- Why has a bishop who was previously a vicar in Camden presented all of London like it's posh?
- Who can afford trendy coffee on a Church of England stipend?
- Apart from utter saints, who wouldn't prefer to serve a parish where you don't get the vicarage burgled every Friday?
- Why is everybody in the Church of England so posh?
But to help every ordinand or curate reaching the end of their training with selecting their calling, we're happy to present this map of England. Hoping it helps.
Although, as a native of Birmingham, I would love to think that Brummies were so widespread, I have to point out (from personal experience)that there are not as many of us in rural Cheshire as your map would imply.
ReplyDeleteI don't know any posh Vicars in our Region of North Kent/South East London, unless having a degree makes you posh? And we don't have any of those Costa, Starbucks type coffee shops in our Parish. We have one Cafe, that does coffee, but no from a fancy machine. We have a few pound shops, and the banks that have closed have been turned into Betting Shops. The CAP Debt service is active here and we have five churches within walking distance of each other of all denominations, that provide an outreach of lunches and soup and a roll for those in poverty. We have deprivation and many lone or single people, some without employment or suffering from Benefits CAP and sanctions. According to the Map, we are in an afluent borough, but that Tory parts of this borough, have house prices 1.5 times higher than our area - they dominate the agenda so, poverty and services for people in poverty have been the first to be cut by the council. They take pride that there is no social housing available to house the homeless, so ship them off to places like Margate to rid themselves of the unsightly begging in their large, well resourced strategic town centre, while the others area's of the borough are starved of resources, or are given so called vanity projects like a huge, multi-coloured fish on a roundabout to console us that we once had a heavy industry, port and fishing past. None of which survives, apart from polluting waste disposal facilities where waste is shipped from across London for disposal.
ReplyDeleteClean air is absent and in industral areas, is worse than central London. Perhaps the Bishop of BUrnley should abandon his rural pursuits, and take a clearer look at the pockets of deprivation, whhere non-posh clergy of all denominations are doing asterling job.
The Telegraph article is not a really fair report on the tlak as a whole. You can find that here:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.blackburn.anglican.org/storage/general-files/shares/Resources/Tlaks%20articles%20and%20sermons/Bshp_P_New_Wine_talk.pdf
(Yes, the URL does have the word 'Tlaks' in it!)