You in your small corner and I in Mine

You in your small corner and I in Mine

When I was around 5 years old, I went to Sunday school.  I liked the people, I liked the other kids, but what I remember most is one song that they always sang. I guess I sang it too as I can still remember all the words; maybe you know it too. It starts off with, “Jesus Bids Us Shine” and ends with the line, “you in your small corner and I in Mine.”  I hated that line; I still don’t like it now.  I don’t think I liked corners and particularly not small ones; I certainly did not want to be in one.

When I was 11 years old I made my first trip, as the Brits say, “overseas”. I went to France with my school for a week. We travelled third class, as you could in those days, on a ferry across the channel to St Malo. Third class meant that you could not go inside the ferry; you had to stay on deck come rain or shine.  They did give you a blanket and you could snuggle up to the funnel to keep warm.

It was great fun in a hotel in Dinard with loads of school friends; however I remember thinking way back then how different France was, not just the scenery and the language but everyone seemed to be much more aware that there was a big world out there, other countries that spoke different languages, and many of the young people spoke French, Breton, and English.  Some it seemed spoke German and Dutch too.  It struck me then at 11 years old, that I lived on an island, and these people lived on a continent. In a sense, I was in a corner, and these people were more aware of the world than I.

Recently I have again been made aware of the small corner thinking that is around me. I talk to supposedly well educated people who, when asked, who is the new Labour leader of the opposition, in the Westminster parliament, they do not know.  I listened to my wife talking to a full hairdresser’s salon about the abduction of people by terrorists, and discovered she was the only one there who knew anything about it. They were shocked to discover from her that such terrible things are going on in our world.  Do they not have TV’s or ever see a newspaper, I ask myself.

What is it that makes us want to live in a corner? What is it that gives us this disinterest in the rest of the world?  Is it selfishness? Is it a complete lack of concern for our fellow human beings? Maybe we are just hard hearted?  Why do we not take an interest in our world?

As a follower of Jesus, and I know many people who read what I write say they are Christians. We need to know that Scripture commands us to do things in the world. He never told us to live in a corner, rather we are told to care for strangers.

So what is going on? We are not stupid, are we? Are we really that uninformed, could we really not care about how we are governed, or what is happening in the rest of the world?

Do we really not know that we, the world, are facing the largest displacement of human beings ever?  Do we not know that this will affect us all, do we have no response?

Do you live in your corner?  Do you like it there?

Adrian Hawkes

For adrianhawkes.blogspot.com

Edited by Kirsty de Paor

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Politics

POLITICS

I don’t usually write anything about Politics, but the recent elections at which I did vote, seem to me to be setting a trend that require lots of us who, maybe think differently, to say something.

An Iraqi friend of mine recently said to me, maybe there is a problem with democracy in that stupid people get to vote; perhaps we should have an exam before people are given the franchise?

Recently listening to the debate in a ladies’ hairdressers, waiting for my wife, who had just commented on the problems for the kidnapped girls in Nigeria, I was staggered to discover from about 10 plus people there, she was the only one who knew that girls had been kidnapped.  They moved on in conversation to various other world shattering events, but it seemed to me that my wife was the only one who had a TV that showed any news programmes.  The world affairs, local and national politics seemed at such a low level of interest to them I wanted to scream argh…

It isn’t that this stuff isn’t out there it is, but as most of the main three political parties are saying the message has not got through, perhaps that is because they shy away from the real facts to try and be popular to those who don’t listen to them anyway.

The big issue over the UK and actually many other European countries has been immigration, immigration, immigration!  There have been lots of rhetoric but not many facts; Facts that are easily findable, such as:

1.       London, one of the most prosperous European Cities, owes much of its prosperity to the fact that it is such an international, diverse city due to immigration.

2.       When questioned about what percentage of immigrants that go to make up the UK population; people had wildly wrong numbers, usually way, way too high. In fact out of the 15.4 million refugees in the world currently, due to war, bad government and the like in 2012 the UK only had 193,510 of these people in the countries that go to make up the union and that represents just 0.33% of our population, did you know that? 

3.        Over a quarter of our NHS Drs are immigrants, I did not hear that fact quoted, maybe it was and I missed it.  Did you know that? I wonder where we would be if they all downed tools?

4.       When talking about immigration we don’t talk about emigration do we? Yet something like 5.5 million British people permanently live in other countries other than the UK, I wonder how those countries responded to those immigrants.

5.       Nasty one here, immigrants are 60% less likely to claim benefits than a UK born person, Oh dear what shall we do about benefit tourism?

6.       Oh and those pesky EU immigrants, taking all our funds, did you know that between 1995 and 2011 EU immigrants made a net contribution of £8.8 Billion more than they gained from being here.

7.       It seems for all the cries, most studies suggest that immigration has little or no effect on overall employment or British workers unemployment. I am pretty sure that often immigrants are job creators rather than job takers, and that they often end up creating wealth and employment on a grand scale. Think about companies started by immigrants, like Marks and Spencer’s, Burtons, Mumtaz Khan Akbar turnover £85 million, James Caan  Turnover £250 million, you probably know him if you watch Dragons Den. Sir Anwar Pervez who set up his first corner shop in London in 1963, expanding to ten convenience stores by the early 1970s and now head of Bestway which has the second highest turnover of any cash-and-carry in the UK.

8.       14% of start-up businesses in the UK were founded by immigrant entrepreneurs, according to a newly released report. The report says that there are 456,073 immigrant entrepreneurs working in the UK who have founded 464,527 businesses which employ 8.3m people.  http://www.workpermit.com/news/2014-03-14/

And just for fun have you ever been to an ODEON cinema, very British, why call it ODEON I wonder well actually his immigrant name didn’t seem to have the right ring so he thought up the acronym ODEON and in case you are wondering what it’s an acronym for, it stand for Oscar Duetsch entertains our nation.  Very English!

Enough already I hear your cry! But if we are going to have this debate lets have the other positive side of what make places like London so prosperous.  Yes there are problems of immigration I have some solutions to that too if you do not want the people to come and make us richer, but that’s for another day.

Adrian Hawkes

www.adrianhawkes.blogspot.com

W.785

Edited by Gena Areola