Virtual Methodist

Readers of this blog will know by now that I do a monthly stint on a local independent radio station, offering reflections on the Sunday newspaper headlines and a "Review of the Week" as part of an early morning religious magazine programme, which in its latest incarnation is called "Dawn Reflections". Today the headlines covered three broad areas depending on what papers you looked at. The Irish nationals (eg. the Irish Independent and Irish Times ) had stories critical of the past and present Irish governments' handling of the economic crisis, and reflected a spirit akin to Fraser from Dad’s Army telling us “We’re all doomed!” The erstwhile broadsheets of Britain , meanwhile, filled their front pages with photographs of a beturbaned Saif al-Islam Gaddhafi, who was captured yesterday trying to flee Libya... (Although the Observer also found space to highlight a letter from Church of England Archbishops and Bishops critical of the current indescrim...

It maybe slightly premature but Nicky Campbell quoted this short poem this morning on Radio 5... Perfection, of a kind, was what he was after, And the poetry he invented was easy to understand; He knew human folly like the back of his hand, And was greatly interested in armies and fleets; When he laughed, respectable senators burst with laughter, And when he cried the little children died in the streets. W.H. Auden

I used to be a supporter of Gordon Brown. I've been left-leaning in my political sensitivities for decades, and while I supported the "modernisation" of the Labour Party under the leadership of Blair, I was always deeply suspicious of his grinning spin. Whilst I appreciated that he claimed a Christian moral compass, I believed that it deviated because of his proximity to the bigger, brasher version used by George W. Bush. I believed that in Brown, you still had a profound sense of Christian (Presbyterian) morality, leading to his interventions on global debt etc., but that it was more substantive and less about surface impressions... that is, that what you saw was what you got. Sadly, over the past months I am more and more convinced that he's just the same as Blair (and Cameron), just not as good at the game. Almost since he took over as PM he has been flailing around like a drowning man. Some of the circumstances, such as the global recession and the wars in Iraq/Af...