19, 2010, during Benedict’s visit to the UK.

A second miracle took place, and Pope Francis canonised John Henry Newman on October 13, 2019, in St Peter’s Square. His feast day is on October 9 in the Catholic Church and on August 11, the day of his death, in the Anglican Church.

The Taliban warn Benedict

On July 5, 2009, the Taliban sent a warning to Pope Benedict:

The Taliban on Thursday threatened “harsh reprisals” if Pope Benedict XVI does not immediately intervene to stop Christians proselytising in Afghanistan.

In a message posted on their official website, the Taliban made the threat against the pope and Christians for spreading their faith.

The message followed video footage aired on Arabic satellite TV channel Al-Jazeera earlier this week apparently showing Christian soldiers proselytising outside the Afghan capital, Kabul, and handing out copies of the bible in Pashtun.

‘One of the brightest Popes in history’

On September 25, 2009, a long-time Vatican spokesman gave his views on Benedict XVI:

Joaquin Navarro-Valls, who was the Vatican’s official spokesman for 22 years, said in an interview that the Church currently has one of the brightest popes in history, and that one of the most unique aspects of Benedict XVI is his confidence in the rationality of individuals.

Navarro-Valls, who worked for almost two years with Benedict XVI, was interviewed by the Spanish daily El Mundo about his work at the Vatican and some aspects of the two Popes he served under.

Speaking about Benedict XVI, he said he considers him “the Pope with the largest and most brilliant personal bibliography in all of Church history. His conceptual wealth is fascinating. And I think people also outside the Catholic circles are aware of it. “

The former Vatican spokesman does not believe that the Holy Father is a cold person. “I would say the opposite. The manner in which he is moved—which is more frequent than believed—is to not react passionately in response to things,” he said.

He also found that the most unique aspect of his Pontificate is his “confidence in the rationality of people, in their ability to seek the truth,” and the great obstacle he faces is, “as he himself said a few days before he was elected pope, the dictatorship of relativism.”

An Anglican take on Benedict

In October 2009, the Anglican Centrist took issue with Benedict’s papacy. What seems to have rankled in particular was his creation of personal ordinariates which saw Anglican priests accepted into the Catholic Church:

The pope’s decision to allow the Tridentine mass and the reinstatement of the leading figures of anti-Vatican II Roman Catholicism back into the fold may also be seen to be theologically and ecclesiologically connected to his decision to receive disgruntled Anglican clergy and laity into the Roman Catholic Church via the creation of personal ordinariates. The connection consists of Benedict’s long-held antipathy for the conciliar/collegial vision of authority pointed to by Vatican II — and his long-held preference for the supremacy of papal authority. Benedict is the chief architect of the re-emphasis of central papal authority.

The debate between Cardinal Kasper and then Cardinal Ratzinger over the relationship between local and universal church — between local bishop and pope — which occurred some ten years ago — has clearly been decided in the election of Ratzinger to the throne. He is simply enforcing his top-down, centralized model of imperial authority for the papacy that Kasper and Vatican II opposed.

French support for Benedict’s investigation into paedophilia scandals

On March 31, 2010, a varied group of French men and women signed a letter, ‘Call to Truth’, which supported Benedict’s investigation into scandals involving priests and minors.

One would have thought that the media would have been relieved that a Pope wanted to investigate the scandals. Instead, they excoriated him for so doing.

Andrew Cusack reproduced the letter in English, available at the link, and introduced it as follows:

A number of prominent French men & women have written a ‘call to truth’ supporting Pope Benedict XVI in the current media storm and pedophilia scandal. As the Appeal’s about page says, Pope Benedict XVI “is the first pope to address head-on, without compromise, the problem. Paradoxically, he is the subject of undermining and personal attacks, attacks relayed with a certain complacency on the part of the press”.

The list of original signatories includes writers, essayists, literary critics, bloggers, professors, philosophers, businessmen, senators, members of parliament, mayors, publishers, actors, a Protestant minister, a Fields medal winner, and even a sexologist.

I will have more on Benedict XVI’s papacy tomorrow. He was a holy man and very wise. I will never understand how and why the media despised him to the extent that they did.

What’s on Anglican priests’ minds: passports, Holy Communion and morality

The Revd William ‘Will’ Pearson-Gee’s Twitter feed is always interesting to read.

I wrote about him in December 2021 when the Government threatened another Christmas lockdown. On December 19, he gave a sermon in which he said he would not close down his church in Buckingham, England. Fortunately, the Government relented and Christmas went ahead as planned, including in church.

On Easter, his church restored the Cup to Holy Communion. I am curious about that because, at mine, we are still receiving the Host only.

In any event, one can fully appreciate how much happier Easter was with both consecrated elements, not to mention kneeling once more at the Lord’s Table (altar rail). Well done:

Yesterday as we celebrated Easter and gathered around the Lord's Table so many people drank wine from the 'common cup'. Such an encouragement as we get back to normal.

— William Pearson-Gee (@willpg) April 18, 2022

On a secular level, a persistent problem in the UK is the Passport Office. Like many other civil servants, they think they can get the job done from home. Wrong! MPs have raised this issue in Parliament several times since the beginning of the year. Countless people are waiting for renewals or new passports. No one answers the phones. Even parliamentary staff have spent six to nine hours on the Home Office’s passport hotline.

The Revd Will was in the same frustrating boat, but finally received his newly renewed passport. Note that our passports have gone back to the original wording and navy blue cover, which doesn’t show up too well in the photo:

https://twitter.com/willpg/status/1519586294304808961

However, returning to religion, his other complaint has been with the Church of England, which refuses to touch issues of morality:

The CofE’s refusal to teach on the moral issues of the day is reprehensible https://t.co/G8zecCtOE5

— William Pearson-Gee (@willpg) March 25, 2022

His tweet has the title of the article from Premier Christianity. Using the pseudonym ‘Mary Wren’, a Catholic convert to Anglicanism laments the omission of guidance on morality.

Before anyone has a go at her, she converted because she fell in love with an Anglican who intends on becoming a priest.

Excerpts follow, emphases mine:

I am the wife of an Anglican vicar in training and, sometimes, I bitterly miss the Catholic Church. But it’s not for the reasons you might think; it’s got nothing to do with theology or cathedrals. It’s got everything to do with moral courage and spiritual leadership.

When I was asked where I stood on an issue (for example, abortion) I could explain that, as a Catholic, I followed the teachings of the Catholic Church. It did not excuse me from doing my own thinking, but it did mean that my views were not taken as personal. To an abortion advocate, their disagreement was not with me as an individual but with the teachings of the Catholic Church, a global institution with over 1.3 billion members. I was protected.

When I moved to the Church of England, my experience changed completely. I found that when these questions came up, the tone of the conversation was much more vicious and personal. It took me a while to figure out why, but I understand now. Where the Catholic Church teaches clearly on what it believes, the Church of England stays silent …

But what happens when the teachers stay silent?

Readers will find that this echoes Calvin Robinson’s parlous experience of being refused a post in the Church of England:

Well, the issue is no longer that I am a Catholic. Now the issue is me. I must be against abortion because I have internalised misogyny or some other personal bigotry that I’m using my religion to justify. The Church stays silent, protecting itself from attack, and I am expected to absorb the blows of culture. That is a heavy burden to place on one soul. I’m writing under a pseudonym precisely because I know this could compromise my husband’s career.

‘Mary Wren’ says that the pressure in standing alone is daunting:

… I have the added pressure of knowing that I alone will be under attack if the position I come to doesn’t align with the world’s teaching. Because you, the Church, have provided no teaching, you cannot be blamed for where I’ve landed. It is a neat little circle. Very convenient for you.

You hypocrites. You should be the ones with sight, leading the blind so we do not fall into a pit.

Where is the shepherd? Where are the watchmen at the walls? Where are the moral and spiritual teachers?

She does an excellent job in the following summary of C of E positions. How sad when someone finds more of a moral compass in the stock market (FTSE 100) than the Church. It is unlikely that hers is a lone voice:

You are concerned with baptism but not catechesis, evangelism but not discipleship, seeker sensitivity but not the teachings of scripture, claiming that God’s moral law might put people off.

You will speak on the housing market but not on trans issues, on agriculture but not abortion. You will revert to broad and uncontroversial topics under the guise of teaching us the basics, but you will not address the questions you are actually asked.

The largest companies are outlining their stances on the key issues of the day. I can find more moral clarity from the FTSE 100 than I can from the Church. How is it that secular corporations display more moral fabric than the house of God? …

You tell me that it is the archbishop’s job to set out the Christian position on key matters. I will ask you what your job is when the archbishop fails to do so.

You tell me that I don’t understand the importance of Church unity. But unity is not a cover for moral compromise.

You tell me you need time. But you had plenty of time. What have you done with it? You are late, like the virgins who waited until the very last minute to purchase their oil.

You tell me that not every issue needs to be spoken on. I would agree. But staying silent to attract as many as possible is a politician’s compromise, not a spiritual communion …

Your silence does not serve God. Your silence serves only yourself.

I am not asking you to constantly beat people over the head with controversial positions. I am simply asking you to teach me. I am prepared to spend my life serving your fractured house, but please – will the teachers of the Church stand up?

My unsolicited advice for anyone in a quandary such as Mary Wren’s is to start a deep, independent study of the Bible using good commentaries. By ‘good’, I mean faithful to the true meaning of Scripture.

I wish her and her husband every blessing as they pursue their respective ministries. Being a priest’s wife is a unique — and, in its own way, demanding — service to God.

Ahead of May’s local elections, Conservatives dig an ever deeper hole for themselves

On the first Thursday in May 2022, the UK will hold local elections.

It is unclear how well the Conservative Party will do, given sudden cost of living increases across the board, all of which occurred on April 1. Oh, were that this an April Fool joke. Sadly, it is all too real.

On April 3, Tim Stanley recapped the Conservatives’ self-inflicted wounds for The Telegraph: ‘The nannying Tories face oblivion if they refuse to get their priorities straight’.

Excerpts follow, emphases mine, except for Guido Fawkes’s posts below:

The same day the gas bill doubled, it snowed. Oh, and restaurants were mandated to list calorie counts on menus. After 12 years in office, the Tories have gone from trying to fix the state to trying to fix us, so we’ll be less of a shivery, fat burden on the bureaucrats. Don’t eat, they advise; don’t fly, don’t drive, avoid using the heating. In fact, it would be helpful if we could stop existing altogether. The NHS would look good on paper if no one used it, and we’d have a zero per cent failure rate in schools if no one ever sat an exam.

As MPs take a break from Parliament this week, the Tories need to dwell on what they have actually done and what there is to do. This all hinges upon the question of who they truly represent. Considering they were elected to clear up the economic mess left by Labour, it’s a bummer to note that debt is higher than under Gordon Brown, the tax burden rising and living standards crashing. We cannot blame ministers for a pandemic or a war, it’s true, but the Conservative Party’s solutions are near-indistinguishable from New Labour’s, and the alternatives rarely aired. Last week, I sat in on the Treasury Committee’s “grilling” of Rishi Sunak and the two points I never heard made were “you are spending too much” and “how dare you take my constituents’ money to do it”. The anger is not there. No party in Westminster stands for the consumer.

It was heartening to see that Stanley shares my impressions of parliamentary debate — virtue signalling, for the most part, including from Conservative benches:

This is not merely a crisis of philosophy, it is undemocratic. MPs are supposedly elected to do what their constituents want, but too many of them, as soon as they arrive in Westminster, are absorbed into a culture that has a uniform idea of what voters need, a total plan for life that runs from reducing carbon to dropping enough weight to fit into a size six dress (even better if you’re a fella!). Half the debates are toe-curlingly pious nonsense that does the electorate no benefit except to reassure them that their MP is spectacularly compassionate – and the more laws you pass, goes the logic, the more money we splash, the more compassionate they appear to be. Ergo, the most important metric for success in 2022 is how much the Treasury is spending, not the results.

It’s maddening to contemplate that nothing is ever done about situations past and present that affect many Britons:

Where to begin? The Ockenden report has stated that more than 200 babies and nine mothers might have survived were it not for failings at the Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital Trust. During the lockdown, the Government allocated around £37 billion for the deeply inefficient Test and Trace project. It lost £4.9 billion in loan fraud. Not one police officer has been sacked in relation to the Rotherham child abuse scandal. And the same Home Office that struggles to kick out foreign-born criminals finds it strangely difficult to let in Ukrainian women and children.

And we’re paying for this incompetence, while an independent body that Labour created years ago just gave all MPs a 2.7% pay rise:

You are paying for all this, and likely paying more thanks, despite [Rishi] Sunak’s tinkering, to a combination of National Insurance changes and inflation dragging people into ever higher tax bands. The Chancellor, in his munificence, says he plans to cut income tax in 2024, which means the British government is now handing out IOUs. At the same time, he is also bunging us £200 to help with the electricity bills, a sum that the state will reclaim at a later date, which means it’s also entered the habit of writing “UOMes”. MPs are getting a wee grant of their own. Their salaries will rise by 2.7 per cent, or £2,212.

The Government has become more intrusive and we have less money in our pockets:

… thanks to Covid, the public sector has been calling the shots since 2020, while the burden of wealth and power has shifted decisively away from the individual. Does this feel like a freer society than 12 years ago? Or a happier one? Paranoia and suspicion are not only widespread but encouraged (adverts on the London Underground now warn against “staring”), and privacy is dead. I can remember when we were told to protect our data. Now, just to take a train to Belgium, I have to prove my vaccine status by downloading the NHS app, send it a photo of my driving licence and record a video of my face reciting a series of numbers. Do I trust the NHS will delete all this information once used? Bless you. I’d sooner invite a rabid fox to babysit the chickens …

Voters, in the eyes of far too many, are spreaders of disease or pollution (in the opinion of some of the old ladies who glue themselves to roads, we ought even to stop breeding), and pockets of money waiting to be tapped.

What is a truly conservative concept of government?

… the old-fashioned principle of offering us the best possible service at the lowest possible price …

Small government doesn’t mean “no government” but more efficient government – more effective precisely because it limits itself to a narrower range of tasks at which it can excel. Drawing a line under the Trimalchio’s feast of a Spring Statement, the Tories must spend the time they have before the next election peeling back the bureaucracy where it is not needed, passing the benefits on to the people who have been robbed to pay for it, and coming up with creative ways to encourage the private sphere to revive. I don’t just mean conjuring up new markets in insurance or energy, but also unleashing culture and technology, faith and family, the very things that make life worth living.

Bravo!

Ultimately, Stanley says:

The paradoxical goal of conservative politics is to make politics less important in everyday life, and while it might sound hopelessly idealistic to expect powerful people to surrender power, unless the Tories try to reduce the state, they will eventually lose office altogether. The time will come when voters finally snap, and take it away.

Let us look at a few more news items on this subject.

A week or two ago, someone sent in a letter to The Telegraph illustrating how much the Government is taking in tax. This is an alarming practical example:

Now let’s look at Net Zero, the Government’s pet project, initiated by then-Prime Minister Theresa May.

This is a practical illustration of the folly of electric cars, written by conservative columnist and broadcaster Iain Dale for The Telegraph:

Back in November, I acquired an electric car, something I never thought I would do … I calculated it would save me thousands of pounds every year … 

On Friday night, I was invited to speak to Beverley and Holderness Conservatives. The main difference when you drive an electric car on a long journey is that you have to plan. In my old car, I could drive 600 miles without filling the tank, but if I ever nearly ran out of diesel there was always a petrol station around the corner.

The equivalent is not true if you have an electric car. You have to plan your journey using apps such as Zap-Map, which tell you where the charging points are, and whether they’re being used, or working. I got to Beverley OK, having recharged the car at Donington Park services on the M1, which has a few charging points. Some motorway services don’t have any.

The return journey proved to be a disaster. I left Beverley at 9am and arrived home in Kent at 7.45pm. A journey that should have taken four hours lasted an astonishing 10¾. It was a day completely wasted. The problem was that the three fast chargers in Beverley were either in use or didn’t work. So I had to use slow chargers to get to the next fast charger, which was 50 miles away. Range anxiety is a real phenomenon. The whole time you’re looking at the screen in front of you, wondering if you will run out of charge before you reach the next charger. And then what?

This week, [Transport Secretary] Grant Shapps announced a target of 300,000 more chargers across the country by 2030, the year when the Government says it will ban the sale of new petrol and diesel powered cars. Fatally, he’s left it to local authorities to make sure the roll-out happens. Mark my words, it won’t. Not without national direction.

My advice is this. If you only do relatively short journeys, then buying an electric car is a good decision. If you regularly travel more than 150 miles, it isn’t. In my experience, the car manufacturers lie about the expected range. My electric car is supposed to do 298 miles. The reality is that it does 206, or 215 if the weather is warm. Caveat emptor.

In other news, the price of milk is set to rise by 50%. The Telegraph reports that crisis talks with EU and British dairy farmers took place in Brussels last week:

Rocketing costs from feed, fertiliser and fuel have stoked fears in the industry of a surge in milk prices not seen in decades.

The cost of four pints of milk will jump from around £1.15 to between £1.60 and £1.70, an increase of up to 50pc, according to Kite Consulting, the UK’s leading adviser to dairy farmers.

Michael Oakes, the dairy board chair of the National Farmers’ Union, agreed that milk prices will likely rise by as much as 50pc.

John Allen at Kite said a 30-year period of low milk price rises is “coming to an end now” as costs surge on multiple fronts. He expects a typical pack of butter to rise from £1.55 to more than £2.

He said: “What is of concern at present is processors are getting inflationary costs as well and also we are short of milk around the world.”

Dairy industry bosses from the UK and elsewhere in Europe flew into Brussels at the end of last week with talks led by Eucolait, the continent’s leading dairy industry group. Dairy processors, which act as a link between farmers and shops, are said to be deeply concerned about soaring costs both at farm level and further up the supply chain, as the war in Ukraine lifts key input costs …

UK dairy industry bosses have raised concerns over their costs to the Government, but officials at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) are said to be merely in “listening mode” …

Mr Oakes, who is also a farmer, said: “I was paying about £7,000 for an artic [articulated lorry] load of fertiliser, and this year it’s £28,000. It would have been a little bit less before Ukraine happened, but it made another big jump because we’d already seen higher gas prices, which have implications for fertiliser costs …

He added that feed costs have risen 60pc.

As if all that isn’t enough to worry voters, we have the Online Safety Bill passing through Parliament. Guido Fawkes tells us what is happening as Ofcom, the communications regulator, prepares for the not-so-distant future:

Ofcom CEO: Exercising Putin-Style Powers Will See Staff Increase By 50% https://t.co/IkWrEh6KWY pic.twitter.com/x2CemGBfrp

— Media Guido (@MediaGuido) April 4, 2022

Scary.

Guido’s accompanying post says, in part:

According to Melanie Dawes, the newly-appointed CEO of Ofcom, the quango will increase headcount by 400 staff ahead of new powers to police the internet in the Online Safety Bill, which will be voted on in Parliament after Easter. That’s a lot of censors…

Ofcom will have Putin-style powers to block websites from being seen in the UK if those sites fail to uphold their new legal duty of care to remove “harmful content”. The definition of “harmful content”, of course, will be a political question. Will questioning hurtling towards net-zero whilst millions are in energy poverty be deemed harmful content? …

Ofcom’s Melanie Dawes told Times Radio:

We’ve got some tough and strong tools in our toolkit as a result of this legislation. And I think we need those. …These very strict and somewhat draconian kinds of sanctions are really only the sort of thing that you would expect to use as a serious last resort.

If you don’t accept self-censorship and comply, your website will be blocked. Chilling.

Then we found out at the weekend that the civil servant in charge of ethics was at a lockdown party.

The Times‘s Patrick Maguire reported:

Were this a plot point in a satire, it would feel much too lazy for any self-respecting reader to get behind. But here we are: the official who was then in charge of ethics on Whitehall has been fined for her attendance at a lockdown-busting karaoke party.

As the first major name to have been revealed to have received a fixed penalty notice, Helen Macnamara — then the government’s head of propriety and ethics, now in the business of neither as director of policy and corporate affairs at the Premier League — is surely a sign of things to come.

For confirmation of her attendance at a leaving do in the Cabinet Office in June 2020 — at a cost of £50 — is a sign that it wasn’t just the junior, nameless and faceless who breached Covid restrictions at the heart of government over that fateful period, as Boris Johnson would much prefer to be the case.

Meanwhile, Scotland Yard is also said to have told people who attended a No 10 party on April 16 last year, the day before Philip’s funeral, that they would be given fixed penalty notices: conclusive proof at last that the law was broken in Downing Street itself.

The PM did not attend either do, but the slow burn of revelations from the Met’s investigation is hardly ideal, particularly with elections just over a month away.

“I have 65,000 constituents in west Wales, where I represent, and they are not shy in coming forward and expressing a view about this and a number of other subjects,” Simon Hart, the Welsh secretary, told Sky News this morning.

“And throughout all of this saga of the Downing Street parties they have said one thing very clearly, and in a vast majority they say they want contrition and they want an apology, but they don’t want a resignation.”

The bigger risk, looking at the polls, is that they don’t want to vote Tory…

However, there are two bright rays of sunlight in an otherwise cloudy day.

The first is that London’s position as the second most important financial centre in the world is holding steady, as The Telegraph reported on Monday, April 4:

London remains Europe’s dominant financial centre based on factors such as (relative) political stability, labour market flexibility, quality of life, infrastructure and innovation, a ranking by think tank Z/Yen Group found last week. It was ranked second only to New York globally, while Paris came in at 11th place.

The second is that Volodymyr Zelenskyy still appreciates all of Boris Johnson’s efforts for Ukraine. He is contemptuous of Emmanuel Macron and Angela Merkel, as Guido reports:

https://twitter.com/TommyGribbin/status/1510905637940736007

Guido has the video of Zelenskyy praising Boris:

Zelenskyy’s said the UK has “agreed on new defensive support for Ukraine. New package. Very, very tangible support,” adding “Thank you Boris for the leadership! Historical leadership. I’m sure of it”. 

It’s too bad that Zelenskyy cannot campaign for Boris’s Conservatives. They could use his help.