Hello?

So, the Joseph Rowntree-MacIntosh foundation has decreed that a salary of less than £13,000 per annum is what constitutes poverty in an advanced industrial economy. Poppycock! Balderdash! I mean, just look at some of the things 'they' claim one needs to stay alive, for heaven's sake: a moving television screen; digital wireless sets; mobile telephones; dvds (whatever they are). No mention of books, I see. Or pianofortes! Dear Lord above, one wonders sometimes how the other half lives. And what they spend their thirteen grand a year on! The Church, of course, is not known for its largesse; we choral vicars draw a basic salary of slightly less than half the sum that Mr Joseph Rowntree has declared to be the minimum necessary to keep oneself above the poverty-line. I have neither plasma wide screen television set, nor digi-radio appliance; as for the confounded nuisance that is mobile telephones - well, don't get me started! Why, only the other day a telephone rang in the middle of the Subdean's sermon. The entire cathedral chapter started fumbling in their cassock pockets, but to no avail. Eventually, the rather red-faced preacher realised that the noise was emanating from his pulpit. The Subdean took the offending article from his pocket, studied it briefly and proceeded to wind up his sermon in record time. Mrs Subdean, apparently, was sitting in the congregation listening (listening!?) and had texted him to tell him that his dinner would be on the table in precisely fifteen minutes.