I've been watching the half-hour long 'best of' clips compiled by Soul Survivor, an evangelical Christian festival aimed at teens. One of the most striking features, between clips of rock music that's pretty far off my taste, was an extended sermon by an attractive, young woman in friendly clothes with a nice, confident voice. I'm sure it wasn't sold as a 'sermon', come to thing of it. It was a loose collection of anecdotes about experiences she had had or heard about when people had been remarkably healed by prayer.
To take two examples:
1. John Wimber had visited an African village where a young boy had been cursed by the local 'witch doctor' after his parents had converted to Christianity. He was mute and shrunken but after Wimber's group prayed for a bit and the boy began to grow and speak. Soon he was fully developed for his age.
2. The woman reported an exchange with her nail technician, one of whom's arms was 1.5cm shorter than the other. After prayer again her arm miraculously grew to full length.
I'm not interested here to assess whether these events took place, although it is hard not to be a little sceptical, but rather what it would mean if they were true, which is what this woman evidently believed and what she was encouraging the enormous crowd of teens listening avidly to her talk.
First, what would it mean for the boy's parents in example 1? Had they not prayed for their son? Had they not prayed hard enough? Were their prayers not good enough? Were they not good enough Christians?
Secondly, what would it mean for other sufferers who don't get better? Her prayers were able to extend the arms of a person she had only just met but why do some good Christians, from loving churches, die from cancer? Were they not really that good? Did they pray wrongly?
Thirdly, did she change God's mind? Had God intended that the little boy should remain cursed unless a prayer group from the USA turned up to help? What about other little boys who are cursed but weren't on Wimber's itinerary, does God give up on them?
In other words does God only act when someone, typically an evangelical Christian, prays to him and why does he act sometimes but, apparantly, not others? My biggest fear about this kind of understanding of 'the power of prayer' is what it means for the practice overall. Prayer, it seems, is like a shopping list of physical ailments for God to fix. If you do it right, he fixes them. For some reason, unknown, He sometimes doesn't. In this sense He's like a capricious car mechanic and we're trying to buy an MOT. Anyone with some knowledge of the history of prayer knows that this is selling prayer far too short and that it simply doesn't reflect our experience of how God works. I don't intend to give a definition but prayer involves, at the very least, a listening exercise not a speaking one. It is about opening ourselves up as a channel or conduit, the traffic is two way. We are in dialogue not monologue.
Saturday 20 August 2011
Friday 19 August 2011
Perfect Haiku
Writing a haiku as a westerner demands you give up so many intuitive assumptions about the kind of language and expectations poetry fulfills. Gone is metre, metaphor and theorising. No more lengthy wonderings about the internal life of the mind, instead just a crystal clear moment captured in language that perfectly reflects something observed. How hard it is to abandon the likening of one moment to another, or the deliberate shoe-horning in of a thought not an observation, and how perfect it is when a haiku does work and an observation speaks volumes.
Some of my favourite haiku:
Thirty pence each:
a cup of tea,
and a singing bird
(Issa)
a cup of tea,
and a singing bird
(Issa)
Snail – baring
shoulders
to the moon
(Issa)
shoulders
to the moon
(Issa)
In the moonlight a worm
silently
drills through a chestnut
(Basho)
silently
drills through a chestnut
(Basho)
The skylark:
Its voice alone fell,
leaving nothing behind
(Ampu)
Its voice alone fell,
leaving nothing behind
(Ampu)
Each morning in spring
the birds and the toaster
doing their stuff
(Koji)
the birds and the toaster
doing their stuff
(Koji)
lend me your arms,
fast as thunderbolts,
for a pillow on my journey.
fast as thunderbolts,
for a pillow on my journey.
(Hendrik Doeff)
lily:
out of the water
out of itself
bass
picking bugs
off the moon
(Nick Virgilio)
Some of my own:
above the towers –
stars
pigeon breast
puffed out and pulsates;
full of desire
by the tower –
below the window –
a man
a boat leaves behind
quiet quivers
on quiet waters
against the bank –
little lappers
from a paddle
unripe grape
between my fingers;
resting on a bruise
Sunday 14 August 2011
Evangelical Teen Camps
Writing in the Guardian, Tom Prosser criticises Christian teen festivals, calling them 'wicked', 'emotionally manipulative' and exploitative. His damning claim is based on two points: first, that the 'tactics' of those who run the camp are manipulative, tricking children into committing to Christianity; and secondly, that the theology of their organisers is suspect. These points do not seem sufficient, to me, to merit his condemnation.
Steve Clifford, general director of the Evangelical Alliance and adviser to Soul Survivor, wrote back, but missed all the key points, although he did do a good job of defending the playing of rock music and so on at Christian festivals from the sneering of Prosser.
Each of the points Prosser made are important, to the first I think he is right that the use of music, dance and spectacle is intended to create an ethereal atmosphere, charged with religious significance and likely to stimulate a reaction that can be quickly identified as the 'Holy Spirit' by the organisers. A substantial part of the appeal of these events is the sense of transformation that be accessed so easily with the right conditions. Prosser goes to far, however, when he characterises this as a ploy to get teenagers to sign on the dotted line like the practices of door-to-door hucksters. The commitment is not odious, without financial demands, and which people keep only as long as they wish to. The signing of a 'contract' to "to include Jesus in their thoughts, words, and actions" is rather more dubious, but not, I think, a widespread practice and obviously more of an initiation ceremony than an out and out legal commitment.
To the second point, I agree again that the theology can be extraordinarily conservative in youth churches but if Prosser really believes, as he claims to, that "young people have a right to choose their religious beliefs", and he ought, then this kind of theology must be available to them. He claims: "Youngsters are threatened with divine judgment, and they are initiated into the world of charismatic Christian practices. At Soul Survivor, the largest Christian youth festival in the UK, teens have been told that witch doctors can maim children by cursing them. They have also been informed that God judges us on death for our deeds and thoughts, and they have been encouraged to practise physical healings."
I suspect not all these claims are true, and if they are, they are not widespread. Taken as a whole, they do not look deeply pernicious, indeed the idea of 'divine judgement' is surely to be expected at a religious festival? The reality is that evangelical teen festivals at their worst are ghastly rock concerts, but as long as the children who attend have fun the core message is overwhelmingly positive.
Steve Clifford, general director of the Evangelical Alliance and adviser to Soul Survivor, wrote back, but missed all the key points, although he did do a good job of defending the playing of rock music and so on at Christian festivals from the sneering of Prosser.
Each of the points Prosser made are important, to the first I think he is right that the use of music, dance and spectacle is intended to create an ethereal atmosphere, charged with religious significance and likely to stimulate a reaction that can be quickly identified as the 'Holy Spirit' by the organisers. A substantial part of the appeal of these events is the sense of transformation that be accessed so easily with the right conditions. Prosser goes to far, however, when he characterises this as a ploy to get teenagers to sign on the dotted line like the practices of door-to-door hucksters. The commitment is not odious, without financial demands, and which people keep only as long as they wish to. The signing of a 'contract' to "to include Jesus in their thoughts, words, and actions" is rather more dubious, but not, I think, a widespread practice and obviously more of an initiation ceremony than an out and out legal commitment.
To the second point, I agree again that the theology can be extraordinarily conservative in youth churches but if Prosser really believes, as he claims to, that "young people have a right to choose their religious beliefs", and he ought, then this kind of theology must be available to them. He claims: "Youngsters are threatened with divine judgment, and they are initiated into the world of charismatic Christian practices. At Soul Survivor, the largest Christian youth festival in the UK, teens have been told that witch doctors can maim children by cursing them. They have also been informed that God judges us on death for our deeds and thoughts, and they have been encouraged to practise physical healings."
I suspect not all these claims are true, and if they are, they are not widespread. Taken as a whole, they do not look deeply pernicious, indeed the idea of 'divine judgement' is surely to be expected at a religious festival? The reality is that evangelical teen festivals at their worst are ghastly rock concerts, but as long as the children who attend have fun the core message is overwhelmingly positive.
Saturday 13 August 2011
Evicting rioters must stop
The news that councils in England, with the backing of the Prime Minister, will start removing benefits and council homes from the families of those arrested for rioting - even before they are convicted of their offence - is loathsome, immoral and unjust. Off the top of my head, here are just some of the problems with this: it punishes families for the crimes of their children, it exceeds the punishments given in court for the crime committed, it uses the provision of shelter and welfare as a tool of punishment, it risks extending poverty and homelessness, it is likely to increase antagonism with the police and councils, it will break up communities, and, ultimately, it will increase the liklihood of crime in the future.
These changes are probably best seen as just one further step an a series of antagonistic and thoughtless acts of community vandalism by councils run with both eyes on wealthy, right-wing voters and a complete willingness to sacrifice the needs of council tenants to pursue those votes. Wandsworth, Westminster, Greenwich, Hammersmith and Fulham - the list of councils proposing to start evicting the families of rioters reads like a roster of far-right Tory-run model councils who have spend much of last few decades doing their best to make those in vulnerable positions feel ever less secure.
These changes are probably best seen as just one further step an a series of antagonistic and thoughtless acts of community vandalism by councils run with both eyes on wealthy, right-wing voters and a complete willingness to sacrifice the needs of council tenants to pursue those votes. Wandsworth, Westminster, Greenwich, Hammersmith and Fulham - the list of councils proposing to start evicting the families of rioters reads like a roster of far-right Tory-run model councils who have spend much of last few decades doing their best to make those in vulnerable positions feel ever less secure.
Tuesday 9 August 2011
The 'TRUTH' about the riots
How quickly 'truths' become accepted and established. A glance through Facebook and Twitter informs me that two beliefs are becoming universally adopted: first, that what's needed is a merciless police battle with the rioters stopping short only of bullets; secondly, that the rioters are violent idiotic 'chavs' who riot because they were born that way, viz. working class. Few seem willing to wonder if these actions could be borne from their social or economic context - this is not to excuse horrible acts of violence and vandalism but to acknowledge that people carry them out not because rioting is their DNA but because they are in such a miserable situation that rioting becomes a desirable option. To greet these despicable actions with classist condemnations, to group being working class with being violent as if the two are simply different labels for the same phenomenon, is grossly wrong.
Nor is it patronising, bleeding-heart liberalism to contextualise these actions. No one should seek to deprive the rioters of their agency. What they are doing is wrong, but it is also not surprising, it is part and parcel of the changes to British society and politics that we are currently witnessing. As Martin Luther King said:
"When you cut facilities, slash jobs, abuse power, discriminate, drive people into deeper poverty and shoot people dead whilst refusing to provide answers or justice, the people will rise up and express their anger and frustration if you refuse to hear their cries. A riot is the language of the unheard."
Nations, like individuals, show their true colours in testing times. There are always two options - to go in with all guns blazing rubber bullets and tear gas; or to learn what wrong, to clean up the streets and to make sure that no one is so ever again so desperate, angry and dispossessed that this campaign of violence, vandalism and self defeat looks like a good idea. The choice is between revenge and compassion.
Nor is it patronising, bleeding-heart liberalism to contextualise these actions. No one should seek to deprive the rioters of their agency. What they are doing is wrong, but it is also not surprising, it is part and parcel of the changes to British society and politics that we are currently witnessing. As Martin Luther King said:
"When you cut facilities, slash jobs, abuse power, discriminate, drive people into deeper poverty and shoot people dead whilst refusing to provide answers or justice, the people will rise up and express their anger and frustration if you refuse to hear their cries. A riot is the language of the unheard."
Nations, like individuals, show their true colours in testing times. There are always two options - to go in with all guns blazing rubber bullets and tear gas; or to learn what wrong, to clean up the streets and to make sure that no one is so ever again so desperate, angry and dispossessed that this campaign of violence, vandalism and self defeat looks like a good idea. The choice is between revenge and compassion.
Monday 8 August 2011
Riots are a sign of the times
What do the riots in Tottenham, Enfield and Brixton tell us about contemporary Britain? It seems to me there are two options: either there is a violent streak in all young men which simmers beneath the surface waiting for an excuse to be unleashed with little threat of criminal charges and rejoices at the chance to nick some electrical hardware; or else the social and economic context are important and riots are an indicator of wider changes in society.
The first is surely impossible to credit - albeit the rioters do seem to consist of young men unconnected to any protest or legitimate concern and are hell bent on causing mayhem, destruction and looting, but these traits are not endemic, genetic traits shared by all young men. To say so is to ignore the relative rarity of such violence and their correlation to poverty, unrest and inequality, whether in Toxteth, Tolpuddle, Brixton or Tottenham.
If the second is the case then I suggest three important factors to look at first: 1. the break down in community policing in London in the last few years after the enlightened policy making of the first Labour government; 2. rising inequality and the failure of living standards to advance significantly for the poorest members of society; 3. the effect of the cuts on poverty, misery and community. To treat these riots as a self contained example of the evil of certain segments of the population or to link them with recent protests by students or public sector workers is as disingenuous as it is contrary to the evidence and to common sense. Why is it now, in poor areas of the most unequal city in the country, that these events are taking place? Vandalism is the most perfect act of self defeat, of blind rage expressing itself in short term, selfish idiocy, of pointless hurt and pain, of dispossession by people with little or nothing holding them to normal society. The police, with all credibility and public trust shattered, have no ability to hold a fragile peace amongst fractured communities. There will be more where this came from over the next few years.
The first is surely impossible to credit - albeit the rioters do seem to consist of young men unconnected to any protest or legitimate concern and are hell bent on causing mayhem, destruction and looting, but these traits are not endemic, genetic traits shared by all young men. To say so is to ignore the relative rarity of such violence and their correlation to poverty, unrest and inequality, whether in Toxteth, Tolpuddle, Brixton or Tottenham.
If the second is the case then I suggest three important factors to look at first: 1. the break down in community policing in London in the last few years after the enlightened policy making of the first Labour government; 2. rising inequality and the failure of living standards to advance significantly for the poorest members of society; 3. the effect of the cuts on poverty, misery and community. To treat these riots as a self contained example of the evil of certain segments of the population or to link them with recent protests by students or public sector workers is as disingenuous as it is contrary to the evidence and to common sense. Why is it now, in poor areas of the most unequal city in the country, that these events are taking place? Vandalism is the most perfect act of self defeat, of blind rage expressing itself in short term, selfish idiocy, of pointless hurt and pain, of dispossession by people with little or nothing holding them to normal society. The police, with all credibility and public trust shattered, have no ability to hold a fragile peace amongst fractured communities. There will be more where this came from over the next few years.
Saturday 6 August 2011
Is £100,000 a year enough for a top civil servant?
There's a popular trope in politics, driven particularly by the Tory media/News International, which says that top civil servants are paid too much - conning tax payers, not giving value for money and earning vastly more than those at the bottom of the profession. Tory ministers recently boasted of the amount they had 'saved' from public spending partly by sacking top staff or cutting their wages.
This is problematic for several reasons. First, ministers rarely consider whether the staff they sack will need to be replaced, creating either holes and problems in the delivery of services or leading to a re-hiring or expensive consultants. Secondly, 'savings' for the taxpayers usually means cuts they will have to endure in another form - as the government reduces fuel duty, imposes punitive rises in VAT and proposes canceling the top rate of income tax so they scrap essential services these could have paid for.
Thirdly, a point least often raised, is that the discourse of 'high pay' for top civil servants redirects attention from vast private sector salaries, the need for high quality individuals to run public services and the differential between pay in the public and private sectors. All of which is very helpful to a Conservative government filled with millionaires and desperate to slash and burn with as little censure or observations as possible, but we should be sceptical of any argument which turns cutting public expenditure into a virtue and casts public servants as grasping fat cats. Public sector pay is chronically low, we should never have to worry about paying 'too much' to those who provide services to the public, particularly to those who have managed to rise to the top. Good management is essential, particularly in a time of cuts, and it costs a lot of money to attract the kind of managers who will ensure that services survive the Tory government. Why shouldn't a top teacher earn a salary which, although much more than most other civil servants, is still less than any equivalent private sector salary? Which, after all, do we believe is most important?
This is problematic for several reasons. First, ministers rarely consider whether the staff they sack will need to be replaced, creating either holes and problems in the delivery of services or leading to a re-hiring or expensive consultants. Secondly, 'savings' for the taxpayers usually means cuts they will have to endure in another form - as the government reduces fuel duty, imposes punitive rises in VAT and proposes canceling the top rate of income tax so they scrap essential services these could have paid for.
Thirdly, a point least often raised, is that the discourse of 'high pay' for top civil servants redirects attention from vast private sector salaries, the need for high quality individuals to run public services and the differential between pay in the public and private sectors. All of which is very helpful to a Conservative government filled with millionaires and desperate to slash and burn with as little censure or observations as possible, but we should be sceptical of any argument which turns cutting public expenditure into a virtue and casts public servants as grasping fat cats. Public sector pay is chronically low, we should never have to worry about paying 'too much' to those who provide services to the public, particularly to those who have managed to rise to the top. Good management is essential, particularly in a time of cuts, and it costs a lot of money to attract the kind of managers who will ensure that services survive the Tory government. Why shouldn't a top teacher earn a salary which, although much more than most other civil servants, is still less than any equivalent private sector salary? Which, after all, do we believe is most important?
Wednesday 3 August 2011
Arrogance, cynicism and ignorance: the foundation of the 'Big Society'
Listening to Phillip Blond on this week's Beyond Belief reinforced to me the cynical, empty and arrogant assumptions behind the Conservative Party's 'Big Society'. This is nothing new of course, it has been well attested to by political commentators, Labour Party politicians and the archbishop of Canterbury. Even David Cameron appears to have lost faith on this empty, ill-considered slogan left over from a failed piece of electioneering, relaunching it time and time again with no new policy ideas, little funding and no sign of public confidence.
How staggering it is that the hubris of politicians leads them to believe that in dismantling the welfare state, the single most important force in helping voluntary organisations offer care in communities, it is politicians who must be central to its every reduction. Only a Conservative politician with staggeringly little experience outside public school and TV public relations could fail to understand how many small societies there are, and have always been, providing services in damaged communities, and how much they rely on the state funded bodies which he is attacking. How patronising it is for a lofty think tank wonk in Westminster to tell religious organisations he's letting them take over libraries, after school clubs and so on. What hypocrisy from a bunch of elite men at the centre of the political machine. I just keep remembering this delightful quote from Francis Maude, who admits to doing no volunteering and then has the arrogance to claim its unfair he's been asked (why on earth should he have to do anything?) - at the same time as he tells local communities to volunteer to fill in the short fall he is creating. Phillip Blond also seems to have memorised important and meaningful phrases very well, listening to him speak is full of soothingly old fashioned left-wingism, until he tries to talk about the welfare state or about religious organisations. The welfare state keeps people poor! Religious groups'll fill in all the gaps! They just need the cuts to help them get it off the ground! Volunteer groups always do it better than the state! Cuts are good for you!
Few tropes are as short sighted or ignorant as that of 'Broken Britain': a nasty, damning sneer on how things look from houses in the Home Counties which rely on the Telegraph and nostalgic hearsay for their information about the world. The problem is almost as glossed and oversimplified as the solution: to fix broken Britain you first take away resources first from the poor and vulnerable, then from state sector institutions that provide services for the poorest people, then from voluntary organisations that vulnerable people rely on. That this outlook, a blinkered pessimism that judges without evidence and condemns without empathy, is so widespread and so instantly accepted shows how little information percolates through the right-wing media firewall to the kind of people who fill the political classes. Why bother hunting after examples of communities in impoverished areas supporting their own or attempting to form a nuanced conclusion based on actual observation and curiosity when an entire world view can be granted in two words? The seductive power that instant condemnation grants that suits both the Tory party and the boor by the bar: "I'll tell you why's this country's going to hell in a hand cart mate, it's the immigrants, the nanny state, health and safety, red tape, blah, blah, blah."
How staggering it is that the hubris of politicians leads them to believe that in dismantling the welfare state, the single most important force in helping voluntary organisations offer care in communities, it is politicians who must be central to its every reduction. Only a Conservative politician with staggeringly little experience outside public school and TV public relations could fail to understand how many small societies there are, and have always been, providing services in damaged communities, and how much they rely on the state funded bodies which he is attacking. How patronising it is for a lofty think tank wonk in Westminster to tell religious organisations he's letting them take over libraries, after school clubs and so on. What hypocrisy from a bunch of elite men at the centre of the political machine. I just keep remembering this delightful quote from Francis Maude, who admits to doing no volunteering and then has the arrogance to claim its unfair he's been asked (why on earth should he have to do anything?) - at the same time as he tells local communities to volunteer to fill in the short fall he is creating. Phillip Blond also seems to have memorised important and meaningful phrases very well, listening to him speak is full of soothingly old fashioned left-wingism, until he tries to talk about the welfare state or about religious organisations. The welfare state keeps people poor! Religious groups'll fill in all the gaps! They just need the cuts to help them get it off the ground! Volunteer groups always do it better than the state! Cuts are good for you!
Few tropes are as short sighted or ignorant as that of 'Broken Britain': a nasty, damning sneer on how things look from houses in the Home Counties which rely on the Telegraph and nostalgic hearsay for their information about the world. The problem is almost as glossed and oversimplified as the solution: to fix broken Britain you first take away resources first from the poor and vulnerable, then from state sector institutions that provide services for the poorest people, then from voluntary organisations that vulnerable people rely on. That this outlook, a blinkered pessimism that judges without evidence and condemns without empathy, is so widespread and so instantly accepted shows how little information percolates through the right-wing media firewall to the kind of people who fill the political classes. Why bother hunting after examples of communities in impoverished areas supporting their own or attempting to form a nuanced conclusion based on actual observation and curiosity when an entire world view can be granted in two words? The seductive power that instant condemnation grants that suits both the Tory party and the boor by the bar: "I'll tell you why's this country's going to hell in a hand cart mate, it's the immigrants, the nanny state, health and safety, red tape, blah, blah, blah."
Monday 1 August 2011
Why the powerful must be corrupt - and what to do about it
I am naturally hostile to any conception of politics or society that rests on an 'us and them' mentality, essentially because I doubt it to be true. There is usually so much middle gournd, such a long ladder between top and bottom, that to divide it at some point and cast the the ends as naturally opposed seems arbitrary. We all have more in common than we have differences - the fundamentals of our physiology are not illusory in this respect, even as wealth or geography create appalling inequalities we all find ourselves in essentially the same predicament as human beings.
Even the division between owner and worker seems more slippery than ever before in the age of digital communications and pension funds; my bank was one of the ones which went under spectacularly, had to be propped up by the government and is now paying its employees astonishingly well, I just feel happy if my interest rate stays about inflation. But the revelations of recent weeks about links between News International, the Metropolitan Police and the government reveal a degree of interpenetration that would surely surprise even the most jaded observer. Each provided funds, personnel and information to the other; restricting it from other institutions and neglecting their prime motivation. The structural imperatives of democracy, elections, the maintainance of law and order and the pursuit of readers and profit formed themselves quite naturally into a closed circuit running to its own logic which even the most heinous of actions against principal figures in the chain could not break (I think here particularly of how Rebecca Brooks ill treated Gordon Brown over the death of his son).
In this it seems overwhelmingly not only that a 'rogue reporter' is to blame, nor even a few 'evil' newspaper proprieters, but rather a huge number of people willed into a kind of automatic amorality by the unavoidable implications of capitalism and a tall hierarchy of power. Power, I think, does corrupt; not because the people who hold it are turned bad, drunk on their own superiority, although this does happen often enough, but because they are forced to act in certain ways to maintain their position. They have the capacity to resist, but not the power to resist and hold their position. Their fault was in choosing ambition and survival over integrity. It is a challenge given to almost all of us on a regular basis - admit to an unfashionable belief, quit an immoral job or call out a loved family member. We get stuck behaving how we are meant to behave, not how we ought to behave.
Should we expect our politicians to give up principles in favour of pragmatism, in a Machiavellian manner which the Tory party has always been proud of, or to fight for what is right in the sure knowledge that to do so will force them out of the system and deliberately undermine it? The latter is surely preferable but I suspect that the best alternative might be to remove the hierarchy of command and the narrow class of power-holders altogether. If the struture doesn't work, ditch it. Is it possible to give unto Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's or must the former, ultimately, ruin the latter; or the latter ruin the former? Let's instead abandon a situation where one or the other must take place - let's get rid of Caesar and let SPQR back in on the act of government.
Even the division between owner and worker seems more slippery than ever before in the age of digital communications and pension funds; my bank was one of the ones which went under spectacularly, had to be propped up by the government and is now paying its employees astonishingly well, I just feel happy if my interest rate stays about inflation. But the revelations of recent weeks about links between News International, the Metropolitan Police and the government reveal a degree of interpenetration that would surely surprise even the most jaded observer. Each provided funds, personnel and information to the other; restricting it from other institutions and neglecting their prime motivation. The structural imperatives of democracy, elections, the maintainance of law and order and the pursuit of readers and profit formed themselves quite naturally into a closed circuit running to its own logic which even the most heinous of actions against principal figures in the chain could not break (I think here particularly of how Rebecca Brooks ill treated Gordon Brown over the death of his son).
In this it seems overwhelmingly not only that a 'rogue reporter' is to blame, nor even a few 'evil' newspaper proprieters, but rather a huge number of people willed into a kind of automatic amorality by the unavoidable implications of capitalism and a tall hierarchy of power. Power, I think, does corrupt; not because the people who hold it are turned bad, drunk on their own superiority, although this does happen often enough, but because they are forced to act in certain ways to maintain their position. They have the capacity to resist, but not the power to resist and hold their position. Their fault was in choosing ambition and survival over integrity. It is a challenge given to almost all of us on a regular basis - admit to an unfashionable belief, quit an immoral job or call out a loved family member. We get stuck behaving how we are meant to behave, not how we ought to behave.
Should we expect our politicians to give up principles in favour of pragmatism, in a Machiavellian manner which the Tory party has always been proud of, or to fight for what is right in the sure knowledge that to do so will force them out of the system and deliberately undermine it? The latter is surely preferable but I suspect that the best alternative might be to remove the hierarchy of command and the narrow class of power-holders altogether. If the struture doesn't work, ditch it. Is it possible to give unto Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's or must the former, ultimately, ruin the latter; or the latter ruin the former? Let's instead abandon a situation where one or the other must take place - let's get rid of Caesar and let SPQR back in on the act of government.
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