Magic Statistics

In 2006, the Church of England spent almost £4 million more to maintain its bishops than it did the year before.  The total amount spent on bishops rose from £20.7 million to £24.5 million, an increase of 18%—about six times the inflation rate.  This despite requests to the bishops to limit their expenses.

New figures revealed yesterday revealed [sic] bishops responded to appeals to curb their use of the CofE's scarce resources by adding millions to the bills for their palaces and staff, including gardeners and chauffeurs.

Last year alone the price of running the palaces and see houses occupied by the 44 senior diocesan bishops shot up by more than 50 per cent from £5.8million to £8.6 million.
. . .
The level of spending will provoke deep unhappiness among many churchmen.

It comes at a time when the CofE is finding it increasingly hard to maintain its historic churches and buildings, and congregations are under ever-growing pressure to make their own financial contributions greater. Pension rights for retired clergy - also funded by the Church Commissioners - are being cut and CofE leaders are regularly calling on the Government for tax breaks or subsidies to help maintain churches.

So, let’s see: should church resources be expended on palaces and chauffeurs or the Millennium Development Goals?  Tough call, apparently.

Nurses and midwives in Ireland have begun the third week of a work-to-rule campaign in a pay dispute with the government.  Escalation of job action now appears likely.

Two unions representing more than 40,000 nurses have been refusing since April 2 to conduct bureaucratic duties, such as answering phones and typing records of patient care into computers. They have threatened an all-out strike unless the government concedes to their demand for a 10.6-percent pay raise and a reduction in the work week from 39 hours to 35.

The government, which faces a likely general election in June, has ruled out meeting the nurses' demands. It warns that could trigger a domino effect of similar claims from other state-controlled parts of the work force — at a time when economists agree that Ireland is growing increasingly uncompetitive because of soaring costs.

As the next step in their campaign, nurses at six medical facilities were set to stop work for one hour today, with more stoppages planned for tomorrow.

Meanwhile, nurses in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland are debating job action to protest what they regard as an “insulting” pay offer.  An independent review board recommended that the nurses receive a 2.5% pay raise, but the government then offered the equivalent of 1.9%—even though nurses in Scotland have already been given 2.5%.

The head of the RCN [Royal College of Nursing] has accused the government of "blackmailing" nurses over their next steps in the light of the below-inflation rise.

Dr Peter Carter said he believed an "all-out strike" was unlikely because nurses would not take action that harmed patient care. But he said the mood was that nurses wanted "something done" to get their message across.

Given that the latest inflation rate for the UK is 3.1%, I’d say even 2.5% is miserly.

By a vote of 95%, the nurses today asked their union to consider what form(s) of job action could be implemented.

Other health workers, including ambulance drivers, porters, and cleaners, have also voted by a wide margin to reject a similar pay offer and consider industrial action.

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In Helmand province, Afghanistan, it’s time to harvest this year’s bumper crop of opium poppy, but work was held up by a clash between landowners and sharecroppers.  The landowners wanted to allow labourers, who work as sharecroppers, to keep 20% of the proceeds, but the labourers demanded 50%.  Last month, the owners demonstrated publicly against the provincial government’s refusal to mediate the dispute.  What’s wrong with this picture?

[T]he Afghan government is supposed to be engaged in a high-profile campaign to eradicate the plant.

“We spent all of our money growing the poppy,” complained one landowner. “If the government doesn’t help us with the harvesters, we’ll lose everything.”

But the workers in the fields are in a strong position. This year’s harvest, boosted by copious amounts of rain, may well be the biggest ever, so many hands are needed.

Hired labour also comes at a premium since the work is in dangerous, Taleban-infested areas. Helmand is battling a growing insurgency, and many areas outside the capital are under Taleban control.

“Last year we had to beg from the landowners,” said Abdul Jamil, who gathers poppy every year. “We wanted one-sixteenth of the harvest and we apologised even for that.

“But this season, they need us more than we need them. They are offering a quarter, maybe a third. We are lucky we’re united. If they want us to go into districts where the Taleban are, they’ll have to pay us a lot of money.”
. . .
According to unconfirmed reports, the Helmand government imposed a limit of one-quarter of the opium yield as a fair deal for the labourers.

Ninety percent of the world’s opium is grown in Afghanistan, and Helmand accounts for 40% of that.

The national government’s programme to eradicate poppy cultivation is having no discernible effect.  In fact, this year’s crop is so big that excess supply is depressing market prices.

Rahmatullah, a small-time trafficker, explained, “This was a good year. There was a lot of rain and it will be a big harvest. But the price is going down.”

A month ago, he said, a kilogram of poppy paste would fetch 140 dollars, but now it was going for 90 or even 80 dollars.

The influx of harvest workers is good for the provincial economy.  Shops and restaurants are doing booming business.  Locals complain about streets crowded with strangers, however.

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Well, we can’t be sure because Dylan didn’t say so, but that appears to be what happened last Thursday when he and his band played Newcastle, England, home town of The Animals.  For only the second time in two decades of never ending tours, Dylan sang “House of the Rising Sun”.  He recorded a folk arrangement of the traditional song for his very first album, released in 1962.  Then, two years later, the Animals, fronted by the great blues shouter Eric Burdon, scored a huge international hit with their extended rock version.

In a moment that is said to have influenced the then folk-singer to experiment with electric guitars and make a hugely controversial turn into rock music, Dylan has been quoted as saying that he "jumped out of his car seat" when he first heard The Animals' version of the song on his car radio.

Dylan has only played the song once in 20 years before Thursday's gig, and long-time fans believe the singer was acknowledging the importance of The Animals' version by reprising it in their home town.

Here are the initimable Animals as they appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1964.

An mp3 file of Dylan’s recent performance can be downloaded at BobDylan.de.  From the home page, click on “media”.

h/t: Expecting Rain

Previous related post: Dylan buys his home in the Highlands

Archaeologists have found evidence that the Toltec people of ancient Mexico sacrificed children.  A grave containing the bones of 24 children, dated between 950 and 1150 BC, has been discovered at the pre-Aztec civilisation’s capital city of Tula, about 80 km north of present-day Mexico City.

The way the children, aged between 5 and 15, were placed in the grave, and the fact they were buried with a figurine of Tlaloc, the God of rain, also pointed to a group sacrifice, archeologist Luis Gamboa said.

"To try and explain why there are 24 bodies grouped in the same place, well, the only way is to think that there was a human sacrifice," he said.

"You can see evidence of incisions which make us think they possibly used sharp-edged instruments to decapitate them."

It was previously known that the Toltecs ritually slaughtered adults, but this is the first evidence of child sacrifice.

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What genius at Yahoo! News Asia wrote the headline on this Reuters story?

Williams says gay-marriage split would hurt church

Everyone would lose if the Anglican Church splits in two over the issue of gay marriage, the Archbishop of Canterbury said on Monday.

Yahoo! indeed.  (The headline writer, that is, not Rowan Williams.)

Has Canadian primate Andrew Hutchison done something to offend press photographers, or is he just having a run of bad luck?  The Yahoo article includes this photo of him next to Dr Williams that's even worse than the one in Saturday's Toronto Star.

It's a good thing that being photogenic is not a essential job requirement for Anglican primates.

Previous related post: Packin’ Anglican heat

Praise the Lord!  Let God's people everywhere rejoice.  Thirteen-year-old Victor Udo Usen is now safe at home.

Kidnapped last November by Muslims intending to coerce him into accepting Islam, Victor finally escaped from his abductors and ran to his mother's shop.  She quickly spirited him out of Sokoto, capital city of Sokoto state.  They have now moved to his mother's home town in southern Nigeria.

Esther Udo Usen, Victor’s mother, who has relocated to Uyo town in her home state of Akwa Ibom in southern Nigeria, told Compass by telephone that she was in her shop when Victor came in.

“He told me he escaped, and I had to contact his father immediately,” she said. “We realized that contacting Bishop Kevin Aje, the Roman Catholic Bishop of Sokoto, about his escape would delay his being taken away from Sokoto, so we arranged through a family friend to take him out of the city.”

Usen said her son’s escape was a miracle. The boy is undergoing counseling in Uyo, as well as attending Bible study lessons, she said, adding, “We are also looking at the possibility of enrolling him into a school here.”

Udo Usen, Victor's father, says that state security forces were informed when his son disappeared and when his kidnapping was discovered, but they did virtually nothing to find or rescue him.

“I feel very happy that my son is back home,” said Usen, a member of the Christ Apostolic Church in Sokoto. “I had to get him out of the city, because we believe that these Muslims will come after him again, just as they did when he previously tried escaping from them.”

He thanks all Christians who prayed for Victor and the family during his son's captivity.

Christian leaders in Muslim-majority Sokoto state report that many teenagers of Christian families have been abducted and forcibly converted to Islam.

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