Politics

Charitable Incorporated Organisations

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An opportunity or a threat?

A critique from the perspective of religious organisations through the lense of public benefit

It was quite an innocent question really, a local charity had been thinking about trustees’ liabilities. There was a management group which looked after all of the day to day affairs of the charity, whilst the trustees held the assets, which consisted some land and buildings from which the charity conducted its affairs, and bank accounts, which were actually operated by the management team. The trustees had little to do, as trustees, with the day to day affairs and conduct of the charity. They had however woken up to the fact that should anything go wrong at the charity, they would be held responsible for it, and had in mind that the financial penalties may not be trivial.

For many years that had not been the case. There was no or little possibility of damage arising out of the activities of the charity, but things were changing. People did not have the same trust in each other as before, and there were some who, in order to indulge or facilitate illegal activity looked for easy targets, gaining confidence of the local people and acquiring places of responsibility, which could be used to cover up their lawless deeds. Others outside the charity began to look for ways in which they could criticise the charity for no other reason than they wanted to shut it down, or obtain some pecuniary advantage for themselves by claiming damages for a personal injury which they had suffered. Often the difficulty with defending such claims is that the ‘injured’ had no connection with the actual event, occasion or individual whose words or actions gave rise to the ‘injury’, the injurious action may simply have been reported to them by a third party.

In the past such claims would have been dismissed as, as they might say in law, nefarious, illegitimate or capricious, but changing views and attitudes in society, as well as the increasing propensity of those who are looking for opportunities to take offence at views with which they simply disagree, to take matters to law, has started to mean that the courts are taking seriously the claims and awarding in some case substantial damages for offence taken, when no offence was intended. It had become so bad that even comedians were disinclined to commence their stories with ‘Did you hear about the Englishman, Welshman and Scotsman?’ it having become far too dangerous to use Irishman as the second guy even many years ago.

Now before you read on, you may care to note that I might here say, and perhaps already have said, things which some would want to consider offensive, or at least suggest have an element of conspiracy theoretics about it, so let me say that I do not subscribe to conspiracy theories and anything in here that may suggest otherwise is a misconstruction or misconstrual of my meaning or alternatively the consequence of an extrapolation from what has been said to an insupportable conclusion. And for those who would want to consider something as offensive, let me add that if what I say is read correctly, and as I intended it to be read, there will be found to be no offence in it, but if it is deliberately misunderstood because I have used an ambiguous grammatical construction, placed a gerund where an adjective should sit, used a preposition to leave it dangling at the end of a sentence or caused an infinitive to be split into its inseparable parts, then let it be known that such may or may not have been deliberate upon my part, or may have been quite accidental, and where clarification of the particular grammatical device is required, then I shall be happy to receive due corrections explaining the error into which I have fallen providing it clearly explains fully all the possible misconstructions of meaning that may arise, or have arisen, as a result of the alleged gaffe, together with a reworking of the text such that its correct inoffensive meaning may be fully, perfectly and completely be understood by the newly proposed text. With that in mind, let on the reader read.

The question involved the possible conversion to a Charitable Incorporated Organisation (CIO). Now CIO is a type of corporation which is regulated by the Charity Commission. This document is not the place to discuss the types of CIO available nor the manner of their incorporation. Information may be found on the Charity Commission website to address these issues and to help you to understand which type of CIO is most suitable for the purpose that you have in mind. CIO Practice Guide 14a is a good place to start if you have questions about this. The writer will also be happy to take questions from you.

A significant advantage of a CIO over a company incorporated under the Companies Acts, is that it is not regulated by Companies House. As a consequence there is a reduced administrative burden for charities which operate through a corporate structure to be a CIO than for example a company limited in any other way, eg as is often the case, by guarantee. A company limited by guarantee is registered under the Companies Acts, and if a charity also, is required to make annual returns etc to both Companies House and the Charity Commission. For many larger charities this is not a significant burden, as they will have professional staff to deal with these matters, but for many smaller or local charities, we may have amateur trustees who may not have ready access, or only expensive access, to the necessary professional skills. Incorporation as a CIO is an advantage to them.

A CIO has advantages also for charities that do not operate through corporate structures, but as unincorporated associations or as trusts. Most of these charities are, and in due time, all of them shall be, registered with the Charity Commission and must make annual returns etc to them.  None of the objects of such organisations must change, apart from one particular group of organisations recognised as charitable to which I shall revert later, nor, in general terms at least, their governance. The chief advantage for the unincorporated charity is that incorporation as a CIO gives the trustees, governors, managers, or whatever else the charity trustees might call themselves, the financial protection of limited liability.  

Whilst unincorporated trustees can protect themselves from financial liability to some extent by insurance, this may not be such good protection as that afforded by a limited liability company (a CIO or a company limited by guarantee), additionally trustee insurance may be more expensive for the unincorporated charity than the incorporated, which puts a greater pressure on the limited resources of the charity which are used to support its work.

The introduction of the new incorporated organisation, the CIO, was welcomed by the charity sector for providing the possibility of both a simplification of their regulatory obligations and financial protection to trustees in an increasingly litigious environment. However, it is not a suitable vehicle for all charities.

Some sub-sectors of the charity sector had objects, some of them very long standing – the writer is aware of charities whose objects and structures have remained unchanged for upwards of 100 years – which are incompatible with the requirements of the CIO. How can this be? you may well ask.

Well to understand that we have to look briefly at the history of charitable causes. Whilst the list in the preamble to the Statues of Elizabeth I did not form part of the law, the contents of that list have for four hundred years informed the law so that by the twentieth century it could be said that a charity is a organisation set up for one or more of the following purposes:

The relief of poverty

The advancement of education

The advancement of religion or

Any other purpose beneficial to the community.

These categories did not however provide a definition of what a charity is, they merely provided guidance to those who needed to assess whether a particular organisation was a charity or not. It was not until early in the twenty-first century that a definition was brought into law. In the Charities Act 2006 the original list of ten specific things, which had become a short list of four characteristics at least one of which should be found in a charity, became a new list of thirteen:

•             the prevention or relief of poverty;

•             the advancement of education;

•             the advancement of religion;

•             the advancement of health or the saving of lives;

•             the advancement of citizenship or community development;

•             the advancement of the arts, culture, heritage or science;

•             the advancement of amateur sport;

•             the advancement of human rights, conflict resolution or reconciliation or the promotion of religious or racial harmony or equality and diversity;

•             the advancement of environmental protection or improvement;

•             the relief of those in need because of youth, age, ill-health, disability, financial hardship or other disadvantage;

•             the advancement of animal welfare;

•             the promotion of the efficiency of the armed forces of the Crown or of the efficiency of the police, fire and rescue services or ambulance services;

•             any other purpose already recognised in law as charitable, along with other purposes analogous to, or within the spirit of, other purposes that are recognised as charitable.

It is a new age, calling for new things. One could argue that the nine new items inserted into the 19th century list between the third and the fourth are all included in the fourth item of the 19th century list. What then was the point? Well, one could point to the greater and greater specificity introduced into the law in during the twentieth century. Perhaps one only need ask: in law how many different ways can you kill a man? Do we really need more than two, murder and manslaughter? But we do not like the law to tell us what we can and cannot do, so we multiply laws as people invent ways around the ones that are already there. Is this propensity in our natures the cause of the rapid expansion of Elizabeth’s list? Or is it much simpler than that? The nineteenth century short list of guidance gave far too much leeway to the courts to interpret matters, so a statutory definition was introduced to provide certainty.

As the same time however the idea of public benefit was given a much greater role in assessing whether an organisation set up for any of these purposes was a charity. There would no longer be a presumption that organisations set up for the first three, and the fourth, elements, of the nineteenth century guidance conferred public benefit, though there was no suggestion that those who had already been recognised as charitable under those heads would lose their status, it would become necessary to demonstrate a continuing public benefit in the activities of the organisation. This is why organisations in their report will in describing their activities say something to the effect that ‘the trustees … believe the charity satisfies the public benefit test’. 

Public benefit has always been at the heart of what is charitable, but there had been a presumption that particular types of activity would always have a public benefit. It was of the essence of the activity, so the maintenance of the walls of a city would be a charitable activity. Nobody would have any doubt about that. Certain other activities would also be seen as essentially providing public benefit. So, religious activities notwithstanding the often hard opposition of the establishment, were seen as providing public benefit. Not all religious activities were recognised as charitable however, but not because they did not provide public benefit, but that the benefit they did provide was not susceptible of legal proof.

The new position today really is not ‘does the organisation qualify under any of the heads of the new list?’, but firstly ‘does it confer public benefit?’. If it does confer public benefit, then it may qualify under one of the specific items in the list, but if not under the final catch all, any other purpose. So why have a list at all? It helps us to think about the particular aspect of public benefit that may be provided by, and therefore what to look for in, any particular type of organisation.

Now we have to be careful when we talk about public benefit. It is a concept as slippery as quicksilver. It is not benefit to the public. You may hear some presenters turn the words around in this way, perhaps thinking it will make the idea easier to understand, but instead that clouds and misrepresents the meaning. The maintenance of the city walls is of no immediate benefit to the public. The charity whose object is for the relief of poverty in the parish of Nevernewthem in a well-to-do area of the Home Counties, may struggle to actually find any thing it can do in any particular year. Perhaps for many years in a row it provides no benefit to anyone let alone to the public. It is nevertheless established for public benefit. Things can be done for public benefit, which provide no benefit to the public. So, a statue may be placed on the harbour wall in Bristol for public benefit, but parts of the populous, perhaps even a significantly large part consider that it confers no benefit on the public at all. It is a hideous statue, much like a carbuncle on the nose of an old friend. The public do not have to agree that there is a public benefit for there to be public benefit. That there is public benefit is a matter of law not of fact. And, perhaps in the context of this article two things to note about public benefit (see  Public benefit: an overview) in relation to the organisations that we are about to consider are: it has not been considered by the courts in relation to every charitable purpose and it keeps changing. We are back to where I started on this matter: the law of public benefit is like quicksilver.

We may now return to our questions about the CIO. Why would it, being a charitable company, not be suitable for all charities? The answer lies hidden in the depths of what is public benefit. As we have seen it is a legal concept, and furthermore it is an unstable concept. The Charity Commission acknowledge that it has not been tested for all charitable activities, perhaps because there has not been any need to test it as before the 2006 Act there was a presumption that it existed in certain types of activity that were considered to be charitable.

Before the 2006 Act it was the objects of an organisation that determined whether it would be charitable, whatever those objects were. If the objects determined under the then current understanding of the four headings public benefit would be presumed and the organisation would be charitable. Unless it fell under a limited number of exemptions it would have to register with the Charity Commission. So an organisation with a trust deed which sets out a number of specific objects, without calling them charitable but fell under the general heading of religious, concluding with a final statement that ‘the remainder of such moneys funds and property shall be applied for such purpose of a religious or benevolent nature as the Trustees or Trustee shall in their or his absolute and uncontrolled discretion think proper’ was considered to be a charity. But note here, that the Trustees had power to apply funds firstly to purposes of any religious nature. The deed does not require that the religious nature be charitable, and it is known that not all religious activities provide a public benefit which is susceptible to legal proof and thus they fail to qualify as charitable.

This particular organisation was established as a religious organisation not a charity. It was an accident of the understanding of what constituted public benefit at that time, and the presumption of public benefit that religious organisations provided, that it was considered to be a charity. It was not envisaged at the time, not indeed later, that any of the funds of the organisation would ever be applied for the purposes of a religious organisation that was not considered to be charitable, but the trustees had unfettered power to do so, and if the only religious organisation that could benefit because of restrictions elsewhere in the trust deed the trustees would be obliged to apply the funds that they held for that non-charitable organisation with all of the consequences, eg income tax may become due on its income, that might follow.

If such an organisation became a CIO there is the very great risk that its original purpose would be defeated. It could be prevented from applying the funds which had been provided by the benefactors for the very purpose for which they had been provided. In this particular case, presently there would be many religious organisations which would still qualify as charities to which the trustees could apply their funds, but as we have seen the law on public benefit is unstable and has not been tested in all cases. There is no certainty that what is today understood to be religious activities that provide public benefit will still be understood to provide public benefit tomorrow.

Even today there is talk of fundamental and religious extremism which gives rise to activities that clearly do not provide public benefit. The law is a blunt instrument, and it does not take much when parliamentary time is limited for law which is intended to deal with the harmful aspects of extremism to include within it provisions that harm the beneficial aspects of extremism. There are also other pressures within society for organisations to conform to a particular moral ethic, just as in authoritarian or totalitarian systems there are pressures to conform to a particular political view. These pressures place those who hold a different moral ethic at risk. These pressures also change the perception of what public benefit is, and are likely to influence the understanding of what public benefit means in relation to religious activity.

Any change in understanding of public benefit in relation to religious activity should not however require a change in the religious activity of an organisation that has been established for that purpose. The organisation should, unless its activity is overtly harmful and immoral, be allowed to continue to operate in accordance with its objects as a non-charitable organisation. The organisation does not change, but its standing in society changes.

It is this that makes the CIO such a dangerous vehicle for a religious organisation. The CIO can only engage in charitable activities. A religious organisation may become a CIO today because its activities are considered by reason of precedent to be charitable. Tomorrow the law of public benefit may be tested in relation to the activities such as that organisation undertakes and it be discovered that our understanding was incorrect. The precedent was wrong. That organisation’s activities were not charitable and have never been charitable, but it is too late to undo the past; the new understanding applies only from tomorrow. But for that organisation it is too late. It is a CIO, and must now conduct religious activities that comply with the new understanding of the law. It was never established for those new activities. It had been established for a different set of activities which are no longer considered to be charitable. It is known that the original benefactors were agnostic to the charitable status of those activities, and did not provide the endowment for a charitable purpose but for a specific religious purpose. The CIO cannot comply. The objects of the organisation have been defeated.

It is this aspect of a CIO which makes it so dangerous for churches, that is the body of people, the organisation, not the building which that organisation or body uses. Similar considerations apply to the congregations that meet in synagogues and mosques, but I am not speaking to their specific affairs or manner of organising and conducting themselves. I can make no comments at all in respect of the congregations of temples of Hindu or Buddhist leaning.  Different consideration apply to the building, which I submit, do not require that it be on anything other than a simple trust for the use, not the ownership, of a religious organisation (narrowly defined of course). Churches are religious organisations first and foremost. They are not established as charitable organisations, though most of them are recognised as charities. I understand that a few congregations because of their peculiar structure are not presently recognised as charitable.  That they are recognised as charities is an accident of our present understanding of the law of public benefit.

If they become CIO these churches are first and foremost charities which conduct religious activities. In today’s world the understanding of what constitutes public benefit permits churches to do what they have done for two thousand years. In tomorrow’s world there is no guarantee that those activities will be recognised as providing public benefit. The CIO will not be permitted to continue to engage in those activities. If it does there is the very real possibility that the Commissioners will dismiss the trustees and replace them with trustees who will be compliant with the public benefit requirement.

I had almost suggested earlier that the CIO represents State control of a particular type of charity, but thought it better to leave that suggestion for a later point in our discussion. It is no problem for organisations that engage in other types of activity such as the relief of poverty, or the advancement of amateur sport, for these activities are firstly charitable. But for religious organisations, as CIO they are at the mercy of the current understanding of public benefit. Whether the Commissioners step in to change the trustees or not, the possibility that they can if the religious organisation continues to engage in non-charitable activities, place the CIO under the control of the Commissioners who are an arm of the State.  

Religious organisations, whether they are protestant evangelical, Roman Catholic, Jewish or Islamic should not become CIO. There are other forms of incorporation, eg a company limited by guarantee, which provide financial protection to the trustees. I grant that the other approaches do not simplify your routine administration, but they do simplify what happens when what you do ceases to be recognised as charitable. As long as what you do is recognised as charitable, you will be supervised by the Charity Commission. That supervision is good for you and for the communities that you serve. If the law changes and what you have always done ceases to be charity, as a CIO you have to change what you do, but as say a company limited by guarantee you do not have to change what you do, but rather the Charity Commission, after giving you fair warning must remove your registration as a charity and cease to supervise you. The lack of registration as a charity changes your status in society. It may mean that you lose certain exemptions from taxes, but it is the taxing authorities which make those decisions not the Charity Commission.

In summary then, religious organisations are charities only because the law recognises that the activities undertaken by them are charitable. It is not the other way round. Religious organisation do not undertake religious activities because those activities are charitable. The recently introduced Charitable Incorporated Organisation (CIO) turns this on its head. It is a charity first. It can only do charitable things however broadly its objects may have been written.  A religious CIO can only undertake religious activities that are charitable.

A day may come when such religious activities, and those of many other eg evangelical groups (using evangelical in the broad sense of seeking converts to a cause) may not be seen as satisfying the public benefit test. Evangelism causes conflict. Religious moral views also are often contrary to the views of the secular society. Those differences cause conflict. In the Christian tradition we know that the apostle Paul knew that well enough. If religious organisations continue to do those things that are no longer understood to satisfy the public benefit test, then they are free to continue to do them, but they lose their status as charities, and the Charity Commission ceases to have authority to regulate them (unless they continue to do other things which would satisfy the public benefit test, but then only in regard to those matters). A CIO does not have this option. It is a charity, and it cannot conduct activities that are not understood to be charitable. It never ceases to be supervised by the Charity Commission, who can step in to take control if it continues to do ‘bad’ things.

You will hear advice which is contrary to what I have written here in many quarters. Indeed there are some, who promote CIO as if they are exactly what this charity sector needs. I suggest that those who speak in this way have either not understood the risk or have underestimated the magnitude of it.

Churches, and some other groups, are religious organisations. CIO are charities which may undertake approved religious activity. Religious organisations should not become Charitable Incorporate Organisations.

The following documents which are referred to either in the article above or the comments below are included here in case they should cease to be available or their form and content be changed to reflect changes in the law after the date of publication of this article. There is no intention to infringe copyright by the copies available here, nor is there any commercial benefit in doing so. The use of the documents is for academic and educational purposes only :

1 gov.uk: Practice guide 14A_ charitable incorporated organisationsDownload
2 gov.uk: Public benefit an overviewDownload
3 gov.uk: Managing faith charities as trusteesDownload
4 gov.uk: Excepted charitiesDownload
5 fiec.org.uk: Should Your Church Become a CIODownload
6 walkermorris.co.uk: Charitable Incorporated Organisation – is it the right structure for youDownload
7 stewardship.org.uk: Charitable Incorporated Organisations for church charitiesDownload

8 Whilst I have included a pdf copy of these documents here, as the Stewardship document referred to is behind a registration wall it is not included. Should it cease to be available from the Stewardship website, in the first instance please ask Stewardship for a copy, but otherwise I may be able to make my copy available for inspection.

A pdf copy of this article is available hereDownload
A pdf copy with items 3, 5, 6 and 7 of the material referred to above. Download

Total energy consumption

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One cannot but be impressed with the work of Greene and his students, not just at winning the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering, but for the 40% improvement in the efficiency of solar cells that resulted from the application of their work. The report may be read here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-64553915 (Queen Elizabeth Prize: Solar team wins prestigious engineering award)

We are also provided with an impressive graph which appears to show that in 2021 solar production of electricity was nearly 50% of that provided by coal. Closer inspection reveals that not all is well with this graph. The percentages do not add up to 100. Something is missing, and most of the missingness can be filled by oil and nuclear, nearly 14% in 2010 falling to 10% in 2021. I am aware that the graph runs to 2022, but I have to restrict my comments to 2021 not having additional data for 2022.

It looks good, but is it?

The second problem we have is that it does not take into account the increase in consumption of electricity since 2010. In 2010 total production was roughly 21TWh, increasing by 25% to 28TWh in 2021. The graph shows nice falling lines for coal and natural gas, which are of course big carbon dioxide producers, as if we are reducing our dependence upon them. If we apply the 25% increase in consumption to the graph however all of the lines tend upwards.

The real problem however is that we appear to be looking solely at electricity consumption. This rather distorts the issues, giving a false impression of how well we are doing in our progress towards the combat of the factors that influence unwanted climate change. A different analysis can be seen if we look not only at electricity consumption, but at the energy costs of electricity production. Coal then comes in at 36%, solar at only 4%. For coal you get out in electricity about one third of what you put in. When you factor in other uses of power, such as transport (shipping, petrol and diesel vehicles, etc) then the picture yet quite different as you may see in the graph below.

Quite a different picture when total energy costs are factored in

Given that the figures behind this have been compiled by BP if there is any bias in them at all it is likely to be in favour of fossil fuels, rather than the other way round, but I have assumed there is no bias. Solar costs are about 3TWh for 2021. Coal is about 44TWh. There is quite a good discussion on https://ourworldindata.org/electricity-mix explaining why we need to look at the production costs of the power we use not just at the power we consume.

The good news is that renewables, which consisted of only 14% of total energy use in 2010 in 2021 consisted of 17%, and increase of 45%.  This mitigated the increase in fossil fuel use, but we still managed to increase out consumption of fossil fuels by 12%.

Let me add in closing that the BBC graph is accurate. It describes precisely what it claims to describe. It could make a nice marketing tool for an electricity supply company that wanted its customers to feel good about buying from them, but it does not provide the information we need to assess where we are in our efforts to decarbonise energy production.

Summary figures:TWhTWh
World20102021
Fossil fuels121480136018112%
Other sources1901927691146%
Total140500163709117%
Fossil fuels86%83%
Other sources14%17%
Detailed figures may be obtained from the data set available at https://ourworldindata.org/electricity-mix

The lack of an English government

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It is over three hundred years since Royal Assent has been denied in the UK, and that as it happens was a Scottish issue. It has been denied since then, though not in the UK, the consequences of which these three nations and the rest of the world live to this day. This is the story of knowing when to pick a fight that you cannot lose in order to win a fight that you cannot win. It will not amuse everyone, and if you are offended, please accept my apologies. No offence is intended, but it can easily be taken, but you are free not to read on, so remember, if you have been offended it is merely because your own eyes have drawn you on in this most charming of encounters.

It happened in private of course but the conversation was along these lines, being translated for yours faithfully for the most part into English from the original Scots, except where English English simply fails to have any equivalent expression:

FM: We are all perfectly aware that England is going to object to our decolonisation proposals so we shall have to be bold. We have had one referendum, but as they have moved the goal posts against the wishes of the Scottish people we can and must propose to hold another.

MSP1: They won’t let us do that.

FM: We shall have one nevertheless.

MsP2: They shall send the matter to the courts which will not go well for us.

FM: Let them try.

Months later

MSP1: It is just as we warned FM. The Supreme Court has ruled that to legislate for a further referendum be outwith our powers; if only we still had the Lords. Now Lord Denning, he would have been cavalier enough to have supported us.

FM: We have other options. Our resources are not exhausted.

MSP2: Are you suggesting a general election? We’ll be out as quick as a dram in the bishop’s tulip.

MSP1: No, she means we’ll pick a fight with Westminster that we cannot lose.

MSP3: Precisely, the gender reform bill: just look at the opposition to it, but we know who wants it and what big mouths they have. Even though we all know that it goes too far, we can push it through here.

MSP2: Westminster won’t like that, it runs roughshod over too much of their equality legislation. It will not get Royal Assent. They’ll block it.

FM: Precisely! Then we can accuse them of using gender as a political weapon insinuating that this is the first of many ways in which they will emasculate the sovereignty of our Parliament.

MSP2: That way public opinion will be on our side. We won’t need to say much, the big mouths will not need our help to show that the English cannot overrule the Scots Parliament.

MSP1: So they will back down on gender reform?

MSP2: No, don’t you see? She’s a cannier lass than that.

FM: We compromise on equality and get a referendum.

MSP (from the backbench): but eerhm, gender, political weapons, if I may ask, isn’t that what you have just….[garbled noises emanating as from one recently subject to an uninvited attack on his person. ]

Ah, the perils of these so-called modern (post-modern) days. Do the right thing and you shall be pilloried. Do the wrong thing and what happens? You shall be pilloried. Well, if pilloried either way…

Finally, at last you say, I do wonder how we could ever be post-modern, for if modern is à la mode, today, the post-modern must be tomorrow, and we are never in tomorrow it is always just around the corner waiting for us, but I guess that in this modern post-modern world where words mean whatever Tweedeldee and Tweedeldum want them to mean we just have to accept it for what it is not. Which reminds me, a friend today remarked on an email into which I had copied him, to say that the recipient and the sender appeared to be one and the same. Oh no, I clarified for him, they were two entirely different legal persons, who simply happened to occupy the same body. The correct pronouns, articles etc are they and its derivatives. Forget ye not.

Transplants

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An abuse of a great need for a political point

When editors see an opportunity…

Whilst I do not wish to down-play the agony of those who wait for an organ transplant and the grief of those whose loved ones do not receive one in time, it is a little ingenious to use organ transplant resources in the anti-cognitive-racism game that is presently being played out in the UK and probably elsewhere with perhaps more ferocity. I also understand that headlines must be catchy if they are to draw the attention of the prospective reader, so when I saw the headline ‘Black patients wait up to six months longer for organs’ (BBC News) (or more fully on the article itself ‘Organ transplants: Black people wait up to six months longer, NHS figures show’ my interest was aroused.

I hope those who saw the headline read it, as though the headline hints at racism thereby suggesting endemic racism is present, the facts mentioned in the article belie that accusation. White skinned people wait on average 488 days, whilst black skinned people wait 735 days. That does suggest an imbalance of some kind, but the cause of that imbalance is not the colour of the skin but the relative sizes of the pools of organs available. If we ignore any overlap in the pools of organs from black skinned and white-skinned people, the pool for black skinned is proportionately half the size of that available for white skinned people (the article is however slightly thin on the ground for this assertion, but let it be for now), therefore, on the basis of a non-rigorous calculation I would expect to see waiting days for white-skinned people to be only 50% that of black (mathematicians, please correct me), but the actual waiting time is around 66% suggesting that proportionately speaking black-skinned people have shorter waiting times taking into account the pool of resources available.

Curiously, which is why I suggest that there is covert racism behind the article, there is also a reference in the article to the waiting times of Asian people being 650 days, but no further information is given. Given that Asian people wait up to three months longer (longer than what we might ask) why do they not come up for greater attention in the article?

The article does go on to speak of better things, the benefits of transplants, some of the results, and the schemes available and is to be commended for that, but we do not need to use a race card to advertise such things.

Do we?

When darkness falls upon the mind

Abyssal

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I came across a new word today and thought to look it up. Well, it is not exactly a new word, but it was used in quite an unexpected context. The abyss is what we expect it to be, a deep, unfathomable hole, pit, mine labyrinth or whatever else may have the physical quality of depth, such as the sea. We speak of the abyss for depths beyond the fathoms we can count on two hands. So what is abyssal?

We also speak of the unfathomable wisdom of God. Paul declared: ‘O the depths of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgements and how inscrutable are his ways.’ His thinking is unfathomable, and therefore we could say abyssal. We speak of quiet rivers that run deep, in the context of men of few words but who think deeply, and when they speak, speak wisely. We could say of them that they are abyssal thinkers. They have abyssal thoughts. Just in case it needs to be said, but I hope the next few words are wasted, abyssal (deep) is not abysmal (out of the deep). Abysmal has a similar meaning, but it is, perhaps we could say, the negative form of the word. Abysmal thinking does not bear the fruit of wisdom but rather of folly.

So, when I heard the word used of thinking in a sociological context my understanding was quite straightforward. We need abyssal thinking in order to evaluate, analyse and understand the particular set of data that was being presented to us. I could hardly disagree. Deep thinking is indeed required to understand a complex data-set. Sometimes I wonder why we use jargon like that – data-set – a list of facts. We have to marshal our facts, place some on the right, and some on the left, and between them, the abyss. Woe to you who place the facts on the wrong side, your conclusions will be as defective as your placements.

But no, so it seems, we do not need abyssal thinking. We have to abandon it. At that point I understood that perhaps there is a meaning hidden somewhere in the abyssal depths of language to the word which I had failed to grasp. A quick read of a Wikipedia article might be a good place to start before reading the academic paper, so I looked up ‘abyssal – sociology’. Yes, Wikipedia has an article. What happened next may have been an artefact of the bug within my browser, but this is the article as you may see (or otherwise) in the picture below.

Abyssal – sociology

Yes, I have edited the screen shot. I have removed the endless (following an example and to use the word incorrectly) list of other open tabs, cut out my favourite icons, and removed some of the white space at the bottom of the screen, nevertheless what you see in this picture is what I see in the browser. I took it to be a message about the true meaning of abyssal. Just as it means unfathomable, it is itself unfathomable, as I was about to discover.

The article does exist. Refreshing the page brought it back out of the albanic abyss. Now recently I found myself in agreement with a sociologist, but today perhaps not. The opening words of the paper seem innocuous enough: Modern Western thinking is an abyssal thinking. I think (sic!) that that statement would even be true firstly without the first word and then also without the second. When we think we do it in order to reach a conclusion. We have to work something out, and that working out requires that we separate one side of the arguments from the other. There is an abyss between the arguments for (pros) and the arguments against (cons). Our thinking must identify that abyss and correctly position the evidence around it. (My quantumly minded friends may leave aside any notion they may have of the possibility of tunnelling through the abyss, and fans of Star Trek should for the time being refrain from using their warp drives). This is the way that logic works.

The paper then goes on however to present quite a different understanding of abyssal thinking. The abstract gives the game away by telling us that in the context of a particular struggle that a new kind of thinking is required, a post-abyssal thinking. I have misunderstood the use of the word abyssal. Indeed, if I have any kind of correct understanding at all of what is being said, it would not matter what word was used, as it is simply being used as a peg on to which to hang his argument that the ‘West’ (whatever that may mean) has a lot for which to answer if it is going to redeem its ‘colonial’ past, suggesting indeed that what is actually required is the overthrow of ‘Western’ thought.

We could have easily as said ‘Modern Western thinking is Tweedledeedum thinking‘. The paper does identify some parts of some Western thinking that is flawed, and clearly where thinking is flawed (Tweedledeedum) then it should be abandoned. A little careful abyssal thinking will help us find out those flaws.

Secondly, the paper does not appear to be about active thinking, that is what we do when we work with our minds to solve a problem, but rather about passive established opinions, which may be held thoughtlessly, and which may drive our actions and our views of other people.

I expect to be told that an overthrow is not what is meant. I disagree. The modern solution to many problems has involved an overthrow. The French revolution fell into the trap. Marx clearly propounded it, and we see the consequences in the countless deaths both in the Soviet Union and China as a consequence of the ruthless application of his doctrine. It is not true to say if we destroy everything we shall have a better world, but it suits those who want power in their own hands and not the hands of somebody else.

Thirdly, the paper appears only to be destructive in its intent. It characterises all modern Western thinking as abyssal (actually, I think it really intends to say abysmal), but there is much in Western thinking that is quite different to the straw man that it sets out.

Where is honour, respect, personality and individuality given to women if not in Western thought? Where is equal honour given to all men and women before the law without distinction as to class, caste, or religion if not in Western thought? Where is the rule of law respected above the rule of the despot if not in Western thought? And what is the invisible hand beneath this, if not the hand of God in his Word, which shows what he in his providence has established for the good of mankind? Without the influence of the Word of God in our society, we would be as bleak as those that are characterised here as on the other side of the line. I am not suggesting that all is as it should be, but certainly it is the case that not all is not as it should be.

I would like to take some words from the paper and apply them in a different context.

“To give an example based on [events in the past twenty years, Cathay’s] modernity may be characterised as a socio−political paradigm founded on the tension between social regulation and social emancipation. This is the visible distinction that founds all [eastern] conflicts, both in terms of substantive issues and in terms of procedures. But underneath this distinction there is another, invisible one, upon which the visible one is founded. This invisible one is the distinction between metropolitan societies (Peking) and colonial territories (Hong Kong). Indeed, the regulation/emancipation dichotomy only applies to metropolitan societies. It would be unthinkable to apply it to colonial territories. The regulation/emancipation dichotomy has no conceivable place in such territories. There, another dichotomy would apply, the dichotomy between appropriation/violence, which, in turn, would be inconceivable if applied on this side of the line. Because the colonial territories were unthinkable as sites for the unfolding of the paradigm of regulation/emancipation, the fact that the latter did not apply to them did not compromise the paradigm’s universality. “

Perhaps a Marxist would disagree with the suggested emendations.

As for abyssal thinking, I suggested at the start that this word does indeed characterise our thinking, whether we are Western, Eastern or Southern, but let us be careful that it does not also characterise the outcome of our thinking. Our words to others should not be abyssal, lest they be unfathomable, incomprehensible and abysmal.

It is only God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit who is unfathomable, unsearchable, inscrutable, abyssal, which we may sum up in but one word, ineffable, but revealed to us in Jesus Christ. Glory to his Name!

The paper by the way may be found here: https://www.eurozine.com/beyond-abyssal-thinking/

And a refutation of abyssal thinking in the context of racialised bilinguality here: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10134372/1/Rejecting%20abyssal%20thinking%20in%20the%20language%20and%20education%20of%20racialized%20bilinguals%20A%20manifesto.pdf

Exposing the truth

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Three rather interesting short articles on the BBC, the first clearly shows how seriously we should take Critical Race Theory.

Lack of ethnic diversity among egg and sperm donors
Richard Drax: Jamaica eyes slavery reparations from Tory MP
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: Author warns about ‘epidemic of self-censorship’

The fault, and cause, of a shortage of resources in a minority culture is clearly to be attributed to the dominant culture for whom the greatest of opprobrium is to be reserved. The particular shortage is of the shortage of the two essential elements in the making of a human being, and though the answer is of course a mother and a father that is not what they mean, they focus purely on the biological elements, eggs and sperm derived from a minority culture in the UK. It is described as a lack of ethnic diversity by the HFEA. In this instance the minority culture highlighted was West Indian, and by inference Afro-Caribbean. Common sense may find a different and more plausible cause and dismiss the suggestion of fault and blame altogether.

The second also takes us to the Caribbean, and in particular to the island of Jamaica, whose government joining arms with Barbados is considering seeking reparations from the current British owner of a plantation for the treatment of slaves before 1833. The grounds of the case may rest in Critical Race Theory or Identity Politics – as these are mercurial concepts I leave it as an exercise for you, dear Reader, to make the correct assessment. The article does not say whether reparations will also be sought from those who made their fortunes and built their kingdoms in West Africa from the enslavement of those who were taken by sea to the Caribbean or overland to the Middle East. I dare say any law firm which takes up the case will be kept busy for many a day, whether or not their solicitors benefited from the education they received at the institutions which were established or funded out of wealth derived from estates established long before 1833.

The third article reports on an author who, seeing through all of this nonsense, speaks of an epidemic of self-censorship and the inability to ask questions because of a fear of asking the wrong sort of questions. This author speaks of a place for valid criticism, which is essential if there is to be meaningful debate, but of no place for an ugly, violent backlash against those who speak a view which is contrary to your own. The aim of debate is not to silence but to convince. Where would we be without the progressive Hypothesis-Antithesis cycle which leads to greater understanding and better hypotheses? But in Cancel Culture the Antithesis must not be spoken. What progress can be made? The proponents of Darwinian evolution have successfully cancelled academic examination of their stories, despite Darwin’s own warnings to them that his hypothesis would fail in the absence of certain conditions, one of which remains absent, a second of which has been strongly overturned. This cancellation has turned biological science into a blind alley seeking to prove that which cannot be proven and failing to pursue enquiries which will yield beneficial results.

It is good to see their willingness to expose, albeit perhaps unwittingly, the short falls, indeed perils, of that which has taken deep root in a society which, in its post-modernist thinking (if thinking is a post-modernist activity), has lost its moorings, Critical Race Theory, Identity Politics, Cancel Culture and a host of other ‘critical’ theories which are no more nor less critical than the sledgehammer used of the builder to demolish* a wall. How we need to return to the law of the Lord which makes men wise.

Look at how King David spoke of it: Restoration – pursuing the right paths. Making wise – enabling us to understand the vast universe in which we live. Rejoicing – do we not when we look at all of the marvels of nature: the stars, the galaxies, the cosmos, the depths of complexity in the living cells, the molecular machines that keep us alive. Enlightening – revealing the secrets of the universe to us. Enduring – they are not fickle, they are unchanging, we can rely on them. Righteous – they provide the grounds on which human society can flourish.

The law of the Lord is perfect, restoring the soul;
The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple;
The statutes of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart;
The commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes;
The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever;
The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.
More to be desired are they than gold,
Yea, than much fine gold;
Sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb.
Moreover by them Your servant is warned,
And in keeping them there is great reward.
Psalm 19

*The oxymoron is deliberate. Builders do not demolish, they build. In true Critical Language Theory style as set out by Lewis Carroll so long ago: builder “means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less”.

Health Care or Profit

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I am astonished. I find myself in agreement with a sociologist. ‘The market in health care is not a means of achieving competitive efficiency but a pseudo-market for creating private value at public expense.’

But I suppose agreement comes in that he is speaking to the least favourite part of my education in accounting, economics. Now when a sociologist speaks to economics one would wonder whether you need to find a pinch of salt, but then you already know that you need more than a pinch when you read any of my comments on economics, so my agreement with the man does not lend any support to what he wrote.

However little I understand economics, the use of words like competitive efficiency and pseudo-market, or even market on its own let alone any pseudosity about it, are warning signs of the first degree.  As an aside, if you know what a warning side of the second degree is you are at least one step ahead of me; please share your thoughts. The conclusion however stands up to all the scrutiny of the much less glamourous side of accountancy. If a service is provided by a non-profit organisation then it will, all other things being equal, cost less than an organisation that is set up for profit. This is an obvious conclusion for there is one significant cost within the organisation set up for profit which is not in the non-profit organisation. That additional cost is not taxation it is the return to the owners of the organisation. That return may be in the way of dividends or the super-profit of the owner being the amount in excess of the wages he would have been paid had he been employed by the organisation.  

Of course not all other things are equal, and the inequalities in the other things will drive the cost up or down. The costs of raw materials are likely to be different for the greater purchasing power of the National Health Care System (NHCS) should be capable of procuring raw materials more cheaply than the other organisations. Staff costs may be different in the other organisations for several reasons:

  1. The other organisations will not be bound by the national agreements of the NHCS;
  1. rates may be higher as a consequence of the expectation of staff that working for a private organisation should be remunerated at a higher rate then working for the NHCS
  2. rates may be lower as a consequence of the transfer of the pension costs away from the NHCS
  3. Base staffing levels within the NHCS may be kept lower if an other organisation is providing staff. The risk of having more staff than can be usefully employed is passed over to the other organisation.
  4. The other organisation will wish to be compensated for taking on the staff level risk.
  5. Where base staff levels are inadequate, the NHCS becomes dependent upon the provision of staff by the other organisation who are then able to charge a premium for the staff they provide.

On balance I would consider that it is likely that staff costs will be greater when taking into account a value for each of these factors, notwithstanding that in some local cases the costs may be lower. I am sure there are economists out there who will point out that I have missed many other factors which influence the cost as not all things are equal.

I cannot but then agree, though I say it with a heavy heart being on the purer side of the spectrum of scientists, with the sociologist that the market in health care is a means of creating private value at public expense.

Or, as the man on the Clapham omnibus might say: Those who wish to make a pretty penny out of health care will relish the thought of its privatisation. If we wish to retain our NHS then efforts to privatise any part of it should be resisted.

The sociologist is Robert Dingwall. In https://www.socialsciencespace.com/2022/11/the-covid-pandemic-in-france-a-review/ he is reviewing two books which analyse the response in France to the presence of Covid-19 in the population, and draws interesting comparisons with the UK’s response.  I commend it to you.

Judgements (ASA)

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If you apply racial stereotyping to this post then as Coco is not a chocolate bean but if this article has been written by a stereotypically white middle class male who wears a tweed jacket you must presume that it is racist and anything that Coco says will be understood to have racist implications, Coco has therefore on the basis of stereotyping Coco’s readers, no expectations that when Coco speaks against these matters anyone shall listen or rather Coco has every expectation that no-one shall listen. If it has not, then on the basis (provided or otherwise) of Critical Race Theory then you must believe every word.

In the youth of the writer the expression it takes one to know one was often used to rebuff those who promoted negative ideas about or images of another person, but there is a certain element of truth in the saying, just as there is an element of truth in all stereotypes, such as references to the similarities between the Thai, Shona and Irish temperaments, or the short arms of deep pocketed men from the West Riding or Scotland. So, when an accusation of racism is heard it is as well first to analyse the accusation itself for any racism which may be inherently in it before considering whether the actions, words or individuals so accused merit the accusation. If the accusation itself is racist, then those who made it must necessarily reconsider their own position for as we well know those who live in glass houses should not throw stones.

What then do we think when we read a judgement like this:

The ad(sic.) [a video advertisement promoted by The Ministry of Justice in support of a prison officer recruitment campaign] formed part of an overall campaign advertising job roles in prisons that had used images of prison officers and other prison staff from a number of different ethnic backgrounds. However, the ASA assessed the post as it would have appeared to consumers in-feed on Facebook and not in the context of the overall campaign. We understood that there was a negative stereotype based on the association between black men and criminal activity; we therefore assessed whether the ad reinforced a negative ethnic stereotype.

The ad showed a real white prison officer and black male inmate in a prison setting. The inmate wore an afro pick comb in his hair – a tool we understood was uniquely associated with black culture. The ad made reference to prison officers being “problem solvers” and “life changers”, and we considered it drew a link between the officer depicted and those attributes. On the other hand, the black prisoner was depicted as a criminal, without those positive attributes. We considered the ad did not suggest that all black men were criminals, or were more likely to be so than any other ethnic group. However, it showed an imbalanced power dynamic, with a smiling white prison officer, described as a “life changer”, and a black, institutionalised prisoner. We considered the ad’s focus on the positive qualities of the white prison officer and negative casting of the black prisoner was likely to be seen as perpetuating a negative racial stereotype.

We concluded that the ad was likely to cause serious offence on the grounds of race, by reinforcing negative stereotypes about black men.

Is there any element of racism within this analysis? Of course I would not be writing this if I did not think that there were, so the answer is yes. You, dear reader, may disagree with me, but first consider the reasons:

The first thing we note is that the thing in the forefront of the mind of the judge is colour. The words used are: The ad showed a real white prison officer and black male inmate in a prison setting. Colour is the most significant thing in this advertisement to him. The purpose of the advertisement has faded into view. The people depicted in the advertisement have vanished. All that the viewer sees is the colour of their skin.

If the first thing that you see in another person, who is just like you, a living human being made in the image of the God who also made you, is the colour of his skin have you not already uncovered racism in your own heart? Does the colour of the skin matter to you more than anything else? That is racism.

We have found racism at the first hurdle. I do not need to go, for it is enough to find one element of racism in the argument that racism exists to know that the argument fails. But let me go on briefly.

In the same sentence the word male is only used once. It is used to describe the prisoner, here called an inmate. Ask your self why would the prisoner be described as male, but no such attribute be given to the prison guard? If the word male is important for one it, or female, is important for the other also. It is there, I submit, to emphasise the racial difference. Here we have a black man confronted by a white man, without saying as much, is what is being said. So in one sentence we have two evidence of a racial bias, which is racism.

Thirdly, we have a reference to a comb.  It is a type of comb which they associate uniquely with African culture. It is an incorrect association. I have seen many such a comb in exclusively white European households, and not merely seen but seen in use. Once again picking up on this element in the advertisement demonstrates a prejudgement of racism and racism hidden within their own thoughts.

Fourthly they contrast the difference between the guard and the prisoner. There is a difference. One is said to be a problem solver and life changer, both of which descriptions may be true of both, but we are not here to discuss that aspect of the advertisement, so we shall leave it that the description was intended to throw light on aspects of the guard’s duties other than the locking and unlocking of doors. The other was depicted as a criminal. Those two things would be true whatever the colour of the skin of the two individuals being described. The judge however again focused not upon the characteristics of the two individuals but the colour of the skin. As I have intimated already, to see the colour of the skin as being the prime characteristic is racist. What we should see first are the rôles of the two individuals in society.

Fifthly, the prison officer is described as a smiling white. Just as the use of the word male is used earlier to describe the prisoner, here we have an emotive word, smiling, used to describe the guard. Why did they choose to describe the guard as a smiling white? Was it to give reinforce their own prejudice that the white man was smug in his position of authority over the black man? Both smiling and white were unnecessary adjectives unless racism was already in the heart of the person saying it.

Finally, that there was an imbalance of power is irrelevant to the matter. In the prisoner-guard situation there is necessarily an imbalance of power, but the imbalance does not arise out of the two individuals concerned but the authority of the law under to which both of them are subject. The imbalance does not arise by reason of the colour of the skin.

The ASA has been misdirected by its agents who have applied their own racist analysis to the advertisement. They have missed the point of the advertisement completely and have allowed their own prejudices to colour their assessment of its aim, which was to encourage people, of all colour, to join the prison service.

I wonder what they would have said had the prisoner been a Geordie or an Irishman and the guard a Cockney, or perhaps worse if the guard had been a Greek and the prisoner a Cretan, all of whom we know on good authority are always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons.

The BBC article appearing to be unbiased perhaps also indicates a bias. It is good to see that the MoJ shall appeal. We await the outcome of that, but wonder whether we shall see it.

SARS

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I normally think that when a thing is referred to by the initial letters of its proper name there is no need to add an S to pluralise it. The plural S is hidden behind the initial capital letter. So we have, for example, OS. You would not ask how many different OSes are there? You would ask how many different O(perating) S(ystems) are there. The plural s is hidden. There are exceptions of course but these prove the rule for the combination of the initial letters has become a noun in itself which does not describe the same thing as the string of words describes, so though we refer to LASER, if we have two sources we shall speak of having two lasers.

I should also like to make a further exception in response to a suggestion by a Western oligarch that one country become an special administrative region of another country. I shall refer later to this as the Type B proposal. That other country is well known for its SARS which were first identified there about twenty years ago. Much effort is put into the elimination of these SARS for they are quite dangerous things. The effects that they have on the people of that country are quite severe and if left uncontrolled would have serious adverse social and economic consequences, so the (dis)benefits of these SARS must, so we are led to believe, be curtailed at all costs.

The truth of these remarks would of course be clearly seen if the doctrine behind this suggestion were pressed to its logical conclusion, and it was proposed that the other country should become a special administrative region of the one. The objective of the underlying doctrine would be equally achieved. I shall refer to this as the Type A proposal.

Both proposals are the logical outcome of the foundational doctrine held by the other country, so why would not a Type A solution be acceptable to it? Is it a fear that it, as a SAR, would go the way of all other SARS?