The Saint Barnabas’ Blog

Do you like this photograph, which shows my gorgeous girl admiring a horse, astride an ass and enjoying an afternoon at the petting farm? Well such moments might become a thing of the past if, due to one or two incidents of non-fatal sickness, the bureaucrats and over zealous parents of 21st Century Britain succeed in segregating children and farm animals forever!

What nonsense! And what a sign of the lily-livered, over pampered and pathetic bunch of fear-filled fools the populace of Britain is becoming! Why do we have to live with such fear? Why do we react such hysteria, fuelled by an irresponsible media, whenever misfortune arises? And why do we delude ourselves that we can somehow eradicate all risk and misfortune in life?

Is it not lamentable, even laughable, that whilst half the world’s children sleep with such animals on a daily basis, the precious of the UK now demand that many a charming attraction closes forever? You might have guessed I deplore such knee-jerked over reaction and can assure you that I shall be taking Jemima to Godstone Farm (if it re-opens) or another local petting farm this Monday in solidarity with common sense! We might contemplate this rather familiar scene and wonder if that too might be banned, for fear of teaching bad practice?!

In many ways we can link this story to the over reaction from the Church of England following the outbreak of swine flu. Where previous generations sipped the precious blood through plague, Spanish flu pandemic and amidst the outbreak of HIV…one hint of mild sickness and the present lot withdrew the chalice under order of the Archbishop of Canterbury! Forget the delicious irony of watching protestants receive in one kind only, this was hysterical over reaction. Hence at S. Barnabas we have quietly ignored the rule. Did we lose half the congregation to death? Were all of us laid out on our sick bed? Of course not, nothing out of the ordinary happened at all. Proof, if it were needed, that the directive was a knee jerk reaction which could, and should, have been avoided.

Christians take note. Life involves risk. We may get sick, we may die, we may slip and hurt ourselves. Rather than seeking financial compensation or litigating against our neighbour, instead of making pointless rulings and endorsing a nanny state…we should take stock of reality. Let us not be a people of fear and panic but a people of confidence and calmness. Amidst all the noisy hysteria of the 21st Century, we must listen carefully for that still small voice of calm.

I was overjoyed to hear that the holy father is to visit Britain in 2010. Why? Well three reasons spring to mind:

1) It is undoubtedly a good thing for all Catholic Christians, regardless of denomination, who can recognise the Pope as the leader of Western Christendom. It is thus a great honour and the cause of great celebration.

2) It is going to raise the profile of the church in the media and thus the mind of the poplulace at large. Again this can only be a wonderful thing.l

3) There is going to be an awful lot of fantastic ‘tat’ on sale for those with a love of garish devotional items!

University students in the UK should pay more for their loans and accept higher tuition fees as "inevitable", says a report from business leaders. What a load of utter tosh, so typical of our deliberately blind society and stemming from a complete refusal to understand how the education system should work and where it is going wrong in our day. If we only ran universities as funded centres of learning, instead of self financing businesses, reserving entry for the truly academically gifted alone, then the problems would vanish overnight.

So forget the insane vision being proposed, crippling our young people with even more debt is simply ludicrous. How can encouraging future generations to live beyond their means be conducive to a healthy society? And how will we ever inspire graduates to take up poorly paid but essential vocations, such as charity work, the priesthood, nursing etc.. if they have mountains of debt to pay off?

Instead we should return to the wisdom of previous generations...you know those days when this nation was not run by a moronic money obsessed bureaucracy that seems hell-bent on turning us into a banana republic. Let me tell a story to explain what I mean...
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...Once upon a time, in the early 1960's, a young lad raised in a low-income one parent family on the 'Sherwood Estate' in Tunbridge Wells held no fears about his ability to enter University. He did not need oodles of money to cover fees, food and accomodation, because the government grant easily covered such things. There was not much left over perhaps but, even so, no-one went short of beer!

And social class was no barrier to entry, all that was needed was evidence of hard work and genuine academic promise. Now we do here need to accept the lamentable fact that remains true today -life is harsh and many lower classed children were at a disadvantage if their own families were dysfunctional. But nevertheless, anyone getting the grades could get in! And because this priveledge was reserved for the few, they were guaranteed a job on leaving, such was the demand for graduates in the market place. I know this to be true because the lad I write about is not fictional he was and is my own father.

Fast forward to 1992 and his son gained entry into University, only now the policy of the last few decades had kicked in and was messing up our education system altogether. It has only got worse in the meantime. Instead of funding on merit, academic institutions are now driven by economic forces. Students = source of income and so the entry bar was lowered simply to fill the coffers. Now add to this lamentable fact the very confused notion of inclusivity that argues that everyone has a ‘right’ to attend and the nonsense of today emerges.

Suddenly anyone and everyone goes to University, regardless of the value of the course or its impact on life. And of course there is subsequently much, much less funding to go around. Hence in 1992 I received the exact same grant as my father had thirty years before me. Only this time it barely covered accommodation fees meaning that huge debt was totally unavoidable...that is unless you were fortunate enough to come from a very wealthy family. How ironic, the so called 'inclusive' policy is leading to a system in which only the rich or foolish can afford to attend.

So now we have a university system in which money has overtaken merit and learning as the driving force behind university. I was lucky to get in before things got really bad, and even then it took the generosity of others and hard work to return to an even keel. The rich/poor divide is being driven further apart in broken Britain and so many clever children from lower income families will soon be deprived of educational opportunity. It stinks and it is not fair! Meanwhile less intelligent loafers will spend three years living out a hedenistic existence studying such futile ‘degrees’ as Madonna studies…and I do NOT refer to the Mother of God!

So let us be honest about the real problems facing society. We need to love and value those of all abilities and none. We need to give good advice to school leavers and help them value a move to work as much as entry to University. We need to teach youngsters that debt is a terrible thing. And we need to return to an affordable, merit based selection policy that rewards the bright regardless of family wealth. Then we might just get back to living in a nation in which degrees and school qualifications are actually worth the paper they are written on!