The Dwarves' Song from 'The Hobbit' - Extended Edition

A very talented family (under the name Calamvi de Profundis) have produced a long version of  'The Misty Mountains Cold', the Dwarf Song from The Hobbit movies, but using all Tolkien's original verses from the book.  It's beautiful to listen to and the video is excellent as well. I wish my family were this musical.

The singing scene in the 1st Hobbit Movie was one of the highlights of the whole trilogy, a powerful, evocative moment that pushes Bilbo towards going on the whole quest.  But it was sadly short, with only two verses of Tolkien's original song. This video restores the whole thing in the same style.

Tolkien wrote innumerable poems and songs for the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, and it's always great to actually hear any of them sung as songs, rather than just read them on the written page.

In Tolkien's younger days he dreamed about creating a mythology for his beloved England, but one that he would begin and like all true mythologies, would be developed by many hands and minds to follow him, and in turn inspire art of all kinds: songs, stories, paintings, theatre that he had never dreamed of. I hope Tolkien would have been very pleased with this small part of his vision coming to life.

Far over the misty mountains cold
To dungeons deep and caverns old
We must away ere break of day
To seek the pale enchanted gold.

The dwarves of yore made mighty spells,
While hammers fell like ringing bells
In places deep, where dark things sleep,
In hollow halls beneath the fells.

For ancient king and elvish lord
There many a gleaming golden hoard
They shaped and wrought, and light they caught
To hide in gems on hilt of sword.

On silver necklaces they strung
The flowering stars, on crowns they hung
The dragon-fire, in twisted wire
They meshed the light of moon and sun.

Far over the misty mountains cold
To dungeons deep and caverns old
We must away, ere break of day,
To claim our long-forgotten gold.

Goblets they carved there for themselves
And harps of gold; where no man delves
There lay they long, and many a song
Was sung unheard by men or elves.

The pines were roaring on the height,
The winds were moaning in the night.
The fire was red, it flaming spread;
The trees like torches blazed with light.

The bells were ringing in the dale
And men they looked up with faces pale;
The dragon's ire more fierce than fire
Laid low their towers and houses frail.

The mountain smoked beneath the moon;
The dwarves they heard the tramp of doom.
They fled their hall to dying fall
Beneath his feet, beneath the moon.

Far over the misty mountains grim
To dungeons deep and caverns dim
We must away, ere break of day,
To win our harps and gold from him!

Far over the misty mountains cold
To dungeons deep and caverns old...

Errantry

A Poem. To be read fast. 

(to the tune of Modern Major-General if you prefer)

There was a merry passenger
a messenger, an errander;
he took a tiny porringer
and oranges for provender;
he took a little grasshopper
and harnessed her to carry him;
he chased a little butterfly
that fluttered by, to marry him.
He made him wings of taffeta
to laugh at her and catch her with;
he made her shoes of beetle-skin
with needles in to latch them with.
They fell to bitter quarrelling,
and sorrowing he fled away;
and long he studied sorcery
in Ossory a many day.
He made a shield and morion
of coral and of ivory;
he made a spear of emerald
and glimmered all in bravery;
a sword he made of malachite
and stalachite, and brandished it,
he went and fought the dragon-fly
called wag-on-high and vanquished it.
He battled with the Dumbledores,
and bumbles all, and honeybees,
and won the golden honeycomb,
and running home on sunny seas,
in ships of leaves and gossamer,
with blossom for a canopy,
he polished up and burnished up
and furbished up his panoply.
He tarried for a little why
in little isles, and plundered them;
and webs of all the attercops
he shattered, cut, and sundered them.
And coming home with honey-comb
and money none - remembered it,
his message and his errand too!
His derring-do had hindered it.

Errantry by J.R.R. Tolkien

This is a wonderful poem that Tolkien wrote in 1930, as described in History of Middle Earth Vol.6 'The Treason of Isengard'. It was read at a literature club called by its undergraduate members 'The Inklings', the name that in later years C.S.Lewis & J.R.R. Tolkien would give to their own private group of friends. It was amended through many versions, and in the end turned into the Poem 'Earendil' that in LOTR Bilbo wrote in Rivendell. 

The poem was written in a unique meter of trisyllabic assonances, three in each four lines, with the end of the 1st line rhyming with the start of the 2nd line, and the end of the 2nd and 4th line rhyming with each other.  Even Tolkien found this so hard he never wrote another poem using it again..

Babi Yar

No monument stands over Babi Yar.

A drop sheer as a crude gravestone.
I am afraid.
Today I am as old in years
as all the Jewish people.

Now I seem to be an Israelite
Here I plod through ancient Egypt.
Here I perish crucified, on the cross,
and to this day I bear the scars of nails.

I seem to be Dreyfus
The Philistine is both informer and judge.
I am behind bars. Beset on every side.
Hounded, spat on, slandered.
Squealing, dainty ladies in flounced Brussels lace
stick their parasols into my face.

I seem to be then a young boy in Byelostok.
Blood runs, spilling over the floors.
The bar-room rabble-rousers
give off a stench of vodka and onion.

A boot kicks me aside, helpless.
In vain I plead with these pogrom bullies.
While they jeer and shout,
"Beat the Yids. Save Russia!"
My mother's being beaten by a clerk.

O, Russia of my heart,
I know you are international to the core.
But those with unclean hands
have often made a jingle of your purest name.

I know the goodness of my land.
How vile these anti-Semites-without a qualm
have pompously called themselves
the Union of the Russian People!

I seem to be Anne Frank
transparent as a branch in April.
And I'm in love, and have no need of phrases,
But only that we gaze into each other's eyes.
How little we can see or smell!
We are denied the leaves, we are denied the sky.
Yet we can do so much -- tenderly
embrace each other in a darkened room.

"They're coming!"

"No, fear not - those are sounds
Of spring itself. She's coming soon.
Come then to me. Quick, give me your lips."

"Are they smashing down the door?"

"No, it's the ice breaking ...

Wild grasses rustle over Babi Yar.
The trees look ominous, like judges.
Here all things scream silently,
and, baring my head,
slowly I feel myself
turning grey.

And I myself am one massive, soundless scream
above the thousand thousand buried here.
I am each old man here shot dead.
I am every child here shot dead.

Nothing in me shall ever forget!
May the "Internationale," thunder and ring
when the last anti-Semite on earth
is buried forever.

In my blood there is no Jewish blood.
But in their callous rage, all anti-Semites
must hate me now as a Jew.
For that reason I am a true Russian!

By Yevgeny Yevtushenko

For Holocaust Memorial Day 2014

This is a beautiful poem from the Soviet Union and one of my favourite growing up.  On September 29–30, 1941 Nazi Einsatzgruppen and local police murdered over 30,000 Ukrainian Jews in the pit called Babi Yar on the edge of Kiev. 

In August 1961 Yevgeny Yevtushenko was went out to Babi Yar and was shocked that not only was there no monument on the site, but that there were trucks emptying rubbish onto the land tens of thousands of massacre victims were buried beneath. Overcome by emotion he wrote Babi Yar in four or five hours that day.  It was a protest against both the loss of the massacre, the Soviet denial that the Jews had been especial victims of the Nazi horror, and the continuing anti-semitism in the USSR.  

I'm Proud of my Church in 2014

We've seen food banks become increasingly high profile. It is little known, but the Trussell Trust, by far the largest organiser of UK food banks, is a Christian Charity. Churches across the country have been key to helping organise many food banks for years, in Coventry since at least 2007.

Justin Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury, made a high-profile attack on Wonga (exploitative payday lender) threatening to "compete them out of business" and raising the issue repeatedly in parliament. Churches up and down the country have begun promoting credit unions as an ethical alternative. Since then Wonga has been forced to write off £220 million of debt and overhaul its business model, halving its profits in a year. 

This December the Church of England, along with others founded their own nationwide credit union, which in a few years will hopefully be open to all churchgoers, providing an ethical, compassionate alternative to current banks and lenders for churches, charities and millions of people.

In Coventry itself Anglican churches have organised their own homeless night shelter over winter for the 2nd year. It is housed in different church buildings and staffed by volunteers, to make sure that there is definitely a warm, safe bed available for every potential rough sleeper in Coventry this winter.

It's really good to see the Church making a difference on important issues. Here's to even more in 2015. ‘For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’ Matthew 25:35-36

Reasons to be Cheerful about British Political Participation

It is generally accepted as true that political participation in Britain is at depressingly low levels.
 People regularly bemoan the rise of political apathy, the disillusionment with the system, the low turnout in our general elections, the decline of political party memberships.  Rightists complain about a lack of patriotism and belief in traditional culture.  Leftists complain about the lack of the kind of activism and mass working class/student/minority group solidarity that made the 1970's such a terrible place to live. All this is taken as a sign that our society is  decadent and unconcerned, steadily declining in a thick sludge of materialism and buzzfeed articles.

And there is a certain amount of truth in all this. Over the 50 years political party membership has fallen, general election turnout has also fallen.  And there are many other things wrong with our political culture as well.  But particularly in the last very few years there are at least a few fragile signs, a few green shoots, a few straws in the wind that this might be changing.  They might just be blips in a downward trends but right now there are at least some reason to be cheerful.

The first is obvious and widely known: the Scottish referendum.  The referendum in September saw impressive levels of political interest and turnout. But people probably don't release just how unprecdented it was. At 85% the turnout was not just higher than our recent general elections, or other referendums, it was the highest turnout ever in British democratic history. It was higher than any general election turnout since the introduction of universal suffrage in 1918 and was higher than any previous referendum conducted in the UK: higher than the 84% who voted in the 1960 general election, higher than the 81% who voted in the Good Friday Agreement referendum in '98 . It was a truly remarkable achievement. It warms my conservative heart to know that even in this day and age you can at least still get people engaged through an appeal to their nationalistic paranoia. Truly some things never change.  

Lots of people were stunned by the passion (and turnout) unleashed in the Scottish referendum and bemoaned the fact that something like that couldn't happen across the rest of Britain.  But UK-wide there is at least some reason to be cheerful as well.  Yes, election turnout isn't what it used to be when your dad were a lad but it is not falling. In fact it is rising and has been for a decade. The idea of falling turnout is one of those zombie facts that lives on long after it stops being true. Turnout bottomed out in 2001 and has been rising since. Sure, it's a relatively recent trend, but it is a trend.   We go into 2015 on the back of two increases in a row and hoping to see a third.  Here's the recent history:

UK General election turnout

2001 - 59%
2005 - 61%
2010 - 65%

And there's every reason to think that we will break the 70% threshold in 2015, which would see us return to the levels generally seen since the 2nd World War, bumping around between 70-80%. Whatever you may think about UKIP, or the SNP, British politics has not been this stirred up since the 1930's.  UKIP has taken safe Conservative seats in southern England and made them charged up marginal contests.  It has taken solid northern industrial Labour heartland seats and made them marginal contests.  The SNP has taken rock-solid working-class Glaswegian one-party state seats even and put the fear of God into the Labour establishment there. The Lib Dems are desperately hanging onto their strongholds with every bone in their liberal bodies and even the Greens are popping up threatening a few seats.

Next year there will be more marginals and three-way marginals and 4-way marginals than there have ever been before; more seats where two or three or four parties will be tearing chunks out of each other and that ferocious contest should drive turnout and participation to height they have not been in decades. You may hate UKIP, or the SNP (I know I do) but the surges in their support have been driven by huge numbers of people who did not vote last time, or possibly ever before. People who have been chronically separated from the political process. And the threat of these parties will also drive supporters of more moderate parties to turn out to stop the crazies: a virtuous circle, at least as far as election turnout is concerned.  Turnout at the general election should hit 70% and hopefully even higher.              

There is also a 3rd good, very recent, reason to feel optimistic about British political life. The collapse in political party membership has been one of the emblematic pieces of evidence proving the never-ending decline of British political culture.  And since the 1950's this trend has been pretty consistent and dramatic.

BUT.

Remarkably, in the most recent period even this has turned around. It may be that even political party membership has bottomed out.  Figures released in 2014 have shown increases in party membership for every single significant UK political party, apart from Labour who haven't released any figures yet.  The Conservatives, Lib Dems, UKIP, SNP, Greens, have all posted significant increases. And Labour saw a major increase between 2009-2010 and have stayed at that higher level since.  Sure, in the case of the major parties: Lib Dems, Conservatives or Labour this is against the background of historic lows. But in the most recent periods for which figures exist we have seen increases.  

Conservative 2013 - 134k
               2014 - 150k

Labour 2009 - 156k
              2010-2013 - 190k

Lib Dem 2012 - 42.5k
                 2014 - 44k

The increases have been down-right dramatic among the smaller parties.  The SNP, UKIP, the Greens (both English and Scottish) and Plaid Cymru have seen big increases, mostly since 2012, in fact mostly this year. Admittedly, here, the BNP and Respect have seen falls (Good, I hear you say) but these are swamped by far by the increases.   Minor party membership has gone from around 70,000 only a few years ago to 160,000 now. The figures are partial and scrappy, but the trend is definitely there.

UKIP   2010 - 15.5k              2014 - 39k Plaid 2012 - 7.6k           2014 - 8k BNP 2009 - 13k           2013 - 4k

SNP 2010 - 16k             2013 - 25k             2014 - 75k   Green (English & Scottish) 2012 - 15k                                                2014 - 31k Respect 2012 - 1.9k                2014 - .2k

Unfortunately the data is poor. But we do have information for almost all for 2014 and from at least some of the last 5 years, and it shows a cumulative change from a recent low of membership across all parties from 400,000 a few years ago to around 550,000 right now, and that is a significant increase.

Of course these might just be straws in the wind. We are talking about decades of trends that show signs of turning around in the last few years.  But why always be a pessimist?  It's easy to always claim things are going to hell, especially with our politics. I'd rather be optimistic.  These fragile signs could be the start, if managed properly, of a new trend that sees higher turnout, higher participation, higher party membership over the next years and decades. And that, even if it is just a possibility, is at least something to be cheerful about.

Vote Conservative Tomorrow for Europe

Tomorrow, Thuesday 22nd May, we have the 5-yearly European Elections. 

You should vote Conservative for our MEP's.

 The European Parliament is an important body that has major influence over the large proportion of our laws that originate in Europe. We need MEP's who will fight for the best deal for Britain and the best policies for the European Union as a whole.

 European Unity is a noble ideal and the European Union itself does have benefits but as it currently exists it is a deeply flawed organisation. It is too undemocratic, too bureaucratic, too distant from the people and too resistant to change. To give just some examples of culpable EU stupidity:

 1. The Common Agricultural Policy, the largest item of EU spending, tens of billions of pounds every year that is still biased towards supporting inefficient farming methods and harming 3rd world producers, rather than research in efficient farming methods and vital R&D of renewable energy and other important technologies.
 2. Due to a decades old agreement the EU parliament moves every month from Brussels to Strasbourg. This totally pointless activity costs over £100 million a year and produces many tons of totally unnecessary carbon.
 3. The Euro: sceptics warned 15 years ago that any system that used the same currency and interest rate in Athens and Berlin would lead to disaster unless the weaker economies became fundamentally more competetive first. The sceptics were 100% right,the EU cheerleaders like Nick Clegg and the Lib Dems allowed their political bias to blind them and now the people of Greece, Cyprus, Spain and Portugal are paying the price.
4. Even after the Euro crisis broke out further incompetence caused an entirely unnecessary recession in 2012 because the rich countries refused to sacrifice to help the poorer ones and the European Central Bank was negligently slow to act to stop the crisis.

 I could go on.

 The EU is also not democratically accountable enough. Unelected commissioners and the anonymous civil service wield large amounts of power too far away from any scrutiny or visibility from the people of Europe. If you dislike the unelected nature of the Monarchy or tthe House of Lords then the unelected power of the EU is far worse. This causes the kind of complacency and arrogance that leads to the mistakes like those I mentioned above.

 The EU is also constantly trying to attract more power to itself. It is natural tendency for every person to think they know best, and for every political body to think it should have more power to decide things. And this applies to the EU as well. But Brussels is for many things the worst body to be in charge because it so much more distant from voters than local councils or their national governments. Of course some decisions are best made on the EU level. But the logic of european institutions is explicitly that of 'ever closer union' and without a counterbalancing force that can only lead to power and decisions being accumulated in Brussels that have no business being there.

 The Conservatives understand all this.

They acknowledge the usefulness of the EU in some cases, and the fundamental nobility of its driving vision of european peace and co-operation, but they realise that it needs deep and significant reform, so it supports economic efficiency, political and cultural diversity and doesn't accumulate powers and take decisions that could be better taken closer to the people they effect, by national states or local councils.

 The Conservatives take a sensible middle-ground between mindless cheer-leading of Brussels and mindless fear and hostility: Sensible, intelligent, experienced, hard-working representatives who support EU measures when they benefit British and other european citizens, but who fight against complacency and for significant reform so the EU offers better value for money, fulfils its potential in terms of benefits, and who fight for greater democracy in the EU and decisions taken closer to the people. The Conservatives also recognise the deep public doubt about the EU and promise a referendum on our membership so ultimately the public can decide, 40 years after anyone in Britain last had a chance to vote on our membership of the EU, as is right in a democracy.

 But this will not be decided by our MEP's, but in parliament. Our MEP's have no say on whether there is a referendum.

 The other parties simply don't offer this.

 1.The Lib Dems are too instinctively pro-EU to properly scrutinise or reform the system. They can barely help but cheer-lead most Brussels measures regardless of content. Until 2010 Lib Dems in the European Parliament and in the House of Commons were still waxing lyrical about the wonders of the Euro and how Britain should join, just as they were 15 years ago. That would have been a disaster for Britain and the same blindness affects their decisions in the european parliament all the time.

 2.Labour have never met a government regulation, or piece of bureaucracy, or governmental power-grab, or tax-hike they didn't like. All the instincts of the modern labour party are in favour of ever-more interference and bureaucracy by 'experts' and against moving power closer to the people. They won't reform the system to make it more streamlined, efficient with money or democratic because they fundamentally don't really believe in any of those things. One only has to look at the Blair and Brown governments to know that is true.

 3. The Greens make good noises about reform but their plans are too often misguided at best and delusional at worst. Their stance is excellent on environmental issues but the EU parliament must consider many other areas and on these their ideas are generally economically illiterate and reflexively statist. To give an example, their manifesto in 2010 supported raising taxes by £170 billion a year, in other words increasing all taxes by a quarter, something that would have devastated the economy and hit all families, including poorer families with a massive tax increase.

 4. UKIP have an irrational hatred of the EU that is out of all proportion to its actual problems. They want to isolate Britain from the world, reject valuable european-wide co-operation on many issues. Even when elected their representatives have the worst record for actually turning up and fighting for Britain. And when they do they vote down every single measure, regardless of benefits to Britain out of spite just because it comes from Brussels. Nigel Farage apparently even dislikes eurovision. The party is also stuffed at the highest levels with rape apologists, racists and homophobes. A party that tells us we should be afraid of people because they are foreign has no place in Britain, and certainly not representing us for the next 5 years.

So vote Conservative tomorrow, Thursday 22nd May 2014, to give our country the best possible MEP's fighting for a better EU for Britain and everyone in Europe.

Odd News 2013

05/11/2013

Such an amazing story. A man is stopped for not having an ID on a train. The cops do some research. He doesn't have a pension, a bank account, health insurance or social insurance number. He doesn't appear on any government database.

The cops search his flat, expecting to find a false bank account and maybe a few thousand euros in cash. They find over 1,400 lost priceless paintings stolen by the Nazis and thought to be destroyed by the RAF in 1944 by artists like Picasso and Matisse worth hundreds of millions of euros.

Literally worthy of a Hollywood Movie. It must have been an incredible day for the Customs agents who found all this stuff.  Again, literally the discovery of a lifetime.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-24818541



25/10/2013

New Statesman writer attacks 'Operation Christmas Child'. What a miserable cow.  It's astonishing the excuses people will cook up to avoid having to do anything to help other people.  Wealthy, privileged western secularist would rather poor children go without gifts at Christmas than run the risk that people might be exposed to the story of Jesus.

It's a good thing we have secularists to protect us from this sick filth, with their brilliant insights won from information the organisation openly displays on its website and public literature. Another triumph for the print media.

http://www.newstatesman.com/2013/10/operation-christmas-child-exploiting-children-spread-prejudice


23/06/13

Andrew Lilico argues brilliant for something I've thought for a while but haven't got round to writing about. Pure meritocracy or 'equality of opportunity' would in actuality be a terrible, immoral system that no-one should want.  We all merely say we support it because we haven't thought about what we actually should be supporting.

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/finance/andrewlilico/100024795/meritocracy-is-an-appalling-idea-that-no-one-believes-in-even-though-everyone-claims-to/




26/05/2013

Daniel Hannan gives the best analysis of the right response to the Woolwich Murder.  Very much worth reading.  'Don't Glamourise these losers by treating them as international terrorists'.  The psychosis of a handful of agressive, alienated young males explains this and most terrorist atrocities, far better than any soul-searching about our security services, foreign policy or possible interpretations of Islam.  We need to consider the psychology that drives this tiny handful to violence when millions of others do not.

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/danielhannan/100218718/dont-glamourise-these-losers-by-treating-them-as-international-terrorists/





08/05/2013

I've been motivated by the continuing debate on Israel-Palestine to post this again. I still find it one of the best speeches given on the issue.  It's also the thing that permanently ended my lingering belief in Israel's moral superiority over the conflict.

Sir Gerald Kaufmann speaking at the time of the Gaza War in 2008.




02/05/2013

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/mozambique/10028738/Last-rhinos-in-Mozambique-killed-by-poachers.html

Last Rhinos in Mozambique killed by Poachers thanks to collusion by under-paid park Rangers.

Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.  












28/3/13

"OUR TITS ARE DEADLIER THAN YOUR STONES!!"

This is the best thing I've heard for a while.  More power to FEMEN, whoever the hell they are.

Powerful description of the hate and violence one woman faces in Tunisia for daring to post a picture of her own body on the internet. Really shows the depth of the dangerous evil in society's poisoned by Islamism across the middle east.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2300008/Naked-female-activists-topless-revolution-Tunisia-preacher-demands-nude-protester-19-stoned-death-epidemic.html










Feb 2013
Brilliant description of the development of academic study and interpretations of the crimes of the Holocaust since 1945. Especially important for those of us concerned with the importance and understanding and appreciating these events for people today.

http://www.newstatesman.com/culture/culture/2013/02/ever-changing-face-holocaust-studies

Educational Hip Hop

For a long time I have been very fond of what I'd call 'Educational Hip Hop'. These videos make a particular niche of Youtube content: a charming mix of of entertainment with educational substance.

Hip Hop is better than most other musical genres for education because of its emphasis on quick speech, meaning you can get across a lot more information in the same two to three minutes than you can in a traditional song.

And the genre is happily expanding all the time. Below is a small selection of videos I've come across that span History, Theology, Economics, Energy Science & English. Please do let me know about any other quality productions so I can add them to this growing library of Hip Hop academia.

And thank you, Educational Hip Hop, for combining two of my great loves: Hip Hop and Academia.

HISTORY

Origins of World War One
The Rap Battle of Kings

King Charles II & The British Restoration

Epic Magna Carta Rap Battle
Horrible Histories

THEOLOGY

Martin Luther, His 95 Theses 

and the Protestant Reformation

ECONOMICS

Fear the Boom and Bust with F.A.Hayek and J.M.Keynes

The Fight of the Century.

Hayek & Keynes . Government Austerity vs Stimulus

Deck the Halls with Macro Follies.  

Have a Very Austrian Christmas!

ENERGY SCIENCE

The Fracking Song (with funk)

Yeah, Baby.

ENGLISH

The Antonym Rap

Word! Professor. . . .  or something.

(Obvious disclaimer: No videos are my own. All thanks to respective Youtube creators.)

What are Church Services For?

First I want to draw attention to how artificial our church services are in a way.

We gather together for an hour a week, generally, in order to worship God, carry out our liturgies, and celebrate the eucharist. And then we go out back to our lives.

But we all recognise that God's call, and particularly Christ's call in the Gospels, is a call about our whole lives. We are meant to be first transformed by the grace and power of the Holy Spirit, and then also grow in  holiness throughout our lives, not just on a Sunday.

In fact God makes it very clear that the details of our worship are irrelevant, almost worse than useless if we don't have love and faith and sincerity in our hearts generally.  

 And sometimes what we do in church every week can seem detached from how we live our lives, especially when we spend so much of our time surrounded by people who aren't Christian and don't necessarily know or understand anything about our faith.

Now, to be honest, this s already quite a common topic for Christians.  I'm sure we've all sat through at least one sermon about not just being Sunday Christians, or Christians for one hour each week.  But I'm just going to share some thoughts about it that I've found useful.

 Today in many churches, whether Orthodox, Catholic, Anglican, Methodist, URC the basic service can be divided into two main sections: The Liturgy of the Word, and the Liturgy of the Sacrament.  

Basically the first is based around offering prayers, reading the Bible, and discussing it in a Sermon, which is taken from the traditional Jewish Synagogue service (which was based around the Torah).

The Second is based around Eucharist, re-creating the last Supper as Jesus commanded "Do this as often as you eat and drink it in remembrance of me".

In more Protestant churches there has generally been an emphasis on the first part, preaching the Word, in more Catholic and Orthodox churches over the centuries there has been a growing emphasis on the 2nd part:  The Eucharist.

What is clear is that this basic form comes from the earliest days of the Church.  The quote below is from Justin Martyr, one of the earliest of the Church fathers, writing only 70 years or so after the writing of last of the New Testament books, and giving a description that must be familiar to any Christian today.

The two main differences is that this describes a relatively simple structure compared to some liturgies today, and that it obviously dates from a time when there was no set liturgy or text for the service. This came later, when instead of relying on the president to make up the prayers set texts were given both to give the ‘best’ prayers, to ensure that correct doctrine (Ortho-doxy in Greek) was taught and just to save the presiding person from always having to come up with something.

Fundamentally, though, this is the same structure we all use today and reflects the essential features of Christian worship and community. 

Historically what happened to the liturgy/service was a steady trend of making the central communion service more and more elaborate and mystical, with embellishments and more prayers and sections, until the time of the Reformation, when in reformation churches steps were taken to simplify it.

In some churches such as among the Quakers this led to totally abandoning formal, structured worship or liturgy, and in evangelical churches it led to a dramatically reduced form of liturgy.

In the Catholic church it led to one stable form of the Mass being adopted that endured for 500 years from the 1580's before it was simplifed slightly (and translated out of Latin) following the 2nd Vatican Council In 1960's.

What is astonishing to me though is how similar the liturgies and services still are, not just in general structure but right down to individual bits of vocabulary.  Below are selections from the current Anglican common worship, and a translation of the Latin Mass set in 1580, itself derived directly from forms of the Medieval Catholic Mass. 

 Services in Western Christianity (Catholic, Anglican, Methodist, Lutheran etc) contain a very similar basic structure dating back to the medieval Catholic service containing many or all of the elements I list below, and at least many of these should be familiar to any Catholic, Anglican, Methodist, Lutheran and many other western Christians. 

Eastern Orthodox churches are slightly different and date back even earlier, but contain most of these same features in a slightly less instantly recognisable form.

 Some more protestant services have a considerably more simple structure, especially if they don't necessarily involve communion.

A common evangelical approach is known affectionately as the Sandwich:  'Worship'-Prayers/testimony-Sermon done.

 Some evangelicals at least claim that they don't like liturgy, they say it's boring and fake and meaningless, but what they generally mean is they prefer a minimalistic liturgy. But the evangelical churches I've been to are definitely using a liturgy of a type even if they don't know it. Whether it's a better or worse liturgy is a very good question. And it can be just as boring and repetitive as any full Catholic-orthodox traditional liturgy.

But the evangelicals do have a good point, I don't think there is any point to church services or liturgy if we are just mumbling through the words every week, or just sitting there feeling bored, however complex or simple our liturgy may be. There is very little to be gained whatever form we use if it is not helping us grow in holiness throughout the week and the year and over our whole lives.

(Slight disclaimer: ‘catholic’ Christians such as myself who believe in the Real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist believe there is a real spiritual, blessed benefit to taking that Eucharist more or less regardless of what else we get from the service. I think what I say here is still strongly relevant in addition to that value though).

Some bits of the liturgy just don't seem to make much sense as we commonly perform them. My favourite example is the confession, which sounds a bit like this:  

 Now certainly in churches I have visited this is read out by the priest and then there is a two second delay before he pronounces God’s forgiveness for our sins. Now I don’t know about you but I need more time than that to confess my sins for the week.  In fact I’ve usually only got to about Monday lunchtime. 

And that’s not the only thing.  If we really, truly confessed our sins, in full realisation of what that meant, of Jesus’ sacrifice for us, the Love of God, and the darkness of sin then we would only ever need to confess them once and never again.  And again, I don’t know about you but I find myself coming back week after week and confessing more or less the same sins.

So what is the point of this?  Is it just bad, lazy religion?   

I think the answer is no. I do really value the liturgy and structure to our services, I really think that there is a lot that is really beautiful and valuable in these bits of liturgy that have come down to us and have been treasured by centuries of Christians.

So I want to try to think of how we can think about our liturgies and services to make them useful to our whole lives:

And my idea is basically this: Our services and liturgies offer us a model in concentrated form of what we should be trying to think about and follow for the rest of our week.  They don't do the job on their own, though they are particularly valuable as you are doing them.  But their main value is in acting as a model of spiritual discipline and the things we should be thinking about all the way through the week. In order to help us reflect on those ideas and grow in holiness.

In Defence of Margaret Thatcher

After the calm comes the storm, and then the calm again. After years out of the limelight Mrs Thatcher finally died, and there was a predictable burst of emotion that is now calming again, now the solemnity of her funeral is done. Now hopefully people can speak from reason as well as emotion, whether positive or negative. I had hoped that she may be allowed to pass quietly, and be mourned quietly, and that her opponents would maintain some basic decency and decorum. In the end both and neither happened.  Most of her opponents maintained some dignity and decency in the face of the emotion of the event, especially the leadership of the Labour Party, but some people sadly and publicly descended into petty, spiteful hate. Not that Mrs Thatcher would have cared at all, or could be hurt by it. All hate does is poison the heart of the person who hates, doubly so when it is totally impotent.

Margaret Thatcher was always a towering figure in the background of the world I lived in. As I was growing up every single adult had an opinion about her. But I, of course, did not. I was two years old when she left office. I just about have memories of John Major as Prime Minister and the 1997 election but Mrs Thatcher I only knew 2nd hand. I don't have the experience other people have, and neither does anyone else my age, and certainly no-one younger. At this point I should stick my colours to the mast. I am a sort of tory liberal and I always admired Mrs Thatcher, the hard decisions she took and what she achieved: I am a proud Thatcherite. And that is partly why I feel the need to defend her now. But I'm also a historian. She has died and been buried and now her legacy may be discussed without  it being a vomiting of emotion. This is conveniently exactly what her detractors said they wanted or at least was the excuse they gave to justify spitting on her corpse, so in my own way I'm hopefully helping to make everyone a bit happier. I do believe that a lot, but not all, of the criticism that is made of her is unfair, or just plain silly. And I believe the rest does not justify the mindless hate that she uniquely receives.

It is difficult to know where to begin when talking about criticism of Mrs Thatcher. Some, like the complaints about the sinking of the Belgrano, are so silly that they can hopefully be ignored, and can only be evidence for the wider thesis that the sheer vehemence of criticism was motivated by emotion rather than reason. More generally I want to start with the people who claim that Mrs Thatcher was a total disaster of a Prime Minster, or claim they oppose almost everything she did. When I hear such a person I want to ask, which part of the 1970's would they like to return to?  Nobody actually opposes Thatcherism these days unless it is not defined as real policies but rather as a vague moral plague that people can claim to oppose. Almost all the great battles of 1980's in this country Mrs Thatcher won, and won so comprehensively that still, 23 years after she left office, nobody seriously suggest reversing any of her main reforms: The Conservatives, Labour, UKIP, Lib Dems, SNP, all Northern Irish parties, are Thatcherite parties, by any description that would be recognised in the 1980's, as are most governments across Europe and around the world. Of all our serious political parties only the Greens and probably Respect could be described as having any intention of reversing the Thatcherite consensus. But they are about as far from the levers of power anywhere as I am.

Only in two areas can I trace that the criticism of Mrs Thatcher is even vaguely justified, in terms of gay rights, and in terms of failing to appreciate the devastating effects of mass unemployment across large areas of the country. But I do not believe either of these areas justify the bile directed at Mrs Thatcher uniquely among politicians in this country.

First, I want to refute those who claim Mrs Thatcher was an unalloyed disaster. I'm, generally, not entirely sure how precisely she managed to win three decisive election victories in a row if she was such a disaster. Nor can it be denied that she was popular and is still popular. She got a total of 40.4 million votes across 3 elections, an average of 13.5 million votes per election, the best record in UK history. Nor was her success just down to FPTP.  The progressive majority has always been a myth and the anti-Thatcher majority is as much a myth. Actual data on 2nd preferences show voters split 53% to 37% for Mrs Thatcher in 1983, and 54% to 38% for Mrs Thatcher in 1987. And she remains popular today. At the time of her death she topped a poll for best Prime Minister in British history, and the same poll showed 52% to 30% claimed she was a good rather than bad Prime Minister, a better opinion poll rating than any current politician from all four parties, and even in the north of England 49% to 35% had a positive opinion of her as PM. In fact the sheer similarity of those figures from this year and 1983 and 1987 suggest perceptions remain stable, with about 50% in favour, 35% against and 15% ambivalent both now and then. I imagine this is one of things some of those who hate her most bitterly really cannot stand, the fact they are a decided minority, and that most of the country did and does support Thatcherism.

Those figures reflect the fact that Mrs Thatcher was undoubtedly a good thing for the majority of both the population and areas in the country. Certain critics continue to maintain that Thatcherism only helped 'The Rich' or 'Bankers', or some other unsympathetic group. This is just silly. Millions of ordinary people supported Thatcherism for good reasons. Mrs Thatcher's aspirational free-market capitalism was not a ruse but a genuine and heart-felt belief. Under her premiership home ownership rose from 55% to 67%, an increase of around 2.5 million, and share ownership more than trebled, rising by several million, spreading assets and wealth to millions more than ever before. Nor can her achievements be doubted in other areas. In 1975-1980 inflation was 15.69% on average, in 1990-1995, the 5 years after Mrs Thatcher left office, Inflation was only 4.63%.  Economic growth increased from 2.1% on average in the 1970's to 3.1% on average in the 1980's and stayed at 2.8% on average in the 1990's. The chart below shows the dramatic turn-around in the UK economy relative to a near and similar competitor: France.

Income tax rates fell from 98% and 33% to 40% and 25%. Now, we can argue about whether the top rate of tax should be nearer 50% or 40%, but I presume there isn't anyone who seriously supports a top rate of tax of over 80% or 90%? I also struggle to believe that any person actually wants to roll back any of the other minor changes of the Thatcher years, whether a nationalised trucking industry, not being able to take more than £250 in currency abroad, not being able to get a mortgage from a bank, or being unable to buy things on a Sunday. Days lost to strikes fell from 11.7 million (on average) in 1975-1980 to only 0.8 million (on average) from 1990-1999. I also challenge anyone to seriously argue that the decline in trade union militancy is a bad thing. Does anyone seriously regret the loss of closed shops, or think it a disgrace that trade unions actually have to ballot their members before a strike, or are forbidden from calling entirely spurious strikes in disputes when they don't even have a grievance?

There is also a more fundamental argument. I have a great deal of sympathy for the plight of coal miners and their communities.  But for the trade union movement in general I have none. In the 1970's trade unionists deliberately sabotaged both Labour and Conservative governments and put their face totally against any beneficial economic reform regardless of the cost to ordinary people or the country. In a democracy it cannot be allowed than ANY group believes it has a right to fundamentally over-turn the democratically elected government, except fairly at the ballot box. A coup by the trade union movement is as much a coup as one by military officers, and the Thatcher government was right to crush it. Nor should it be forgotten exactly what those trade union leaders were fighting to defend. Arthur Scargill's bargaining position was clear: The government subsidy to the coal industry was already in the billions of pounds and yet Arthur Scargill would only accept mine closures on grounds of "exhaustion or geological difficulties". In other words he was demanding unlimited subsidy to maintain UK coal mining the state it was in at that time regardless of the economic or environmental cost.

The other great successes that ought to be mentioned are of course those in Foreign policy. Mrs Thatcher led Britain through the Falklands War and successfully defended British territory and citizens from the unprovoked military invasion of a fascist dictatorship, which victory was certainly not guaranteed, and which was itself instrumental in leading to the collapse of that dictatorship and a return to democracy in Argentina.  Not that they thank us for it much. Also worthy of mention was her role in the Cold War. She didn't win the war, but still her courage and determination to oppose the Soviet Union deserves mention. Communism and the Soviet Union in particular are as bad as fascism of any type, but still there were a great many people in Britain, even in the 1980's, who were morally ignorant enough not to recognise that. Mrs Thatcher did and acted as a beacon of freedom to millions of East Europeans and contributed to the strong western Anti-Soviet response that itself contributed to a largely peaceful victory in the Cold War, with the result of freedom and peace for tens of millions of people.

Which leaves me with more difficult territory to cover. It is wrong to say Mrs Thatcher oversaw the collapse of British industry, even more ridiculous to claim that she deliberately and gleefully engineered that collapse. In fact Manufacturing output grew by 7.5% during her time in office, only to then steadily decline under 13 years of Labour government. Neither was Mrs Thatcher responsible for the greatest relative decline in manufacturing: In 1970 Manufacturing was 20.6% of GDP, in 1979 17.6%, in 1990 15.2% and in 2010 9.68%. What did happen under Mrs Thatcher though was that jobs in manufacturing, and other traditional industries like mining, collapsed.  Manufacturing employment collapsed from 4 million to 2 million and mining employment fell from hundreds of thousands to tens of thousands. This brought disaster across areas of the country that became long-term unemployment blackspots, with undiverse economies and workforces poorly trained to create or take up other jobs. It is fair to say that the government did not foresee how bad this problem would get, how long it would last, or have any plan to solve it that was even vaguely up to the task.

But it is meaningless to pretend that this entire fall in industrial employment, and the more than 3 million unemployment it lead to, can be placed at the door of Mrs Thatcher. The first point worth mentioning is the 1.5 million already unemployed when the Conservatives took office in 1979. The second is the fact that the recession that plagued Britain in the early 1980's was not just a British event, it was an international recession that did not originate in Britain. Mrs Thatcher had been in government for only a year when the economy slid into recession and unlike Labour in 2008 cannot be blamed for the years of decisions that led up to it. And, more importantly, manufacturing across the developed western world went into serious decline in the 1980's due to an explosion of globalisation and increasing competition from developing world economies. Britain, America, Germany all have their abandoned factories and rust belts. Should Mrs Thatcher be blamed for Detroit, or the abandoned factories of the Ruhr?

It is true that Britain was hit hardest of any major economy but there is plenty of blame to spread for that too. Short-termism by successive governments and Trade union militant pig-headedness meant that much of British Industry was inefficient, untrusted, over-manned and only supported by government subsidy and protection. Industry should have adapted gradually to those changing realities through the 1970's but due to a mix of governments and unions who fundamentally refused to face up to the reality it had to deal with it all at once in the early 1980's with destructive results. But in this case there really was no (long term) alternative. Government attempts to hold back change had already broken down with unemployment reaching 1.5 million and Inflation peaking at over 20%. The traditional Keynesian attempts to inflate the economy were simply not an option as Labour Prime Minister James Callaghan stated in 1976:

"We used to think that you could spend your way out of a recession, and increase employment by cutting taxes and boosting Government spending. I tell you in all candour that that option no longer exists, and that in so far as it ever did exist, it only worked on each occasion since the war by injecting a bigger dose of inflation into the economy, followed by a higher level of unemployment as the next step. Higher inflation followed by higher unemployment."

Now I can't deny that the Thatcher government could have done more to stop unemployment rising quite so high. Interest rates were raised higher than was probably needed to combat inflation and public spending was cut to control borrowing during a recession. But these measures weren't spiteful attempts to punish northerners or manufacturing workers or miners or labour party supporters. Mrs Thatcher's own words were "This Government are pursuing the only policy which gives any hope of bringing our people back to real and lasting employment."  They were a conscious choice that 20% rates of inflation were a more dangerous long-term risk to the economy and long-term employment. They were decisions taken in light of an ongoing deficit and the memory of an IMF bailout only a few years before.

There are reasons to argue that these policies succeeded in the long term. Even within the 1980's over-all employment grew by 1.8 million, despite the fall in traditional industries. After 1992 Britain had 15 solid years of falling and then low unemployment, low inflation, and steady growth, totally reversing the long-term post-war trend of higher inflation, higher unemployment and lower growth. And when that period did end we have seen, despite a deeper recession, lower levels of unemployment: 7.8% rather than 12%. And at least a significant part of this difference has to be put down to the Thatcherite reforms that increased Labour market flexibility and allowed wages to take the strain of recession rather than jobs, especially when one remembers unemployment was 6% even when Mrs Thatcher took over.

It is extremely easy in retrospect to deride the policies of those in government in the 1980's, or to throw around accusations of personal malice or evil. It is a lot harder to say what you or I would have done in the same position, faced with the fundamental long-term problems that existed by the end of the 1970's. It is particularly easy in a country with entrenched Thatcherite policies to say the government should have been specifically more moderate on interest rates while presumably pursuing all the rest of the policies we take for granted today. But at the time that wasn't a clear option. All Thatcherite policies received massive opposition, and the main clear alternative was not Thatcherism with more awareness of the long-term damage of mass unemployment, it was the unapologetic big-government, nationalised industry, trade-union dominated, real socialism of Old Labour, attempting to hold on, without compromise, to the world that had already failed in the 1970's, Canute-style, against the tide of growing globalisation. I don't say this to excuse the mistakes that were made at the time by the government, but to put them in the extremely difficult context in which they existed, without a clear better alternative on offer.

Moving on from actual policy, the other main accusation I want to mention is that despite the actual historical evidence, Thatcherism (and the lady by extension) were unacceptable sources of evil purely on some moral basis. They stress the "spiritual or "moral" damage that Thatcherism supposedly did to Britain, by preaching individualism, greed, selfishness, blah, blah. Some even draw a direct line to the financial crash of 2008. The thing is that nobody can actually factually explain this. The charge of individualism is true: Thatcherism was unashamedly pro-individual achievement, pro-aspiration, pro-freedom, and I don't apologise for that in a world where collectivist ideologies have left an unequalled legacy of death and human misery. The charges of greed and selfishness are less clear. Mrs Thatcher obviously never stood up and said "greed and selfishness are good". I can only presume that people mean she correctly pointed out there is no shame in wanting to earn money and do better, and society is based on people striving to achieve that for them and their families. If they mean anything more I presume they can quote some actual evidence for the accusation of vague moral malevolence?

I presume they are also expressing moral outrage at the fact Mrs Thatcher oversaw the failure of the post-war socialist consensus without any particular sadness, and assume this could only come from some sort of personal evil. This is nonsense because, as previously discussed, Mrs Thatcher did not dismantle the post-war consensus because it was already failing, and she did not choose to end full employment because it had already ended, and there was no way to realistically turn the clock back. What she could try to do was reverse the long-term trend of decline, which is what she took pleasure over. I just don't recognise privatising an airline, to give an example, as a promotion of selfishness and vice in society.  Moreover, it is morally ridiculous to judge someone on the basis of how sad they looked about something happening, as opposed to by their actions.

Even more over, what Mrs Thatcher supposedly did or did not personally morally promote is utterly irrelevant to the moral health of society. Whatever that state may be, to blame the PM in a limited democracy for it is cowardly, incompetent and crazy. Individuals and communities are responsible themselves. To pretend otherwise is a deliberate abdication of personal responsibility on a massive scale. Even more ridiculous is to pretend that some direct chain of blame can be traced over 20 years to events that weren't even a glimmer in anyone's eyes in 1990. People and politicians are responsible for their own actions over a generation. Attempts to project guilt back into the past instead of blaming the people who are actually responsible for the actions is stupid.

The one concrete example that is often given to support this idea of some moral plague emanating from Mrs Thatcher is the "there is no such thing as society" quote. This quote has been taken out of context. Mrs Thatcher was specifically opposing the idea of 'society' as an abstract entity that should solve all people's problems for them:

"people have been given to understand “I have a problem, it is the Government's job to cope with it!” [...] and so they are casting their problems on society and who is society? There is no such thing! There are individual men and women and there are families and no government can do anything except through people and people must look to themselves first. It is our duty to look after ourselves and then also to help look after our neighbour and life is a reciprocal business"

The fact she evidently did believe in society is demonstrated by a range of other quotes: "We cannot achieve a compassionate society simply by passing new laws and appointing more staff to administer them'." "'the basic ties of the family are at the heart of our society and are the very nursery of civic virtue'. " "we learn our interdependence and the great truth that we do not achieve happiness or salvation in isolation from each other but as members of Society'." The fact is not that the initial quote proves anything but that for those who blamed Mrs Thatcher uniquely and personally for the breakdown of the society of the post-war consensus "there is no such thing as society" was too good to pass up. It just confirmed all the things so many people thought they already knew.

The one final subject is that of Gay Rights, and particularly the notorious Section 28. Section 28 of the Local Government Act 1988 banning local authorities from "promoting homosexuality" or "the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship" was a nasty piece of legislation that made life unnecessarily difficult for countless young gay people by effectively banning schools from supporting them or promoting tolerance or acceptance of homosexuality. Mrs Thatcher had been an early supporter of decriminalising homosexuality in the 1960's, and the Section was not introduced by the government but by a private backbencher. But that is small defence. It was accepted and passed by the government, for party political ends, which is a disgrace. Another quote illustrates her attitude, taken from a speech on Education: "Children who need to be taught to respect traditional moral values are being taught that they have an inalienable right to be gay." This clearly reflects the traditional view that being gay is a 'choice', a moral failing, as much as anything, that people need to be strictly cautioned against. This idea is ridiculous and wrong, and the only defence that can be given is that it reflects, not personal animosity or evil, but the generation Mrs Thatcher was from. This is a woman who grew up before the 2nd world war, and her thinking on this issue sadly reflected the prejudice of an almost bygone age.  But it is one sadly still shared by millions of people who grew up in that time and shared those widespread social assumptions before awareness of the real nature of homosexuality became widespread in society.

That finishes my defence of Mrs Thatcher. I do not want to claim that she was perfect, far from it. She made mistakes,serious ones, her attitudes to homosexuality was a serious moral failing, if a partially understandable one given the age she grew up in, and her governments should probably have acted to bring inflation down more slowly and keep unemployment lower (though possibly for longer). Though to what extent that would have been possible, or beneficial in the economic long term, is hard to judge, even retrospectively. What I think is unarguable is that she did a great deal of good and that a lot of the criticism she does receive is simply undeserved. On economic issues a lot of that criticism and hatred seems to reflect the childish view that she could have just flicked a switch to make the unemployment and suffering of the 1980's go away and chose not to.  That view is idiotic to the extreme. Criticisms of general incompetence can only reflect ignorance about what she did achieved and the situation she inherited. She was right about 9 issues out of 10, and her accuracy, motivated by a passion for personal freedom, is reflected by the ongoing adherence to the Thatcherite consensus, both in Britain and around the world. In extremely difficult times I believe her record was was certainly no worse than that of any other politician and does not justify the ugly hate that is thrown at her. It is easy to feel good because you have a bogeyman to despise. It is hard to face up to the fact that the world is a complicated and difficult place and there are no simplistic explanations or solutions to our problems.