The Church of England means well, it really does; it just finds it very difficult not to put its own interests first. Who could blame us really; that’s what most of us do. Well, we do have this nagging expectation that the Church does the Right Thing. I know that historically we’ve done all sorts of bad things, like burning Catholics, encouraging Puritans to move to America, providing reconnaissance and population control for British colonialism, and generally siding with establishment against the grievances of the poor and needy. But, we’re really sorry: Archbishop Vincent is our buddy now, we have a black Archbishop of York and mission churches on council estates. See, we’re really nice now!
Well, no. We haven’t learnt our lesson. The blessed C of E believes that it is necessary to fund your vicar’s stipend and pension by investing in war and pollution: we simply have to do it! That’s why the Church of England has £200 million invested in the oil industry. We also do some mining and out-of-town retail parks, having shifted funds to the latter from the badly performing market in social housing. We also have £8.4 million invested in a nice Scottish bank called RBS, making us a major shareholder alongside the UK Treasury who now own a 70% stake in the banking group due to the recent, sudden conclusion that the bank’s money wasn’t terribly real and it could do with some very real tax money to help it out. Continue reading
