Review

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Music

24 March 2025

6 min read

Sing it out with James Partridge’s joyous assembly

Bad days gets better when we sing together.

Natalie Garrett

Natalie produces and narrates The Seen & Unseen Aloud podcast. She's an Anglican minister and a trained actor.

A pianist sits at a keyboard singing on a stage.

For the first time, in a long time, I can honestly say that last Friday night, I gave it large. I was at a singalong show at the Cheltenham Playhouse, with hundreds of other people belting out the words to some well-known and well-loved songs.

As an actor-turned-vicar, I am one of life’s unusual people for whom singing is a normal and expected part of life. Yet still, I was taken by surprise by what a truly fabulous evening I had, singing gustily along with hundreds of people I didn’t know.

Seen & Unseen’s Belle Tindall wrote an article some time ago about the power of Jacob Collier’s concerts to make strangers feel a sense of belonging. I’ve not been to one, but I feel like I went to a lower brow version of that on Friday night.

I went to James B. Partridge’s Primary School Assembly Bangers Live Show. Which is almost certainly more mainstream and on trend than you think. He arrived on many of our radars when he took Glastonbury by storm last year, but he’s also performed at the Edinburgh Fringe 2024, Latitude, and The Big Feastival. He has been featured on BBC’s The One Show, and ITV’s Loose Women. He featured live on ITV News and on BBC Radio 1 and BBC Radio 2. His online videos have been written about in The Times, The Independent, Buzzfeed and featured in a number of podcasts. And now he’s even got a mention on Seen & Unseen…

For those of you who still have no idea what I’m talking about, let me take you back to Lockdown. Which may be triggering for some, and for that I apologise. Mr Partridge is a primary school music teacher and during Lockdown, he was trying to bring some joy into the lives of the children that he was still trying to teach online. And indeed, into the lives of their parents. He put some “Assembly Bangers” on YouTube, and the videos went viral; they just made people feel better by singing along. And so, it began.

Partridge is a great musician and all-round showman – he knew exactly how to play his audience – who were, by the way, really up for it. Some had even come prepared with fruit shakers and triangles to play. I kid you not. Although the bulk of his playlist were indeed Assembly Bangers, the nostalgic singalong extended beyond the Assembly Hall. He played a couple of bars of the intro and the entire theatre burst into the theme song of 90s Australian soap opera Home and Away. He delighted us with a medley of Alan Menkin’s Disney classics from The Little Mermaid through to Tangled. I even got involved in the SClub7 mash up. Get me.

Partridge told lots of great stories and anecdotes in between songs and one stuck in the mind. He’d recently received a message on Instagram from a woman who had had an accident in her early 20s and, because of brain damage, had lost all memory of her childhood. Until she listened to some of his Assembly Bangers. Through reconnecting with some of the songs she had sung at Primary School, memories attached to those songs started to come back. Amazing. Beautiful.

This is a widely known phenomenon. Music – and specifically singing – is increasingly becoming a feature of dementia care because, in trials, it has proved powerful in sparking memories, often long after other forms of communication have diminished.

There’s also research proving that singing releases endorphins – serotonin and dopamine – the ‘happy’ chemicals that boost your mood and make you feel good about yourself. Singing in the shower or with a hairbrush/microphone is, apparently, genuinely good for you.

At the same time, we all know that, if you can get over your self-consciousness, singing is a fantastic communal activity. Just go to a football match or a karaoke bar to find the proof. And the good news is, it doesn’t matter whether you think you can sing in tune or not: apparently the health benefits will still be the same. Although possibly not for those standing next to you.

With all this in mind, it’s interesting to note that much of the greatest classical music ever written (for choirs and orchestras) was composed in worship of the Christian God. Handel, Mozart, Bach, Brahms, Hayden all churned out the bangers of their time. In the same tradition, John Newton, Charles Wesley, Matt Redmond, Chris Tomlin and Stuart Townend – all have written songs that have helped us, over many generations, to lift our eyes and our souls in song.

The saying, "the one who sings, prays twice," attributed to St. Augustine, helps us understand something about the spiritual power of singing and how it takes our words to the next level. There is something “more” happening when we sing; our whole being is connected, somehow; it’s physical, mental and spiritual all at once.

The Bible is full of songs and exhortations to God’s people to sing in praise of their God – because it’s good for us. As with so much cutting-edge psychological research, we are only catching up with what has been found in the Bible for thousands of years.

Sunday by Sunday in churches around the world, Christians sing songs. Songs that teach or remind us about who God is, songs that lift our souls and minds away from the cares and trials of our lives and the state of the world. Songs that take our eyes off ourselves and transport us into a place of worship. Songs that connect our memories of the past with God’s promises for the future. We sing to join together; we sing to join with the choir of Heaven and experience something of the Kingdom of God that we can all too easily miss otherwise. This is powerful stuff.

Singing along with James Partridge, the Assembly Bangers ranged from the obvious Morning has Broken and All Things Bright and Beautiful to songs steeped more deeply in Christian-ness, such as Give me Oil in my Lamp and Colours of Day (Open the door/let Jesus return[…] Tell the people of Jesus, let his love show).

For the big finale, Partridge took a vote, and the clear winner was Graham Kendrick’s beloved banger, Shine Jesus Shine. Funnily enough, the Sunday morning before this Friday night, I had thought of Graham Kendrick. As I pressed play on a CD player in a tiny medieval church in a tiny Cotswold village, I thought how Kendrick probably wouldn’t have anticipated Shine Jesus Shine to lift such ancient rafters. But he almost certainly wouldn’t have expected it to be sung by hundreds of theatre-going people who probably haven’t been anywhere near a church in years, if ever.

By the end of James B. Partridge’s Primary School Assembly Bangers Live Show, I have to say I felt brilliant. I had had a bad day and somehow the joy of singing had made me feel better. The joy of singing with other people and making a shared noise, singing words of prayer and praise as loudly and as freely as my lungs could support, just made me feel better. If you can get tickets, I heartily recommend catching the tail end of his sell out tour so you can experience it for yourself. It’s a bizarre event, a glorious mish mash of secular and sacred but one that the church can learn from and which I can’t help thinking makes God smile.

By way of Epilogue, as we all poured out of the theatre, and towards our cars, I heard a gaggle of strangers-become-friends skipping across the car park singing,

Flow, river, flow

Flood the nations with grace and mercy,

Send forth Your word,

Lord, and let there be light.

To which I say a happy and hearty Amen…

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Comment

Economics

29 October 2024

6 min read

How to tax ethically to avoid a two-tier society

From income tax to property and inheritance taxes, which is fairer?

Laurence Fletcher

Laurence is a journalist at the Financial Times.

Sarah Agnew on Unsplash.

Few doubt that Chancellor Rachel Reeves will be putting up taxes when she presents her first Budget on October 30th.

The political narrative of recent months has very much been of an alleged fiscal “black hole” of £22bn - or is it £40bn? - that somehow needs to be filled.

While the size of the shortfall and the identity of those responsible are both hotly disputed, and despite a lack of detail from the Treasury about what it actually consists of, the questions now being asked are not whether taxes will rise but which ones and by how much.

Months of speculation have focused on employer National Insurance, capital gains tax and freezing income tax thresholds as areas that Reeves could look to for the additional revenue.

But beyond the immediate issue of raising enough revenue to make good any shortfall, lies a deeper, trickier question about the way in which taxes should be levied for the good of society. If a government is to force people and companies to hand over their money, then what is the most ethical way to do this? Who should pay and who shouldn’t? How can tax be used to reduce inequality and build a better society?

Answering such questions is, of course, far from straightforward, because there are plenty of other factors in play.

For instance, some taxes are surely levied because they are simpler to collect. Take income tax - an unpopular measure introduced in 1799, then abolished before being reintroduced as a supposed temporary measure. It could certainly be argued that taxing people’s income - their attempt to get on in life and improve their lot in life - is less “fair” than taxing wealth that has been accumulated by someone’s ancestors years ago. Working hard and earning income is often surely a way of breaking down class divisions. But income tax - contributing 28 per cent of UK government tax take in 2023-24, according to The Institute for Fiscal Studies - has the advantage that it is relatively difficult for the average worker at a UK company to avoid it. Ease of levying it is surely a driver.

Equally, some taxes that might seem “fairer” have deliberately not been levied because of the difficulty in collecting them, and/or because to try to do so could be counterproductive.

A wealth tax, for instance, would be “economically damaging”, according to one of the UK’s highest profile tax experts Dan Neidle.

Or take the politically contentious issue of non-doms, a colonial era tax break allowing rich foreigners to avoid UK tax on overseas income. It would be fairer, the argument goes, to tax them on the whole of their income. If they are going to be resident in the UK, then surely they should be taxed like a UK resident whose home is here?

Former Chancellor Jeremy Hunt abolished this regime earlier this year but left a number of concessions that the incoming Labour government pledged to abolish. But non-doms are tax-sensitive and highly mobile, and a number of jurisdictions compete to attract them. Many are entrepreneurs and wealth creators that many countries need. Reports have suggested a clampdown could raise no money or even cost money and could drive people away.

“Housing is being treated as a commodity. The problem is, it’s not; it’s not just an asset. It has utility value and a communal and quasi-spiritual value, enabling people to feel rooted.”

Paul Williams

So, what can be done to use tax in an ethical way? Paul Williams, research professor of marketplace theology and leadership at Regent College, Vancouver and chief executive of the Bible Society, takes a Biblical perspective that he believes offers some solutions.

He takes as his starting point a story from the gospel of Matthew, where Jesus is asked whether people should pay taxes to Caesar. The question is a trap - either Jesus gives his backing to taxation that is highly unpopular with the Jewish people, or he rejects the tax in an act of rebellion against the Romans.

Jesus replies that they should “pay to the Emperor what belongs to the Emperor, and pay to God what belongs to God.” We are to pay our taxes to those in authority, but we are also to honour God.

While Williams believes that too much emphasis is placed on the Budget and political parties’ promises to be able to fix everything, and that a more radical rethink of our economy is required, he also sees room for positive tweaks to the current system.

One key area is the property market, the manifestation of so much inequality in society, with some people owning multiple houses while others cannot afford to buy one.

Williams argues that the ready availability of debt finance has allowed those who already hold assets to easily acquire properties, turning real estate into an investable asset class to the detriment of many of the poorer in society.

“The reason there’s so many homeless people and empty houses is due to debt finance. It makes it easy for a relatively small proportion of the population to acquire a large percentage of the assets.

“The system has allowed a structure in which a small advantage in the beginning can lead to big, big differences over time.”

Williams highlights parts of Devon and Cornwall that have been, he says, “completely ruined” by wealthy people from elsewhere buying second homes, leaving property “out of reach of anyone who lives and works there”.

Nevertheless, he believes taxation can be used in this area to help level the playing field.

He proposes a “pretty punitive” marginal rate of tax on ownership of more than one home. (Stamp duty only partly does the job and is a blunt instrument also affecting people moving homes, thereby makes mobility expensive).

“You want to disincentivise the way the housing market is used for speculation,” he said.

“Housing is being treated as a commodity. The problem is, it’s not; it’s not just an asset. It has utility value and a communal and quasi-spiritual value, enabling people to feel rooted.”

Buy-to-lets, meanwhile, are better than having empty second or third homes, but “wouldn’t it be better if occupiers could buy that house?” he adds.

Meanwhile, research by the Financial Times recently found a huge wealth gap between the average millennial and the top 10 per cent of millennials, who are benefiting from family wealth to accumulate substantial housing assets.

So, would increasing the rate of inheritance tax - one of the most hated of taxes - and/or lowering the threshold also help reduce some of this inequality? After all, how is it fair that one child in the UK is born to inherit large property wealth while another is born to inherit little or nothing? Or, even worse, that second child will only ever be able to afford to be the tenant of the first, paying them rent for the rest of their lives?

Williams is not a fan of inheritance tax per se, arguing that it is “not part of the package” in a Biblical image of a flourishing economy.

But he adds an important caveat: “the playing field is not level.

“There might be circumstances to impose a one-off tax on the very wealthy… if you want a transition to a more equitable society.”

Such steps are not easy to take. It is, he admits, probably “career suicide” for a politician to adopt such views. But if we are to take steps towards a fairer way of life, and avoid a two-tier society in decades to come, then maybe the conversation needs to shift this way. Perhaps the Budget could be the time to start.