Friday 3 April 2015

All Things to All Men at Easter

An outbreak of high moral purpose from our politicians at Easter, which seems appropriate.  But they all find it quite difficult to 'do God', don't they?  Premier Christianity has managed to get the Paschal interviews, and it would be unkind to fisk them rigorously.  Gently, then ...

Cameron would urge his critics in the Church "not to dismiss the people who proposed those policies as devoid of morality – or assume those policies are somehow amoral themselves."  This is an important point about ethics and practical politics, though he's put it rather defensively where it could have been more forceful.  But I suppose we are all resigned to suffer in gracious silence ignorant leftist sermons from earnest leftist clergy. 

He follows with a comment that has clearly been crafted carefully for the occasion.
As Winston Churchill said after the death of his opponent, Neville Chamberlain, in the end we are all guided by the lights of our own reason. ‘The only guide to a man is his own conscience; the only shield to his memory is the rectitude and sincerity of his actions.’ 
That notion could - if anyone were so minded - be the cue for a decent philosopical and religious discussion.  (Some years ago, when heavily provoked by St Tony of Blair, I let fly with a few related thoughts of my own.)   But that's about as deep as it gets.

Miliband, we learn, is Jewish, but it would seem this is a convenient technicality.
My dad was Jewish, my mum is Jewish, and obviously I’m Jewish. What’s important for me is the word ‘respect’ ... I’m clearly not going to claim that I ‘do God’, 
Ah yes, respect.  And we are not to take Clegg's atheism as anything too 'vociferous', either.
I have quite a complex attitude towards faith. My family is infused with faith ... I now accompany [my wife] and the children with great joy to mass pretty well every weekend. I sometimes think it must be the most wonderful thing to be infused with faith. It’s not something that has happened to me yet.
I think we get the picture, sunlit and infused.  But as we tactfully disengage from these airy vanilla confections, what is that ominous rumbling in the distance?  Lo - it's Boris on a moral mission - his "personal vision of 'moral purpose' in business and politics".  Given that this was being reported on April 1st, one needs carefully to assess exactly what's going on here: but we can quickly tell how serious is his 'purpose' from the opening words: 
When I was quite a young man in Wolverhampton ...
Ah yes, Wolverhampton, spiritual home of Boris Johnson, he's forever harking back to it isn't he?  (I think he has a little weekend cottage in nearby Dudley: and such a shame he couldn't find a Parliamentary vacancy there).  Morality is to Boris what Courage is to Gordon Brown: the more they write about it, the more we know that they know that there is a bit of a - how shall we put it? -  local deficiency to be papered over.

Ah well, the election will be here soon enough and we need to gather our strength.  A sincere Happy Easter to all our readers!

ND

5 comments:

Elby the Beserk said...

And a Happy Easter to you and yours, Nick. I am off to the wonderful St. George's in Bristol tonight (a former church with perfect acoustics) to witness the Matthew Passion performed by the glorious Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, with tenor Mark Padmore. It's a performance I have witnessed there before, and it will be sublime.

http://www.oae.co.uk/event/bachs-st-matthew-passion/

dearieme said...

The ten commandments rule out socialism (thou shalt not covet, thou shalt not steal) but seem to allow for a range of opinions otherwise.

dearieme said...

"a former church with perfect acoustics": I think I have a CD of a jazz pianist recorded there. He said that his sort used to play in brothels.

Suffragent said...

BE+1
A lesson in morality from the amoral.
Have they even read the pieces they’ve put their names to? By using some very clever people in their spin departments, they have managed to hijack and corrupt every single moral value. They bleat on about doing the right thing for the public good and do exactly the opposite in private. The media on both sides have managed to convince sections of the community that values like compassion, forgiveness, kindness, hard work and responsibility, are only available with their type of washing powder. They’re not, they are the values of every descent human being.

My faith is in people and I’m rewarded every time I expand my friendships.
Happy Easter everybody.

Elby the Beserk said...

dearime ... have seen both Abdullah Ibrahim and (RIP) Estborn Svensson (sp?) at St. Georges. And yes, you are right, jazz pretty much started in the bordellos and drinking houses of New Orleans