Current Affairs

Yes, we should be questioning those who identify as Christian

If you missed it yesterday morning, Richard Dawkins appeared on the Today Programme on BBC Radio 4, alongside Giles Fraser.  I want to start by saying that I like and respect Giles Fraser, although I disagree with his religious beliefs.  In the same way, I like and respect my religious friends — but this doesn’t change my evaluation that their beliefs are categorically wrong.  I try not to deliberately offend anyone when taking about religion, but conversely, I’m not prepared to hold back on what I consider to be the truth.

The debate today concerned a survey, carried out by an independent agency in the week following the 2011 UK census.  The results suggested that the percentage of people who identify as Christian in the UK has fallen significantly since the previous census, down to just 54% — barely a majority, and certainly not enough to make any claims about this being a “Christian country”, never mind justify the inclusion of religious practices into public practices and governance. (more…)

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New court rulings expose Christians unaware of their privilege

If you’ve been following the news lately you might have seen the eagerly-awaited results of two court cases, both involving the role of religion in business and government.  Although small cases, it’s important to remember that the precedents set by cases like this can affect other cases in the future.  While both cases were a success for the secularist movement in the UK, the reaction by the Church, media and even politicians has been both enlightening and concerning.

The first case was one of two male partners who were turned away from a bed and breakfast, because the owners considered their homosexuality — and intent to share a bed — to be a sin.  Now, while the owners have every right to believe that, what they don’t have the right to do is apply that discrimination to their business.  In January 2011, a court found that they were liable and awarded damages appropriately.  They appealed and yesterday, the appeals court upheld the original ruling.  What was ultimately disappointing however was the näive and ignorant attitude expressed by the Christian Institute in its comments about the case: (more…)

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Corporations have no place in education

My friend Ivor wrote recently about a scheme being run at his daughter’s school, involving an odd form of sponsorship by a certain doughnut corporation.  Long story short, the entire scheme basically just consisted of the school selling doughnuts to children, a portion of the profits from which, would go to some kind of “good cause”.  Rather than consulting parents first about the idea, the first contact Ivor had was effectively a sales letter from the school, inviting him to pre-purchase some doughnuts.

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The Daily Mail’s portrayal of cannabis is textbook bad journalism

Generally speaking, I try not to get too hung up on the individual failings of articles in the right wing press.  I could spend from now until Christmas objectively criticising just one edition of the Express or Mail – and they are tame compared to their American counterparts.  Every so often however, they seem to lose the plot a little bit, drop their pseudo-moderate cover and output what can only be described as textbook, blatant propoganda, the likes of which Joseph Goebbels would be proud.  Every once in a while, the logical jumps made become so cavernous, that one is forced to consider the possibility that the Daily Mail is in fact a working proof of Poe’s Law; that their ranks are in fact filled with undercover liberals, pretending to hold conservative viewpoints, while deliberately presenting themselves as idiots, in order to discredit the conservative ideology.

Press editorial standards, including those supposedly upheld by the PPC, state that there should be a separation between news and opinion.  That means that the DM is free, within reason, to publish its racist, sexist, classist, homophobic, xenophobic, hysterical and illogical babble, so long is it is clearly portrayed as opinion.  It is also free, should it choose to make such a bold leap, to publish actual facts, about actual things, things that actually happened.  What it is not free to do, is to mix the two up.  Of course, this means that yesterday it went ahead and did exactly that, exploiting the death of a young man to push its anti-drugs message. (more…)

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Executive pay is just the symptom

Since the start of the financial crisis and the bank bailout, there has been a marked increase in public interest regarding executive pay.  It’s not that executives didn’t earn ridiculous salaries before then, but because we were in a boom time, the economy was something most people simply took for granted.  The only people asking questions back then were generally written off by the mainstream as “silly socialists who are jealous of success”.  We were all sucked into the American dream, that one day it might be us up there on the top floor, calling the shots and raking in the dough.  The fantasy was so lucid that even when we despised our bosses, we still dreamed of being in their shoes.  There was no question about whether people at the top should earn as much as they do.  With the crisis however, came the media attention on the banks, with both socialists and traditional conservatives demanding answers. (more…)

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Asda’s “Job Creation” should be met with scepticism

David Cameron has praised the announcement by Asda that it will be creating approximately five thousand new jobs, as part of an expansion drive this year.  The plans involve the opening of twenty-five new stores, three new depots and the refurbishment of existing stores.  The supermarket also announced that it would be allowing some of the new staff to work as part of City and Guilds apprenticeships.  According to Asda, half of its new employees in last year were young people, with a large number coming through the Job Centre.

Of course, all of the above sounds brilliant at face value.  It’s understandable why David Cameron is pleased by this; since his government came to power, their mantra has been to cull the public sector in the belief that the private sector would expand and create jobs.   It’s unsurprising that every time a private corporation creates a significant amount of jobs, he feels vindicated.  The problem with that is it leads to a lack of questioning.  When people believe they have been proved right, they don’t stop to ask whether that’s really the case.  Cameron, desperate to see growth in the private sector to prove him right, doesn’t stop to question the details when jobs are created. (more…)

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Thoughts on Dale Farm

Just a couple of thoughts on the planned evictions and demolitions at Dale Farm, where a traveller community has overshot its planning permission:

I wonder how people’s attitude would change if instead of travellers who had overstepped their planning permit, it was a middle class community who had built 4 bedroom houses?

Guess what: evicting these people, bulldozing everything and then dealing with the homeless men, women and children you’ve created is going to cost a hell of a lot more taxpayer money than just leaving them be. Yes, they were wrong to overstep their planning permission (might I add overstep – since they did rightfully have it for half the site), but going in with bulldozers is mindlessly destructive. (more…)

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Taking our jobs…

Reading about immigration tensions in the US and a familiarity with mass feelings here, makes me think about the nature of immigration and the concept of “taking our jobs”.  The Xenophobe constantly raves about the “lazy immigrant” on one hand and yet, on the other, compains about people “coming over here and taking our jobs”.

Fundementally, the idea is almost a paradox.  We live in a world, nay, a country, where there a mouths that go unfed.  So when a worker arrives from afar and offers to work in this nation, for the most minimal reward, contributing his sweat to the production of food, this is apparently a bad thing?  From a resource based perspective, this makes no sense: any able worker, especially one working on the land for low wages, inevitably produces more than they consume.  Their efforts, in real terms, feed more mouths than just their own.  Yet we reject this? (more…)

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Obligatory Post-Riot Blog Post

As a result of the recent riots, it seems like every man and his dog has returned to their blog to pass comment.  I’m therefore going to, in typical riot style, join the masses and put forward a brief (turned out not so brief) post.  It’d almost be wrong not to.  One thing I must say however is that most of what can be said has been – I won’t claim to be adding anything new, although I have managed to agregate some of the better stories of the past week or two.  The unfortunate problem is that the people with the power to change things aren’t listening, so we might just have to shout louder to escape the liberal echo-chamber.  Please though, no looting.

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New Labour? Blue Labour? Can I get a pint of Labour Classic?

It’s very rare that people actually ask me to comment on stuff.  More often, I just stick my nose in where it isn’t wanted and generally offend at least a handful of folks.  Several days ago however, my good friend @sarahcritcher asked for my comment on a piece in the Independant about “Blue Labour”.  Here’s my take:

Socialism is now a dirty word.  It’s almost more acceptable to say you’re a BNP supporter than a Socialist.  There’s an overwhelming consensus among society that Socialism is “bad” – although nobody really knows why (this is in fact, something I wish to discuss further in my upcoming book, but that’s for later). (more…)

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