蜜芽传媒

Good morning. The implications of the vote in the House of Lords on Monday has rumbled on all week. Leaving aside the particular issue of tax credits, all parliamentarians agree that much of the relationship of the Commons and the Lords is governed by certain conventions. Conventions are not legally binding but they are generally accepted as being in the public interest. There are strong conventions and weak ones. At the weaker end they elide into customs and manners, which change from age to age. I was brought up to give my seat to a woman. Now when I travel on the underground I find it both touching and disconcerting that even women who are getting on a bit seem willing to offer me their seat. On the other hand mothers sometimes plonk their children in seats when in earlier generations adults would have had priority. Stronger than this giving up of one鈥檚 seat is the English convention of queueing. Of course this too is culture specific as anyone who has travelled abroad knows, but in this country there is a widespread tacit understanding that making an orderly queue is in the best interests of everyone. It鈥檚 not written down, it鈥檚 not a law but on the whole we observe it. In fact all day long we are guided by a mixture of custom and convention, some specific to our family like what we do at meals, some local, some national, like the poppies for Remembrance Day now beginning to be worn.

Fundamental to both Judaism and Christianity is a very strong form of convention to which the Bible gives the name Covenant. Though referred to in writing it is not legally binding. Indeed the prophet Jeremiah talks about God writing this Covenant in our hearts. The Jewish people think of a special covenant which binds them to witness to the Holy One in special ways, especially good deeds. Christians think of a new Covenant or relationship opened up to humanity as a whole through Jesus. But both Jews and Christians draw upon an earlier Covenant still. It comes to my mind every time I see a rainbow. For after the great flood Noah saw such a rainbow and understood this to be a sign that God wished to continue to sustain life on earth. 鈥淎s long as earth lasts, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, they will never cease鈥�, he heard. So as he said 鈥淲henever the bow appears in the cloud, I shall see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and living creatures of every kind on earth.鈥�. This is not a legal document. But according to Jews and Christians it is in response to this that all humans are to live and all life is to be governed, especially now of course, as we think of our heavy responsibility in this for the wellbeing of future generations.