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Santa or Scrooge

There’s a very fine line between being mildly conscience-stricken at our conspicuous Christmas consumption at a time like this and being a curmudgeonly old scrooge.

As we enjoy the festive conviviality of the Midnight Mass, unwrap the mountains of presents which now seem to have become the norm, tuck into our vast Christmas dinners, doze port-filled in front of the Queen, enjoy the fine tradition of the Avon Vale Hunt Meet at Lacock on Boxing Day, who cannot have spent at least a moment or two reflecting on how lucky we all are.

We will all, I hope, have spared a thought for the lonely, the elderly and sick, those who have to work at Christmas, the jobless desperately trying to ‘keep up appearances,’ the homeless, and perhaps especially our servicemen on active duty in Afghanistan and elsewhere, and the families who will be missing them and worrying about them on Christmas Day. What decent human being would not at least take a moment to remember some of those people, perhaps assuage our consciences with a donation to a suitable charity, perhaps even give practical help in one way or another. As a very small example, I always very much enjoy going round Chippenham Hospital with the ‘friends’ singing carols on Christmas Eve. But am I doing it because the patients actually want me to do it, or is it that it makes me feel better about over-indulgence the next day?

This year in particular with news of job losses, businesses folding, and economic gloom of all kinds just about to descend on us, is there not a slight feeling of the Ball the night before the Battle of Waterloo about our festive conviviality? Would hair shirts, and bread and water not be more fitting than paper hats and mince pies?

But there I go – slipping from the concerned to the curmudgeon, from Santa to Scrooge in one easy leap. Even in the darkest times  is there not a real place for celebration, for kindness to one another, for a bit of a jolly? The World’s in a mess. Of that there can be no doubt. And there is worse to come unless we do something about it, and that pretty sharpish too. But perhaps it’s worth remembering (without offending any French readers that I might have) that we actually WON the Battle of Waterloo despite (or perhaps because of) the Ball. It’s always been part of the British psyche to make the best of a bad job, ‘Keep Buggering On’, as Churchill famously described it, look for the silver lining, Dunkirk Spirit…. You know the kind of thing I mean.

So I truly hope that you all have a lovely Christmas, a thoroughly jolly one. Spare a few thoughts for the less fortunate, but dispel any credit crunch scrooge-like tendencies. Lets all have a thoroughly Merry Christmas.

Christmas

“So much to do, so little time to do it,” probably sums up the pre-Christmas rush for lots of us, perhaps especially, to be a little old-fashioned for a moment, for the mothers amongst us! Food and drink in seemingly massive quantities, Christmas trees and decorations, end of term plays at school, presents and wrapping, cards coming out of our ears. Some people greet Boxing Day with a huge sigh of relief.

The sheer stress of Christmas is worse this year for so many people. Our hearts go out to those who have lost their jobs, or who fear that it may be imminent. Children don’t understand that sort of thing….. And we think of those, so many of them from this area who have sons or fathers deployed over Christmas in Afghanistan or Iraq, and of the soldiers and airmen themselves who may well be in deadly combat with the Taliban as we are tucking in to our turkeys.

The World’s economy in apparent meltdown and a historic struggle against Jihadist extremists across the Middle East may not be entirely unrelated. The extreme forms of consumerism which some people seem to believe to be what Christmas is all about in the West, and in which may like the seeds of our economic woes, is in some ways almost as unattractive as the extreme Puritanism which - leaving aside the terrorist extremists - is a result of a reaction amongst many Islamic people against so much of the decadence of the West. Neither extreme consumerism nor extreme Puritanism can be right.

No matter what our personal religious beliefs may be - and we should never forget that Britain remains, and I hope always will be, a Christian country - surely there is a message for the world in the Christmas story. There’s a bit of tinsel in there - the three Kings and their exotic and expensive presents; there’s a bit of social inclusion too - the shepherds paying their tributes; there’s a bit of cosiness in the crib in the stable; there’s a bit of politics - the national census, King Herod killing all the first born, the birth of the King of the Jews. But more important than all of that, and central to the whole thing, there’s the simplest thing in the World - a new-born baby.

I remember an old Infantry Colonel friend of mine who was always keen to take a look at new-born babies’ feet since he had spent his military career inspecting the filthy gnarled, worn-out feet of his infantry soldiers. Well maybe the World’s leaders, maybe all of us, should take a lesson from that old Colonel at this Christmas time. Maybe we should just take some time out to focus not on “all the trimmings,” but to try to see through them at the new-born baby in the manger; and whatever our beliefs, just try for a moment to learn some lessons for the future of our troubled world.

May I wish you all a truly happy - and relatively stress-free - Christmas.

Service, Gratitude and Hope

The World sometimes feels as if it is spinning out of control. The appalling outrage in Mumbai, continuing bloody warfare in Afghanistan, Pakistan in turmoil, Zimbabwe beyond saving with I hear people at church unable to shake hands for fear of Cholera. The economy remains in turmoil despite the lowest interest rates in living memory,  billions of taxpayers funds being pumped into the banking system, and £12 billion being spent on an apparently futile cut in VAT. Where will it all end up? And what can we do about it?

This week saw the State Opening of Parliament, which should have given us a few answers to what Her Majesty’s Government are planning. The Queen in her splendour sending Black Rod off to summons her Loyal Commons to listen to her speech, he of course having the door symbolically slammed in his face. (Which, incidentally, is exactly what OUGHT to have happened to the warrant-less police officers who invaded the Commons in pursuit of a whistle-blower). So we all trooped off to the Lords to listen to the Gracious Address as the Queen’s Speech is known. I must admit that I love the occasion, and believe that the pageantry and assorted flummery has important symbolism for the way we conduct the business of Government in this, the oldest and greatest of all democracies. This year I was especially proud that at the other end of their Lordships Chamber stood my elder brother, Charles, who was attending the Queen as Marshall of the Diplomatic Corps. He gets a much smarter uniform to wear that me! But in the midst of all of that grandeur, and with some of the gravest situations we have faced globally and at home in our lifetimes, the actual speech itself barely amounted to a hill of beans.

The four day debate which followed hardly shed more light on the Government’s plans, and the huge fuss over Damian Green, the police, Mister Speaker and the Serjeant at Arms, while overwhelmingly important in terms of the operation of our Parliamentary system seemed  positively surreal against the backdrop of the world in crisis.

So I headed back to North Wiltshire in search of enlightenment, or at least of a drop of common sense. The BBC Wiltshire Sound Carol Service in Trowbridge, a Politics Show interview in Bristol, speaking at a lunch in Westonbirt, the Wootton Bassett High Street Christmas, carols in Hullavington were all hugely enjoyable and successful, but still a bit disconnected from harsh realities.

It was not until the superb North Wiltshire District Council Valedictory Carol Service in Malmesbury Abbey on Sunday evening that my thoughts began to clear thanks to the excellent Bishop of Swindon’s sermon. He was not afraid to recognise that there had been controversy over the creation of the Unitary council for Wiltshire, nor that there were still quite a number of people with very sore heads and hearts on the subject. But he enjoined us to be thankful to councillors and officers alike for 35 years of service and to have hope for the future.

 Service to the people, Gratitude for the past and hope for the future. What more could we want? If our statesmen, national and international, would but use those three as their watchwords, I cannot help but feel that we’d be in less of a mess than we are today, or at least that there would be some glimmering of light at the end of various tunnels. Service – to the people who elected us. Gratitude for past services and, perhaps above all, Hope for the Future.

Mumbai

We were all transfixed and outraged by the appalling terrorist attack on Mumbai. How could ten young men be so brain-washed as to murder perhaps 200 people in cold blood, for no reason other than that they happened to be in Mumbai at the time? What possible motivation could they have? How could they have so lost any trace of humanity as to carry out these barbaric acts? They are quite beyond my comprehension, and our hearts go out to the families of all of those killed and injured.

This was as significant an event as 9/11. India’s sovereignty was breached by this event. The Congress Party Government who are often accused of being weak on terrorism will without doubt have to retaliate. The last time something similar occurred – when Islamic militants attacked the New Delhi Parliament with eleven deaths in 2002- only US intervention prevented a nuclear exchange between India and Pakistan. This time is worse. There is no effective US President (the timing of the attack was probably deliberate, and was predicted in this column some weeks ago). Pakistan is both nearly bankrupt and on the verge of civil war, with the new President and Government opposed to the military and Intelligence Services, who – it is alleged - are closely allied to Islamic militants. So it is vital that India should not over-react if we are to avoid a potentially catastrophic crisis. After all, while some of these vile terrorists may have had Pakistani nationality, we should not jump to the conclusion that the raids were somehow or another State sponsored. Let us hope that the Indians will remember Ghandi’s wise words “An eye for an eye will lead to a blind world.”

At home, as we continue to reel from the impact of the banking crisis, the Pre-Budget Report and its massive £12billion to reduce VAT by 2.5% seems to be having precious little effect. Two businesses came to see me in my surgery in Wootton Bassett last Saturday gravely concerned about the downturn, and the virtual disappearance of credit without which no business can operate for very long. The housing market continues to fall, the Stock Exchange to fluctuate, and all the signs are that consumer spending at Christmas will be extremely low. It is partly International, but significantly thanks to incompetent handling by the Government, and especially by a Chancellor who looks increasingly like the headlight-fixated rabbit.

Meanwhile, in a Constitutional outrage the like of which has not been seen since 1642, police raided an MP’s House of Commons office confiscating documents and equipment simultaneously arresting him in his constituency apparently for no crime other than using leaked Government documents to highlight the crisis in the immigration system. The Prime Minister and Home Secretary are going out of their way to claim that they knew nothing about it. If not, then why not? If not wicked, then at very least wickedly incompetent. And who and why allowed the police into Parliament? When Black Rod symbolically bangs on the doors of the House of Commons on Wednesday during the State Opening of Parliament, I for one will be inclined not to let him in, until such time as some questions have been answered on what seems to me to have been a fundamental breach of Parliamentary privilege, for which heads must roll.

As the World teeters on the edge of catastrophe- military and financial, the British Government seek to suppress perfectly legitimate attacks on their competence. This will go down as one of the most important weeks in British history.

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