Cliff Richard’s ‘Little Town’ for Christmas No1!

Today, England’s second-greatest Christian institution becomes a septuagenarian.

Not quite as enduring as the quincentennial Church of England, but undoubtedly in a lot better shape.

A survey a decade ago, in which people were asked to name a famous Christian, revealed that Cliff Richard left both the Pope and the Archbishop of Canterbury trailing.

Like God, Sir Cliff moves in a mysterious way.

He has been ridiculed, mocked, hated, rejected and boycotted.

According to The Guardian, ‘outside of a loyal, ageing fan base, almost no one takes him seriously’.

But even at 70 he is capable of releasing an album which NME notes can give Robbie Williams a run for his money. Bold as Brass fulfils Sir Cliff's lifelong ambition to record a selection of timeless classics from the Great American Songbook with a band of Nashville’s best swing musicians.

This radical rock’n’roll phenomenon uniquely has had number one hits in the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s – half a century of religio-celebrity endurance.

The ageless pop icon seems to be without beginning or end.

And in the calendar stakes, he even outsells global icons like Kylie Minogue.

His private life is, well, private. Except we know that the 30-inch waist is apparently a result of three games of tennis a week and a dairy and wheat-free diet. Like all of us, he has fears. And his Mum, Dorothy, died of Alzheimer's.

He does wine and Jesus but he doesn’t do politics, though he did once loan his Barbados villa to a ‘dwindled and haggard’ Tony Blair during his Iraq trauma. "The idea was to do a good deed for someone doing a terrible job," Sir Cliff explained. One hopes, out of non-partisan Christian charity, that he may someday extend the same invitation to David Cameron when the stresses and strains of ‘doing a terrible job’ make him look older than Sir Cliff, which won’t be very long by the looks of things.

After being the first (and only) British artist to secure number ones in every decade from the 50s to the 90s, the spiritual darkness of the new millennium demonically conspired to keep Sir Cliff out of the top slot in the noughties.

His Millennium Prayer of 1999 was his last Number One.

But, God willing, he will have his second coming in the twenteens (or whatever this decade is termed).

The resurrection is long overdue.

And it isn’t merited because he’s sold more units than the Bible (he hasn't), or because he’s been ridiculed and spat upon over the years by industry big-wigs and Radio 2 djs (he has), or because his contribution to the nation’s GDP eclipses that of any other ‘pop’ artist and his charitable efforts and philanthropy are legendary and laudable.

Sir Cliff is worthy of the No1 Christmas slot just because he is.

And, let’s face it, the infallible Simon Cowell now inspires such messianic devotion that X-Factor has become a dangerous quasi-religious cult in danger of sending many deluded millions to musical purgatory, so an injection of artistic authenticity and Christian orthodoxy can do no harm at all.

Especially at Christmas.

Rage Against the Machine achieved it last year, bringing to an end Mr Cowell’s four-year domination of the Christmas charts. They got to number one with nothing more than a hugely popular Facebook campaign culminating in a frenzied Christmas iTunes download.

It was not at all out of spite to X-Factor’s Joe McElderry.

But rather a Cromwellian challenge to Simon Cowell’s notion of Divine Right.

This was the common people versus the King. More than half a million downloaded the band’s anti-authoritarian track ‘Killing in the Name’ in what was undoubtedly a mass protest against the increasing influence of Cowellian manufactured pop music.

And the Machiavelli of music monopoly has schemed and manipulated this year to ensure that his Anointed One is crowned No1 at Christmas by making every X-Factor week an iTunes download week.

Two interminably tedious months of sterile, quirky, plastic karaoke downloads is enough to drive anyone to contemplate another vision of hell.

Can a humble, lowly blog take on the majesty and omnipotence of the heretical trinity of Cowell, ITV and X-Factor?

God was born in a stable.

Carpenters get resurrected.

So perhaps anything is possible.

Except maybe determining Radio 2’s play list: even after Rage Against The Machine defied all the odds and beat Joe McElderry last Christmas, Radio 2 boycotted Rage (as they did Cliff in 1999) and stubbornly plied their listeners interminably with the X-Factor winner.

It may not be possible to raise a hand against the Cowell’s Anointed and be guiltless.

But bearing guilt must be preferable to having another hollow X-Factor fabrication to tinsel the Christmas charts with plagiarised pap.

Which brings us to Cliff Richard’s ‘Little Town’.

Surprisingly, despite it being by far his best-known Christmas single, it never reached No1. In fact, in 1982 when it was released, it didn’t even enter the Top 10.

The campaign to make ‘Litle Town’ the Christmas No1 for 2010 begins here.

And His Grace is delighted to announce that Sir Cliff has generously agreed to donate all the proceeds of ‘Little Town’ Christmas downloads to the Alzheimer’s Research Trust.

So, while the Grinch Cowell’s digital commercial creation will go towards fuelling his private jet and subsidising his fifth mansion at a cost of $22million in Beverly Hills, Sir Cliff’s analogue Christmas carol will be raising money to heal the sick.

When Christmas ceases to be about giving, it ceases to be about Christ.

‘Little Town’ is the spirit of Christmas.

Let’s not only give Sir Cliff Richard his first No1 of another decade, but let’s try to end forever the interminable loneliness caused by dementia in all its forms.

For those who know nothing of this illness, you don’t want to.

Many thousands may feel acutely lonely on Christmas day, but for families of those who suffer with Alzheimer’s, that loneliness can be felt all year round.

Join the Facebook page HERE.

Register your email address for the 13th December download HERE.

Donate to the Alzheimer’s Research Trust HERE.

Please spread the Good News: a Christmas song is coming to the Christmas charts, and it's all about giving.

A wondrous gift indeed.

Hallelujah.

Happy Birthday, Cliff.

Baroness Warsi on faith

Speaking during the Pope's visit, Baroness Warsi addressed the Bishops of the Church of England. She outlined how the Coalition Government will put the contribution of faith and faith communities at the heart of the Big Society. His Grace has had this for some time, wondering what to do with it. Unusually for him, he has decided to post it without comment. He simply wants to preserve it in order to discern the outworking five years hence. The Baroness said:

I am having a divine week. First, I celebrated Eid-ul-Fitr. Last night I was at dinner with the Chief Rabbi, who has just marked the Jewish New Year. Today I am delighted to be here with you, the Bishops of the Church of England. And on Friday I will be meeting His Holiness the Pope.

So if anyone suggests that this government does not understand, does not appreciate, does not defend people of faith, dare I even say, does not "do God", then I hope my schedule this week will go some way to banishing that myth.

But to be serious, I think everyone here will agree that we have had a big problem in Britain in the way the state has been handling issues of faith and religion.

Indeed, I would go even further: I think we have a big problem in the way we think about faith in our society as a whole.

This isn't the first time I've talked about this. Last year, I spoke out at the Conservative Conference about the growing suspicion of faith by the political elite in Britain.

That feeling was fuelled by a flurry of stories in the media: The nurse suspended from her job for offering to pray for the recovery of a patient; The think-tank report suggesting that we downgrade Christmas to help race relations; And reports of faith charities being put off from applying for public funding by a barrage of bureaucracy.

Whichever way you see it, it's clear we have got into a real mess when it comes to talking about the relationship between faith and society. The political elite in particular have got things badly wrong. Far too often, too many intellectuals, journalists, commentators and politicians have been too quick to dismiss faith and its contribution to society.

Unpicking these problems is a huge operation, but today I want to make a start and focus on one part of the confusion: The role of government.

Now I don't want to score big political points this morning. It's clear that there are people of integrity in all parties and beyond. What's more, whatever is said about the previous two Prime Ministers, there is no doubt they were men of faith and spiritual sincerity.

But at the same time, it seems clear that the previous government did get things profoundly wrong. It got things wrong because it sent the wrong signals about the right relationship between state, faith and society.

To quote the Archbishop of Canterbury last year: "The trouble with a lot of government initiatives about faith is that they assume it is a problem, it's an eccentricity, [and that] it's practised by oddities, foreigners and minorities."

Oddities, foreigners, minorities. Some people would say I fall into all three categories.

But of course, faith isn't something confined to these people. `So the question is why the last government came to the impression that it was.

And as I see it, it was because of the following things:

* they misjudged the actual state of faith in our society - they thought that faith was essentially a rather quaint relic of our pre-industrial history;
* they were also too suspicious of faith's potential for contributing to society - behind every faith-based charity, they sensed the whiff of conversion and exclusivity;
* and because of these prejudices they didn't create policies to unleash the positive power of faith in our society.

As a result of all this, the relationship between state, faith and society got out of kilter.

We urgently need to put that right - and that means starting by doing three things.
First, we need to understand the current state of faith in Britain.
Second, we need a richer recognition of the Anglican and wider faith-based contribution to society.
And third, we need to draw the right conclusions for policy, especially when it comes to voluntary action, social cohesion and the Big Society.

Let me take each of these steps in turn.

THE STATE OF FAITH

First, the current state of faith in Britain and the world.

Twenty years ago, Soviet communism came to an end revealing shocking information about how terribly Jewish, Christian, Muslim and other minorities had been treated by the Soviet Empire. Soon afterwards, Bosniak Muslims were ethnically cleansed in Bosnia which reminded us of the horrors of the Holocaust.

And then, just as some were claiming that a clash of faiths and civilisations was inevitable, came the terrible events of September 11th.Sadly, some took that day as the excuse to scale up their attacks on all people of faith. Others kept pushing the myth that religion had died out in modern societies and was the source of most conflict in less developed ones. And meanwhile we have seen the rise of a new kind of intellectual, who dines out on free flowing media and sustains a vocabulary of secularist intolerance.

But is faith actually in decline? Is it a symptom of economic backwardness? And with the progress of history, is faith something which will ultimately fade away? Not as I see it.

For a start, we know that the proportion of people in the world who adhere to the four biggest religions has actually increased in the past century.

And right here in Britain, despite what many say, religion is certainly not going away.

Not only did up to eighty per cent of British people say that they had some kind of religious belief in the last census but there is evidence to show that religious attendance actually seems to be rising. Tearfund tells us that number of people attending church each year increased between 2007 and 2008, from around one in five adults to around one in four. Cathedral worship has increased since the turn of the century. And the Baptist Union have been recording rising attendances - especially among the young.

Part of the problem of course is that for decades university social science departments taught that as societies modernised they would become more secular. And they suggested that as the 'modern' state grew, faith-based voluntary action and social care would wither away.

One of the most extreme examples is the sociologist Peter Berger. Back in 1968, Peter Berger predicted that "by the twenty-first century, religious believers are likely to be found only in small sects, huddled together to resist a worldwide secular culture". Fast forward three decades, and he has had to retract the prediction completely.

The fact is that our world is more religious than ever. Faith is here to stay. It is part of the fabric of human experience. And in Britain faith is very much alive and kicking.

Deny it and you deny the ability of a huge part of society to articulate where they have come from, what they are working for, and who they are.

UNDERSTANDING THE FAITH-BASED CONTRIBUTION

Nowhere is this better demonstrated than when you consider the social action of millions of British believers and the work of the almost 30,000 faith-based charities.

And that brings me to the second point I want to make.

We have to come to a deeper understanding about the contribution of these faith communities to our society. In other words, why they do the good things they do. Unless we understand what drives people of faith to contribute to society, we cannot hope to help them on their way.

Now there will always be people who look at faith-based charities and think they are something sinister. There will always be people who think that religious organisations are up to no good or on the make. You can see it in the debates at the end of the 19th century, when some parliamentarians argued that the rise of convents and monasteries was a threat to our liberty. You can see it in the way that many modern sceptics criticise Mosques, Temples, Churches and faith-based charities over the social work they do.

They fail to see the vital link between these peoples' faiths and their contribution to society. They fail to see that these people feel inspired to help others because of their faith.

Let me give you just a few examples of what I mean.

The 2008 Citizenship Survey suggests that those who are religiously observant are more likely to volunteer and give than their non-believing or non-practising counterparts. Again and again you see similar patterns taking shape whether it is the care of Jewish social welfare charities, the huge generosity of Muslims and others in response to the floods in Pakistan or the work of local church groups to help those overwhelmed by drink, drugs, or crime.

When you think about it, it's incredible that many people of faith give up their evenings to work as street pastors making sure that young men are less at risk of knife crime and young women less likely to run into trouble after a night out.

A second line of attack from secular fundamentalists is that faith communities are "intolerant" and their welfare provision is "exclusive" or "contractual". But recent research by York University shows that faith based provision for the homeless was both more open and inclusive than other agencies. It also came with far fewer strings attached, because it less often danced to the tune of 'targets'.

But when you try to tell the "new atheists" about these sorts of facts, too often, they simply do not want to know.

An increasing body of evidence reveals the economic contribution of Cathedrals their important work in running faith schools and the emotional support offered in hospitals, prisons and other social institutions by faith-based charities.

And very often, faith communities offer us innovations which the whole of society can learn from: The Fairtrade movement was launched in an Anglican theological College in the North East. Churches were integral to the emergence of the anti-homelessness and the anti-slavery movements. The story of overseas development cannot be written without the names Christian Aid, CAFOD Islamic Relief, Jewish Care, and Muslim Aid.

Of course in England it's hard not to notice the presence in every community of a parish church served by clergy. It's absurd to stereotype these parishes as 'holy huddles'. They are hubs around which people of all faiths and none can meet, greet and build relationships in what can be a fragmented society. As you know better than any of us, they are also the bases where post offices, libraries and job clubs have been co-located. They are the place where self-help groups for those facing addictions can meet affordably.

So the real question is not: "how should big government be controlling faith-based organisations"...

....but "how can government help people of faith do even more to build the Big Society?"

FAITH AND THE BIG SOCIETY

And that takes me to the third point I want to make.

Once we are clear about the reason why faith-based charities do all the good things they do, we can put in place the right policies to support them responsibly. It's simple:

Faith gives rise to huge numbers of personal kindnesses and other civic contributions; Faith shapes beliefs, behaviour and a sense of purpose; And so what government should be doing is helping people of faith express themselves in this way.

My conviction is that in a stronger and bigger society the scope for people of faith to take their places as equals at the public table should become easier not just on so called 'stake-holding' bodies but as the vanguard of an increasingly decentralised civic society.

Let me explain what I mean.

As Lord Wei will be saying later, our aim with the Big Society is to build a culture where we don't just look to government to solve all our big problems. Where people are empowered and feel encouraged to take control of their local communities and neighbourhoods. And where we foster a new culture of social responsibility - not by legislation but by example and collaboration.

Just imagine if the whole nation could give to charity at the same levels as people of faith already do. The question is how can government help to bring that about?

One big part of it is about giving you - charities, churches, faith groups, community groups - the chance to do even more good. That means giving you the chance to take control over local community buildings or run services where the community thinks that you could do that well.

Under our plans, you will have more power, more responsibility, and more choice over how to get involved in your communities and over how to apply your skills.

Another part of it is about showing that we are all in this together, and ensuring that no community and no corner of society gets left behind.

That's one of the reasons why the Cabinet Office plans to establish a new fund to invest in poorer communities, called the Communities First Fund.

And then there is the funding you will be able to access through our Big Society Bank - a bank built up not of new taxpayers' money, but unclaimed bank accounts.

But above all we want to encourage a bonfire of the petty rules and prejudices that have held you and others back for so long. It seems crazy for the state to offer support to the voluntary sector and then shackle it with so many targets. And it's crazy that bidding for funds as a faith-based charity is made more difficulty by a kind of religious illiteracy in local authorities.

All of this needs to change and be challenged - and that's what this government will be about.

So I don't just want to say to you that you have a lot to contribute to building the Big Society. I want to tell you that for me you are at the heart of society already and key to its future, and that this government will be on your side.

CONCLUSION

As I have said today, we urgently need to rethink the way we think about faith in society. The challenges of the late 20th century and early 21st century have revealed a world which is more religious than ever. It is a world where faith inspires, motivates and sustains - despite what the sociologists thought they could predict about the modern world.

We need to get the relationship between state, religion and society in sync with this new reality.

In Britain the resilience of religion gives us the confidence to reject the intolerance of secularist fundamentalists. It should also give us the confidence to recognise fully the huge contribution of believers everywhere.

And to do that, we need first and foremost a government which understands faith, which is comfortable with faith, and which when necessary, is prepared to speak out about issues of faith.

And so that leaves me with the last point I want to make.

It would be easy to make this speech and walk away, maybe with the promise of returning next year. But I am serious when I say that I will be thinking about all these issues long and hard over the next few months. And I will always be ready and willing to speak out and help lead the debate.

Because however things pan out over the next five years, I don't want anyone to look back and say: "This government thought that people of faith were eccentrics or oddities."

Instead, I want this to be a new beginning for relations between society, faith and the state. Thank you.

The inherent atheism of globalism

His Grace was fortunate enough to meet the former Czech President Vaclav Havel in 1990. We talked of much, but the enduring impression has been of the man’s politico-philosophical conviction.

There is an excellent article in The Catholic Herald on Mr Havel’s address to a conference in Prague entitled ‘The world we want to live in’. It deals with ‘different spheres from politics, economics, sociology and political philosophy to aesthetics and religion’:

At the opening of the conference. Mr Havel, an acclaimed playwright and essayist, gave a speech in which he deplored the global society, describing it as the “first atheistic civilisation”. This society, he said, preferred short term profit over long term profit, but its most dangerous aspect was its pride.

He described the pride as: “The pride of someone who is driven by the very logic of his wealth to stop respecting the contribution of nature and our forebears, to stop respecting it on principle and respect it only as a further potential source of profit.”

Mr Havel continued:

“I sense behind all of this not only a globally spreading short-sightedness, but also the swollen self-consciousness of this civilisation, whose basic attributes include the supercilious idea that we know everything and what we don’t yet know we’ll soon find out, because we know how to go about it. We are convinced that this supposed omniscience of ours which proclaims the staggering progress of science and technology and rational knowledge in general, permits us to serve anything that is demonstrably useful, or that is simply a source of measurable profit, anything that induces growth and more growth and still more growth, including the growth of agglomerations.

“But with the cult of measurable profit, proven progress and visible usefulness there disappears respect for mystery and along with it humble reverence for everything we shall never measure and know, not to mention the vexed question of the infinite and eternal, which were until recently the most important horizons of our actions.

“We have totally forgotten what all previous civilisations knew: that nothing is self-evident.”

The former president described the current financial and economic crisis as a very edifying sign to the contemporary world and a call to humilty.

“Most economists relied directly or indirectly on the idea that the world, including human conduct, is more or less understandable, scientifically describable and hence predictable. Market economics and its entire legal framework counted on our knowing who man is and what aims he pursues, what was the logic behind the actions of banks or firms, what the shareholding public does and what one may expect from some particular individual or community.

“And all of a sudden none of that applied. Irrationality leered at us from all the stock-exchange screens. And even the most fundamentalist economists, who – having intimate access to the truth – were convinced with unshakeable assurance that the invisible hand of the market knew what it was doing, had suddenly to admit that they had been taken by surprise.

“I hope and trust that the elites of today’s world will realise what this signal is telling us.

“In fact it is nothing extraordinary, nothing that a perceptive person did not know long ago. It is a warning against the disproportionate self-assurance and pride of modern civilisation. Human behaviour is not totally explicable as many inventors of economic theories and concepts believe; and the behaviour of firms or institutions or entire communities is even less so.”

This call to humility, he said, was: “A small and inconspicuous challenge for us not to take everything automatically for granted. Strange things are happening and will happen. Not to bring oneself to admit it is the path to hell. Strangeness, unnaturalness, mystery, inconceivability have been shifted out the world of serious thought into the dubious closets of suspicious people. Until they are released and allowed to return to our minds things will not go well.”

He continued:

“Wonder at the non-self-evidence of everything that creates our world is, after all, the first impulse to the question: what purpose does it all have? Why does it all exist? Why does anything exist at all? We don’t know and we will never find it out. It is quite possible that everything is here in order for us to have something to wonder at. And that we are here simply so that there is someone to wonder. But what is the point of having someone wonder at something? And what alternative is there to being? After all if there were nothing, there would also be no one to observe it. And if there were no one to observe it, then the big question is whether non-being would be at all possible.

“Perhaps someone, just a few hundred light years away from our planet, is looking at us through a perfect telescope. What do they see? They see the Thirty Years War. For that reason alone it holds true that everything is here all the time, that nothing that has happened can unhappen, and that with our every word or movement we are making the cosmos different – forever – from what it was before.

“In all events, I am certain that our civilisation is heading for catastrophe unless present-day humankind comes to its senses. And it can only come to its senses if it grapples with its short-sightedness, its stupid conviction of its omniscience and its swollen pride, which have been so deeply anchored in its thinking and actions.”

Amen and amen.

There is something of Weber in this, and His Grace particularly likes ‘the cult of measurable profit’.

There have been throughout millennia numerous religious movement which prophesy the imminent destruction of the present order and the establishment of a new order, usually reversing the relative status of the oppressed and the oppressor.

It did not come with the last General Election, though it was undoubtedly a small step in the right direction.

Whether or not you are a pre-, post- or a-millennialist, or a pre-, mid- or post-tribulationist, a numerologist, apocalypticist or just an agnostic dispensationalist trying to find your way in a dark world, it is political leaders like Vaclav Havel who light the way.

Mayor Boris on Katharine Birbalsingh: ‘Reinstate her!’

After the media furore following Katharine’s Birbalsingh’s ‘suspension’ last week for delivering a speech to the Conservative Party conference, the Southwark Diocesan Board of Education issued a statement to the media which was not only a highly public and humiliating rebuke of Ms Birbalsingh, but it included this assurance:

Miss Birbalsingh was asked to work at home on Thursday and Friday and will return to work next week.

‘Will’ is quite definite: it is a future expectation of ability or capacity.

It implied at least that a conversation had taken place and agreement struck between Ms Birbalsingh and Dr Irene Bishop to permit Ms Birbalsingh to return to work at the St Michael and All Angels Academy.

As far as the media are concerned, she did indeed return to work on Monday of this week.

Even the Facebook campaign has ceased and the page is closed.

The curious thing is, when one phones the Academy and asks to speak to Ms Birbalsingh, she is ‘not available’.

Presumably the Southwark Diocesan Board of Education, being a wholesome body operating under the aegis of the Church of England, is populated with truth-telling Christians.

When they issue a statement, it must be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

Notwithstanding that in their public rebuke of Ms Birbalsingh last week in which they criticised her for using children’s photographs, they inadvertently omitted to mention that she had secured not only the permissions of all the parents, but also of the Academy’s full-time ‘on-the-ground’ Headteacher who operates beneath the part-time ‘flying’ Executive Headteacher.

Yet it was the part-time ‘flying’ Executive Headteacher who was so angered and ordered Ms Birbalsingh to ‘work from home’.

It must be difficult being a remote deputy headteacher. Is Ms Birbalsingh expected to deliver lessons via Skype and issue detentions by email?

How does she collect exercise books to mark?

Having said that, Dr Bishop appears to manage quite well being a completely remote Executive Headteacher.

Or perhaps she doesn’t.

And this epistemological gap is the primary cause of Ms Birbalsingh’s apparent continuing ‘suspension’, because the part-time Executive Headteacher’s right hand appears to have very little knowledge of what the full-time Headteacher’s left hand is doing.

Or saying.

Mayor Boris to the rescue:

…the most important voice in the great university debate belongs this week not to Lord Browne or any of the politicians – but to Katharine Birbalsingh, the deputy head of a south London school. She has now become the latest great martyr to what I can only call political correctness. She was sent home from her school after having the effrontery to suggest that Lefty thinking in education was inhibiting discipline, standards and competition. But isn't she right?

Isn't she right to point to the central importance of discipline and the authority of teachers in driving up educational standards? She strikes me as being a principled person who has reached the end of her tether, and I welcome the move to reinstate her.

The ‘move’ was polite and fairly low-key.

A movement will be neither.

If Dr Irene Bishop and the Academy’s governors and sponsors wish to avoid this manifestly political persecution escalating into a rather more aggressive and high-profile campaign for vindication, His Grace humbly suggests that they fully embrace Ms Birbalsingh’s manifest talents, however irritating they might find her mouth, and thank God that she has come to redeem their failing school.

Census 2011 - the ethnicity question

There are quite a few departures from the 2001 census in the 2011 ethnicity options (click image to enlarge), presumably in response to the outcry over the previous exclusion of English identity.

Ten years ago, respondents in Scotland and Northern Ireland were able to tick a box describing themselves as Scottish or Irish. With the absence of an English tick-box, the only other tick option was 'White-British' or 'Other'. It was never clarified whether or not if 'English' was written in under the 'Other' option it would be counted as an ethnic group in same the way as the Welsh.

Following the 2001 census, Plaid Cymru backed a petition calling for the inclusion of a Welsh tickbox, which they now have. No major political party supported equality for the English, yet the voice of the English has clearly been heard.

According to the 2001 Census, the ethnic composition of the United Kingdom was:

White British 50,366,497 85.67%
White (other) 3,096,169 5.27%
Indian 1,053,411 1.8%
Pakistani 977,285 1.6%
White Irish 691,232 1.2%
Mixed race 677,117 1.2%
Black Caribbean 565,876 1.0%
Black African 485,277 0.8%
Bangladeshi 283,063 0.5%
Other Asian (non-Chinese) 247,644 0.4%
Chinese 247,403 0.4%
Other 230,615 0.4%
Black (others) 97,585 0.2%

Significantly, 'Arab' appears on the 2011 form for the first time as an ethnic tick-box option. This is as a result of lobbying by The National Association of British Arabs and other Arab organisations, in order to include under-reported groups from the Arab world.

We now await the inclusion of a 'Cornish' ethnic category in 2021.

Census 2011 - the religion question

The questionnaire for the 2011 Census has been released.

No option for the Jedi.

Appalling discrimination, considering the 2001 census established that they were 390,127 practising Jedi in the UK - a number surpassing both Jews (267,000) and Sikhs (336,000).

Perhaps HM Government is subscribing to EU directives/conventions on the matter, by which we are bound and shackled through the Human Rights Act 1998. It was Tony Blair who incorporated the European Convention on Human Rights into UK law, and, despite his pre-election protestations, David Cameron now shows no sign of repealing it.

According to Article 9 of the Convention, 'everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion'.

As His Grace's loyal and erudite communicant Mr D. Singh has previously elucidated:

1. Article 9 includes the freedom of belief and the freedom to manifest belief
2. A belief does not have to be a religious conviction
3. A belief can be an absence of belief
4. A belief (i) must not be trivial (ii) must be consistent with basic standards of human dignity or integrity and (iii) must be coherent, in the sense of being intelligible and capable of being understood
5. It is hard to predict whether an act is a manifestation of belief or not
6. A religious obligation is likely to be a manifestation of belief
7. A religious motivation is not likely to be a manifestation of belief
8. An interference with an Article 9 right can be justified

Those criteria are a far cry from the 16th century when Elizabeth I refused to 'make windows into men's souls' and thereby signalled the end of State interference into religious belief in England.

Perhaps the ruling élite consider Jedi to be too 'trivial' for a census designation. Yet who determines religious triviliality? Who judges a religion's coherence and intelligibility?

Why is the belief in a carpenter who gets resurrected from the dead not frivolous?

What is coherent about human infallibility or intelligible about angels dictating books to illiterate warlords? What is capable of being understood about a man with an elephant's head, or a book which is revered as a living guru?

Is there any inconsistency between human dignity, Yoda and the Force?

And this Census question evidences further inconsistencies:

Why is it that only Christianity has qualifying denominational clarification (note how 'Church of England' is distinct from 'Protestant')?

Why are (for example) Jews and Muslims not equally treated in this regard, with reference to Sunni, Suffi and Shi'a Islam, or, for the Jews, clarification for inter alia Hasidic, Haredi, Liberal or Reform adherents?

What qualifies as a 'Christian denomination'? Do they all need to subscribe to trinitarian belief? Are Jehovah's Witnesses a Christian denomination? Is Unitarianism? Are you a Christian because you tick this box?

What makes Buddhism a religion and not a philosophy of life?

Does 'Other' now possibly include Environmentalism? According to a recent judgement, the belief in man-made climate change is capable, if genuinely held, of being a philosophical belief for the purpose of the 2003 Religion and Belief Regulations.

In 2001 the religion question was voluntary, and 4,011,000 people chose not answer it (7.7 per cent of the population).

It remains voluntary for 2011.

But for how long thereafter?

X-Factor downloads from iTunes 'not chart eligible'

His Grace hesitated before posting on this apparently utterly trivial and relatively unimportant matter, lest his august blog of intelligent and erudite comment upon matters religio-political be mistaken for Watchdog.

His readers and communicants will know more on Thursday about why this matter is of any concern to him at all.

Especially since Ms Widdecombe is not a contestant.

The X-Factor innovation for this year's interminable two-month eternity of Saturday night musical mediocrity is that all of its performance tracks every week would be immediately available for download on iTunes.

No matter how desperately bad or embarrassingly awful the act, if you happen to like the offering, you may download it within hours of the show for the bargain price of 99p; 98p of which goes directly to fund Simon Cowell's third private jet and subsidise the servants in his fifth $22million mansion in Beverly Hills.

His Grace is of the opinion that this development is Mr Cowell's rather clever response to the success last year of the Cromwellian 'Rage Against The Machine' depriving Mr Cowell of his divine right - the Christmas No1 slot.

But it has been decided that the weekly X-Factor performance tracks are not eligible for the official UK singles chart, despite being sold via iTunes, the reason being to 'protect integrity'.

Whilst His Grace (along with millions of others) may thank God for this relief, the decision raises certain ethical issues relating to the music market.

The concern is that, for the first time in its history, iTunes is determining what is of an acceptable quality for the UK charts; that is to say, they are 'censoring' tracks, irrespective of their popularity, to ensure that they cannot enter the charts.

Where does this end?

Or what precedent is being set?

If the powers-that-be at iTunes were, for example, to determine that 'Killing in the Name' compromised the integrity of the Christmas chart, would they somehow disqualify it from entry irrespective of its download popularity?

And by what creative reasoning is that which might compromise the integrity of the chart during October and November suddenly determined, on 11th December, to be consistent with the desire to 'preverve integrity', in order that the X-Factor televised that week might 'influence' in the following week the popularity and sales of the climactic Christmas release?

Do 'Mistletoe & Wine' and 'Saviour's Day' preserve their chart integrity criteria, while 'Mr Blobby' compromises it?

Or, God forbid, vice versa?

The omnipotent and absolute divine right of Simon Cowell has now been irrevocably fused with the unaccountable and immovable oligarchy of iTunes.

Their control is complete.

His Grace finds himself torn between thanking God that we are to be spared two long months of plastic karaoke covers in the charts, but despairing of what this might mean for democratic protest.

But His Grace will go with the principle every time.

The political persecution of Katharine Birbalsingh

She was ‘suspended’ last week, after delivering an electrifying speech at the Conservative Party conference on the state of Britain’s ‘broken’ education system.

And it’s not just ‘broken’.

Ms Birbalsingh has helpfully since elucidated her meaning and explained that it is, in fact, ‘fundamentally broken’.

Fundamental: adj. of, affecting, or serving as a base or foundation, essential, primary, original (OED).

This didn’t go down well with Dr Irene Bishop, the Executive Headteacher of St Michael and All Angels Academy in Camberwell, who appears to have taken it all rather personally.

What Ms Birbalsingh objectively appropriated to state education in general, Dr Bishop subjectively ascribed to her school in particular.

Or, rather, to one of her schools. For her leadership of the St Michael and All Angels Academy is part-time, perhaps only one or two days a week, because her primary allegiance is to St Saviour's and St Olave's School, which also has a Church of England foundation in the Diocese of Southwark.

And if you compare the sparse and bleak website of St Michael and All Angels with the vibrant and technicolor one belonging to St Saviour’s and St Olave’s, you might detect a slight indication of the relative pride and shame.

Of course, one shouldn’t judge a school by its website.

But one does.

And it is doubtful that Ms Birbalsingh is the webmaster for St Michael and All Angels.

It would appear that Dr Bishop has welcomed a prime minister, a mayor and a monarch to her favourite school.

There is no indication on the St Michael and All Angels website that she has yet invited anyone to judge for themselves whether or not Ms Birbalsingh has a point about it being ‘totally and utterly chaotic’ with a lack of discipline in black boys in particular which keeps the ‘poor children poor’.

Ofsted, of course, are able to invite themselves.

And their findings tend to vindicate the perceptions of Ms Birbalsingh.

According to the statement issued last week by the academy’s sponsors, Southwark Diocesan Board of Education, Ms Birbalsingh ‘will return to work’ today.

His Grace is rather doubtful about this.

At least, she deserves a little ‘clarification’ before she does so.

The Diocese’s statement was a very public and utterly humiliating rebuke to the deputy headteacher. Certainly, that is how the media interpreted it.

Ms Birbalsingh was criticised inter alia because she had ‘used pictures of children from our school and made reference to them by name’. The Diocese said: ‘We are concerned by this and in particular by the way in which the pictures have been used.’

Well, it transpires that not only had Ms Birbalsingh secured the necessary permissions of the children and their parents to use these photographs, but she did so with the full knowledge and consent of the headteacher.

The confusion or lack of communication is perhaps a consequence of having a part-time ‘flying’ Executive Headteacher who doesn’t know what the full-time ‘on-the-ground’ headteacher is doing.

Or saying.

The statement of the Diocese does not indicate at all that Ms Birbalsingh had secured the permission of her headteacher. Indeed, it rather suggests that she had not.

The omission of this salient fact from this press release is, at best, an inadvertent imprecision or, at worst, evidence of collusion and cover-up.

If the latter, it is a resigning matter either for the Executive Headteacher or the academy’s Chair of Governors. If the statement were simply an inadvertent imprecision, one wonders whether the helpful and obliging ‘on-the-ground’ headteacher might today have the integrity to explain to the ‘flying’ Executive Headteacher why he saw fit to grant such permission if it be a serious breach of child protection regulations.

Or at least speak up to restore the personal integrity and professional standing of Ms Birbalsingh, who has had her reputation unjustly trashed by Dr Bishop’s precipitous decision to send her home last week.

Dr Bishop is concerned with perceptions, inaccurate generalisations and educational equality. Ms Birbalsingh is concerned with facts, reality and educational inequality.

It is not so much a clash of civilisations as a collision of conceptual ideologies.

For the ‘Blairite’ Dr Bishop, ‘all schools have high aspirations for our young people whatever their background’: her creed is beyond question. For the Tory Ms Birbalsingh, the children born into disadvantage face an almost impossible struggle to get out if it, and the education system cannot facilitate social mobility as long as its ‘essential, primary’ foundation is based upon the dogma of 'equality', which makes few demands on pupils and bludgeons teachers into making excuses for their failure, especially for the young black males.

It is fortunate indeed that Ms Birbalsingh is of Indian-Guyanese-Jamaican heritage: it makes her racially untouchable, and her gender facilitates the reception of her damning critique. If she were a lesbian, she’d have a discrimination hat-trick and her school would urgently be looking to settle out of court. Certainly, no English white male could have got away with saying such things at a Conservative Party conference without being accused of racism or of affirming the ‘nasty party’ leitmotif.

His Grace would like to remind everyone that St Michael and All Angels is a Church of England school.

It is sponsored by the Southwark Diocesan Board of Education

Its Chairman of Governors is Canon Peter Clark.

It includes three other clerics on its Governing Body, and doubtless others who profess to be Christians.

Its Executive Headteacher is positively effusive about the importance of the Christian faith in education; indeed, she says it ‘raspberry ripples’ its way throughout her whole ethos (play the 'welcome' video).

So, could we please have a ‘statement of clarification’, exonerating Ms Birbalsingh from the suggestion that she ‘used’ the photographs of children without acquiring permission?

And an apology would also be appropriate.

All she did, after all, was to tell the truth.

Or is Dr Irene Bishop simply going to issue the same riposte to this as Pilate did?

Ann Widdecombe - 'a salsa the likes of which we will never see again'

As His Grace intimated last week, Ann Widdecombe is fast becoming a national treasure. She is known to be one of the most 'right-wing' politicians: a devout Roman Catholic who opposes abortion, has zero tolerance on cannabis, was against the repeal of Section 28 and is a climate-change sceptic.

And yet she is cheered to the rafters...

George VII, By the Grace of God King and Defender of Nature

Prince Charles has disclosed not only that he wishes to be known as King George VII when he accedes to the Throne, but also that he wants to be Defender of Nature.

DG REX ND

That is to be his mission.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, The Daily Telegraph botches its mocking objection when it says:

‘As heir to the throne Prince Charles will one day be given the title Defender of Faith’.

No he won’t.

He will be given the title ‘Defender of the Faith’.

That faith being the Protestant Reformed Religion established by law.

The title ‘Defender of the Faith’ (Fidei Defensor) was bestowed upon King Henry VIII by Pope Leo X in 1521, as a reward for his pamphlet Assertio septem sacramentorum adversus Martinum Lutherum (‘Declaration of the Seven Sacraments Against Martin Luther’). When Henry VIII broke with the papacy, Pope Paul III deprived him of this designation, but the title was restored to King Edward VI (and his successors) by Parliament in 1544 in recognition of the Monarch’s role as Supreme Governor of the Church of England.

So, the Pope originally bestowed the title ‘Defender of the Faith’ upon England’s king.

Parliament bestows it upon the Queen of the United Kingdom.

By what authority is Charles made ‘Defender of Nature’?

Welcome to St. Michael & All Angels Church of England Academy

This is not funny.

The Welcome Page of the St Michael & All Angels Church of England Academy is featured above, with a prominent photograph of its Executive Headteacher, Dr Irene Bishop. It reads thus:

St. Michael & All Angels Academy has high expectations of students, who are encouraged to enjoy learning and to succeed.

Our core values are Care, Respect, Achievement, Faith and Trust. To support and develop our core values within our learning community we expect every student to give the very best of themselves.

We integrate ICT fully into the curriculum, with students using new technologies to enhance learning within their subjects, ensung (sic) that they leave St. Michael & All Angels as confident, able youring (sic) adults, fully equipped with the skills required to respond effectively to the adult world, whatever career path they choose to follow.

Our staff are committed and enthusiastic and we expect the same from our students.

The Academy is committed to providing a safe, secure and stimulating environment within which young people are supported through a personalised approach and high quality support so that every student is able to achieve his or her personal best.

We believe in nurturing ambition and creativity and welcome students of all abilities.

Dr Irene Bishop - Executive Headteacher

....ensung?

...youring?

His Grace has enquired of Dr Bishop the provenance of her doctorate.

It beggars belief that the Welcome Page of such a prominent and highly-paid Executive Headteacher had not (at the very least) been proof-read by someone literate.

Perhaps she is a little too part-time either to notice or care.

‘Blairite’ Headteacher with damning Ofsted inspection publicly rebukes her Tory deputy

If His Grace did not know that Dr Irene Bishop, the Executive Headteacher of St Michael and All Angels Church of England Academy, were so committed to the principle of absolute political 'neutrality' in education, he might easily be persuaded of the view that she was persecuting Ms Katharine Birbalsingh for her political beliefs.

In an astonishing development, Dr Bishop has authorised a very public rebuke of her deputy, which casts not inconsiderable doubt about the future of their working relationship.

Indeed, it appears to have ‘broken down’.

Irrevocably.

The fate of Ms Birbalsingh may not be quite as clear as some sections of the media have made out. The Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph and Guardian have all indicated that Ms Birbalsingh is permitted to return to work on Monday and that the matter is therefore closed.

In an attempt to deflate the pantomime and mitigate the furore which has ensued as a result of their decision to ‘suspend’ Ms Birbalsingh from her professional duties and the pursuit of her vocation, the academy’s sponsors, Southwark Diocesan Board of Education, issued the following statement to the media:

Katharine Birbalsingh has been a Deputy Head at St Michael and All Angels Academy since September.

Her speech at the Conservative Party Conference used pictures of children from our school and made reference to them by name. We are concerned by this and in particular by the way in which the pictures have been used.

Teachers will always have opinions about the ways in which schools should be run. Some teachers may agree with some of the points made by Ms Birbalsingh and some may disagree. Our concern is that the position of the Academy should not be misrepresented. Generalisations about teachers and schools can be seen as insulting to many teachers who have worked hard to make a difference to the lives of the young people in their care. We and all schools have high aspirations for our young people whatever their backgrounds.

Miss Birbalsingh was asked to work at home on Thursday and Friday and will return to work next week.

His Grace has quite a few problems with this. Indeed, Dr Irene Bishop and the academy’s Chair of Governors, Canon Peter Clark, have quite possibly inadvertently just ensured that this pantomime plays into a second act with an encore.

Ms Birbalsingh is a very experienced teacher: she has been an assistant principal for many years and was promoted to the position of deputy headteacher in September.

Media reports now indicate that she had secured permission from her headteacher to attend the conference and to address it. It is also widely reported that she had secured the necessary permissions from her students and their parents to refer to the children by name.

What is inconceivable to His Grace is that Ms Birbalsingh had not also secured the permission of her headteacher to use these photographs.

The statement of the Diocese does not indicate that she had secured that permission. Indeed, it rather suggests that she had not.

If it transpires that Ms Birbalsingh had indeed informed her headteacher and permission had been granted for these photographs to be used, then the omission of that salient fact from this press release is evidence of collusion and cover-up: the Diocese has deceived by omission.

It would be a resigning matter for either the Headteacher or the academy’s Chair of Governors or both.

Further, Ms Birbalsingh had been instructed to ‘stay at home’ for two days. The natural inference is that she had done something which merited this ‘suspension’. Since her speech at the Conservative Party conference has gone viral (due, in large part, to Dr Bishop’s crass handling of this situation), staff, students and parents will now all be persuaded of the view that Ms Birbalsingh is guilty of misconduct, indeed ‘gross misconduct’, since only gross misconduct merits being instructed to leave the school premises immediately and to ‘work from home’.

Such a suspension, however informal, is not necessarily 'neutral'.

His Grace refers to the judgement of Lord Justice Sedley in the 2007 case of Mezey v. South West London and St George’s Mental Health NHS Trust. Counsel in that case submitted to the Court of Appeal that suspension was a ‘neutral’ act. Lord Justice Sedley gave judgement on behalf of the Court and responding to Counsel’s submission, said: “I venture to disagree, at least in relation to the employment of a qualified professional in a function which is as much a vocation as a job. Suspension changes the status quo from work to no work, and it inevitably casts a shadow over the employee's competence. Of course this does not mean that it cannot be done, but it is not a neutral act.”

Ms Birbalsingh may be justifiably concerned about the shadow that was cast over her competence and character by her ‘suspension’.

It is clear from all the press reports that Ms Birbalsingh is fiercely defending her school and its reputation.

Yet there is no reciprocity of respect in this statement.

Indeed, it rather sounds as though Dr Irene Bishop and/or the Chair of Governors have decided to initiate disciplinary proceedings against Ms Birbalsingh, because the wording of this statement indicates that they consider either that she has brought the academy into disrepute or that she may be guilty of breaching child protection guidelines by the unauthorised use of children’s photographs, or both.

It is not Ms Birbalsingh’s alleged misconduct which has compromised her position, but this rather public humiliation of a senior member of staff. Indeed, it might even be defamatory.

But let’s come to the political persecution.

Dr Irene Bishop and Canon Peter Clark accuse Ms Birbalsingh of making ‘generalisations about teachers and schools’ which ‘can be seen as insulting to many teachers who have worked hard to make a difference to the lives of the young people in their care’. They assert: ‘We and all schools have high aspirations for our young people whatever their backgrounds.’

Ms Birbalsingh is at liberty to state her opinion. Whether or not she generalised in order to make her political point is irrelevant: indeed, it is difficult to make a political point in a three-minute speech without generalisation.

But the Diocese statement itself is a generalisation.

Ms Birbalsingh’s observations of state education might indeed be ‘insulting to may teachers’, but equally so might her comments be seen as inspirational.

And it is bizarre that they presume to speak (generally) on behalf of the ‘high aspirations’ of ‘all schools’, as though these were beyond question.

Let us examine the (very recent) Ofsted report for St Michael and All Angels CofE Academy.

Only five months ago, this school was graded ‘4’ in its overall effectiveness.

In Ofsted grading: 1 is outstanding, 2 is good, 3 is satisfactory, and 4 is inadequate.

Its capacity for sustained improvement was graded ‘3’.

Her Majesty's Chief Inspector was of the opinion that this school ‘requires significant improvement, because it is performing significantly less well than in all the circumstances it could reasonably be expected to perform. The school is therefore given a notice to improve’.

While teaching and learning were improving, it was judged that ‘the sixth form curriculum is preventing students from accessing a range of courses that meet their needs, interests and aspirations, and is therefore inadequate’.

The school is a failing school. It needs leaders like Ms Birbalsingh.

Its educational outcomes for individuals and groups of pupils was grade ‘4’.

This is hardly surprising when inspectors found evidence of ‘inadequate’ teaching.

Pupil achievement and enjoyment was graded ’3’, apparently due in large part to pupils’ overall behaviour being graded ‘4’.

The ‘effectiveness’ of the leadership and management of the school (prior to Ms Birbalsingh’s appointment and that of Dr Bishop) was graded ‘3’.

Is this what Dr Bishop means by 'high aspirations' in 'all schools'?

Clearly, her predecessor was found wanting.

One must remember that this ‘effectiveness’ is not a measure of raw results, value-added or other outcomes, but of the knowledge the leadership have of their own school and their strategy for school improvement.

This, say Ofsted, is only ‘satisfactory’.

As is the level of support and challenge provided by the Governing Body.

Most damning for the Governors and Sponsors of the school is that Ofsted graded them ‘4’ in ‘the effectiveness with which the school deploys resources to achieve value for money'.

While Dr Bishop rebukes Ms Birbalsingh for 'insulting teachers', it would appear that the Southwark Diocesan Board of Education deserves to be exposed for their managerial incompetence, the misuse of public money and rank hypocrisy.

Ms Birbalsingh exposed all of these failings (and more) as being endemic within the state secondary system, and she did so with incisive and damning precision. She did not name her new school: indeed, insofar as she had only worked there for three weeks, she could not in any credible sense be accused of having ‘misrepresented’ the position of this academy, as alleged.

However, Dr Irene Bishop and Canon Peter Clark appear to have misrepresented and defamed Ms Birbalsingh.

Someone’s position is becoming untenable.

And it is not Ms Birbalsingh’s.

His Grace refers his readers and comminicants (again) to the Facebook campaign: the battle for vindication has only just begun.

Save Katharine Birbalsingh - the Facebook campaign is launched

There is now a Facebook campaign dedicated to saving Ms Birbalsingh 'from revenge'.

Presumably that of the her 'politically neutral', over-zealous executive headteacher, who is herself just a victim of the system and deserving of pity.

His Grace exhorts his readers and communicants to register their support.

And to tell their sisters, cousins and aunts.

Bless you.

UPDATE (after just 20 minutes)

Apparently, Dr Irene Bishop and the Governing Body of St Michael and All Angels Academy in Camberwell have given in. Ms Birbalsingh is back.

That must have been the shortest Facebook campaign in history...

Katharine Birbalsingh - the speech which so angered Dr Irene Bishop

Here it is - the speech which so incensed the Executive Headteacher of St Michael and All Angels Academy in Camberwell that this talented deputy headteacher was 'sent home' while her future in the academy is 'under consideration'. Hitherto, it has been available only on BBC iPlayer, but now, thanks to YouTube, it has been democratised for her inspirational message to go out to the four corners of the earth.

His Grace is deeply indebted to Mr Dizzy for discovering that the Executive Headteacher who so disapproves of Ms Birbalsingh's conduct is one Dr Irene Bishop.

This is that same Dr Irene Bishop who, as headteacher at St Saviour's and St Olave's in 2001, permitted Tony Blair to announce the general election of that year from her school hall.

Though she has a slightly different take on events.

Dr Bishop's action against Ms Birbalsingh appears to be an unconscious psychological defense mechanism: Dr Bishop clearly felt 'used' by Tony Blair, who further abused the children in her charge by exploiting them for his blatant partisan posturing. This offended her 'neutrality', and the media furore became, for her, a shameful 'pantomime': "Party politics and schools do not mix well", she opined.

And yet now she has produced, directed and cast this latest pantomime all by herself.

It seems that because she felt so 'used' in 2001, she believes that all teachers might be as naïve as she in allowing unprincipled politicians to take advantage of their benevolence and violate their sacred neutrality. Because she herself once permitted the children in her charge to be treated as political props, she is hyper-cautious to the point of irrational paranoia to ensure that the latest generation of children in her charge are never again so abused.

But Ms Birbalsingh, our beloved Miss Snuffy, is such an experienced teacher and school leader that it beggars belief that she had not secured the necessary permissions both to attend this conference and to mention the children she did.

Dr Irene Bishop has said: "Schools should be apolitical."

Quite.

She has also advised other head teachers 'to be very careful not to be seen to support one side or the other'.

Right.

So please get a sense of proportion and permit Ms Birbalsingh to return to work on Monday, and stop pandering to the political prejudices and biases of your (most vocal?) staff.

His Grace would be most obliged.

Teacher who spoke at Tory conference ‘suspended’ by Head

Well, ‘sent home’ actually, which is some clever pseudo-legal way of avoiding immediate suspension while the (Executive) Head Teacher and Governing Body of the St Michael and All Angels Academy in Camberwell decide how to deal with having a Conservative-supporting deputy headteacher in their midst.

It must be awful for them.

In a highly-unionised, Labour-dominated, Socialist-obsessed profession, having a repentant former-Marxist in the staffroom must be like marking with the enemy.


Or formulating schemes of work with a traitor.

Or discussing continuing professional development with a socio-political retard.

Miss Snuffy, aka Katharine Birbalsingh, an Oxford graduate and teacher of French, ‘came out’ at the Conservative Party conference two days ago, where she disclosed: “I have come here today to expose some of the truths about the education system. My experience of teaching for over a decade in five different schools has convinced me beyond a shadow of a doubt that the system is broken, as it keeps poor children poor.”

She got a standing ovation from the conference.

But has been stamped under foot in her school.

La Leçon aujourd’hui, mes enfants, is that telling la vérité will get you into a whole load of merde. You will be humiliated (look it up) and ostracised (don’t bother); your professional reputation will be ruined and you might even be sacked.

Truth is truth, to the end of reckoning.

What a burden it is.

Ms Birbalsingh is now facing potential disciplinary action and even dismissal for daring to speak out about the shambolic state of state education. She has been made to ‘work from home’ after her (executive) headteacher, governors and sponsors consider whether or not she has brought her school into disrepute.

Pray, how does a deputy headteacher work from home?

She’s only been in her position for three weeks.

But her truth-telling has caused ‘negative publicity’, you see, by talking of ‘leftist ideology’ and a ‘broken system’.

And so she had to go.

Even though she was not criticising her colleagues, her employer, her school or her pupils at all, but the system which binds them.

One can scarcely think of little else that the school could have done to establish the truth of every word Ms Birbalsingh spoke. To send her home is an outrageous reaction, and by it they bring themselves into disrepute.

Ms Birbalsingh loves her school, she loves children and she loves education – enough, it seems, to die for it. All she wanted to do was to highlight the barriers that stand in the way of improving education in Britain.

But God forbid a that a teacher might exercise freedom of speech.

Unless that speech is Marxist, leftist and statist.

How does a deputy headteacher who has blown the whistle on a sclerotic culture of excuses, criticised low standards, derided arbitrary targets and league tables, disparaged political correctness and poured scorn over the pervasive ‘leftist ideology’ in state education ever again command the respect of a staffroom populated with pathological Socialists?

The unenlightened pedagogues will say there is no redemption: the heretic must burn.

But His Grace will show them a better way.

They must respect the foundational liberties of the nation; understand the Christian settlement upon which state education is based; appreciate that Plato’s academy curriculum is founded upon the primacy of epistemology; and open their minds to challenge the limitations of their own myopic worldview.

If they cannot do this, then they forfeit the right to participate in the development of the minds, bodies and spirits of the children to which their professed vocation has drawn them to dedicate their lives.

Those educators who spit on Katharine Birbalsingh are those who inflict perpetual harm upon the nation’s most vulnerable.

Those who despise and reject her are the very ones who dedicate their lives to keeping the poor children poor.

Perhaps this is too much truth for St Michael and All Angels Academy.

And so Ms Birbalsingh sits ‘working from home’, while her governing body considers whether or not her Toryism is as perverse as theft, cheating in exams or allegations of paedophilia. Certainly, by sending her home, they equate speaking at a Conservative Party conference with gross professional misconduct.

The (Executive) Headteacher you can perhaps forgive: she too is a victim.

The Governing Body you must humour: they are, by definition, amateur.

But the sponsors are the Church of England.

And His Grace will be having words.

Very serious words indeed with any meddlesome priests who presume to sit in judgement in this case.

And if they dare to despise and reject Ms Birbalsingh simply for telling it like it is, His Grace will have such revenges on them all,
That all the world shall - he will do such things -
What they are, yet he knows not: but they shall be
The terrors of the earth!

You mess with Miss Snuffy; you mess with His Grace.

You have been warned.

David Cameron, heir to Disraeli: “We are the Radicals now.”

In a speech constructed almost entirely on the ‘Big Society’ theme (which he mentioned about 10 times), David Cameron has soared above the interminable tedium of petty party politics and offered himself to the nation as a reforming radical. He is painfully cutting the deficit and repaying debt because he has to, but he is intent on renewing the nation because he wants to.

And we’re all in this together.

If there is to be fiscal discipline, fairness and social justice, there must be collective enthusiasm, individual responsibility and reward for industry. He will abolish the entrenched, top-down bureaucratic services if the spirit of enterprise and entrepreneurial vision fills the void. The poor we will always have with us, but henceforth only the deserving poor will receive support from the state. He wants the British people to love their country because we’re all in this together.

This is Cameron’s patriotic social contract.

And with this, he stands four-square behind Disraeli, Churchill and Thatcher.

Disraeli’s pursuit of ‘One-Nation’ politics was primarily concerned with the eradication of poverty, and this was to have an enduring appeal for the Conservative Party. A Jewish convert to Anglicanism, his faith may have been more about political expedience than spiritual regeneration. But he came under the influence of the New England Movement and thereafter made great gains in the most impoverished urban areas in the 1874 general election: his administration of 1874-80 saw public health bills, factory acts, education reforms and slum clearance initiatives which won praise even from the trade unions.

For Churchill, the ‘One Nation’ leitmotif was manifest in national unity, and that unity predicated upon the pursuit of the common good which was grounded in the Christian, Anglican basis of English political life. He once described himself as a ‘buttress’ of the Church of England, supporting it from the outside rather than being a pillar within. Whatever Churchill’s personal beliefs about the nature of God, his writings and speeches consistently equate Christianity with enlightenment and Anglicanism with patriotism.

For Thatcher, from a Nonconformist tradition, her conservatism was Tory in its Burkean deference to the great institutions of state but thoroughly Whiggish and libertarian in its iconoclastic challenge to the big agencies of state, her emphasis on the ‘work ethic’ kind of Protestantism, her patriotic belief in the national British Christian spirit and her notion of morality as the opportunity for free choice.

David Cameron sees a fusion in the spiritual, moral, political, and economic crises facing the nation: they can be addressed separately, but they are different descriptions of the same overall crisis. His ‘broken society’ theme stems from the same aversion as Thatcher had to the state’s interference in the exercising of individual free will. For her, morality lay in choosing between feasible alternatives. A moral being is one who exercises his own judgment in choice, on matters great and small, bearing in mind their moral dimension, i.e., right and wrong. If there were no choice, there would be no ethics, no good, no evil; good and evil have meaning only insofar as man is free to choose.

In a more Anglican fashion, Cameron has articulated the same theme. We’re all in this together, but the moral good lies in choosing to participate: it is a fusion somewhere between individual responsibility and community right. One does not need to manifest missionary zeal: a passive assent to the benign aims and objectives of the ‘Big Society’ will suffice. Out of this will flow service, self-sacrifice and voluntary effort. It is a vision wholly consonant with his ‘fairly classic Church of England faith, a faith that grows hotter and colder by moments’.

Unlike Thatcher, he has not come to set father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law. She brought a sword: Cameron brings peace. His expression of Anglicanism does not seek to polarise or divide by setting one moral philosophy over another, but instead to unify and heal; to seek consensus in accordance with its traditional via media. His political philosophy is both Catholic and Reformed; Conservative and compassionate; One-Nation and devolved: it is Red Tory.

And, in accordance with the postmodern settlement, he tolerates the illogical disjunctions and internal contradictions. His worldview does not pitch Europe versus the USA or the EU versus the Commonwealth any more than liberalism is antithetical to conservatism. ‘It takes two’, he says.

And so the party of free-market capitalism is also the party of the poor: the party of localism and individual responsibility is also the party of the NHS. While Margaret Thatcher invoked the ‘extremism’ of the God of the Old Testament in her iconoclasm, David Cameron’s approach is of the new dispensation. His appeal to Disraeli stems from his awareness that under Thatcher the Conservative Party was perceived to have a harsh attitude towards the poor. And so his ‘Compassionate Conservatism’ has a distinct focus on those who have little, with policies on health and education in particular to ensure ‘social justice’.

“We are the radicals now”, he says.

By shifting conservatism from Tory paternalism to Whiggish individualism and local responsibility, Cameron’s vision is indeed radical. The move ‘from state power to people power; from unchecked individualism to national unity and purpose; from big government to the big society’ is laudable. He explains: “The big society is not about creating cover for cuts. I was going on about it years before the cuts. It’s not government abdicating its role, it is government changing its role.”

Cameron is simply completing the Thatcher revolution. His vision for education is one of the most liberating and empowering pieces of legislation ever: it is the logical continuation of Margaret Thatcher’s political objectives. While she democratised industry, the stock market and home-owning, she stopped short of giving choice to NHS patients and empowering parents to educate their children in the school and with the curriculum they wished.

This is where Cameron picks up. And he will soon find that what is good for education is what is best for health.

His speech may not have pleased everyone. And the whole conference has been somewhat overshadowed by the disastrous child benefit announcement. There are those who carp and criticise that the speech was a 'profound disappointment', 'illogical', 'peculiar' or even 'forgettable'.

But these have missed the point. This was not a speech about clarifying political policy, but inculcating a national mood. It was not a speech about philosophocal logic or particularity, but about subtlty shifting perceptions and understanding. The speech was forgettable because they all are – every one of them. What we remember is the sound-bite – ‘the white heat of technology’; ‘the lady’s not for turning’; ‘the determination of a quiet man’; ‘education, education, education’.

And we will remember ‘We’re all in this together’.

Disraeli said: “I am a Conservative to preserve all that is good in our constitution, a Radical to remove all that is bad. I seek to preserve property and to respect order, and I equally decry the appeal to the passions of the many or the prejudices of the few.”

The Coalition is not a hindrance to radical reform: liberal conservatism or conservative liberalism is not an oxymoron to David Cameron; just a via media tension which has to be tolerated to realise his vision.

To Miss With Love – who is she?

Yesterday, a delightful lady with whom His Grace has had the most fulfilling of relationships over many years decided to ‘out’ herself. And she did so at the Conservative Party conference in Birmingham where she received a standing ovation.

A link to ‘To Miss With Love’ has sat upon His Grace’s blog ever since he discovered her existence. She did what all good bloggers do: find a niche, tell it like it is, often letting the heart rule the head, challenging her readers in eloquent and creative prose. Her posts were infrequent, but each one a sparkling jewel upon the blogosphere’s plate of cold baked beans.

Miss Snuffy, as she was known, posted here; His Grace posted there. It will be seen in the right-hand column that Miss Snuffy even credited His Grace with influencing her political development. She wrote:

You have made me appreciate Conservative thinking. I had always believed right-wingers to be evil, selfish, and mean individuals. You, however, are Conservative and delightful. I will indeed be voting Conservative in the next election – your influence in particular has led me down the path of taking an interest in what the Right has to say.

And so this former Marxist did indeed vote Conservative at the last general election.

And she instantly became a darling of conference, with The Guardian, The Times (£) and the Daily Mail all wanting a slice.

Her speech is available on BBC iPlayer (forward to 1:17). It is a superlative account of the manifest deficiencies in the state education system and the root causes of its chronic failure to meet the needs of our children because ‘it keeps poor children poor’ and teachers are too ‘blinded by leftist ideology’.

And now Miss Snuffy, aka deputy headteacher Katharine Birbalsingh, has been forced to take down her blog (it would be quite impossible for her to write about students now that her school has been identified). And she has asked His Grace to bid farewell to her ‘Blogsville friends’.

To have come out as both Miss Snuffy and a Tory on the same day has been more than a little traumatic for her, especially with all the paparazzi and consequent press intrusion. While we can now put a delightful face to ‘To Miss with Love’, her loss to the blogosphere is acute.

She would like her friends and many contributors over her blogging years to know that it is they who brought her to where she is: that when the newspapers asked what helped her in her evolution, she credits blogging and ‘the people she met in Blogsville’. She says: “I want to tell them how grateful I am.”

As we are to you, Miss Snuffy.

Ms Birbalsingh.

Katharine.

Good-bye. You will be missed.

Though it is quite likely that you will be Baroness Birbalsingh before too long.