www.reconciliationtalk.com

Reconciling the differences: Cleaners 'worth more to society' than bankers - study

This has to be radical in its implications!

BBC News - Cleaners 'worth more to society' than bankers - study.

The research, carried out by think tank the New Economics Foundation, says hospital cleaners create £10 of value for every £1 they are paid.

It claims bankers are a drain on the country because of the damage they caused to the global economy.

They reportedly destroy £7 of value for every £1 they earn. Meanwhile, senior advertising executives are said to "create stress".

Think of the consequences. True they are maybe being a bit hard on bankers. They did catch them in a bad year. Maybe an average of the good and the bad years would see them receiving the same wage?

The importance of social capital has been growing, and maybe this whole systems approach to economic worth is worth taking further. The work of Relationships Foundation in evaluating policy in terms of its impact on relationships deserves much more thought.

The reconciling impact on society would actually be very significant. 

In the Developing World, Swine Flu Elicits Shrugs, Not Panic

Is the H1N1 virus story the most worrying news this year or overblown hype?  Probably both. News reports this evening seem to have been playing down thge scare, but that may be a bit premature. What for me gives it perspective is to set the danger in the light of existing pandemics in the developing world.  

There were stories in two journals that passed my eyes on this today, and undoubtedly many more. The first was in the Church Times:  a news story. Poorer countries may struggle to obtain swine-flu anti-virals.  This kicked off:

FEARS are being voiced that poorer countries would be the losers in a global flu pandemic. Developing countries may struggle for access to anti-viral drugs because wealthy nations had advance-purchase agreements and other deals in place, campaigners warned this week.

The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) called the outbreak of swine flu, which began in Mexico City, “a test for global solidarity”, and said in a statement that preparedness levels in middle- and lower-income countries were low. The UN secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon, said on Monday: “Poorer na­tions are especially vulnerable. . . We must ensure that they are not hit disproportionately hard by a po­ten­tial health crisis.”

There is also a leader article: World specialises in diseases of the rich:

... The feeling of reassurance that this prompts is tempered, though, by the knowledge that such a response is possible only in the wealthier nations. The inference drawn from the lack of fatalities in developed nations so far is that this variety of swine flu is relatively mild, and responds well to treatment. This must be contrasted with the number of deaths attributed to the disease in Mexico. Were the epidemic to spread to other countries with smaller public-health budgets even than Mexico’s, the world would be facing a much greater challenge. ....

It continues on to compare the response to ongoing pandemics like malaria and TB. This is a theme in Time:  In the Developing World, Swine Flu Elicits Shrugs, Not Panic:

If the fast spread of swine flu suggests the world is small, the global response to the epidemic reminds us that in many ways it's still light years apart. Swine flu has been making headlines in the Western world, but in places like India and Africa, where "pandemic" is just another part of the daily vocabulary, no one has so much as stifled a sneeze.

In Africa, malaria kills more than 3,000 children a day; in South Africa, HIV/AIDS has taken 2.8 million people and infected 5.3 million more. Every day in India, 1,000 people succumb to tuberculosis. Those are just the big diseases. According to the United Nations, a recent cholera outbreak killed nearly 4,000 Zimbabweans and infected 80,000, while in India diarrheal diseases kill an estimated 600,000 children under 5 every year. ....

And returning to the relative vulnerability of the developing world, I found this sobering: 

.... The problem is, if and when the flu does take root in the developing world, countries' lack of preparation could be devastating to their populations — especially those that are already so ravaged by endemic disease. The 1918 flu pandemic, for example, was estimated to have killed some 17 million Indians.

This is challenging.

Solving the credit crunch with a Jubilee Year?

A couple of times in the last month or so it's been suggested that we comment on a call for a worldwide Jubilee Year to resolve the current financial crisis.  The Jubilee Centre that seeks to address issues in society on the basis of wisdom from the Christian Bible (both Hebrew Scriptures and our own Christian 'new testament' writings) is interested. 

Jubilee Centre - Blog - Solving the credit crunch with a Jubilee Year?.

The Jubilee Year was a means by which debt was cancelled every 50 years and people got a fresh start.

The way our debt-based economic system is structured means that from time to time the amount of debt accrued by households, companies and governments exceeds the economy's ability to service the debt. Paul Mills points out that 'bankruptcies, inflation, default or debt:equity swaps (in corporate restructurings) are then needed to rebalance the two (usually in the context of a banking/financial crisis)'.

In contrast, the biblical economic model maintains this balance through reliance on rental and equity contracts ('I share in the risk and get a share of the profit' arrangements) coupled with the periodic and predictable debt cancellation.

To be clear, the provisions of Deuteronomy 15 and Leviticus 25 have debt forgiveness (amongst the people of Israel) every 7 years while the year of Jubilee every 50 years focuses on the return of land to the families that were allotted it on entering the promised land. No matter what economic hardships were got into, even becoming a bondservant, the Jubilee ensured that subsequent generations were not cut off from their roots through the loss of the family land in a particular generation. This safeguarded identity, rootedness and access to the land as means of production. In this sense, loans, selling (or more accurately leasing) land and bonded servitude were last resorts.

Thus the Jubilee is just part (albeit a key part) of the biblical economic model that Will Hutton said 'makes Das Kapital look tame'. Forgiveness of debt might seem a radical suggestion but the truth is we need an even more fundamental and biblical reorientation of our economic principles to avoid another 'credit crunch' in the future.

I find this fascinating as up until now it has been evident that the health of Muslim Banks based on a part of Sharia Banking Law have been healthier than so many of those that have been going under in recent months.

Of course this is seen as a threat by many. Melanie Philips wrote a scare piece in the Mail two weeks ago:  Britain's a world-leader in sharia banking - but we haven't grasped the sinister and dangerous implications
I do undestand what she is saying. But one has to ask the question, if they are prepared to live by the wisdom from above which tells us of "the good life" then maybe they will do well and be blessed. Its not as if "Christian England" hasn't got its own solution -  if it was prepared to pay the cost. Unfortunately I am not sure that is the sort of Christian England Melanie Philips and many others want.

On the subject Rowan Williams wrote again on Sharia Law a week or so ago: Archbishop of Canterbury: Society is coming round to my views on sharia  Not necessarily the best sound bite for his cause (though a great one for the press)  but good thoughts once agian.

And while we are talking of the "Good Book(s)"  the row last week about consigning the Bible along with the Quaran to the top shelf can thus be seen in a different light. Bible moved to library top shelf over inequality fears   The Christian Institutre don't like the idea but maybe there is another answer.

Maybe we need to give our Scriptures  a place of honour in libraries?  Maybe the top shelf should be a bit lower where they can be accessed?

Graffiti artist Banksy goes to the Holy Land

Link: Graffiti artist Banksy goes to the Holy Land.

Banksy has made himself well known for his provocative graffiti in London. Now he goes to Bethlehem. Here a Israeli soldier checks Christ's donkey's ID card at the separation wall outside Bethlehem.

Let us Spray: Banksy in Bethlehem

and best of all, on the BBC,  the pictures themselves

Justice in Question

Two reports concern me these past two days:

At Guantánamo, no right to confront accusers    "Defense lawyers preparing for the war crimes trial of a prisoner at Guantánamo Bay have been ordered by a military judge not to tell their client or anyone else the identity of witnesses against him, newly released documents show."

This seems to totally undermine the basis of justice that is essential to the freedom we so believe in - and that some seem prepared to fight for - that a person is innocent until proved guilty.

US says it has right to kidnap British Citizens   I could not believe this one.  This is not just terror related extraordinary rendition, but is about kidnapping of just about anyone who is wanted for fraud, bypassing agreed extradition arrangements.

"If a person was kidnapped by the US authorities in another country and was brought back to face charges in America, no US court could rule that the abduction was illegal and free him: “If you kidnap a person outside the United States and you bring him there, the court has no jurisdiction to refuse — it goes back to bounty hunting days in the 1860s.”

It would seem that the present US holds itself above any accountability to international law, or even the rule of law.

I don't want to be anti US, but lets speak truth where truth is necessary.

In the Colosseum, thoughts turn to death

Robert Fisk at his provocative best.  Not ranting here but making good observations, asking good questions, and making us think. 

Link: Robert Fisk: In the Colosseum, thoughts turn to death - Independent Online Edition.

"At midnight on Thursday, I lay on my back in the Colosseum and looked at a pageant of stars above Rome. Where the lions tore into gladiators, and only a few metres from the cross marking the place of Saint Paul's crucifixion – "martyrdom", of course, has become an uneasy word in this age of the suicide bomber – I could only reflect on how a centre of cruelty could become one of the greatest tourist attractions of our time. ..."

He concludes:

"... I fear the real problem goes beyond the individual act of killing, judicial or otherwise. In a weird, frightening way, we believe in violent death. We regard it as a policy option, as much to do with self-preservation on a national scale as punishment for named and individual wrongdoers. We believe in war. For what is aggression – the invasion of Iraq in 2003, for example – except capital punishment on a mass scale? We "civilised" nations – like the dark armies we believe we are fighting – are convinced that the infliction of death on an awesome scale can be morally justified.

And that's the problem, I'm afraid. When we go to war, we are all putting on hoods and pulling the hangman's lever. And as long as we send our armies on the rampage – whatever the justification – we will go on stringing up and shooting and chopping off the heads of our "criminals" and "murderers" with the same enthusiasm as the Romans cheered on the men of blood in the Colosseum 2,000 years ago."