Jim Stewart's Blog

I was struck today by the thought that so many churches need to have “a confession” as part of their services. Some churches even have special little boxes where you can confess.

At the same time I see people in the limelight that seem to find it impossible to admit to anything less than perfection.

A recent post by Franklin Graham said:

Without repentance, our country will continue to spiral downwards with more division, more hate, more violence.

The responses were by people pointing out who they thought should repent – them over there.

Tesco have reminded us that there is no naughty list this year.

I have never really liked the Santa naughty and nice concept.

My interest is in the breadth of the spectrum from “I am perfect” to “Miserable me” and where we should sit on it. I think I never get it quite right myself.

One of the antiques shows this week showed a Papal Indulgence – a “get out of hell free” card. It was interesting because it had 50 “write in” spaces for friends names.

Martin Luther is well known for his opposition to this idea. It is worth reading his 95 Theses, there are some interesting parts:

Christians are to be taught that he who sees a man in need, and passes him by, and gives [his money] for pardons, purchases not the indulgences of the pope, but the indignation of God

In other words – it is more important to support the poor than support the church.

But his view was still that people needed to be penitent before they were absolved, so he still wanted people to know their guilt.

Personally I think it is healthy to accept our imperfections, but is it healthy to live with permanent guilt? I can’t accept that.

An interesting set of complaints about the film Music for failing to cast an autistic person to play an autistic person.

I remember similar comments about a straight man being cast to play a gay man.

The arguments for and against are interesting. There are some mathematical principles I use to test ideas. In this case I like to reverse the argument to see what it looks like. Could you say a gay actor can never play a straight person? Was it wrong to cast George Takei as Sulu? Should Daryl Hannah have been disqualified from film roles where the characters were not autistic?

The idea of asking people to declare their sexual orientation before casting them in a film is something that would be abhorrent to many.

Is this a form of positive discrimination, well according to Ian McKellen it isn’t needed.

Are “causes” sometimes as much about a desire to complain as they are about fixing a wrong.

New results from ONS today show a negative growth rate for the North West. So far we have not seen the effects of the lockdown or the city wide testing, this is the effect of Tier 3. All the indications are that by the end of lockdown out infection rates will be below 100, and once the full effects of lockdown are seen (around Christmas) the infection rates could be below 10.

It is interesting seeing how little of this is headline news. When the region had the highest infection rates it was the focus of news, but now things are looking positive there is limited mention.

When I lived outside the UK I always noticed how negative the UK was when I returned on visits. I have no doubt a lot of this is based on the mood of the press.

In other news I ordered some packing material (the sort of bubble wrap type of stuff). It arrived in a box that was too big for it – so it was wrapped in packing material to protect it. If I had ordered an empty box maybe I could have saved a lot of money.

BBC Radio 1 have announced that they will not be playing the original version of The Fairytale of New York anymore, because some people are offended by the language. A bit odd that a couple of lines that involve people shouting offence at each other should be redacted because they are offensive. They are supposed to be offensive.

Some people have also pushed for songs like “Do they know its Christmas” to be pulled from playlists.

And of course Jingle Bells has a racist past. It has connections to minstrel shows.

Is it time Galaxy withdrew their “minstrel” chocolate line?

Time after time I see cosy discussions about naughty words. I expect one of the pressing things on George Floyds mind in his final minutes was the connection between Jingle Bells and Black and White Minstrels – or maybe it was just “I can’t breathe”.

Are our discussions over “acceptable language” about redressing wrongs, or are they about making s feel good without leaving our armchairs?

Scotland has recently removed the defence against smacking children. This means parents can be prosecuted for it.

So do parents now resort to using the naughty step? Early bed? No screen time?

I’ve always wondered why the voices calling for a stop to hurting children always focus on physical pain and not mental pain.

When you tear off a plaster the short sharp pull is better than the slow long pull.

I have seen young people I have been friendly with turn in to multiple murderers. I always wonder whether there was something that could have been done to change the direction of their lives.

I remember staying in a school hall during the sponsored bike ride across the USA in 1996. They had some booklets in the classroom called “The flag code”. I read through one and was astounded by some of the things it said.

We see a lot of people in the USA making an issue of how important their flag is. Many of them have the flag on their clothing, or maybe on a face mask. Most do not seem to know that one of the items in the flag code says “The flag should never be used as wearing apparel”.

A really interesting rule is section 4 which says

Any person who, within the District of Columbia, in any manner, for exhibition or display, shall place or cause to be placed any word, figure, mark, picture, design, drawing, or any advertisement of any nature upon any flag, standard, colors, or ensign of the United States of America; or shall expose or cause to be exposed to public view any such flag, standard, colors, or ensign upon which shall have been printed, painted, or otherwise placed, or to which shall be attached, appended, affixed, or annexed any word, figure, mark, picture, design, or drawing, or any advertisement of any nature; or who, within the District of Columbia, shall manufacture, sell, expose for sale, or to public view, or give away or have in possession for sale, or to be given away or for use for any purpose, any article or substance being an article of merchandise, or a receptacle for merchandise or article or thing for carrying or transporting merchandise, upon which shall have been printed, painted, attached, or otherwise placed a representation of any such flag, standard, colors, or ensign, to advertise, call attention to, decorate, mark, or distinguish the article or substance on which so placed shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor and shall be punished by a fine

The question might be – is this then illegal?

At the same time there are parts of the code that they all know. “I pledge allegiance to the flag…”

But hang on – just what does that mean? How can you be allegiant to a flag? I always find it interesting that the groups who oppose big federal government are the strongest supporters of this pledge to obey federal government.

In the USA the Jehovah’s Witnesses have stood out as a group by calling this idolatry. Good on them.

Of course we never would have idolatry like that.

Recognise this? Do you know the rules about it? Did you know that only certain government vehicles can use this?

When developing documents for government we had to add this sign to it. Do you see that little cross on the top of the crown? The rule is that you cannot place text above that (no headers on that page then).

I remember one old film about a war where the officer complained that God was more important to some people than country.

Pledging allegiance to an inanimate object is in effect an act of worship to the puppet masters behind the object. What do the crown or the flag demand of us? Whatever the high priests tell us they demand!

And no doubt my friends on the left will agree to this, as they sing the red flag.

But what about religion? I was lucky to be brought up in a tradition that recognised that opposing views were worth listening to – that there was no monopoly on the truth. I don’t see organised religion as idolatry, but I do question established belief systems that cannot be challenged.

The EU is facing budget problems. They have a fund planned for COVID recovery, but in the EU budgets can be vetoed. And the far right wing countries are blocking the budget. The budget was being tied to the need for countries to obey the rules, and the countries that don’t want to obey the rules have a right of veto.

There is a side lesson here – that the EU are trying to use legislation to punish people that are breaking rules, which is clearly the work of the courts. Confusing executive, legislative and judicial duties always causes problems.

Anyway, the interesting thing to me is to what extent we allow freedom to deviate from a societal democratic decision.

We see the same with the USA at present – do you accept the results of the vote or not? People need freedom to disagree, but to what extent should they be able to express that? Should they be able to ignore the vote even if the courts make decisions supporting Biden victory?

This will be coming home to us soon. As the vaccine is produced should we insist that people take it? In some countries children are excluded from school if they do not have all the vaccinations necessary. Should we be able to force people? And if we can remove the freedom to reject a vaccine what other freedom can we remove?

Watching the second episode of Rob Rinder’s family story from the holocaust is a reminder that state power must never be unlimited, no matter how many people vote for it.

Despite the election in the USA the trade war with other countries continues. In the last week a number of new tariffs came in to effect on agricultural products.

In other news the honey harvest in Europe is down 40%. On top of that there is a threat of cheap imports from China, Mexico and Ukraine.

So why shouldn’t we buy the cheapest? Well, to be blunt – no bees – no harvest. So will you buy Manuka Honey from New Zealand?

Food production cannot be left to the cheapest wins. The ecosystem does not work on the basis of profits.

The Yorkshire Ripper is dead – and instead of his photo on the front page we see the photo of the victims. People are making an effort not to glorify the killer but to remember the victims.

Recently the BBC had to withdraw an advert that talked about the rise and fall of Oscar Pistorius because it talked about him and failed to mention Reeva Steenkamp – the woman he killed. Was that too hard? There certainly was a lot more to his life than just the murder. But not mentioning her name does seem off.

I just wondered where we are going with this concept.

I felt the knife in my hand and she laughed no more

At least he mentions her name. There is something about art that makes it right for it to explore the unacceptable side of human nature. I hope we never end up censoring Tom.

I’m glad Dominic Cummings didn’t get pushed out for something as trivial as a drive to Barnard castle. I’m glad it ended with a realisation that political advisors should never have the power he had, that the civil service can be better but is not broken. I am glad that the politics of division have seen him thrown on the streets.

I know many people want to get rid of opponents by any means, but I believe getting rid of the philosophy behind some people is far more important than the figurehead. To that extent I believe the Biden win may not be a victory. I do not think the American people have had enough exposure to Trumpism to turn them away from the ideology that elected him.

Anyway today I heard an interesting fact that got me thinking about pyramid selling. In case you don’t know, pyramid selling is where your income depends on you selling the product to several others and each of them selling it to several others etc etc – until there are not enough people left and the whole system collapses (in pandemic terms it normally depends on an R rate of about 10 and then collapses when herd immunity kicks in).

Today I heard about our population in 1801 – it was around 9 million. Now there is around 60 million. It struck me that we live in a pyramid society – we depend on more children and more children. Partly this is because of the need for more children as a result of early deaths. So as we change society in terms of child births and life expectancy we are moving away from a pyramid structure.

Does that mean we need to change ow we function as a society? Are the ideas of hard work followed by an easy time still viable? Would we be better with a different system – is this where a universal basic income could come in? Or maybe a jubilee system, where we take “retirement” throughout our working life?