At the last count, fewer than a million people worship regularly in the Church of England. I am one of those, having so far resisted the almost overmastering desire to extract myself from the Church’s increasing wokeness and ever closer conformance to – and infiltration by – the secular society it is meant to serve. My frustrations are usually vented by strident comments on social media and the occasional email calling individuals to task, but the straw which really threatens to break the camel’s back in my case is the Church’s obsession with ‘climate change’.
Why the Church of England is so vocal on a subject about which it clearly knows nothing is beyond me, but when it makes completely unsubstantiated statements in the public domain, easily capable of being refuted by facts, it is time to take action. One source of the Church’s outlandish statements in this regard is the Community of the Resurrection (CR) in Mirfield, West Yorkshire.
Most people – even many churchgoers – think Religious Communities died out forever in the Reformation, but they actually staged a comeback in the 19th Century and to this day there are vowed monks and nuns, many ordained to the Priesthood, living in Communities as part of the Church of England. I came to know the one at Mirfield and it was therefore a great disappointment to witness CR jump on the woke climate bandwagon and promulgate in its official publication, CR Review, what appeared to be climate facts but which, in reality, were nothing more than personal opinions – although this was never once made clear.
I endeavoured to call CR to account and the Community was gracious enough to include in its publication my rebuttal of one offending article, although radically edited. I hoped this would be an end to the matter but no, CR continued to pump out articles and videos making outrageous climate assertions. Each time these appeared I contacted the Community with detailed facts, evidencing the untruthfulness of the statements, but, unlike on that first occasion, the Community became unyielding, refusing to publish any retractions even though the Superior later admitted to me “we are not climatologists”.
Matters came to a head earlier this year when yet another article appeared in CR Review full of inaccuracies and clearly written to scaremonger and possibly to influence voting (the local elections were just around the corner). Yet again, I provided detailed evidence disproving each assertion and once more CR refused to recede from its position. Having reached deadlock, I decided it was necessary to escalate matters.
My initial approaches were to those holding some degree of responsibility for the Community, its doings and its members. However, neither the Archdeacon of Halifax nor the Bishop of Blackburn, Chair of the Advisory Council for Religious Communities in the Church of England, had the courtesy to reply. The Bishop of the Diocese in which CR resides, the Rt Revd Nick Baines, Bishop of Leeds, responded claiming that the Community was “not accountable” to him and making it apparent that his sympathies were entirely with the climate alarmists (unsurprising, given his own actions and public proclamations on climate matters). The appointed ‘Visitor’ to CR (a kind of overseer for the resolution of disputes), the Bishop of Lichfield, replied saying the matter lay outside his area of responsibility. Thus, the buck having been well and truly passed, the only route left to me was to raise a formal complaint against CR under the Clergy Discipline Measure (CDM).
With whom does such a complaint have to be lodged? The Diocesan Bishop. Yes, that meant the Bishop of Leeds, who originally said he had no accountability! Of course, I asked that he recuse himself because, in my view, he had already prejudged the matter. It appeared obvious to me, when he summarily dismissed my initial communication to him asking for help, that this Bishop is part of the Church’s groupthink on climate. I reasoned that he was never going to give me a fair hearing on this subject although, in truth, the chances of finding another suitable person in this woke Church who is not also part of the same groupthink are remote.
The Bishop chose not to recuse himself and pronounced his judgement. Interestingly, the fact that the Bishop of Leeds adjudged this matter apparently meant he did have jurisdiction after all. If he’d wanted to, he could have done something about my concerns from the outset before I was forced to utilise the formal CDM process.
The Bishop dismissed my complaint and gave three reasons.
First, he said it did not relate to Clergy discipline. This completely took me aback. If the matter of Ordained Priests, for whom the Bishop is responsible, repeatedly making untruthful statements in the public domain is not a matter for Clergy discipline then I don’t know what is.
Secondly, the Bishop said that it was not credible that a Priest “be disciplined for adhering to the policy and position of the Church of England on the matter of climate change”. He was effectively saying that because the Church happens to have made a policy on a subject (in this case on Net Zero and one which I believe to be completely erroneous and unscientific) then it is absolutely fine for Clergy to say anything they like echoing that policy, no matter how untruthful those statements might be.
Thirdly, the Bishop had clearly dismissed every single fact I used to counter the untruths in the article and its predecessors and justified this by making the bizarre statement that the facts in the case are actually “a matter of dispute and opinion”. This has to be the icing on the cake. That a Church of England Bishop genuinely believes factual, empirical and scientific evidence only happens to be somebody’s “opinion” is complete gibberish. A fact is a fact, capable of proof. Perhaps, after all, the Bishop isn’t really a Bishop and it is only his opinion that makes him think he is!
To say I was enraged by the Bishop’s dismissal and his outlandish reasons would be an understatement. He had not considered any other course of action open to him under the Measure or outside of it. These include, inter alia, an attempt to bring about reconciliation – which I would have welcomed – or giving advice or a warning to CR about its future behaviour. No, the case had been perfunctorily dismissed and the Church of England cabal had, as they always do, protected their own.
There is no right of reply to a Bishop dismissing a CDM allegation. The sole remaining option is to refer the matter to somebody called a ‘President of Tribunals’, setting out why one believes the Bishop’s dismissal was an incorrect decision. No further evidence can be submitted. So, as a last attempt to try and inject context, sanity and reality, I lodged my reasons – seven of them – with this grandiosely named personage. All the President (or, as it transpired in this case, the Deputy President) of Tribunals had to do was to refer the matter back to the Bishop and say, effectively, “you ought to think again”. That should have been a good enough steer for the Bishop. I therefore retained a shred of hope.
The Deputy President of Tribunals, who had the final say in the matter, turned out to be His Honour Judge David Turner KC. Hardly independent of the Church of England, he is a Licensed Lay Minster at the evangelical All Souls, Langham Place, acts as ‘Chancellor’ (essentially Judge in the Church Court) for the Diocese of Chester and has been closely involved in church litigation for many years. He ruled that the decision by the Bishop of Leeds to dismiss the case had been “plainly right” and went on to reveal some of his thinking behind his ruling.
Mr Turner referred to “the global climate emergency”, thereby presupposing that one actually exists (it doesn’t), wrote about climate legislation taking place elsewhere (a completely irrelevant point), climate being a “live issue” and a “public concern” (which it is only because of the wall-to-wall barracking by climate alarmists spouting their pseudo-science and unsubstantiated scaremongering) and, surprise surprise, the fact that the General Synod of the Church of England had voted to follow a “routemap for Net Zero carbon by 2030”.
The Deputy President of Tribunals really showed his true colours, though, when he quoted the long since debunked “97% of scientists” consensus nonsense. Mr Turner is clearly sold on this totally false regurgitation (the true percentage is 0.3) and on his belief that science works by consensus. Of course, if it is science it is not consensus and if it is consensus it is not science.
The Deputy President not once sought to open himself up to the possibility that the climate issues so beloved by the Church have never been based on provable, empirical science and clearly discounted all the evidence I submitted with my original complaint and my previous submissions (links to which I provided).
How is it that my facts are, in his eyes and those of the Bishop of Leeds, questionable and open to debate, whereas any so called facts used to support the Church of England in its ridiculous Net Zero policy are held to be sacrosanct?
In summary, Ordained Church of England Clergy have repeatedly made dubious statements in the public domain, the Bishop doesn’t care and believes facts are debatable and merely opinions (except, of course, those facts which suit him). The one person who might have steered the Bishop to a different conclusion has used his own belief in climate change nonsense to uphold the Bishop’s decision.
As the Church of England descends into a woke hell of its own making – and its absurd fixation on climate is just one manifestation of this – I wonder what the churchgoing statistics will be next time they are measured and whether they will, by then, be reduced by an additional one, i.e. me.
Kevin Sims has been scrutinising climate related issues for the past eight years and tries to help debunk false information promoted by the mainstream media and others on the subject.
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If they are intent on doing this, one might suggest that mileage is obtained from the odometer at the yearly MOT rather than a privacy destroying network of CCTV.
At least it could be less bad.
That would be common sense, unfortunately it would remove instant pricing control from government.
You would still be able to drive where and when you like and pay after! that’s not what the ptb are doing this for they want, at the moment control, by financial or technological means
Not to mention a lucrative black market in “clocking”? Reporting mileage on changing a vehicle mid-way through the year?
And pay-per-mile will not apply to false plated vehicles or overseas registered ones in difficult to trace places. There are many of the latter around London and I expect in other cities too.
If pay-per-mile ANPR surveillance is implemented, false plated vehicles will be very rapidly caught (or should be).
A work colleague was able to show that a speed camera had recorded a similar vehicle to his falsely showing his registration number. Great, he avoided the fine but was stopped many times in the months afterwards because the cops ANPR pinged his plate as ‘dodgy’.
A bit later he heard that someone had been stopped in a car with his plate after a passenger was seen exposing himself. A likely story – we teased him mercilessly at the pub.
Indeed….You don’t know who you’re cloning!
If ANPR infra is extended that far I’d guess it would be repeatedly damaged
Not necessarily as the DfT provides a very useful way of finding out if a reg no actually exists via its website.
Maybe that explains all the fuss about Oasis and ticket pricing.
Not to mention all that extra date storage.
Exactly what I was about to suggest – no need for high tech and intrusive tracking systems.
For an ideologically driven government it doesn’t matter if a policy is ruinously expensive to implement, counterproductive, absurd, illogical, pointless. It will be done anyway.
The insane economical policies of various communist governments caused mass famine and destruction where millions perished. They didn’t care.
The ultimate aim of evil is destruction itself. It doesn’t want to demolish existing systems to replace them with something better; it just wants to demolish them.
None of this net zero nonsense will achieve anything. The world will not be cleaner, greener, a better place to live. It will be poorer, uglier, colder, a sort of dystopian wasteland where nothing works any more.
And it will be a dystopian world which the Tory party did more than its fair share of creating. Shameful, unforgivable behaviour by the Tories, who have danced to another tune for 25 years…
Yes! The Conservative party shifted left in 1997 when Blair won and have been labour lite ever since. If only they had the backbone to stick to solid right of centre policies.
If they did, many more younger people would still have a future. Well done!
Here’s a thought…….
Build more roads!
Then people will use their cars more, use more fuel and the tax revenue from fuel duty will increase.
Journey times will be shorter per trip but the volume of trips will massively outweigh that.
Productivity will increase, business will boom and, again, the tax take from increased business activity corporation tax etc will increase.
But that will increase atmospheric CO2…..or not really…….
‘A residence time of only 4 years for all CO2 molecules, regardless of origin, is consistent with the conclusion that nature is dominant in driving changes in CO2 concentration. Fossil fuel emissions serve only a minor role.’
‘Since 1750, additions to the atmospheric CO2 concentration derived from natural emission sources associated with biological processes are about 4.5 times larger than the contribution from fossil fuel emissions (e.g., 22.9 ppm per year from nature, 5.2 ppm per year from fossil fuel combustion).’
‘In other words, observed CO2 data contradict the climate narrative that says anthropogenic fossil fuel burning is driving CO2 concentration changes.’
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2024/08/30/new-study-co2s-atmospheric-residence-time-4-yearsnatural-sources-drive-co2-concentration-changes/
A dangerous, subversive thought-crime.
Your social credit score demerits have been recorded and you are hereby enrolled in the mandatory citizen-loyalty ‘residential’ training programme.
Whatever method of discouraging car use they choose the loser will be motorists who are the enemy of government when it comes to the fake climate agenda and the mass immigration agenda. They will switch to pay per mile as they are trying to coerce us all into EV’s with the no road tax bribe. But they also need us off the road as we continually fill the country up with millions more migrants. How many people do government think can comfortably live in these small Islands which are now the most densely populated part of Europe? 70 million, 80million, 100 million? How many?
Do we pick one of those suggested answers, or are they yearly figures?
Well I only ask because there seems to be no limits. Soon we will require a ring road around the Orkneys
Road taxes and vehicle taxes we know are not used to repair or improve the road network, it like N.I is just another way Governments rinse the public.
I do not believe the argument that cheaper fuel increases car driving miles, why would it?. Perhaps a few more people might go on a few more trips, but my guess is the majority of us use our cars as and when we need too.
So if the Government reduced the taxes on fuel it would leave more disposable income in the nations pockets which could contribute to house purchases, putting back into the economy through Retail etc.
It won’t happen though because all Governments want is more of our money such that they can increase control over us so they can hold on to power.
“majority of us use our cars as and when we need too”
Yes we still have the issue of wear & tear with advisable oil changes & services to keep things going.
And send to Ukraine, just a loan of course of. what was it last time six billion?
just wondering when the British taxpaying public will see those loans paid back into the tax system?
I was heavily involved in bidding to install & operate the LRUC (lorry Road user scheme) abandoned in 2006. Admittedly this was before smart phones, but through the scheme development the various bidders discovered all sorts of problems that hadn’t been anticipated. In the event it was going to cost about the same to introduce it as would have been collected.
A big problem was foreign vehicles. We were in the EU then & discrimination against an EU vehicles wasn’t allowed. Maybe that’s eased now? But what to do with cars & trucks arriving at Calais?
Retrofitting to older vehicles, maintenance, annual certification of units. Simple things like, who owns the unit in the vehicle. Who pays for the 30million needed. How is it enforced. Big bang or rollout.
Then the privacy issues. Do you get a bill with a snail trail of where you’ve been? To whom, car owner? Does everyone want their wife/husband/boss, whoever is the bill payer knowing everywhere they’ve been?
The issues are endless.
Anyone who is a member of the RAC should leave ASAP. The organisation has gone rogue. They should make clear to this awful organisation why they are doing this as well. The RAC obviously cares not one jot about its members, virtue signalling to the Govt is the main aim.
ABD & Fair Fuel are much better, I joined the former just to have updates on what ‘attacks’ against the motorist are in the pipeline.
Modern EV cars are smart phones on wheels in constant contact with the network, in that respect I would have thought EVs could go on to a pay per mile scheme right away.
The problem is with older cars, well no problem really for this Government, just impose a huge tax hike in lieu of being able to retrospectively put older vehicles on to pay per mile. Then, jack up the ULEZ schemes as well and they will be well on to the road of driving all old cars off the road. The Government will soon be getting petulant that few people are buying EVs and so many are still driving old cars that this would seem to be the way to go. Indeed next month’s budget could well see the Government take the first steps in ‘driving’ old cars off the road and moving to a high tech full surveillance transport system.
you can see it coming – they are releasing bits and pieces and seeing what the reaction is, we need to fight back against road charging with all our might….
First they came for the smokers etc, or should that be “far right”.
There are lots of ideas like this that could make sense if there was trust between the population and the government. See also gun control, ID cards etc.,
Mark my words, ULEZ will be converted into a generalised road charging scheme, with no waivers for electric cars, within 12 months.
Was this 20MPH mentioned in their manifesto? I must confess that I didn’t pay attention to a bunch of Globalist lackies, but would be interested if they even cared to mention it.
The idiots in charge are still wedded to the idea that BEVs are going to replace ICEVs, which is the root of this latest Government-created problem.
If only they could accept reality, and unfortunately politicians have no understanding of economics and only see the immediate, never the unseen.
Extract from Cafe Hayek:
Like a cost benefit analysis!
A halfway ground could be to turn some motorways into toll roads. Most toll roads already do ANPR for payment. All the small roads around me, though, are single lane with passing places and I doubt that the cost of installing the cameras would ever be recouped.
What might be even better would be to sell the rights and responsibilities of the road to investors and use the money to pay down the debt.
Of course, that’s not what will happen. They’ll sell the rights and then splurge the money on something shockingly wasteful and then still have a mountain of debt.
About those 2001 fuel protests, didn’t they threaten the hauliers and the companies that they worked for to remove their licenses. How very 21st century!
You know how they put trigger warnings on comedies from the 90s and beyond, well the way things are going, 90s comedies will be ‘problematic’, not because of some politically incorrect comments, but they show how much BETTER it was. Chatting to your local Doctor, short Airport visit (with fluids) and people having the freedom to jump into their car and go for a drive….Very problematic.
As far as I am aware, the US will not allow the use of its GPS system for raising money with pay-per-mile. The other option is the EU Galileo system that the UK is no longer part of but perhaps that is part of Two Tier’s smoozing in Germany and France.
It is so obviously a terrible idea for all the reasons you give that no wonder the slimy wankers at treasury love it.
A war against country people who are generally lower paid and have to drive longer distances
If I had been an RAC member, I would have immediately terminated my membership and switched to the AA (whom I’m already with). So many of these supposed ‘service’ organisations are turning into rampant ‘woke campaigning’ ones, to which the customer reaction has normally been “go [green] woke, go broke”. Let’s hope the RAC sees sense, and rids itself of this green cronyism, else it may find itself in a rapidly declining state.
I think if anyone thinks that any government, especially this government, will replace fuel duty with pay per mile, they are living in cloud cuckoo land. There is no way that they will give up the tax currently earned on all that fuel sitting unused in the tanks. If I put £50 in my car, that is instant tax for the modern day highwaymen which would take a month to recover at my mileage. No, pay per mile will never replace the current car tax, fuel duty etc etc and will only ever be charged in addition to the current method of fleecing us.