Right now I feel ashamed to be English. Ashamed to belong to a country that has clearly identified itself as insular, self-absorbed and apparently caring so little for the most vulnerable people among us. Why did a million people visiting food banks make such a minimal difference? Did we just vote for our own narrow concerns and sod the rest? Maybe that’s why the pollsters got it so badly wrong: we are not so much a nation of shy voters as of ashamed voters, people who want to present to the nice polling man as socially inclusive, but who, in the privacy of the booth, tick the box of our own self-interest.
No doubt sobbing with frustration, he went on:
The utterly miserable thought strikes me that Russell Brand just might have been right. What difference did my vote make? Why indeed do people vote, and care so passionately about voting, particularly in constituencies in which voting one way or the other won’t make a blind bit of difference? And why do the poor vote when, by voting, they merely give legitimacy to a system that connives with their oppression and alienation?If I ever found myself wondering if Russell Brand had been right about anything, I'd assume that I was either suffering a psychotic episode or that someone had spiked my drink with a powerful hallucinogen. And if this were 1945, I could imagine being ashamed to be German, but I'm not sure that Tory-voting English folk should feel the need to cover themselves in sackcloth and ashes for having elected a mild, centrist Conservative government in 2015. On the other hand, I would feel ashamed if I were an Anglican priest who had so totally forgotten the point of my calling that I had turned into some Marxist obsessive who feels that the church's job is to preach socialism rather than the message of personal salvation revealed by Jesus in the Gospels. In fact, I'd feel it my duty to resign from the church, throw away the dog-collar, and become a political activist, rather than hysterically insulting the majority of Anglican church-goers who identify themselves as Tories.
Most of the Anglican priests I've met are reasonable, rational, rather nice people, as one would expect them to be. Dr. Fraser would appear to be none of the above. While, in my experience, priests generally try to view people's actions in the best possible light - after all, compassion is meant to lie at the heart of their profession - Fraser seems determined to impute the vilest possible motives to anyone who doesn't agree with his extreme, hard-left political views. Why assume that voting for stability and prudence and order is voting for "our narrow concerns and sod the rest"? Has it really never really occurred to this narrow-minded ideologue that people might vote Tory because they think socialism inevitably results in poverty and misery and oppression? Or that voting Tory might be in the best interests of the people of the country they love? Or that they're justified in voting for the party which they think will create better lives for their families, friends and communities? Or that enticing people into a life of welfare dependency by making it more rewarding than working for a living is morally repugnant? And that advocating such a system purely because it salves your own conscience and sod the consequences for all those who suffer as a result is extraordinarily selfish and wicked?
As for foodbanks, Dr Fraser, the only person I know who runs one is a Catholic Tory - he actually set it up from scratch, entirely on his own initiative. I doubt if he's in the least ashamed of how he voted on Thursday. Neither do I imagine that all those Tory Anglicans who spend their free time helping the poor and the homeless, and giving to and collecting for charities feel any need to apologise to an arrogant, insulting, insular, self-absorbed, mean-minded pillock like you.
And if parliamentary democracy is so bad (when it doesn't yield the result you prefer, of course), what alternative are you proposing? Tyranny? Dictatorship?
Shame on those who voted Tory? Shame on you.
You can read the rest of Dr Fraser's spiteful ravings here.
I can't pretend to have a great deal of contact with Anglican priests but I do like to visit old churches and am lucky to live in a county where there are many lovely ones.
ReplyDeleteIn the course of these expeditions, my eyes are often drawn to the brochures, posters and pamphlets displayed on the rickety tables at the entrance, almost always espousing some Guardianista cause or other: African poverty, the Palestinian 'struggle', Kenyan pilgrimages and the like.
It seems to me as if Dr Fraser is quite in tune with the C of E's current passions, as well as the Guardian's.
It's one of the reasons, I suspect, why the pews are always empty on Sundays.
I suspect the retreat into virtue-signalling leftie politics gives clerics whose congregations are melting away a sense of purpose. The only way I can remain a member is to do what I suspect most of the conservative majority of church-goers do - just try to ignore all the trendy leftie nonsense and concentrate on the spiritual aspects, which is, after all, what the church is supposed to be about, rather than militating against the "bedroom tax".
DeleteMy daughter runs a food bank each Saturday on top of her paid employment. She tells me that the mix is interesting. Some are genuinely needy, some lead lives so chaotic that food is the last thing they think to set aside money for. Some are unable to plan ahead, some have never been taught to cook. Others come for the company. Some are blatantly trying to game the system. Food banks run by volunteers are an expression of a very British concern on the part of good natured people for those less fortunate. It is difficult to think of anything else that so aptly encapsulates what we used to think of as the Christian virtues. Which is probably not at the top of the whingeing Rev's agenda.
ReplyDeleteWhat's so dishearteneing about the food bank phenomena is the way the left - instead of welcoming it as a sign of basic British good-heartedness and decency - has chosen to use it as a stick with which to beat the Conservatives and to demand that food banks be taken over by the government rather than run by generous volunteers. Because, as we all know, the government is so incredibly good at running things, and because charity should always be controlled by well-paid left-wing quangocrats, and charitable contributions should be expropriated from people's wage packets rather than given voluntarily.
DeleteYou must be very proud of your daughter.
Giles Fraser has the brass neck to accuse the electorate of being "self obsessed and insular." Bejesus, has the man no sense of irony?
ReplyDeleteHe's a regular on Radio 4's Thought for Today (natch) and always irritates and bores me in equal measure with his pompous and oh so progressive pc opinions.
A smug, self righteous, comfortably off left wing pain in the Aristotle.
Stand for Parliament Giles and give us all a laugh.
I suspect Giles is far too comfortable preening and posturing in the left-wing media to willingly submit to the indignity of fighting an election during which he might realise that, while he is "ashamed" of the electorate, they would no doubt find him an absolute hoot.
DeleteI every time spent my half an hour to read this webpage's articles everyday along with a cup of coffee.
ReplyDeleteWonderful post but I was wondering if you could write a litte more on this topic?
ReplyDeleteI'd be very thankful if you could elaborate a little
bit further. Kudos!