Soap Boxing

 

Hello everyone. I hope that you are well. We are fine. We are just having a go at that "Bookish" on the telly. I don't know if you have been watching.  It looks quite good. I mean, I'm not sure why it has taken everyone so long to come up with a closeted post-war bookseller who solves crime in his spare time. Apparently, he has a letter from Winston Churchill, which gets him in everywhere - a bit like that passport that Dr Who carried around everywhere. Everything is connected, I suppose. I'm not sure about the programme. It seems a bit hammy. We'll see. 

I'm borderline political this week and would like to apologise for it in advance. It's just that there's a lot going on when we read the news, and it's been making me think. I hope you stick with it, but completely understand if you don't. 

We've had a bit of excitement here this week with the referendum deciding whether Plymouth would like a Mayor to look after us. Well, I say excitement. The turnout was about 17% so no one was that excited, obviously. It's the first time I didn't get round to voting, partly because the government had said that, even if we wanted a mayor, we couldn't have one. Anyway, we don't want one, apparently, a mayor that is, and it cost the city £400,000 to hold a referendum that was therefore a total waste of time. I wouldn't be troubling you with it at all except the chap who wanted us to have a Mayor is the multi-millionaire husband of Darcy Bussell, and they are living in the city, we believe. Well, we are not used to this level of glamour in Plymouth. Not that it seemed to impress us much, as I say.     

17% is a shocking turnout (and I am partially responsible for it, so I'm not having a go at anyone). There are reasons for it, obviously. You can't really blame people who don't turn up for an election that they have been told will make no difference at all to anything or anybody. It's not a great sell. However, most people feel that about proper elections. It comes at a time when the Government is about to lower the voting age to 16. I was quite chuffed about this. Here are the young people coming along to save us with their radicalism and sense of the injustice of it all. Hmm. In all the interviews I have seen with young people, they seem to be saying

a) I wouldn't give me the vote. I have no idea what I am doing.         

b) I certainly wouldn't give my friend the vote.  He is worse than I am. 

c) What time do you have to get up to get to the polling station?

So the young people are generally not queuing up to come to our rescue. That could be because they have enough on their plates already, or maybe because TikTok takes up so much time or possibly because they have never seen us old people doing much fighting for justice and don't know what it looks like.

I am old now (if I believe what my lower back is telling me), but it seems that I don't get out of responding to the call to justice. That sounds very pompous. I am a bit susceptible to a bit of pompousness. The last thing anyone needs is someone with their head slightly on one side, smiling down on you with pity as they remind you that they are a justice warrior for the poor and the lonely. However, I'm not sure it's that difficult. You ask yourself what is making you mad, and you work towards making it better. 

I was reading a bit of Timothy Keller this week, and he was saying that we pursue justice on two levels. One is in our personal lives through generosity and giving. (He reckons that this means sacrifice but doesn't mean selling ALL your possessions, so chill out, St Francis.) The second way is through advocacy - campaigning, speaking up, pushing for justice for all, annoying billionaires. I'm not sure how good I would be at the second part. I'm not that keen on any kind of trouble. But, it feels like the country is so strapped for cash that the government is terrified of upsetting all the rich people in case they all take their money to Bermuda. So, because the poor are too busy trying to work out how to cook pasta in a kettle in their B and B or hoping that the PIP assessment falls right, so that their 80-year-old nana doesn't have to be their main carer - they are too busy to pull on the sleeves of the government and say "Oi! You work for me too, mate!" 

In Luke 14, Jesus, who was a very hot ticket at the time, goes for a meal with some movers and shakers. He watches them jostling for position to be at the top table or at least have their elbow in with the big dudes (my understanding is that people would recline onto their elbows at these meals). Jesus then tells several stories about the entitled and the rich and those trampling on the disadvantaged for their own benefit, which makes it clear just how much nonsense this is and also that when God jostles with his elbows, he does it on behalf of the very people that they are pushing away. 

So, we are old, but we are still advocates. We still have a government here, despite the prevalence of nameless billionaires lobbying on the quiet. So what is getting your goat? There's plenty. I might not be very good at banners, but a letter to my MP, maybe? 

I am accompanying this with an old photo of me at a visit to the Council House, threatening everyone with the possibility of my Glorious Rule and the gavel of MY justice. So I say let's get things sorted while we can, to stop THAT happening at least. Have a good week.