Aidan Semmens
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'People of faith' have no monopoly on the ache of injustice

28/10/2016

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I want to share with you an exchange I had with a faraway friend. It seems to say a lot about what’s wrong in the world – and a bit about what’s right too.

You may remember Jamie Allen, if you saw the BBC series A Country Parish back in 2003. He was the vicar whose daily life and work the programme revolved around. Since then he’s emigrated to New Zealand, where he was dean of Taranaki cathedral and is now an advocate for poverty relief charity Tearfund. Having built himself and his family a wonderful-looking home he then sold it to help pay for a suicide-prevention project. It’s fair to say he’s one of the good guys.

Jamie wrote: “Some days I find that the ache for the sheer scale of social injustice and the extreme rich/extreme poor divide is almost unbearable. There is a temptation to close your eyes to it and be swept along. The conversations and progress seem constantly, of late, to have been derailed by political machinations too ridiculous and self-serving for belief.”

Well said, that man.

As a good Christian, he was promoting something called The Justice Conference in Auckland. The flyer for the conference reads: “Now, more than ever, people of faith need to come together to wrestle with the injustice in our world.”

Take out the words “of faith” and that remains true. In fact, it becomes truer.

I know only too well that ache Jamie speaks of. Revulsion at the rich/poor divide and the way power works to widen it is a very real, very familiar sensation.

It is by no means exclusive to “people of faith”. And I’m sure it’s not universal among them, either, whatever faith they may proclaim.

I’m glad to see people – any people – standing up against injustice. I’m less thrilled when any group appears to claim special status in that cause. Whether they are people of faith generally, or any particular creed – or none.
Decency and humanity are not the special preserve of any one club or tribe, religious or otherwise.

Jamie, I know, would say “amen” to that.



Hard Brexit, soft Brexit - or no Brexit at all?


Am I reading the runes right or am I just imagining that the chances of Britain actually pulling out of Europe are declining fast? This may be wishful thinking, but there are a number of reasons for it.

One is the brilliant manoeuvring north of the border. When it comes to playing the politics game, the SNP leaves every party at Westminster flat-footed.

If the UK leaves the EU, Scotland will leave the UK. This, obviously, is not certain – but it’s much more than an idle threat. And, from a Scots perspective, it would be only right and proper.

So we have the real prospect of Scotland prospering in the EU while its neighbour to the south dives down the economic plughole. A prospect that should concentrate a few minds.

Then there’s the suggestion that Scottish universities should let EU students study free. Which might leave English students at Edinburgh, Glasgow and St Andrews mired in debt, surrounded by Scots and other Europeans with no such burden to bear. You have to admit, it’s brilliant.

Last week’s Economist – hardly the most anti-Establishment publication – gave a detailed breakdown of how public opinion has swung away from Brexit since the referendum.

And, let’s remember, only 27 per cent of potential voters actually voted Leave then. Just a few more than the 24pc who voted Conservative last year (although a lot more than the precisely nil who voted for Theresa May to be prime minister).

Some leading Brexiteers have called for anyone still expressing support for remaining in Europe to be charged with treason. Which is so hysterical it can only stem from fear. Fear of not getting their own way, like kids in the playground.

But the biggest remaining hope for the Remain camp lies with Parliament. A majority of MPs always did back that side. And if “bringing democracy back to Britain” means anything, it surely means letting our elected representatives do what they were elected to do. Decide stuff, so we don’t have to.

Because – in theory, anyway – they know more than the rest of us do about the big things. Things like Europe, what we can get out of it – and whether we should.

Very little about Brexit is certain, but some things are. It’s a mess that will run and run. And while it may sometimes be amusing, it will never be pretty.

It will continue to be a massive distraction from things that really matter, like climate change, the wanton destruction of public services, the rampant enrichment of the rich at the expense of the poor, a crazily cock-eyed energy policy and its unconfessed links to nuclear weapons – none of which is likely to handled better out of Europe than in it.


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The rich man in his castle...

17/6/2015

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Did you know the Duke of Wellington was still alive? It came as news to me. I don’t mean, of course, the chap who led the victorious British forces at the Battle of Waterloo. He died in 1852, a full 37 years after his finest hour and 22 years after his brief stint as one of Britain's worst prime ministers.

But the title that was given him a year before Waterloo lives on. It currently sits on the shoulders of the ninth duke, the inheritor also of the titles Prince of Waterloo, Duke of the Victory of the Kingdom of Portugal and Duke of Ciudad Rodrigo. He was born Earl of Mornington.

He went to Eton, married a Prussian princess (who knew there could be such a person, more than a century after the unification of Germany?) and had 10 years as a Tory MEP. The long list of company boards he’s sat on includes investment banks, insurance companies, tobacco firms Rothmans and Dunhill and the drinks company Pernod. First I’d heard of him was last week when he unveiled a memorial to his most famous ancestor’s most famous victory at the London railway station that bears its name.

The first Duke was still alive when Mrs Cecil Alexander wrote one of everyone’s favourite hymns, “All Things Bright and Beautiful”. If you know it, you may know the third verse. That’s the one which goes:

            “The rich man in his castle,
            “The poor man at his gate,
            “God made them high and lowly,
            “And ordered their estate.”

Hmm. Believe that if you will. My school hymnbook had an asterisk next to that ringing endorsement of inequality, giving permission for it to be “omitted”.

The ninth duke still lives at Stratfield Saye House, the stately home in Hampshire that was bought for his family in 1817 “by a grateful nation”. It’s not a castle in the fortified sense, but it’s certainly what the French would call a chateau. Very grand indeed.

These days the poor man is allowed past the gate – for a fee – to admire the building (well, parts of it), the grounds (ditto) and an exhibition devoted to the first duke’s grandeur.

Today’s Duke of Wellington, like all his eight predecessors, is the same sort of chap as the famed barons who – 800 years ago yesterday – forced King John to put his seal to the document that has gone down in history as Magna Carta.

The “big charter” is renowned as the original declaration of democracy, but it was never really that.

For one thing, the ancient Greeks had a truer democracy than anything Magna Carta laid down.

For another, it wasn’t about giving power to the people. Only about taking it away from the king and giving it to the rich landowners, who were hardly about to share it with the peasants and other workers.

There was a beautiful irony about the Queen taking part in Monday’s celebrations of the curtailing of royal power. A different kind of weirdness about a 13ft statue of her, in full royal regalia, being unveiled at Runnymede.

But perhaps the weirdest symbol of all of our clinging to the old codes is the honours system, which was wheeled out again at the weekend for its twice-yearly flag-wave. The Queen’s Birthday Honours List – though her actual birthday is in April.

Top of the list, at least as far as the media cared, were the knighthoods bestowed on singer Van Morrison, rugby-player Gareth Edwards and comedian Lenny Henry. They were among 30 new knights, most of whom you’ve never heard of and probably never will.

But what is a knight?

William Marshall, first Earl of Pembroke, whose name was at the very top of Magna Carta, is often considered to be the typical knight: a brilliant fighter on horseback, brave and powerful – and successful – in tournaments and on the battlefield; a man who raises an army to fight for the king; and sometimes gets to decide who’s going to be king.

I can just picture Van Morrison and Lenny Henry donning full metal armour and getting up on horseback to go jousting. My money’d be on Van the Man – until bold Sir Gareth entered the lists.

Among previous title recipients, imagine Sir Mick Jagger and Sir Paul McCartney riding into battle against the infidel hordes of the rebellious Middle East.

Tragic that John Lennon was snatched away before he could be offered a title. Would he have accepted? The man whose best known solo song includes the line “Imagine no possessions…”.

Most of the new knighthoods went of course, as ever, to top civil servants, bankers and businessmen. The sort of people who expect a K as the final rubberstamping of their career status.

One shocked headline at the weekend remarked on “A knighthood for services to the Tory party”, as if that was a surprise. Isn’t that what ennoblement has always been about – services to the ruling elite?

Other folk get lesser honours.

Like Will Pooley, the Suffolk nurse who went back to help Ebola sufferers in West Africa after recovering from the disease. To him an MBE – a patronising pat on the head for an ordinary Joe who did something extraordinary, something truly honourable.

All makes you proud to be British, doesn't it?

 

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Oscar-winners are like MPs - they're getting posher

25/2/2015

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Congratulations to Eddie Redmayne on his Best Actor Oscar. I haven’t yet seen The Theory of Everything, but I’m sure Eddie’s portrayal of the amazing physicist Stephen Hawking is excellent. He certainly did a good job of hero Stephen Wraysford in the TV mini-series of the First World War drama Birdsong. (Does he have a thing for characters called Stephen?)

But let’s face it, once he landed the part of Hawking he was always going to be a hot Oscar tip. The Academy of Motion Pictures does have a thing for characters gamely overcoming various illnesses or impairments.

Last year the same gong went to Matthew McConaughey for portraying a cowboy with Aids. Four years ago Colin Firth took it for playing a king with a speech impediment (royal and stuttering, sure-fire Oscar material). Memorable previous winners have included Geoffrey Rush as a pianist with mental problems (Shine), Nicolas Cage as a suicidal alcoholic (Leaving Las Vegas), Tom Hanks as the not-all-there Forrest Gump and before that as another Aids victim (Philadelphia). Who could forget Daniel Day-Lewis in what you might call the eponymous My Left Foot? Or Dustin Hoffman’s turn as the “idiot savant” Rain Man? And so it goes on. Julianne Moore as a woman battling Alzheimer’s is just the latest name on a similarly worthy list of Best Actresses.

But few people have ever overcome such visually and audibly striking impairment to such great effect as Professor Hawking.

Redmayne was not wrong in his acceptance speech when he described himself humbly as “a lucky, lucky man”. And – as I’m sure he is fully aware – his luck began a long time before he was picked for that particular role. Because young Eddie is top class in more ways than one.

That wonderful comedian Reginald D Hunter (more on him below) has a great line on the British class system. It is, he says, “a brilliant system” – much better than America’s crude racial segregation. Why? Because it’s “a way of discriminating against people even when they look just like you”.

Class is, of course, partly about money – money you’re born to, not money you earn. That’s why footballers can never be high class, though their children might. But it’s about other kinds of privilege and expectation too. It’s about how you think of yourself, how you speak, and who you know. And a lot of all that comes down simply to what school you go to.

Eddie Redmayne went to Eton.

As did his two immediate predecessors in the role of America’s favourite British actor, Hugh Laurie and Damian Lewis. Their nearest rival in those stakes, Benedict Cumberbatch, a nominee and presenter at this week’s Oscars, was at the other place – Harrow.

From choir-school boy Laurence Olivier and Westminster School alumnus John Gielgud on, the Yanks have always rather gone for posh Brits. Three-time Best Actor Oscar-winner Daniel Day-Lewis – whose father Cecil was Poet Laureate – was sent to Bedales, an ultra-posh establishment whose fees are topped only by Eton, Harrow and Westminster.

Of course, not every British actor who has “made it” over there is a toff. Think of Bob Hoskins, Michael Caine, Dudley Moore. Colin Firth is a kind of hybrid – a comprehensive school boy who excels at playing privileged types.

But the real privilege still runs deep. And it’s getting deeper again.

The present government is much the poshest we’ve had since 1964. Just seven per cent of the population went to fee-paying schools, but 54pc of Tory MPs did, as did 40pc of LibDems, 15pc of Labour, both UKIP MPs and the Green Party’s Caroline Lucas. Just one school provided 20 current MPs – 19 Tories and one LibDem. Eton, of course.

David Cameron is the 19th Old Etonian to be Prime Minister, but the first since Sir Alec Douglas-Home in 1964.

One in seven judges went to just five schools, including Eton, Westminster (Nick Clegg’s old school) and St Paul’s (George Osborne’s). In all, 71pc of those who sit in judgement on the rest of us went to private schools.

According to the Sutton Trust, the domination of the media by privately educated types is growing. Of the “top 100 media professionals”, it says 54 went to private schools.

And that can only get worse in a profession where it’s now almost essential to start out as an intern, working for free, if you want to get in at national level. I, like most people, could never have afforded to do that.




It’s nearly 20 years since my only brief visit to America’s Deep South but it’s so familiar from books, the movies – and especially music – that watching Reginald D Hunter’s Songs of the South felt almost nostalgic.

Nearly every song on his road trip was one I could sing along to – from the minstrel showstopper Old Folks at Home to the bluegrass Blue Moon of Kentucky, the Allman Brothers’ rocker Ramblin’ Man to the Glenn Miller swing of Chattanooga Choo-Choo.

That was just Kentucky and Tennessee – and he didn’t even drop in on Memphis. Probably because Saturday’s first episode was his venture into the White South. I look forward to him returning home to the Black South this weekend.

And if there isn’t a brilliant soundtrack album to follow when the series is over, the BBC is seriously missing a trick.
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