Monday 26 November 2012

Reader's Letter Of The Day

From The Metro (26 November 2012, page 14):

Joe Alvarex said David Cameron's stand on the failure of the Church of England to approve female bishops is 'disrespectful and risks huting the independence of an important institution'.

I'm afraid he is wrong. The Church and state are not separate in this country. They are linked together. This is seen most clearly in the House of Lords, where 26 bishops sit as the Lords Spiritual.

If the Church is to have a say in the laws of this country, it should have to stick by those same laws and not be exempt from equality legislation. Bishops are allocated 26 seats in parliament - where females are woefully under-represented - that women don't have a change of filling.

While the Church has the opportunity to influence our laws, then we should have the right to demand equality from it.

Sheila Fairlamb, London.


10 comments:

Shlomo said...

"The Church and state are not separate in this country. They are linked together. This is seen most clearly in the House of Lords, where 26 bishops sit as the Lords Spiritual."

This is nonsense on stilts, proving incontrovertibly that reading newspapers and the bilge they contain rots your brain. There are 200-odd lords affiliated to each of the Tories and Labour, yet we never hear anyone advancing the argument (not without some merit) that "The Labour Party/Tories and the State are not separate in this country. They are linked together." What a dreary propaganda-swallowing harridan she must be. Pity her husband/partner for putting up with this thick ninny.

Mark Wadsworth said...

Sch, nope.

The C of E has a quasi statutory or constitutional RIGHT to have 26 Bishops in the HoL regardless of how many people vote C of E in general elections (AFAIAA, nobody ever voted C of E in a general election).

The large parties have no such right, the PM has the right to appoint peers, for sure, but nobody is actually forced to vote Labour or Tory, and peers appointed by a Labour or Tory PM can, and occasionlly do, resign the party whip or defect to other parties.

Further, turning to the topic in hand, as employers, the Tory and Labour parties are bound by equal rights legislation just as much as a corner shop or a car manufacturer.

Lola said...

Well, yes. But it was so funny when the whole women must become bishops thing went tits up (pun intended) because 'democracy didn't work' - again. I am all for women bishops (just as I think that Catholic Priets should be permitted to marry) but I just love it when all the planning by the establishment to force something through gets stymied by the voter.

Next, gay 'marriage' - which I am agin, at the moment, or at least until we have a serious debate on what marriage actually is and how it is defined...

Mark Wadsworth said...

L, careful here. "Female bishops" was not stymied by the voter, it was stymied by "male bishops" who might be more than a little biased. It's like leaving new planning approvals up to popular vote by "owners of land which already has planning permission", the outcome is pretty much a foregone conclusion.

Lola said...

MW - well, yes, but...it's still not gone as 'they' would have it go. Anyway, all voters are biased...towards their (our?) own point of view.

In re land, wasn't that power given by the Town and Country Planning Act of 1949 (?) made by Labour and long described as the 'nationalisation of land'.?

One distortion begets another.

Mark Wadsworth said...

L, Town Planning goes back much further than that, e.g. Housing, Town Planning etc Act 1909, and before them we still had roads and sewers and railways and stuff, somebody must have been in charge of all this.

And such acts are pretty much the opposite of 'nationalisation', which is when private wealth becomes national wealth. What restrictive planning does is turn national wealth into private wealth.

Lola said...

MW, Oh I agree, but my point was really that democracy is untidy, but that's its beauty. Especially when the 'authorities' are frustrated by it. OTH if the arguments are well made then I have implicit afith in the Voter returning the 'right' decision. In respect of land values the arguments are not being properly made.

Mark Wadsworth said...

L, people will always be NIMBYs because of perverse incentives. If NIMBYs were made to compensate others for the costs which the NIMBYs thereby impose, then there wouldn't really be such a thing as a "wrong decision".

Tim Almond said...

Mark,

"Female bishops" was not stymied by the voter, it was stymied by "male bishops" who might be more than a little biased.

Wasn't it actually the laity, representatives of the lay members, and didn't the bishops vote in favour?

But Cameron can hardly talk as his party uses all-women shortlists, which are only allowed because the politicians created an act allowing it after the courts ruled that they were against discrimination law.

Then there's council run swimming pools allowing sessions for muslim women, the BBC running courses for women experts to get broadcasting training and the DETI providing courses for women entrepreneurs.

Mark Wadsworth said...

TS, political parties can have any rules they like for candidate shortlists, these people are not employees of the party, they are candidates to be elected or not by the general public.

If the BNP want to have all-white shortlists, or Respect want to have all-Muslim shortlists, then good luck to them, I shall be voting for neither.

As to laity, who cares? The C of E is the national, state religion and qua employer, they can abide by the bloody rules. I don't care if e.g. all Glaxo shareholders vote against employing women above a certain pay grade, well they can f- off as well.