Famous for 15 minutes

A man was arrested for swimming into the path of the University Boat Race. With almost equal stupidity, the media told us his name, thereby giving him the publicity he craved, and advertising this as a route to fame. (At least he kept his clothes on, unlike some others who disrupt sporting events.)

There are many ways to yell “Look at me,” if that is what you live for. Some people get a car number plate that declares their name. Like Postman Pat or Noddy. (Bless.) Some people try to catch the coat-tails of someone else’s fame – for example, by shooting them. One general (whose name is ironically only approximately remembered) had his shot at fame by destroying the Temple of Diana.

A very popular method these days is to sign up for a reality show on TV. Of course, you have to choose carefully. You need a grain of talent to gain a place on Masterchef. (Unless of course you are already famous for something else. In that case you are readily offered further fame regardless of talent, as a chef or dancer or ice-skater. To him who has, it will be given.)

But those lacking talent can still get their 2 minutes of fame (falling short of Andy Warhol’s utopian 15) on the freak-show of the X-Factor auditions.  Or simply Big Brother, which openly embraces the fact that its participants simply want to be famous.

I have a proposal for the next series of Big Brother. At the start of this piece, I objected to our being told the name of the boat race swimmer. Following the same logic, I would like to see the identity of the next lot of self-publicists carefully concealed. Let them preen into the Big Brother house in front of a crowd of carefully-chosen unbelievers, who will dutifully wave and cheer and then utterly forget the utterly forgettable. They will be there again, when the suckers emerge.

Let there be cameras all over the house, and let no film be made. (This seems to work quite well with CCTV. The bad guys see cameras and tailor their behaviour accordingly.)

And then (this is the clever bit) comes the “real” reality TV. Let secret cameras follow each emerging contestant into the outside world, and let us all watch their bemused response as they realise that nobody knows who they are.

But above all: we do not want to know their names.

(Or maybe I’m missing the point. Maybe Big Brother is a necessary conduit. Maybe without it, people would be reduced to shooting people, destroying religious buildings, wrecking sports events, or demonstrating their catastrophic inability to sing.)

How to save the planet

My wife remarked the other day how many baby-wipes we get through with our toddler. It's a small thing, but it reminded me of a question on QI a year or two ago, about environmental damage. And it seems that if you're looking for the biggest carbon culprit, you can forget about dogs or horses: and presumably the Porches and petrochemicals and fossil fuels and fighter planes which sustain our democracy. The greatest carbon damage, it turns out, is achieved by having children.

That is: to save the planet, stop having children. This will probably work: but taking the human race out of circulation seems a little drastic.

I expect there are some with an agenda who would approve. Our extinction would doubtless be well-deserved, might be pursued (by quicker methods) by certain religious sects seeking divine approval, and is also  the logical end of eco-terrorism. I don’t know whether there are militant nihilists out there, who reckon creation “ex nihilo” was a bad move, and would like to restore our bit of the universe to its pristine chaos.

I wonder, though, about the Buddhist take. The end of the world would free us all from that troublesome reincarnation business: but I don’t think Buddhists are actually meant to kill people. So would Buddhists approve the “QI agenda" of letting humanity die by simply not having children? It is probably the surest way of saving the planet.

But what does it mean for the path to Nirvana? If I’ve got this right, current reincarnation arrangements allow you to be - as it were - promoted (eventually to a life as a monk, and thence to Nirvana) or relegated. Someone relegated to (say) a flea can presumably work their way up through the leagues of newts and newspaper magnates.

But if all the human divisions are removed, will it be possible to gain Nirvana? Or will the spiritual Premiership forever be out of reach? It’s like removing the Championship and League One and Two, along with the various feeder leagues: so that qualification for the Premiership will depend on improbable performances in the pub leagues.

Meanwhile we are rapidly filling the air, sea and soil with stuff with unguessable side-effects. It’s quite likely that we will all soon be infertile, the QI agenda will be fulfilled, and the planet will be saved. (Without abandoning the consumerist agenda! Win-win.)

Old Firm, infirm

Other football matters were put into perspective by events concerning Fabrice Muamba. But media attention has quickly and tastelessly returned to the "survival" of Rangers FC, that older patient through whose veins it is proving difficult to pump money.

I expect a way will be found to let the club continue in business. After all, the media assures us (with the same idle metaphor), Scottish football cannot survive without Rangers.

Excuse me? Certainly, clubs traditionally feed on and into their local communities, and the loss of a football club can leave locals as bereft as the loss of a local factory. And certainly, the lack of competition at the top of Scottish football is a pity – compared with twenty-odd years ago, when Aberdeen and Dundee United were reaching European finals. And perhaps, if Celtic have no credible opponents, the sponsors will go home.

But kids will still kick a ball around on any available patch of land. I mean, if the Scottish league goes part-time, will the kids switch to baseball, or croquet, or caber-tossing? Football as a sport will hardly notice the difference. Football as a multi-million-pound circus may well be affected, but that is a business affair – not a sporting one.

In fact it is probably that very circus, that same sea of cash, that is destroying football clubs as a community resource. Manchester United has long since ceased to be part of its local community. It is a global brand with a global support base, and a largely non-UK playing staff (in common with other top “English” teams). If it relocated to Sheffield or Shanghai, there might be the merest blip before business continued as usual. Remember the Brooklyn Dodgers?

The excess of money may also contribute to a growing culture of cheating and ref-baiting. If a missed offside flag can cost a million pounds, or a sly elbow gain 10 million, what antics may not result?

It’s also the excess of money that causes a growing minority of us to lose interest – not that this hurts the owners, as long as Sky and the sponsors keep the taps turned on. Really I’m beginning to think I’d prefer to watch croquet or caber-tossing. (I’ll draw the line at baseball.)

A few months ago I opened my bank statement. I shan’t (and needn’t) name the bank: but the envelope proudly proclaimed the bank’s association with the English Premiership. And I realised: I’ve been bitching about the money “earned” by top footballers, and here I am – in effect – sponsoring those salaries.

I’m not surprised at the bank in question: after all, who better than a bank chief to understand the value of handing out obscene salaries for non-achievement? But I have moved my bank account. And I dare say the bank will notice this about as much as England would notice the demise of Rangers.

And you thought school league tables were bad

I blogged the other day about illegal quota-setting by a privatised traffic warden service. I expressed shock that, within days of the court’s finding, David Cameron would announce the contracting-out of certain areas of police work.

Now, in the aftermath of the murder of 16 civilians by a “rogue” US soldier in Afghanistan, the BBC revived a link to an earlier story referring to the atrocities at My Lai and elsewhere. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-15499138

“Officers were under pressure to produce high body counts of enemy in Vietnam and those pressures persist.” That is to say, groups of soldiers had “kill quotas” to fulfil. But I imagine the bad guys had guns, too. So I guess it was just natural to fill the quotas up the easy way, by killing unarmed women and children.

Can this be true? Surely the BBC is making it up. In any case, I imagine American military training nowadays extols discipline, not merely a Space Invaders mentality: so this week’s gunman no longer has the defence that he was “obeying orders”. But can you imagine what might happen if the US, or the UK, sent a privatised peacekeeping force to Afghanistan? Or we could both send one - just to add that competitive edge?

Can David Cameron still be serious about privatising law-enforcement? Altamont could shortly look like a walk in the park.

Just hand over the money and we'll say no more about it

In late January a tribunal found that a traffic warden, Hakim Berkani, had been unfairly dismissed after blowing the whistle on illegal quota-setting by his employer.

Three things are worrying here.

Firstly, he was not employed directly by the authorities, but by NSL – a private contractor. To place law-enforcement in private hands is surely asking for trouble. Tax-collectors in New Testament Judea were widely known to be creaming it: and I am sure the Mafia, experts in collecting revenue, would love to do so with official sanction.

Secondly, NSL is the largest such contractor in the UK, working for 60 local authorities. So there is no reason to be optimistic that the same practices are not operating throughout the country.

Thirdly, and astonishingly, within weeks of Berkani's tribunal, the government is proposing to allow the contracting-out of police work.

Berkani said to reporters: "Do you tell a police officer he should arrest a minimum of 10 people a day?" He was joking. David Cameron is not joking.

Unmasked

I blogged a couple of months ago (Masks) about the Occupy London protest. This is a group of people in V for Vendetta-style Guy Fawkes masks, who camped between St Paul’s Cathedral and the Corporation of London to protest against economic injustice.

Their presence must have been very scary for London’s financial elite. So I am sure their recent eviction has brought sighs of relief and saved the stock market from meltdown.

I was interested to see one Occupier interviewed – without his mask. It is now the powerful who are keeping a low profile. The Corporation of London continues to hide – behind the bailiffs and police officers who carry out their bidding.  But the Corporation at least expressed “regret”, while St Paul’s has (to my knowledge) remained silent.

Mary Ann Sieghart wrote recently in the Independent celebrating the tolerance she sees in the Church of England. She links this to its status as the Established Church: belonging to all, it seeks to be the servant of all. (David Cameron celebrated the same tolerance in a recent statement about this country’s Christian values.)

Certainly, in a world where some religious groups preach death to homosexuals or to poets they don’t approve of, the C of E – by contrast – is certainly a broad church. It tolerates many voices, including scepticism of its own stated beliefs.

But is it possible to be too tolerant? Pastor Niemoller spoke with regret of the failure of the German church to oppose the Nazi regime. In Kenya, Bishop David Gitari challenged economic injustice and political corruption – and at one point was actively asked by government figures to make sure the church maintained its role of prophetic moral challenge to those in power.

The Church of England has the same role and the same invitation. The role (shared with other denominations) derives from a Biblical call for justice, and has led people (from Wilberforce to Barnardo to Desmond Tutu) to show us that the world can be better, if we will it so.

The invitation derives from its status as the established church, which places its senior bishops in the House of Lords. Thus (if the mood so takes them) they can challenge our thinking from Parliament as well as from pulpit.

And from time to time, they have done so. David Shephard wrote Bias to the Poor (and thereby ruled himself out of contention for the Canterbury post while Thatcher ruled). John Sentamu cut up his clerical collar on national TV in protest against the Mugabe regime.  I think it was David Jenkins who dared to “pray for our enemies” during the Falklands war.

But on the whole, the established church, understandably, does not want to rock the boat. Sieghart values a church “that is prepared to move – albeit a generation behind the rest of society – with the times”. I would like to see a church which moves ahead of society: which takes the lead, like Wilberforce, like the Quaker reformers, like the Jubilee campaign: which sides with the vulnerable in the (often hidden) face of the comfortable and the corporate.

The trouble is, challenging the government has been portrayed (at least since Thatcher, perhaps longer) as disloyal. But the opposition’s official title is Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition. Opposition to bad legislation – indeed, forcing the government to properly justify good legislation – is an essential function in a democracy.

It is also a function which the church forgets at peril to its relevance. We do not make the gospel “relevant” by changing the message to fit what people already believe, any more than we make the speed limit “relevant” by changing it to match the speed people already drive at.

The new fundamentalism

A Devon town council was told by the High Court it was acting illegally by allowing (presumably Christian) prayers to be said before meetings. The council found a surprising defender in Baroness Warsi, Britain’s first female Muslim cabinet minister. She wrote in the Daily Telegraph:

“To create a more just society, people need to feel stronger in their religious identities and more confident in their creeds. … You cannot and should not extract these Christian foundations from the evolution of our nations any more than you can or should erase the spires from our landscapes."

The British Humanist Association waded in, saying Baroness Warsi’s comments are “outdated, unwarranted and divisive”. Let’s take those one at a time.

Outdated? The intellectuals at the BHA can do better than this. To value an idea according to whether it originated long ago or last week – or on a Thursday, to paraphrase Chesterton – is like saying that job interviewers should appoint the candidate born first, or last, or under Scorpio.

Unwarranted? Means: without basis. Richard Dawkins gives the game away by declaring that Warsi’s comments have “no logical basis” (italics mine). I think he mistakes the nature of faith. I have no logical basis for believing God exists, just as he has no logical basis for believing God does not exist. Or for believing that new ideas are better than old ones. Dawkins and the Baroness each take up a position with a clear basis – in their respective faiths.

(Meanwhile, the idea that God would submit himself for examination by Dawkins is laughable. The opposite may eventually occur, but that is another matter.)

Divisive? This is the most puzzling accusation. I would say Warsi's comments are the opposite. A person of one religion is finding common cause with people of another religion, even though important differences remain. If a secularist tries to discourage this, if a humanist wants Muslim and Christian to disagree: who is being divisive?

The Baroness speaks of “militant secularisation” as a form of totalitarianism. I look forward to the BHA showing us that this is not so – although there is “no logical basis” for that hope: since there is no logical connection between loving one's neighbour and hating God.