Reflections from a retired rural vicar

I want to offer a few thoughts about a report out recently from the National Rural Crime Network , “ Captive & Controlled ”  about domestic abuse in rural areas. You might not imagine that domestic abuse is an issue in rural areas, but the report shows that it is. Rural victims of domestic abuse are only half as likely as urban/suburban victims to report it. They spend an average of 25% longer in an abusive relationship before being able to get out of it. For victims in rural areas getting help can be more difficult as support services are in the towns, public transport is scarce and communications – mobile signals and internet- are poor compared to urban. Close knit rural communities can be wonderful places to live, but can be manipulated by abusers. It can be difficult to the point of being impossible for a victim to be taken seriously when the abuser is seen by people outside the home as a fine upstanding pillar of the local community. The report says that that ...

Just click the photo above to listen.   Since posting the last two blogs, " That run in.... "  and " Is that where the future.. ."  I’ve been involved in a twitter discussion with people insisting that a vegan diet is the only legitimate moral choice. Perhaps it’s the format of twitter that limits comments to 280 characters that has made nuanced debate difficult. Or perhaps it isn’t. In among all the posts was one saying “How is ... animal killing justifiable?” My response was “That's the key question and not one I can answer in 280 characters! I'll put a piece on my blog in a few days time. Will you read it?” I’ve had no promise from Extremely_Vegan that he/she will read it but never the less here goes.  1. All food production involves taking animal life. Of course there are questions of degree and high intensity feed-lot livestock will involve more life taking than extensive grass fed livestock or (much) vegetable production. But a beli...

I started this blog less than a month ago and if anyone had said that there would have been hundreds of people looking it, I would have told them to "get real". As I write this over seven hundred people have looked at the piece about Evan Davis and Minette Batters. I've had a number of interesting Twitter conversations. Twitter isn't the discussion medium I'm most comfortable with and being limited to 280 characters, I find it is impossible not to deal superficially with complex matters.  So, to avoid what Evan Davis tweeted me about saying , " you are in danger of ...making this a falsely binary issue" , another blog post. Evan raised the question of animal welfare and that was taken up by someone else saying, "I walk regularly in the countryside. It shocks me to see the state of some cattle kept in stinking sheds, shit everywhere, over distended udders and covered in flies....." I replied, " Most farmers practise high welfare...

I want to share some reflections on the run in - if that's not too strong a description - between Minette Batters, NFU President , and Evan Davis, presenter of BBC's Radio 4 "PM".  It all came about (and can be heard here about 35 minutes in to the program)  as a result of the government announcing its intention to develop a national food strat egy. PM invited Minette and restaurateur Yotam Ottolenghi into the studio.  The introduction to the discussion was bizarre! Evan introduced the item by asking if we are at a turning point in our attitude towards meat. "Is", he asked, eating less meat the "next anti smoking drive".  What makes that bizarre is the review the government is setting up has very broad terms of reference but in the 1,000 word document it makes no reference whatsoever to eating meat! It's as though Evan had decided what the outcome of the enquiry would be even before any evidence had been taken or considered!  Having liken...

The view you’re looking at is of Ullswater in the glorious Lake District.  It’s where I was on Sunday  as I joined with    4th Sunday adventures of “Tranquillity and play by the lake”. So what’s that about? Why wasn’t I doing “proper” church? Isn’t that what vicars, even retired ones, should do?   One of the things I have been thinking about has been how churches can help the faith of people for whom "proper" church doesn’t scratch where they’re itching.  Don’t misunderstand me. I think there is great benefit in “proper” church,  hymns, reading, prayers, sermons in (usually) historic buildings.   But that doesn’t do it for everyone.  John Muir, a Scottish-American environmentalist  and influential in having Yosemite set up as a National Park,  in the 19 th century said, “I’d rather be in the mountains thinking of God, than in church thinking about the mountains” and I guess that’s still true for many people t...

Hello, thanks for looking at this blog. I want to talk about a couple of different things and make a connection between them. The first is a report that came out back in February, the “State of Rural Services 2018”. The second is what I’ve been doing for the last couple of days. The report is produced   by “Rural England”   and is downloadable from their website . It looks at eight key service areas , transport, broadband and mobile phone coverage,   libraries, hospitals, public health, young people, shopping and personal advice services. It reminds us of a few key facts about rural areas and for me the statistic that jumped out at me was that 24.1% of the rural population - that's nearly a quarter-  is 65 or over. Perhaps that jumped out at me because I’m part of that statistic. That compares with only 18% of the population for the UK over all. That means there are a third more over 65s in rural areas than the national average. That, of course, h...