Children Indeed

Now I KNOW it's nearly Christmas: once again a huge bear with the worst case of jaundice I've ever seen is the inescapable presence on everything BBC today- websites, television, radio. It's the 25th anniversary of the previously rather low key annual BBC charity appeal, started on the "Children's Hour" on radio back in the twenties, becoming the annual November niceness multi-media mega-bash it now is.

I wonder what the residents of a pleasant Bradford suburb think of the bright spark of a BBC designer born there who, around twenty years ago now, decided that naming the Beeb's new ursine star after their town was a good idea? Perhaps they think less kindly of that corporation servant than most folk do of another former employee of Auntie, Michael Bond, the cameraman-turned-writer who created my favourite childhood bear who hailed from darkest Peru. I seem to recall there's even a statue of Paddington Bear on the concourse of the eponymous London station where he was discovered, complete with marmalade sandwich and luggage label politely requesting "please look after this bear".

The Children in Need mascot, by contrast does not get looked after in the Pennine backbone of England, probably because of the threat of corporate litigation. He gets little mention on the websites discovered on a quick Google exploration and I blame the Beeb. For them "Pudsey" is a trademark; for proud Northern folk it's a grand name for a special place which they laid claim to long before the yellow fellow ever developed what seems to have become an incurable eye condition. It seems to mean that every reference to the town on the web has to be suffixed with "West Yorkshire" for clarification: I bet Network Rail don't have this problem with Paddington train station and the 'smokey' bears at Paddington Green Metropolitan Police nick (rumoured to be the inspiration for Dock Green Dick as Victor Maddern so famously fluffed it) certainly don't.

At first glance on the "proper' Pudsey websites, you find few of the bear necessities of life in the town bearing his name. Oh dear, I seem to have left the pun filter off again- sorry. There does however appear to be a children's facility with the homophonic name of "Buddy Bear's nursery", but I think it's a reet shame that one of the most popular teddys in Britain can't be marketed and used more for the benefit of the little ones in his home town.

GIVE 'EM THE MONEY BARNEY
It was another famous Yorkshireman who made this his catchphrase on "Have A Go", long before Yogi Bear's- sorry, I mean Logie Baird's- great invention really caught the public eye. "Have a Go" was the quiz show on radio where Wilfred Pickles used to hand out the readies to his eager post-war contestants and Ena Sharples, aka Violet Carson, played the old joanna. The prizes must have been miniscule by today's standards: TV abounds with gameshows and easy money and numerous opportunities to make a fast buck with questions even an infant could answer these days.

However, I don't wish to be churlish about the benefits of mass media in raising awareness and getting us off our butts to do something. It is more blessed to give than receive (Jesus' saying reported in Acts 20 verse 25). Children in Need is undoubtedtly an amazing charity and much-needed, again pardon the pun, in an age when the requirements for care of our most vulnerable citizens are as pressing as ever.
This week has seen the resignation of the boss of the much-beleagured Child Support Agency, amid calls for its abolition and for its functions to be handed over to the Inland Revenue. Would that solve the problem? Knowing government these days, probably not; it's been computers, not people that have been blamed for the failure of the CSA to get proper payments of what used to be called "maintenance" to the main carer of the sad casualties of the ever-rising divorce rate in British society today. I can't somehow believe though that someone at the burgeoning Inland Revenue departments will be any the better at automating payments of these essential resources for so many Mums and, let us not forget, Dads too in many cases.

You have to be wary of too much government involvement in helping charities attend to the need of others. Gordon Brown, that great son of the manse, is to be commended for his many efforts already to aid the aiders; the extension of the Gift Aid scheme, an apparent commitment to free the third world from the chains of debt and even the refund of VAT on a forthcoming megastar CD (more on this shortly) Nevertheless, the sceptic in me was a little uneasy about Tony Bear, I mean Blair- oh dear, see what it does to you!- fraternising with the timeless Teddy and a selection of needy littluns this morning outside Number 10. Pudsey needs an eye doctor, not a spin doctor. Incidentally, shouldn't we be doing something about the national scandal which has kept him visually challenged for the best part of 20 years? He must set the record for having to bear the longest wait on an NHS waiting list. Perhaps he ought to try Bearsden Hospital :-)
I shouldn't be too unkind on our PM though. He has an under-five of his own to father alongside the great demands of state, so he knows what it is like for parents and carers today. Suffer the little children to come unto me, for theirs is the kingdom of Heaven. This has been a recurring theme in some of the thoughts and prayers I've heard and read this week, alongside some encouragement to do that other thing which loved and cherished children do so naturally, laugh. It's the best medicine, and a child's laughter is the most hauntingly beautiful sound in an all too dark world.

BAND AID JUNIOR
Sadly, it will take much more than a sticking plaster or a bandana to cure the worst of the world's ills and give all the world's children a future of hope and promise rather than one of despair and dysfunction. Any mortal with a heart looks at the tragedy which is Africa and is tempted to think "what can I do"? Certainly, as mere individuals this is an understandable reaction. The problem seems so vast, there is so little we can do. But this is defeatist talk, not at all becoming of soldiers in the war on want.

A collection of luminaries from the world of rock and pop gathered together in a North London recording studio last weekend as the first step towards their aim to lift Africa out of the slimy pit, and to make a difference as the original Band Aid did so notably two decades ago now. The twelve inch of the original single remains in my record case and I will surely dig it out regularly in the next few weeks. It is a classic of music and a champion of charity. The legendary worldwide concerts which followed in the Summer of 85, and which I heard on the way back from a memorable holiday in Northumberland the year I became a Christian, have deservedly been committed to DVD and are a tempting item to add to my Christmas list.
However, the efforts of "Band Aid 20", as the latest gathering have been rather uninspiringly called, are rather harder to get to like. Last night saw an unprecedented media event: all five UK terrestrial TV channels, together with about 20 satellite and cable stations, simultaneously screened the video of the single at 5.55 p.m GMT. Pudsey may well eclipse Poverty on the Beeb today, but this was undoubtedly tear-jerking television. Images of suffering little wretches in Darfur, Sudan and their helpless parents cannot but bring any feeling soul to the point of wanting to do whatever he can to help the helpless. Unfortunately, though, twenty years of satellite soul-searching scenes have probably dulled our capacity for the kind of reaction that Michael Buerk's epoch-making reports had in the eighties. It's rightly or wrongly called compassion fatigue.

The new cover of the song has its moments- some brilliant guitar work by Macca for intance and, of course, Bono had to deliver the classic line from the original "and tonight thank God it's them, instead of you". I'm sure, financially challenged though I am myself at the moment, that I will buy or download the single just to do my bit, but I'm not convinced this is my "best bit". We need a new world order (isn't that the name of a band too-so where were they last weekend then?) and until all hardened hearts are softened, all swords turned into ploughshares, all pursuit of greed turned to the provision of need, that ain't gonna happen, I'm afraid. Telethons, telly songs, tele-banking. Use it and give it-but remember the real sacrifice has to be one not of metal money but of mental mercy- of love in action. That's a message as much for the pundits as the politicos, for the priests as for the people. Jesus didn't have any money to give, but Jesus saves, amen!