A New National Anthem

In these days of Commonwealth Cups and World Football games, Wimbleton competitions, London Snickers* and so forth, there have been plenty of opportunities to hear our country’s national anthem.

In the past, I have heard people opine that the British National Anthem is dull and dirge-like, that its references to both God and the monarchy are now hopelessly old-fashioned and no longer reflect the true feelings of the average Briton.  I can’t say I agree with them, since I think that both God and the Queen are rather awesome, and the former saving the latter is definitely a Good Thing.  However, bursting with the milk of human kindness and willing to plug a perceived gap in our collective existence, I have composed a new song that perfectly encapsulates the current zeitgeist, that simply says out loud exactly what almost everybody (barring unfortunate misanthropes, monsters and misfits) is thinking.

Throughout each verse is weaved a message so subtle as to be almost subliminal.  Don’t try and fight it.  Just lie back and let it do its work.  I’m also on Paypal, if that helps.

So anyway, here it is, your new National Anthem!  (FYI, most of my friends and close acquaintances know me as ‘TJ’)

The British National Anthem 2.0

Hooray for TJ, great leader of men!

All chorus his glorious praises and then,

Consider his victories, triumphs and wins,

Unnumbered and how, unencumbered by sins,

He stands as a model of virtue and health,

Let’s crown him our monarch and send him our wealth!

He’s dashing and daring and most debonair,

With knowledge and courage and honour to spare.

A hale and hardy hard-hitting hero,

When he explains he makes everything clear.  Oh,

How can it be he’s so witty and funny?

Proclaim him your master and send him your money!

Courteous, caring and cunning as hell,

But honest and modest as millions can tell.

A Hercules, Hannibal, Homer or Hector,

A hammer of grammar and spelling corrector,

He lives every second with vim and panache,

Let’s make him our leader and send him our cash!

Bursting with brains and hearty of health,

So clever, but never admits it himself.

Quietly modest is always his way,

Though all that have met him have much more to say.

A wisdom preserver, so learned in his learnings,

Attempt to deserve him and send him your earnings!

Three cheers for this hero of virtues unending,

The leaderless leading, the friendless befriending,

He’s feeding the foodless and freeing the fettered,

And all your best efforts he’s already bettered.

So praise and adore him, but do it correctly!

Go talk to your banker and debit directly.

Copyright Thomas Jones 2014

*You’re showing your age if you got that one.                     

Consideration and the Art of Tea-Making

Tea.  Good stuff, tea.  Drink of gods, champions and kings, stuff of life, sweetest of the sweet nectars, fuel of genius, cheap for the poor, sophisticated for the rich, warming when you’re cold, cooling when you’re hot, calming when one is fraught, invigorating when one is sluggish, etc etc, and so on and so forth.  Like I said, good stuff.

And everyone likes it their own way, be that strong, weak, milky, not milky, whatever.  And of course, since that is the way you like it, it stands to reason that it is the best way to have it, and other people only have it their own way because they’ve not tried it in yours.  In the excellently titled ‘A Nice Cup of Tea and a Sit Down’ (a book which, it must be said, spends far too many pages on biscuits, and not nearly enough on tea and sitting down), it is pointed out that this tea arrogance results in people making tea for others in their own way.  There may be token queries as to how much milk, and no-one from any kind of civilised society would ever add sugar to another’s tea without asking first, but basically tea is made in the way the maker best sees fit.

At work, I am part of only a small team, consisting of myself and two others, and when we make tea, we make it for the others as well.  I should add that normally I am a supreme tea snob, and at home I make it using loose leaves in a proper tea pot, and drink it out of a cup and saucer.  However, this would be impractical, not to mention somewhat pretentious-seeming, in an office setting and so I lower my standards and drink tea made with a tea-bag.  My main consolation is that I get to use my Spiderman mug; the one with a spider symbol on the side that changes colour when hot liquid is poured into it.  It’s the little pleasures that make the day bearable.

All that being as it is, one of my colleagues, when they make tea for the rest of us, makes it quite milky.  The other, when they make it, makes it very strong.  I tended to make it somewhere in the middle, although possibly slightly stronger than not.  However, having read the book named above, and knowing of the phenomenon of ‘tea arrogance’, I have attempted to extrapolate how they like their tea and prepare it accordingly.  For the one who makes it milky, I make it milky.  For the one who makes it strong, I make it strong.  For myself, I make it the way I like it.  In this manner, I hope to give them tea that they will enjoy as much as I enjoy mine.

Neither of them has commented on this, I’m not even sure they’ve noticed.  Possibly they both assume that they have won me over to their way of doing things, and that now I enjoy milky or strong tea far more than my previous misguided delight in medium-strongish tea.  Certainly neither of them has reciprocated and started producing tea in a manner other than that which (I assume) they enjoy, so it seems that I may rather have shot myself in the foot with my own consideration.  Or maybe I’m just over thinking the whole thing…

Still, do as you would be done by, bless those who curse you, and make nice tea for those poor benighted souls who haven’t yet realised that the way you like it is just outright better.

The Right to be Wrong

This week, there was a news story about a small chain of cake shops in Northern Ireland, which face potential legal action for refusing to create a cake with a slogan supporting gay marriage, due to the religious beliefs of the company’s owners.  A same-sex couple placed an order for the cake, the company responded, saying that they were unable to take the order, and gave the couple a full refund.  The company assumed that was the end of it, but then received a letter from a solicitor, demanding compensation and threatening them with court action for discrimination.

I have to be careful here, because it would be easy to misrepresent myself, and just to establish my moderate, socially liberal credentials, I will state now that I am completely in favour of equality when it comes to sexuality.  I am entirely in favour of gay marriage, especially in religious ceremonies, and see no reason whatsoever to judge another person on what they get up to in the bedroom, assuming that they’re above the age of consent, and it’s all consensual.

However, I’m also completely in favour of equality when it comes to freedom of expression of religion or lack thereof.  There have been several high-ish profile court cases in which gay couples have come into direct conflict with Christians over the last few years.  The B&B case in which a gay couple were refused a double-room is a comparatively recent and well-known one, and a few years back it was Catholic orphanages refusing to give children up for adoption by same-sex couples.  My opinion of this new case is very much the same as my opinion on these older ones.

There is a clear and direct conflict of interests here, in which the rights of one group directly infringe on that of the other, and vice-versa.  As I said above, I do not pay much heed to the biblical injunctions against homosexuality, but some people do.  I believe that they’re wrong, but I also believe that they have every right to be wrong.  On the other hand, I also believe that anyone should expect equal treatment, irrespective of their sexuality.  But there still doesn’t have to be a conflict of interests.  I don’t understand why the couple involved in this new case can’t get a cake elsewhere.  I struggle to believe that there are no other cake shops in their area, and by using one of these after they’d been refused, they would have avoided a messy conflict.  I can understand that they might have been hurt by the refusal, but ultimately I don’t believe they have the right not to be.  The problem with free speech is that people are free to speak, and if we don’t like what they’re saying, we just have to go and stand somewhere where we can’t hear it.  There are plenty of people out there whose beliefs and opinions I find odious and offensive.  I believe that those people have a right to be odious and offensive, but the last thing I’d want to do is help them earn a living by buying their cake!

If there were no other cake shops in the region, I would say ‘Sorry cake people, but these guys want cake, and you’re the only ones who can provide it, so I’m afraid you’re going to have to.’  If on the other hand, there are plenty of other places willing to serve them without generating a conflict of interest, then they should go that way instead.  I feel the same way about the B&B and the orphanages.  If all orphanages in the UK were Catholic, then I would insist on them allowing gay couples to adopt.  Since they weren’t, I would expect gay couples to go elsewhere instead of causing conflict when no conflict is necessary.  There seems to be an ‘All us or all them’ approach going on, in which only the complete capitulation of one side or the other can be considered a satisfactory conclusion.

To me, this case and the others mentioned are the equivalent of a fundamentalist Christian going into a pub, only to discover that it’s a gay bar.  However, instead of quietly withdrawing and going to the pub down the road, he loudly insists that everybody else refrain from any shows of physical affection or any other ‘gay behaviour’ while he’s there, and that they join him in the singing of a few hymns.  Then, when asked to leave, he immediately reports the place to the police for discrimination.

The couple could (and should, as far as I’m concerned) have publicised the fact that this company don’t want the business of gay people and their supporters, and the company would likely have lost money because of it.  That’s fine, that’s people exercising their own freedom and voting with their feet.  Using the law to try and force someone into doing business with you is going to do no-one any good at all, besides a bit of petty point scoring, and all it does is inculcate and strengthen the siege mentality that seems to have set in amongst a lot of Christians, who feel that their rights to freedom of religion are under constant and inexorable attack from groups whose rights always seem to trump their own. 

I don’t know whether this particular case was a deliberate attempt to make a point, but whether it is or not, all it serves to do is make certain Christian groups even more hostile to homosexuality.  It comes down to whether you believe respect can be demanded, or must be earned.  I strongly believe the latter, but at the moment, some gay rights groups seem to be demanding respect through the medium of the law, when conversation and a clear show that they respect the rights of religious groups would do infinitely more good, and be far more likely to lead to reciprocation.  As with so many areas of life, it would be far better to educate, not legislate, be prepared to give a little in order to gain much, but apparently even this gentle and progressive compromise isn’t enough for some.  And, of course it must be said that it’s just as true the other way round.  The church must clearly show that it respects the rights of gay people, and is willing to engage in sensible dialogue with them and not merely in antagonistic ranting, and generally the mainstream of Christianity is doing this reasonably well, but this is spoiled by a small but loud minority on both sides.

And to clarify, I would not support the same company in refusing employment to someone on the grounds of their sexuality.  People have the right to work, and to be considered for work on no other grounds than their ability to do the job.  I do not believe they have the right to force their business on a company (or individual) who doesn’t want it, and they’d be much better off taking it elsewhere.  Personally, I wouldn’t want to buy a cake from a company who hated me, and was being forced to deal with me very much against their will.  Who knows what they might do to it or put in it?  Not that’d it’d be very Christian to do so, but there you go.

Basically, this country is big enough for us all to rub along smoothly without stepping on each other’s toes, and interfering in each other’s lives, beliefs and rights.  Unfortunately, some counter-productive people insist on creating friction where none is necessary, and all it does in my opinion is harm the whole machine and help no-one at all.

Real Things

A quote for you, from a book I’m reading at the moment:

“With them (…) was a power mightier than any, the power that in its highest form does indeed make the world go round; the one power in the world that is above fortune, above death, above the creeds, or, shall we say, behind them.  For with them was love in its highest form, the loves that gives and does not ask, and being denied, loves.  In their clear moments men know that this love is the only real thing in the world; and a thousand times more substantial, more existent, than the objects we grasp and see.”

This is not, as you might assume, from Unspoken Sermons, by George Macdonald, which I mentioned in my last post.  It is from The Abbess of Vlaye, by Stanley J. Weyman, a historical swashbuckler set in sixteenth century France.  Stanley Weyman was writing in the 1890s and 1900s, and his works are similar in tone and content to Alexandre Dumas but unlike him, and quite inexplicably, Weyman is now almost completely unknown.  It might be that his heroes and heroines are somewhat nobler and more wholesome than Dumas’ more roisterous protagonists, and thus excite less interest, but although I’m a huge Dumas fan, and would class The Count of Monte Cristo amongst my favourite books (and which includes, at the very end, a wonderful quote about hope), I think on the whole, I prefer Weyman.  Weyman’s A Gentleman of France instantly catapulted itself into my top 10 books list as soon as I read it, and his Under the Red Robe is also excellent.  Because Weyman’s works are now out of copyright, they can be downloaded for free from the wonderful Project Gutenberg, where I’ve acquired all mine, and I highly recommend them if you’re into books full of duels, chases, narrow escapes, true love, giants (Wait, no, that’s The Princess Bride.  There aren’t any giants) and cameos from Persons of Historical Significance.

Anyway, enough literary criticism.  The reason I quoted the above is because it resonates with me in much the same way as the C S Lewis quote which adorns the top of this page.  The idea that the important things, the real things, aren’t the ones that, in Weyman’s words “we can grasp and see”.  It’s a view that some people find hard.  “I only believe what I can see” is a phrase that I’ve heard a great many times.  Presumably these people are agnostic about the backs of their own heads, but there you are.

I am, if not an ardent, then at least a confirmed monarchist, and when discussions on the monarchy occur, they often end up coming down to money.  It commonly ends up in a debate over whether the royal family brings in more in tourism than they use in public money, but to me this misses the point.  The importance of the monarchy isn’t a material one.  Ignoring the excellent work they do in terms of diplomacy and international PR, their value to me is much harder to define, much less straight forward, but all the more important.  It’s about tradition and history, pomp and circumstance, about magnificence and dignity and continuation.  There are a great many bland republics about, but only one British Monarchy.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m no advocate of absolute monarchy, but I definitely feel that with our parliamentary democracy and constitutional monarchy, we have the best of both worlds.

Likewise my feelings towards religion; towards love, faith, hope, grace, forgiveness, goodness.  We are told that these are all merely evolutionary adaptations that increase social cohesion and group survivability, that love is merely ‘chemical brainwashing’, forcing individuals to stay together against their will, for the sake of raising young, that even the very concepts of goodness and justice are nothing more than nature’s way of tricking us into being nice, with the sole aim of increasing the likelihood of passing on our genes.  That may well be true.  It could well be that the concepts that we hold dear are things that we have invented, things we’ve dreamed, things which we cannot weigh or measure or touch or show when sceptics demand that we give them ‘proof’ or else admit that our beliefs are fantasies and fairy-tales; unconditional, disinterested love, perfect forgiveness, faith in the face of doubt, hope in the absence of any cause to hope, Grace that deserves the capitalisation, not as the result of firing neurons and sloshing hormones, but independent, free, objective and absolute.

If these aren’t real, and I don’t believe for a second that they’re not, then reality seems pretty rubbish really, and we have found a much better one.

I seem to be throwing a lot of quotations around at the moment, but just one more for the materialists, sceptics and ‘realists’, this from the great Baron Munchausen:

“Your reality, sir, is lies and balderdash, and I am delighted to say I have no grasp of it whatsoever!”