The police rubbing their hands

         The police have had a fair bit of stick for their handling of the riots in their early stages. I think they underestimated the fact that it was August, frankly,
         But look at it from their point of view. A load of local ne'er-do-wells kick off in full view of everyone and in in full view of the CCTV cameras. Here is golden evidence. Let it run for a bit. Bring in re-inforcements when things get too out of hand, but in the meantime all the local wildlife will be tempted beyond endurance to join in. A lot of ordinary kids will get drawn in as well, but we can sort that our later.
         Then the CCTV footage gets broadcast. The police haul in the ones they recognise. Bang to rights! Then they get hold of the kids that just want to have fun. Here they can really put the screws on. These kids are scared and worried. There is evidence on them as well.
           Imagine the interview: ' Well, well well, Johnny. You have been a naughty boy. We shall have to charge you, We've got the evidence. You're not really a bad lad, though, are you? We can go easy on you, but you will have to help us. Were any of the Black Hand gang there? Which ones? What were they doing? Was Dodgy Darren there? Apart from these riots what else do you know about what he's been up to?'
           These are scared kids. They will sing. They won't get involved in anything like this again.
           This is a bonanza of CCTV evidence, eye witness evidence and criminal intelligence. I reckon we will see a dramatic fall in all sorts of crime figures in the future. The usual suspects will have records now, and a huge number of marginal kids will be put off forever.

After the Politicians have said their Piece

           It has all been a bit depressing. The Riots have happened, and the politicians have had their say. Isn't extraordinary how almost all their ruminations have been have been at the abstract societal level? There is something wrong with our education! There is something wrong with society! There is something wrong with our sense of morality. After huffing and puffing bland generalities they have all gone back on holiday.  Then it will be the Party Conference season, and then they will go back to their Punch and Judy politics.
           The kids will still be there, though. The problems will still be there,
           To get a handle on what went on you need to look at the kids who took part in the riots. First of all it was the HOLIDAYS. Kids get BORED during the holidays. It doesn't get dark until really late. I can remember getting bored witless during the holidays. I used to hang around with my pals at the local shops. We all ached for a bit of excitement. Sometimes we would cycle a mile or two to our local beach in Goring, and lark about there. Of course the grown-ups moaned about us then too. All I can say is that I was lucky to live near the seaside.
            Where can teenagers go off, away from grown ups, and let off steam? In my childhood we had plenty of places . I am sure the kids in Tottenham, Clapham and Croydon don't have anything like the space we had.
             We need to look at these practical things about everyday metropolitan life before dancing around the abstactions so beloved of the dinner tables of Westminster, Hampstead and their second homes in Hertfordshire.

No Riots in Roehampton

             Roehampton is a place of multiple deprivation. We have the highest index of child deprivation in the Borough of Wandsworth. From the outside, you would have thought that we would be a prime candidate for the sort of lawlessness that we have seen on TV and read about in the papers.
             There are a number of factors that have engendered this absence of lawlessness. The first is that we are so atomised as a community that we never really come together for anything. There isn't the energy, there isn't the capacity, to get together to do things. Roehampton doesn't do co-operation. Therefore we don't do looting.
             Secondly, I don't think that we have critical mass of young/adolescent people to form a mob that feels safe attacking shops or police stations. A lot of the children are away - on holiday, or visiting family abroad over the summer.
             Thirdly, Roehampton is big. It has large open spaces, and it is quite a walk to get from one part of the estates to another. There isn't that focus or intensity of population in one particular area.
             Fourthly, I must pay credit to the youth services and police groups that have been working with young people here for a long time: Connexions, Catch 22, YIP, Junior YIP and Regenerate.
             Every place is different. Local history and background make all the difference. Government and Local Government initiatives can make all the difference.

Godlessness and Political Correctness

A couple of posts back, I wrote about a summer camp I used to run for the children of my parish in Doncaster. This has led me to mull over some issues of health and safety, safeguarding and political correctness which have emerged since 1984 when I was doing the camp. Political correctness is probably the most moaned about and vilified corner of our social lives. We all despise the 'nanny state' and local 'jobsworths', but we find it impossible to counteract these trends. Why should this be? After all, looking after children and keeping people safe at work are good things, aren't they?

           Part of the answer, I believe, is to do with our modern public mindset. This is the mindset of secularism and the exclusion of God from public conversation. There are three main ways in which the secularist mindset tends to travel in the direction of regulation, the direction of aversion to risk, and the direction of a culture of suspicion and blame. This is not to say that atheist or secularist philosophy is the direct cause of these trends or tendencies in modern culture. I don't think that you can point the finger at any one political party, or group or ideology. We are all to blame.

           No. The case I want to make out is that the absence of God from social consideration, the lack of experience of going to church, the conduct of an inner life without reference to God, all these salient features of a secularist mind set, inevitably push the personal and social features of our culture towards these restrictions that so annoy us.

            Now, all this is a pretty big claim. First of all, let's have a look at the culture of suspicion and mistrust.  Now, if you don't believe in God, then 'man is the measure of all things'. All that we do, all that we plan for, all that we determine is solely that product of our human capabilities. Nature is beyond our control, and we make allowance for that. But everything else is the product of human effort. Now this is fine if we live in a pleasant world where everyone is nice to one another, and there is no conflict. But that is not the sort of world we live in.

            There is no way in which can we assume that a stranger will do what we want them to do. We have excluded trust from our mental world. The religious person is used to trusting God and trusting in God. By and large that trust will have been seen to be beneficial, otherwise they would cease to be religious. Trust is an essential part of any religious person's make up. If a person is not used to trusting on this everyday basis, as part of his or her mental furniture, then it is very difficult to trust anyone at all. Out of this there is no defence against a culture of suspicion. Instead of trust there is the never-ending quest for certainty, for some kind of guarantee. So we have our CRB checks, our safeguarding training and our background surveys. All this encourages us to retreat further and further into our own closed worlds.

             But this is not just a generalised trust. Because the secularist does not believe in God, he or she will not go to church. One of the main things that you do when you go to church is to meet people. But even in purely human terms, this is a peculiar form of meeting people. It is a radically egalitarian form of meeting people. Most of our interactions, at work, shopping, travelling either attempt to exclude the world, or they are conducted on a hierarchical basis. At work there is a definite hierarchy, and that hierarchy determines the whole way people get on with one another. The same is true in commercial transactions.

              In church, no one has to be there. All sorts of people are there. Conversations spring up spontaneously. Sometimes you will take to this new person talking to you, sometimes you will want to get away from them. All is done civilly, and it is all on a regular basis. This is fantastic training in how to get on with other people, and how to trust them. There are very few arenas where this is able to happen. If a person is not used to this free and easy form of egalitarian conversation, then it is easy, once again, to retreat into suspicion and mistrust. The direction of travel remains the same.

              Now we come to blame and aversion to risk. Even though the secularist comes out of a position of suspicion and mistrust, things still have to get done, you still have to co-operate with people. But this isn't all. Because God isn't in your world, everything is down to human agency. People are responsible for everything. If something goes wrong, then someone is to blame. As I write, there is an investigation being carried out as to why a polar bear was able to break into a camp and attack five young lads, killing one of them. Now, of course, such a serious accident deserves investigation, but this investigation is the first thing that has to be done.

          The party hasn’t come home yet. The injured are still in hospital, the funeral hasn’t taken place. No! Someone must be to blame! In less than twenty four hours since the tragedy, we have already heard that the trip wire failed to work. Well, it’s cold up there. Perhaps something froze. Polar bears are cunning, purposeful  killers. It’s what they do, and they are really sneaky. Perhaps the leaders were outwitted. The outcry will inevitably come that it is all too dangerous. Let’s stop these adventure camps.

          Our secular mindset refuses to acknowledge that we live in a fallen world, and that we are fallen. Things go wrong. We fail. We fail because we are limited – limited in intelligence, limited in energy, limited in understanding, limited in time, limited in neighbourliness. We have a blind faith in progress – that things must get better all the time, but because we are alienated from God we think we can do everything ourselves. Perhaps we can do most things ourselves, but even if we are able to do most things, we need to do things together. But here is the rub – can we trust one another? We have to co-operate, but we cannot trust.

          And so out of all this we have the passion for regulation. We can do things together if we all go by the rule book. Step beyond the rules, and you are in big trouble

          The irony of all this is that atheists and secularists used to rail and chafe at the customs and traditions of the Church and religious observance. They used to (and still do) laugh at the social and communal protocols and etiquettes, courtesies and manners that characterise religious assemblies, get-togethers and ‘do’s. And yet it is these very secularists and atheists that hamstring our common life with all the dead weight of legislation, regulation and interference.

          Secularists have been so keen to castigate faith in God and the role of the church in community, that they have become blind to the dangers of their own mindset. (I don’t call it a philosophy because, the secularists are keen to separate themselves from any over-arching philosophy. They believe, quite literally, in nothing.) Their aversion of God has pushed them into the primordial realms of fear, mistrust and subservience, from which, without God, there is no escape.

Mystery Worshipper Pursued by Parish Magazine

Our ace reporter from the Parish Magazine has managed to hack into was given privileged access to the Mystery Worshipper's mobile phone. Here are the photos we managed to take whist the MW made his getaway.

Mystery Worshipper Unmasked

After years of detective work, our reporter for the 'Spire' our parish magazine has managed to track down the Mystery Worshipper who reports to the 'Ship of Fools' website. Here are some photos of this covert church inspector doing his surreptitious work.