I saw a chap from Southampton Transition, replete with his Southampton Transition t-shirt, reciting his Southampton Transition doctrines. Okay, fine. Seems like a worthy organisation with noble aims. Stop squandering fossil fuel. Seek and develop alternative energy sources. Happy with that.
So anyone representing this organisation would, obviously, be a full-blown, hemp-wearing, bin-diving, tree-hugging, tie-dyed, chemical-free, commune-with-nature, peak-oil-watching, all-men-are-brothers, be-buried-in-a-wicker-casket-in-woodland, living-in-a-commune, recycle-everything, save-the-world, at-one-with-nature, organic hippy-type, right? A shining example of sustainability. A beacon of hope for the future of our planet. And fair play to them. I admire these kind of people.
Why, then, was this person, this representative of Transition Southampton, with his Transition Southampton t-shirt, wearing Levi jeans and gleamingly-new Nike trainers? Save the planet but bugger the 8-year-old Taiwanese children whose fingers bled sewing my jeans, or the 12-year-old Indonesian children who work 16-hour-shifts to feed their families so I can wear fashionable footwear? Hmmm.
Tell you who I do like though - Stacey Dooley. She's the incredibly young-looking and, if I'm honest, somewhat annoying, flame-haired lady who made such documentaries as "Blood, Sweat and T-shirts" for the BBC.
http://transitionsouthampton.org/
Sunday 1 January 2012
Christians? Hmmm...
In church a while back a lady, I'll call her Barbara, from Christian Aid told us a tale about one of her Christian Aid week collectors.
This collector, also a lady, spent a few hours knocking the doors of her allotted patch, collecting the Christian Aid envelopes which had been posted through said doors some days prior. She ended-up raising some £20.
The collector said, to Barbara, that because her time was valuable and £20 was paltry she would have rather not spent those few hours knocking door and given the £20 from her own pocket. The moral of this story, we were told, was that it was about more than money, it was about spreading awareness, fostering community relations, and all that good stuff.
What are your thoughts on this? Fair enough, do you think? Makes sense, you say? Yeah, okay, I'll give you that. So everyone in the congregation got to make "tut, tut" noises whilst gently shaking their heads, admonishing this collector for not being the best Christian she could be. Great. Job done.
But not for me! In my opinion, if this collector had £20 kicking around in her pocket, doing nowt, why on earth wouldn't she donate it to Christian Aid anyway? Surely she should have done the door knocking, raised the £20, and stuck her own £20 too!
And how about this lady that was speaking to us, a regional collection manager, or some kind of key position within the Christian Aid organisation. What did she donate? I would expect her to be living in a modest property, one that suited her needs and no more, driving a modest, utilitarian car, eating basic foods, wearing clothes from charity shops, preferably Christian Aid ones if they exist, and giving the remainder of her income to Christian Aid, and possibly other, similar, charitable causes. And clearly she would forgo any payment for her labours from the Christian Aid organisation, unless necessary to meet her subsistence expenses. Only then would I be happy.
It made me think of these mega-rich celebrities that appear on Comic Relief and the like, making pleas for donations from the general public, most of whom are not particularly wealthy. I always wonder just how much said celebrity is donating themselves. I suspect, cynic that I am, not particularly much, relative to their wealth. In which case they should clear off and stop bothering us until such time as they are prepared to make a substantial, meaningful, heartfelt donation themselves.
This leads me on to Christians in general, and how they live their lives. It seems to me that many of them purport to be Christians, frequenting church etc, but actually show little compassion to their fellow man. Perhaps the subject of a future blog entry.
This collector, also a lady, spent a few hours knocking the doors of her allotted patch, collecting the Christian Aid envelopes which had been posted through said doors some days prior. She ended-up raising some £20.
The collector said, to Barbara, that because her time was valuable and £20 was paltry she would have rather not spent those few hours knocking door and given the £20 from her own pocket. The moral of this story, we were told, was that it was about more than money, it was about spreading awareness, fostering community relations, and all that good stuff.
What are your thoughts on this? Fair enough, do you think? Makes sense, you say? Yeah, okay, I'll give you that. So everyone in the congregation got to make "tut, tut" noises whilst gently shaking their heads, admonishing this collector for not being the best Christian she could be. Great. Job done.
But not for me! In my opinion, if this collector had £20 kicking around in her pocket, doing nowt, why on earth wouldn't she donate it to Christian Aid anyway? Surely she should have done the door knocking, raised the £20, and stuck her own £20 too!
And how about this lady that was speaking to us, a regional collection manager, or some kind of key position within the Christian Aid organisation. What did she donate? I would expect her to be living in a modest property, one that suited her needs and no more, driving a modest, utilitarian car, eating basic foods, wearing clothes from charity shops, preferably Christian Aid ones if they exist, and giving the remainder of her income to Christian Aid, and possibly other, similar, charitable causes. And clearly she would forgo any payment for her labours from the Christian Aid organisation, unless necessary to meet her subsistence expenses. Only then would I be happy.
It made me think of these mega-rich celebrities that appear on Comic Relief and the like, making pleas for donations from the general public, most of whom are not particularly wealthy. I always wonder just how much said celebrity is donating themselves. I suspect, cynic that I am, not particularly much, relative to their wealth. In which case they should clear off and stop bothering us until such time as they are prepared to make a substantial, meaningful, heartfelt donation themselves.
This leads me on to Christians in general, and how they live their lives. It seems to me that many of them purport to be Christians, frequenting church etc, but actually show little compassion to their fellow man. Perhaps the subject of a future blog entry.
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