With knobs on

The Rev Martin Dudley said:

"Nor is it the first time there have been prayers, hymns or readings following a civil partnership. It may be that this ceremony had rather more knobs on. It may also be the only one we know about."

That's the Church's problem with gay marriage - too many knobs.

Men of honour

Perhaps I was a bit hasty this morning in targeting Murdoch alone for his attempts to manipulate UK politics by media proxy. He's been doing it for years, with impunity.

If MacKenzie did stand, and win, he would merely join a long line of MPs who have received earnings from external employment in addition to their MP salary or enjoyed the the attentions of corporate lobby groups. Possibly the difference with MacKenzie is that he is being honest about who is giving him the instructions.

Rosebud

The news that former Sun editor Kelvin MacKenzie may stand against David Davis should cause great concern. In a by-election which looks like it's going to be fought over a principle of civil liberties, another ethical issue which must come under examination is the media power which can be wielded by one of the possible candidates.

If MacKenzie stands, it will be for the Sun, and ultimately the Rupert Murdoch party.

As we've seen in the past, the Murdoch empire will swing into action in support of its chosen candidate. Such a cheapening of our electoral system, bankrolled by a foreign media mogul, leaves a bad taste and is incredibly worrying.

Make your bloody mind up!

Is the Alliance a political party or not? Curly's covered the Alliance's shenanigans several times in the past, and he returns to mystery of the real status of the Alliance in his coverage of the departure of councillor Tom Defty. It seems the Alliance don't know what they are either.

Ahmed Khan said:

"Comparing us to the Labour party is a nonsense. We're not a party, and any attempts to make us into one are swiftly quashed."

Nonsense eh? We'll ignore the number of old Labour bodies in the Alliance, but the term "swiftly quashed" sounds oddly like a whip.

Jane Branley said:

"Everyone's got to find an excuse to leave a political party, and it seems that Coun Defty has found his."

What? Khan just said you're not a party! Someone's out of the loop here.

To add to the confusion, the Gazette has referred to the Alliance as a party several times, even giving their 'party leader' Jane Branley the opportunity to voice her party's position before the last election in an on-line video broadcast. In her on-line pre-election address, she said that she was:

"leader of the largest minority party which are the independents on South Tyneside Council"

Uh-oh, there goes the P-word again. But hold on, the Alliance website says in big red letters:

"The Independent Alliance is NOT AN ALTERNATIVE POLITICAL PARTY"

So there we have it. They are a political party, and they're not a political party. I hope that's cleared things up.

The Alliance piously made a lot of capital out of the peculiarities of last year's Beacon and Bents voting, so it seems a tad hypocritical that they don't apply the same rigorous electoral expectations to themselves.

As Curly pointed out, to all intents and purposes the Alliance is a party. Why don't they stop hiding behind ambiguous electoral rules and do the right thing and register as one?

I've complained in the past about Labour members having lost a sense of principle after their party's warmongering and steady walk towards a police state. However, some of them still have the moral courage to stand by their principles.

Brown's desperate attempt to bolster his leadership, embodied in raising the pre-charge detention limit for terrorism suspects to 42 days, rallied most of the pliant troops who put party politics before the protection of our civil liberties. But not without some last minute horse-trading.

I've never often had an occasion to agree with Diane Abbott, but she rightly accused the government of:

"trading ancient civil liberties in a grubby bazaar"

Every concession Brown gave the wavering backbenchers was bought with another scrap of our freedom.

Kudos to Jim Cousins (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) and Chris Mullin (Sunderland South), the only Tyne/Wear Labour MPs with the cojones to stand up against Brown. Respect to all who voted against this disgusting charade.

PS - the Unionists where whores under the Tories. They're still on their back - but taking Brown's shilling.

DUP d'oh!

Free speech is great. It lets you know who the bigoted asshats are. Like the DUP's Iris Robinson, who has suggested that homosexuality is a psychiatric disorder and that gays should seek counselling. And yes, you guessed it, religion has something to do with it.

What a complete fruit loop. Perhaps someone should offer counselling to the bigoted dysfunctional shit shower that is the DUP.

Goodbye Tesco

MPs flocked to vote to stop toffs fox-hunting, but turn a blind eye to the daily poor treatment of millions of chickens in the UK.

The campaign for improved poultry welfare has been picked up by the likes of Compassion in World Farming and various celebs, as unfortunately we are dependent on retailers and the ethical concerns of consumers to drive a humane farming policy which should really be addressed by Government.

The MPs who voted for their furry fox friends aren't the only hypocrites.

I've shopped at Tesco. It was a poor compromise of sorts - they led the way in organic food in terms of supermarket retailing, but I was unsettled by their sharp approach to planning and crushing local competition, known as 'Tescopoly'. The fact that their type of business is dependent on, and encourages, growth in burning fossil fuels, burns too.

Pushing the trolley around their stores, it's hard to reconcile the comfort of the nice shiny clean surroundings with the ethical dilemmas inherent in the business models of the big food retailers.

I'm aware that there's constant compromise with any purchase choice, but sometimes, enough is enough.

I can't stomach Tesco's behaviour any more: their refusal to recognise the impact of the type of chicken farming they profit from and dirty tricks they're using to keep it that way.

If Tesco took steps to take their chicken supply to a higher standard of animal welfare like the RSPCA Freedom Food standard it would be a start, and the rest of the retail grocery sector would follow.

Green weekend

This year's Newcastle Green Festival takes place tomorrow and Sunday at Leazes Park in Newcastle Upon Tyne. The free festival's Saturday event is a great day out for the family, whilst Sunday is aimed more at the adults (although not exclusively) with great live music (powered by chip fat!) and beer tents.

Tee shirts in disguise

Terrorists must be pissing themselves with laughter at how scared we are of our own shadows. And tee shirts. Perhaps the stoopids at Heathrow would be better spending their time looking for real guns?

Fortunately El Reg was on the spot to get a photo of the incident.

We went to war on lies

If there's anyone due for eternity with a rectally administered red hot poker it's Iraq war cheerleader John Bolton. Even though Monbiot's attempted arrest was a doomed stunt, it's important to continue to provoke debate, and never let those who backed this war think it's been forgotten about. That includes our local MP, David Miliband.

Clerical error?

Usually I radge against the clergy when they put their foot in it. In this case, my initial radge-o-meter was turned down to 'mildly irritated' by the furore that the comments of Gordon Mursell, the Bishop of Stafford, has caused. True, the comments don't really help things, with tenuous comparisons of our society's relative inaction over global heating with Austrian nutter Josef Fritzl, but Mursell has unintentionally highlighted the barely rational belief structures of climate change denial.

Whilst those in denial over climate change either choose not to follow the science or cherry-pick their sources, it seems that many have taken his comments very much to heart as a personal attack on their denial ideology. The Bish's language and his position as a cleric confirms the tin-foil hat delusions of many deniers who like to portray climate change as some kind of new age religion, some even going so far as to proudly proclaim themselves as 'heretics'. The comments on the Telegraph thread are clear evidence of this group-think.

Perhaps using such language makes for some fiery pulpit bashing, but using monster á la mode Fritzl just seems like Mursell's trying too hard to stimulate debate. Well, it worked, but I don't think Mursell expected such a Pavlovian response.

If any comparison of deniers or those opposed to action is to be made, the most valid is to the supporters of appeasement before the Second World War. They didn't want to believe the evidence before their eyes, and weren't stirred into action until the bombs started falling.

We have faced similar challenges. Acid rain, ozone layer depletion and particulate emissions. We came up with solutions to them all through agreement and policy, despite opposition. We can do it again, although with climate change, it needs to be a response on a much bigger scale.

Back to the war analogy. Since tackling climate change now needs a war footing response, I wonder if our children and grand children will ask us in the future "What did you do in the war against climate change?"

Pizza cone!

When I was visiting Edinburgh, I stayed in a caravan park in the village of Coldingham near St Abbs for a couple of days. It was an ideal location - 45 minutes from Edinburgh and 5 minutes walk from the local pub.

This poster was on the window of the caravan park's chippy.

Pizza Cone is new to me. Since the chippy was never open whilst I was there I didn't get a chance to sample this delicacy, which if in the Scottish style I guess would be deep-fried.

How long before this hits the streets of South Tyneside, vying for fast food supremacy with the artery destroyer the Geordie Special*?

* Note: Geordie Special = pizza with kebab meat

Writing the wrongs

I've been away for a few days in Edinburgh and it looks like I've missed all the fun on Curly's blog, where I've become an opprobrium magnet for daring to criticise a spook book written by Mike Hallowell and Darren Ritson. Presumably the posters are the book's authors Hallowell and Ritson, or maybe it's a mischievous poltergeist. You never know on t'internet.

I could respond on Curly's blog, but I don't want to further damage my welcome there - and I wish to avoid being slapped with another 'use your own blog' yellow card.

However, I wasn't sure how to respond, or if I should. Would a response feed their apparent self-righteous indignation or would a challenge provide them with a sense of credibility they don't deserve? Or both?

The whole episode is a bit odd. A couple of short tongue-in-cheek critical comments lit the touch-paper and attracted such fury and lengthy, pained replies. Imagine the phone call between the "two battle-hardened paranormal investigators" (seriously, that's what they call themselves):

"Darren? Yeah, it's Mike. We got trouble on the internet."

"What's up Mike?"

"Some guy has posted on Curly's Corner Shop. He says our book is shit."

"He did? Let's get spooky on his ass. I'll post with awful grammar just so no one thinks I'm a poltergeist."

"Good stuff Darren. I'll try and look outraged, and I'll rope Dave in to blow off his usual anti-blogger angst."

"What about BA Baracus?"

"He won't let no fool get him on no plane."

"Pity. But it's still a good plan."

"Go team paranormal!"

I know I should have gone for a Scooby/Shaggy thing, but the A-Team is way cooler.

Anyhow, I resolved I shouldn't go for a full blow by blow response to their desperate attempts to avoid looking like complete tits, and decided to just concentrate on one whopping howler. Ritson provided a classic and quaintly amusing example of fatuous ignorance in this misconception:

"Did’nt [sic] people once mock and ridicule Christopher Columbus after telling people the world was in fact round and not flat?"

No Darren, they didn't, but chances are that if there were such people, those doing the mocking would have believed in the supernatural too.

However, a conscientious and objective researcher (or a history head like me) would know that during Columbus' time most scholars and navigators worked on the basis that the world was spherical. It wasn't a new concept: the ancient Greeks had provided observational and mathematical proofs and even local boy Bede described the characteristics of a spherical world at least 750 years before Columbus. The main contention with Columbus' adventure was over his estimation of the planet's circumference, and over that, Columbus was wrong. This isn't to take anything from Columbus' achievements: history is made by such risk-takers.

Even without referencing Ritson's historical inaccuracy, his argument is based on a creaking non sequitur fallacy - mockery or ridicule has no value in establishing the truth or otherwise of the statements being mocked. And yes, I am aware of the faint irony.

Fair due to Ritson, the 'Columbus was mocked' assertion is a common misconception, fed by reliance on poor source material. Perhaps next time though, before accusing someone of knowing nothing, Ritson could employ some intellectual rigour first and check his facts before making himself look like a complete numb-nuts.

Columbus should have texted to put him straight.

Sanity prevails

For once, but it highlights the ludicrous legal situation where a respect for a religion has outweighed free speech.

In the Guardian Marina Hyde treats the issue, and Scientology, with the contempt it deserves.

Silly cults

The next time the police moan about red tape and endless form filling sucking the life out of their jobs, I'll remember this episode of our brave boys and girls in blue in action and ignore their whinging for the bollocks it is.

The City of London police, members of which have in the past benefited from church of Scientology's largesse, went to great lengths to hand a prosecution notice to a protester who refused to stop displaying a placard describing Scientology as a 'cult' at a demonstration outside the cult's London headquarters. What a pointless waste of time.

Even if we ignore the barmy interpretation of a dodgy law, teenagers are the victims of shootings and stabbings all over London, and some are found carrying weapons in public. Yet the police went to the bother of checking with the CPS before handing the summons over to a teenager who had did nothing worse than express, in a public place, his opinion about a club whose members believe in an imaginary premise.

The police interpreted the use of the word 'cult' as "abusive and insulting". Abusive and insulting pretty much describes the police's attitude to free speech.

Hopefully the judge hearing this case will recognise what a time wasting piece of bullshit policing this is and throw it straight out.

Ethical bombs

A morally vacant cockweasel. It reminds me of BAE Systems' press release last year about lead-free bullets and low emissions grenades.

Whilst MPs publicly wring their hands over the ethical dilemmas in abortion and human genetic research, these same MPs let loons like Codner casually walk the corridors of government, lobbying for the arms industry - with nary a blink.

Foreign Secretary and South Shields MP David Miliband, who has managed to avoid showing his colours at the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill votes, has a chance to stake out the ethical high ground at the Dublin conference.

Will he be listening to arms establishment goons like Codner, or to the 30,000 people who signed up to stop the UK using cluster bombs?

United in chauvinism

I hadn't planned to post today because I'm feeling shit (I'm currently drinking a Lemsip, and feeling that someone has taken blowtorches to the back of my eyes), but the loons are outdoing themselves so I couldn't avoid a couple of quick comments.

The political parties in Northern Ireland have finally agreed on something. That they are all cockweasels. The DUP, Sinn Féin, the UUP and the SDLP have united to declare that women are second class citizens who shouldn't have the right to decide what happens to their bodies.

A member of the Northern Ireland Assembly's 'pro-life' group (oh yes, the sweet irony that former murdering bastards in Sinn Féin are somehow pro-life) played the jurisdiction card:

"The issue of abortion is a matter that should be left to the assembly itself."

Perhaps it would be better to let any such amendment pass and leave "the issue of abortion" for women to decide for themselves.

Liberating Iraq

Is this really what we invaded Iraq for?

Chilling:

"I know God is blessing me for what I did"

I suppose that's what people of faith do: let an imaginary being take responsibility for their brutal behaviour.

Creepy Cardinal

Mad Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor is at it again. Whinging about how folk don't take enough notice of his barmy rantings and choose to walk away from his criminally insane church. He manages to confuse the meaning of the terms 'atheist' and 'secular', just to show how those pesky atheists and secular folk are a bad lot.

Frankly, who cares? Well, Cormac for one. It's an odd target for him to choose: it's not as if atheism is a movement, has a defining ideology or set of policies like those religions competing with Cormac's. But for some reason, this absence of belief in the supernatural terrifies the religious. It's as if blind faith is a virtue and rational questioning a sin. Indeed, Cormac even suggested that the reason so many people turned away from god is because they were thinking too much about it:

"We spoke too easily about God, we spoke perhaps in the wrong way and we treated God as an idea rather than a living mystery to be approached in silence and prayer rather than in the arguments of the mind."

He also had a go at secularism (just like his chum the Archbish of Canterbury), presumably because he thinks the religious should have more say on what goes on in society (just like his chum the Archbish of Canterbury). As if a church that condemns people to slow deaths knows better.

But it wasn't all bad news for the non religious. To show us just how 'moderate' he really is, Cormac said:

"I want to encourage people of faith to regard those without faith with deep esteem because the hidden God is active in their lives as well as in the lives of those who believe."

This is despite according to his religion non religious folk will be cast into a fiery pit or be forced to watch Big Brother for eternity.

Bless. Patronising bastard.


Update

Just came across this wisdom from kooky Cormac:

"Danger because, if you go just by reason, I think, without faith, without belief in God, you can imagine, for instance in the last century, some of the faith(less), or supposedly faithless societies - people, whether it's like Hitler or Stalin, bringing up - having a country in which, if you like, a God free zone, a dictatorship ruled by reason, and where does it lead? To terror and oppression"

Let me get this right Cormac - you think reason leads to terror and oppression?

What a fucktard.

Less well off language

An issue which almost slipped under the radar on David Miliband's 'keep the poor making the rich richer' Gazette article was his use of language.

Poverty is bad news, and the Labour spinners know it. So discussions of poverty have become clouded by obscurantist language. The phrase "less well off" is a classic example of an Orwellian euphemism, recognising that terms like "poor" or "low income" are taboo words which don't score enough happy voter points on the spin-o-meter. Grinding poverty gets a kind of 'glass half full' re-branding exercise.

It's all very doubleplusungood.

Renewables nuked

Micheal Meacher provides a calm and sober assessment for the future of nuclear energy policy. Nuke fails on several criteria - fuel supply, energy security, economics, waste management and sustainability.

Despite all this, the Labour government is pushing it's nuke dreams (blessed by the Tories), whilst at the same time quietly planning to water down our EU renewables obligations, nicely removing a low carbon competitor for nuclear.

It makes you wonder who is running our energy policy. At the moment it looks like the nuclear industry.

Desperate cries of a dinosaur

This Guardian interview with former chancellor Nigel Lawson revealed a man riling against climate change, but without a rational or coherent argument. Relying on the clichéd accusation of climate change as a religion (but presumably the only religion based on science) and portraying sceptics as martyrs, Lawson attempts to paint the issue as taking place in an Inquisitorial environment.

He seems to be running a multi-tiered denial strategy: it isn't happening; it is but it's not as bad as everyone says it is; it's too late to stop it. I wouldn't be surprised if this attitude was buried deep in the dark hearts of both the Conservative and Labour parties.

Even taking into account the possibility of the Guardian presenting a hostile case, a most revealing indicator of Lawson's moral attitude to the effects of climate change is revealed in the article:

"He is very drawn to what he says is the underrated upside of climate change. In his book, he says the hot summer of 2003, which killed 15,000 elderly people in France, was "perfectly tolerable" at his own house in Armagnac."

Qu'ils mangent de la brioche, I suppose.

No doubt Lawson does make some valid comments on the cynical politics of climate change being employed by the main political parties, but anyone who dares to disagree with Lawson's view, like NASA or the Met Office Hadley Centre, are accused of being cheats. This has all the hallmarks of an almost religious paranoia.

Poor bloke.

Greens now the opposition!

Nope, not in South Tyneside, where the results were very disappointing, but in Norwich. Well done!

Not invited to the party

It seems that the Gazette enjoys a cosy relationship with the local 'old school' politicos in South Tyneside, if this weekend's stunt, grandly described as an 'election broadcast', is anything to go by.

The leaders of the Lib-Dems, Labour, Conservatives, Progressives, and the two flavours of Independent (despite the indies not being officially registered as political parties) were all offered the opportunity to produce a short video clip to be streamed from the Gazette's website, along with attendant publicity in Saturday's edition of the paper.

However, two parties were left out in the cold by the Gazette. The Green Party and the BNP.

The Gazette (the editor I presume) excused this arbitrary decision on the basis that the Greens and BNP don't currently have councillors. This justification doesn't stand up to scrutiny - unless of course you resort to the juvenile 'it's my ball' gambit.

The 'no councillors' argument falls victim to simple reasoning. Even the neurologically challenged of the BNP could manage to muster a couple of firing synapses and make a simple deduction - if you withhold publicity from selected parties, the relationship between publicity and voting means there's a reduced chance of those parties getting votes, or councillors. And presumably subsequently banned from getting publicity the next time round.

So, could there be any credible reasons why the Greens and the BNP have been left out of the Gazette's little on-line party?

Looking at the scumly BNP, I can understand why the Gazette would want to withhold a platform from them. However, the Gazette has not been averse to giving the BNP paper space in the past so this doesn't seem like a reasonable explanation. Besides, there is an argument that the BNP are their own worst enemy and giving them space to shoot themselves in both feet would serve democracy, rather than harm it.

If the Gazette wanted to avoid publishing outlandish and offensive beliefs then readers would have been spared the witless ramblings of Mike Hallowell long ago.

The Green Party has been fairly harmless and has managed to stay out of the personalised warfare being waged in council. The party has maintained consistent involvement in local waste issues and campaigning against incineration. So nothing extreme there.

Unless anyone can think of another conclusion, it looks like an uneven playing field is precisely what the Gazette's editor wants.

Holding the privilege of being the only local daily newspaper in South Tyneside, the Gazette has an ethical responsibility (although admittedly not an editorial one) at election times to promote the principles of democracy, especially when you consider that it's democracy which provides the mandate for free speech.

I don't expect objectivity and balance from the Gazette. That would be naive. Anyone looking at the publicity given to the Khan circus over the last year would have detected the whiff of bias.

The Gazette editor can only in good conscience extol the virtues of democracy while at the same time respecting it by extending a fair opportunity for all the parties to promote themselves. Otherwise, there is hypocrisy, a word I don't use lightly.

By allowing a chosen cadre to contribute to the on-line 'election broadcast', the Gazette has stained the concept of democracy and failed to recognise an absolute right to free speech.

I suppose there's also something to be said for the voracious ambition of all the 'parties' that took part in the broadcast, happy to do so whilst some of the competition was arbitrarily excluded.

So much for democracy.

--------------------

Update

Yesterday's Gazette election web page says:

"But will South Tyneside Council's ruling Labour group feel the force of voters' wrath against the Government? Or can they stave off the challenge locally from the Conservatives, Lib Dems and a raft of Independent candidates?"

No Green Party or BNP mentioned here, and now the Progressives seem to be dropped.

"And don't forget all the local political party leaders have recorded exclusive video messages on our website to tell you what they stand for and why they want your vote."

I have highlighted the 'all'. Untrue and presumably since the editorial knows they've excluded two parties, dishonest.

Yesterday's newpaper editorial, ironically headlined "Voice of South Tyneside", takes it further:

"You can also visit the Gazette's website and hear the pledges from the leaders of the political parties in our video broadcasts."

'All' has evolved into 'the' political parties. The page opposite the editorial also features mugshots of the six featured party leaders.

At least Curly provided parties with an opportunity to publish a 'mini manifesto', and it's been pointed out to me that chances are that Curly gets more traffic than the Gazette website anyway. However, that doesn't get away from the fact that the Gazette's web initiative have been transferred to the newspaper.

Back in business...sort of

It's been an odd few weeks since my last post. After that post my father's condition deteriorated, and he died on Saturday 12th April at South Tyneside Hospital. It's come as a big shock to everyone, not least because he was a tough old boot, but because in the last couple of days he was perking up and giving everyone hell. Then, after lunch on that Saturday, he just went to sleep and quietly passed away.

As you would expect, I've got a lot going on at the moment, but I'm hoping to get back into gear over the next few days.

Fathers for Medieval justice

Because of the hospital visiting and all the stuff associated with having a relative in hospital, I've been posting less regularly than I would have liked to recently, especially since there's been no shortage of issues to comment on. However, I couldn't let this doosie in the Shields Gazette last week go without a mention.

Reading the article about the three fathers' fears of a genetic moral apocalypse (Clergy speak out against embryo hybrids, Gazette 28th March) you would be forgiven for thinking that we were in the Middle Ages or Iran, certainly not 21st Century Britain.

I support their right object to the Bill. There are genuine ethical issues to debate.

What is insulting is their outrageously arrogant presumption that they and their particluar religion have a right to assert a superior moral authority over us all. They state that "it is the role of the Church to be the moral conscience of the nation", which suggests an organisation with dreams of Sharia-like religious domination over our lives.

Well guys - you certainly don't speak for me.

Their position suggests a paternalistic 'we know better' mindset. A mindset that doesn't belong in a rational and modern liberal society, especially when it's based on a doctrine restricted by the narrow confines of religious teaching - teaching which has no more moral authority than any other philosophy.

The three amigos also make a mistake in confusing morals with ethics. The Anglican Church has no problem appeasing their gay-hating chums in the African congregation, who object to homosexuality on religious moral grounds, apparently blissfully ignorant of the fact that their position is ethically abhorrent and utterly unprincipled. The Catholic Church rejects the use of condoms on moral grounds; in the face of so many lives destroyed by AIDS, ethically, this ranks with condoning mass homicide .

So guys, before you can tell us what motes are moral and what's not, you should examine your own moral beams.

Hospital horrors

Over the past week or so I've been a regular visitor to South Tyneside hospital, visiting my father. He was admitted with an acute infection which occurred as a complication in his cancer treatment, which isn't that unusual. This week, it was discovered he has also contracted an MRSA infection on a wound. Fortunately it looks like he is reacting well to the treatment.

However, during my visiting I've been exposed to some of the harsh realities of our bright and modern hospital. Wards scrounging for dressings off other wards or using customised incontinence pads, pneumonia patients on general wards with patients at severe risk of infection and patients waiting hours for pain relief because of staff shortages.

This is supposed to be rich 21st Century Britain, not some broke third world country.

This is in no way a criticism of the staff on the shop floor. Most of them work incredibly hard and conscientiously, worthy of their salaries many times over. It would be easy to blame the problems on unions or privatisation, but the real responsibility lies in the command chain, in a management culture apparently distanced from the real work and needs on the ground.

Behind the headlines and photo ops of awards being won and targets being met there are real stories of suffering, caused by a management structure which goes all the way to government - which is failing patients, and possibly killing them.

Falling to Pieces

Going through my old albums, I've been reminded about the brilliance of Faith No More.

The missionary murder position

In a preface to a typical "atheists are evil heartless bastards etc" rant, Roman Catholic fundamentalist Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor gave us this little gem:

Many of those living with HIV/Aids are now too malnourished to take the drugs they need, though they have them. I asked Sister Margaret McAllen, director of an Aids programme in Harare, what she could do. She replied: "How can we give hope to people in such a desperate situation? Through love. Change comes through love."

What utter wank.

Here's an idea. One thing you could do Cormac, is ask your boss to abandon the Catholic Church's opposition to condoms and sex education. No, let's go further, lets see the Catholic Church make up for it's dogma which has been sentencing people to death through it's ignorance and start funding real world rational programmes to stop the growth of AIDS, instead of this love and beetroot juice bollocks.

Parents would have a hope that their kids would grow up in a world where AIDS has been defeated by science and reason, not by mumbo jumbo and good intentions.

That would be a start.

Until then Cormac, you and your religion, including the good missionary sister, will be complicit in wholesale murder through misinformation.

Party posers

Some shameless Labour electioneering over in Biddick & All Saints in today's Gazette on the back of an important issue. Labour councillor Olive Punchion rightly condemned the racist graffiti attacks in the Stanhope Road area.

One could have expected her to be similarly critical of the BNP, given that the racist party has stood a candidate in the ward in the last few elections. It's not too much of stretch to make the connection that such extreme anti-social behaviour is fed by the extreme ideology of the BNP.

But attacking racism isn't what this piece was all about. In the photograph accompanying the article in the Gazette, Labour managed to get a nice photo op for their candidate in the forthcoming local election, Anne Walsh. Funny though how the Gazette failed to mention this, referring to her as a "West Park resident". Perhaps the Gazette should be told.

Five years ago

March 20th 2003. That's when the UK and the USA rolled into Iraq, starting a war built upon lies.

A Labour war enthusiastically supported by the Conservatives. 175 British troops lost and possibly over a million Iraqis. That's blood on the hands of the Labour and Conservative parties.

Blair has walked away from it smiling and into million dollar jobs. Bush is likely to do the same. Both used God as the basis of their convictions. Both should be facing convictions in front of a war crimes tribunal. Neither should see the light of day again.

However, I keep coming back to the same thought - that people keep voting Labour and Conservative despite this terrible war. Is our nation's ethical spirit lost? I keep thinking that from councillors to MPs they will still get the votes without a thought for the lives lost in this disastrous conflict. And it chills me.

If there is one reason not to vote for these two parties of the ethically vacant, Iraq is it.


respect to punkscience.

Cash action

An article appeared in today's Gazette about a new group calling itself the South Tyneside Democracy Forum.

Who are they?

An important question you would think, since the group's name features such equitable words as 'democracy' and 'forum'. A cross party body perhaps? Sadly though, the Gazette reporter failed to provide an answer to this question. But we were told why they were set up:

"The forum was set up to promote Mr Khan's case, increase the public's knowledge of the missing ballot boxes issue, and to raise money to pay off the legal bill."

Given that the two names featured in the piece, Ahmed Khan and Steve Cairns, are affiliated with the Alliance awkward squad, the more objective spectator of local politics would be forgiven for thinking that it's little more than a front group for the Alliance.

I've got no problem with a genuinely democratic group which monitors, reports and takes action on local democracy issues in a non-partisan manner - including raising money for legal actions. But when it comes to protecting democracy, it should be above the mire of party politics and cheap point scoring.

If it is just a cynical Alliance machine then it's an insult to true democracy and just cheap spin hiding behind a noble name.

But hey, if it gets you extra column inches in the paper - good luck with it.

What price a free press?

I'm normally not one to regurgitate Private Eye's work, but a piece in today's Eye puts the view of the Johnston Press as a bastion of local press freedom in doubt.

Milton Keynes Citizen journalist Sally Murrer was charged with soliciting and receiving leaks from one Mark Kearney, the ex police officer at the centre of the Sadiq Khan bugging scandal.

Murrer faces a lengthy and expensive battle against the charges, which are under laws designed to protect the Police from whistleblowers and those who report their stories. No problem, you would think. It's normal for newspapers to support their journalists through such trials, especially when fighting what is such an unjust law. But not so. According the the Eye, the Johnston Press, the owners of Milton Keynes Citizen, has failed to fund Murrer's defence - instead offering an interest-free loan to pay her legal costs.

Local reporters in South Tyneside now know how far their employers will go to protect them, as Johnston Press, as well as owning the Milton Keynes Citizen, also owns the Shields Gazette.

Sir Arthur C Clarke, 1917-2008

It's tempting to say goodbye to Arthur C Clarke, but given the volume of work he has produced, he'll be around for a long time yet.

I grew up reading science fiction and works by writers like Isaac Asimov, Frank Herbert and Arthur C Clarke featured heavily, and I remember in my youth buying secondhand yellow-paged paperbacks from jumble sales and second hand bookshops. I still have many of them today and have now in my collection two Arthur C Clarke first editions.

He wrote smart, inventive and sometimes darkly funny short stories, as well as huge epic novels. They were always human, not focussing too much on fantastic technology - the story and characters coming first. Clarke's HAL, the artificial intelligence super computer in 2001: A Space Odyssey driven to psychosis by clumsy programming, is probably the most famous of those characters and despite 'his' homicidal tendencies, the most sympathetic. The 1968 movie, directed by Stanley Kubrick and written in a parallel collaboration with Clarke, is still considered by many to be the best sci-fi movie ever.

In a science fiction field now much dominated by dark dystopian futures, like Asimov, Clarke's view of the future was filled with a bright optimism typical of many sci fi writers of the post war period.

Despite his interest in science, he also poked around in the occult and supernatural, UFOs and other strange phenomena. However, he also maintained a healthy scepticism about religion, combined with a comic wit.

"I would defend the liberty of consenting adult creationists to practice whatever intellectual perversions they like in the privacy of their own homes; but it is also necessary to protect the young and innocent."
Arthur C. Clarke, 1984.

Arthur C Clarke - a writer of monolithic proportions.

The dirty truth

I was thinking about coal a while back, sparked by an article in the Shields Gazette (one of several over the last year) where local geologist Paul Younger was trying to sex up coal energy extraction. I never posted my blog on it, but was reminded about it today when I read George Mobiot's article. So here it is...

In carbon emissions terms, energy from coal is about as bad as you can get. It's dirty and kicks up a lot of other nasty things you wouldn't want your kids to breathe. Environmentally, extracting it is mostly disastrous. Despite efficiency improvements, even the new proposed coal energy plants will spew more CO2 than their predecessors.

I admit that I used to be warm to the concept of replacing 'King Coal' with 'Clean Coal', the latter being the burning of coal using a technological fix to extract the CO2 from the coal, either before or during burning, and bury the CO2 in exhausted oil or coal seams.

Commonly known as 'carbon capture and storage', it promises an opportunity for the UK to use it's hundreds of years worth of coal resources without a carbon hit. It seemed like a sensible way to bridge any coming 'energy gap' whilst renewable energy technologies matured, and guarantee a level of national energy security that gas or nuclear can't provide. A true energy magic bullet.

I've changed my mind. Carbon capture is industry-government groupthink bollocks.

Sequestration technology is still very much in it's infancy, and unproven as a mass commercial solution. Viable large scale capture technology may not be about for decades, and probably too late to have any benign effect on emissions. In May last year Alistair Darling conceded that commercial carbon capture technologies “might never become available”. Even if such technology does become available, there is no guarantee that such storage will be safe and wouldn't just place an unfair burden of responsibility on future generations. In these terms, carbon capture and storage fits a similar risk and sustainability space as nuclear power.

Essentially, the process will require digging up the carbon, burning it to release energy and create CO2, and then capture the CO2 and bury the carbon again - whilst ensuring that the capture and storage process uses considerably less energy than you produced from the burning.

Another more immediate problem with carbon capture is that government and energy companies will throw shit loads of money into research. Money which could be used to develop renewable power.

Instead of creating an environment to encourage the growth in renewable infrastructure that we need, through tools such as carbon price controls to make renewable energy more attractive, our government is hell-bent on coal extraction and burning.

In my past preference for capture, I had assumed that any coal dug up would be used in British power stations. However, in the cold cash reality of a globalised market the coal would go to the highest bidder - wherever they may be in the world. The economic powerhouse that China is becoming could buy all the coal it could afford, pushing up coal prices which would no doubt impact on domestic UK energy supply. We can already see China's hunger for uranium accelerating uranium prices. So much for the energy security argument.

Meanwhile the British countryside is scarred with opencast mines.

The carbon locked the rocks has already been captured and stored. It seems that the best way to reduce fossil fuel emissions is by leaving the fossil fuels in the ground in the first place.

The way to go forward is zero carbon. Large scale investment in any fossil based generation is a waste and a danger.

Evolution of an agenda

Well, Archbish Williams is at it again. He's decided to pit his huge Mekon-sized intellect against evolution. And came out of it looking like a complete fuckster. His learned opinion on evolution is:

"It's a limited theory about certain limited phenomena which is very plausible as far as it goes but it's not a complete philosophy."

Wow. He's managed to stuff so much bollocks in one sentence. I mean, how the very fabric of reality doesn't fall in on itself with such a high bollocky mass is remarkable.

Evolution: "It's a limited theory...." Backed by mountains of scientific evidence, so presumably not as limited as the "god did it" theory.

"...which is very plausible as far as it goes..." What kind of woolly nonsense is this for an intellectual, if only to play the doubt card? This argument is along the lines that global warming deniers or flat-earthers would use: "It sounds plausible, but..."

"...but it's not a complete philosophy". No shit sherlock - it's science.

You know, it's so obvious it's pathetically easy to knock his argument. So what's he really saying?

Hidden in the measured language lies zealotry with an agenda.

Don't get me wrong, I don't think science should only be the preserve of the high priests of science (ouch, I'm going to get it for that one). Too many people are becoming too disassociated from science as it is. Similarly, examination of religious belief isn't the preserve of the high priests of faith. The difference between the two is that science is built upon evidence and reason, and faith is supported by, well, faith.

Okay, Williams isn't a stupid bloke, so this has got to be a little more than a Southern baptist style attack on natural selection. The whole evolution whinge is is more likely another Williams-brand straw man. It's not really about evolution, as much as his Sharia law nonsense wasn't really about Sharia law. This issue is about science as whole, and the high priests of faith want to take science down a couple of pegs, by casting doubt of a key scientific theory not on it's evidence base, but on it's 'philosophy'. What folks like Williams really mean by 'philosophy' is a religious moral code.

The thing is, science doesn't have a religious moral code, and that's what zealots like Williams can't accept.

Williams' comments were prompted in part by the debate over the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill which is going through Parliament (and partly to do some Dawkins-bashing). Similar to his last agenda piece on law, he wants the religious elite to be given the power to judge and influence scientific advancements through moral guidelines, based upon his giant religious brain. Here's what he says:

"The problem is with our own inability as a society to know what to do with discoveries of science."

"Man playing God is not a problem about science. It's a problem about our decisions about the results of science and we shouldn't be so much afraid of science as we should about our own inability to have a clear moral perspective on these matters."

"We haven't as a society got a sufficiently clear notion of what constitutes a human organism. My own view is that an embryo is a human organism but that requires some argument, which isn't something that can be settled simply by science alone."

We can ignore his casual bandying of terms like 'human organism' - they're just distractions. He's saying we should be afraid of 'our' (by which he means normal plebs) inability to make the right moral choice, presumably at least according to his moral code. In a nutshell - too much science and not enough god. Also note Williams doesn't use the term 'ethics'.

He's clear - 'moral perspective' is what he wants - and his particular religious moral perspective.

Fortunately though, science is done in a laboratory, not in a pulpit.

There are ethical issues raised in the Bill, and in the application of science. But they shouldn't be dominated by a subjective moral code which relies on belief in a deity.

Six degrees

This is a trailer for the National Geographic documentary Six Degrees Could Change the World, based upon Mark Lynas' 2007 book Six Degrees. The show aired back in February on National Geographic and hopefully it will be re-aired. Whilst it (and the book) is based upon model-based predictions, it's sobering stuff, and timely given the EU's concerns over mass immigration driven by climate change. It breaks down the changes we face for each degree of planetary heating from 2 degrees to 6 degrees.

The IPCC's Fourth Assessment Report raised the worst case scenario for projected warming by 2100 from 5.8 degrees to 6 degrees - unless we do something to significantly reduce the amount of greenhouse gases we pump out.

Two Degrees is the limit we should try to stay under. Over that, the likelihood of serious negative impacts increases.

Welcome to Gattaca

Gary Pugh, the director of forensic sciences at Scotland Yard and DNA spokesman for the Association of Chief Police Officers ACPO, wants to start screening children for criminal traits at a young age. Pugh said:

"If we have a primary means of identifying people before they offend, then in the long-term the benefits of targeting younger people are extremely large... the younger the better."

Further, he wants all primary school age children on a DNA database. Such an activity would be in effect the cataloguing of every future generation.

This is wrong for so many reasons. Science fiction meets Nazi social Darwinism meets 21st Century phrenology.

If we ever needed a reason to send the ACPO members on a winter holiday to Snowdon this is it. Then again, if we had a mechanism to screen for dickheads, we could have spotted Pugh earlier and given him help.

Straw man's straw man

In what looks like a shot over the bows in the election battle for Fellgate & Hedworth, the independents who are part of the Independent Alliance grouping are attempting to derail other candidates planning to stand in the ward as independents in the coming election by implying they will be puppets of Labour councillor Paul Waggott.

Their Winter 07/08 campaign leaflet says:

"IT’S EMERGED that the last remaining Labour Councillor, Paul Waggott in a last ditch attempt to cling onto his seat may be behind a plot to stand another ‘independent’ in May’s local Elections, which clearly stinks of desperation.

Remember the one and only true INDEPENDENT candidate for Hedworth, Fellgate & Calf Close endorsed by current Independent Councillors Steve Harrison and George Waddle is GERALDINE WHITE."

This means that any independent other than the candidate 'endorsed' by Waddle and Harrison has effectively been smeared as a Labour straw man before the nomination papers are even signed. This is without even considering the sheer arrogance of the Waddle and Harrison politburo in assuming the role of arbiters of who is or isn't 'independent'.

Without any evidence, these claims are pure dirty tricks spin.

This 'clearly stinks' of cynical electioneering and makes them no better than the Labour party they supposedly despise.

Do 'left' and 'right' have any meaning?

In yesterday's Guardian, both Toynbee and Monbiot attack the econo-tards and corporate whores who make up the Labour government, selling us out to help the stinking rich, well, get richer. Quite timely given that Alistair Darling will be presenting his budget today.

Over on Curly's blog recently Labour councillor Iain Malcolm rated the Labour party as 'centre-left'. Given that not even Thatcher sold off the NHS (and the post offices), perhaps 'centre-left' has bizarrely shifted to the right of Thatcherism.

Free speech 2 : Jeebus 0

March 5th proved a fruitful day for human rights and freedom of speech. First, the House of Lords threw out a petition to appeal brought by religious zealots Christian Voice, who had tried to prosecute the BBC for screening Jerry Springer - The Opera. The appeal was rejected on the grounds that the case did "not raise an arguable point of law of general public importance". Simply put, the law in this case was an ass and irrelevant in a modern liberal society.

Then, in another small victory for reason and common sense, the House of Lords voted 148 to 87 to accept an amendment to the Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill that will abolish the common law of blasphemy and blasphemous libel.

However, in a society where religious fundamentalists are never far away, there remains the risk of scary new laws to allow the faith lobby to try and stifle free speech.

Choices

I'm furious. In fact I'm livid - in disbelief at a council which studiously follows stupid and arbitrary bureaucratic rules. Logic and common sense have been abandoned.

I'm angry at a government to which 'parental choice' is fiction.

Bitter about a schools building programme which has caused a reduction in school places to a point where schools are so 'heavily oversubscribed' that people can't send their children to their school of choice.

Anyway, you get the message - I'm pissed off.

My son has been denied a place at our secondary school of choice - because we live outside the school's catchment area.

However, we live less than 400m from the school. That's about a 6-8 minute walk. That's also despite the fact that my son is leaving a primary school that is further away than our secondary school of choice and the primary school is a feeder to that secondary school. My son's best friend manages to be in the catchment area despite living over a kilometre away from the school.

The school he has been allocated, the second 'choice' on the application, is three times the distance and requires the crossing of a dual carriageway. So much for the safe routes to school concept.

It's concerning that dogmatic adherence to policy comes before an objective risk assessment of child safety.

The almost religious devotion to arbitrary lines on a map is council bureaucracy at it's most Kafkaesque. What is the point of making choices on an application form if they are just going to be ignored anyway?

Choice? Don't make me laugh.

How independent is independent?

A great post from punkscience, discussing the sinister use of allegedly 'independent' organisations to propagate the opinions of whoever is paying the cheque. This technique isn't limited to corporate 'think-tanks' or 'independent analysts' - the state isn't afraid to use a bit of the old 'independent' subterfuge to mislead the public too.

It reminded me of how our local education bodies on Tyneside were marshalled to produce a teaching resource website called 'xingthetyne' to promote the second Tyne Tunnel project. The creators of the website, South Tyneside and North Tyneside Education Business Partnerships, (along with the education departments of North and South Tyneside prostituting themselves to the cause) claimed it was to encourage student participation in democracy and citizenship. But all of the information on the website came exclusively from the tunnel sponsors, and naturally represented their views. Despite the objections to the tunnel, none of the opposition viewpoints were represented in the material.

One question was 'Why do we need a second tunnel?', instead of analysing if there was a 'need' for a new tunnel. A clear case of teaching children what to think instead of how to think. I wonder if the genius who wrote this beauty is now spending their time compiling consultation questionnaires for South Tyneside Council.

What was meant to be an independent educational resource was little more than a marketing tool to sell roads to kids and perpetuate the 'car is king' culture, and received some enthusiastic support from Labour leader Councillor Paul Waggott.

The 'xingthetyne' site now seems to have disappeared into the internet ether, apparently no longer needed now the mission to get permission to build the tunnel has been successful.

I'm now expecting the local waste partnership to sponsor a new educational resource "How incinerators are great and getting cancer from the shit they spew out isn't too bad actually."

Suffer little children

So faith schools are not only religiously divisive and teach mumbo-jumbo as science, it also looks like they are doing their best to reinforce class barriers.

Back to the drawing board

An interesting and thought-provoking article at the excellent The Lazy Environmentalist - AC or DC for our future renewable electricity distribution? This kind of infrastructure needs governments to get talking to each other and some serious investment applied. Given government's political cowardice over combating climate change I'm not confident that our lot are up to the challenge.

Tremors on Tyneside

Bloody hell! Just before 1.05am I was woken by the house shaking. Not a short burst like a strong gust of wind or what you sometimes feel when they used to blast at Marsden Quarry. A consistent shaking lasting for about 10-15 seconds - long and strong enough to wake me. The radiators rattled on the walls and when I stood up the whole movement was quite disorienting. I can imagine the terror a full blown earthquake must instil.

Now Sky News are reporting tremors felt across central and southern England - Bedfordshire, Norfolk and Leicestershire.

They can add Tyneside to that too.

Saying the wrong sorry

South Shields MP and Foreign Secretary has said sorry. Not for failing to stop the USA's 'Extraordinary Rendition' flights (otherwise known as kidnapping) landing on UK soil. He apologised to MPs for previous statements which suggested UK territory was not being used in such a manner. But now he has admitted that the island of Deigo Garcia has been used for such activity. Then again, it's not the first time that Diego Garcia has been used for dodgy military actions.

Sadly Diego Garcia is no stranger to crimes against humanity and people forcibly removed from their homes. Diego Garcia is the main island of the group of islands known as the Chagos, from which the inhabitants were ejected by the British government in the 1960's and 70s under a dirty deal to provide the United States with a military base in the Indian Ocean. The people were dumped in the slums of Mauritius. After such brutalisation, many committed suicide, turned to addictions, prostitution or crime.

If these had been white Falkland Islanders, there would be outrage. Gordon Brown refuses to talk to Mugabe after the expulsion of white Zimbabwean farmers, yet Brown refuses to acknowledge the plight of the exiled Chagos islanders.

The High Court has repeatedly ruled the expulsion illegal. Blair's and then Brown's government ignored the rulings, hiding behind "royal prerogative" - essentially a decree by the Prime Minister in the name of the Queen. Only a couple of days ago the government forced an appeal into the Lords on the grounds of "problems for how we run the whole of our relationships with other overseas territories". Essentially they are saying the rule of Law should not apply to the government when it comes to abusing British citizens in overseas territories - human rights only apply when the government says so.

The exiled Chagossians have been ignored and blocked by successive Foreign Secretaries and governments. It is a stain on our national conscience, and blunts our international moral credibility. Miliband's apology has been misplaced. It's about time the British Government said sorry to the Chagossians and took them home.

Ornery frog

Normally we have plenty of frogs around the area in which I live. In the late spring and summer you can hear them in the field at the back of my house at night. We don't normally see them until about Easter, but this tough cookie is the first we've seen this year, despite the recent cold snap.

How many deaths is a flight worth?

Yet again, George Monbiot produces a thought-provoking analysis. Today he discussed the freaky way in which economics is used to justify behaviours we wouldn't, as normally morally concious beings, objectively consider as good.

Economics, as envisaged by it's father Adam Smith, should be used as a tool to make existence better for humanity. But instead of a tool, it's used as a weapon, and in the case of Heathrow cited by Monbiot used to hammer through developments which may not just directly damage a minority, but contribute to the erosion of the general well-being of us all.

The 'economic benefits' argument is often used to justify anything from the second Tyne Tunnel to a new runway at Heathrow. There are similarities. Both projects promise (doubtful) 'economic benefits'. Both projects are driven by a Labour government for the benefit of a minority. But both projects also promise significant environmental degradation, and guide us towards a future we should be carefully edging away from - rather than running for the cliff edge at full tilt.

Projected economic benefits are often wholly subjective and dependant on a wide range of wildly optimistic scenarios and unmeasurable factors. But now the economic benefit argument is being twisted further in a sick accounting - a deadly ledger to tot up the value put upon lives of the poor in other countries.

Some (who sometimes falsely call themselves libertarians) cry that this is our 'right'. We pay for the 'right' to consume with our economic success and superiority, blind or uncaring that it comes at a price that is often paid by others. Those rights are allegedly inalienable - irrespective of the damage done to others. Anything that challenges those perceived rights, like laws, taxes or regulations, are derided as interventionist, dictatorial or that lazy old cliché, 'nanny state'. This is mistaking true human rights for an excuse to do whatever the hell we want; free from society, government and civil responsibility and displacing any kernel of guilt with the excuse that "it's my right".

Like a disease, this behaviour has it's own defence mechanisms - even daring to suggest that these attitudes form a core of the anti-social behaviour which haunts our society attracts contemptuous charges of being sanctimonious.

Decisions based upon economic factors will always have a place; after all, economics is still just a tool. But we should all worry when lives are measured in pounds and dollars and our rights in reckless behaviour.

In an ideal world the true rights of everyone - rich and poor - would be balanced through democracy and expressed with the currency of human rights. The need for this balance is acute and will become more so with the effects of a heating planet. Unfortunately in the feudal corporate/consumer system we currently inhabit the shallow 'rights' enjoyed by the affluent will be paid with the lives of the poor.

The most dangerous man in England

No, not Rowan Williams, but Charles Darwin.

Dangerous. That's how one critic described Darwin after his book On the Origin of the Species was published, which vies for the title of probably the most important book ever written.

Darwin's revolutionary idea of natural selection is beautiful in it's simplicity yet it explains life's remarkable diversity and complexity, and has become the guiding principle of biology. Not only that, as an explanation of the origins of life outside the mythic constructs of religion, his work became a beacon of reason.



Charles Darwin, 12th February 1809, to 19th April 1882

The Devil told him to say it

Looking over the net and the media over the past couple of days, some commentators have given Rowan Williams a hefty dose of the benefit of the doubt, variously crediting his comments as being 'naive', incorrectly interpreted, or overblown, and have criticised those comments in response as 'knee-jerk'.

In summary: A kind of slightly batty but benign intellectual cleric, who has been a victim of muddled PR judgement and has been unfairly criticised by detractors who aren't intelligent enough to understand what he was really saying.

It's attractive, but that kind of delusional and revisionist nonsense won't wash.

Williams may have made an idiotic misjudgement of the PR consequences of his words, which could see him out of a job by Easter - but he's an idiot with an agenda.

Williams is an intellectual who measures every single word he writes and says. He's been criticised for citing Sharia law in example, but it's really just a straw man. It's easy to be drawn into arguments over Sharia but it's just a sideshow; this issue isn't just about laws based on clerical interpretation. It's much more fundamental than that - it's about weakening British law to defer to religious sensitivities.

Don't believe me? Then take it from Rowan Williams himself. He said that the Muslim community shouldn't be "faced with the stark alternatives of cultural loyalty or state loyalty". Remember, he's using 'Muslims' as a code. Williams is really talking about the right, under law, for some to follow their own moral code (or whatever passes for one) and be judged by it.

He didn't say it just once though, he reiterated that:

"What we don't want either, is I think, a stand-off, where the law squares up to people's religious consciences."

...and then again:

"But I think it is a misunderstanding to suppose that means people don't have other affiliations, other loyalties which shape and dictate how they behave in society and that the law needs to take some account of that."

He referred to this concept THREE times. That's no misjudgement or coincidence. It's a clear and specific agenda.

It can't be a coincidence that Williams makes these remarks whilst the Catholic church is under pressure to recognise gay rights and the Anglican Church and various other Christian groups not just fight the loss of the blasphemy laws but call for new ones.

Williams' supporters claim in defence that we already have laws which respect religious culture. True. We have laws which permit the mutilation of children's genitals and laws that allow normal animal welfare rules to be bypassed - all for religion. It's a morally subjective and dangerous argument to follow. Just because British law has been already twisted to the tune of religion it doesn't make it right.

This isn't some call for equal rights or cohesion as some of Williams' apologists are claiming - it's a call for different rights, based upon a legally enshrined expectation of respect for religions as philosophical and moral equals (at least in general relativistic terms) to secular laws.

The so-called 'moderates' who have come out to defend Williams have revealed their secret fundamentalist desire to theocratise our legal system, turning justice into some medieval freak show.

Religious laws and courts, whether it be by Sharia, Beth Din or Inquisition are tainted by the religious-cultural bias and agenda of those who would judge others and make a mockery of equality, democracy, liberty and reason.

A truly equitable and cohesive society is best served by one secular legal system which is shared by all participants and which protects everyone. Equally.

Cloistered bubbleheaded fool

Go Pat go!

Rowan Williams - religious loon

Punkscience beat me to it. Rowan Williams is an idiot. Sharia law has no place in a rational society.

If people want to follow a set of philosophical rules that's fine, as long as they don't force those rules on anyone, or demand that those rules require respect, recognition and protection, and the application of those rules doesn't hurt anyone.

The problem with religion based systems like Sharia is that those living in religious communities will be pressured to adhere to the laws and accept 'legal' decisions, even when there is no rational reason to do so other than community peer pressure and diktat from religious authority.

Laws based on the interpretation of ancient myth and rely on the authority of religious zealots have no place in the 21st Century. Considering the influence of Wahabi Imams in British Islamic society - an extreme and fundamentalist view of Islam which has gone a significant way in the radicalisation of modern Muslim doctrine - putting laws into the hands of these medieval nutters is dangerous and divisive.

We should be reducing the influence of religion, not increasing it.

News from Sunderland

From South Tyneside Friends of the Earth, and with the kind permission of Dan Alliband of BAN Waste, a report on another council revolt, but this time in Sunderland - and how the opposition left the meeting in disgust at the Labour council's undemocratic ploy to keep the Waste Strategy secret:

"About 30 people were on the public gallery at Sunderland Civic on Wednesday evening of 30th January when the council proposed to eject public and press to allow councillors to look at the ‘Business Case’ for the Joint Waste Management Partnership."

Note - despite several Freedom of Information requests, the Business Case has been withheld from the public.

"Sunderland council's argument was based on the argument that it was in the public’s interest as council tax payers to not disclose budget figures for whatever they were planning, because the private bidders would then know what to bid up to. The independents and conservatives put up a case against this to support ‘freedom of information’ and that it was not in the public’s interest for the discussion to be private. Why should people be denied access to all other information about the plans (e.g. locations and treatments etc).

"There was a vote – and 22 voted against the public being ejected, and 47 voted for, at this point the 22 councillors walked out (the council make up is 57 LAB, 1 LIB, 4 Independents and 13 TORY – so this I think this included all independents & Tories and possibly the Lib, and odd Lab back-bencher!?).

"While the Labour councillors jibed how undemocratic it was that the Tories not wanting to discuss the item while they voted so solidly against Freedom of Information was laughable!

"The mayor adjourned the meeting for 5 minutes while the public were asked to leave, but a handful stayed, including FOE members, and the police were called. The mayor and his labour chums returned to the chamber and declared that the agenda item would have to be deferred to next month.

"The remaining members of the public then left by a side exit to avoid the police who had seemingly arrived at the main reception!"

Real idiots

South Shields discussion forum sanddancers is home to a wide range of characters with a whole spectrum of political tastes which inevitably leads to some lively, sometimes heated discussion.

One member of the forum, a local BNP bigmouth, advised in this thread that Kirklees BNP Councillor Colin Auty will be at the next local BNP meeting on the Wednesday 6th February.

The BNP's own 'lyrical terrorist', Auty is famous for his allegedly crap songs. I've never heard his music, but given that it's popular amongst the BNP knuckledraggers I don't think I'll bother. No doubt Auty would find plenty of business at the meeting of the "one born every minute club".

Recently the BNP has split, with most of the Yorkshire region turning against the leadership of Nick Griffin, and Auty has come out firmly in support of the rebels. So I'm not sure that Auty, as one of the newly dissident BNP members, will now actually turn up for the local stormtroopers - particularly since the North East gruppen have apparently tried to stay "neutral" in the split.

Neutral - it doesn't seem like a word which would be the BNP vocabulary.

If Auty is being welcomed, could it be that he is drumming up support for more groups to join the breakaway 'Real BNP'?

And should that be 'Reál' as in Madrid, or 'Real' as in IRA?

It's a funny old game (2)

It's been a long run in to the local council elections 2008, which started the day after the 2007 elections with recriminations over the rejected ballots. Over the past few weeks the BNP carpet-bombing of the letters page of the Gazette and the Independent Alliance stunts in the council chamber illustrated that things were heating up.

However, election season doesn't really start until we start seeing election leaflets hitting doormats. Well, I got my first one today, from the Labour candidate for the Harton Ward Neil Maxwell. It seems Maxwell is following Rob Dix's successful campaign tactic from last year: "slag off the Progressives".

The leaflet slams the Progressives as "lazy", and accuses them of refusing to support Rob Dix. Perhaps this is an example of the "Punch and Judy politics" that David Potts finds so distasteful.

I've some disagreements with Progressive Jim Capstick, but his work output hasn't been one of them.

I only hope that the Progressives don't stoop to Maxwell's level.

It's a funny old game (1)

Today's performance on The Politics Show by South Tyneside councillor David Potts marks another entry on the ambitious Tory's media CV. Potts was on the show to condemn the planned closure of Boldon C of E Primary school. The fault was clear: "Labour's consultations [over the school closure] have been a sham" he accused, adding that "Labour's view is extremely short-sighted", and the drive to close schools came from national and "from local Labour-led authorities." Take that pesky Labour-led authorities!

Impressive stuff, and truly the voice of a strident opponent of Labour.

Well, perhaps not. Anyone watching today's Politics Show will have thought that this Councillor David Potts, hammer of Labour-led authorities, is a different Councillor David Potts to the one who prostrated himself before South Tyneside's Labour-led council to kiss the boots of Labour council leader Councillor Paul Waggott.

In the council meeting on 1st February, "Coun Potts was first to stand, and praised Coun Waggott's leadership and skill", according to the Gazette. So not only did the Tory publicly massage the Labour leader's ego, Potts was also given the dubious honour of being the first to get some serious brown nose.

To be fair, Potts wasn't alone amongst 'opposition' councillors bigging it up for Waggott: Lib-Dem Joe Abbott and 'independent' councillor George Elsom also piped up in his defence.

But let's not forget that Councillor Potts is a man of honour. "I refuse to be dragged into Punch and Judy politics", he promised, apparently completely unaware that his showpiece support of Coun Waggot is more of an Orwellian affair.

Ryanair. Immoral bastards.

Congratulations to cheapo airline Ryanair. Not only do they cheapen airline tickets they cheapen society with their sordid view of the world.

They're not afraid of controversy and their 'Back to School Fares' advertising campaign is one in a line of intentionally offensive adverts aimed at gaining media inches, using the theory that there's no such thing as bad publicity. But lets be fair to them, the advert fits their target market profile of male readers looking for cheap flights to seedy sex tourism hotspots.

Now it has positioned itself as:

Ryanair - the 'Carry On' airline and the carrier of choice for perverts!

Also, with the refusal to respect the decision of the Advertising Standards Authority's ruling over their 'schoolgirl' ads, Ryanair has helpfully highlighted how powerless and pointless the voluntary code system is, and that industry simply cannot regulate itself or be expected to be socially responsible.

Since they are so vehemently anti censorship, I'm sure that Ryanair will respect my opinion that they are greedy immoral fuckwits who cynically encourage fantasies of child sex to sell plane tickets.

Seriously fucking creepy.

Fire on waste mountain

Last year Councillor Michael Clare, Lead Member Environment, Housing and Transport on South Tyneside Council, declared that no waste incinerator would be built in South Tyneside.

In today's Sunderland Echo, we have a bit of a revelation:

"Secret documents seen by the Echo reveal officials are looking into burning the city's rubbish, along with Gateshead's and South Tyneside's, to create energy in the way power stations generate electricity by burning coal and gas."

Otherwise known as incineration. But not to worry South Tynesiders, Coun Clare is there to protect us. Or perhaps not.

Fiona Brown, project director for the Waste Management Partnership, said:

"... a number of possible sites for the waste treatment facility have been identified in all three council areas, but the partnership could not reveal the locations for "commercial reasons" in case the land had to be bought."

All three council areas.

To be honest we don't really know what's going on. The three councils involved have buttoned up the waste strategy under the cloak of commercial confidentiality. Several Freedom of Information requests have been rejected. Not to protect the commercial interests of the companies involved - but to protect the three councils.

Sunderland council is debating the strategy tomorrow, and council papers issued in advance suggest that the public may be asked to leave the public gallery during the debate.

Local democracy in action.

Escape from Justice

Killer and tyrant General Suharto of Indonesia died in his bed, instead of rotting in a jail cell. Suharto, aided in his campaign to crush his opponents and rip off his country by the UK, US and in some measure, Australia, has evaded justice. But rather than denouncing Suharto, the world's politicians have been gently ambiguous to the point of being kind.

An indication that the change in government in Australia hasn't really changed the its approach to Indonesia was evidenced in Kevin Rudd's sickly euphemistic quote:

"The former president was also a controversial figure in respect of human rights and East Timor, and many have disagreed with his approach."

'Controversial' eh? Is that controversial like Adolf Hitler, Saddam Hussein and Pol Pot or controversial like an offside decision? What a simpering fuckwit. Rudd had an opportunity to make a break with the past and say it like it was. He didn't, and joins Hawke and Keating in a role-call of Australian prime ministers licking corrupt Indonesian backside.

He's not alone though, the United States ambassador to Jakarta Cameron Hume continued with the controversy theme, saying, "Though there may be some controversy over his legacy, President Suharto was a historic figure who left a lasting imprint on Indonesia and the region". Given that the US supplied Suharto with a list of people to bump off when he seized power in 1965 and endorsed the brutal 'annexation' of East Timor in 1975 I guess he also refers to the US government's legacy of collusion which left the lasting imprint of the hundreds of thousands of graves of those murdered.

Our own government has been fairly silent on Suharto, other than Miliband sending a message of condolence to the Indonesian government. What did it say? Sorry the murdering bastard is dead? Can we sell you some guns? And this not long after him signing Amnesty International's book marking the 60th anniversary of the UN Declaration on Human Rights. Right on Dave, power to ya!

But Labour's support for Indonesia's oppressive regime is not new - this was the regime for whom Robin Cook sold his principles and integrity - for the price of some Hawk jet bombers. Cook got a great deal; in 1997/98, the UK was the biggest supplier of arms to Indonesia.

I suppose sooner or later evil dictator groupie Margaret Thatcher will announce her sorrow at Suharto's death (assuming someone can prise her dusty soulless bones out of her coffin), and probably dribble some barely coherent revisionist bollocks about how he turned Indonesia's economy round and fought communism. She said it about other evil bastards like Reagan and Pinochet so I think I'm fairly safe. "One of our very best and most valuable friends", she once said of Suharto. Valuable indeed - he bought a shit load of weapons off us to terrorise Indonesia and the countries he invaded.

If there was a hell, there would be a nice long hot poker reserved just for him and his back passage to become acquainted with for eternity. There isn't; instead the mass murderer and thief is being given a hero's funeral and the dubious plaudits of morally vacant politicians the world over.

Holocaust Memorial Day - light a candle

I can't say it better than the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust:

"Nazi ideology was founded on racism, anti-semitism and discrimination, creating a fascist state that rejected human and civil rights. The evils of prejudice, discrimination and intolerance continue to exist in Britain. We have lessons to apply today, as individuals, communities and institutions within our society. Hate crimes and attacks against people because of race or ethnicity; sexuality; disability; or religion continue to take place. HMD acts as a reminder to all of us of our responsibility to protect the civil and human rights of all people in our society and around the world."

And you may ask yourself...

Hateful bastards

It's sad to see actor Heath Ledger die so tragically, but frankly I don't really care about his celebrity - but I can appreciate the work he has done. Let his family and friends celebrate his life and mourn his passing with respect and dignity.

However, it seems that respect and dignity aren't in one Christian group's vocabulary - the Kansas-based Westboro Baptist Church. The group, infamous for picketing the funerals of US soldiers killed in Iraq, making their point with placards saying things like 'Gods Hates Fags', has decided to protest at US memorial services for Heath Ledger. They have singled him out because of his role as a gay character in the movie Brokeback Mountain, and have proclaimed that Ledger has gone to hell.

These dopey inbred cousin-fuckers don't know when to shut the fuck up. Sooner or later a US citizen's right to free speech they abuse with their hateful tripe will tragically come up against a US citizen's right to carry a gun.

You've been framed

A couple of weeks ago Curly commented on the lamentable attitude of some police officers towards photography in public places. I was reminded of a blog entry on prisonlawinsideout, which I've dug out here. These numbskulls in the video below were poised to arrest someone for a law that doesn't exist. Well, not yet anyway.

Whilst many suspect that our police are developing an "arrest first, decide what for later" philosophy, this video suggests that it's closer to "arrest, who cares what for".

Compass me baby

The Political Compass has hit local blogs and we're all anxious to wear our digitally decided political hearts on our sleeves.

Curly, Bryan and Northern Herald have all had a go. Since the Mindless Sheep Compass website cast me as "you will follow a herd of ambivalent bunnies to places where lemmings fear to tread", I thought, what the heck, give it a go.

I'm still not sure what a libertarian collectivist is though...

Nuclearsaurus rex

If there was any evidence that Sir David King is fast losing his credibility as a scientist and becoming a corporate whore, it's his assertion that greens are "keen to take us back to the 18th or even the 17th century". This is the kind of bollocks you would expect from loony right wingers.

His new book "The Hot Topic" seems to be aimed at the market that is warm to Bjorn Lomborg's pseudo denial philosophy, one in which the solutions are purely a matter of technology, and ignores the kind of societal changes that are needed.

King is a dinosaur, where his rosy 1950s vision of technology and consumption being the only recourse to tackle climate change.

But don't take it from me. PunkScience puts it much more succinctly.

Gooed fun

Adland has long farmed the popular media for advertising inspiration, then rip it off.

Camelot's Christmas advert featuring the house covered in lights synchronised to music will be old hat to anyone who has seen the original version here. Then there was the Virgin credit card's shameless 'homage' to Danny Wallace's Yes Man concept.

Now we have the new campaign for Cadbury's Creme Eggs "Here today, goo tomorrow", featuring kamikaze creme eggs. Any similarity to the hilarious Bunny Suicides concept is purely coincidental.

Probably.