CARE Statement in Response to Child Benefit Announcement

Child Benefit changes amount to an increase in the tax burden of over 40%, whilst those without family responsibility see their tax burden untouched. This is unjust, says CARE.

CARE has responded with very real concern to the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s Child Benefit announcement this week.

CARE completely recognises the imperative for cuts in public spending and that the government has a very difficult balancing act to perform.

CARE also completely affirms the attempt at fairness seen by the decision to restrict changes to child benefit to higher rate tax payers.

This announcement, however, completely fails the fairness test for two reasons:

Firstly, a one-earner family with an income of £45,000 will lose child benefit, but many two-earner families with an income of more than £80,000 will be able to keep it, so long as neither salary crosses the higher rate threshold.

Secondly, if we are seeking a fair way of meeting the deficit challenge, why is it that we are working to increase the tax burden on those with family responsibilities, whilst the tax burden on single people with no family responsibility remains the same? This is a hugely important question, because if we look at the way Britain shares out the tax burden between different family types and compares its approach with other developed countries, what we find is that the tax burden on single people is already comparatively light, whereas the burden on those with family responsibilities is relatively heavy.

A one-earner family of four on £45,000 currently pays income tax of £152.30 per week. This tax burden, however, is offset by £33.70 a week in child benefit and also by £10.50 in tax credits, giving an actual weekly tax burden of £108.10. If the Chancellor’s child benefit announcement is implemented, however, (along with his tax credit emergency budget announcement), the tax burden on this family will increase from £108.10 to £152.30, a rise of over 40%!

One result of the proposed changes is that families on £45,000 will actually pay the same tax as single people on the same income without family responsibilities. Almost no other country requires families to pay the same tax as single people – typically in OECD countries a family of four pays just over half the tax a single person would pay on the same income If the changes announced are implemented in the UK, one-earner families in the middle of the income range will be paying 100% of what a single person with no family responsibilities pays!

The announcement presents the Conservative Party with a real problem. Their Broken Society narrative is very much based upon the need to strengthen family life and a chapter of their recent election manifesto pledged to ‘make Britain the most family-friendly country in Europe.’ By moving us from a situation where the tax burden on those with family responsibilities is far greater than the OECD average, but still significantly less than the burden on a single person with no family responsibilities, to the place where the burden on those with family responsibilities and those without are actually the same, puts them in a very difficult position.

This announcement is as ill-fitting with the Conservative narrative as was the abolition of the ten pence tax band with the Labour narrative.

CARE strongly advises the government to think again and to develop a way of rising to the current fiscal challenges that generates a proper balance between what is asked of those with and without family responsibilities.

Date: 09-10-2010

The Task Force Report by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs Engaging Religious Communities Abroad: A New Imperative for US Foreign Policy called for greater "religious literacy" across the "whole of government" and greater levels of interaction between nongovernmental institutions, American higher education and business, and select religious communities around the world. Not least, it urged the Obama administration to bolster US advocacy and enforcement of religious freedom around the world.

The question is: With what kind of religious communities, specifically, should the United States engage? To what ends?

Many Americans and Europeans are taken aback, to say the least, by our suggestion that collaborating with religious groups on matters of shared concern is a necessary element of advancing democratisation and prosperity in many parts of the world.

They demand an answer: Is not religion the province of absolutism, intolerance and repression - especially when it is publicly empowered? The answer is complicated, of course.

The largely untold story of religion is its demonstrated power to oppose injustices, defend human dignity, reduce violence, practice compassion, mediate conflicts, deliver social services to the marginalised, encourage repentance and forgiveness, and, yes, foster good governance and honesty in business. In some cases - the headline-grabbing cases - extremists betray the core principles of the religion and prioritise violence and punishment as a response to injustice.

But the same can be said of dogmatists who proclaim the creed of secularism, as if they were the sole bearers of truth and righteousness. And the secular fundamentalists control vast resources of their own.

Secular fundamentalists? But this is a contradiction in terms! Not if one understands 'religion' to be, in the theologian Paul Tillich’s pithy definition, “whatever is a matter of ultimate concern.” Of ultimate concern to secular fundamentalists is the triumph of their largely materialist worldview and the crushing of the religious opposition.

In the 1990s, The Fundamentalism Project, a study of worldwide religious resurgence defined 'fundamentalism' as a mode of modern belief and behaviour manifest as a minority option in most, if not all of the worlds major religious traditions.

Held in common by the seventeen clusters of movements identified as belonging to the fundamentalist ‘family’ were five ideological traits that worked together in a mutually determining dynamic: reactivity (to the marginalisation of religion), selectivity (of both modern and traditional ideas and instruments), absolutism (our truth is superior to all other forms of knowledge), inerrancy (because it is free from error) and apocalypticism (the enemy is evil, gathering strength, and preparing for a mighty battle which must be joined). The core authors recognised the presence of these patterns in nonreligious as well as religious communities and individuals.

Today we see the competition between secular and religious forces, including fundamentalists on each side, unfolding across the world. This is the case, not least, in Turkey, arguably the pivotal nation in the contemporary Middle East. No economy save China's is growing at a faster rate.

In this new century, no society has modernised as rapidly, nor seen its international profile rise higher. Not least, Turkey is on the threshold of becoming the world's most powerful and influential Muslim-majority democracy - and a model for other Islamising and democratising societies. An unprecedented regime of religious freedom, including full rights for religious minorities, is not out of the question.

The ruling AKP (Justice and Development Party), led by the Muslim Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has succeeded where its predecessors failed. By governing transparently, effectively and honestly, the AKP has demonstrated that cronyism, inefficiency and corruption is not an inevitable concomitant of state power.

Having experienced responsive government for over seven years now, Turks are tiring of the constant manipulations of what many openly refer to as "deep state"- the shadow government of the ruthlessly secular nationalist elites, embedded largely in the military, who have run the country in the name of Kemalism since Atattürk's death in 1938 but only episodically after their defeat in the first free and fair national elections, held in 1950.

In short, the fundamentalists in Turkey tend to be of the secular variety, whereas the mainstream Islamists identified with Erdogan, at least to this point, have been advocates of tolerance and openness.

Erdogan and his allies now stand a fighting chance of prevailing in an internal struggle with the generals. On 8 July the eleven-member Supreme Court, packed with champions of the old guard but confronted with a newly vigorous media and popular pressure, yielded to reality (as in the past, the secularists are nothing if not pragmatic) and allowed most of the constitutional reform package supported by the AKP to move forward to a popular referendum.

As Gunes Murat Tezcur wrote on openDemocracy ('Turkey's referendum: a democratic dynamic'), the constitutional referendum of 12 September 2010 saw a clear majority of voters endorsing a set of amendments that serve to limit the authority of the military and 'deep-state.' These include introducing civilian trials of members of the army who are accused of violating the constitutional order; subjecting decisions of the high military council to judicial review; and lifting the judicial immunity of the leaders of the 1980 coup.

The most contested articles in the amendment list increase the size and open up the appointment procedures of both Turkey’s constitutional court and the judicial organ that supervises judges and prosecutors. There is also a new provision for citizens to apply directly to the constitutional court.

“Overall,” Tezcur writes, “these changes augment the power of Turkey’s presidency and parliament over the bureaucratic institutions of the army and high judiciary, by reducing the political autonomy of the latter.” The Constitutional changes would open Turkey's system wider and diminish further the power of unelected elites.

In short, nothing less than a soft power revolution is underway in the heartland of the erstwhile Ottoman Empire. As with all popular revolutions, its driving force is ideas - ideas embedded in, and conveyed through, culture. And crucial to the cultural revolution transforming Turkey have been the progressive, liberalising doctrines of Fethullah Gülen, a Turkish imam living in self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania who serves as the inspiration for a global network of elementary and secondary schools, colleges, hospitals, media foundations and civic organisations that together constitute a virtual civil society of its own: one dedicated to promoting Gülen’s philosophy of religious tolerance, intercultural dialogue and social action to eradicate poverty.

Gülen has his critics. His endorsement of robust religious pluralism, reluctance to proselytise publicly, and insistence that his followers build schools not mosques, has led some Islamists to conclude that Gülen preaches an "Islam-less Islam"- a fuzzy ecumenism that refuses to take seriously the supposedly absolutist claims of religion. Others, from Turkey's secular hard core, cannot believe that Islam could produce such an open-minded figure of influence, and therefore suspect Gülen and his followers of playing a duplicitous game. Like all Islamists, these detractors claim, the Gülen movement seeks eventually to impose Islamic law and establish a theocracy.

This familiar “secular fundamentalist” line was ably represented in an article on openDemocracy called 'Don't sweeten the pill of an illiberal democracy', by Ceren Coskun. Deeming “the principle of secularism a fundamental pillar of civic citizenship and hence liberal democracy,” Coskun warns us not to judge secularism by the behaviour of its extremists.

Moreover, she argues, the direction of AKP policies has been increasingly illiberal. “The chosen date of the referendum itself, in marking the thirtieth anniversary of the military’s most brutal coup, is an effort to further propagate the myth of victimhood,” she writes. “This is a truly Machiavellian ploy because the AKP is the product and beneficiary of Islamisation policies adopted by the Turkish military following the 1980 coup, which incidentally was carried out with the backing of the United States.”

Yes, one should not judge a movement solely on the behaviour of its extremists, as secular fundamentalists are quick to do about Islamist movements. If a tree is known by its fruits, however, thus far the Gülen people give no evidence of deserving these accusations.

Notwithstanding the expectations of the critics from the secular and religious extremes, Turkish Muslims by and large are embracing modern culture and liberal political values while feeling increasingly comfortable enacting their religious beliefs in the private sphere and in a plural (secular and religious) public square.

If the popularity of the Gülen movement can be taken as a bellwether of 'public Islam' in Turkey (and elsewhere where it exercises influence), the detractors will be hard-pressed to sustain their polemics.

Indeed, the movement embodies a mode of religious presence within societies that responds effectively to, and draws its energies from, the wave of teens and young adults who are equally post-secular and post-fundamentalist. These young professionals see no contradiction in adopting traditional religious practices, morality and garb while also embracing and even celebrating diversity and plurality of expression.

Within a decade, in Iran as well as Turkey, China as well as Brazil, this cohort will inherit the mantle of their religiously skittish, indifferent or extremist forbears - and they think quite differently than the oldsters, not least about matters relating to 'social justice.' The United States is no exception.

The charismatic Chicago activist Eboo Patel, like Gulen, talks about building "a golden generation" of interfaith youth who will serve as agents of change for the common good of all. Dynamic religious trend-setters such as Patel's Interfaith Youth Core, the Gülen movement and Roman Catholic renewal movements like the Community of Sant'Egidio know that mobilising the rising youth under the banner of religion requires a soft touch, not a hard line.

Their milieu is civil society-transnational networks of friendship, dialogue and cross-religious and cross-cultural collaboration for effective social change. In a rapidly globalising world, such efforts are never merely local - and never lacking in political influence, however indirect.

And so I return to the questions posed at the outset. With whom should US universities and youth movements, foundations and businesses engage? To what ends?

One could do worse than respond constructively to the Gülen network's open and oft-repeated offer of dialogue and mutual inquiry. Is a truly moderate and progressive Islam both possible and popular? Can democracy, economic development, pro-Western policies co-exist with - and even thrive within - an inclusive Islam? Scholars are beginning to study the Gülen phenomenon with the critical eye appropriate to the academy. Universities are seeking student and faculty exchanges, businesses new markets, states a new major trading partner.

But none of these budding partnerships will endure unless Islam in Turkey is engaged seriously and constructively. Today, enlightened governmental and nongovernmental engagement with religious communities and networks is the exception rather than the rule, not least in religion-wary Europe.

In part, secular poets as well as politicians assume that the churches, looking for a way to revive their sagging public presences, would take advantage of the new openness and unleash aggressive missionaries.

But ignoring the likely consequences of intelligent engagement with other cultures and their religious bases is a self-defeating policy. Europe has made a major mistake in raising the bar unfairly for ("Islamic") Turkey's admission to the European Union.

In a show of obtuse cultural chauvinism, secular European politicians were all too ready to make common cause with their suddenly useful Christian (especially Roman Catholic) countrymen in pronouncing the Euro-zone a Christian civilisation.

Positing an unbridgeable gulf between Islamic and (post) Christian societies is a self-fulfilling prophecy, and in this case, one likely to drive a major (re)emerging power into closer economic and strategic relations with Iran and other rivals of European interests.

Greater engagement with religions elsewhere should be undertaken by universities, businesses, artists and even politicians. But even European churches could play a constructive role. Decisive in such an effort would be a clear understanding that "religious freedom" must be construed legally, not as a warrant for proselytising religious actors, but as a brake on such neo-imperialism.

Turkey is by no means the only religiously vibrant nation poised on the brink of significant economic and political transformation. Demographers predict that by 2030 China will be the home of enormous Christian and Muslim populations.

India continues to be shaped culturally and politically by the crosscurrents of Hindu revivalism. And Pentecostal Christianity is taking Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa and large swaths of southeast Asia by storm.

'Failure to engage' will leave the secular fundamentalists, along with the rest of us, on the outside looking in.

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© Scott Appleby is the John M. Regan Jr. Director of the Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies (http://kroc.nd.edu/), and Professor of History at the University of Notre Dame. His work examines the roots of religious violence and the potential of religious peacebuilding. He teaches courses in American religious history and comparative religious movements.

This article appears under a Creative Commons License (see below) via openDemocracy (http://www.opendemocracy.net/).

Date: 27-09-2010

The challenge to global market power won't stop with the general election
It feels like we're living in interesting times. Since Obama swept to power last year, it's as though the UK might be getting the message that enfranchisement is a precious right worth acting on. I'm not saying that Brown, Cameron or Clegg carry with them the hope and light of the 'Yes we can' roadshow, but perhaps the apathy of the past UK general elections will be thrown aside in favour of active participation.

And even in the last days, as the horse-trading of the pre-election wash-up promised little more than half-baked legislation or shelf-filling for the next government, a couple of surprises were thrown up to add to the feeling that there is still a lot to play for.

Last week the Debt Relief Bill and Bribery Bill passed into law. There hasn't been a huge hoo-hah in the media but both pieces of legislation make significant strides towards addressing some pernicious obstacles to poverty alleviation in the poorest countries of the world.

The former will act as a control over the ruthless practices of vulture funds - private companies that buy up poor countries' debts and then sue for repayment on inflated terms. The Debt Relief Act now makes it illegal for any vulture fund to take a heavily indebted poor country (HIPC) to court in the UK to gain repayment of debts on any terms different to those previously agreed. Is it not the cruellest idea imaginable that when a nation is down, and its people are struggling to eat, be educated and stay healthy, that those who are rich come to kick them? And those blows from vulture funds - which can force nations to divert debt relief from citizens to legal compensation - can be so brutal that a nation may be winded for a generation or more.

And then came anti-bribery legislation that creates a new offence of bribing foreign public officials, along with a corporate offence for companies that fail to prevent bribery. People living with poverty suffer most as a result of bribery: it undermines effective governance, transparency and public services, and can lead to the loss of foreign investment. In the wake of the UK government's intervention to prevent investigation into the BAE Systems-Al Yamamah military contract with Saudi Arabia, it also goes some way to ensuring there is someone watching the watchmen. The Bribery Act is a solid stride in the right direction.

Dependent on May 6, these may be Gordon Brown's final actions as Prime Minister of the UK, but in putting them in place, he has started rolling a ball that must not be stopped. Both of these pieces of legislation acknowledge that with global market power comes global responsibility.

Their existence in law may be the first steps towards a sea change in the way the richest economies do business with the poorest.

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Pascale Palmer is CAFOD's advocacy media officer

Date: 12-04-2010

Film Club:

For a while I have been thinking about organising an event for people to get together to watch a film then discuss the issues it raises. I have access to a venue and equipment in Poole at very little cost, but am looking for partners who will help make this a stimulating and sustainable event.

To be up front about my motivation; I am a Christian who loves films and debating, (although I am not very outgoing!). I believe that my faith challenges me about the way I respond to every aspect of life and talking about complex and difficult issues can help us to confront and understand them. I also recognise that we are all different and won't necessarily have the same views or level of understanding and the greater the diversity the more interesting it could be. I am not seeking to proselytize, but to challenge and be challenged about our response to the issues raised.

If you're interested to help or just attend, please get in touch.

Jz

Date: 02-04-2010

Local Hustings:

I have been reading the election preparation information on the CARE website and wondered if any of the local churches are planning to hold a hustings?

I would be willing to volunteer to help organise one, if anyone is considering the idea. I don't have any politcal contacts, or agenda, but to believe the church should take an active role in politics and supporting our leaders.
Click here to view answer

Date: 02-04-2010

Walk of Wetness:
I went on a 'walk of witness' this morning (Good Friday) in the pouring rain. Despite the weather there was a reasonable size gathering at it's termination in Poole High Street, but as we gathered there outside the Methodist Church, a huddled mass of umbrellas I found myself wondering how it was regarded by the passing shoppers. Are we demonstrating our unwaivering faith, unhindered by a bit of rain, there to remind the world of the reason for Easter celebrations, or the stubborn remnant of a dying church, puerly following tradition, standing in the rain, unwilling to change? What impact does this sort of event really have? (One passer by did thrust a £10 into my hand for the collection, even though I wasn't taking one!)

Date: 02-04-2010