This week a moment of sanity that could begin to unpick the web of PC stupidity that councillors, bureaucrats, and secularists in general weave (and sadly, a group which includes far too many teachers and Guardian viewers) came from a very unexpected source – the Muslim Council of Britain. PC advocates and practitioners have the sheer arrogance to assume and act on ‘offence’ vicariously, without actually bothering to check with the people they consider to be ‘victims’. So the word ‘brainstorming’, for intensive and non-critical think-ins designed to generate ideas, was banned (by a government department, no less) in case it offended people with epilepsy. Did they bother to check with the Epilepsy Society to see if anybody with epilepsy was likely to be offended? No. But the Society very sensibly carried out its own survey in 2005 to see what people with epilepsy thought, and 93% weren’t offended in the least. One response read -

"I have no objection whatsoever to the term brainstorming. I am sure the public do not, in any way, associate this with epilepsy, so why should we?"

It didn’t do any good, though. Political Correctness is still with us, corroding our language and denying us access to our own past, as though we were not capable of making up our own minds, given the benefit of hindsight. PC is informed by nothing more than petit-mindedness and a woeful failing of education, and it puts too much power in the hands of people not intellectually equipped to wield it.

I’ve fulminated at length about PC in modern hymn books, where not even the poetry of Robert Bridges is safe from the hands of  vandals (most of whom can’t even grasp the difference between the archaic –est and –eth verb suffixes, though their schoolboy howlers provide much mirth in many a vestry and choirstall.)

What the Muslim Council of Britain did this week was to challenge,  very politely and  wittily, people who take offence on somebody else’s behalf. It is a response from wise Muslims to stupidities like ‘Winter Festival’ in Birmingham (Christmas renamed so as not to offend Muslims.) That bit of nonsense offended me, and I'm a Christian.

http://www.mcb.org.uk/keep-calm-christmas/

Holiday insurance - for suckers

My wife and I tend to to take our holidays together, When you've been married to the same person for a few years, such as and eg nearly 48 of them, it's what you do. You plan the holiday, you pay for the holiday, and you look forward to the holiday during the dismal winter months. 

But ah! there's a catch that you only find out about if you have to cancel at the last minute because one of you is suddenly taken ill. That holiday insurance, which cost you a big chunk of the holiday itself, is per person, not per couple. While your nearest and dearest is mopping your fevered brow as you're convulsing and hallucinating with a temperature of 105F, your insurance company is drafting the letter which says: 'so only one of you is dead, then?' And you've cancelled very late (says your travel company) so there are penalties. 

You'll be lucky to get back 40% of the cost of your joint holiday.

Spouses do not desert each other, however great the disappointment at losing a holiday. What do insurance companies expect? That husband will hook up with a temporary surrogate wife, and wife with temporary surrogate husband, for the duration of the holiday? And what do they sign in at the hotel as - Mr and Mrs Smith? Some hotels still look a bit askance at such goings-on.

When a couple take out insurance for a holiday, the insurance should cover both in the event of cancellation by either.

But it's not going to happen. Insurance works by virtue (if that's the right word) of the small print, with all those exclusion clauses that mean they don't have to pay out if you've ever had an ingrowing toenail or an aunt with dandruff.

We're wiser now. Next holiday my wife has invited Hugh Quarshie to step in if I am unavoidably dead, and I am torn between Carol Vordeman and Tuppence Middleton. Oops, sorry. Hugh Smith. Carol Smith. Tuppence Smith.

But we won't be travelling with the same coach company and their insurers again. Ever.

Some thoughts over sloppy reportage

We used to keep a foam-rubber brick for hurling at at the telly, but it disappeared in a house move. I miss it (the brick, not the telly - I was a very good shot). I've given up waiting for the hypothetical, though perfectly possible 'US troops evacuated over Iraq' because there's now a more insidious assault on the English language than the all-purpose preposition 'over' - and that is the prevalence of the dramatic present (aka historic present) in news reports, usually at tea-time when innocent children might be watching. Newspaper headlines use the historic present for two good reasons - it has impact and immediacy, and it takes less space, 's' being shorter than 'ed'. But once the headline is out of the way, newspaper reporting reverts to a more conventional linguistic treatment of past, present and future.

Not telly reporting, though. Tense abuse is widespread, often with ludicrous consequences when desperate newsreaders try to cope with the tripe the work-experience kids who write the reports churn out, lacking any familiarity with the pluperfect or anything else much, innit. Tense shifting simply doesn't work in TV reportage. "Police are now searching the area. Later, a spokesperson said..." It's nonsense.. It's Doctor Who territory. 

Just two quotes:

"If you introduce things which are past as present and now taking place, you will make your story no longer a narration but an actuality."
(Longinus, On the Sublime. Out of print, publisher unknown, authorship uncertain, but probably 1st or 3rdC AD)

"Avoid the use of the historical present unless the narrative is sufficiently vivid to make the use spontaneous. The historical present is one of the boldest of figures and, as is the case with all figures, its overuse makes a style cheap and ridiculous."
(James Finch Royster and Stith Thompson, Guide to Composition. Scott, Foresman, 1919)

Rant over (oh bugrit, I've used that word)

Really really interesting blogs

Very rarely an interesting and literate blog turns up while surfing. Cathy Thinks and Mary Jackson are today joined as a favourite by 

http://theidlewoman.blogspot.co.uk/

(blog pseudonym Leander).

Browse, read, possibly enjoy. It's centred on history and historical fiction, true, but that's just the start.

Them and Us - a parable for our times

During Christian Aid week a friend who is also a Canon of the church, who spent her working life among street children and AIDS orphans in Kenya and was awarded the MBE for it, went freelance with a collecting tin to two village venues where people foregather on a Saturday - the golf club, where the great and the good hang out, and the workmen's club, where they tend not to lest they be seen as class traitors. Guess where every single half-pint present made a contribution, and where not a single Pimms No 1 could find even a brass halfpenny that they could spare. 

Creationism, and Elvis is alive and living on Mars

“Children should be taught about creationism in science lessons to avoid alienating those of strong faith, according to new research.

A study by academics at the University of York claims creationism should be tackled by science teachers in order to engage their religious pupils.”

Oh dear, here we go again. That’s from today’s Times

I wholly agree that young people studying the sciences should learn about Creationism, but it has nothing do with ‘faith’. Scientists of any age need to be able to distinguish between good science and science-hocum, into which latter category the cult of Creationism falls neatly and wholly.

Creationism, New Creationism, or Intelligent Design, is the second attempt by a group of Christian fundamentalists in the US to argue for the existence of a Creator God by denouncing Darwinian evolutionary theory and pointing to apparent scientific ‘truths’ in their garish, populist literature – the absence of a fossil record in Pre-Cambrian rocks, or the impossibility that evolution alone could account for the existence of the flagellar motor. The problem with the quasi-science of Creationists is simply that it’s bad science, and it needs good science, and good scientists, to knock this non-science on the head once and for all and stop it polluting young minds.

So by all means put this stuff on the science syllabus in schools and universities, but don’t pretend that it has anything to do with faith. 

Oh, and make sure that the reading list includes this:

Young, Mark, and Edis, Taner (eds). Why intelligent design fails: a scientific critique of the new creationism. Rutgers University Press, 2004.

It’s a collection of essays by leading scientists in their fields, but the editors’ introduction alone is worth the cost of the book. It’s 10 years old now, but the Discovery Institute, home of Intelligent Design, is still turning out its garish propaganda

When I checked a couple of months ago it was £68, so I borrowed a copy, but it now has to go back to the issuing library. I’ve just ordered a second-hand copy from the US via Amazon - £12, incl p&p.

There should be a copy in every science classroom in the country. Scrap that other cultish non-science, Brain Gym, and put the money to better use.

And as for Faith – why should anybody think that there is a conflict between knowledge, understanding, and faith?

Knott End bus services - pt 2

Lancashire County Council has relented in the matter of closure of evening and weekend bus services in some of the most remote villages and townships along the Fylde Coast. Faced with such a huge tide of opposition from local residents, including a petition organised by a very competent and forceful young woman (still in her late teens, I believe) who is currently Garstang’s Youth Mayor, the council has done a good job of spin so that voters will feel reassured and not protest through the ballot box, something that always terrifies party leaders.

Yes, the county council has to make colossal savings in services and jobs, but it’s not all to do with the state of the economy or where the money is coming from for HS2. It is, of course, because of national, not local politicking. When government policies go badly skew-whiff it's much easier to blame local councils and cut their budgets as punishment. If there is a finger to point at all in the miry world of politics it should point at just one man – Eric Pickles, the minister for communities who, in a paraphrase of his own words (apparently), just loves bashing local government. Mr Pickles is, you might think, an intravenous Tory, but his biography on Wikipedia tells a slightly different story –

“...He was born into a Labour supporting family – his great grandfather was one of the founders of the Independent Labour Party, and described himself as "massively inclined" towards communism as a boy – but he [ie Mr Eric Pickles MP, basher of local government – ed.] joined the Conservative Party in 1968 after the Soviet Union invaded Czechoslovakia ...”

Eric Pickles achieved  prominence by becoming the Leader of the Conservative Group on Bradford City Council in 1988 – his first significant leg-up on the political ladder, and afforded by a local authority, you will note, that organ of government he affects most to despise. But on the (Tory) Mayor’s casting vote in September 1988 Pickles’s Conservative group took control, and one of Pickles’s first triumphant acts was to axe the small Equal Opportunities section, SERIS, set up by the previous Labour administration in the city library. It was a political act of almost supreme hypocrisy, because Pickles was at the same time chair of the Joint Committee Against Racism, now leader of the council of a very large and multicultural city, and this section of the library had been set up specifically to help to counter racial and gender prejudice.

But ‘Equal Opportunities’ was a no-no for Tories in the Thatcherite 1980s – and hardly surprisingly, because social equality and tolerance have never figured high on the agenda of the party of the privileged classes. And while the Iron Lady’s closest chum, Dame Shirley Porter, was flogging off homes in exchange for Tory votes in Westminster, for which she was later personally fined £12,300,000 by the District Auditor under Tory legislation originally designed to punish illegal spending by Labour councils, social inequalities were increasing and the race riots of 1995 and 2001 were imminent, though not foreseen.

Now Mr Pickles is in government and engaging in his favourite sport, and, to wrest the latest Tory no-brain cliché from them, ‘hardworking families’ (ie us plebs) are suffering, (and by the way, 'hard-working' is a compound adjective which still needs a hyphen.)

One of the reasons they are suffering is that the coalition government thinks that Eric Pickles is a suitable person to be local government minister. A distinguished CofE cleric this week wrote of the paucity of (male) candidate parsons for the episcopacy thus: 'this shallow pool [of suitable people] has been overfished', and the metaphor is also apt when applied to the Coalition government.

The Conservative Party has lost something like half of its supporters since the last election, most of them disenchanted women, and in the words of Tim Yeo, deselected this week by his local party:

“We have a shrinking membership which means you tend to get predominantly among those remaining activists people with probably more extreme views than the average Conservative voter, and that applies to issues like the EU, on issues like gay marriage..." reported in the Daily Telegraph, here

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/conservative/10625690/Tim-Yeo-interview-Fear-of-Ukip-will-drive-the-Tories-to-defeat.html

So don’t blame our county councillors for a funding crisis which led them to look for savings in rural bus services. Stop blaming Lancashire CC and pin the blame where it belongs. On Mr Eric Pickles, MP, Communities Minister, and now, heaven help anybody who doesn't live on top of a mountain, Minister for Floods. Or perhaps he should be given a new title – Minister for Local Government Bashing.

And don’t for a moment think that I’m rabidly anti-Tory, because I’m not. We have some very able Tories serving on our parish, district and county councils, and several of them are good friends. It’s when politicians of any hue lose the idea of service to those who didn’t elect them, as well as to those who did, and start to act in self-interest or party self-interest, that the trouble starts. And there's an awful lot of trouble about.

Knott End bus services

This from the Lancashire County Council website -

“Lancashire has an extensive network of bus services, from high frequency bus services serving urban areas, to rural bus services providing a vital community link.

Lancashire County Council works in partnership with local bus operators, and we are committed to providing high quality bus travel, allowing you to travel easily and safely within the county.”

(my italics.)

Apparently there’s a public consultation exercise going on about proposed cuts to the 2C, 86 and 89 bus services between Lancaster and Blackpool, but if you can find any information about it on the Lancashire County Council, Wyre BC or Blackpool Transport websites you’re a better man than me.  The cuts, which would come into force in 2014, would mean no services at all on Sundays, and no weekday or Saturday services after 7:00pm. And all this just as Blackpool Victoria Hospital is about to begin evening appointments.

A Vital Community Link?

So anyone living in, say, Cockerham or Glasson Dock, or Pilling and Stakepool, Hambleton, Stalmine or Knott End-on-Sea, who relies on buses to get home from work, or to keep hospital appointments or visits, including our clergy visits to the sick in Blackpool Vic hospital, or to get home after school or college evening activities, is going to be a bit stuck. Schoolchildren. College students. Shiftworkers. Nurses and other NHS staff. Shop assistants.  People who'd been to the theatre in Blackpool. And many of them are voters, as well as council tax-payers, and they certainly know how to use the ballot box. We are not hicks and yokels in West Lancashire. Some of us even have the Internet, as well as the electric light and indoor privies.

In West Wyre villages alone there are some 11,000 residents, many of whom rely on the rural bus services, these vital community links,  that Lancashire County Council is so proud of.

No doubt the county will argue money and falling bus occupancy. Hm. I worked in local government long enough to know how easy it is for bumblecrats to fiddle the figures. We seem to have had a lot more double-decker buses in Knott End over the last year or so, though still the same number of passengers, and I’m starting to sniff a conspiracy. While 10 passengers on a 20-seater single-decker make the bus half full, those same 10 passengers on a 40-seater make it three-quarters empty. Public Transport Authorities (PTAs) have got rid of unprofitable local railway lines and bus services for decades by thus massaging the figures and spinning their arguments, and they’re very good at it.

Knott End has a very high percentage of elderly residents. I haven’t seen many of them riding about on bikes, because in this village (pop. 5,500) disability buggies are the preferred mode of transport, yet Lancashire has invested millions of their tax revenues in cycleways and 20mph zones, and it’s quite startling, when you’re driving obediently at 20mph in your buggy, to be overtaken by that rara avis, a cyclist.

But back to the buses and Reg Varney-land. Local taxi firms must be rubbing their hands in glee. We do, however, have a voice as council tax-payers and voters. We don’t yet have the vox-pop power in the form of local offshoots of change.org, which rallies public opinion so effectively that it often changes government policy, but it will certainly come.

In the meantime - do we want our council tax to be spent on cycle lanes which hardly anyone uses, or on our rural bus services, these vital community links, to use LCC’s own propaganda?

It is up to us.

JAMIE OLIVER'S TOSSET FEAST FIASCO

JAMIE OLIVER’S TOSSET FEAST FIASCO

It had been publicised for several weeks, although those of us involved in the local background research had known about it for several months.  A revival of the Tosset Feast of Stalmine in Lancashire, to be filmed for Channel 4 today, 14 August. Details were kept top secret, but it didn’t take long for someone who’s been a news librarian and parliamentary researcher to work out that filming was to be done by Fresh One, the film company owned by the celebrity chef Jamie Oliver. Anyway, so far so good. The centrepiece of the programme, one of a series about forgotten foods, was to be the Tosset Cake, Tosset being assumed to be a corruption of St Oswald, once the patron saint of the parish church in Stalmine.

A link for the history and recipe –

http://www.foodsofengland.co.uk/tossetcakes.htm

Once the wraps were off, publicity began in earnest in the five parishes of Over Wyre. Big recreation of the Fosset Feast up at Parrox Hall in Preesall! Everybody from the five Over Wyre parishes is invited (that’s upwards of 11,000 people).

What the production company didn’t tell anybody was that attendance was going to be limited to just 350 people. Hundreds of disappointed people, children as well as adults, were turned away, some having travelled quite a distance on public transport rather than add to parking problems (me included.)

There’s no egg in the recipe, but plenty on the faces of the production company and organisers. And I rather think that Jamie Oliver’s name is going to be mud in the Over Wyre villages for a long time to come.

PS the programme went out on Friday 17 Jan 2014. In fairness to Jamie's film company, the programme was hugely entertaining and I enjoyed it. Caveats remain, however.

Andy Murray

Just a quickie, before the press pundits twig, and it comes from Mrs A, at 6:10 on 7 July, while Andy Murray is still celebrating his win.

He's 7 days older than his opponent. The date is 7/7. It's 77 years since Fred Perry last won the cup for a British male, and it was '77 when Virginia Wade was the last British woman champion.

Not that we're superstitious, of course.

PCC - guidance for new (and old) members - Part 2

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Copyright and Public Performance licences

PCC members need to ensure that their church activities, and the activities of groups using the church hall, if there is one, comply with the law of copyright.

There is widespread ignorance of what copyright actually means. When a new licence (PPL) came into operation on 1 January 2012 an advisory notice from one diocese (in December 2011…) suggested that when a church buys a set of hymnals it also acquires the copyright in the contents. That is dangerously misleading nonsense. All that comes with a set of hymnals is the implicit permission to perform the contents during acts of divine worship (including weddings and funerals.) And even though the words and music of a hymn may be centuries old, there is copyright in the typographical layout of all printed material, including pages in the hymn book.

So – lock up your church photocopier until you’ve acquainted yourself with the finer points of copyright law.

This is a good start –

http://www.copyrightservice.co.uk/copyright/

and I’m afraid it gets worse.

Which of these statements is true?

1)     we can show a DVD of The Sound of Music at an MU meeting without having to bother with stuff like licences

2)     we can watch telly by hooking up a wi-fi tablet to the computer projector in the hall  without having to bother with stuff like licences

3)     we can video a concert in church and sell DVDs to raise funds without having to bother with stuff like licences

4)     When we’ve got broadband in the hall we’ll be able to look at YouTube videos as well as watch programmes on I-Player without having to bother with stuff like licences

5)     We can have as many concerts in church and hall as we like without having to bother with stuff like licences

6)     We’ve got all the licences we need. They cover the church hall across the road as well as church itself.

7)     I own a book of Pam Ayres’ poetry, so I can read some of them at WI.

8)  We’ve got a local authority entertainment licence, so we can put plays on in the parish hall.

None of them is true, of course.

1)     Showing a commercial DVD in public, whether or not the audience has paid to come in, needs several different licences.

2)     You’d need a church video licence AND a TV licence

3)     Not if any of the music performed is still in copyright. Again, licences are needed.

4)     No you can’t. You’d need a TV licence and a church video licence

5)     No you can’t. You’d need both a PPL licence and a PRS licence. You’re allowed  six concerts/recitals a year without further payment or reporting back. Any more than that and PRS will deem your church or hall a Concert Venue, and then you’re in the business of reporting what’s been performed and paying the due fees, which go up as your audience size increases (so you need to count your audiences as well.)

6)     No. Separate licences are needed for hall and church if they’re not physically linked, because some licences are premises licences, not event licences.

7)     No you can’t, at least not without Pam Ayres’ permission or the permission of her agent(s), and you can expect to have to pay a fee.

Read this:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2007/dec/17/freeversegettingcopyrightw

8)     Oddly enough you can’t. To perform straight plays (as opposed to putting on musical shows like Gilbert & Sullivan comic operas) you need a special licence from your local council. It’s an historical anomaly; a hangover from the bad old days of theatre censorship (in 1737 Robert Walpole, then First Lord of the Treasury, got so miffed with always being satirised by playwrights that the lord Chamberlain was given the power to vet every play before it could be staged and to demand whatever changes he saw fit

Fortunately, most of the licences a church might need are managed by a single body – CCLI (Christian Copyright Licensing International)

http://www.ccli.com/Global.aspx

and this is a quick link to which licences your church might need

http://www.ccli.co.uk/licences/guide.cfm

Other useful sites are

http://www.prsformusic.com/Pages/default.aspx

http://www.ppluk.com/

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Thank you for reading. If you’re a new PCC member this is probably everything you need to get started, and all in one place, too!. If it has helped you, please pass the link on and help other new PCC members learn the ropes, or download the article and modify it to your heart’s content, without the risk of my chasing you for breach of copyright. And if you can suggest more useful  links, please do, via the Comments box.

PCC - guidance for new (and old) members - PART 1

-----------------------------------------------------------
PCC MEMBERSHIP - EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW (almost)

I have just finished my three-year term as a member of my church’s Parish Church Council and I ain’t going back. At no time during those three years was I given any guidance in my duties and responsibilities. Mine is a PCC whose agenda arrive by e-mail  the day before  the meeting, or in the past have been left at the back of church for members to pick up, and they are agenda whose biggest item is often AOB.

The governance of the Church of England since its establishment has been finely balanced between collars (some with crosiers) and ploughboys, and as a ploughboy myself I bridle rather when collars treat me like a mushroom. I suspect that the principle of keeping the PCC conveniently in the dark is more common in small rural parishes than in minsters and whopping great churches with colossal catchment areas and Sunday Schools 800-1,000 strong, like Henry Francis Lyte’s.  And I acknowledge that one of the difficulties of attracting  people onto a PCC is that if you tell them too much you’ll frighten them off.

So – self-taught in the business by necessity – here’s what I put together in my three years – the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the PCC. I’ve done it because two virgin members of our PCC who are close friends said ‘help!’

If you readers diocese-wide or even worldwide spot any factual errors please leave a comment and I’ll correct them, but I don’t answer accusations of heresy, sorry – it’s not a word you’ll find in the New Testament, or the Old, for that matter.

Let’s now get serious. Sunday best, please, and leave your clogs in the porch.

=============================================================

THE HITCHHIKER’S GUIDE TO THE PCC

An excellent basic introduction to the PCC is -

http://www.chichester.anglican.org/documents/diocesan-booklets/being-pcc-member/

and another, here in A5 booklet format (but can be downloaded as two A4 pages)

http://www.liverpool.anglican.org/userfiles/file/Church%20&%20Society/PCC_Leaflets/PCC_MEMBERS_Leaflet_A5_booklet.pdf

PCC members are trustees of a charity – their parish church. More information about the responsibilities of PCC trustees here

http://www.parishresources.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/Trusteeship-local-print.pdf

PCCs were established by the Parish Church Councils (Powers) Measure 1956. This legislation is still in force and has been amended several times. This link is to the current state of the Measure and its amendments

http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukcm/Eliz2/4-5/3/contents

This is the Enabling Measure for the set of regulations governing the PCC known as the Church Representation Rules, a vital tool for every PCC member who wishes to know about, so as to work within, church law. The Rules are available in printed form, published by the CofE at £8.99 [2013 price] or, if you don’t have ethical objections, from Amazon at £6.40 [again 2013 price]. The Rules are also available online, in their 2012 edition, at

http://www.churchofengland.org/about-us/structure/churchlawlegis/church-representation-rules/church-representation-rules-online.aspx

Appendix II of the Church Representation Rules is where the real detail is to be found.

[comment – look at Rule 6, the AOB rule. No item that isn’t on the agenda proper can be discussed unless three-quarters of the members present at a meeting agree. This is the highest degree of majority ever required in the conduct of PCC meetings, and it is there to protect members (trustees) from any attempt to slip contentious items in via AOB, which is always taken at the end of a meeting when members are tired and want to go home. If the chair of a meeting appears to intend to introduce such an item without invoking Rule 6, any member can invoke it by raising a Point of Order with the chair, and the chair isthen  bound to seek the necessary three-quarters majority]

[comment – a new PCC is elected at every parish annual general meeting in April and may hold its first meeting immediately for the purposes of appointing officers and co-opting up to two members. Newly elected members of deanery synod should note that their term of office does not begin until after 1st June. If a deanery synod meets in April or May it is the 'old' members who are eligible to conduct business.]

[comment – it is the duty of parish secretaries to inform diocese of any changes in PCC membership, including changes of address, at any time and not just after the parish AGM. Parish secretaries also need to inform their deanery synod secretary of such changes, because for convenience diocese will ask for details of members and their addresses from the deanery synod secretary.]

Another invaluable vade-mecum for PCC members is the

 Handbook for Churchwardens and Parochial Church Councillors (this isn’t a link.)

It’s only available in print, for around £10. There is an excellent section of advice for parish secretaries on how to minute a meeting, and the advice should be heeded. Employment law, copyright law, and neglected bits of church law can all too easily bring a PCC into conflict with legal authorities, and secretaries (and PCCs) need to bear in mind that in such circumstances minute books might be called as evidence in a courtroom.

-------------------------------------------------------

PCC members look after church finances, and need to exercise wise stewardship of funds. Not building up unnecessarily large reserves is part of stewardship –

http://www.parishresources.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/parishreserves.pdf

Fund-raising and proper management of funds and appeals for funds are governed by

Charity Commission  rules, which have the force of (civil) law. Here they are (go to section F9 for the details)

http://www.charitycommission.gov.uk/publications/cc3.aspx

and more detailed guidance for charities that want to raise funds by trading -

http://www.charitycommission.gov.uk/Publications/cc35.aspx

(and note that Charity Commission guidance notes are not longer available in print form, but only as downloads in PDF format.)



Thank you for reading. If you’re a new PCC member this is probably everything you need to get started, and all in one place, too!. If it has helped you, please pass the link on and help other new PCC members learn the ropes, or download the article and modify it to your heart’s content, without the risk of my chasing you for breach of copyright. And if you can suggest more useful  links, please do, via the Comments box.

Elfin Safety

To the Manager, Booths Supermarket in the Village


Dear Sir

I popped into your illustrious emporium today to purchase some carburettor parts for my ageing Primera. Reasoning that the bag of peanuts I placed in my trolley was exactly what I was looking for (there was no warning that the package might contain only nuts or traces thereof) I returned home, only to discover to my dismay that the package did indeed only contain nuts.

Surely a warning could be given on packets of peanuts (and for that matter all other products) - "This package does not contain carburettor parts"  to protect the unwary consumer?

Yrs, etc

traditional working class, moi?

I took The Times's social class test yesterday. You can do it too -

click here

you might find it very revealing.

Yesterday I answered all the questions truthfully - and was assigned to Traditional Working Class. I have absolutely no beef with members of the Traditional Working Class, stalwarts all, beavering away in the salt and the coal mines, reading Schopenhauer by the light of the midnight candle to improve themselves; even breaking the mould and sending their daughters to uni. To that extent I have always been one of Them - voting Labour, supporting the miners, that sort of stuff. Why, I was even at the same grammar school as Ken Loach, though a few years behind him. In my last hibernation, and retired on not quite enough pension to do what I would like to do, I spend a lot of time reading and writing - and pondering.

I know a bit about questionnaires, and how difficult it is not to give too much weight to just one of a number of variables, so I took the Times test again today, having spent yesterday evening reading, inter alia, Eco's fable of power and corruption, The Prague Cemetery; Jeanette Winterson's erudite and achingly painful tale of power and wickedness behind the trial of the Lancaster 'witches', The Daylight Gate; David Bellos's adventure into translation, the amazing art of, Is that a Fish in Your Ear?, and Caitlin Moran's How to be a Woman (which made me extremely to blush and hope that neither my wife nor my servants will be tempted to read it.) Four books at once? Why not? Thought fertilises thought.

So I tried the questionnaire again this evening, but this time I told a few fibs and changed a couple of variables. I upped my meagre pension somewhat, overstated the value of my house, and increased my savings rather, while keeping all other answers exactly the same. Phew! Now I'm of the Elite, which is about as high as you go social class-wise without actually being the Queen. And all because of money! Screw enough of it out of other people and you too could be one of the Elite (as MPs and investment bankers have already discovered - for theft and gambling are far more rewarding in the social hierarchy than honesty and altruism, providing you don't get caught.)

The message from this mishmash of a questionnaire comes out loud and clear - you stay in your allotted social place. Steelworkers must not like opera. Coal miners must read (or view) only The Sun. Farmworkers should stay with the cowpats. For social class is still all about £££ and how many of them you have got (as Alex would say on Pointless.)

The whole of the methodology of this pseudoscientific nonsense, the weighting given to what the questioners consider to be the key variables, could be inferred if enough of us were prepared to tell repeated and systematic lies and check the results against each other, and then blow the whistle.

There are children out there whom education has not yet finished inoculating against this tripe.

CofE - put the cat out when you close up

Today saw the beginning of the end of the Church of England, in an act of assisted suicide. Today the Church of England moved closer to Islam than to the rest of the Christian community worldwide, and delivered a massive Christmas present to secularism. The Church of England can no longer claim any moral authority. It has made itself a laughing-stock. Despite the overwhelming support of clergy and lay members for women bishops (all but two dioceses in the provinces of Canterbury and York voted overwhelmingly in favour), the House of Laity voted against, and diocesan representatives on General Synod will now have to explain themselves to the diocesan synods that elected them.

Where did the rot start setting in?  With hindsight, that’s an easy one. It started when parishes were asked whether they were in favour of the episcopacy being opened to women. Parishes which had had experience of women clergy were overwhelmingly in favour. A few, which had only ever known the ministry of male clergy, were opposed. In any other circumstances that would have sounded warning signals and questions about methodology. Is a vote from a PCC which had never experienced the ministry of women clergy as valid as a vote from a PCC which had? Did male clergy in these anti parishes allow their PCC to make up their own minds, or was there a bit of gentle nudging?

But the result was what we have today. Enormous efforts have been made over the years to placate what was in reality a small (and possibly ill-informed) minority. Flying bishops were introduced, but that didn’t work. The Church split itself apart grovelling to a few people who preferred their Church to stay in the 1stC AD, when women didn’t have a voice.

Our own Bishop John, Bishop of Burnley, implacably opposed to women clergy, produced a report a few months ago about the future of the Church of England. Declining numbers of stipendiary clergy, closure of churches and merging of parishes, dependence on lay ministry: all the usual sanctimonious guff.  How can the same head hold such violently opposing views, or was he just doing what he was told? His flock are entitled to be told. Heavens above, we’ve managed to incorporate Darwinism into mainstream (as opposed to loony) Christianity despite the diehards and flat-earthers, but it seems we can’t accommodate half of the human population, the ones without penises. It’s against Scripture, see?

A new argument (at least one I hadn’t heard before) was introduced into the debate a few days ago. Apparently God didn’t create the sexes equal, but complementary. Now this is a very dodgy argument indeed, because not only does it wrench theology out of the New Testament and slap it back into Genesis and myth, but it tends to confuse somewhat the ethical – and linguistic – arguments for and against same-sex ‘marriages.’ The Church today lost its way in that argument. Actually it’s far worse than that: the Church lost something else today – the plot.

And today is the first time in my life when I am ashamed to be a member of the church I was brought up in

Police Commissioners? Pure spin

I was one among the 85% or so voters to ignore the much-trumpeted introduction of police commissioners in yesterday's elections. I stayed at home. My main reason for treating the whole unnecessary cock-up with contempt is the abuse of language, the spin, that proponents of this completely nonsensical notion have used in an attempt to have their way. It would be 'more democratic' than present arrangements, they claim. I, for one, would be interested to see what evidence they can produce in support.

Existing police authorities are already made up of elected representatives, with most of them consisting of nine local councillors and eight independent members, at least one of whom should be a magistrate.

How oversight of a police force can be considered  'more democratic' when exercised by one elected person than by nine eludes me, but then 'democracy' is a slippery word that can be given all kinds of spin.

Policy Exchange is a think-tank, one of the bodies supporting the introduction of US-style police commissioners. The quality of its thinking might be suggested by the quality of its language of advocacy in one of today's national newspapers:

Policy Exchange conducted a questionnaire of Chief Constables (half of whom responded) for an upcoming paper, Policing 2020.

In it we asked Chiefs what they thought of the support they received from care homes. Not a single Chief was content with the support they received from them.

One police force had 3,500 missing people in 2009-10, costing them £3.3 million. Over three quarters of this demand came from care homes, with 2.5% of individuals creating 26% of the demand and single care homes being responsible for over 100 missing people reports a year.

Despite the obvious benefits of proactive intervention with the few individuals and care homes that created most of the demand, there was instead an over reliance on the police.

Care homes were calling the police if a child was just 10 minutes late for a meeting and generally negating their responsibilities in loco parentis.

Police and Crime Commissioners should be their police force’s greatest advocate and change this, by using their powerful media and political clout to encourage police partners, wherenecessary, to raise their game.

Clear? If this was part of an essay submitted in an English language exam its author would have been given a fail. Yet this bureaucratic bilge comes from one of the bodies that advises government. It's enough to make you weep, that and the fact that £75m of our money has been wasted on a stupid political stunt.

Coach holidays - the Knowledge

In our household we try to do a couple of coach trips a year. We do self-catering as well, and sometimes we even Go Abroad, but we like coach trips best because they are so educational. 

The last trip was even more educational than usual. At the end of the holiday, before being allowed out of your hotel and while Reception is discreetly checking that you have remembered to pay your colossal bar bill, you have to hand in a completed report form on which you have ticked little boxes in answer to questions such as “Did you find the facilities in your room...excellent?...brilliant?...fantastic?”

We’re not very good at ticking little boxes, which might be why we didn’t make it to university. We prefer narrative reports. So this is what we learned on our last Educational Coach Holiday.

1) the most interesting people are always on the other coach (your coach is full of [see Appendix A])

1a) and you only meet at breakfast and dinner, when you enjoy the maitre d’s special entertainment, sliding the poached egg into the lady’s lap, and

1b) not tasting the wines that have just been run out of.

2) All coach trips, whatever their destination (Braemar, Polperro, Scarborough, the Scilly Isles, Llandudno) always have a visit to a shop that turns heather into feather boas or old flagstones into spectacular swimwear. It is a little-known fact that these shops are actually owned by the coach companies, who have cunningly established them at points exactly halfway between any two holiday destinations, thus giving honest employment to starving people who would otherwise have to become hotel entertainers rather than attempt to scrape a bare living from the stony soil of Glen47milesfromanywhereelse.

3) People who travel on coach trips are deemed to be addicted to a) bingo and b) country & western music, and hotels are obliged to provide both or the coach company won’t use them. The intellectual effort required of participants in a) is exhausting, so an entertainer is always on hand to provide b) until well after closing time. And as people who travel on coach trips are also deemed to be stone-deaf, the entertainment is provided at colossal volume and can be clearly heard several streets away. Indeed, some travellers, denied the solace of sleep because the noise keeps making the wardrobe fall over, take rugs and a thermos flask and camp out several streets away (this does not work in Torquay, of course, because the noise from the entertainment in the hotel several streets away is far, far worse.)

Appendix A

i)  crisp-eaters. The first indication of the presence of a crisp-eater is a rustling sound. Slumbering heaps stir uneasily. Then the pure recirculating air of the coach is invigorated by the initial bag-opening aroma of sweaty socks, followed immediately by an assortment of ponging vapours; of salt and vinegar; prawn cocktail; cheese and onion; sea-salt and mangold-wurzel; goat and cranberry; and dead dog and lavatory cleaner. The second indication, assaulting the ears instead of the olfactory organs, is a sound rather like that of an ice-breaker working its methodical way through a Norwegian fjord in January. At this point the entire coach is awake.

ii) coughers, sneezers and snufflers, working on the principle that a filthy cold shared is a filthy cold halved, or better. ‘You need a holiday’, the doctor said. ‘A change of air will do you the world of good.’ And keep me and my colleagues in business, he mutters under his breath. In the good old days he would have recommended a walk to the end of the pier. And then, similarly sotto voce, jump off.

iii) people who have paid extra for the front seats, the ones with a view of the windscreen wipers or the driver’s sunblind, and insist that their right of occupancy extends to the feeder coaches and the optional tours. This is why you will often see a coach with 16 or 17 people stubbornly occupying the front seats and refusing to budge, even for a comfort stop. Some coaches are provided with a side door to allow the rest of the passengers to disembark without being suspected of waiting to pounce on a potentially vacated front seat and thus risking ritual disembowelling.

iv) people whose wet coats smell of dog

v) hotties and coldies. In general it is hotter at the back of the coach than at the front, where the door is. When the coach is stationary, as it often is for a couple of hours at roadworks, internal temperatures equalise, but the moment the coach starts again all the hot air rushes to the back. And whatever the inside temperature is, it is always a) too hot and b) too cold. Lively discussions ensue when some brave soul asks for the heating to be turned up/down.

Next holiday we’re going to stay at home, play country & western music very loud and lob poached eggs into each other’s lap. Apart from the washing-up it’ll be as good as a coach trip, and a lot less expensive.

Jam Jars - the Musical

The scene – a dusty office in the grandly titled Health & Environment Dept in your local town hall. Walter (49) is an Environmental Health Officer, or EHO. Priscilla (17) is on work experience.

Priscilla           Please, Sir, could you find me something to do? I’m dead bored.

Walter            “Do?” What d’you mean, “do”? You’ve been making the tea. What more do you want?

Priscilla            Well, it’s just that I haven’t learnt anything here, yet. And I’ll be expected to...

Walter             You are on Work Experience, young lady. You are not expected to learn anything, but to Experience Work.

Priscilla           But I haven’t seen any work going on, and I’ll have been here for three months next Tuesday. I mean, aren’t you supposed to be going out and inspecting things? Like premises? I quite fancy inspecting premises. It sounds really, like, cool. I’d like to close something down. That would be a real work experience, closing something down. Like for example Premises. If they, were, you know, a bit dodgy, with people snuffing it all over the place from E-coli thingies, you know.

Walter             First thing, young lady: put that kettle on again. And we don’t have time to go around inspecting premises. Good heavens, do you know how many Premises there are? Probably hundreds. Inspect one and we’d have to inspect all of them, and then where would we be? Masses of paperwork, and most of the time it would be raining.  And talking of paperwork, have you finished the filing? I know the system’s hard to understand, but that’s the whole point. It’s hard work finding anything in the files. It can take days. I go home sometimes and I say to the wife, I say, Hilda, that’s the wife, I say to her, we found that file I was telling you about on Sunday, and she’s as thrilled as I am, bless her.

Priscilla           I think I will put the kettle on. Excuse me.

Walter             Where’s the wretched girl’s file? Heavens, it’s on my desk. That will never do. Still, might as well have a shufti for a refresh. [he reads the file. Stasis, apart from occasional expressions of disbelief, such as ‘bloomin’ Ada’ . Then he reads aloud]

                        Baccalaureate, Sorbonne. Huh, bloody foreigners. Tripos, Cambridge, at 13. Load of tripe, more like. [pause, as he skims through several pages of CV]. What’s this? Summer job at Pizza Parlour? That’s better. Much, much better.

Priscilla           (enters, with tea tray.) I’ve brought you some ginger biccies. They were in the EHO tin in the kitchen. They’re a bit soft, but I’ve rubbed the green furry bits off. Shall I pour?

Walter             Ah! Tea and biccies! Pour away, girl. Excellent!

                        Now then. I’m at conference this afternoon with the mayor. You can’t reach me because the Golf Club don’t allow mobile phones on the links. But when you’ve done the washing-up and the filing you might have a look at this. It’s a bit old, but there might be some juice in it yet. It’s Euro directive 1935/2004...

Anyway, must rush. Lock up when you go, won’t you?

Priscilla goes off to the kitchen for a moment, but returns immediately.

Priscilla (to audience)            

I was really sorry for ‘im, snuffing it like that on the eighteenth. Food poisoning, apparently. Odd, ‘cos he was so busy being busy that he’d only had a ginger biccy all day.

                        Now then. I’d better experience some work. So what’s this? European regulation 1935/2004...

                        [she sits in Walter’s chair, puts on his reading glasses and begins to make copious notes.]

Envoi: Thank heaven for the Wallies and the Prissies who rule our lives with such wisdom from their desks in the town hall

                       

The Great Jam Jar Panic of 2012

Shock horror. Mayday. Sacré bleu. Even the normally staid Church Times raised an eyebrow (5 Oct) at reports that the days of home-made jam, that stalwart of the produce stall at the church fete, could be numbered. Re-using food containers, it seems, could fall foul of European regulation 1935/2004 and/or 2003/2006. Apparently the WI have been bombarding the Food Standards Agency’s switchboard with anxious phone calls, and everybody’s in a right old tizz, including, predictably, the Daily Mail.

So let’s just all calm down a little, and see what all the fuss is about.

You’d think, wouldn’t you, that even a bumblecrat would have the sense to look at prime sources before issuing panic edicts, but then you obviously don’t understand the way the bumblecratic mind works, and how it took eight years before somebody read the small print of regulation 1935/2004 and uttered the battlecry of the bumblecrat – “whey-hey guys,  look at this what I have just found. We’re back in business.”

There is absolutely nothing in these regulation to give the WI the wibbly-wobblies and cause the good ladies to fear the end of civilisation as we know it. They were sensible measures introduced as a precaution as new food packaging materials (mainly new forms of plastic) were being introduced. You can read the whole of the regulations here – they’re not secret:

http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:2004:338:0004:0017:en:PDF

http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:2006:384:0075:0078:EN:PDF

But if you are particularly busy, just read this bit, Article 3 of reg 1935/2004 -

(3) The principle underlying this Regulation is that any material or article intended to come into contact directly or indirectly with food must be sufficiently inert to preclude substances from being transferred to food in quantities large enough to endanger human health or to bring about an unacceptable change in the composition of the food or a deterioration in its organoleptic properties.

The significant words here are ‘sufficiently inert’, and certainly not ‘organoleptic properties’, which is scientist-speak for taste or smell, and of these two words ‘sufficiently’ is the one to focus attention on.

This European regulation was introduced to ensure that food packaging manufacturers and food processing companies only used packaging materials which were safe to use with the intended product, because in certain combinations of food and packaging, and some cooking processes, chemicals could migrate from the packaging and contaminate the food, causing people unfortunately to snuff it.

The other regulation, 2003/2006 [sic, 2006], is aimed at the manufacturers of food containers and labels. It was a bit of an afterthought, to make sure that any labels used on food containers didn’t have anything in the ink or adhesive that could migrate to the food, and, once again, cause people unfortunately to snuff it. And  the preamble specifically states that ‘the rules of Good Manufacturing Practice should be applied proportionately to avoid undue burdens for small businesses.’

But nowhere in these regulations will you find any mention of glass. There was no need to mention glass. Glass is about as inert a food containing material as it’s possible to be. About the only thing that can migrate to your WI marmalade is the pong of previous pickled onions, which no amount of sterilisation or cleaning seems to be able to get rid of. You can look at some of the research into the safety of glass as a food container material here:

http://www.feve.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=84:scientists-prove-health-and-safety-of-glass&catid=9&Itemid=29

The real danger in this European legislation is not what the legislation actually says, but how it is going to be interpreted by member states, and in the UK our bumblecrats love finding loopholes and exploiting them to the point of absurdity, and then passing the buck of further interpretation down the quango food chain until your local council feels obliged to ban something without really having any idea why it’s doing it, except that it seems like a Good Idea and gives people something to do to occupy the hours between nine and five.

There is, incidentally, a similar absurdity in the regulations governing the performance of recorded music in public places, including small church halls, that followed the imposition of of the PPL licence at the beginning of 2012. The reporting requirements – by volunteers – are beginning to impose a burden which is quite disproportionate to the money involved, which is quite literally pennies.

Legislation which is allowed to produce such ludicrous nonsense by the inexorable application of the principle of reductio ad absurdum by bumblecrats is ipso facto bad legislation, and it needs robust challenge.