Giles Fraser and Occupy

Occupy is my kind of movement. They/we don't know exactly what we are for but we are sincere. Yes. You better believe it. We don't like rich bankers as they've taken all the money meaning that anyone born for the next five or six generations will have to live in poverty until we've paid i all back. There is a good chance that the capitalist generation will not only have spent all the money but have damaged the planet so badly earning and playing that the world won't be any fun to live in anyway. 

We went to London, or a city near you and camped out. Got on Newsnight and generally pointed out how fat and greedy the rich are. I honestly hope that, like me, people realise that collecting as much money as you can is spoiling the world for everyone. The money is not endless, we can't all be rich, each pound you take is a pound someone who is starving can't have.

This week when the police came in to move the protesters on was saddening though Occupy hadn't been in the news so much lately and new creative means of protest are necessary so maybe it had run its' course.

On a differnt angle it saddened me thinking of Giles Fraser. Clealy a noble and good man who got caught up in all this. Maybe it felt good to put his Christianity in to practice. So many christians appear unable to make the link between the outlook they promote and thier own lives. Christianity in the modern world has become a suburban passtime. I see the big cars pulling up outside churches on a sunday morning, advertising bring and but sales that raise a few pounds when you are driving a 20,000 pound car seems silly. If you are a Christian then act like one. Give your money to the poor. It is what Jesus would have done. He would be turning your tables over. 

Jesus is ace. I love all he said, just about and lived a good life waking many up to a higher morality. So how come his followers have gone so wrong? Christianity is so often a mask, a way to salve the conscience. Like Comic Relief, you know, that programme with all the rich comediens on mucking in to make a few pounds off the public before going home to their vast estates feeling all righteous about it.

So Giles Fraser did the brave thing. He pointed out that the protesters were right and would have no truck with those who sought their evciction. He has since been given the odd collemn in the Guardian but he has lost his job.

When he wakes up today, with St Pauls free of all the straggly tents will he feel that he had his life washed apart by a passing wave. His house stood strong till the wind came but no the wind has gone he has no house.

If his public profile that has developed due to the protest is strong enough he may make a new career in the media. He may help out future protests. His church career is gone though. I just pray he didn't preserve his moral integrity at the expense of his career and now the focus of the media moves on thgat he is not left a victim of forces beyond his control.