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Responsibility Laundering

I don’t know much about money laundering. It’s not my thing (despite what the bank seems to think if you ever need to change a signatory or use cash!). However, my limited understanding is that if you take the dirty money (from crime) and you process it enough times, through companies and individuals it can’t be traced back to you.   UK Governments over the last few years have taken this principle and applied it to responsibility.  I first noticed this (belatedly) after Grenfell. Central Government had laundered the issue of cladding out to the local authority, who in turn passed it on to the local housing association, who passed it on to the contractor, who passed it on the architect who had never done this kind of work before. This person is a private company at best, to whom we have no recourse of accountability. All we have is retrospective legal action. Meanwhile the national government looks like it’s clean.  Responsibility laundering is a bit like buying a yell
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What Just Happened

Warning: what I’m about to write includes some critique of middle-class culture and values. If you are not prepared to hear that, don’t read this. For the last twenty years I have, by intention, lived in the poorest ten percent of communities in the country. For the last ten years I have served as an ordained resident of some of the kinds of communities that have voted heavily for the Conservative Party. These are my observations on what I see as a long-term disengagement from the Labour Party by the people I live in and among. It is tempting to say “oh it was Corbyn” or “it was Brexit”. They are the Archduke Franz Ferdinand to the arms race and militarisation of various other factors (if you want a cuppa to go through that analogy you are very welcome).  Here are my top ten of why respectable working-class communities have gone blue. Let me explain ‘respectable’ working class. It’s a term Lynsey Hanley uses in in her book of the same name. I may not have her exact sense of wh

Life Audit: 2018 Results

As some of you will know- I take a month each year to note down what I do every minute (ish) of every day that I work. I do this partly to satisfy my own geekiness, but also to look at the balance of my life in a number of different ways. It helps me to note where I am spending most time- and over the course of the years it has helped me to identify my better working patterns.  This year I chose October (if you are clergy never do this in August, December or Easterish).  So the headlines: I had at least one day off every week. I still work 54 hours a week (54.3 this year). Its been the same for four years now (over two different jobs) That is still spread over about 5 and a half days a week (5.6) That equates to a full working day of 9 hours and 42 minutes. My average full working day span (from first bit of work to last) is 12 hours and 17 minutes.  Be gentle with me if these maths don’t work. I am not a great statistician. Within that gap betwe

Don't Be Fooled: Boris and the Great Distraction

We are now into day five of the nonsense about whatever Boris has or hasn’t said about women wearing burkas. Older white man makes derogatory, ill informed comments about what women wear. That’s not news. That’s every day.  I am not belittling the impact- but there is some mischief going on here.  I just finished reading Hillary Clinton’s “What Happened”. It’s not for the feint hearted- analysing loss is an ugly business. But in the midst of the pain she makes a really wise comment about the way the media covered the more outlandish things that Donald Trump said during the campaign. Her view is that it did no further damage to Trump as everyone knew he was a buffoon (my word), but it dominated the news cycle and stopped people talking about real issues for days at a time.  Over the weekend senior economic types (like the head of the Bank of England) talked about the danger of a no deal Brexit. The pound continues to tank. And the media is dominated- not even by a serious

International Women's Day: where are we?

I popped into school this morning, with the aim of getting some soundbites (well markerboardbites) about gratitude in preparation for Sunday’s service (more of that later, or never.. ) It was snowing and so I ended up being a spare pair of hands with a year five class for an hour. It was a lot of fun- I really enjoy being around that age range.   As the remnants of the class appeared from bus and abortive car journeys there were various activities going on in the room; games, a new dance (called the Floss, which I have already consigned to the pile of co-ordinated movements that I will never get the hang of), word searches and some drawing. It was the drawing that caught my attention. Three girls, all focused and ready to go were setting themselves a fifteen minute time limit. “What for?” I asked. “For our princess drawing competition”, came the reply. Now those of you who know me, will know that a) that made my soul a little bit sad, and b) how much hard work it was t

Oxpresidentgate and a Crisis of Generosity

Its been an interesting start to the year for the third sector. As we all get to grips with GDPR (more later), we have been subject to increased media attention as first we reeled from President’s Club revelations to the far deeper impact of this week’s revelations about Oxfam (and others). There is much that can be written. Undoubtedly there are some in media and politics who will seek to exploit the 1/3 of us who don’t think aid should be sent overseas to change policy off the back of bad behaviour by some people. We could face a drop in giving to international development, as supporting Oxfam is no longer seen as acceptable (like buying a plastic bag). I suspect this will recover at some point, possibly in different form. However, there is a deeper moral crisis for third sector organisations and my fear is that Christian charities are not immune. To explore this let me go back a month. The President’s Club- where charities were set to receive significant amounts of