College Knowledge

I am pleased to see that the Northern Echo ("County Durham's Daily Newspaper") has picked up the story of the proposed changes to the collegiate system at Durham.

I have been trying to stay out of this, since I am still here. Type in "Lindsay", and see the first thing that comes up.

From a University computer, you even get my University email address rather than the form, although they both work, and the address is the same as it has been since 30th September 1997.

My staff card is valid until 30th November 2017, just over 20 years after I arrived. Although it is hardly the first staff card that I have ever had here, and I have no intention that it be the last.

But ... well, you know "but" what.

Enough is enough.

Registering

Rowenna Davis writes:

Picture this. You are 19 years old and you manage to get down to the polling station on election day. Maybe you finally make up your mind about who to vote for as you walk in the door.

But before you get that far, you're stopped. "Sorry Miss, you're not on the electoral register. I'm afraid you won't be able to vote today."

This kind of humiliation is already felt by many in this country.

Returning officers in Southampton, where I live, have told me horror stories about tension rising when a number of young people were turned away in 2010 simply because they hadn't registered. The sad fact is that just 56% of 19-24 year-olds are on the electoral register and eligible to vote, as opposed to 94% of those aged over 65.

Similar discrepancies are found if you compare home owners with renters, or black and minority ethnic groups with white residents. These people don't even show up on turnout figures. They are not just voiceless, they are invisible.

This crisis is about to get even worse under the government's new proposals for individual voter registration.

In the past, one member of a household could sign up everyone living at the property on to the electoral register. From June, every person will have to sign up individually or they can expect to be turned away at the ballot box.

Labour candidates have been shouting from the rooftops about this problem for some time.

Now Sadiq Khan, the shadow justice secretary, has come out in favour of allowing electoral registration on voting day, a system that has raised turnout in the US. It means that if someone turns up to the voting booth and realises they are not on the list, they can simply sign up on the day and still place their vote.

It's one of a number of measures proposed by Labour.

John Spellar, the MP for Warley, has been encouraging councils to let residents opt in to the electoral roll when they are in contact with public and government services, such as when making council tax payments, buying parking permits or applying for a passport.

It is telling that these measures are being picked up fastest in councils under Labour control.

The government says that individual voter registration is needed to prevent fraud, and I expect it would reject Labour's proposed solutions on the same grounds. The problem is that there is no evidence to support its position.

According to the Electoral Commission, there have been less than 10 proven cases of electoral registration fraud in the past four years, and it's not clear how this new system – which allows you to register online without a paper trail or signature to check – can solve this problem.

Even if by some weird twist the government proposals did reduce fraud, the cost in terms of potentially thousands of people dropping off the register and being turned away at the polls doesn't seem worth it. Why should the wrongs of a few mean that the many are punished?

So we must ask what the real motive behind these registration changes is.

Sadly, I fear it is in the Conservative party's interest to suppress the number of citizens who are able to vote.

This is a party that opposed universal suffrage and caused a massive decline in the number of people on the electoral roll through Margaret Thatcher's plans for a poll tax, which resulted in many people dropping off the list for fear of having to pay.

The party knows that the groups vulnerable to the change – renters, BME groups, young people – are unlikely to vote for it. The groups left voting will be the relatively powerful in society, and so our politics will become more likely to serve them and their interests, cutting the less fortunate out of the conversation.

Of course, all the technical solutions in the world will not fix the problems of declining voter turnout. There are huge issues that politicians and parties of both sides have to address to restore public trust and inspire people to want to register in the first place.

But the government's proposed changes will make things worse.

If individuals are being turned away from polling stations for reasons they cannot understand they will lose faith in democracy, and our political system is impoverished by becoming smaller. We cannot allow this to happen.

However you choose to vote, give yourself the choice. Register here and spread the word.

No Kiev Chickenhawks Here

From Tim Stanley on the involvement of neo-Nazis, to Robert Fisk on the connection to Syria, facts and common sense prevail.

Reverend and Honourable

The title to this post would serve as that of a collection of studies of each of the clergymen who have ever sat in the House of Commons. I am surprised that no one has ever written it.

I am raising a glass on this ninetieth anniversary of the first ever rebellion against a Labour Government, by the Reverend Herbert Dunnico, MP for Consett. Having opposed the First World War, he was continuing to oppose apparent preparations for a repetition. Yes, as early as 1924. As the successor to the Consett seat, North West Durham bears the legacy both of Dunnico and of the rather more recently deceased figure of David Watkins.

It is much to my regret that Watkins is no longer with us to lend his support to the ongoing project in which I am involved, and which has the very strong support of local trade union leaders of national and international importance, to secure a triple memorial to those who performed non-military service during the First World War, to the ILP Brigade that went to fight Fascism and was killed by the agents of Stalinism, and to the Fallen of British Palestine, which was once a country on the map and with the Union Flag in the corner of her own, until bombed out of existence by the founders of modern terrorism.

The first, at least, is firmly in the tradition of Dunnico, and the second is firmly in the tradition of Watkins, that figure of international significance and of staggering prescience, who represented this area for 17 years before the Israel Lobby took advantage of boundary changes to replace him with a rather more modestly accomplished man who was 10 years older, whose mind was already starting to go, but who it was common knowledge was only keeping the seat warm for his daughter.

She went on to be the Local Government Minister under a Prime Minister who wanted to abolish both local government and the party that, then as now, it most sustained. He was nominally the Leader of that party, much to his distress.

After that, she served as that Prime Minister's Chief Whip at the time of the invasion of Iraq. The Lobby that, by fouler means than fair, had installed her father, and thus her, certainly had to cause in the end to be glad that it had done so. Even if a Special Adviser from that period, in one of the Departments of which Blairites are still proudest of their achievements, recently described her to me as, "never exactly in the intellectual vanguard of the Movement." I was shocked, I tell you. Truly shocked.

But she was Herbert Dunnico and David Watkins combined, when compared to the more-or-less male Katie Hopkins to whom, in the absence of any heir of her body, she had wished to bequeath this seat. The all-women shortlist that spared us that, and which had several other strong candidates on it in addition to the first rate one who was selected, cannot be all that bad a system, really.

Moral Vision

Giles Fraser writes:

Why are we so angry? By we, I mean the clergy. Because this is what the government has been hearing via our bishops and archbishops over the past few days. So let me explain.

Apparently, benefit cuts are popular with the electorate. The idea has been sold to the public that there is a whole class of scroungers which prefers to lounge around on the sofa all day, watching telly, smoking spliffs and drinking lager.

Going out and getting a job makes little economic sense to such people. They are lazy and dissolute. An insult to hard-working families everywhere. And nobody likes to have the piss taken out of them, which is what the sofa-lolling brigade have been doing to the rest of us.

The "moral" case for benefit cuts is an attempt to re-establish a culture of personal responsibility. It is an attack on the feckless.

We are angry because this is such a distorted picture, an extrapolation from a tiny number of cases into some sort of general rule.

And this rule is now being used to disparage a whole class of vulnerable people whose greatest crime in life is to find themselves struggling to get by in the chill winds of a financial climate that was absolutely not of their making.

Since Christmas, my church has turned itself into a homeless shelter once a week. Volunteers cook large batches of shepherd's pie for hungry people who have been wandering the streets most of the day.

We provide a warm bed and a safe place to hang out for the evening. Camp beds are set up in the nave of the church. And bacon rolls and porridge are provided for breakfast.

Unfortunately, business is thriving. There is a waiting list for beds. Homelessness has risen 60% in London over the past two years. And half a million people now rely on food banks.

It's not just churches that are volunteering in this way. And many who help out with us are not themselves religious.

But given the local nature of the parish system, and given that churches have an outpost in every community in this country, the clergy are uniquely positioned to understand the effect that financial cuts are having on the ground.

And what makes many of us so bloody angry is that the reality of what is happening is not being acknowledged by politicians in government. They don't feel the need to face this reality because the war against the scroungers is so popular.

So long as the rightwing press keeps stoking our sense of indignation at those who exploit the system, the government has little incentive to admit the much wider reality that austerity is turning pockets of Britain into wastelands of hopelessness.

The scrounger tag has become a way to blame the poor for their poverty. How convenient. Those who created this financial crisis have got away scot free, protected by their money and their lobbying power. So now we blame the poor, a much easier target.

David Cameron, in responding to the churches, has insisted that his is a moral vision too.

But no moral vision worthy of the name can remain indifferent to the hunger and homelessness of others. This is morality 101.

Indeed, far from operating out of a moral instinct, the government has poisoned the wells of public sympathy by amplifying a fear that vulnerable people are actually sniggering cheats.

Nothing about this shameless sleight of hand is moral. In fact, it's right out of the bullying handbook. Maybe – just maybe – he is feeling a little bit guilty about all of this. And we often blame those who make us feel guilty.

Or we just ignore them. It's so much easier than admitting our own responsibility for the misery of others.

No, prime minister: this is not moral – it's a national scandal.

Cardinal Virtue

Fr Alexander Lucie-Smith writes:

Archbishop Nichols was at my ordination, though it happened quite by chance. In those days he was an auxiliary bishop in Westminster, and he was leading a Martyrs’ Walk (as I think it was called) which passed the Church in which my ordination had taken place. He and his fellow walkers thus caught the tail end of the party.

Funnily enough, I had met him only a few days prior to that at another ordination. I remember him telling a small group of us something that I have never forgotten: you bless people making a sign of the Cross in the vertical plane, and you bless objects making a sign of the Cross in the horizontal plane.

This is something I have always remembered and done my best always to do. The then Bishop Nichols told us that he had been told this by Cardinal Hume.

I next met the soon-to-be cardinal, when he had just become Archbishop of Westminster, at a symposium organised by the Institute for Economic Affairs on the subject of overseas aid.

I was there to give a brief paper about my experiences in Africa where I had seen the results of aid projects “on the ground”, and I spoke about what the Italians call “cattedrali nel deserto” (cathedrals in the deserts), what we English might term white elephants, that is to say aid projects that are not really of any use to people in Africa.

The archbishop listened very carefully and made notes of what I said; I was very pleased on that occasion to have his ear, aware that my position on foreign aid, though shared by many Africans, is not held by many Europeans, especially not those in the aid industry itself.

I last saw Archbishop Nichols at a function organised by the friends of Westminster Cathedral. He went round the room saying hello to people in a very affable way – he is not in the slightest bit grand.

“How are you?” I asked. He stopped and thought carefully: “I think I can say,” he said, “All things considered, that I am very well.” An honest answer to an honest question!

As I write this, Vincent is preparing to become our newest English cardinal.

I am delighted by the appointment, and gratified that he has been chosen by the Pope. It is a great thing for him personally, and a great thing for all of us English Catholics too.

It is particularly remarkable because so many sees that might have had a cardinal have not been given one this time around, simply because the Pope has wished, quite rightly, to internationalise and de-Europeanise the Sacred College.

Venice and Turin have not made it, but Westminster has. It is clear the Pope must think highly of Vincent, and presumably knows him quite well from various international gatherings where the two men met long before the Bergoglio papacy began.

Vincent, as I said above, is not in the least bit chilly or grand, which is something he shares with the Pope.

Like the Holy Father, he was born in ordinary circumstances, as were Pius X and John Paul I. Vincent’s parents were teachers, which I suppose represents a higher social standing than those of the Popes I have mentioned (railway man, postman, factory worker respectively).

But, the fact remains, Vincent has been a parish priest, and can mix easily with his fellow Catholics. He knows of the challenges they face. He cares about them. He particularly cares about those who are facing the challenge of unemployment, or precarious and underpaid employment.

When Pope Francis was elected one of his fellow cardinals asked him not to forget the poor.

The poor are too often forgotten, invisible even, in our society. But there was no chance that Pope Francis would forget the poor. And there is no chance Cardinal Nichols ever will either.

And neither will he allow us to forget them – for which I am profoundly grateful.

What Is Happening On The Ground

Andrew Brown writes:

The 26 Anglican bishops who signed a letter denouncing the coalition government's welfare cuts are part of a central Christian tradition that is growing as the hard times continue.

The food bank movement and the campaign against payday lenders have the support of almost all Christians in Britain.

Even the evangelical HTB movement, often derided as an upper-class dating agency, does a great deal of social work, poverty relief and outreach to prisoners.

There is no connection at all between right-wing economic views and theological conservatism. The fundamentalist Salvation Army does almost nothing except work for the poor [shame about workfare].

It was the conservative Roman Catholic church that opened the latest round of hostilities with the government when Archbishop Vincent Nichols criticised the effects that the policies of his fellow Catholic Iain Duncan Smith, the work and pensions secretary, were having.

The interventions have stung the government, and with good reason. The churches are very much larger than any British political party.

Even the Methodist church has more paying members than the Conservative or Labour parties – more than the Conservatives and Ukip together.

The Church of England has five times as many people in church every Sunday than the number of Tory party members.

David Cameron and Nick Clegg have both struck back.

Cameron wrote in the Telegraph: "The moral case for welfare reform is every bit as important as making the numbers add up … Whatever your religious or spiritual perspective … It is wrong to penalise those who work hard and do the right thing while rewarding those who can work, but don't."

While they accept the government has a moral agenda, few bishops believe that is what is driving welfare reforms. Nick Baines, the bishop of Bradford, blogged:

"The government [should] just say: 'We are determined to get people off welfare dependency and to reduce the tax burden of welfare, so we are prepared for people to starve and become destitute in order to achieve that longer-term goal; they won't take responsibility until forced to do so.' Harsh? Yes, but honest. And at least we would know what we were dealing with."

Baines did not sign the letter, published in the Daily Mirror. In one of the most significant political interventions by members of the church in many years, they warned of a "national crisis" forcing people to use food banks because of "cutbacks to and failures in the benefit system". Mothers, they said, "were skipping meals to better feed their children".

Baines says he would have signed the letter, but wasn't asked. And that brings out another important feature of the row: it is decentralised and spontaneous.

There is some evidence from polling that the government's strategy is popular with Christians, if not with their leaders.

A large survey conducted by YouGov for the Westminster Faith Debates found that 69% of Anglicans agreed that "Britain's current welfare system has created a culture of dependency", as did 59% of Catholics, while only a quarter of Anglicans and less than a third of Catholics thought that "most people on welfare are the victim of circumstance beyond their control".

This hostility was clearly marked even among regular churchgoers [yes, but that is not how theology works; 80 per cent of them are also in favour of assisted suicide, but that is not an argument].

Some bishops think the answer to this is simply to preach louder and more often. Tim Stevens, the bishop of Leicester, said recently on Radio 4:

"I believe that it's impossible to read the gospels without seeing that concern for the poor is absolutely integral to any understanding of what Christian life or Christian values are, and if you say to me that that's not really understood by or grasped by significant numbers of church members, then … it is the task of preachers and teachers to communicate those values more effectively."

The Anglican bishops' letter was signed by 41 senior clergy, including two Quakers and many Methodists. This is an issue which unites churches across the theological spectrum – a unity that marks a change from the struggles of the 1980s, when the Church of England appeared as the most coherent opposition to Thatcherism [well, the one that could get on television in those days, yes].

In those days there was a significant body of Christian opinion that argued that the operations of the welfare state were themselves demoralising and tended towards immorality.

People such as Brian Griffiths, the head of Thatcher's policy unit, and the ideologue Digby Anderson, who founded the Social Affairs Unit thinktank, believed that it was their Christian duty to attack the social democratic ideology.

They saw Catholics and free churches as standing up for an individual responsibility that the Church of England had forgotten [they cannot have read anything by the Catholic and Free Churches, in that case]. That's over now. The Catholics and the free churches have joined the chorus of criticism [they were never out of it, with their attendees voting solidly Labour in the 1980s and in 2010, in stark contrast to the C of E's in either case].

Disputes about the legitimacy of social democracy and the dangers of paternalism continue. But even people who believe that the present welfare system is morally corrosive accept the urgency of preventing hunger.

At the same time, it's much rarer now to find a bishop who believes that the system doesn't need reform – just not these reforms done the way that they have been.

Canon Angus Ritchie of the Contextual Theology Centre, a charity that works with inner city churches, said:

"The quality of debate is much better now, but the reality on the ground is much worse. We're seeing less paternalism and more practicality.

"It is a complete misreading that this is an attack on the principle of welfare reform, but there is a feeling that the way the reforms are working is subverting their purpose. If someone comes off a short-term and insecure job and finds there's no money available for food, that's not an incentive to work."

On his weekly radio show, Nick Clegg said it was wrong to say the safety net had been removed.

The government, he said, had to deal with a "massive black hole in our public finances", and there was "nothing fair about simply saying we are not going to deal with our debts, we are going to let our children and our grandchildren do it".

The church will perhaps rightly believe its views cannot be ignored. The Christian churches have a wide social spread: they are represented all the way from the inner cities to the House of Lords.

This gives them a sense of what is happening on the ground which few politicians can hope for.