This month, EADT columnist Michael Cole says the BBC and the Church of England must do better....
Christianity is dead in Britain, according to some senior Anglican clerics. If true, that’s bad news for the Church of England but worse for adherents to other religions who have settled here.
English law is based on Judeo-Christian morality: the 10 Commandments, Love Thy Neighbour, Turn the Other Cheek, Blessed are the Meek for they shall inherit the Earth.
We don’t cut off a thief’s hand. We do not stone an adulterous woman to death. “He that is without sin among you”, said Jesus Christ, “Let him first cast a stone at her”.
Justice is administered with equity. No detention without trial. Innocent until proven guilty. Verdicts tempered with mercy when merited.
The baying mob, howling for revenge, does not prevail.
Christianity has defined western civilisation which, for all its faults, is so attractive that people risk their lives to live under the rule of law in a liberal democracy with a Christian king.
Our culture hasn’t happened by accident. People have had to be taught to be good, kind and just.
Man is an animal, with animal instincts, now all the more apparent as Christianity fades.
Without our Biblical faith, murder, rape, incest and robbery with violence would have defined a brutal existence for us all centuries ago, the strong for ever oppressing the weak.
People used to learn right from wrong from their parents who learned it at Sunday school.
Now, as the Anglican Church neglects its primary duty to preach the word of God, young people don’t know who the Good Samaritan was and why the Sermon on the Mount is important to their personal lives.
Charles Dickens taught people compassion. Early Hollywood taught the world how to dream, as Norma Desmond declares in “Sunset Boulevard”. Many screen writers were European Jews. They adapted Biblical stories and themes to shape public morality.
Now, people are exposed to unrelenting screen violence depicting human degradation.
Who will save us from a post-Christian world of immorality, increasing violence and screaming mobs demanding their rights while ignoring the public good?
Not the Church of England. It has given up. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, says the loss of faith is “not all bad”. That says it all.
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Warfield Place would be a better name for Felixstowe’s new houses and flats next to the site of Beach House, where the woman who became the Duchess of Windsor waited for her divorce in 1936 so that she could marry King Edward VIII, rather than Simpson’s Place as the developers intend.
Yes, she was Mrs. Wallis Simpson in 1936 but was born Bessie Wallis Warfield in 1896. Simpson was merely the name of her second husband, businessman Ernest Simpson.
When Beach House was for sale in 1980, my wife and I viewed it. The position above the seafront was superb but the interior run down, water damage down the walls from the leaky skylight above the sweeping staircase.
In her autobiography, “The Heart has its Reasons”, the Duchess recalled lonely days at Felixstowe only enlivened by Felixstowe College girls playing on the beach as she took solitary walks.
The king dropped by on his way to Sandringham but people petitioning for divorce then had to be discreet or risk being denied their decree nisi.
Beach House was later demolished and flats built on the site. Felixstowe College, where many a bright girl found inspiration, sadly closed in 1994.
Warfield is more upmarket than Simpson.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------“Nation Shall Speak Peace unto Nation”, says the BBC motto. But don’t question Auntie or you’ll be expunged!
That’s what happened to Radio Norfolk’s Sophie Little who criticised the BBC’s “unbelievably unfair” cuts to local radio when her popular Treasure Quest show was cancelled after 15 years. Her two-minute denunciation was subsequently wiped from the catch-up service.
BBC cuts are steadily degrading Radio Suffolk: no Mark Murphy morning show, no James Hazell, no Suffolk programmes after 2.00 p.m.
Radio Suffolk costs a fraction of the daily taxi bill for non-broadcasting bureaucrats attending futile meetings and writing memos to each other at New Broadcasting House.
If the BBC cannot run a basic service like local radio properly, it’s time it went.
I have known former ITN newscaster Alistair Stewart for 45 years. I was at GBNews the night he said farewell because of his dementia.
It’s quite the thing now for famous people to parade their debilitating illnesses.
It started with Nigella Lawson’s first husband, Daily Mirror columnist John Diamond, who wrote a diary of his terminal cancer, declaring it was his illness and he would exploit it until it killed him, which it did, aged 47, in 2001.
We must all meet death in our own way but whatever happened to privacy, discretion and restraint?
Raine, Countess Spencer, step-mother of Princess Diana, told no one that she was dying of cancer, not even me when she asked me to give the address at her Memorial Service.
She didn’t bother family or friends, declined treatment and “made a beautiful death”, according to the experienced nurse who was with her when she died aged 87 in 2016.
That’s style.
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Spray-painting cars parked by air travellers near Stansted Airport is criminal.
Parking in residential streets is not criminal. But it’s wrong.
So, why do owners of expensive cars park away from the airport?
Because the charges for airport car parks are exorbitant. I paid £60 recently to park for 30 hours.
Manchester Airports Group, which owns Stansted, makes more profit from car parking than landing aircraft.
MAG will squeeze drivers until it’s reminded that operators of virtual monopolies must charge fairly. If not, the Civil Aviation Authority should impose a price cap.
Wind turbine fans (pun intended) should be compelled to live next to one, like the people of Kessingland. And why aren’t turbines painted black, making them less conspicuous?
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I filmed the first story about collapsing concrete in 1973, 50 years ago!
A school in Hillingdon, near Heathrow, was closed because of what was at first called “concrete cancer”.
A Scots cameraman at BBC TV News, Bill Nicol, had children at the school. He crawled under the frame of the 1960s building to film crumbling concrete beams.
A news conference was called by the leader of Hillingdon Council, Alderman John Bartlett - short, pugnacious, bow tie.
I’d first met Bartlett when he stood unsuccessfully for Labour against Tory Sir Anthony Buck for the Colchester seat at the 1970 General Election.
Bartlett began by saying: “I am sure you lot would have been more interested in this story if the school had collapsed and a dozen children had been killed….”
I found myself rising from my seat: “Mr. Bartlett, I have not consulted my colleagues but I know they would join me in telling you that none of us would ever wish to see a child hurt and your suggestion that we would is disgraceful”.
Bartlett realised his mistake and muttered an apology.
Half a century on, we now have the RAAC scandal making our hospitals and schools dangerous because of sub-standard concrete. Britain really is broken.
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