After a good night’s sleep, Meg and I enter our Sunday morning routines. After the carers had got Meg up and we had breakfasted, we turned on the TV to get the last embers of the Olympic Games, the normal political programmes being off-air whilst we are in the midst of a holiday service. Then we had a visit from our Eucharistic minister and as we tend to do, we discussed with dismay the fate which is likely to befall our parish. It looks as though as part of a regional reorganisation, the number of services will be reduced from three at the weekend to one on a Sunday, attendance will fall dramatically, income will consequently fall and our whole parish looks as though it is going to enter its death throes. This is a source of some distress to the particularly committed church members but is a syndrome which is common across many denominations in the UK at the moment. After our visitor had left, we got together some elevenses, walked down to pick up our Sunday newspaper and thence to our usual bench in the park. We came across one acquaintance who we see most Sundays but our University of Birmingham friend had domestic commitments this weekend. We cooked some beef in the slow cooker and so had a lunch of beef, cabbage and baked potato. The beef was tasty enough but I often find the flavour improves the following day. After lunch, Meg and I tuned in to the ‘Pilgrimage’ programme which we often view on a Sunday. A group of celebrities of diverse faiths and none engage in the pilgrimage and today we viewed the route of St. Colomba. This might be thought of as a Catholic pilgrimage but according the Scotsman, Saint Columba is arguably Scotland’s most popular saint and certainly its most adaptable, ecumenical and all-purpose one, equally beloved of Roman Catholics and Wee Free Presbyterians. What I find interesting about the modern day pilgrims is that you can see the group engaging in physical, emotional and to some extent spiritual explorations as they journey. In today’s program, we have a practising Catholic, a lapsed Catholic, a Sikh, a Muslim, a pagan and a Jew. But in no way does the program attempt to convert pilgrims from their current belief systems but in practice, each participant seems to find their own pre-existing beliefs to be renewed and even reinforced. There is sometime in the pilgrimage for everyone – for example, the paganist could point to the ancient ‘stones’ that had been erected in pre-Christian times but which had to some extent been Christianised in that the religious/spiritual significance of the stones were incorporated into the early Christianity. Other pilgrimage programmes have explored the route to Santiago de Compostela, Fatima and North Wales.
In some ways, the riots that we have been experiencing in some of our communities could not have happened at a worse time. The political elite are all taking their summer holidays and the Paris Olympics is providing diversions for many. The response of the government seems to have worked, however. Massively reinforced policing, almost instant court cases and terms of imprisonment of up to ten years seems to have turned the tide. At one level, I applaud the activities of the government in responding to these riots and one can only wonder what the response of the Tories would have been if they still in power. The modern Tory party has drifted more and more rightwards and one can imagine that at least some members of the Tory party might be somewhat ambivalent about the attacks that are made on asylum seekers and other ethnic minority communities. It is sad to say that one level the riots have succeeded in one of their objectives because I have heard more than one member of an ethnic minority group say that they feel threatened and frightened in contemporary Britain. But one wonders after a period of imprisonment, what effect will this have on the mentality of the rioters? At least part of me is inclined to argue that the government is convicting people of being stupid and ignorant. One of those convicted said to the police that he had no idea what ‘Far Right’ (or Left for that matter) actually meant. Perhaps in our society, it is left to the probation service to help in the re-education process of those convicted and imprisoned. In Chinese society (and even in Saudi Arabia) there follows a process of ‘political re-education’ and although we in the UK might be repulsed at these measures, the point remains how we are to deal with the aftermath of the riots. The education secretary is going to generate changes in the curriculum to encourage school pupils to have a much more critical attitude to what is read on the internet and to spot ways in which fake news can be spotted and counteracted. But the genie is now out of the bottle and with the increasing influence of artificial intelligence, one wonders how easy it is even for those who are ‘internet savvy’ to spot fake news, let alone those at school. In general terms, I think that the government is on the right lines in doing what it can to counter the effects of social media but national governments are pretty powerless to be able to act unilaterally against the impacts of it. There is a complete irony in that Elon Musk, the owner of social media platform X, has claimed civil war is ‘inevitable’ in the UK as pockets of violent disorder continues to break out across the country. But if any western country is on the brink of civil war, one would imagine that the USA should be the first to be considered in this category.
The Olympic Games ends today and a dramatic closing ceremony is promised to us by the French in the Olympic stadium. Team GB ends with 65 medals (14 golds, 22 silvers and 29 bronzes). They top their Tokyo tally by one, although did win eight fewer golds than in 2021. But to my recollection, there seemed to be a large number of events in which the British athletes were literally pipped to the post by the smallest possible margins. The next Olympic games are to be held in Los Angeles in the USA and I can only see our medal total going down in four years time as the numbers of family and friends must reduce compared with Paris.
© Mike Hart [2024]