The Annual Rant 2014

For the first time in a very long time this year, we begin not with a rant about our lives in the inner

city, but with Deborah's news. Those of you who do Facebook may well already have picked up that in their latest OFSTED inspection Ladybrook was judged to be Outstanding in every area of the school's life. Do, please, click on the link to read the report. I have never read an official report which is so positive about anything! It really is a remarkable read.
It is a fitting tribute to the work which Deborah - and above all, Sheila, the headteacher, have put in over the years. And it is a glorious note for Sheila to bow out on. Some months ago, now, she announced that she was going to retire. Since September, she and Deborah have been acting as 'Co-headteachers' (although OFSTED don't seem to be able to cope with such an innovative concept). At

Easter, Deborah will take over as substantive Headteacher. I wonder how many teachers, still in the same school after 20 years, can honestly say that they are still as enthusiastic and committed as they were when they first started.
If you haven't done so before, why not have a look at Ladybrook's website - which Deborah re-designed earlier this year.

Now that Beth has left - oh, Dad, that was three years ago - St Clement's Primary seems to be back on an improving trajectory. As a family, we no longer have anything to do with the school, but after 12 years as parent, governor and chair of governors, I can't help but be interested in their progress. After the horrendous experience of the last few years, it is good to see the children of Openshaw getting an education which at least begins to approach that which the children of Bramhall have been getting for years.

Children growing up in Openshaw don't get much else.

A child born in Openshaw will, on average, die four years earlier than the average child born in the UK - and a staggering 11 years earlier than a child born in Kensington and Chelsea.

NHS funding formulae are, of course, incredibly complex. So complex that the government believe

that you and I will not actually be interested in these highly technical changes. Over the last three years, the NHS funding has been moved away from a system weighted according to the deprivation of the population towards a system weighted according to the age of the population. Fair enough, you may say. Older people make the most use of the NHS. Except that in places like Openshaw people don't live long enough to benefit from these changes. Our population suffers from exactly the same health problems - it's just that poverty means they suffer from them earlier in life.

During the lifetime of this government, there has been a significant shift in NHS resources away from Manchester towards Kensington and Chelsea—and other, affluent, Tory-voting communities.

Did you know that the Bible Society's Poverty and Justice Bible highlights over 3,000 verses in the Bible which condemn poverty and injustice? There are, perhaps, a dozen which speak of homosexuality. I can't help wondering which issue God is more concerned about.

Anyway, the NHS is no longer my direct concern. I was finally allowed to stand down in April. I wish I could say that I leave the NHS in good stead and good heart. It is certainly in a better state than it was when I first got involved in 2000, but the last three years have quite clearly been a question of defending all the achievements of the previous ten years against the incompetence with which the NHS is being directed today. I can speak out more freely now. To go to the polls on a platform of "no more top-down NHS re-organisation," then to impose the biggest top-down reform the NHS has ever seen, placing doctors who want nothing to do with politics or management structures at the heart of the political, management structure is a recipe for disaster. The NHS is now being run at best by reluctant GPs and, at worst by for profit contractors who have been shipped in to decide the health need of our populations. 

Since January, though, my concern has been less direct. The North Western Baptist Association, for whom I am now working, chose for its theme this year "Let Justice Flow," taken from Amos 5:24. I like the Message translation:
I can’t stand your religious meetings.
    I’m fed up with your conferences and conventions.I want nothing to do with your religion projects,    your pretentious slogans and goals.I’m sick of your fund-raising schemes,    your public relations and image making.I’ve had all I can take of your noisy ego-music.    When was the last time you sang to me?Do you know what I want?    I want justice—oceans of it. I want fairness—rivers of it.    That’s what I want. That’s all I want.

So, you'll gather I have fitted in well to the Association. 

There is no doubt that these are challenging times for the Church. For 1,700 years Christianity has been able to see itself as the predominent cultural, moral and even political force in Western society. This was the era known as Christendom. 

We are now moving into the era of Post-Christendom. Christianity is reverting to what it was before

the conversation of the Emperor Constantine - a prophetic movement. The Church has to re-learn to see itself as this movement rather than as an institution; a network rather than a solid entity; a prophetic minority rather than the prevailing culture. That is quite a challenge. For some, for whom the Church has been a precious home - or who see some kind of identity between Christianity and Britishness - this transition is both challenging and difficult. 

So I have been tasked by the North Western Baptist Association both with helping churches to make that transition - and to help the Association itself to ensure that its structures are responsive and flexible enough to support our churches, as well as robust enough to ensure that they cannot be broken by the challenges which so many churches are facing today.

In a nutshell there is the answer to the question I have been asked more than any other this year, "What exactly is a Transitional Regional Minister?"

Of course, those of you who have been following the Rant for many years may - quite reasonably - point out that this is no more than we have been doing in Openshaw for many years. With a declining congregation and a crumbling building we have been forced to adapt or die. Now (still) without a building we are 'flexible' in that we worship in borrowed buildings. We are prophetic in that we are angry about the way our community have been treated. And we are a minority in that our congregation is so small as hardly to qualify as a church!

Ten years ago, when the then-General Secretary of the Baptist Union, David Coffey came up to visit us, and film a video about our work, he drew out the message of "Keeping on, keeping on." The faithfulness of God's people, continuing to proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ in the face of all the bad news which we have thrown at us day after day.

Here we are ten years later. and, at one level at least, we don't have a lot to show for all our mission. Children in Bramhall still start life with a significant head start over children born in Openshaw.. We still live in a field - the homes which we were promised would bring new life to our community have still not been built. The church itself remains homeless.

It seems to me that the good news is in the journey, not in the destination. The fact that we are still here, still a faithful worshiping community, working out what it means to be good news in this small corner of creation. And that, once again, is our message of Advent hope. Not the easy, cutesy message of the Christmas baby. Certainly not the oppressive, commercialised message of despair which encourages us to eat drink and be merry for there is no hope. No, our message is the hope which looks full in the face of all the pain and injustice of Jesus' crucifixion and is still able to proclaim that life will triumph.

The Annual Rant 2013

On November 3rd this year, we celebrated 20 years at 1421 Ashton Old Road. Together with the then one-year old Rachel, we moved into this great wreck of a house the same day the damp proofing firm took up all the floorboards. By then we had succeeded in getting a "builders' electricity supply" switched on. This meant that by the time we were actually living in the house, we had one solitary electric socket in the cellar.
A group of elderly ladies (and yes, they would all have preferred to be called ladies) from the church had spent an entire day scrubbing what is today our bedroom. That was the only room clean enough for us to live in.
Deborah's Dad, Darrell, had installed the central heating. The only problem was that the broken and rotten windows had not been replaced.
Of course, today, our TV screens are full of foolish people embarking upon renovation projects. In 1993, though, it felt bold and unusual to take on a house which had not only been repossessed, but which had seen a variety of squatters and vandals tearing the life out of it.
Together with Tim and Caroline Clay, we moved to Openshaw believing that God loved Openshaw and determined to demonstrate this by breathing new life into this house.
It all sounds rather naive today.
Except that we still believe that it is true.
Of course, in the process, we have gained a beautiful home which I still believe will, one day, be finished! To be fair, we celebrated completing the renovation some years ago when, after about 16 years, Deborah finally had a wardrobe in which to hang her clothes. I have spent my spare time this month scraping paint off the shower room ceiling, cursing the idiot who used flexible ceiling paint—before realising that it was actually me who used it to cover up the poorly removed Artex which I scraped off all those years ago. The ongoing project now is to convert the cellar into a pottery/ art studio.

In the last twenty years, we have seen enormous changes in our community. Those of you who have been reading the Annual Rant have followed some of those changes with us. It is now three and half years since our estate was demolished and we are still living in a field. Of course, to call it a field is to glamourise it somewhat. The soil is little more than builders' rubble covered by a thin layer of poor quality topsoil. Last year we did some 'guerilla gardening' but neither the blackberry bushes nor the poppies we planted as a church have sprouted.

The plot of land which I reported last year that we were negotiating to purchase remains derelict. So does the site of the old church building on Mersey Street. Not only have we gained a large sum of money in compensation for that land, but it seems that Manchester City Council does not want the money we have offered for a suitable piece of land. It is two and a half years since they accepted our offer and we signed heads of terms, but still they seem incapable of moving to a legal contract which would enable us to begin developing the project.

Still we love this community.
Still we believe we are called to serve this community.

So, if you have not already heard the news, you might be surprised—amazed might be a better word—to learn that in January I will be taking up a new, full-time, role as Transitional Regional Minister for the North Western Baptist Association.

In Baptist circles we do not have—or believe in—Bishops. The rebel in me likes to think of the Regional Ministers role as being the "Anti-Bishop," but still, it is the closest equivalent we have.

As part of the appointment process, I was asked to do a presentation. Having worked in the public sector for so long, you won't be surprised to learn that I have a horror of "death by PowerPoint" presentations in which the presenter reads from the screen a series of bullet points which you could just as easily have read yourself. [As an aside, I was lucky enough to sit through just such a PowerPoint last week during which the presenter, who had clearly not read the slides in advance, on two occasions skipped through a slide saying, 'I don't know what this slide is about,' before finally showing us a slide which contained so many words that even she could not read it, stating, 'I know you can't read this slide, but I'm going to read through it anyway.']

I decided, therefore, to read what I called a poemprayer outlining my vision for the role. If you are interested, you can read it by clicking here.

So, does this mean that we have finally given up on the transformation of Openshaw? More to the point, does it mean that God has finally given up on the transformation of Openshaw? Clearly, the answer to the second questions is, 'no.' So the answer to the first question is a resounding no as well. We have no intention of leaving Openshaw, or of giving up on our tiny church. Although I will technically no longer be the minister of Openshaw Baptist Tabernacle, I will be staying on as Team Leader of Urban Expression, Openshaw.

Our Stories & Songs and Living Well projects, in conjunction with the local SureStart Children's Centre go from strength to strength - on occasion challenging the fire regulations for the centre!
Sadly though, SureStart has now been decimated by the cuts so the future of these project is constantly under review. Nevertheless, we are hoping to employ a coordinator next year to develop them.

Another personal highlight was the discovery that there is a proper academic-sounding word to describe the kind of writing that Clare and I have been doing for years: theopoesis. Put simply, this is the belief that poetry is the natural language with which to discuss theology. In prose we make dogmatic statements. In poetry, we use image and metaphor to describe that which lies beyond description. I have done quite a lot of work this year to update Dancing Scarecrow which showcases our poems and prayers.

Of course, I am probably the least creative of the Presswood family. Following last year's triumph as a rat in the Royal Exchange Theatre's performance of Rats' Tales Beth/ Lizzie/ Elizabeth (her name varies according to who you are) is now working towards her Grade 5 ballet, acting in the school play   and has now taken up the flute.

Rachel has finally (after two foundation years) made it to the first year of her degree proper—in Fine Arts. You can find (and buy!) some of her work here and some more here

Meanwhile Deborah has taken up the piano. Just three years after leaving several pianos in the old church building to be demolished (they were unsaleable), it was Christmas Eve that we took delivery of the piano which now has its rightful place in our front room. Most days you can discern A Hard Day's Night or The Laughing Polka wafting its way up the stairs.

I think it is fair to say, though, that what Deborah really wants is for me to get the cellar finished so she throw herself wholeheartedly into her ceramics. Which brings us full circle in what has been a strangely reflective rant this year.

Don't worry, though, the anger is still there. Every time I walk past that piece of derelict land which we have so singularly failed to buy I am reminded of how much we have to be angry about...

Have a creative, and angry, Christmas and New Year!

The Annual Rant 2012

This is a work in progress. I'll add some more pictures over the next couple of days, so check back later.

A couple of years ago, a friend responded to the Rant that he would appreciate something a "leetle more personal." On the other hand, I bear in mind Lynn Truss's series on Radio 4 this week on how to respond to the annual newsletters.

Let me begin then, with a quick canter through our family news. Then, if you don't like the ranting, you can stop reading and enjoy the rest of your Christmas:
Deborah has had a very challenging year. After over 15 years as Deputy Head in the same school, she had headship forced upon her in very difficult circumstances when Sheila, her best friend and head teacher, had to go off on long-term sick leave. Deborah adapted very well to the challenge and actually enjoyed running the school. Happily, Sheila is now well and back at work, but that, of course, leaves Deborah pondering the future. In the meantime, she is relishing the challenge of moving from Year 6 (10 & 11 year olds) to Reception (4 & 5 year olds).
Equally difficult for Deborah (and for me if I'm honest) was adapting to the fact that Rachel has now started university for real (last year she did a foundation course at Manchester, but as she stayed at home it didn't really feel like uni to us). She is now doing another foundation course in Fine Art, but this time at Dundee University. And this will lead on to a further three year degree. Of course, things have changed a lot since we were at uni. Skype, FaceTime and Facebook have transformed communication and we see a lot more of Rachel than would have been the case 'in our day.' Although Facebook updates from Sin City Dundee don't do a lot to reassure her parents.
For Beth (or Elizabeth or Lizzie as you may know her) this has been the year in which she has blossomed. After struggling to fit in at her primary school, the transition to high school has been a breath of fresh air. Our little baby takes herself off on the bus every morning at 7:30am. I say every morning, but actually she has missed quite a lot of school because as well as doing ballet and modern dance, she is actually appearing in the Royal Exchange Theatre's Christmas performance of Carol Ann Duffy's Rat's Tales. Tickets are still available - and if you do decide to go, please mention Beth's name at the box office to help her win a prize.
As for me, well, read on…

Or stop reading here if you are easily offended.

Like most of you, I guess, we spent much of the summer glued to the TV watching first the Tour de France, then the Olympics, then the Paralympics.
I must admit that I was among the many Olympic-doubters. Those who have been reading the Rant for many years will no doubt accuse me of hypocrisy as it is only 11 years since I poured scorn on those who doubted Manchester's ability to host the Commonwealth Games in 2002.
The Olympics, though, are so much bigger—as is London. I visited the East End in April and saw the roads being closed so that dignitaries could zoom through the traffic—but which left residents unable to get in to their own streets. I heard from people, frightened that rocket launchers were to be sited on their roofs—and that for the period of the Games, they would be under occupation.
For the Commonwealth Games in Manchester, ticket prices started at £5. Everyone I knew within striking distance of the stadium attended at least one event—well, perhaps not everyone, but you know what I mean.
Stories in the press seemed to confirm all my doubts. Volunteers who were not allowed to wear their own trainers, or eat the wrong brand of crisps. The banning of the mention of fish and chips. And not least the fact that the ticketing system—whereby it was only possible to buy Olympic tickets if you have a Visa card all led me to believe that these were games in which the demands of big business were squeezing out the ordinary people.
So we didn't buy tickets, opting for a holiday in France just as the athletics was starting (this is as close to a traditional "what we did in our holidays" newsletter that you'll ever get from us!).
Then came Danny Boyle and Frank Cottrell Boyce's Opening Ceremony. The Mary had a Little Lamb prelude seemed to confirm my worst fears—and then BANG! What an amazing celebration of the life of our nation. I will even confess that when the celebration of the NHS came on I shed a little tear.
From then on,  of course, we were hooked. Even in France we spent happy hours glued to the TV (which was, admittedly only 10m from the pool—smug Christmas newsletter face!).

One Facebook friend who shall remain nameless accused me of hypocrisy merely for watching the Opening Ceremony. Harsh, perhaps, but it does squarely raise the question of whether my cynicism about the Games was wrong.

I refuse to call it the Etihad Stadium!

Which brings us back to Openshaw. For it is now amazingly ten years since the Commonwealth Games. It was the springboard upon which the regeneration of East Manchester would be built. 2002 was the third year of a thirty year 'masterplan' to lift this community out of the poverty and deprivation into which it had fallen over the previous forty years. Some £300m of public money would be used to rejuvenate the local economy and bring in at least three times that figure of private sector investment.
If you are interested, you can find a list of New East Manchester's achievements here. We built new schools and significantly improved educational standards. We dramatically reduced levels of crime and developed new partnerships with the police, particularly with youth groups. We built new youth centres. We introduced new business support packages and helped a number of social enterprises to get started. We built new health centres and increased the number of GPs in the area. We even built a new church (no, not ours yet. Don't get excited!). Over 5,000 new homes have been built.

I may have written about the Indices of Multiple Deprivation before. In 1998 when we started the regeneration, Bradford ward, (which roughly coincides with what everyone calls Openshaw) was in the bottom 2% of the most deprived wards in the country. Today, after all this effort and regeneration success, Bradford ward varies. Where we live, we have leapt up the Chart Top 40 table. We have just crept out of the bottom 5%. Which is hardly surprising. Those of you who looked at our blog of the demolitions will know that knocking all the houses around us down is a pretty effective way of getting rid of poverty! Less than a mile away, Openshaw Village remains in the 1% most deprived communities in the country.

The bottom line is that on average, while a baby born today in England can expect to live for 80.6 years, a baby born today in Manchester can only expect to live for 76.5 years. A baby born in Bradford ward can look forward to just 72.7 years. Of course, those figures say nothing of quality of life. They merely indicate its quantity.

Ten years after our games, then, we don't feel very regenerated.

For the Presswoods personally, it doesn't feel at all bad. We now live on the edge of what we might romantically call a meadow! I have even done some guerrilla gardening and planted some blackberry bushes, although they aren't doing very well yet. We have one of the lowest crime rates in the country now. Well, there is no one living here to be the victim of crime - and no one here to commit the crime! Of course, the local businesses are all struggling as there is no one to keep them going, and the schools and GPs all lose money because their registered populations have gone... but we now occasionally see daylight in our back yard, so that's alright then isn't it?

This is the context for this government's decision not just to pull the plug on regeneration spending—you might argue that in a time of financial crisis, regeneration spending would have to wait. What is, I believe, unforgivable, is the cynical decision actively to take money away from the poorest in the country to give it to the richest.  Manchester City Council made 17% of its workforce redundant last year. The final figures for the coming year have not been published yet, but reports in the media are that a further 10% of its workforce is to go.

Manchester is struggling to survive. Whole departments have disappeared. Almost two years ago we agreed 'heads of terms' with the council to purchase land on which to build our new church. As far as I can work out the department with which we are negotiating is now reduced to a single person who is very nice and helpful, but simply cannot cope with the workload. Two years on we have still not signed a contract.

Another visit to the East End of London recently didn't do much to reassure me that their experience will be any different. It is already clear that those who live on the estates of Stratford or Shadwell gained very little from the Olympics. Welfare 'reform' is going to clear thousands of the poorest citizens from London.

So what does any of this have to do with us as a family? Or with Christmas for that matter? Or, for those of you who care about such things, with God?

I am constantly brought back to an insight of my former college principal, Brian Haymes (yes—I'm still quoting the Shining One after all these years!). Discussing the ecological crisis facing us, he confessed himself to be profoundly pessimistic about the chances of turning around the oncoming environmental catastrophe. However, Brian added, pessimism alone would lead us to inaction, fatalism and apathy. The folly of the Christian Gospel is that it offers us hope.

Hope should not be confused with optimism. Optimism is the naive belief that things can only get better. Optimism is the unshakable confidence in human progress. Optimism is the misplaced certainty that the economic benefit of a massive event like the Olympics or Commonwealth Games will 'trickle down' and somehow transform the lives of the poor.

The crowds who greeted Jesus on Palm Sunday were optimistic. The Magi who sought the transforming Messiah in Herod's palace were optimistic. Judas Iscariot was optimistic that Jesus would bring about change by political revolution.

All of that optimism led the baby born in a stable to be crucified on a cross, the ignominious death reserved for the humiliation of those upstart criminals who threatened the stability of the Roman Empire. If Jesus was to bring about political change, he was an utter failure.

As Christians, though, we believe in Resurrection. Resurrection—that the despair of crucifixion, was by no means the end of the story. That after three days, Jesus gave us a glimpse of the eternal life in which death is not the end, and in which transformation is possible. This is hope, not optimism.
Hope which energises.
Hope which engages.
Hope which enrages.

So yes, I am enraged. I am enraged that if the Baby Jesus were born in Openshaw, he would live 8 years less than his cousin born in middle England.

And yet, when the NHS came knocking again in June I resisted the temptation to despair and tell them where to go. I am all too aware of the possibilities of failure in our attempt to transform health services in North Manchester. I am very conscious of the all-pervading cynicism which sees the current reforms as just one more round of the constant reorganisation of the health service. I am not optimistic.

But my hope, my faith keeps me energised, engaged and enraged.