THOUGHT FOR THE DAY - 22nd March 2007

The Rt Rev James Jones, Bishop of Liverpool

As we know The Chancellor yesterday delivered his Eleventh Budget and may well be on the verge of changing Office and offices. Meanwhile Adam Smith has won the latest round of musical chairs and taken the place of Edward Elgar on the back of the £20 note.

Adam Smith, the Scottish philosopher and economist, is reputedly the Chancellor’s mentor rather than other figures of history that have been resurrected this week to cast a shadow over Westminster’s political manoeuvrings!

In his book ‘The Wealth of Nations’ Adam Smith showed great foresight. Even though like others of his day he viewed the earth as a limitless larder he was very conscious of the vice of wastefulness and especially the profligacy of Governments. ‘Capitals’ he declared, choosing his words very carefully, ‘are increased by parsimony and diminished by prodigality.’

I’ve wondered whether this dictum might have been in the mind of the Chancellor as he introduced a new range of green taxes to cut our prodigal use of the earth’s resources. What budgets reveal is that Governments levy taxes not just to fill the common purse for public services but also to change people’s behaviour.

Pundits will forever debate whether it’s the job of Government to tell us how to live our lives. Yet if prodigality and profligacy are the enemy of capital and a threat to the planet responsible politicians acting on our behalf surely can’t ignore it.

Today happens to be World Water Day. And campaigners are drawing attention to the increasing scarcity of this natural resource. When you hear that seventy percent of the planet is covered by water but only one percent is drinkable it makes you think twice about turning on a tap and leaving it running furiously while you occasionally whisk your tooth brush under it when brushing your teeth.

But telling people how to live their lives is a tricky business exposing you to media scrutiny and to charges of hypocrisy from the new puritans. Although I’ve been heartened here in Liverpool by the response to the “Carbon Fast” we launched this Lent, and by how willing people are to reduce their impact on the earth.

There’s a familiar story from the life of Christ which has a twist in the tail that’s worth pondering. It’s the feeding of the five thousand people with just a few loaves and a couple of fish. After giving everybody a feast of a picnic Jesus ordered his followers to go round and collect up all the leftovers. The reason given? – ‘so that nothing might be wasted’. We’re not told what they did with it, or even the theological principle behind this check on such prodigality which Jesus himself had created. We’re left to mull it over. But no doubt such an act of parsimony would have been music to the ears of that auld Scottish economist!