oops!
Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa - after accusing the Church Times of bowing the knee to the hierarchy of the Church of England in not publishing my letter about taxing their retired clergy, they've been and gone and done it. My grovelling apologies!
The Reverend Victor T. McClaughrey died on the 25th April 2005, aged 91 years. He was a complex irishman always seeking the end of whatever rainbow he was currently looking at. I was his curate at East Preston with Kingston, West Sussex back in the early 1970's. Our relationship was a rollercoaster of promise and disappointment on both sides. One lovely anecdote - in my first year he complained bitterly about being taxed so heavily. I was present when he received a letter from his tax inspector saying that all his discoverable income would be taxed at 50% if he didn't make his tax return by 30th September. Now all his paper work was kept on his desk-top (a big wooden one - this was before computers) and when it grew too big a pile he would cover it all with another table-cloth and start again. I persuaded him to dig back and find the latest tax return, which he did. Together we filled it in, disclosing his stipend and other incomes. Then we came to the bit about wife and children. He was genuinely mystified. "What's that got to do with the taxman?" he asked. I explained that they represented allowances from which he could benefit. We entered the details. I posted it off. About a month later he got a large cheque from the Revenue representing 7 back years of missed opportunities, and a coding notice which negated his current liability. I can't say I loved or respected him, but he was a prisoner of his race and situation. May he find now what he searched for. May he rest in peace and rise in glory!
