Am I alone in sensing a change in the air? I don’t mean that feeling of expectancy that comes naturally with a new year, nor do I mean the news that a growing number of people are seriously questioning the notion that garden fires and rural folk eating beef and driving cars, is somehow causing the climate to go to hell in a handcart.
No: I mean the way ordinary people are now beginning to question the secular orthodoxy of recent years, whereby an unhealthy obsession with Health and Safety, Multi-Culturalism. Equality and Anti Discrimination has overridden the written wisdom previously obtained from the Gospels and other venerable literature of the ages.
Was I alone in cheering out loud, as I to read in a national newspaper that the chairman of the flower arrangers at Gloucester Cathedral had refused to submit to checks by the Criminal Records Bureau? This story arose, because the Deanery authorities are worried that a flower lady might bump into a pupil from Kings School. So concerned were they that they paid a bureaucrat to find evidence of any previous malefactions by the entire team of volunteers.
Annabel Hayter the chief arranger said on radio that she was given two options, “To submit or resign,” and so she resigned! How I wish she had waited to be sacked. In that way the Deanery spokeswoman, who later said, “She was not pushed,” would have had to justify her own actions rather than the flower arranger having to justify hers.
My guess is that flower arrangers take second place to no one in their concern for children and, as they give their time to add beauty and grace to church buildings, they are among the least likely people to have dubious intentions towards children, or anyone else for that matter.
It is to be hoped that the flower-lady of Gloucester has struck a blow for commonsense and, in so doing, has deterred woolly headed church bureaucrats nationwide from treating us as though we are all criminals until proven otherwise. It has always seemed to me that whilst it is alright for Bishops to regard us all as sinners in the scriptural sense, there is no justification for them to assume we are also criminals in a legal sense.
A saying in the forefront of my mind is, ‘Hope Springs Eternal.’ And I just hope that the next few years will see the emergence of a body politic in which we ordinary rural folk are trusted to conduct ourselves in a sensible and friendly way towards one another. After all what is wrong with trust, particularly as it costs a darn sight less than the alternatives? There are, of course, exceptions to every rule and the exceptions must be dealt with, but without imposing the same restrictions, costs and burdens on the majority who are not wrong-doers.
Talking of hope reminds me, that in December last, I expressed a hope that villagers would remember that Carol Singers get cold as they wander the dark lanes, and that sherry was a good means of warming the voice. My hope was realised, and I have to report that the Carollers of Pauntley enjoyed two rather jolly, if somewhat bibulous, evenings during which their melodious voices brought cheerful news and raised a tidy sum for the Children’s Society and the Church.
As I write this column; an advert on Classic FM from HM Revenue and Customs, reminds me that January 31st is the deadline for paying my tax. (The Self employed pay two lump sums each year) The thought however, of paying taxes to support government policies which harass flower arrangers raises conflicts in my mind. On the one hand I do not mind paying for vital national services and to help those who are sick or disabled, but I am not happy when my money goes to pay people who write laws such as the following:
For some time it has been illegal for employers to say certain things in adverts, and this list now precludes asking for ‘Reliable Workers.’ This phrase is banned on the grounds that it discriminates against Unreliable Workers.
Hope however is better than despair, and so I live in hope that my tax will not be spent on the wages of officials who write such nonsense. Anyway, all is not lost as there are opportunities to turn such silly thinking to advantage.
At the next election when a candidate declares that he/she is competent and has their full wits about them: I shall immediately expose them to public scorn on the grounds that such a statement discriminates against half wits!
View from the Pew 