We heard sermons on slavery last Sunday, following St Paul’s short epistle to Philemon, which is interpreted as a plea against slavery. We’re told to deplore the historic (or current) practice of slavery, and to bear in mind that the White House in Washington was built by slaves.
But as most of us have little direct contact with any such dire practices today, condemnation is easy. What is much harder to wrestle with is the catastrophic and oppressive situation which is on our very doorstep at Calais.
During a week in France, I became acutely aware of the terrible dilemma around “the Jungle” at Calais. The French are very exercised indeed about the 10,000 people – refugees and immigrants – who live there. Conditions can be violent, threatening and evidently an obstacle to the conduct of normal life in the Pas de Calais, which happens to be a political constituency run by Nicolas Sarkozy’s party, Les Républicains.
The politicians argue about who is responsible for the ever-increasing population of “the Jungle”. The British say the French should never have allowed it to occur – they should have either granted the migrants asylum (only a third of applications to France are granted) or else sent people back to their own countries.
The French say the fault is Britain’s – for blocking migrants from crossing the Channel as the majority hope to do.
What is the Christian duty in this? To accept all refugees is to encourage others to make more risky journeys towards the UK. To refuse refuge is to condemn pitiful humanity – including children – to a life of misery.
Does anyone know the true, moral (and practical) answer? Is St Teresa of Calcutta directing us helpfully with her words: “Never worry about numbers. Help one person at a time and always start with the person nearest you”? We need more practical guidance all the same.
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The rising political star in France is Emmanuel Macron, economics minister under President Hollande until he resigned last week. His politics can be described as “Blairite” – a socialist who has modified his economic theories towards the centre.
His private life, however, illuminates a cultural and moral difference between France and Britain. When he was 16, his schoolteacher, married and a mother of three children, and 24 years his senior, fell in love with “her brilliant pupil”. When Macron was 17 and in college, they ran off together. They married in 2007. He is now 38 and Brigitte, his former schoolteacher, will be by his side for the presidential campaign of 2017, in which he’s expected to be a contender.
These bare facts of his personal life have been reiterated in the current edition of the magazine, Jours de France, but they are otherwise seldom mentioned in the public realm. It is merely remarked that Brigitte, chic and articulate, is an asset to his political career.
In Britain, a married schoolteacher who fell in love with her 16-year-old pupil, and subsequently went off with him would probably be put on the sex offender’s register. Cultural differences indeed. Are Britain’s Protestant roots more fundamentally stern than France’s more forgiving Catholic roots?
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There have been suggestions that Britain post-Brexit may now return to the imperial system of weights and measures, using inches, pounds, pints and stones, rather than the metric system of grams, metres and kilos.
I understand most engineers and those in the construction industry find the metric system more satisfactory, so it will probably formally stay.
But aspects of the imperial system have never gone away in everyday life. People still talk about a pint of milk, a pint of beer and a pound of butter.
And in one significant area, the imperial system dominates absolutely: among weight-watchers.
Attend any group whose goal is to lose weight, and “a stone” is still the great measure of achievement. I lost a stone in weight at my local slimming group this year, and I got awarded a star and a round of applause. “A stone” is much more symbolically important than seven kilos, somehow.
I’m now progressing towards losing another half-stone – surely a more impressive numeral than three kilos and a bit…
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