The bishop gets real

THOUGH it was somewhat wrapped up in pious platitudes - such as this belief in the need for the church to follow the cry of young people and 'get real' - the Bishop of Blackburn's Christmas Day message was a refreshing departure from much of the getting real with which the Church of England has been seeing out this millennium.

For, in contrast to the sort of 'relevance' that many clergy have engaged in of late - condoning couples who live in sin and the ordination of homosexuals and even casting doubt on such tenets of the Christian faith as the Virgin Birth and the Resurrection - the Right Rev Alan Chesters resorted to old-fashioned condemnation.

He lashed at those who see abortion as the answer to the problem of teenage pregnancies and attacked the standard of sex education in schools, which, he said, could do a lot more than at present to tackle the issue.

"People think that abortion, which is the denial of life, and sex education in schools, without any morality based on love, are the answer to the growing number of teenage pregnancies," said Bishop Chesters, blasting both notions as nonsense.

He is, of course, quite right - the first, abortion, is a drastic mopping exercise after the second, non-judgmental sex education has failed to deter the under-aged and immature from engaging in sex and, arguably, may - bereft of disapproval and coupled with the free available contraceptive devices issued to youngsters nowadays with no questions asked - encourage many to try it. What Bishop Chesters left out - sadly, as is the fashion with churchmen today - is that this sort of behaviour is, or at least used to be, regarded by church and society as a sin - and because we once did not pussyfoot on such things, we used to have fewer of the problems that teenage sex creates nowadays.

Would that bishops and priests had the courage to speak out plainly.

Then, perhaps, we would not have hordes of teenagers who consider that in order for the church to 'get real,' it must accept that youngsters have a right to non-judgmental sex education, contraception and easy abortion when all else fails.

Deport these undesirables

WHAT are we to make of the catalogue of mugshots issued by the police this week of women pickpockets from Eastern Europe - in the hope that the people shopping in the sales or out celebrating the millennium might be on their guard?

For what struck me about this bunch - said to be highly-skilled professional thieves operating in our major cities - was that all had been caught and convicted before. Hence the availability of their mugshots.

But if that's the case, what are they still doing here?

Don't we deport undesirables any more? The disclosure just days before that Britain now has a backlog of 'asylum-seeker' cases running up to 100,000 and that the way of dealing with those longest outstanding is blanket permission to stay suggests to me that the government no longer cares who gets in or is allowed to remain - even professional thieves.

Let's get our priorities right

WE are told by the Department of Health that only a 'very small' number of NHS patients need to go abroad each year for treatment they have been waiting ages for here - as did 58-year-old North West grandad Chris Davies who went to Belgium for a heart by-pass he'd waited more than two years for in the UK and then used EU rules to claim two-thirds of the £15,000 bill back from the government.

But even though there may not be many like the resourceful angina-sufferer Mr Davies, his action highlights the desperation and anxiety of the thousands of heart disease victims waiting their turn for surgery on the NHS - during which, we are told, more than 500 a year die before reaching the operating theatre.

This, of course, is an outright disgrace when the government has proudly declared war on the 'big killers,' of which heart disease ranks as No.1.

But if we were to accept that, for all its good intentions, the government and the NHS simply has not the wherewithal to help everyone like Mr Davies all at once, would we still not be right to play hell about what the NHS does have resources for - when that includes £11,000 sex-change surgery for an armed robber currently serving 17 years behind bars and more than £100 a week for him to have electrolysis treatment to remove unwanted hair while he awaits his appointment with the gender-bending knife? Unbelievably, such is the case with the post office shotgun raider David Cross - and the Prison Service and the Treasury have backed off from challenging this 'right' in law.

Where's the government's guts? Surely, there's not a court in the land even in soft-hearted Europe that would say that a gender-confused villain has a greater right to surgery than a person needing a heart by-pass.

And even if, in law, the NHS cannot deny such a deserving case the right to sex-change surgery at the taxpayers' expense, its right to prioritise is already so well established that it ought to be able to make the likes of wrong 'un Mr Cross wait a long time for his op - such as until there is no backlog of people like Mr Davies or anyone driven to go abroad to get the treatment they should be getting here.

And finally, my prediction

THIS being not just the end of the year, but also - depending on the way you count - the end of not only a century but also a millennium, we are being bombarded from all sides by summing up and predictions from all sorts of so-called experts, so I'll keep mine short.

This epoch ends with Prime Minister Tony Blair ensconced more securely at No. 10 - this popularity set to peak even more when he becomes a dad again next year. But just a tip, as the Tories see out 1999 as embattled as ever under William Hague, with sleaze still sticking to them as much as ever thanks to Neil Hamilton and Jeffrey Archer. Look back to last summer and ask yourself which immensely popular party lost more than half its MEPs in the Euro elections.

It was Labour.

Why? Because the British people don't want to give up the pound and join the Euro.

If in the coming millennium, Tony Blair is going to ask them to do just that, do you think his currently sky-high popularity will prove persuasive?

I predict not.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.