Saw This

Saw this and loved it. I mean the audacity of naming your company "Real Coach Hire".

'The others' it says with a sneer, 'They're just playing at it.'

Or maybe they have a sister company, the Pretend Coach Hire and when you book with them a bloke turns up at your door and says 'come on then, get on!' and then proceeds to go off down your street making a coach noise as he walks. Presumably saying 'Sorry about this it's going to take us a while to get to Glasgow.' To which you reply, 'Yeah, traffic's awful today'. Or maybe when you book with them they ask you if you want a double or single decker and then pop one in the post to you.

In other news, today I completely failed to find homosexuals more of a threat to my way of life than global warming. 

Must be why I'm a protestant.

Archbishop (Again - sigh)

My attention has been bought to the latest offering from the archbishop, on the subject of the credit crunch.

It is, in my opinion, breathtaking in it's ineptitude. 

First of all the whole premise is that Brown is returning to debt as a means to get us out of the financial mess "like an addict returning to the drug". The only person who could make that statement is someone who has consistently failed to pay attention for the lat 10 years. It simply is not the case that Mr Brown has repeatedly used government debt as a way of solving problems. The fact of the matter is, as we all know, Mr Brown has tried to build his reputation both as Chancellor and Prime minister based on PRUDENCE. 

Whether he has achieved that is another matter, but the best criticism that one can make of him is the one the Tories are currently pushing out, eg that he has forgotten prudence and torn up the old rules. To say "oh no here we go again" with reference to public debt ignores the facts.

Secondly Rowan completely misses the difference between personal debt, which is currently a bad thing, business debt and government debt. These are all different. For example in government and business sometimes debt is necessary for cash flow. Fiscal stimulus has been repeatedly called for by the IMF. Individuals need to deleverage, so too do businesses, not because they have maxed out their credit cards but because credit is not available due to the exceptional circumstances in the banking sector.

Finally his comments about Britain needing to actually 'make something' are unbelievably wide of the mark. Currently the biggest proportion of manufacturing jobs are to be found in China. This is because China currently has the lowest wages. We simply cannot complete with that. Is the Archbishop suggesting we have special economic zones in this country in which workers get paid less that a dollar a day? Or does he imagine that just because our banking sector is in trouble we can just pull out of the global economy and reopen the textile mills of Manchester.

Of course it would be lovely to have more manufacturing in Britain, but until China and India shut up shop that is nothing but a pious wish.

Archbishop of Canterbury he may be. Robert Peston he is not.

Please Sir, can I not have some more?

It seems that the University has finally acknowledged to itself the simple truth: academic robes are a bit hot. So, as of this week we have a new thing in the University: Christmas Graduations.

It's lunchtime. The Esquire Bedell turned to me.

"Are you going for Lunch?" she asks.
"Yep!" I reply. I have some cheese sandwiches in tin foil back in the chaplaincy.
"Right, we can all go together." says the academic marshal. I realise that they are referring to some dinner organised by the University, to which, obviously I have not been invited. So I say something bland like.
"Oh I don't think I've received my invite there."
"You've not been invited to lunch?" says the marshal. "Nonsense, you must be on the list."
"No, really I'm not" I say.
"Oh I'm sure you are." says the Esquire Bedell.
"Yes, come on, let's go to lunch." says the Academic Marshal.

I have a slight growing unease as we walk across to the staff club. On my way to a lunch I'm 150% certain I'm not supposed to be at. We arrive outside the room. The Esquite Bedell and the Academic Marshall wonder out loud what they have ordered.

"Right!" says the Academic Marshall. "We're here for lunch. And we've got a chaplain here."
"Oh?" says the woman outside, "He's not on the list."

This is already quite embarrassing, I try to slip away, but the Academic Marshal doesn't let me. So the woman says.

"I'll just go and get another chair." she says.

Oh my. She's gone to get another chair.She goes into the room and emerges two minutes later.

"I've got you a place, you can go in, sir."

Then the Academic Marshal and the Esquire Bedell push me into a small room with the Vice Chancellor, The Chief Operating Officer and the Deans. This was a private functions for the very senior mangers of the University. The very top of the tree.

And Me.

Jonny Free Lunch.

No other member of the University would ever engage in such flagrantly career limiting activity, as to blagg lunch off the VC's entertaining budget, right in front of the sodding man himself. 12 pairs of eyes looked at me and clearly said "What the Christmas stuffing, is he doing here?"

I....NEARLY....DIED.

A waiter appeared at my side.

"As you didn't order in advance are you going to have the peppered steak or the monk fish?" Everyone eyes me. I wanted the ground to open up and swallow me.
"Th-th-th-the steak." I say weakly.
"And for dessert?"
Oh DEAR LORD! NOT DESSERT TOO. PLEASE NOOOOOOO!
"Sir? Dessert?"
"Er, the ch-ch-ch-chocolate tart."
"Very good sir, cream or ice cream?"
"Ice cream." I said softly.

There then followed a toe curlingly difficult lunch. I clearly wasn't on the list, what was I doing here? The peppered steak was good, but then it was rather well prepared for those way above me. How on earth does one make small talk in a situation like this? Ah, I see you are the Dean, how is running a large piece of the University? Me? Oh I've just popped in to steal dinner. Invited? Oh no I never let that stop me!

"That was good wasn't it." said the Esquire Bedell.
"Yes" I said, not quite believing I had just crashed a private party and completely blagged a whole meal.

I returned to chaplaincy, to find students eating sandwiches.



Man that peppered steak was good.

A New Society

I noticed a couple of weeks ago that Robert Peston was wondering out loud about what sort of capitalism would emerge from the rubble of the credit crunch.

I find myself wondering what sort of society will emerge.

It was not so long ago that a German guide to the UK condemned us all as superficial and given to ostentations displays of wealth. I have a feeling that the amount of bling we collectively own is going to shrink rapidly.

Perhaps the silent streets of England will be silent no more as we re-learn the art of actually talking to one another.

Apparently Church attendance is up.

A short note about Damian Green

Ted Stevens is sleazy. A US Senator who made his name, by using the US senate to secure federal funds for his home state. The King of Pork who bought home the bacon, and was then convicted of seven, yes SEVEN, felony counts for corruption.

He received over $250,000 of gifts from wealthy businessmen.

It seems that in all things the US does things bigger than the UK.

If you believe the police then Damian Green has been "aiding and abetting misconduct in public office" and "conspiring to commit misconduct in a public office". Effectively what he is accused of seems to be sidling up to a young tory voting civil servant and offering him stuff (probably a shot at a political career) if he supplied him with embarrassing government secrets. In spite of his spinning this one as “I have been arrested for doing my job”, that is a crime. But it is a very minor crime. Hardly coming near the exploits of Senator Stevens.

Yet he finds himself under arrest and his home and office searched like a major crime scene.

This is the second time the police have blundered into politics. The first was an attempt to prosecute Tony Blair for selling honours for cash, again this in a little known law, and in spite of extensive inquiries there was not enough evidence for a prosecution. In the murky world of politics unfortunately sometimes people give money to politic parties in the hope that they will get some sort of gong, to my mind that is better than using money to obtain undue influence over government. In the same way opposition MPs sometimes ask sympathetic civil servants to help them out. Frankly the police have better things to do.

The question of why they were interested at all remains. I think what we see is the rise of celebrity policing. Take the case of Chris Langham. Clearly guilty as charged. But why was he arrested at the same time as he was due to win an award? Like Matthew Kelley who was arrested in a packed theatre. It seems Plod is quite partial to a bit of publicity. No doubt in both these cases some copper fancied himself as -the man who bought down the government or the man who scuppered the opposition.

What the police have done however is fundamentally bad for democracy From now on, they will face a sceptical public when it comes to political misbehaviour and they will always hesitate before taking action. By pursuing such a trivial case they have ensured their hands are forever tied. Which makes their job of ensuring MPs are not above the law impossible.

One day there will be a British Ted Stevens there have been before and there will be again, and provided he hides all the evidence in the house of commons, it is highly likely he will get away with it.

And if he does you can lay the blame fairly and squarely not at the door of the Home Secretary, nor at the door of the Speaker or the Serjeant-at-Arms but firmly at the door of the Metropolitan Police.

Caption Competition

Games Nite

You know, Campus is all very serious and grown up all of a sudden.

I use the words deliberately, not adult, grown up.

Everyone is focused on their future career and working hard like uni is a job and they have a contract with the government. Yet I can't help wondering if this is actually the way the students want it.

Take the other night, we hosted the chaplaincy games night. An evening of old fashioned board games and frolicking fun. Not the sort of thing you'd think sophisticated students, and wanna be employees of Price-Waterhouse-Coopers would go for. Turned out to be the most successful social nearly of all time.



Even more popular than when we realised that Chaplaincy was a house and decided to play Cludo with real people.



It was all very silly really. Perhaps tuition fees need to go up to knock this sort of thing on the head.