What is in Kelvin's Head?

Alternative Queen’s Speech

04/06/2014

Here is an Alternative Queen’s Speech – the things that I’d have liked to hear from the Queen in the House of Commons today and what I’d have asked Her Majesty to say if I were the Prime Minister.

My Lords and Members of the House of Commons, my government will work in the year ahead for the wellbeing of the people of this country. It shall continue to pursue economic prosperity but shall see this within the context of what may be identified as the common good.

My government will seek to reduce both relative and absolute poverty and seek to bring an end to the culture of Food Bank Britain. It will pay appropriate benefits to those in need in a timely fashion.

My government shall work towards a new constitutional settlement in order to bring stability to the nation. To this end, it shall prepare legislation which will be presented in Westminster if the referendum on Scottish Independence is not passed in September 2014. This legislation will set out a new constitutional framework for a federal United Kingdom with a written constitution establishing this nation’s sovereignty within the European Union. This will introduce a new parliament for England based in the city of York. It will abolish the House of Lords and establish a new honour of Royal Commissioner of the United Kingdom which all current members of the House of Lords will receive. Members of the new Royal Commission shall be called upon to give evidence according to their speciality during increased pre-legislative scrutiny for four parliaments in Northern Ireland, Wales, England and Scotland. The four parliaments shall act as unicameral assemblies in all matters excepting those relating to foreign policy, the constitution, the monarchy, registration of political parties, international trade, currency and economic policy, defence, energy policy, climate change issues, declarations of war and treason. These matters shall be the preserve of the House of Commons, entirely comprised of elected members from across the United Kingdom. If the people of Scotland reject the proposals for an independent Scotland in September 2014 then these new legislative developments will be put to all the people of this country in a referendum on 24 March 2016 and my government will seek cross-party support for them.

My government will reform the national curriculum in England in the light of best practise in all parts of this kingdom in order to empower teachers and set them free from red tape. The new curriculum will establish what should be taught in schools whilst leaving teachers free to teach those subjects to the best of their ability and according to their professional judgement.

My government will introduce legislation to disestablish the Church of England and will consult on the best way of preserving the positive ethos which exists in many church schools when those schools are given over entirely to local authority control.

My government will introduce legislation to ensure that charitable status is removed from all charities which discriminate on the basis of the Protected Characteristics of other equality legislation. For the avoidance of doubt, religious charities which campaign against other protected characteristics in terms of age, gender, sexuality etc will automatically lose their charitable status.

My government, mindful of the number of citizens who now live in single households will begin a consultation on extending the Equality Act by introducing protections for single people particularly in relation to the provision of goods and services in the travel and hospitality industries.

My government will introduce a new law of copyright which is fit for the digital age which will include reducing the terms of copyright.

My government will ensure that no public money is spent on reparative (or gay conversion) therapy.

My government will establish mandatory sex education in all schools in England and remove the requirement for religious assemblies in schools. Legislation will be introduced to place a statutary duty on schools to review procedures to ensure the prevention of homophobic bullying. My government will clarify the law to ensure that teachers who ignore such bullying can be prosecuted under the same legislation as other forms of child neglect.

My government will continue to allocate 0.7 % of GDP to overseas development and shall engage in a consultation about how this money might be best distributed to ensure that this country does not aid discrimination, violence or corruption.

My government will continue to raise the threshold for income tax. Alongside this, my government has recognised the need for tax measures to ensure a fairer distribution of wealth. To this end, my government will in the current year cut Value Added Tax by half, raising income tax in order to pay for this. The 50% band for income tax will be reestablished for all earning in excess of £100000 per year. My government will begin preparatory work for a further major tax reform by beginning a consultation on introducing a land value tax in order to replace Council Tax within the next 5 years. Furthermore my government will revive local government by removing all caps on revenue raising that have been imposed by central government.

My government will overhaul the laws on freedom of assembly and protest to ensure that all voices may be heard.

My government will reform the data protection laws beginning from the principal that all citizens are entitled to their own privacy.

My government will introduce proportional representation for all elections.

My government will abolish all University tuition fees.

My government will invest in research and development in Universities with the aim of establishing new generic drugs which will be free from pharmaceutical patents for the good not only of this country but for the wellbeing of the citizens of the world.

My government will establish and fund a new centre of expertise for open-source software and shall prefer to commission new public computer systems using such software.

My government will publish a national energy policy and invest in nuclear and renewable energy whilst outlawing fracking.

My government will raise the minimum wage to a new living wage.

My government is proud of the fact that it has introduced consolidated fares in the airline industry, ensuring that advertised fares include all booking fees and taxes. It will now introduce legislation to do the same for all arts productions, outlawing the practice of charging a separate booking fee on ticket prices.

My Lords and Members of the House of Commons,

I pray that the blessing of the Eternal God may rest upon your counsels.

Alternative, federal UK, independence, politics, Queen’s Speech

7 responses to “Whither the Kirk?”

Pausing Place

25/08/2010

I missed last night’s programme, but I thought your comments were interesting.

In a sense, perhaps it’s unsurprising if the SEC is inwardly more positive about itself than the CofS. My take is that in the recent past, at least, the SEC started from a lower common denominator, not being the “local” church in the same way as the Kirk, and so it doesn’t have to contend with others saying of it “look how the mighty have fallen” in quite the same way.

As to the health of the Kirk (and the SEC for that matter), I think we need to reflect on our self-perception and to consider carefully the points and places in which a dying church (congregation or denomination) should be allowed to die gracefully, and the ways in which we might see new life emerge from the rubble.

As a young(ish!), relatively new Christian I have seen examples of (both urban and rural) SEC and Kirk congregations where there are few signs of new growth, little to draw in younger (under 50 year olds, to pick a random-ish number) new folk, and much to sustain negative preconceptions of church as boring, irrelevant and so forth.

We as a faith community need to get much better at stepping up to the mark in our creativity and engagement with our society. The sad truth is that most young adults do not know and have not heard about Jesus Christ, and unless we engage with them in ways culturally relevant to them, and which do not presuppose previous knowledge (too often taken for granted) they never will.

It troubles me, but I do think it’s true to say that in the SEC and in the Kirk we have a church sustained by the traditions and cultural reference points taught to a previous generation. Culture has shifted radically, with the result that the same will not be able to be said in 20 years time.

Our challenge is clear. Whether the Kirk and the SEC can step up to the mark to address what it means to live out the Great Commission in the 21st century is less so.

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Cal

25/08/2010

I didn’t really understand who this programme was aimed at, or even what its aim was.

Yes, numbers have fallen, but perhaps the small number of people who remain are there because they actually want to be, not because it’s the done thing on a Sunday morning.

And personally, I rather like the idea of a church “sustained by traditions”. Clearly the church has to be relevant to modern society, but in abandoning the traditions of worship then you lose the centre of why the church exists in the first place.

There was something very Presbyterian about the programme with its “we’re doomed” mentality. I find the SEC generally more positive in outlook.

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John

25/08/2010

The only book the presenter seemed to have used in his research was ‘The Death of Christian Britain: Understanding Secularisation 1800-2000’ By Callum G Brown – indeed Callum Brown was one of the speakers. The thesis of this well argued sociological study is that “quite suddenly in 1963 something very profound ruptured the character of the nation and its people sending organised Christianity on a downward spiral to the margins of social significanceâ€. That something he identifies as new media, new gender roles and a moral revolution which has dramatically ended peopleâ€™s conception that they lived Christian lives.â€ It could be said to have happened as â€œsex beganâ€ between the end of the Chatterly ban and the Beatles first LP as the poet Philip Larkin so famously put it.”
To balance this statistical decline the programme flagged up some of the “church without walls ” iniatives in a lame sort of way. All in all a most unsatisfactory programme that only told half the story.

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Kenny

25/08/2010

Good crit Kelvin. My reflection at the end of the programme was, “Lord, we visited this stuff over 30 years ago, and have come out of it stronger and better Church in the SEC.” Hopefully, we stopped longing for ‘the good old days’ a long time ago!

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MartinRitchie

26/08/2010

I thinking “Pausing Place” makes a good point about needing to creatively engage with society. From my own experience of working with a CofS congregation, this creative engagement is a weak spot for many.

As a counterpoint to the programme, interesting to note in the latest “Life and Work” a very positive article about a growing CofS congregation in Stornoway – and I mean really growing! So not all doom and gloom, and I’m sure there are many more examples of bright spots, just as there are in the SEC!

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Graham Vahey

28/08/2010

If the C of S disappeared completely we would be at a loss. During the dark and bleak years of Thatcher’s reign she refused to visit Scotland for 5 years. When she did she expressed shock that we had Royal Regalia and ordered it to be removed immediately for safe-keeping to England. Her ‘Sermon on the Mound’ is now historical for its condescension to the Scots. She was none too pleased to be handed two reports on poverty in Scotland by the powerful Church and Nation Committee. Indeed, it was to this Committee that the population turned to for a moral lead during Thatcherism. When James VI (‘Jamie the Saxt’) became James I in England, the population turned to senior Scottish earls for a moral lead. Unfortunately, the Piskie Church does not give a moral lead in Scotland, apart from the work of the Scottish Constitutional Convention in the recent past. The RC Church does pronounce on moral issues. Could it not be conceivable that all the major Churches could unite in a Committee to pronounce for Scotland on moral issues as the Church & Nation Committee once did?

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Aldous N. Gaiters

01/09/2010

Speaking as a Nonjuror myself I am sure the SEC has a right to a moral voice in Scotland. Taking the US daughter church of the SEC as a model you could see where the fissures would appear. There is room for a modern liberal Christian voice, but even I an old Liberal myself, would have to fear that such a voice might appeal to only a select few.

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