Keep it simple, Stupid!

The General Synod of the Church of England has obviously never heard that the best way to get anything done is to "Keep it simple, Stupid (K.I.S.S.)".

Having, last year, overwhelmingly voted in favour of consecrating women bishops, a "Revision Committee" of the Synod is now engaged in working out some very complicated arrangements for allowing conscientious objectors to ignore their female diocesan bishop and turn to some new breed of super-bishop with the statutory authority to overrule the Diocesan. If this isn't the kiss of death for the Church of England as we know it, I don't know what is. The whole point of a bishop is that they are the "focus of unity" in their area. How can anyone, male or female, be the focus of unity knowing that some of their flock won't even talk to them and are taking instructions from an interloper?

The revision committee state that they are trying to address the concerns of those with "conscientious difficulties" so that they won't leave the church altogether. Conscientious difficulties?? Their conscientious difficulties should lie in their continued insistance on treading a path that is at clear odds with the declared will of the majority of Synod. In the "good old days" of the Church such people would be declared heretics and burnt at the stake. You wouldn't have found Henry VIII or Queen Mary saying "let's just change the whole order and structure of the church to accommodate these folk who, quite clearly, do not believe in the unity of the church anyway."

If the Church is not one it is nothing. Stop pandering to these people and let them either put up or shut up. It is surely better to preserve the majority of the church and lose a few than to risk destroying the whole church.

More on this here: www.churchtimes.co.uk/content.asp?id=83359

Important Statement from the Archbish and the Pope

Well ..... I think it's important. A joint statement made today can be found here - www.archbishopofcanterbury.org/2572

Have you read it? Good - then perhaps you can explain to me what it actually means. Particularly the bit about "a canonical structure that provides for Personal Ordinariates, which will allow former Anglicans to enter full communion with the Catholic Church while preserving elements of distinctive Anglican spiritual patrimony." Does this actually mean a change in anything or is it just a very verbose way of saying "We're still talking"?

What I would like it to mean is that we Anglicans can take communion in a Roman Catholic church without thinking we'll be damned to all eternity if the priest ever finds out we're not a Catholic. ...... but I don't suppose it means that at all. Any attempts at a proper translation into common English would be much appreciated.

At last! Someone with some common sense.

I am thinking of becoming a "Seddonite". Not some new religion but at last someone with a common sense view for the future of local government.

John Seddon is described as an "outspoken management thinker". He is only saying what I have been saying for a long while ........ but if people listen to him, I don't mind if he takes the credit.

He says "Targets always make performance worse. They are arbitrary measures which distort people's thinking and sub-optimise the system." Outsourcing and shared services in local government is "wasteful and pointless", and he is all for saving billions of pounds and making services run like clockwork by scrapping the entire "systems and inspections industry".
In other words Whitehall - let local government get on and do what it has to do without continually telling it how to do it, when to do it and how fast to do it. Local government has been around for a long time now ....... it knows how to operate efficiently and effectively and as cheaply as possible ....... unfortunately those who think they know better won't let it.
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/public_sector/article6733600.ece

Gottcha Dawkins

Oh dear! Richard Dawkins has finally been cornered by his own peers. Recent studies reported in the Sunday Times (6.9.09) [www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article6823229.ece ] have suggested that atheism may be fighting against nature. Humans have been hardwired by evolution to believe in God, scientists have suggested. The natural processes of evolution have ensured that those with religious beliefs tended to work together better and therefore stood a better chance of survival.

Professor Pascal Boyer, anthropologist of Washington University, holds out little hope for atheism and said "Religious thinking seems to be the path of least resistance for our cognitive systems. By contrast, disbelief is generally the work of deliberate, effortful work against our natural cognitive dispositions - hardly the easiest ideology to propagate."

Upside down priorities.

So much stupidity going on at the moment that it's difficult to know which example to pick!

This week's prize has got to go to the school which sacked a dinner lady because she told a child's parents that the girl was being bullied at school. In the minds of 99.99% of the population this was entirely the right thing to do. Somehow the school managed to justify sacking her on the grounds that the child's confidentiality had been breached! So keeping confidentially comes higher up the ethical scale than safeguarding a child's physical safety and human dignity does it? I pity any child at that school if they have to put up with this kind of warped thinking for very long.

Safeguarding - or revenue making?

The world hasn't got any saner since I've been away on holiday. The latest bad idea to hit the headlines is the Independent Safeguarding Authority, the body set up to register anyone who wants to work with children or vulnerable adults. It will shortly be an offence for anyone to work with these groups unless they are registered with this body!

When will the Government stop interfering with everyone's lives and just trust us to manage our own affairs? This stupid idea apparently sprung from the murder of two schoolgirls by a school caretaker. Nasty occurence, obviously, but exactly how is this kneejerk reaction going to prevent such cases? Even the policeman who was involved in the case can see no sense in this suggested solution www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/crime/article6834544.ece

Instead of identifying future murderers and paedophiles, all this is going to do is make a lot of unneccessary work for everyone and cost a fortune to administer. While the Government looks one way and asks for suggestions on how to cut public spending, its alter-ego looks the other way and sets up an expensive and completely ineffective quango. All this will show is whether or not the person being vetted has been caught before. Anyone who is any good at being a murderer or a pervert won't have been caught and won't have a record. I am convinced this is simply a very poorly disguised way of raising more taxes (I understand it will cost £64 to become registered. The requirement will apply to millions of people ...... that's , err....... quite a lot of money, thank you very much.
How many undesirables will it catch? ......... I would venture to suggest probably none.

I am sure I have said it here before, but I'll say it again. Every government department and every local government authority should employ a "Common Sense Officer" to vet all political decisions before they are put into practice. This seems to me to be the only way to stop the country completely disappearing down the plug hole!

Downsizing

I have been moaning for sometime about the "rabbit hutch" mentality in British housebuilding. But now it's official. A report from the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment [http://www.cabe.org.uk/publications/space-in-new-homes] says that new British homes often have barely enough room for proper furniture or even a microwave. Things have become so silly that many people are now renting out units in self-storage warehouses to keep all their possessions in and, in some cases, to live in part of the time. A room that would have been a walk-in cupboard in my youth is now designated as a single bedroom. A single bed is all that you can get into it. No room for a wardrobe, drawers or even a chair. British house sizes are now the smallest in Europe with an average floorspace of 818 sq.ft. compared to 1200 sq.ft. in France.

When I started in Local Government we had the "Parker Morris" standards which were designed to ensure that houses were fit to live in and provided a decent standard of accommodation. Somewhere along the line these standards went to the wall. Now anything goes. The more units you can cram onto a piece of land the more profit you make. Never mind whether anyone wants to live in them or not. Never mind whether people will go mad, get stressed, and probably come to an early demise if they do.

Despite all the government's rhetoric on "Decent Homes" they are doing absolutely nothing to ensure we get them. It would be quite a simple matter to deal with - classify housing accommodation as "1 person", "2 person", "3 person" accommodation etc, with or without a garden. Then get Local Authorities to refuse planning consent for any units which do not meet an appropriate space standard for their grade. Separate space standards should be set for both living accommodation and garden space. Then people would know exactly what they were getting when buying a house or flat and local Housing Authorities would be easily able to deal with overcrowding issues without people being able to claim that the cupboard under the stairs is really a bedroom. Bring back Parker Morris.