Money makes fools us of us all

I see that some West End shops have opened their doors at 0730 this morning in a desparate attempt to get shoppers to spend money. Like Americans after 9/11, apparently spending money (and lending money if you're a bank) is the most patriotic thing you can do. The Government would clearly like this to happen by cutting VAT to 15%.

Don't misunderstand me - and I'm sure you don't. I approve of tax-cuts. (Our insistence on allowing governments to take over 40% of the wealth out of the country and then spending it on our behalf is total madness. We don't let the government organise food distribution - it's far too important to let them get their hands on it. So why do we give them our sick to nurse, our elderly to look after and our children to educate?) But the tax-cuts by this current administration demonstrates they don't believe in anything, or anyone, but themselves.

What do I mean? A few months ago, numerous pundits and ill-informed journalists started talking about the death of capitalism. Hooray cried Brown and Darling - "We never believed in it any. Allow the State to take control." The State then swooped in and took over our banks - and are about to become the majority shareholder in RBS. In so doing, the State is gambling billions of pounds of tax-payers money on mitigating the completely discredited practices of numerous banks who have not been allowed to fail.

So capitalism is over, is it? Of course, not. Now the government have got cold-feet on their Statism and are trying to shield the tax-payer from the consequences of their own irresponsible actions. They are refusing to cut public spending, and lowering taxes, including cutting VAT, and not raising taxes. Effectively, the Chancellor has put the nation's problem on his Exchequer's Credit Card. So what exactly does the Chancellor believe in? He wants the public to spend their way out of a recession that he has already made worse. That is surely the worse kind of pragmatism - electoral pragmatism based on a fusion of failed-capitalism and pseudo-Statism. We will all pay for this lack of intergrity for many years.

Christmas Movies

At my church, I'm going to be reviewing a number of Christmas films - that is to say films about, or related to, Christmas (eg. Elf), rather than films that we traditionally watch at Christmas (The Great Escape/Chitty Chitty Bang Bang).

My own personal favourites would be:
1. It's A Wonderful Life (no surprises there)
2. White Christmas (with Bing Crosby and the hilarious Danny Kaye)
3. Elf (with Will Ferrell on TOP form)
4. A Muppet Christmas Carol (you just can't beat the muppets)
5. And Die Hard? Does that count? (as John McClean is technically coming home for Christmas)

I seem to remember enjoying Scrooged (with Bill Murray) but very few other films stick out for me. Apparently A Charlie Brown Christmas is brilliant - and contains a surprising large amount of Bible stuff. And somehow, I've never seen The Nightmare Before Christmas, Miracle on 34th Street (original or remake), Bad Santa, The Santa Clause (or the sequels), The Grinch, The Polar Express or even Home Alone. Yes. I've never seen Home Alone. Should I seek any of these films out?

What's interesting is that there have been dozens of Christmas films. Hundreds. And most of them are terrible. Jingle all the Way with Arnie, The Holiday - the latest Romantic comedy offering - and such like. Is it possible that Christmas is impossible to encapsulate on film? Do you just have to be there? Certainly Jesus seemed to think so... Why do movies fail to reproduce Christmas?


For a bizarre Top Ten, as chosen by Mark Kermode (and then the order voted on by listeners) have a look here.

Milton Jones rides again...

When I'm not busy being a failed author, I'm relatively successful as a comedy script-writer. Radio 4 is currently airing a show I wrote with Milton Jones called Another Case of Milton Jones.

Miranda Sawyer of the Observer says:

"I have a soft spot for Milton Jones. His show is so silly, so warm and daft. Like Count Arthur Strong, Radio 4's best comedy series, Another Case of Milton Jones is miles from the clever-clever satire that Radio 4 is known for. It is its own surreal world, one through which Milton bumbles, spouting groan-aloud puns, irritating all around him while trying to do his best.

He's immensely quotable, chucking out one-liners like bread for the birds: a high-speed Jimmy Carr without the cruelty. 'I've heard great things about your spring collection,' he said last week (he was being a fashion photographer). 'When exactly did you start collecting springs?' Yes, I know - awful - but a funny image. The lines come so thick and fast that you crumble eventually..."

Read the rest here.

But, more importantly, listen to the show on the BBC iPlayer here.

And the failed novel is here.

And finally, on the subject of writing...

No more posts about my novel, writing or publishing for a while. I promise. Just a few final comments about writing and how to do it.

I've been writing comedy for a living for nearly ten years. But it's been almost all radio and TV. Dialogue. Writing fiction/novels is a different ball game, so it feels like I've had to start from scratch. I was already used to the importance of character - and how everything a character does needs to be consistent with that character - and plot - and how that is effectively an extension of character. But fiction is tricky. Prose is not easy. And the hardest thing is how to use a semi-colon. No-one knows.

I learnt a fair amount from reading about a book about screenwriting called Story by Robert McKee. (You can find that here) Author and academic, David Lodge has written an excellent book about novel-writing called The Art of Fiction. I'm sure there are other useful books out there - but of course there is no substitute for reading other fiction. I made a concerted attempt to read more (having already read a fair amount of David Lodge, Malcolm Bradbury, Tibor Fischer and Robert Harris). I ended up getting into Christopher Brookmyre and Michael Innes, who were both pleasant discoveries.

There are numerous courses and groups to attend, but I've always steered clear of that, since they attract lots of other aspiring writers who have tastes that are completely different from the mainstream audience - and so the peer feedback is very skewed. (I'd be interested to hear anyone's experiences if people would like to leave a comment.) It's good for building morale and getting some camaraderie, but that doesn't make for a good novel. That said, I've gone my own way - and don't know if that has made for a good novel. I guess I'll find out soon enough.

So to finish the week, can I point you to a couple of blog posts by Nate Wilson, who writes well about the process of writing. Part 1 here. And part 2 here.

And here it is...

Crossword Ends in Violence (5), a quintessentially British thriller, is now available to buy. You can purchase the 0th Edition here.

How much?
It costs £6.49 plus £3.50 postage and packing, bringing the total to £9.99 - which I hope is an acceptable price. Because the book is 'printed to order', it will take a few days for your copy to come into existence. And then it's packaged and shipped. But if you order now, it should arrive in a week or two. And well before Christmas, if you think you'd like to inflict this book on someone else. Who knows, maybe this early Oth Edition will be worth money in the future. But I wouldn't bet on it.

If you live outside the UK, I have no idea whether you're charged in dollars, dinars or any thing else. Or whether you'll have to pay higher shipping costs. I'd be interested to hear - please leave a comment.

Format
The book is the size of a 'softback', 6 x 9, which means it's larger than a regular Grisham-sized novel. It's more like a hardback in size. I chose this format to keep costs down. If it were Grisham-sized, and legible, it would be around 300 pages, making the book at least a pound more expensive. Costs are worked out based on the number of pages. So bigger pages, lower page-count, lower cost. Everyone's happy. I hope.

And to everyone who helped me with this project - you know who you are - thank you. Seriously. Your patience, kindness, expertise and cheerfulness have been a great blessing to me. And hopefully to the readers of this book.

Publishing a Novel Part 3

On Friday, the 0th Edition of Crossword Ends in Violence (5) will available from Lulu.com - a self-publishing website. It's rather ingenuous. It prints books to order, which makes them a little more expensive, but there is no stock, no waste and no storage issues. And it costs me nothing, which is probably what I like best about it.

How does it work? The author uploads his novel onto the site, and when a customer clicks on it to order it, the novel is printed off, packaged and mailed. I hope that the book, including postage and packing, will be £9.99.

So how am I going to persuade people to spent £10 on a book that they can't peruse from an author they've never heard of? Good question. Firstly, it's worth pointing that that I don't expect to sell thousands of copies of this book. If a sell a few hundred, I'll be perfectly content. The idea is not that I attempt to show the publishers what an awful mistake they have made by turning down my novel - it's an easy trap to fall into, and a powerful motivator if you want it to be, but it's a path riddled with bitterness that will not end well. My main objective for publishing via Lulu is purely so that anybody would like to read the book is able to do so for only ten pounds sterling.

Who do I think would enjoy the book? Naturally some the readers this blog would be curious and interested. I also write a sitcom for Radio 4 called Hut 33, which gets about half a million listeners. I should imagine some of them would enjoy the novel I've written. And either of the above will almost certainly know people who would enjoy the book. We all know crossword fanatics, World War Two buffs and people who like a bit of a laugh.

But how will anyone know if they'll like it? £10 is a lot compared to heavily discounted books in Waterstones or on Amazon. And these are difficult days for the economy. I agree, but I believe that people will spent £10 on a book if they are sure they are going to really like it. And I can help them (and you) with that. Since I'm not bound by publishing contracts, I own the full copyright the book. This means that I can put plenty of it up on the web so that people can read lots of it, which means that there is no risk for the buyer. In fact, they can read pages and pages of it, allowing them to get to know the characters and start to be drawn into the story so that they will be eager to get the book. Equally, they may realise that this book is not for them and they can save themselves £10. Good for them. This isn't about the money but all people who'd like the book getting to read it.

On top of this, there's an opportunity to have some fun with the book itself. On the book's website, you can download sections and read them. But some later sections are encrypted and need passwords to view - but you can work out the passwords but solving various cryptic crossword clues. Should be fun - at least for crossword-solvers. And it might draw in others. But for those who just want to read, there's plenty encryptic to give them a flavour.

All of the above then begs the question "Where can we read your book?" And to that question there is a simple answer. Here. Hope you like it.

Publishing a Novel Part 2

Exactly why my novel has been turned down by every publisher in town is hard to pin-point. What are the options?

The most obvious one is that the book stinks. Maybe its prose is clunky, the characters obvious and plot ludicrous. I am assured that is not the case. My agent thinks the book is terrific – and this is someone with no commercial incentive to lie to me. About twenty people I know have also read it and most are positive about it. Some say it is not to their taste, but by and large the prose is readable, the characters and enjoyable and the plot believable. They could all be lying, but I don’t think they are.

Maybe the book doesn’t deliver on what it promises. This is option two. Maybe the book gives the impression of being about one thing, but is actually about something, or someone else, which means that it is confusing to the reader. But this one doesn’t hang together either. The book is entitled Crossword Ends in Violence (5) which sounds like a crossword clue. Which it is. The book is about crosswords. The hero is a professional crossword setter. The novel is also about code-breaking, D-Day, spies and Bletchley Park, with a few chess grandmasters thrown in. And it pootles along in that kind of tone. It doesn’t get overly sentimental or pretentious. It’s sort of Robert Harris with jokes.

And maybe here in lies the problem. Option/problem three. Historical fiction doesn’t have jokes in it. It just doesn’t. And shouldn’t (People don’t want them apparently. It explains why Blackadder has simply never been popular or memorable.) But it’s not just historical fiction. Some of it is set in the present day, and some in the past and it functions like a farcical spy thriller. And thrillers aren’t meant to be funny either. Unless you’re Carl Hiaasen, in which case you’re allowed. So unless you have ID proving that you are he, stop putting in jokes. (And it’s not use claiming that Christopher Brookmyre writes comedy crime books. He’s the British comedy crime writer and we don’t need any more, thank you.)

Another problem (for me) is that there are not many publishers of popular fiction. It may appear that there are dozens, but they are mostly owned by a handful of larger publishing houses who have hoovered up the Luton Towns and Accrington Stanleys of the publishing community. Eg. HarperCollins own Avon, Harper Fiction, Voyager and Fourth Estate (to say nothing of the excellent reference works of Mr Collins). So, thanks to the efficiencies of the market, my novel can be turned down by everyone faster than ever. One has to admit that it’s some sort of progress.

Naturally I’m frustrated. (Is it that obvious?) But I have to admit that my book is most likely to lose money. Most books do. Most authors are unsuccessful. Most books don’t make back their advance. Hardly anyone makes a living out of ‘being an author’ because unless you’re called Rowling or Tolkein, most books sell in the dozens rather than the hundreds of thousands. Which is presumably why so many publishers don’t survive, go into receivership or get taken over. And is why so many publishers would rather put out a novel by someone who was in Eastenders, or even Baywatch, than me. (I’m sure the Hoff has got a novel in him). Look at the list of speakers at literary festivals – the majority of them are not authors but ‘people with books out’. This is how the bookselling world wants. So they can be forgiven for wanting to publish a book by the England Rugby Captain than a barely-known radio sitcom writer.

On top of all this. Publishing is an expensive business. Books have to be printed on paper, moved around the country, sold to wholesalers, and then retailers and then the public. Review copies have to be sent out. Blurbs need to be written. A ‘story’ about the book or the author needs to be constructed in order to sell the book. And once all of these are put in place, there is still no certainty of success.

And so the sad story of Crossword Ends in Violence (5) could have ended there. There was simply no way of getting a copy of the book in yours hands. I have already decided against the traditional route of self-publishing, which involved printing off 3000 copies, stuffing them away in your houses and hoping that booksellers will stock your book. This method worked very nicely for GP Taylor, author of Shadowmancer, but I’m not taking this path. My house isn’t big enough. Plus the cost of the print-run is nothing to hours of labour that go into selling the book, boxing up copies and despatching them and all that goes with it. And, having spent 6 months writing the thing (equivalent to £12k in labour according to the average wage), I do not propose to spend many more on promotion and hawking it around the place. Plus I hate lugging heavy boxes around. And, most likely, I will end up seriously out of pocket – and become the dreaded, indebted football club that keeps paying its bills because its addicted to the game.

Here’s the reality. I’ve written a novel. I think some people will like it. A few will love it. I would like to give them the chance to read it – in book form. E-books aren’t really a viable option yet. Plus printing off a three hundred page pdf isn’t much fun either. People want a book. In their hands. For a reasonable price. And I’ve found a way. And I’ll tell you about it tomorrow.

Publishing a Novel Part 1

Professional football clubs are broke. Every month or so, another one goes into administration. Players x million pounds to employ. The gate receipts, season tickets and TV rights bring in y million pounds. For most clubs, x>y. Why?

Football clubs are not proper businesses. The Premiership looks an awful lot like one. Billions of pounds – and even more roubles – change hands every year. This raises the stakes for football clubs all over the country, because theoretically, any club can make into the Premiership if they work their way up the leagues, from the Ryman leagues, through the Coca-Cola Leagues Two, then One, and then into the Championship and from there, into the Premiership where honour, glory and enormous windfalls, and even more staggering wage bills, await. Why?

Because football makes people behave irrationally. Because it’s the beautiful game. Millionaires of entrepreneurs are seduced by the adulation, the love, the roar of the crowd and sense of importance owning a football club brings. And this makes them take terrible financial decisions. They would normally need a dozen shredders working round the clock to destroy their cash that fast. But why have a machine to eat your money? Why not a 19-year-old with a golden boot? The problem is that once you're competing with clubs that are pouring money uneconomically into clubs, for all the wrong reasons, it’s impossible to compete without similar insane spending.

This is nothing like the National Football League (NFL) in America. This is the league for what we in Britain call American Football. The NFL is a self-contained business. There is no way of getting into this league unless they give you permission to join. Every now and then, a few new franchises pop up. Some teams move city – imagine Arsenal moving to Manchester. (A small civil war would be the minimum outcome. Possible airstrikes). My team started life as the Houston Oilers. For some reason, they moved to Tennessee and became the Tennessee Titans. (What do I care? I’ve never even been to Houston.) And now the Titans are doing very well in the League, thank you. Unbeaten in ten games in row. Go Titans. The money made by the NFL is shared out by the teams, and the worst performing team of the year gets the first pick of the college players. It’s a closed-loop, salary-capped, highly-profitable franchise. It is designed to make money – and be on television. An untelevised game is simply not an option. This isn’t art. It’s not even sport. It’s business. With helmets.

Why do I mention this? Because the publishing industry is much more like the NFL than the Premiership. I’d hoped that it was still a cottage industry in which people published books because “they simply had to” or believed that “this book deserves to be read”. But I have discovered that this is not the case. I don’t know if it ever was. Possibly in some quarters. In the past. But not now. I should know. My novel has been rejected by every publisher of fiction in town. And I’ll tell you about it tomorrow.

Nice Trick

Here's a trick that Christian liberals, post-evangelicals and the doctrinally flabby like to play. It's the 'There Are People Dying' trick. It's a really good trick and almost impossible to oppose because, sadly, there are people dying of hunger and disease. It closes down any debate in which we take God's word seriously and we consider it important to love God and serve him in a way that he would like to be loved and served according to his Word. So how does it work?

Bishop Lookatmymitre says in some speech or sermon that Jesus Christ did not rise from the dead physically but that he rose spiritually and in the heart of the first Christians. He argues, by simply stating, that the resurrection is a powerful, evokative metaphor of hope for the people of all faiths to follow.

Rev Rightbut-Cross wades in and says that the Apostle Paul said that if the resurrection did not happen, Christians are to be pitied. It all depends on a physical bodily resurrection, he goes on, and gives 219 references to scripture.

Bishop Lookatmymitre ignores Rev Rightbut-Cross for while, since he isn't able to argue on biblical terms as he hasn't read it for several years and can't quite remember who's who and which bits are where. So, when the two engage with each other across the nation's airwaves on BBC Radio Five Live, the Bishop says this "There are people dying. Do you really think we should be arguing about whether Christ really rose when we could be sitting with the poor, helping them and feeding them? That's what the message of Christianity is really about." He's played the 'There Are People Dying' card.

Rev Rightbut-Cross is invited on to the show and acknowledges that Christians are to feed the poor, and that his church has a soup kitchen, but it all sounds a bit half-hearted and theological. It's obvious that Susan Secular presenting the BBC Radio Five Live prefers the message of Bishop Lookatmymitre as it's about helping people, not arguing and not having to believe anything specific or, at first glance, implausible.

Bishop Lookatmymitre then tells a few decent if slightly self-aggrandising anecdotes in which he visited an orphanage in Kampala, Uganda (no mentioning that in that country his own theology would not be tolerated by Anglical clergy) and he also tells a funny story about a misunderstanding at Customs about the word 'crook'.

In the closing minutes of the 7 minute, in-depth dicussion, Rev Rightbut-Cross gets a bit hot-under-the-dog-collar and says that the resurrection is a one-off one-time event in order show God's power, the vindication of his Son, and herald a new creation in which the humble will be lifted up, the hungry fed and the homeless given mansions. But that's all in the future. What about helping the poor now says the Bishop. After all, Jesus fed the hungry. He fed the 5000! Rev Rightbut-Cross points out this was to demonstrate Jesus was the Bread of Life, the provider of Manna and his social action was to teach, but the news jingle starts, the travel news begins and the debate is over. Bishop wins 1-0.

I mention all this as I see that Giles Fraser, who took great delight in welcoming Bishop Gene Robinson to his church to preach during the Lambeth Conference, has written this.

PJ O'Rourke Says...

The other day, a friend of mind expressed his distaste for the Weekly Standard, a Murdoch-owned magazine that barely covers its costs (if at all). He implied it was a right-wing mouthpiece bankrolled by the media mogul for his own political ends. He's probably right. But I'm not that bothered by it. In Britain, at least, far louder, and more liberal and left-wing, voices are bankrolled by an Act of Parliament and the TV Licence Fee. To me, the Weekly Standard is a useful, quiet corrective.

One of its regular contributors is the splendid and amusing PJ O'Rourke - one of the few comic voices that comes from the right. I don't agree with everything in this article, obviously, but it explains how the American Right have failed to make proper use of the extensive powers they have been given. (If only PJ knew they had been given those powers by God.)

He also made me aware of some wise words from Reagan who said, "The ten most dangerous words in the English language are, 'I'm from the federal government, and I'm here to help.'"

Longevity

How do we think we'll live long and happy lives? I suspect that our first answers would be good diet and regular exercise. Perhaps a good work-life balance. And we teach these ideas - for that is what they are - to our children, so that they will be healthy and wealthy. It's a shame that even Christians think that aerobics, swimming and leaving work at 6pm is at the heart of longevity because the foundational documents of the Bible say otherwise.

I've been re-reading the Ten Commandments in Deuteronomy and the surrounding passages. When you read them carefully, you discover they contain large promises that we are quick to ignore - since we know that sometimes the good die young and that some people starve to death through no fault of their own.

But what does the fifth commandment actually say?

"Honor your father and your mother, as the LORD your God has commanded you, so that you may live long and that it may go well with you in the land the LORD your God is giving you."

How will live long in the land? By obeying our parents? Seriously? That's what the text says! If we honour our parents, we will do well. If we obey them, we will live long in the land. The best thing we can teach them is not how to pass exams so they can get a good job and earn lots of money, so they can afford private health-care and live 'til they're 90. We need to teach them obedience - not just that they honour their parents but that they obey the commands God has given us. Deut 5:32-33 says this:

So be careful to do what the LORD your God has commanded you; do not turn aside to the right or to the left. Walk in all the way that the LORD your God has commanded you, so that you may live and prosper and prolong your days in the land that you will possess.

Do we really believe that? Or do we believe that we live long because we're careful and wise and clever? Clearly there is more to this than simple statistical life-expectancy figures (which in some areas are decreasing). But the Bible is fairly clear that this nation does not need anti-obesity programmes. It needs pro-obedience programmes.

It's Okay to Laugh

The message of proverbs is a simple one: True wisdom begins with fearing the Lord. This fear is more of a right and respectful reverence than terror that brings about a cowering grovel. But the God of the Bible causes people to tremble. When God showed the Israelites his glory at Sinai, they begged him to withdraw for fear of death. Christians worship a God who is a holy consuming fire. Mock this God at your peril.

Proverbs also contains warnings of various kinds of folly – in particular mockery. The mocker is a type of fool who heaps insult and abuse on those who seek to rebuke or correct him. Christians are not to be mockers.

Proverbs, then, gives us two stark warnings about the use of comedy, wit and satire. We do need to careful when reading God’s word, preaching to God’s people and discussing theology that we are not irreverent. And the easiest thing to do is to head in the other direction and be serious about everything, to avoid the mistake of making light of the wrong thing. Passages in scripture, then, which are genuinely comic or amusing are then preached dryly, lifelessly and sometimes, therefore, incorrectly.

This spills over into church life as a whole. One can extend the moratorium on jokes by claiming that not only is God a consuming fire, but all things relating to him. As a result, laughter in church is deemed inappropriate, and the public face of the church becomes grave and joyless, perpetuating the stereotype that Church and religion is serious. This isn’t funny. It’s a tragedy.

Evangelicals should not only be people of joy but be those who preach scripture faithfully. When they find comedy in the Bible, they should preach it, explain it and laugh with. This is not the same as laughing at God. The warnings in Proverbs are exactly that. Warnings, not prohibitions.

Proverbs does not call all humorists and comedians ‘mockers’. Mockers are those who will not take correction. They use humour, wit and abuse to frighten away a rebuke or a call to repentance. They’re problem is no that they laugh at certain things. They laugh at everything. They despise everything. They have no sense of when to scoff and when to praise. Clearly this attitude should not be true of a Christian.

The Bible does not invite to laugh at God. But the there are plenty of comic moments which involve God’s people that are funny, even though we may not fully identify with the character of situation.

In Acts 12, Peter finds himself in prison, facing a sham trial and a swift execution. Was Peter awake, worried half to death? Was he feverishly praying for his release? No, he was fast asleep. He was so sleepy that when an angel arrives in a blaze of light, the angel has to smack Peter on the side in order to wake him up and rescue him. Despite this, Peter thinks he’s still dreaming and only when the angel disappears later does he wake up and realise he is truly free. Minutes later, Peter is standing outside the house of Mary where some Christians are gathered. They are almost certainly praying for his release. When the servant girl, Rhoda, hears Peter’s voice as he knock at the door, she runs in to tell the Christian brothers – who don’t believe her! This is in spite of their prayers and angelic miraculous escapes in the past.

The story is almost farcical. To laugh at, though, it is not to diminish it, or imply it isn’t true. This is how Jorge, the blind monk, thinks. It is also not irreverence or laughing at God. Stories like the one in Acts 12 are just real-life encounters that present comic and absurd moments – just as our own lives do on a regular basis. And a valid and reaction is to laugh.

Give us a King

The outpouring of emotion, optimism and euphoria at the election of Barack Obama is remarkable and predictable at the same time. Somehow, Americans - and plenty of Brits - have convinced themselves that one man, George W Bush, was personally responsible for all of the evils in the world. Now Barack Obama will fix everything. He is the great hope and reason for much rejoicing - despite the fact that America has no money spend (having spend billions on failing banks and failing wars).

Given this, Obama has two choices. Choice One is penny-pinching pragmatism, in which he will have to abandon his grand plans, which were at best sketchy, and disappoint the millions who elected him to fix everything. (This is also called the Blair Route) Choice Two is using the strong arm of the state to change laws and raise taxes. America is not ready for socialism. Either way, expecting politicians, even totemic and charismatic ones, to change society by spending money or changing the law seems foolish - but that's what happens when one is enthralled by the power of The State.

America, like Britain, could have a society in which the government enforces law and order and protects the realm - and lets the people (families, churches, businesses, organisations, charities and groups) to look after each other, care for the poor, the sick, the marginalised and the elderly. Then it wouldn't really matter who was President since they don't actually have much power. (And we'd be spared the endless electioneering, grandstanding, rallies and hundreds of millions wasted on billboards, adverts and pamphlets) But what they - and we - would rather have is a King who is going to tax them heavily, legislate onerously and force people to behave in certain ways. This sounds familiar:

10 Samuel told all the words of the LORD to the people who were asking him for a king. 11 He said, "This is what the king who will reign over you will do: He will take your sons and make them serve with his chariots and horses, and they will run in front of his chariots. 12 Some he will assign to be commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and others to plow his ground and reap his harvest, and still others to make weapons of war and equipment for his chariots. 13 He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. 14 He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive groves and give them to his attendants. 15 He will take a tenth of your grain and of your vintage and give it to his officials and attendants. 16 Your menservants and maidservants and the best of your cattle and donkeys he will take for his own use. 17 He will take a tenth of your flocks, and you yourselves will become his slaves. 18 When that day comes, you will cry out for relief from the king you have chosen, and the LORD will not answer you in that day."

19 But the people refused to listen to Samuel. "No!" they said. "We want a king over us. 20 Then we will be like all the other nations, with a king to lead us and to go out before us and fight our battles."

1 Samuel 8:10-20

Or, put another way: "Can we have a King, please, Samuel?" And Samuel replied "Yes, we can."

Share the Wealth

My friend Jonathan found a neat little story.

It starts:
In a local restaurant my server had on a “Obama 08″ tie, again I laughed as he had given away his political preference–just imagine the coincidence.
When the bill came I decided not to tip the server and explained to him that... [read the rest here].

Two really good talks...

Here are two talks that I've really enjoyed listening to recently.

The first is by Mark Driscoll on "How Sharp the Edge? Christ, Controversy, and Cutting Words" given in September 2008 - audio or video here. Loads of great thinking and a whole boat load of passion.

The other talk is also at Desiring God and is given by a chap called Dan Taylor. It's called "The Life-Shaping Power of Story: God’s and Ours", about how God uses stories - and makes us hungry for stories. Really good. That's here.
Enjoy.

The Prejudice of the Left

Over the last few months, I've been listening to plenty of commentary and comedy on the American election. And what's been of most interest to me is the hateful reaction to Sarah Palin from the Left - in particular the standard British knee-jerk left that contains many British comedians (many of who are thoroughly excellent comedians, and very pleasant people to boot) and commentators in British and American media.

Let's put this leftist politics in some sort of context. It's a political faction that was wildly optimistic about Blair and New Labour, before finding out within weeks, even days, that their hope was misplaced. What is the aim of the left? Let's be kind and say that it is to help the poor. They want the poor to be richer, to have more opportunities and be happier. As an aim, that's not a bad one at all.

It's not entirely dissimilar from the aim of the right - who place self-determination and personal choice before equality - but the left like to pretend that they have the monopoly on compassion and helping the poor. They love to paint the Right as vile, selfish and privileged who are doing very nicely thank you and don't want to share their wealth.Because this sort of comedy rests on stereotype, it's a very appealing and comic one. The selfish city banker, the overgrown school-boy from Eton, the Yuppie Thatcherite, The New Statesman Alan B'Stard (see pic). These form the basis of plenty of jokes which are so successful and pervasive that they have forced the Conservative party in Britain to essentially abandon Right-wing politics for a mealy-mouth centrist form of pragmatism which has no overt difference from that of Blair's New Labour. (Incidenntally, Blair's New Labour project was itself a total failure. He had the chance to make some radical changes to Britain while he enjoyed a massive majority but he completely blew it. Nothing changed, and we're sitting on several financial time-bombs that have yet to go off.)

So how does the Left go about achieving its political ends? The politics of the left must have power. It needs the authority of the state to impose its philosophy. In order to redistribute wealth and run the country for the sake of The People, not elites, one needs to be in power. This of course demonstrates that the left ultimately seek to impose their will via coercion. The State must be obeyed. The State, when run by the left, 'knows best' and 'is fair'. So do what they state says, pay your 70% taxation and do it their way or you go to jail.

But the problem for the left is how one takes power. One tried and tested method is armed revolution. It worked in Russia and China and is often very effective. Another way, is public lying. Sometimes it's unintentional, but dupe the population into believing that you're going to nationalise everything and that somehow imaginary wealth will trickle down to every family and put a chicken in every pot. But with a free media and sense of fair play, things are harder in the West. Everyone gets to vote, which is a real pity. Because people don't know what's good for them, so they vote for the wrong people. People decide they don't want everything to be run by the state. They look at the state's record at running services, which borders on the criminally wasteful and they think, "Hmm, I'd rather keep my money rather than give it to the government who will spent in on a bureaucrat who will work 35 hours a week on a bigger salary than me, take more sick days than me, get more public holiday than me and have a state-backed, extremely generous pension from five years earlier than me." The left's problem, then, is democracy. People can make choices. The state doesn't like choice.

And so we return to Sarah Palin. She represents everything about democracy that the Left hate. They don't hate her because she's politically inexperienced and naive. They hate her because she's different, she doesn't believe that government will solve all society's ills and, even worse, people want to vote for her. (They also hate her theology but that's another story). Sarah Palin's very public existence, her rallies, her media profile and political views make her lightening rod for the left. "Why can't everyone just see that Obama-Biden is the right ticket?" they lament. Because it's a democracy and you get to choose. "Why do these deep-fried southern baptist lunatics keep voting Republican?" they sob. Because they don't believe in the magic wand of government. They don't believe in state-backed wealth redistribution. They believe in a whole bunch of other stuff - like family, personal responsibility and volunteering to help the poor, rather than paying someone else to do it. And while we remain a democracy, they're free to believe that and vote for it. It's interesting, then that the Left thing the Right are the control freaks that can't take a joke.