Not the most dynamic video I’ve ever seen and it did feel like I was being talked down to at times. Still, with the economy faltering and most people believing that growth will not improve this year (The i, Jan 27), here is a very succinct and clear explanation from Compass of why “Plan B” is better economics than the current austerity plans of the Coalition government.
Angry with IDS!
I listened to Iain and Duncan Smith (as Paul Merton used to call him), with a growing sense of anger. He is the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions and was speaking on BBC Radio 4′s Today programme in response to the backlash – pleasingly led by Bishops in the House of Lords – against the plan for a £26,000 per year cap on benefits.
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Faith, hope and healing
Sermon, Christ Church Downend, evening service, Jan 15, 2012
Bible readings: Matthew 8: 5-13; Isaiah 60: 9-end
As many of you will be aware, a member of this church, David Stevens, died last Sunday from cancer. He was not a regular at this particular service, though you may remember the creative service, Encounter, that he helped to lead. In any case, he was an honorary godfather to my younger son, Timothy. I say honorary because, sadly, Tim’s first godfather too died of cancer some years ago. It was a blessing to my family, and I hope also to Dave, that he had the opportunity to take on the role, albeit for what turned out to be a sadly short period.
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Correlation or causation? Debates about immigration and joblessness in the UK
A very interesting set of debates have taken place this month as to whether immigration leads to raised unemployment amongst some groups of the UK-born population. For example, MigrationWatchUK have noted that youth unemployment in the UK increased from 575,000 in the first quarter of 2004 to 1,016,000 in the third quarter of 2011, coinciding with a rise of 600,000 workers from Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia, Slovenia, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
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Working paper: Who benefits from grammar schools? A case study of Buckinghamshire, England
Working paper. Not for publication, reproduction or citation. Just for interest!
With education policies in England expanding the range of secondary school types available, some commentators have sought to defend and promote the historically older selective system where those pupils who pass an entrance exam are taught in separate schools from others. They do so arguing that selective schools produce higher learning outcomes and aid social mobility by giving some pupils from poorer households an educational opportunity they could not otherwise access. Continue reading
Has Science made Christianity irrelevant?
An audio recording of a talk that I gave last year. Download. (Right click and use Save Link As or similar, 23 MB)
My first sermon of 2012
Sermon, Christ Church Downend, evening service, Jan 1, 2012
Bible reading: Deut. 30
Well, it’s a great pleasure to spend the first day of 2012 with you all. I hope that whatever your circumstances you were able to find some sense of peace and joy this Christmas period. And, for those of you who queued from 5am at Cabot Circus on Boxing Day, that you were able to secure the bargain you were looking for.
Merry Christmas Everyone!
Shaky put it so well, didn’t he?
I’ll be back in 2012, most probably with a paper suggesting Buckinghamshire’s grammar schools curtail the academic achievements of pupils whose prior attainment might have got them into those selective schools but, for whatever reason, they didn’t.
In the meantime, a very Merry Christmas one and all.
P.S. This radio programme is worth a listen.
Grim Statistics
Yesterday’s Autumn Statement from the Chancellor made grim listening and reading: economic growth downgraded (again), unemployment predicted to rise to over 8.5 per cent in early 2012, total national debt still rising, and annual borrowing greater than expected.
Meanwhile, train fares are increasing above inflation (albeit that the increased rate has been cut a little), fuel prices remain at an all time high, public sector workers can expect their salaries to reduce in real terms, and we can all work longer before receiving a pension.
As I say, grim.
The 78,239,674,565th person to have lived!
According to http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-15391515 I am the 78,239,674,565th to have lived and the 3,948,478,824th person alive on Earth. Lucky me! The precision is, of course, utterly spurious but it’s a bit of fun the helps to emphasise (a) that the world population is now an estimated 7 billion people and (b) that population number has more than doubled in 50 years.
Bad luck with the prediction, there, Revd. Malthus, though perhaps your more general point that there are limits to how many people one world can support most likely to still have validity, whether we look to growing inequality within and between countries, or the increasingly devestating effects of climate change upon the most vulnerable.
So, let me give a plug to the Living Lightly website, a Christian site that helps to give ideas to live more sustainably and less wastefully. I’m not saying I am especially good at it but I admire and hope I can begin to follow the aspiration. I’m tempted to add something along the lines of ‘if there are 7 billion of us then I’ve got to stop living as I’m the only one’. But it sounds a little too pious, I’m afraid.