St Michael’s Church was full of colourful stalls for the Autumn Fair. I was suprised on entering how many stalls and people there were, and had to ask “Is it always as big as this?”
There was a raffle with about twenty prizes including a Miele vacuum cleaner. There were charity stalls and games and entertainment and food; also there were craft stalls with people who had paid for a table. Money raised goes towards the church’s operating costs and for HOST Abingdon supporting Syrian refugee families settling in our area.
As people sat over soup and a ploughman’s lunch a man told us a little about the HOST Abingdon project. They want Abingdon to be a place of sanctuary for a few of those who have lost everything – asylum seekers and refugees.
St Michaels has many memories for me, some happy, some sad, my daughters were christened there, my youngest daughter was married there, my mothers funeral service was held there and I’m pleased to see by this report that it has a strong and charitable following, that said I just wish their charitable direction was focused on the real needs of those in their own community rather than welcoming the 30 year old immigrants masquerading as children we’ve seen on the telly this week, my thoughts are with the young homeless girl who I referred to on an earlier thread who took her own life after being evicted by TVP for sleeping rough in Abbey Grounds!
Charity , it seems, CK, DOESN’T begin at home…. in fact it seems, anywhere BUT home….
Thankfully there are a lot of people who are quietly putting in a lot of hours and emotional energy to help the needy – whatever their origin and whatever their circumstances. I wish it was the government (central or local) who were doing it, but the chiurches, mental health charities and numerous others are doing their utmost to fill the gaps.
Personally I would not want to have to make judgements abou the relative needs of someone with mental health issues vs someone with drug or alcohol problems vs someone fleeing from torture or a war etc etc
St Michael’s is 150 years old in 2017; it is supporting two charities for that year (among many others it always supports). One of those charities is The Abingdon Bridge, the other is Tariro, a youth and education charity in Zimbabwe.
Charity is an outward movement – “I love you” – and it always involves those who are not “me”.
If CK would like to talk to St Michael’s about their charitable giving, I am sure that they would be glad to let him know about the charities they support in Abingdon and Oxford as well as those in Africa.
I have a horrible feeling that our “charity” towards these overgrown “children” (young men,…because you never see any girls??…why IS that???!), is going to bite us on the bum in the future. We have already seen it with some communities who we previously welcomed into our society…some of whom have turned against their own country (us), and seek to destroy us and all we stand for? (Yes I know that it is a minority, and most are grateful and love being here, but it has still happened!). And why don’t these young men want to fight and stand up for their own country…like our young men did for ours, to make it the great place it is now! Why do they pass through so many other safe countries to get to ours, if all they want is a safe haven?
Yes, I am all for helping others…but let’s look after our own first and foremost?
I have to agree with Hester. It does annoy me that some of you moan about helping others. Firstly because it’s common human decency to help people in distress, whoever they are. HOST Abingdon is to support people who are fleeing war and have lost everything. We should be proud of it.
Secondly, you’re very keen to criticise but how much do you actually know about what the local churches do on a day to day basis? You do know that the Foodbank is run by the churches, don’t you? To give another example, one of the churches gave a not inconsiderable sum to one of our local mental health charities after this year’s Lent project. Not refugees, not foreigners, locals. As Hester points out, there are lots of good things quietly going on. It’s simply not true that the needs of locals are ignored.
(End of grumble)
Here here rachel and hester.
These people are not migrants, refugees or asylum seekers , they are human beings no different from you or me, just people who have been placed in a significantly worse situation.
Ian I do not see you fighting the cause for our homeless. It seems only foreign people are worthy of helping. We see the closure of childrens’ centres and services for the homeless to save money while we send copious amounts of money abroad to spurious causes. Asylum seekers get accommodated in hotels and are given three meals a day whereas our homeless have to find £40 a night to stay in homeless accommodation, and as mentioned about the homeless girl, just moved on without help in Abingdon. I am worried about Ken the homeless man who played a guitar in Abingdon. I have not seen him about for some time. I always used to stop and speak to him.
A common cause of much that politicians get wrong is that many/most have few other skills than those required to ingratiate themselves with their party machines. These skills enable them to climb their party’s hierarchy aided by the mobilisation of party drones on their behalf. Once elected they owe the party.
This can get low-grade thinkers into positions of influence when they have no experience of managing projects involving other peoples’ money and no empathy with what the electorate are thinking. This happens at all levels of government.
Because these people are operating beyond their level of competence they cover there lack of abilities by employing bureaucrats and then consultants the latter, who, according to last week’s TV programme on government waste, regard the public sector as ‘inexperienced, inconsistent and incompetent’.
This explains the serial cock-ups that politicians inflict on the electorate from white elephants like aircraft carriers and hugely expensive National Health Service software that doesn’t work, to our Guildhall project and the fumbling of the Old Goal development.
Ask them what went wrong and it’s ‘commercially confidential’, which is code for ‘we’d like to keep the detail as murky as possible’.
Then there’s the lack of empathy with the electorate. They couldn’t see the Brexit vote coming? No wonder, MP’s think that the view from inside commuting distance from London sets the public’s agenda. What’s more, they think the electorate are fools as evidenced by the current influx of ‘child’ refugees.
Government seems to be all about ‘initiatives’ followed by no delivery, while the real deals are done under the table where the electorate can’t see.
Let’s just hope that TTIP is dead in the water.
Central government spending is budgeted at £611 billion for the Financial Year 2017, and includes two major functions. Pensions take 26 percent of central spending, and health care, the National Health Service, takes a 23 percent share. Welfare, or Social Security, takes 10 percent of central government spending, defence amounts to 7 percent of central government spending. All other spending, presumably including interest on the national debt, our roads, the police, and the courts and prisons, takes 35 percent of central government spending.
Of the entire total, 0.7% (7p in every £10) goes towards overseas aid. When it comes to caring for “our own”, I imagine that if we were able to identify the collections made for charities in this town, the amounts Help for Heroes, British Legion, Cancer Research (several funds), Air Ambulance – all very worth causes – will outstrip gifts for Christian Aid, Oxfam and the like by a considerable factor.
Contrary to what is sometimes suggested on this blog, we do not give away massive sums of money overseas while ignoring those at home. Quite the reverse!
All that said, the Autumn Fair at St Michael’s was a great success. Thanks to all who came and spent some of their hard-earned money with us. The total raised was £1200. 10 percent of that will go to the Abingdon Bridge and 10 percent will go to Tariro. The remainder will help us to fund other charitable activities during the year.
Can we not just accept that any action taken to help someone less fortunate, taken in good faith, is a good and positive thing?
If one person chooses to focus on those in our own community less well off and another chooses to focus on those further afield neither of those are bad things. There should be no hierarchy in charity, each of us acts within our own conscience, means and personal choice.
I have nothing against charitable hearts and the good deeds they do, however, if politicians were more intelligent as to how they spent our taxes there might not be such a need for charitable efforts.
Some long term planning from politicians past and we would not be having to bribe foreign governments/companies to build power stations for us now. Ask any of the ‘Old Hands’ who used to work in nuclear science at Harwell what they think.
I don’t believe our current crop of politicians is any better.
Janet – you dont know anything about what I do or dont fight for, as it happens I am involved with one of the very things you mention in your post.
The point I make is not any reflection on how our society treats homeless people, and I agree we should be doing more. Where I differ from the views you take in your posts is that I think we should also be doing more for the refugees, assylums seekers, migrants and indeed the desperately poor in other countries who are no less human just because they didnt happen to be born in Abingdon.
Thank you ppjs. It is good to have some actual facts once in a while 🙂