Medway Messenger column, 17th January 2003: A Northern Town In A Southern Landscape
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Medway Messenger column, 17th January 2003: A Northern Town In A Southern Landscape |
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A
northern town in a southern landscape. That
description of Medway by a colleague came back into my mind last Friday when I
read David Jones’ column in this paper about the depressing education
settlement our Council has received from the Government. They’ve left us £7
million short. That’s on top of the Council having a general deficit anyway,
that recently led to a recruitment freeze. Why
a northern town in a southern landscape? Because we know why the Government has
given us less in this year’s settlements. It is trying to equalise funding
with northern authorities. The south is privileged, and we must be penalised. Yes,
that’s right: of course Medway is privileged. That’s why Teflon Tony and
Cherie’s latest property acquisition will see them sell their family home in
trendy Islington and buy a two-up two-down in Luton. (What do you mean, you
didn’t hear Trevor McDonald telling us that snippet of news?) David
Jones goes on to talk about all the big future plans for Medway – but which
always remain that way, moving just from ‘in the pipeline’ to pipedreams. Forever
living with unfulfilled pipeline pipedreams does something to the soul of a
people and a place. An ancient biblical proverb puts it well: ‘Hope deferred
makes the heart sick.’ And
our sick hearts do strange things as we seek to fill the void vacated by hope.
Without a future to anticipate, we live for the present. Hope may be deferred,
but we won’t defer our own gratification, immature as that is. So
we go for retail therapy and break the back of our flexible friend. Debt
repayment? That’s in the future we don’t want to think about. We eat for
England and ignore the health consequences: never mind the obesity, feel the
width. We don’t worry about polluting the environment: we won’t be around
for the mess. We take it out on others: it’s us against them. As Johnny Rotten
sneered, there is ‘No future’. Or
is there? In the Bible the prophet Jeremiah has a reputation as a misery-guts,
always telling people off. Except he didn’t do that all the time. He also
spoke to broken, disillusioned people who thought they had been rejected and
forgotten by God – a real ‘no future’ recipé. To such people, his message
from God was of ‘a hope and a future’. The
idea that God gives us hope is dismissed by many: “That’s just pie in the
sky when you die,” they say. Well, it does include the idea that within the
love of God you have a place in heaven when you die, but there is more to it
than that. God has plans for our welfare in this life, too. He even walks with
us through the darkest valley. There’s
just one snag: we can hardly be part of God’s good plans unless we are willing
to bring our lives within his orbit. We may expect God to provide everything we
want, but we do so with our backs turned to him. Wouldn’t
it make more sense to turn around?
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Copyright © David D Faulkner, 2006 except where other sources are attributed or noted as inspiration. |