Cameron's amoral Christians

I had not intended to comment on David Cameron’s speech of two weeks ago (here) when he ‘did’ God, and this will almost certainly be one of the tardiest blogs on the subject. But for all that was encouraging in the speech, there was one particular phrase near the end of the speech that has niggled me ever since:

‘There are Christians who don’t live by a moral code.’

Now I don’t profess to be any kind of theologian; I lay claim to no deep knowledge of Anglicanism, nor the Bible. But I fail to see how anybody can lead an amoral life yet still claim to be a Christian.

The story in Exodus describing how God gave the Law to Moses means that the Law is sacrosanct. As such, the Law is not just a useful moral compass but to keep it is a religious obligation. It seems to me that this is a pretty basic plank of what it means to be a Christian (or to be a Jew or a Muslim for that matter).

Of course, it is possible to hold high a set of ideals such as the Law, but fall short of actually living in accordance with them – the Law books of the Bible contain 659 commandments, so it is likely most of us will break one or more of them from time to time! Perhaps it is this to which Cameron alluded in his speech?

But to fall short of living up to your own moral code is something completely different to living life without a moral code.

I am always wary of discussing faith, and particularly the Law, in fora such as this. Waiting for the inevitable wit of somebody singling out a line of the Law they object to, usually, and with a tiresome lack of imagination, taken from Leviticus. I would merely ask such critics one simple question.

In Jesus’ summary of the law, He cites the second commandment as being: ‘Love your neighbour as yourself’.

Irrespective of individuals’ faith (or lack thereof), can there be a better starting point for any national debate of morality, of law and order, as those five short words?

Minimum pricing, on chips?

We read in the Telegraph today (here) that the Prime Minister has instigated plans to introduce minimum pricing on the sale of alcohol.

Whilst such a move will undoubtedly be welcomed by some health professionals, and warmly so by the patronising, preaching nanny statists, it is difficult to see this as little more than an eye-catching gimmick which will achieve little in the way of public health improvements or a curtailing of problem drinking.

Whilst ‘problem drinking’ and ‘preventable deaths’ are easy and emotive phrases to bandy about, I fear we are trying to come up with solutions before we have fully understood the root causes of the problem.

Whilst there have been well publicised and extreme cases of nightclubs retailing alcohol at ridiculously low prices, inviting partygoers to‘drink all you can’ for a fixed price, these are very much the exception rather than the rule.

Minimum pricing will have no impact at all on those individuals that believe their alcohol intake on a Saturday night to be directly proportional to their masculinity, who in the main already pay way above the likely level of any minimum price in their quest to prove their manliness.

We also seem to fall in to the trap of assuming that those who abuse alcohol only buy the cheapest alcohol available to them, and then only because it’s cheap; that we can price alcoholism out of peoples’ reach. The notion that we can tax addicts into kicking their habit is breathtakingly misconceived.

Any solution to ‘problem drinking’ must be centred on the tried and tested approach of education, education, education. No, it won’t give you a sexy headline; it won’t give you overnight results; but it will work.

The Telegraph also reports today that of the quarter of the population which is clinically obese, over 40% thought they were a “healthy” weight. It also reports that even a substantial number of health professionals cannot tell the difference between a healthy weight and an unhealthy one.

As the National Obesity Forum calls for the better education of pupils about the dangers of obesity, I await next year’s inevitable plans for the minimum pricing of fatty foods with baited breath…

Say Nay To Pay And Display

Last week, Stockton Borough Council's Labour / IBIS coalition cabinet voted to introduce parking charges to Yarm High Street.

Stockton council would like me to stress that their argument for replacing the existing disk controlled zone with parking meters is not to raise revenue (honestly, they kept straight faces when they said it and everything), but because the great British public don't have the wit to understand the nuanced technicalities of a disk controlled zone.

As though this wasn't bad enough, they are looking to install meters virtually the full length of the High Street, with the loss of the vast majority of the 127 unrestricted parking spaces relied on by residents of the High Street.

With Stockton's annual madcap parking proposals in danger of becoming an unwelcome tradition, you could be excused for thinking that the situation in Yarm was complicated. That there was no straightforward solution.  Well you'd be wrong.  Both the problem and the answer are breathtakingly simple.

Problem:  Yarm doesn't have enough parking spaces
Solution:  Create more parking spaces

Forgive my being glib, but that really is the crux of the matter.  Now don't get me wrong, I am not saying the solution is simple to implement.  Where could we put a new car park?  From where would we access it?  Who will pay for it?  These are difficult problems to solve - if they weren't, this matter would have been put to bed years ago - but that does not detract from the fact that the answer is simply to create more parking spaces.

Meandering back to the point of the article, I'll put this equally simply:

Stockton's proposals to introduce a tax on those visitors to Yarm that had the audacity to drive there won't achieve anything but deter shoppers from visiting Yarm.  Granted, that's one way of solving traffic congestion in Yarm but it has the one minor drawback that we would likely end up with a High Street which looks something like Stockton's in no time at all.

As for their plan to convert free long stay spaces into charged short stay spaces, Stockton would have you believe that this will boost business, by encouraging and enabling more shoppers to visit the town. My response to that is...well, just re-read the previous paragraph.  Not only that, in their misguided attempt to help the High Street what they will actually do is ensure that some 100 residents won't be able to park anywhere near their own home.

Furthermore, 100 or so people that work on the High Street that rely on these spaces to park during the day will just park elsewhere.  On West Street. On Worsall Road.  In Eaglescliffe.  Stockton would have you believe this won't happen, but it already does - ask the residents of Butts Lane, Eaglescliffe how much they enjoy Yarm Fair week.

I could go on - the report to cabinet was so full of holes one would need to write something of a similar length to correct it - but I won't.  Put simply, these recommendations are the veritable unholy trinity - they're bad for residents, bad for traders, bad for commuters.

I'll leave you with one last thought.  Mary "queen of shops" Portas recently completed her research into the state of the nation's High Streets and has made a number of suggestions.  One of these was to call for councils to "implement free controlled parking schemes".

It's not clear if she based her recommendation on the current arrangement in Yarm specifically, but we would already seem to be exactly what she's recommending.  But you never know, I suppose it's possible that Mary Portas' recommendations (and common sense) are wrong, and that Stockton Borough Council know what they are doing...

I'm back

After a truly hectic few months, my redesigned blog is here and ready to go.

As predicted in my very first post, parking in Yarm is well and truly back in the news (see here).  Stockton council's daft, sorry, draft proposals for 2011 - parking charges.  Well it was only a matter of time before the Labour led council looked to bleed that particular stone wasn't it?

I will post my take on the plans tomorrow.