Almost Enough Rope

Chaplain Francis Stephen on Christmas in a London prison. Someone swiped an Advent candle but gave it back, plus memories of two unexpected gifts:

After the Christmas Day service a couple of years ago, a prisoner who spoke no English pressed something into my hand as he left. At first, I thought it was a piece of rubbish he was giving me to dispose of. Only after he had gone did I realise that I was holding not a ball of fluff, but a length of thread that had been plaited into a tiny cross and chain. The cross was less than an inch long, its arms the thickness of a pencil lead, but it had been so finely and tightly knotted that it was inflexible. It was beautiful. Heaven knows how many hours he spent making it. When I was next in the prison, I went looking for him to say thank you, but he had just been released. It’s one of the nicest presents I have ever received. The other time I found myself holding a piece of prison ropework, was rather less pleasant. I had been called to the wing to visit a prisoner who was lying with his face turned to the wall. The landing officer said he had been like that for days. I sat with the young man for the best part of an hour. Just as I got up to leave, he stopped me. ‘You’d better take this, guv,’ he said, as he reached under his bed to hand me a homemade rope formed into a noose.

Those British Aren't So Smart

They think Leo McGarry from "The West Wing" is real.

The Keynes English

Focusing on Britain's drastic round of public sector job cuts, the New York Times predictably mourns European governments' abandonment of John Maynard Keynes' theory we can overspend our way out of recession. But the Times says nothing about the 300,000 private sector jobs the "Spectator" says the British economy has created this year. Did the Tory mag just make it up?

300,000 New Jobs -- In England

Fiscal austerity appears to be working in England, according to this Allister Health article in the British "Spectator":

There will be real hardship for the soldiers and public-sector workers who are laid off. But job losses will not be the main problem the British economy faces over the next few years. The overall British story now is one of steadily rising employment, with 300,000 more jobs this year. The private sector continues to create jobs faster than the government is cutting them, and by the end of the cuts there should be a million more jobs than there are today.

And this editorial in the same issue:

The newspaper headlines may speak of 500,000 public-sector job cuts over the four years, but the same unreported forecasts suggest that 1.5 million new jobs will be created over the same period. The purpose of the cuts is to create more jobs, and better-paid jobs.

[Chancellor of the Exchequer George] Osborne was...right to point out that the amount paid in debt interest — £63 billion — is lower as a result of his being more ambitious in his spending reforms. This is a tangible benefit of austerity. Confidence in Britain’s economic future has lowered the cost of government borrowing, helping to secure the supply of cheap credit on which the tentative economic recovery depends. And it is working. The economy is creating jobs faster than the government will cut jobs: the result is more jobs, less poverty and quicker recovery. This, again, is the purpose of cuts.

That's Osborne, above (and no, he's not 17; he's 39). England's budget cuts (an average of 4% a year in overall government spending this and the next three years) are devastating for those who lose their jobs or depend on government services. Is it worth it if it helps the economy recover? People will have a variety of answers to that question. And then there are those who insist austerity doesn't work at all, such as Paul Krugman of the New York Times, who visited Germany in June and wrote as follows (his column is reproduced here from the British Guardian, along with its links):

Many economists, myself included, regard [Berlin's] turn to austerity as a huge mistake. It raises memories of 1937, when FDR's premature attempt to balance the budget helped plunge a recovering economy back into severe recession. And here in Germany a few scholars see parallels to the policies of Heinrich Brüning, the chancellor from 1930 to 1932, whose devotion to financial orthodoxy ended up sealing the doom of the Weimar Republic.

No sign so far in either England or Germany of such dire consequences, Meanwhile, in the U.S., after massive stimulus expenditures that have piled debt on debt, the recovery is stalling, and job creation is anemic.

When economists such as Krugman respond to the lingering crisis by arguing that we should spend even more, I'm tempted to think that their motives include an ideologically-rooted desire for the larger and more powerful and intrusive federal government that stumulus-based policies will inevitably leave behind. On the other side of the policy argument, the tea party's secretive sugar daddies talk about getting back to sound free enterprise principles, but they're just out for themselves, having benefited plenty from government largesse.

I wish macroeconomics were more of a science than an art, which might enable us to get the politicians and pundits out of it completely.

An Unanticipated Country

British novelist Penelope Lively (we've used a couple of her books, including Consequences and City Of The Mind, during adult Christian education classes at St. John's) reflects on aging while reviewing a new book on the subject written by...darn, I forget:

It is in a sense another country — and one we never anticipated. This reviewer (77) found herself nodding in agreement: the accumulation of ailments, the awful familiarity with hospital waiting-rooms, the black hole in the head into which disappear words and names. The way in which we no longer want the things that were once central to life: sex and shopping are cited. I was reminded of my father, in his eighties, gleefully recounting the comment of a contemporary of his: ‘D’you know, I used to be extremely interested in pretty girls, and now I can’t for the life of me remember why.’

You Read It Here First (And Maybe Last)

The British "Spectator" thinks Jeb Bush's running for president in 2012.

It's Not Fair. We're Reactionaries, Too!

Conservative British Anglican Peter Hitchens (Christopher's brother) covets the opprobrium being heaped on the pope by secularists he calls "68ers."

Eggspectations

Writing in the British "Spectator," Katie Grant, a lifelong British Roman Catholic and the member of a recusant family (whose members refused to attend the Church of England in earlier eras), doesn't object to the church's sins as much as its self-righteousness and whining:

What is neither understandable nor forgivable is the current collapse of the church into slithery, prickly victimhood. When, over child abuse, senior members bleat about the Church being unfairly singled out ‘although every institution has its rotten eggs, doesn’t it?’, I find myself shouting at the radio, ‘Do you understand nothing, you silly creature? If you claim to be conduits of God’s grace, you must expect a bit more stick than a judge or a policeman.’

Grasp The Nettle!

At the British "Spectator," another of Mary Killen's circuitous British solutions to vexing social problems:

Q. We have taken a house in Italy and are bringing out some good old friends to stay. Now we learn that some very friendly neighbours in England will be three miles away during the same week. We will certainly run into them while we are out there and they will definitely want to meet up. My husband will go mad if we see them even once but I do not want to offend them. What should I do?

Name and address withheld

A. Grasp the nettle. Ring the neighbour crooning that you have been maddened to hear that they will be there at the same time because you will not be able to see them. Say that it will not be a holiday for you as you have a VIP coming to stay and have to comply with all sorts of security regulations and anyone coming over will have to be vetted. Will they forgive you for not saying who the VIP is and for not asking them over? In the meantime, can you book them to come over to you for dinner when you are all back?

American Terrorists?

Writing in the British "Spectator," Rod Liddle says some Americans' criticism of Abdelbaset al-Megrah is rank hypocrisy:

In the single year before the Lockerbie bombing the IRA murdered 20 people, mainly civilians, and maimed thousands of others — 11 dead and many more injured in one single atrocity in Enniskillen in November 1987. That campaign of terror, waged against British citizens for more than 30 years, was bankrolled by donations from the USA — and in those 30 years not a single terrorist was extradited from the US to face charges here, despite our repeated requests. Both federal and local US courts refused extradition requests almost as policy, while the funding of the IRA continued without interruption and was still raking in the money even after 9/11, when the Americans suddenly decided that they ought to start proscribing certain terrorist groups. The IRA was not, for some time, one of the groups so proscribed.

I Say, Good Chap, Please Get Out Of My Lap

Leave it to the British to solve this ancient problem. From the London "Spectator"'s Dear Mary column:

Q. I wonder if you could turn your mind to a distressing problem affecting those of us confined to the pleb class of aircraft and not in a financial position to nibble canapés up front with the co-pilot. What does one do when the...person in front unilaterally decides to press the button entitling him or her to some hours of snore-laden sleep and you to a lapful of coffee? I’ve just come back from a (delightful) trip to New Zealand with stopovers in Hong Kong, and it happened four times. I’m too polite to pretend that my coffee has shot into the air and landed on the back of their neck.

J.B., London N1

A. Respond by leaning forward immediately, and before the offender has nodded off, to ask, concernedly, is he or she is all right? Explain that their chair came back with such force you suspect it may be broken and may collapse fully while they are asleep. Would they like you to call the stewardess? Wear an anxious facial expression. In this way you will get the message across.

Israel, Palestinians, And "Useless Outrage"

Writing in the "Spectator" about her postwar visit to Gaza, Mary Wakefield:

Richard Ben Cramer’s excellent book, How Israel Lost, puts it like this: ‘On the Palestinian side the conflict has more or less replaced life — or cooked it to a standstill. Among the Jews, the effects are harder to pinpoint, or more insidious — because the whole point of Israel was to create a place where Jews could live the best life — and liveliest — in accordance with their values.’ What has happened to values when Jewish children are inured to the idea of collective punishment, to the effects of white phosphorous and dime bombs? What has happened to Israel’s admirable ‘Purity of Arms’ when young Israelis fighting for the side we think of as right leave graffiti in Gaza like this: ‘We came to annihilate you’; ‘Death to the Arabs’; ‘Kahane was right’; ‘No tolerance’; ‘We came to liquidate’.

It’s not just the soldiers who are warped by the war. Haaretz, Israel’s oldest daily newspaper, reports this week that 68 per cent of Israeli Jews would refuse to live in the same apartment building as an Israeli Arab.

‘Twenty years ago I would have called Israel a nice little socialist country, with one problem,’ writes Ben Cramer. ‘Now I’d say the “one problem” has eaten up the rest of the country.’ It eats up the rest of the world too. Everyone’s got an opinion; everyone’s flushed with useless outrage one way or the other.

"Lent Is Excised"

Charles Moore, editor of the British "Spectator," is one Anglican who pays attention to the words of the hymns in church, recognizing that they are expressions of prayer and praise to God:

At the beginning of Lent, the hymn ‘Forty days and forty nights’ is sung. Singing it this Sunday, I noticed that the words were different. In the original, the third and fourth stanzas go:

‘Shall not we thy sorrows share/ And from earthly joys abstain,/ Fasting with unceasing prayer/ Glad with thee to suffer pain?

And if Satan, vexing sore, / Flesh or spirit should assail,/ Thou his vanquisher before,/ Grant we may not faint nor fail.’

The Celebration Hymnal in front of me said:

‘Let us thy endurance share/ And from earthly greed abstain/ With thee watching unto prayer,/With thee strong to suffer pain.

Then if evil on us press/ Flesh or spirit to assail,/Victor in the wilderness,/ Help us not to swerve or fail!’

The changes are an almost perfect example of bowdlerising. Necessary antitheses vanish — ‘Sorrows’ are the opposite of ‘joys’ but ‘endurance’ is not the opposite of ‘greed’ . You are ‘glad’ to suffer pain because that is the opposite of what is normally expected: being ‘strong’ to suffer pain is what one would generally hope to be. ‘Flesh’, being weak, ‘faints’: why would it ‘swerve’? Fasting is removed, as are Satan and the temptation he offers. In short, Lent is excised.

Political Memory Banks

A columnist for the British "Spectator," Fraser Nelson, describes an unexpected (if not unintended) consequence of the nationalization of British banks: The apparent requirement of those seeking loans to disclose their private political associations. He writes:

Geoff Robbins, a Cheshire-based computer consultant, recently approached [the state-controlled Royal Bank of Scotland] to ask for a credit-card processing facility for his business. After the usual bankers’ inquisition, he was asked a question that knocked him for six: did he have any political affiliation? Did he know any MPs, councillors or mayors? It was a new question, the lady explained to him, which had been introduced soon after the government took control of RBS. She said, in his paraphrase, that ‘political influences may be used for corrupt purposes’.

No Awkwardness, Please; We're British

At the "Spectator" in London, Mary Killen, in her "Ask Mary" column, helps readers escape awkward situations without giving offense, an English cultural imperative. Several years ago, an Anglican from the north of England wrote in complaining that when she went to church in London, the liturgy included the opportunity to greet those sitting nearby between the ministry of the Word and Holy Eucharist. Churches call this passing the peace. She said that since she greeted people before and after the service, she saw no reason to do so in the middle. In the U.S., we'd smile or grimace, shake our heads, and say no thank you. Mary advised the reader to go to church with her right arm in a sling and gesture at it apologetically to escape being grasped or hugged.

Here's a more recent example:

Q. My 12-year-old son and I braved the snow last week to keep an appointment for him to look at a school. On the much delayed journey back to Paddington I was walking through to the buffet car when I saw two friends of a friend who kindly suggested I fetch my son and come and join them. Having said I would, I immediately regretted it because it meant my son (who boards) and I would not be able to chat together alone. I could not think of a way to backtrack and dragged him through to both of our regrets. How could I have explained that I had changed my mind without causing offense, Mary?

J.N., London W12

A. You could have made a show of going to your son’s carriage and then returning to announce that since he had fallen asleep you had better not leave him to wake up and wonder where on earth you were.

That's Some Car

Joan Collins, reporting a little too breathlessly on the Inauguration:

[Obama] arrived in a specially made Cadillac, constructed to withstand a nuclear attack...

A Very British Analogy

The pro-Israel "Spectator" on Jan. 3:

Those who criticize Israel's actions should consider what Britain would have done if Sinn Fein had come to power in the Irish Republic during the Troubles and rockets had been regularly fired across the border. It is hard to imagine Her Majesty's Government sitting idly by.

Confidence Will Come Surging Back

Boris Johnson, mayor of London and former editor of the Spectator, is bullish on the economy, as bad in England as here:

It was the great Colonel Kilgore in "Apocalypse" Now who said, ‘Some day this war’s gonna end.’ And some day this recession is going to end too. Confidence is going to come surging back with all the biological inevitability of the new infatuation that follows a broken heart. In the meantime, there’s always bicycle hire schemes and bacon sandwiches.