Virtual Methodist

I may be on sabbatical, but I'm not completely lounging around with my feet up... just taking a break from my circuit, connexional and chaplaincy responsibilities, freeing me up to to a few of the things that I enjoy doing and more reading and writing. Hence it was that I still found myself sitting in the green room of BBC Radio Ulster this morning at stupid o'clock to do the following Thought for the Day (for the next week you can listen to it here at 25 and 85 minutes in ) It's on a theme I've been touching on more than once here recently... Last week a number of banks posted their annual trading results, and as has been the case every year recently, the figures have been uniformly in the red… However, that hasn’t stopped bank executives being awarded hefty performance related bonuses, on the grounds that the losses weren’t as bad as last year! It strikes me that it’s a weird world where we don’t cap the bonuses of the bankers who got us into this mess, but do ca...

I was just going to include this story with others in another linkdump on Saturday, but the more I've thought about it, the madder I have become... After David Cameron announced yesterday at Prime Minister's question session in the House of Commons, a Downing Street source is reported to have said that food banks were to be welcomed as an example of "the big society"; so far, so predictable. But then she is said to have added: "Benefit levels are set at a level where people can afford to eat. If people have short-term shortages, where they feel they need a bit of extra food, then of course food banks are the right place for that. But benefits are not set at such a low level that people can't eat." The last statement may be currently true, although with below inflation increases to benefits already proposed by the government for the next three years against increasing food, fuel and transport costs, together with announcements today about council...

Just read this report by the National Council for Voluntary Organisations in England, which I presume is the same one reported on the BBC , telling of significant pessimism in the charitable sector in the face of public sector spending cuts. For once we in Northern Ireland are ahead of our friends on the other island as that pessimism has been pervading the community and voluntary sector here in Northern Ireland for some time... And perhaps for more reasons... The squeeze that is hitting English charities will hit us too as the assembly departments and local councils need to find ways of cutting their budgets... and since the recent RPA debacle has shown the reluctance of public sector turkeys to vote for Christmas there is no doubt that in order to retain staff and resources for themselves, they will reduce funding to outside bodies... Even though the community and voluntary sector adds a huge amount of value to any investment (the "voluntary" element obviously allows the de...