The accounting firm I'm with recently picked up a new client, whom I will call Mr. Jones. That's hardly a reason to put the flags out, we are an expanding practice and I hope we will continue to be so.
When a businessman changes accountants, his new accountants will write to his old accountants asking for certain information that will help the new accountants to understand the background to the business, so that they don't have to bother the business owner with loads of questions. As a general rule, they will get a response, eventually, from the old accountant to their questions. There may be a time delay depending on how complex matters are and how teed off the old accountant is at losing one of his clients. Normally, however, changing your adviser shouldn't be a problem.
When we wrote to Mr. Jones's old accountant, who I will call Mr. Smith, we got a letter stating that he objected to our acting for him. Why, we asked. Mr. Jones owes me money, he replied. That's no reason for objecting to our being his accountants, we said. You should simply ask Mr. Jones to pay his bill. Mr. Smith persisted in refusing to co-operate, so we reported him to his professional body. After much correspondence, we got some of the information we wanted, but it was about a year before we got enough clarity on what was going on to make sense of Mr. Jones's accounts. By then, they were late, and he had to pay fines to the Government.
It came out that Smith & Co. were reluctant to sue Mr. Jones for the unpaid bills. The principal of Smith & Co. was a very religious Christian who took the Bible absolutely literally, and it says in the Bible that you shouldn't go to court against your fellow Christians. The reference is the first letter of the apostle Paul to the Corinthians, chapter 6, verses 1 to 11. Now, given that the early Christians were predominantly Jewish, I can explain just why the apostle said what he did. He envisaged that there would be church courts, like the Beth Din of the Jewish community, to which Christians would refer for resolution of disputes between church members. Given that Mr. Smith's church clearly doesn't have its own legal system or anything like it, all that Mr. Smith could do was to write increasingly intemperate letters to us and to all else involved about his continued refusal to hand over details to us of Mr. Jones. It doesn't strike me as a functional method of dealing with a dispute.
It is with the above in mind that we have to consider Sharia law. It would be much more straightforward, as well as less expensive, for faith communities to regulate themselves than it is for them to use the legal system of the State. It isn't anything new in human affairs either: in the early days of the Jewish community in India (approximately 400 C.E.) the decisions of Jewish Batei Din were automatically ratified by the ruling Maharajah. If a naughty member of the Jewish community refused to obey the Beth Din, the Maharajah would send his boys round to ensure compliance. It worked like a charm.
Today, there are Jewish women who are unable to remarry in accordance with the rules of the Jewish faith because their estranged husbands won't give them a divorce complying with Jewish religious law, and there appears very little that anyone can do to make them. If, however, it were the law of the land that all Jews have to do as our Beth Din says in matters of dispute, and that those who don't will face a criminal trial before the legal system of the U.K. for contempt of court, then even the most obstinate man may well see sense. The same principle could apply to Muslims, Hindus, or anyone else.
That is why I would be in favour of a law recognising religious courts of faith communities as being of competent jurisdiction for U.K. legal purposes on the following conditions:
1. Only civil cases could be tried before such courts, not criminal cases.
2. The rulings of such courts apply only within the faith community concerned.
3. The law of the land cannot be overruled by any decision of a religious court.
4. When any case is brought before a religious court, its decision is final and binding subject to judicial review if it can be proved that it acted dishonestly or in bad faith.
5. And finally: as a condition for being recognised as being of competent jurisdiction, the religious court has to comply with democratic principles. That would imply, on the basis of equality of the sexes, that women should be able to be appointed as judges.
I hope the above is close enough to what Dr. Rowan Williams had in mind. Women bishops, anyone?
My opinions on anything are subject to change. My love for you will not change.
Sunday, 9 March 2008
Thursday, 3 January 2008
A sober New Year
Happy new year, everyone!
The column-inches of the Standard are filling steadily up with drink-related stories of every kind. In response to "Hungover staff blamed for Notwork (sic) Rail fiasco", 3 Jan 08 page 9, and other such horror stories, this is my take on the media obsession with booze.
There isn't anything new about national insobriety. This time four hundred years ago, everyone in the land used to drink beer morning, noon and night, because the water was so filthy. In those days, if you lived long enough to develop liver trouble, you were very fortunate; we were all dying like flies from infectious diseases. The average life expectancy was between 25 and 35 years. Over time, other drinks such as tea and coffee began to be introduced to Britain, the water supply began to be cleaned up, and industrialisation demanded a sober workforce. Now that work patterns have changed, and we also don't have to behave ourselves properly to impress imperial subjects, we are reverting to the way that we have always behaved in the past.
It is now becoming clear that way isn't helpful for us.
The question is whether you can enjoy life without chemical intervention. Many of us feel that we are lacking something. Life doesn't seem exciting, stimulating, peaceful, or whatever, enough, and something seems missing. In order to fill the gap we put all sorts of substances in our bodies, legal or otherwise, which have no business being there.
This is because we weren't taught how to go within. The idea that somehow we aren't complete is a fallacy. With practice in the art of cultivating our inner life, we can find inside ourselves all the stimulation, or relaxation, that we want. That wasn't the way we were brought up. We were taught, consciously or not, that we have to get something from outside ourselves in order to be happy. That something will inevitably cost money: there is a fortune to be made out of human discontent, you just have to be creative in inventing more things to be discontented about. Or else it will affect our health: there's no effective drug without a side effect, which means a lot of people will earn a good living dealing with the side effects, or pretending to.
People used to talk about the military-industrial complex, in which our economy depends so much on the production of weapons that we have to go around creating war and commotion to maintain our customer base. The discontentment-chemical complex is just as real. We are fed with thought systems that make us depressed. Most of us will look for a mood-altering substance, sooner or later, to get us out of the depression. Once we come to see it isn't working, we may have become dependent on the substance, so we carry on using it anyway, even though it may be costing us more than we can afford.
By way of another example, I went on a course in employee relations recently, in which the speaker touched on the subject of depression. He said that the most common reaction to feeling unhappy is to get a take-away meal and watch a video. He also said that is about the worst thing you can do to deal with such feelings. It may give you a lift now, but it does nothing about the causes of sadness. Well, if you're like me you probably get a bit of junk mail every day advertising one or another fast food outlet, which in my home goes untouched from doormat to recycling bin. Some people must be making a fortune out of reactions to being depressed.
Therefore, once enough of us to make a difference master the art of enjoying a satisfying inner life, the economy will take a considerable knock. We will have to prepare ourselves for having to change our ways of living, and for finding something interesting and creative to do that won't be part of the discontentment-chemical complex. The people who earn the most from it, including the media, won't like to see us all going within. Expect large amounts of black propaganda against meditation, and against non-invasive forms of healing, in the media in the near future. And when you see it, smile: you've started to make an impact.
My opinions on anything are subject to change. My love for you will not change.
The column-inches of the Standard are filling steadily up with drink-related stories of every kind. In response to "Hungover staff blamed for Notwork (sic) Rail fiasco", 3 Jan 08 page 9, and other such horror stories, this is my take on the media obsession with booze.
There isn't anything new about national insobriety. This time four hundred years ago, everyone in the land used to drink beer morning, noon and night, because the water was so filthy. In those days, if you lived long enough to develop liver trouble, you were very fortunate; we were all dying like flies from infectious diseases. The average life expectancy was between 25 and 35 years. Over time, other drinks such as tea and coffee began to be introduced to Britain, the water supply began to be cleaned up, and industrialisation demanded a sober workforce. Now that work patterns have changed, and we also don't have to behave ourselves properly to impress imperial subjects, we are reverting to the way that we have always behaved in the past.
It is now becoming clear that way isn't helpful for us.
The question is whether you can enjoy life without chemical intervention. Many of us feel that we are lacking something. Life doesn't seem exciting, stimulating, peaceful, or whatever, enough, and something seems missing. In order to fill the gap we put all sorts of substances in our bodies, legal or otherwise, which have no business being there.
This is because we weren't taught how to go within. The idea that somehow we aren't complete is a fallacy. With practice in the art of cultivating our inner life, we can find inside ourselves all the stimulation, or relaxation, that we want. That wasn't the way we were brought up. We were taught, consciously or not, that we have to get something from outside ourselves in order to be happy. That something will inevitably cost money: there is a fortune to be made out of human discontent, you just have to be creative in inventing more things to be discontented about. Or else it will affect our health: there's no effective drug without a side effect, which means a lot of people will earn a good living dealing with the side effects, or pretending to.
People used to talk about the military-industrial complex, in which our economy depends so much on the production of weapons that we have to go around creating war and commotion to maintain our customer base. The discontentment-chemical complex is just as real. We are fed with thought systems that make us depressed. Most of us will look for a mood-altering substance, sooner or later, to get us out of the depression. Once we come to see it isn't working, we may have become dependent on the substance, so we carry on using it anyway, even though it may be costing us more than we can afford.
By way of another example, I went on a course in employee relations recently, in which the speaker touched on the subject of depression. He said that the most common reaction to feeling unhappy is to get a take-away meal and watch a video. He also said that is about the worst thing you can do to deal with such feelings. It may give you a lift now, but it does nothing about the causes of sadness. Well, if you're like me you probably get a bit of junk mail every day advertising one or another fast food outlet, which in my home goes untouched from doormat to recycling bin. Some people must be making a fortune out of reactions to being depressed.
Therefore, once enough of us to make a difference master the art of enjoying a satisfying inner life, the economy will take a considerable knock. We will have to prepare ourselves for having to change our ways of living, and for finding something interesting and creative to do that won't be part of the discontentment-chemical complex. The people who earn the most from it, including the media, won't like to see us all going within. Expect large amounts of black propaganda against meditation, and against non-invasive forms of healing, in the media in the near future. And when you see it, smile: you've started to make an impact.
My opinions on anything are subject to change. My love for you will not change.
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