Category Archives: Culture

Arts, Christianity, Culture, Religion

Understanding the meaning of Christmas from Ecclesiastes…

TRINKETS ARE TRIVIAL

EXPERTS are predicting that so many people have ‘everything’ that Christmas presents will become ‘experiences’ – tickets for such things as hang gliding or bungee jumping. Most of us in the West have many possessions and few can detach themselves completely from them. House, car, furnishings, sentimental objects and clothes define who we are, and we hate to lose them.

But when life is laid bare on the autopsy table, these things look trivial. Who we were, the influence we exerted, the people we helped (or hurt) are what will be remembered and missed. They will be a more powerful memorial than instructions in our will or any words on our tombstone.

Ecclesiastes invites us to step back and look at our own silliness. We never think we have enough (1:8) and we keep on re-inventing the wheel (1:9). Knowledge is no good stored in our head and never used (1:16, 17). Pleasure is an emotion that goes out like a light the moment its energy source is cut off (2:10, 11). And we work our socks off for others to get the benefit (2:17-19).

The author does, though, pose a hard question: why on earth do we live like this? Why do we waste so much time and energy on trivial things and spend so little on lasting things like relationships with others and with God? Perhaps we all suffer from practical agnosticism, despite our protestations of faith. Wisdom starts when we look deep into ourselves and reflect on our own mortality.

Ecclesiastes has a particularly poignant message for Christmas, despite it being a book from within the Old Testament. It looks at life by clearly instructing us to be content with what we have; it also suggests that life is meaningless without the spiritual dimension, and teaches the need to keep everything in proper perspective. The message couldn’t be clearer for today.

Part of our calling on earth is to appreciate and enjoy what the Creator has given us. All good things are to be received with thanksgiving (1 Timothy 4:3).

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Arts, Culture, History, Society

Nobel Peace, at what price?

PERPLEXED

Despite being shortlisted five times, Dame Beryl Bainbridge never won the Booker Prize, a literary prize awarded each year for the best original full-length novel, written in the English language, by a citizen of the Commonwealth of Nations, the Republic of Ireland, or Zimbabwe. Mahatma Gandhi, neither, despite his pre-eminence, won the Nobel Peace Prize, though he had been nominated on five separate occasions between 1937 and 1948. In 1948 Gandhi was assassinated and no prize was awarded, a decree given that there was ‘no suitable living candidate’. It is, of course, up to the Norwegian Nobel Committee to ultimately choose whoever it sees fit to hold the prestigious award. The Norwegian parliament appoints the committee because, when Alfred Nobel died, Norway had been ruled by the same king as its Scandinavian neighbour, Sweden, since the war between the two nations in 1814. It is becoming increasingly difficult, though, to ignore the committee’s aberrant selections.

Two weeks into his first term as President, Barack Obama was nominated for the prize, simply on the basis that the committee had heard his speech in Cairo in which he delivered, at times, perplexing and enigmatic statements. Conjecture such as… ‘Islam has a proud tradition of tolerance’ [as seen] in ‘Andalusia and Cordoba during the Inquisition’ was a presumptuous viewpoint based on little evidence.

The first U.S. presidential laureate had been Theodore Roosevelt, an award that surprised many because Roosevelt had led his own irregular cavalry in an invasion of Cuba. Other implausible laureates followed: Henry Kissinger, Yasser Arafat, and Al Gore among them.

And what of this year’s award? Those in favour of chemical weapons are likely to be displeased with the choice of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. Yet, of more concern, is the smoke-screen that has thickened in search of those chemical weapons that has created unabated slaughter in Syria’s ruthless and bloody civil war.

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Arts, Britain, Culture, Government, Media

Plans for a tough new Press watchdog following the Leveson Inquiry…

PRESS STANDARDS

Following the Leveson Inquiry into press and media standards, Britain’s newspaper and magazine publishers have revealed the details of a tough new Press watchdog.

The Independent Press Standards Organisation (Ipso) will have the power to impose fines of up to £1 million for systemic wrongdoing and require editors to publish upfront corrections ‘whether proprietors like it or not’.

The Media and Culture Secretary, Maria Miller, has said she is ‘glad’ that progress is being made following months in which talks on Press regulation have stalled.

The watchdog will have far tougher rules than the previous toothless Press regulator, the Press Complaints Commission (PCC). It is understood that Ipso will incorporate a standards and compliance arm, with strict investigative powers to call editors to account. The majority of members of the new body will be independent and the industry itself will have no veto on appointments, but proper processes for public appointments and scrutiny will be in place.

Report: The Leveson Inquiry highlighted ethical failings in the press

Report: The Leveson Inquiry highlighted ethical failings in the press

The public will be able to call a hotline number if they want to ask media organisations to leave them alone. And a whistleblowers’ hotline will also be set up for journalists if they are asked to do anything they believe is unethical.

The details were released ahead of a meeting today of the Privy Council at which a Royal Charter to govern the rules surrounding Press regulation will be discussed.

Newspaper publishers appear to hold a common consensus in that the Independent Press Standards Organisation will be a ‘complete break with the past’ and will deliver all the ‘key recommendations’ made by Lord Justice Leveson.

The Culture Secretary said:

… We have been urging the newspaper industry for several months to set up a new self-regulator, and are glad that they seem to now be making progress.

… We all want to see the principles of the Leveson report implemented and the self-regulatory body is a key component of that.

Most in government will welcome that the Press are forging ahead with the establishment of a new regulator. Ipso will go a long way to remedying the deficiencies of the PCC and in fulfilling the recommendations of Lord Justice Leveson.

Though it may take several months for the new body to be operating, the proposals offer a route map out of the deadlock eight months after Leveson reported. That deadlock is mostly attributable to the lobby group Hacked Off which has tried to stitch up a deal for political control of newspapers.

A watchdog with teeth is needed. The public have a right to expect a resolution to this matter sooner rather than later.

PROPOSALS

  • Maximum fines of £1 million for systemic wrongdoing by the Press
  • Upfront corrections when stories are wrong
  • A phone hotline for the public to complain about harassment by the Press
  • A whistleblowers’ hotline for journalists who are concerned they are being asked by bosses to do something unethical
  • A standards and compliance arm, with investigative powers to call editors to account
  • The Press have no veto over appointments to the new regulator
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