There is a publicity horror that pollutes community life in Newham. So watch and learn Kim Jong-Il, ‘Dear Leader’ and dictator of North Korea, you are about to receive a master-class in personality-cult politics courtesy of the Labour Mayor of London Borough of Newham – who of course is not to be confused with the Tory Mayor of London, Boris Johnson.

Supported and promoted by a bloated council PR department with its annual budget – last time I looked – of over £1m of taxpayers’ money, public life in Newham is dominated by one man, Newham’s elected executive Mayor, who preens, pouts and promotes himself at every photo opportunity. He never graces a function or event without the council cameraman in tow. On bus stops and billboards, in council offices and doctors’ surgeries, at train stations and community centres – the Mayor advances himself and his message at every opportunity.

Newham Council is currently installing a running track in a small park in my ward. So who takes the credit for the project? The residents who requested it? The taxpayers who fund it? The council officers who design and manage it? The contractors who undertake the work? No, a large notice by the park gate tells us that it’s “Brought to you by the Mayor of Newham” and that investing in Newham’s parks is the fulfilment of the Mayor’s (election) promise number 15.

Of course the notice itself (estimated all-in cost: £500) is also paid for by Joe Public.

Every fortnight the Council (aka ‘the Mayor’) distributes a free glossy ‘Newham Mag’ into every home in the borough – and guess who always features prominently in it? A cynical wager has developed amongst those who bother to open it; they bet on how many photos of himself the Mayor will publish in each edition. It’s never less than a narcissistic six.

So it was a breath of fresh air when recently I attended a meeting at neighbouring Redbridge Council. Newham Mayor’s publicity machine cannot bulldoze alternative viewpoints in Redbridge as it does here; Redbridge residents and councillors of all parties including Labour are up in arms about Newham’s decision to allow a 50% increase in flights at London City Airport, which has a direct impact on Redbridge people living under the flight path. I also joined a related demo in Redbridge organised by Fight The Flights campaign (here) .

There has been a similar response in Waltham Forest too. So I wrote the following letter to the main newspaper in our borough, the Newham Recorder:

Dear Editor,

The Mayor must be very frustrated.

Each year he spends a fortune of Newham taxpayers’ money on public relations promoting himself and his administration. In glossy magazines and newspaper adverts; on billboards and bus stops; at borough events and in the borough parks – all over Newham there are photos of the Mayor and messages telling us how much wonderful work he is doing in the borough.

But his story doesn’t seem to have seeped over Newham’s boundaries into neighbouring boroughs. I recently went to a Redbridge Council meeting at Ilford where councillors of all parties, including Labour, were unanimous in strongly condemning Newham for lack of consultation over the approved increase of flights at London City Airport. Redbridge residents live under the flight path too, yet like Newham residents they have been sidelined and stitched up. One Redbridge councillor said that the lack of dialogue from Newham “was politically insensitive and morally reprehensible”.

The previous month, Waltham Forest councillors from all parties including Labour unanimously agreed to make strong representation to Newham’s Mayor over the airport expansion. They are also considering legal action about the flight changes over their borough about which they were not consulted. Waltham Forest residents too have been sidelined and stitched up by Newham Council.

Clearly the Mayor’s public relations campaign hasn’t reached into these other boroughs. They can see his administration for what it really is.

Perhaps he ought to spend another fortune preening and promoting himself there. But this time, not at our expense.

Yours sincerely,

So far the Newham Recorder has declined to publish my letter.

I wonder why?

It’s more than just City and stock-market panic and it’s more than a bad recession at the bottom of a boom-and-bust economic cycle. We are peering into the abyss. It’s a financial and economic meltdown that we’ve not seen our lifetime.

Like the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami that gathered strength out at sea and took time before it hit land with such destructive effect, this meltdown has been some time coming. And it looks like the dams and dykes hastily erected by the world’s governments by way of multi-billion dollar bail-outs won’t be enough to halt the devastation.

The implications are yet to become clear, except that life certainly won’t be the same again. The world changed seven years ago on 9/11 and it’s changing even more during this autumn of 2008.

We can argue about the cause, and we should grieve over the impact on vulnerable people around the world as social services in the wealthy countries and aid programmes in the third world are slashed and unemployment balloons. Collectively we’re in for a tough time.

But there is one side-benefit. Here in the UK we’ll soon be burying the shallow, secular, and materialistic consensus that’s blighted our decision-makers, opinion-formers and public life over the past 30 years and that’s driven our phony borrow-til-you-bust shop-til-you-drop consumer society and our superficial glossy five-minutes-of-fame celebrity culture.

Encouraged by easy borrowing and lured by relentless media advertising, we’ve chased the illusion that money buys success and conspicuous consumption is the good life, and we’ve recklessly built mountains of personal debt. Now the chickens are coming home to roost big-time.

A political expression of this consensus by Matthew Parris – usually a stimulating and excellent writer – illustrates the point. Towards the end of Tony Blair’s premiership he reflected on the Blair decade in a Times article entitled, “I do love Blair’s Britain” (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/matthew_parris/article1737544.ece)

It was the high water mark of the liberal consensus and good epitaph for it too.

Having argued that there was truth and a real idea in the stylish phrase “cool Britannia”, Parris wrote “A defining moment (of Blair’s premiership) for me was the union of Elton John and David Furnish.”

So that’s it. In the midst of all the gritty issues (poverty and inequality, NHS and education, global warming and climate chaos, Islamic terrorism and rogue nuclear states) facing Britain’s Labour government through the turn of the century, Parris’ “defining moment” was the celebrity Hello!-glam civil partnership ceremony of the world’s best light entertainer.

Not even Blair’s Iraq war! The sheer superficiality and complacency of Parris’ liberal-luvvy value system speaks volumes about our media elite.

But the consensus is breaking down; it doesn’t of course fit the times we’re living in now or for the foreseeable future. There is a new confusion, anxiety and fearfulness which leads us away from superficiality and complacency and towards a new openness and a questioning of assumptions.

And so, at last, there’s a new social need and opportunity for the church, as it’s faith that drives out fear.

This is of course not a need and opportunity for unfortunate short-term political comment such as that by the Archbishops of Canterbury and York about greedy banker-robbers (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/sep/25/religion.creditcrunch). But rather for the eternal verities of the Gospel of Truth – the Truth which sets people free from their dark pits of fright, panic and powerlessness and into the broad sun- (and Son-) lit uplands of the love of God and neighbour.

Actually, it may be that in the event people will be tempted into the ephemeral floss of New Age religions, or into the demand for submission to the Allah of Islam, or into worshipping the variety of Hindu gods.

But it’s only in Christ that they will find the true rock upon which they can stand and keep their heads and rebuild their lives when everyone else is losing theirs.

The question is, after decades of secular battering, will UK churches regain their nerve and recover their confidence in time to help society in its hour of need?