Peace Prize

Sunday morning always starts early and in particular starts with  Sunday, Radio 4's weekly religious magazine. Today's programme picked up on the item that was doing the rounds before Easter about the funding of hospital chaplains by the NHS. The National Secular Society were protesting that such support was not a proper charge on the public purse. The costs, they argue,  should instead be borne by churches and individual patients exercising  personal choice. Costs UK wide are said to be around £31m although workings on the back of a few backs of fag packets have the figure as high as £44m. Thats quite a lot of  nurses, so the argument goes. And nurses are surely a better use of £30 - 40m than the chaplaincy. Enter the Taxpayers Alliance (Daily Mail with attitude) who, like the NSS,  believe this money could be better spent (or, I suspect, preferably not spent at all).

The work of hospital chaplains  is not an area that I know much about. It seems to me that when you are at a low ebb health wise (ie wondering whether you are actually going to get through this crisis)  some sort of spiritual support would be of great comfort. And I believe many are comforted this way.  But equally if I was say Richard Dawkins or Ricky Gervais, committed atheists both,   I might resent the intrusion. 

But this whole episode leaves a nasty taste. The NSS is being manipulative. If they believed their arguments stood up why come out with this research just before Easter?  I'd conclude that it was a spoiling tactic designed to catch the attention of the UK  media to the fact that they are still around at a time when we would otherwise forget about them .  Why get into bed with the Taxpayer's Alliance who have a very different agenda (and who frankly would be better advised to focus more attention on far worse examples of  taxpayer waste). And finally why try and persuade us that they are highly principled sweetness and reason itself, all about human rights  (everyone has the right to a religion or not to have one) and then focus on hospital chaplains as an example of religious privilege. The NSS agenda is dishonest. Like the BNP they would have us believe its about protecting the rights of all. They do not: the NSS want to eradicate religion.