Interesting reading in today’s copy of our Dundee Courier. The Church of Scotland are considering the use of “VIRTUAL MINISTERS” to help cover the short fall of some 200 ministers in parishes across the country.

This could be technology embraced on a level never before seen in a Church. Our church still use a manual paper ledger to record their finances !!!

In our own town, there are two churches (St Margarets and East & Old) looking to fill the post of a full time minister. There are two massive buildings, two sets of costs, repairs, maintenance and the churches are barely a quarter full.

Add the cost of installing the “new” technology into two buildings and it begins to seem a little overkill, a bit like having two multi-plex cinema’s in the wee town of Forfar.

Looking forward to seeing this in action, it will be fun if nothing else. !

Last year these two churches failed to merge after a 10 year effort. The case is yet to be proven for that decision. The merger info

Read it, listen to it, view it – - – all doom and gloom. Don’t take it any more, just live for now and how about dancing the blues away. Check out the dancing going on in your area.

BALLROOM

SCOTTISH COUNTRY

Crude is today down to $87 representing a 41% drop in price from the high’s earlier this year.

DIESEL is £1.10 per litre today down from high’s of £1.31 earlier this year. This represents a drop of just 16%  – a gap of 25% !

ENERGY – UP 35% last month has not dropped at all anywhere despite the 41% drop in crude.

WHAT DO YOU THINK ?

UPDATE 03-10-09

Unfortunately the petition is now ended, however, are we taking our eyes off the petrol retailers ? Their prices remain at 118p for diesel and around 109p for petrol while the oil is dropping back.

UPDATE 16-09-08

Crude prices are sitting today at $91.5 and our pump prices remain at £1.20 !

UPDATE 11-09-08

Crude prices are sitting at $101 dollars today and our pump prices remain at £1.20 !

Crude oil prices hit a low of 105 dollars per barrel today, this is more than 30% down from the high of June this year.

The pump price remains 120 pence per litre in our area and is much higher in remote areas, it has not tracked down the price of crude.

A petition was be sent to No10 on 30th September 2008.

Oil price today 02-09-08 is $106 per barrel, diesel in our area is still £1.20 per litre, the price is simply NOT following crude prices down. When crude was at it’s top of $147 per barrel, diesel reached £1.29 per litre. CRUDE HAS DROPPED 27%  diesel should therefore be around £1.00 MAX at this time (0.93 if the full 27% is taken into account).

Similarly energy prices are not dropping. So where are the pressure groups now, what can be done about this. I see little evidence of pressure of any kind being exerted on petrol retailers or energy companies. Once again British citizens just lay back and get walked over, we should protest more loudly than this if our voices are to be heard ?

Oil prices have been dropping daily now for a few weeks but yet pump prices remain high. Who says the retailers are not profiteering then ?? This is the typical pattern of pump prices related to oil prices, they always lag and never ever return to previous low prices in relation to previous similar oil prices.

Petrol

A new round of energy price rises was announced by energy firm EDF on Friday. Scottish & Southern also warned the day before that they will have to increase prices in the near future.

Where price rises are totally justified then fair enough – BUT  Scottish & Souther in the very same statement also went on to say – Our profits for the FIRST 3 MONTHS of this year 2008 will only be £1.23 BILLION pounds.

Fat cats

The obvious question is what on earth is done with all this profit, if that is profit for the first 3 months then for full year this is likely to be in the region of £4.92 BILLION Pounds. Where does it all go and who does it go to, shareholders probably get around 55p per share which is not a massive amount.

Must be going to the FAT CATS and others with their noses in the trough ?

 Oil Companies BP & Royal Dutch Shell will also announce profits this week of totally obscene levels and will still tell us they don’t make any money at the pumps. We all know it is the Government making the money at the pumps but this does not satisfy the ordinary working person who is having to spend £1.25 on a litre of fuel to transport themselves around the country and attend work etc.  Someone somewhere has to realise that while these obscene profits are being harvested, the ordinary man and woman on the street feels like they are being mugged on a daily basis.

Oh sorry, I forgot, the very people who can do anything about it are in with the pigs at the trough ! What hope have we got for fairer wealth distribution in this country with this sort of thing allowed to continue day in day out and the good old British public just lay down like lambs to the slaughter and take it !

A good MALT should sort it all out !!

MP’s will vote later today on their salary award. It is tipped that they will ignore Gordie and vote themselves a “restrained” pay award this year but 4.4% or more in the years to come.

Is your MP really worth – £61,820 basic pay  BEFORE any expenses ? (Expense listed here – too many to count !! BUT Huge) Don’t you think this puts them just a little bit out of touch with the very people they “represent” who on average earn just  £20,565 basic pay (according to the BBC – Nov 07) and not much chance of running up and receiving any “expenses”.

MP’s don’t then suffer to the same extent as the normal person in the street if they are earning 3 times basic salary and they can pretty much “expense” anything to cover any of their losses !

Another thing that is perhaps overlooked is that 4.4% or 2.2% of £60K is an awful lot more than 2.2% of £20K. All of us are being offered not much more than 2% of our salaries at this time. This is to cover the massive car fuel price increases (MP’s can of course expense that via their transport costs), increases in energy costs at home (MP’s can of course expense that on their properties in London or wherever they record as their 2nd home), the ever increasing food bills (I expect their is an expense for that too for the MP’s).

 All in all they really do very well indeed out of us all, not to mention the Rolls Royce of pension schemes and pay off’s they get.

Do you think there will ever come a point when us Britons will begin to object really loudly about some of this or will we just let it go on and on ?

The result tonight will be interesting and I am sure it will be hotly discussed on Question Time tonight !

UPDATE: 16:17 – 3rd July

The MP’s have actually voted to restrain their wages, Mmm perhaps they sense the public’s distaste at the massive pay they already get. The results are here

Later on today or this evening, they will vote on their EXPENSES. It is tipped that they may vote to award themselves a lump sum payment in lieu of the current system. This would allow them to “hide” all the expenses from the public. I hope they take the sensible route and vote this down too. I may then credit them with a little social responsibility and understanding of the hardships being experienced by their electorate.

Markets crashing, oil rocketing, electricity into orbit, gas into the stratosphere, mortgages up up up  and  banks  in a total shambles – what to do in these hard times.

How about a bit of dancing ? Could be Scottish Country –

Or a bit of Ballroom

Click on the DANCE Diaries above and dance the night away, relax, enjoy the company of friends and have a grand time. No need to even talk about the econcomy going down the pan or the country that’s broken apart, just dance and relax.

Enjoy !

 RSCDS Forfar branch have recently updated their web site and have added a new blog for members.

The web site is www.rscdsforfar.co.uk

The blog is www.rscdsforfar.wordpress.com

 The web site is to be gradually upgraded and refreshed and the BLOG is a new addition for branch members of Forfar RSCDS.

Two major churches in Forfar were set free with a decision given by Angus Presbytery yesterday evening to abandon all further moves to unite the two congregations. East and Old Church Forfar responded with a very positive statement for the future, embracing the challenge of change and modernisation. This statement is yet to be detailed to the congregation and until it is clear how the office bearers intend to overcome the steady decline in membership, the loss of revenue, the year on year deficit in funds needed to run the church and the complete modernisation of the image of the church then members may not support the office bearers sufficiently to survive.

St Margarets response was somewhat bitter to say the least. This is understandable when details of the long wait and the protracted negotiations emerged.  I’m not sure that the comments made were altogether within the spirit of the christian ethos but at the end of a long road tethers are a little threadbare !

Both organisations currently run an annual deficit in the order of some £10,000.00 The reserves of both churches are generally restricted in what they can be used for since many are bequests and therefore the amount of funding available to cover these deficits must be very limited. Unless a remarkable turnaround is achieved then the future of both these buildings remains in some doubt.

Negotiations for merger have been going on now for nearly 13 years in Forfar. It is a very sad state of affairs when two sets of office bearers cannot agree a sensible way forward for the churches in Forfar. It is even more sad that the congregations involved seem to have been so “attached” to a materialistic thing like a building or set of buildings, and have chosen to ignore the realities around them. Any one of the two sets of buildings involved could have potentially been released for redevelopment. It may even have been possible for the congregations involved to be part of this and to develop one of the buildings into affordable housing for example to help struggling young people get onto the property market, a profit for the church may even have been made. It is possible that this may happen in the future, but I fear it will be a long time before either party feel like talking together about these issues.

As they say, time will tell.