Barriers to compassion
The leader of Britain's opposition Labour party Jeremy Corbyn, right, stands for the national anthem during the 75th anniversary Battle of Britain memorial. It is getting easier by the day to be a ‘grumpy old man’. And I really don’t think it is just my age that makes me irritable, it is the absurdity and nonsense which I see all around me. That’s my side of the story.
It will surprise no one therefore that this week’s column is going to be a bit of a rant about things that annoy me. So let’s get something recognisably good out of the way first.
The Archbishop of Canterbury’s attempt to keep the Anglican Communion together is clearly a good thing and his mechanism for doing so is a stroke of genius. Instead of calling the Anglican Primates together in a formal ‘meeting’ he has instead invited them to a ‘gathering’. This distinguishes it from the structures of Communion.
It is also a recognition that the Anglican Communion as we once knew it with its own instruments of unity – Archbishop of Canterbury, Primates’ Meeting, Anglican Consultative Council and so on – can no longer bear the weight of communion. The only way forward is to begin meeting again in much less formal ways to see whether it is possible to go forward into communion again.
Now for something to get angry about. There is no justification for harsher sentencing based on the race and culture of the victim. Last week’s Court of Appeal verdict upheld a sentence on a sex offender who was given a longer tariff because the victims were Asian. Both the judge and the appeal judge suggested that race and culture were aggravating factors because sexual Finally, ‘elf ‘n’ safety’ looks likely to get in the way warm-hearted compassion for Syrian refugees. According to a report in The Times, almost no Britons will be able to open their homes to asylum seekers because of health and safety measures (‘Families’ help for Syrian refugees forbidden by ‘defeatist’ safety rules’, The Times, 21 September, 2015).
Home Office rules state that accommodation must be safe, clean, secure and crucially self-contained. “People are urged to contact their local council only if they have a spare second home rather than a spare sofa.”
This means that the Archbishop of Canterbury’s offer of a spare cottage will undoubtedly be taken up but many thousands of other kind-hearted people with a spare room or two will be rejected.