Faith in a workaday world

                                    Faith in a workaday world

One of the questions to be asked in a big city like this one is how easy it is to continue with a religious belief among the tumult of modern life.

In a country where most people profess a secular orientation and churches tend to empty more and more the issue of people of faith living as a minority comes to the fore more and more. In most churches the picture is the same. Declining attendances tell the story with empty pews in most churches. Differences can be seen in areas and in churches.

The Church of England has been the victim of a very steep decline in membership over the years with the Methodist church taking an even bigger hit.

It is as if Religion has been expunged from the national consciousness with even the Prime Minister speaking about having issues with faith. In terms of most moral issues that are affected in any cases there is a strong puritanical streak in secular Britain which damns all who do not see eye to eye on the issues of the day. Recent issues affecting Christians are usually spoken about as if the Christian position is wrong. On abortion the consensus is that it is a good thing and that only Catholics are against it. To be against abortion is to be against the rights of women over their bodies. It is a decidedly non party political issue but most politicians who raise their heads above the parapets endure strong derision from their party colleagues

A few years ago at the time of the Olympics, a faith outreach was set up linking all the main Christian churches. People were invited in for tea and coffee and a chat about faith. Various volunteers many from the US provided outreach services. I could only imagine the response that they got most of the time as people do not even want to talk about faith and in this case I ended up talking to a southern Baptist Lady from the US who almost fell off her chair with shock when I was able to produce a Bible from my rucksack. In England this would be a very unusual response.

Many churches have progressively ageing congregations with the membership dwindling. The Methodist Church was predicted to go extinct a little while ago. As far as other churches are concerned immigration has been a boom. It has halted the trend of declining catholic congregations and the catholic church seems to be holding its own in the battle of numbers. The same effect works for the orthodox churches which show a modest increase in membership. Apart from that the Pentecostal churches show some sort of increase in membership being increasing linked to arioso initiatives from the US.

Aside from this the picture is a bleak one. Increasingly the church has been all but expunged from national life. The new place of worship is the shopping mall driven by an increasingly money orientated consumer society.

The picture is similar for most of the British Isles with the exception of the Republic of Ireland ,though there the church has taken a knock due to child abuse allegations. However it remains fundamentally strong as still plays a part in national life unlike the other countries of these islands

Underemployment

                                                Underemployment

During the recent downturn a lot has been made of the fact that people are unemployed. Little has been made of the fact that many of the newly created jobs are part time. This has resulted in a phenomenon known as underemployment.

Of course this is great for the politicians as they can say that employment is on the rise. It does not however disguise the fact that there is a human tragedy behind all these things and that underemployment is actually quite a curse. Many people gain part time hours that still however ensure that they are not counted as unemployed yet they fail to make enough money to live a decent life and struggle to pay their bills.

Large numbers of people are reduced to working at a part time job when they would prefer to work more hours. This is very much a hidden statistic and its toll on the people involved cannot be underestimated. Not only do they have little money but they have the whole day to think about their problem!

Of course another aspect of this is the zero hour’s contract which is becoming increasingly common. Many forms are doing this and it becomes quite difficult as the person is only hired as and when required! This can also play havoc if a person is getting their income topped up by benefits as the hours can be variable and the bureaucracy of the benefit offices in this regard is something else!

However the politicians find this a very handy in painting their picture of an economy that is recovering!

Commuting to work

                                                Commuting to work

One of the great bugbears of London is the time it takes to get to work. Most Londoners are accustomed to spending long periods of the day just getting to their workplaces

As more and more people are forced into outlying suburbs and commuter towns so the daily commute grows. Trains coming from towns in the Home Counties are usually packed at weekdays with many of them providing standing room only. One of the annual miseries is the rise in rail travel tickets with all the fallout that it entails.

Even for those who live in London there is the misery of the commute. Many times I have had to spend about two hours actually getting to my place of work and that in London is not uncommon. Once I had an evening class to deliver in one location and I recall getting home at midnight which was in general quite a tiring commute.

Often it is said that everybody in London has two jobs, their own job and the other is getting to and from their workplace. In many ways it is fairly much of a truism that the daily commute can play a big role in your life and you can actually spend quite a few hours of the day getting to and from your workplace.

In the mornings the metro or tube system is packed. Most of the carriages are standing room only

And it is quite common to see tempers flaring as people all over themselves to get on trains and stay on the trains through all the stops. Busses can usually be packed as well and many buses will speed by as these are already so full of passengers that not is not safe or them to take any more.

Even private modes of transport are hardly an option as using a car in central London is a fruitless exercise. Not only do you have to pay to drive in this zone which is indicated by road signs bur you also have to find parking which is not easy and the few parking garages are quite expensive. Some people take to the roads and cycle but this also has its problems as London has an appalling record on road safety for cyclists. Many cyclists are killed every year by cars and lorries. The sight of bundles of flowers marking the death of a cyclist at a particular road junction is commonplace.

Every method of commuting has its problems. For most Londoners the idea is trying to find something to do in the long hours we spend commuting                               

           

Heat wave

                                                Heat wave

At the moment London is suffering a heat wave. It seems as if people are never satisfied. Now all the complaints are

“It is too hot!”

However those who work outdoors are enjoying the heat. Since air conditioning is nor so common here most people are sweltering in the heat. On the metro you constantly hear advice about taking a bottle of water with you. And it will probably come to a point soon when trains will slow down as usually happens. The transport system never seems to be adapted to cope with extremes of weather.

For the moment a lot of people are enjoying it. The parks come alive with people sitting in groups taking in the sun.

In a country where this does not happen so often many people are grateful for the short interlude because next week we could have rain. That is the ever present threat!

The recovery

                                                The recovery

In a time when the last recession has been decimating the high streets of the UK and led to a massive drop in the living standards of most people in the UK talk of a recovery seems a bit rich. For the past five years at least people in work that is have seen bills rose exponentially while wage rises have been small or nonexistent.

The truth is that now the government and press is trumpeting recovery. However people are still losing their jobs and for the average Briton life does not seem to have improved much

“The new conditions are rubbish” My one friend told me after going for a teaching job.

“What they expect from you is impossible!”

This sentiment would actually be mirrored in the exchanges various people have ad generally new jobs created seem to have worse conditions than the last.

In general people are accepting lower wages and worse conditions of employment just to get jobs which seem to still be very hard to come by.

One f the problems is that in education the paperwork that needs to be done is about ten times what is was When Labour left office so the government is increasing the load of paperwork all the time.

And the recovery seems ever so distant for most people as there seems to be very little work out there. In addition costs are rising all the time. Housing costs and fuel costs particularly. For the average person very little seems to be working at the moment.

Wirth the relentless increases in costs with wages staying stagnant there is likely to be large political fallout. 

Cheap shops

                        Cheap Shops

A good indicator of the health of the economy for most people is what is going on in the high streets of towns. This tends to reflect what is happening in the world at large and at the moment many high streets in the UK look pretty grim despite all this talk of recovery. The sight of  boarded up shop is still common. It is as if the enterprise has gone out of the economy. One aspect of the recession has been an explosion of cheap shops and for most people still in work this is one thing that has reduced the cost of living. We have the pound shop, the 99p store and poundland along with many other independent 99p or one pound chains. A huge range of goods are displayed there and of course nobody now asks their provenance. In fact few care about why the goods are so cheap but only the price. One of the signs of this recession is that even the Middle classes now go to poundland. Before the crisis that would have been unthinkable.

However these sops offer a range of goods from kitchen utensils to toys and garden accessories. All are offered at the standard rates of one pound. People are going there to stock up on all the essentials. Now the range even included such staples as cooked food ad it is possible to buy pizza salads and cooked chicken wings in some of these outlets. In fact there is a never ending streams of traffic in these places and this industry is one that has certainly not been suffering from the recession. So difficult has it become that even the major British supermarkets such as Tescos, Sainsburys and Morrisons have started price wars among themselves.

Certainly one effect of the recession has been an explosion of these shops and despite the so called recovery which for most people does not feel like a recovery with jobs still being very insecure, it looks as if for the moment these shops are here to stay.