[speaker001:] oh I'd suggest, with respect, that it should be included in a footnote to that affect so that the simple minded like myself when they see... well... cost value of, as... almost eighteen million and a present day value of twenty eight million and over and look again at twelve hundred and four pounds I say where is the money gone? I think if there's, if there's a reason for not showing it there I think I comment to the bottom would satisfy most people.
[Hugh:] Thank you....
[speaker001:] Yes Moderator the Board's erm published accounts are prefaced by some comments on the accounting conventions that are used....
[Hugh:] Thank you. Number three.... Number four.... Number five.... Number six.
[speaker003:] Moderator...
[Hugh:] I was going to call you now because of the national health
[speaker001:] [LAUGHTER]
[Hugh:] but you've preempted me.
[speaker003:] [LAUGHTER] I'm awake. And
[speaker001:] [LAUGHTER]
[speaker003:] I'm still five four eight. Right.... Now don't be too surprised if this sounds like a question.
[speaker001:] [LAUGHTER] [applause]
[speaker003:] Now... I've learned, I've been since Saturday as I told you and I've, I've learned how to make a good question.... Now what you've got to do is use the correct words and phrases... and these are... finally
[speaker001:] [LAUGHTER]
[speaker003:] briefly
[speaker001:] [LAUGHTER]
[speaker003:] now I thought I knew what that word meant until I came to the assembly.
[speaker001:] [LAUGHTER] [applause]
[speaker003:] It seems to me... in conclusion... important... Right a wee bit of background will help the assembly understand my being here. Now I had a kidney transplant in nineteen eighty four. The assembly made a very good decision in nineteen ninety to support the transplant programme. The assembly passed it to presbyteries and they in turn passed it on through their billets to ministers who in turn were supposed to pass it to sessions and it was supposed to be discussed at session level and turned down to ordinary congregations. Now unfortunately, that's how it should of worked... but the message got lost down the line somewhere. Now these messages remind me of the old Tarzan movies, now you were all old enough now to remember the old Tarzan movies. In the old Tarzan movies they used drums, and they also used natives... and the warriors carried a stick, they called it a forked stick... and it looks like the assembly might need a new set of forked sticks
[speaker001:] [LAUGHTER]
[speaker003:] because these messages keep getting lost between here and the congregation.... The kidney transplant waiting list could have been reduced remarkably if the Church of Scotland had done their job properly. Now that is a good story for the press. It's not a bad one it's a good one. So finally, briefly and in conclusion
[speaker001:] [LAUGHTER]
[speaker003:] This is where my question was coming... I ask the convenor why the committee failed to follow up their good work by not promoting the kidney donor cards through ministers to the congregation. Now we, let's say for instance we've got five hundred thousand members of the church, and they in turn have a circle of friends and relatives of ten... now you don't need to be a mathematician to find out that's five million. So that everyone in Scotland could have been covered and given the opportunity to carry a donor card. Now all churches should carry a supply of cards,t at all their functions... even the general assembly. And I'm not just quite finished because I was gonna put a wee P S in, why don't we have the assembly at the S E C C? Because you've no stairs, you've got no hills and you've got bags of wee places to put your motor.
[speaker001:] [LAUGHTER] [applause] I, I'm looking to see if Dr 's there because if he were me, or if I was him, I would say what the commissioner alleges is neither known nor admitted. Erm the Board has not failed to follow up its very good work. In fact it has followed it up with an absolutely excellent study pack which has been very widely used within the church. It has followed it up because I personally and other members of the Board and er and members of our staff have accepted invitations to go and speak to presbytery conferences on human transplants. I've been as far a a places as far apart as the presbytery of erm Annandale and Esdale which is to, what to south of Scotland, erm and I can't think of any corresponding place erm in the north but there have been places in the north that I've also gone to, and this is my donor card. And I... I, I, I commend this to the church and I, and I'm glad the commissioner had a chance to come back and speak again about his concern about erm the waiting list for transplants. Please carry a donor card, please discuss it with your relatives, please discuss it with your congregation, please ensure... that in the event of tragedy overtaking you... your relatives know... your views in advance on transplant surgery. And if it is your, your view that y y your, your organs may be used in, in advance, and if that's known to your relatives it'll make a very very difficult time for them a great deal less difficult than it might have been otherwise.
[Hugh:] Thank you. Thank you very much.
[speaker001:] [applause]
[speaker003:] Moderator I'd just like to thank the convenor. [LAUGHTER]
[Hugh:] I hope you feel your intervention has been worthwhile and has borne fruit.
[speaker001:] [LAUGHTER]
[Hugh:] I was proving to the convenor that I'd made a mark opposite that deliverance on which to call you. So he can prove it's true. [LAUGHTER]... Can we pass then to number seven? On number eight Dr has erm... an addendum I think....
[speaker004:] Er fifty five. Moderator I've asked for this new clause to come in immediately after seven because of what in accepting seven we've just done. We have welcomed what the Board are doing, and we've encouraged them to find new ways of doing so more in meeting the needs of the elderly who increase in numbers here in Scotland. Now they cannot possibly do these things without becoming painfully aware, as I am sure they are already, of the problems arising through lack of financial... er er financial sufficiency or poverty among the old people. Now let me read the words for the s benefit of those who don't have them... add new section eight and rem renumber eight urge his majesty's government to give continuing and careful concern to the many situations in which lack of financial resources are still causing elderly people grave hardship. Having read that I immediately repent me in dust and ashes for having committed a dreadful grammatical error. I was so caught up in my plurals or situations in hardship that I didn't notice that the subject in more senses than one is a singular lack, and the verb should be is and not are, therefore I must ask the indulgence of the general assembly to change the verb. I don't think it needs to go down under the barrier act.
[speaker001:] [LAUGHTER]...
[speaker004:] Moderator... it can't be very often that a young minister contradicts a giant of the church in open assembly... but it did happen several years ago. In fact if the previous speaker has complained about waiting in patience, I have waited forty years to tell this story in the assembly... because a young minister flatly contradicted a giant of the church, Dr John, the protagonist of national church extension. What happened was that he was a giant of the church indeed, and he behaved as one. I remember wickedly making a note at one assembly of the number of times he spoke and believe it or not the total was sixty seven. And I'm not setting that up as a record to be broken or a
[speaker001:] [LAUGHTER]
[speaker004:] or a target to be aimed at because when I saw the sixty seven I remembered it's the number of the song that begins lord bless and pity us.
[speaker001:] [LAUGHTER]
[speaker004:] Now how did a giant of the church get himself into such a position? In presenting the report to the national church extension committee, he made the astonishing statement that there is no longer any dire poverty in Scotland. Now how on earth did he say such a thing? He was falling into the trap of the enthusiast of overstating his case. It was a good case... he wanted us to remember that there's a hunger for the word of God... and that what we should be worried about was... poverty in the things of the spirit... but he made the blank statement... and it shocked one young man called John who at the time was the minister of a church extension charge in one of our deprived housing situations. He went straight out, went to four families, whose names immediately suggested themselves to him, checked his facts and figures, got in while... discussion was still on and flatly contradicted the great John and gave him the facts and figures to prove it, to tell him that he was wrong. What on earth has this got to do with my motion? Simply this... that any government of any colour, at any level, central or local... and any organization charged with the responsibility of meeting the needs of elderly people... which proceeds on the tacit assumption or makes the blatant assertion that there is no longer any poverty in Scotland is requiring to be contradicted because it is not true.
[speaker001:] [applause]
[speaker004:] I haven't used the word poverty... I've used a phrase about lack of financial resources because it relates more obviously and directly to many of the concerns of the Board for example almost certainly the real reason why there was no room in the inn at Bethlehem is that the income of a village... carpenter didn't go near the exorbitant prices being charged by mine host when, to use the good Scots phrase, the cow calved and there was this boom over the crows for the census. In other words, lack of financial resources can contribute to homelessness and it does. And in all our consideration about homelessness to which the report rightly refers, we must remember that lack of financial resources is a contributory factor and how many in the assembly know that while we naturally think, in homelessness, of our tragic young people, five per cent of the homeless are elderly. Like the exiled Scots sitting up in bed with his cap on in Sidney Royal Infirmary, asked by the retired sister who visited people like him who had no friends how old he was, he says ninety two. Oh where do you live? Central station, platform six. Contributing to homelessness. Moderator if... the Board wanted a patron saint, my sole nominee would certainly be the good Samaritan cos he got it right. He was faced with a situation where he had to deliver a service, to use the jargon of social work which has dropped into their report. He went not to collect particulars and feed them into a computer, he went to get down on his knees and get himself covered in mud and blood. He did not qualify him for income support, he supported him on to the back of his ass, he took him to the inn. He took care of him and the Greek verb means that he literally took total charge of his case, in other words he probably stayed up all night nursing him, and so he made the inn into temporarily a nursing home and we're back into another area of the Board's concerns. But he gave two pence, how miserable can you get? But put the two pence in their contemporary context. We know from the parable of the labourers in the vineyard that one penny or one donarius was an accepted whole day's wage for a twelve day in the heat of the sun... in the great harvest, so the two pence was the equivalent of two days' wages. Now bring it back to the modern time of the five day week, what is two fifths, or what are two fifths of the wage? At the end of last year the national average wage in the manufacturing industries would give you, for two fifths, one hundred and fourteen pounds. [bell ring] What does a pensioner get?... Now a pensioner, over eighty and in poor health, possibly requiring special food that costs more, certainly requiring extra heating in cold weather, will get sixty three pounds twenty. And if anybody thinks that with reasonable budgeting you could manage on sixty three twenty, I challenge you to do a little personal budgeting. You've got no... savings... you've got no relatives you can fall back on, you have no other source of income... and you've got to pay for everything off of sixty three twenty. So what in fact happens? I'm not going to leave you with statistics, they don't get me any longer, I've developed an immunity to statistics, thank God. There are a hundred and seventy thousand people in Scotland who qualify for income support, whether they get it or not is not the point, but that's the size of the problem. And what happens in actual human situations which are what get me, and I'm going to give you three... and I guarantee their genuineness... you will doubt them all I have not the least fear... but I guarantee you their genuineness, they come from the records of Age Concern Scotland of which I am the president. Here are a couple who are doing very awkward cooking over an open fire... because their cooker has packed in and they can get a new one only in terms of a loan which is compulsorily payable by deduction from their, from their pension every week and they've a Scot's dread of debt. Here are a couple who must be just rejoicing in this kind of weather because when it's cold the only way they get warm is to take their shoes or boots off and go into bed in the early evening with all their clothes on.... Here is a little old woman in her upper eighties, never been married, no relatives, outlived all her generation. Her boon companion is a cairn terrier called Sandy and Sandy's leash is her lifeline. Sandy takes her for walks, not the other way round. And because she happens to live reasonably near a park, she walks Sandy or Sandy walks her in the park, she meets other dog... walkers and they are her human contacts. Sandy means an awful lot in that old lady's life and she does occasionally reach the point when she's got so little money left that believe it or not she has to choose between buying food for herself and buying dog food for Sandy. Now don't say it's a silly, sentimental story, that's what poverty means in real terms to actual people. Three years ago when the new regulations came into force the then Secretary of State for Social Security said this means the end of the era of poverty.... Now... John was not afraid to tell somebody as great as John that he was wrong... and I see no reason why this general assembly should be afraid or inhibited about telling the authorities that they are wrong. If and when they work on the tacit assumption or make such a blatant assertion as that, that there is no longer any poverty, because it is not true... and unless and until it is true neither they nor we have got any right to be content.
[speaker001:] [applause]
[Hugh:] Is that seconded?
[speaker001:] Seconded.
[Hugh:] The convenor I think is willing to accept this....
[speaker001:] Yes Moderator. Erm er I'm very grateful to Dr and I'll offer him another story, a woman who's now died whom I used to visit who sat with her coal fire set but not lit until someone would come to the door. She'd always say she'd just put coal in the fire. That kind of situation, Dr is entirely right to say to the general assembly, that kind of situation is utterly unforgivable, it's utterly unforgivable. Next year I'll report to the general assembly erm, if all things are equal, that the Board will by then have set up a scheme to allow care workers to go out from our... erm residential establishments into the community to extend the kind of professional service that we're able to give in our establishments to people who live in the community. That's something that will need to be financed and it's something which the Board will need to find the money to do. I, I in no way want to resist Dr 's erm er addendum, I hope that the general assembly will simply erm accept it by acclaim.
[Hugh:] Will the assembly accept it?... Thank you.
[speaker001:] [applause]
[Hugh:] Then we pass to number nine. Yes... please....
[speaker005:] thirteen twelve. Visitor... delegate from the Christian Church Disciples of Christ in the U S and Canada. It appears that there are many points at which er we can identify with one another or I have found that I can identify with the church and its social responsibility in this country because of our experience in my country. The cut back of social services by public agencies has meant for us, and I'm sure for you, er the church becomes more and more important in helping people survive and live more fully.... In erm our situation dedicated persons on the front lines have found themselves overwhelmed by increases in human needs and dwindling resources with which to meet those human needs and so we've tried to get innovative and do something about it. In our particular ministry in St Louis Missouri... we are trying to use the vast technology that's available to us in linking up with other organizations such as Catholic charities, Salvation Army and others, so that when persons are in need of help they can go to one organization and tell their story and they don't have to keep going from place to place telling their story over and over and... we're beginning to look toward the use of computers and what they are capable of doing in order to help resources stretch. And I think the, the kinds of er ministries expressed in item nine erm in which service delivery and the changing needs of individuals and the regular personal crises demand that kind of er linking and working together. There is also technology available which can link organizations throughout the world and so that when er the church in one place discovers a resource or a way to work with people around a particular need, they have the opportunity to share that and I would be interested in talking with persons who might have an interest in that. A man came to us for food recently, but he also needed spiritual counselling. He was on the point of taking his own life because he was depressed over his ill health... and at the, in the church one can find spiritual food and physical food together, and in our country that's about the only place where you can find those two together. Later he said to me... that we had been very helpful to him and he said it's bad enough to be depressed but when you're depressed and hungry, it's really bad. I think that the church has the responsibility to continue to find new and innovative ways of reaching out and doing a better job and that is er testimony to the fact that we can continue to reach out to persons who are suffering in many ways, and I would appreciate and look forward to learning better from you how to do that and would be happy to share....
[speaker001:] [applause]
[Hugh:] Thank you very much. Pass to number er ten... eleven... twelve... thirteen... fourteen Please....
[speaker003:] I wish to inject an addendum... in deliverance fourteen... after the words each other, helping each other to continue to mature... add the words christian worship together is seen as a priority.... Moderator... in the course of my lifetime I believe one of the big changes within a family has been the fact that grace is no longer said at meal times. In so many of the homes that I visit that is patently clear. Perhaps it's a small thing but it's a touchstone of other things and a reflection of the importance given to God and christian principles in the home. I believe christian worship within the home and with the family together should be seen as a priority and therefore I'm not satisfied with the convenor's comments earlier on in answer to my question. I believe if this is indeed a statement about the christian ideal of marriage, then we should put worship at the very centre of it.... Shared worship, moreover, increases the trust and security which the words that follow my suggested addendum make clear. In this context of trust and security they engage in sexual relations. I believe that christian worship together is a vital and important place where such trust and security and the togetherness can be built up. The only christian element of this ideal, this christian ideal, is the mention of the word God in the promises made at marriage. How regrettable it is that so often in the marriages that we come across, those are the only promises that seem to be made, and the only mention of God within the family. My contention is that God and christian principles need to be set explicitly and overtly at the heart of this declaration of ideals. We heard the other day from Professor about the importance of a godly mother. I would add to that the importance, I am not a sexist, of a godly father. I think it's very important that we should make clear