Day 3812: Exam board asks unanswerable question: 'What is the Archbishop of Canterbury for?'

Thursday:


Oh, if there's one thing guaranteed to get me to blow an upper head gasket it's the sound of hot air escaping from the Beardy Weirdy of Canterbury.

This week, apparently, he is guest editor of the New Statesthebleedinobvious Magazine, and has used his bully pulpit to "launch a remarkable attack on the coalition government".

"Remarkable", I'd have thought, that anyone is remotely surprised that this ageing hypocritical hippy is castigating the government while contributing nothing himself. I'm sorry, I mean "calling for the left to come up with ideas" (not at all code for "I've got none myself"!).

Mr Paul, who is often wise, suggests waiting to read the Beardy Weirdy's actual article, but I'm going to take a leap of faith and assume that the passages from his piece FOR the New Statesthebleedinobvious quoted BY the New Statesthebleedinobvious are accurate. Yes, it's a gamble.

"With remarkable speed, we are being committed to radical, long-term policies for which no one voted," he writes. "At the very least, there is an understandable anxiety about what democracy means in such a context."

Well, if VOTING for things is SO IMPORTANT to him, I'm surprised that I don't remember His Weirdiness leading the charge for reform of the unelected House of Lords, where he occasionally places his bottom on a seat, nor fronting up for the AV referendum demanding more power to the voter.

I don't actually mind an informed criticism of the Government's policies. What I DO mind is this frankly ANTI-DEMOCRATIC rhetoric that asserts that a government's policy can only be "legitimate" if it was (a) in their manifesto and (b) they won a majority.

(a) Most of the Coalition's policies WERE in one or other (or both!) of the two Parties' manifestos.

(b) Between them, the two Coalition Parties received support from nearly 60% of the electorate. To say "no one voted for that" when the previous government of "the left" (as he, weirdly, describes them) had the support of 35%, absolute power on their own, and broke all their promises, is outrageous verging on the BEARING FALSE WITNESS. And – who'd have thought it – never a question of THEIR legitimacy from the Beardy Weirdy.

Oh and for the record, the Conservatories got a HIGHER share of the vote in 2010 than Hard Labour did in 2005. For that matter they actually got more than a million ACTUAL votes more than Hard Labour got in 2005.

It really can only be PREJUDICE against Coalitions to say that this is a government "no one voted for".

That is ACTUALLY saying that "legitimate" government is and can only be domination of the majority by the largest minority.

Presumably 60% is too populist; 35% is half-way there; but his idea of true legitimacy is LITERALLY NO-ONE VOTING FOR YOU AT ALL.

I can't say I'm SURPRISED that that's the opinion of a man whose power comes from his minority religion having enshrined established absolute power, but that doesn't stop me calling him a BLINKERED HYPOCRITE over it.

Given that he IS a member of the legislature, though, with the power to effect laws over the rest of us, it would be nice if he would READ THE CONSTITUTION. It's a quick read, seeing as it's UNWRITTEN.

Janet and John version: we have a REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACY. We choose the PEOPLE who will decide the laws, NOT THE LAWS that they will make.

You get to vote for ONE MP. Not the government and certainly not which BILLS they will put to Parliament. On that basis, no one voted for ANY government policy EVER.

So to say "no one voted for these policies" (or even, as commentators often put it, "no one voted for this government") is both BLEEDIN' OBVIOUS and BLINDINGLY STUPID.


Yes, I realise that with the increase of the franchise and the decrease in intelligent meeja coverage, a great many people choose to vote for PARTIES rather than PERSONS. Linked to that, and also through the development of Parliamentary etiquette such as the Salisbury Convention, the specific policy content of MANIFESTOS has gained a greater importance.

But manifestos are not SUPPOSED to be a promise of policies that will be effected; they are supposed to be a guide to the CHARACTER of the person you are voting for, the sort of values that they sign up for.

(Yes, again, I realise that we Liberal Democrats have got ourselves into trouble by making a very specific promise about a very specific policy, i.e. pledging to vote against any increase in university tuition fees. But keeping pledges is about CHARACTER too, and we're going to get punished and carry on getting punished for that failure of character.)

The fundamental point is this: no government has EVER been limited to legislating JUST on the things in its manifesto.

But let's just LOOK at this assertion: "no one voted for these policies". What IS the case is that a large majority of the people who voted last May, DID vote for one or other of the Coalition Parties: 36.1% voted Conservatory and 23.0% voted Liberal Democrat, a total of 59.1%.

Did they vote in COMPLETE IGNORANCE of those Parties' health or education policies?

This is what the CONSERVATORY manifesto last May had to say about NHS reform (on page 46, under "Trust Healthcare Professionals"):

"Doctors and nurses need to be able to usetheir professional judgement about what is right for patients, instead of being forced to follow bureaucratic processes that often put lives at risk. That is why we will scrap the politically-motivated targets that have no clinical justification. We will set NHS providers free to innovate by ensuring that they becomeautonomous Foundation Trusts."

and they add:

"NHS staff will be properly accountable to patients for their performance, removing the need for expensive layers of bureaucracy to oversee the NHS. As a result, we will be able to cut the cost of NHS administration by a third and transfer resources to support doctors and nurses on the front line."


Meanwhile, the LIBERAL DEMOCRAT manifesto says (on page 40, under "protecting our NHS":

"[O]ur first priority is to increase spending in some parts of the NHS by cutting waste in others. We have identified specific savings that can be made in management costs, bureaucracy and quangos, and we will reinvest that money back into the health care you need."

We go on specifically to say we will:

"Cut the size of the Department of Health by half, abolish unnecessary quangos such as Connecting for Health and cut the budgets of therest, scrap Strategic Health Authorities and seek to limit the pay and bonuses of top NHS managers so that none are paid more than the Prime Minister."

and

"Empower local communities to improve health services through elected Local Health Boards, which will take over the role of Primary Care Trust boards in commissioning care for local people, working in co-operation with local councils."

(my emphasis)

You can see the KERNEL of Mr Andrew Landslide's reforms are RIGHT THERE; you can also see why Liberal Democrats would initially sign up to his scheme that seemed to promise pretty much the same as our plan. The devil, of course, was in the detail and handing power to BUSINESSES rather than PEOPLE has been a STUMBLING BLOCK (to say the least).

But replacing PCTs and SHAs actually WAS in our election manifesto.

If you are "baffled" and "indignant", Mr Archbishop, perhaps it's because you didn't bother to read it?

In reference to Michael Gove's education reforms, the Archbishop writes: "[T]he comprehensive reworking of the Education Act 1944 that is now going forward might well be regarded as a proper matter for open probing in the context of election debates."

So he's blaming the Conservatories for not answering a question that HE COULDN'T BE BOTHERED TO ASK AT THE TIME – even when they answered it anyway! As proof…

The CONSERVATORY General Election manifesto has THIS to say on Education:

"Drawing on the experience of the Swedish school reforms and the charter school movement in the United States, we will breakdown barriers to entry so that any good education provider can set up a new Academy school."

and

"We want every child to benefit from our reforms. So all existing schools will have the chance to achieve Academy status…"

Well, blow me down! That's Mr Michael Borogove's "Free School Revolution" right there! If only someone had TOLD us this during the General Election so it could have been PROBED in DEBATE. Oh wait, they did!

The FRONT COVER of the Liberal Democrat manifesto promised "A Fair Deal for Every Child". We spell that out: smaller class sizes; a pupil premium for the most disadvantaged; more freedom for schools.

You had the opportunity to raise this IN the General Election, your Beardiness. Your failure, the meeja's failure, the "left's" failure properly to do so does not mean it was sneaked past you in the night.

Is it a problem that the General Election debate got bogged down in the state of the ECONOMY and borderline-racist questions about IMMIGRATION? Possibly, yes. But we don't elect the Secretary of State for Education and the Secretary of State for Health separately from the Chancellor or Prime Monster.

(It might be fun if we did – but I'M a political junkie; you can bet that turnout would be EVEN LOWER than under the current system!)

Fact is, 59.1% of people voted for Parties that SAID they would enact polices SOMETHING LIKE THIS.

What about his specific criticisms?

The Archbishop also questions David Cameron's "big society" agenda, a phrase which he describes as "painfully stale". He writes that the policy is viewed with "widespread suspicion" as an "opportunistic" cover for spending cuts…

Don't you think that you FEED those suspicions by airing them? Wouldn't it have been more STARTLING, and more BRAVE to embrace, even RECLAIM the "Big Society" idea?

Seems to me that "the Big Society" is a rather rubbish PR name for "Love Thy Neighbour". Now, if the Beardy Weirdy of Canterbury thinks that THAT is "painfully stale" then he is SERIOUSLY in the WRONG JOB.

It's so easy to MOCK, but there IS something vaguely WORTHY about Mr Balloon trying to resurrect "One Nation Conservatoryism" in the teeth of the Church of Thatchianity who occupy his rightward benches.

Yes, it's viewed with "widespread suspicion". That's because it is a badly explained catch-all title for a group of policies about restoring the local spirit and sense of possibility and creativity in a country that's become too used to being spoon fed by Hard Labour's Nanny-State apparatus.

I've said before that this was the WRONG TIME to try and bring in a kinder gentler Conservatory philosophy. It was ALWAYS going to get confused with the harshness of the austerity programme. Mr Balloon should have WAITED for the NEXT election, to say: "we have guided you through the dessert of the Labour recession, and now we will show you the path to the sunny uplands."

But I admire the effort to come up with a POSITIVE reason to vote Conservatory, rather than all the horrid, old NEGATIVE ones they usually come out with.

At least the Conservatories are MAKING the EFFORT, rather than just taking the SAD and EASY route of rubbishing an idea 'cos it sounds a bit silly. Talk about taking pot-shots at the easy targets!

And speaking of LAZY THINKING:

In an implicit criticism of the Chancellor, George Osborne, Williams writes:"It isn't enough to respond with what sounds like a mixture of, "This is the last government's legacy," and, "We'd like to do more, but just wait until the economy recovers a bit."

Oh you're RIGHT, your Canterburyship, this economic climate is TERRIBLY inconvenient, isn't it. I tell you what, let's just say we should ignore it. Oh wait. We can't.

If your house burns down – or, if you're the Beardy Weirdy of Canterbury, if your GILDED PALACE burns down – how would you feel if your hippy neighbour came round and complained that dinner isn't ready and that it's not good enough to say that it's a legacy of the house burning down?

Well, in economic terms, the house DID burn down.

There are many and complicated reasons for that and a great many people are to blame: the bankers, yes for their gambling; but also the Labour government not just for not regulating the banks (though they should have) but also for the example they set, borrowing at the height of a boom and spending like a gushing pipe of money; and also a whole load of ordinary folks who ramped up their mortgages to buy holidays and tellies and stuff.

But it doesn't actually matter WHOSE fault it was; we have to DEAL with the fact that THE HOUSE IS BURNT DOWN.

(Of course the Government will keep reminding people that Labour were in charge when the House BURNT DOWN. And it's a bit RICH for Labour to make political hay out of all the PAIN that the cuts ARE causing and then DENY they had anything to do with BURNING THE HOUSE DOWN.)

Where does the money come from, your worship? Divine intervention?

We CANNOT just behave like the last Labour Government as though the money will never run out, because it did. We cannot pretend that the economy is magically all better now, because it's not. The reason for the cuts is because there is no money left.

I'm so sorry that left-wingers are BORED of hearing this, but that doesn't stop it being TRUE: the government is getting SUBSTANTIALLY LESS cash. And will CONTINUE to get SUBSTANTIALLY LESS cash.

The gap between what we spend and what we get in is HUGE.

We are BORROWING a LOT this year to cover that gap. And a LOT next year.And hopefully not so much in the years after that.

The PLAN, if you've been paying ANY ATTENTION AT ALL, is to reduce government spending and therefore government borrowing AS THE ECONOMY RECOVERS. We are NOT slashing spending in the recession; we're not ACTUALLY cutting spending AT ALL, we're just spending not-as-much-more. We are SLOWING DOWN the increases in spending. We are slowing A LITTLE in the first year, and more in the second and then more still.

This is the painful truth: we're a rich country and we can afford almost anything we want, but people don't want to pay the tax to pay for it.

At the height of the longest boom in post-war history (leading to the inevitable deepest crash in post war history, not that Mr Frown would listen when warned) the Labour Government were spending more than they raised in tax and had to borrow to cover the difference.

IF PEOPLE WON'T PAY THE TAX THEN OF COURSE WE CANNOT AFFORD THAT LEVEL OF SPENDING.

(And yes, Mr Balloon was BONKERS when (pre-crash) he said he would match it.)

If people won't live with higher levels of tax, by which I mean won't VOTE for higher levels of tax, then the governments that they elect have to live within their means.

Did the Beardy Weirdy say after the 2001 election, or the 2005 election, that "nobody voted for borrowing instead of taxes"? Did he say that those policies weren't debated? They weren't debated because Lord Blairimort refused to hold an election debate AT ALL!

I'm pretty certain that "nobody voted for" a borrowing fuelled boom and binge that ends in a massive bust.

Oh, sorry, it's "not enough" to keep mentioning the legacy of the last government. Translation: "Move along, move along. Nothing to see here. No flaming debris or wreckage of the good ship UK Economy. No evidence of the "government of the left" found at the scene. Move along please; nothing to see."

In the end, that's the bigger debate than just education or just health: will you spend the money or keep the taxes down?

THAT is why "the economy" dominated the debates and nothing was heard of health policies or schools policies.

Hey, here's an idea: let's let the Archpillock put his money where his mouth is. Sell off his state-owned palace, and remove charitable status from the C of E!


Finally, the poor, who apparently are always with us.

He also launches a sustained attack on the government's welfare reforms, complaining of a "quiet resurgence of the seductive language of "deserving" and "undeserving" poor". In comments directed at the Work and Pensions Secretary, Iain Duncan Smith, the Archbishop criticises "the steady pressure" to increase "punitive responses to alleged abuses of the system".

Was he ASLEEP during the whole of New Labour?

It seems to me that His Wierdiness is responding to the increasingly hysterical poison from the right wing meeja – the Daily Heil and the Tell-lies-o-graph seem to run daily stories about this immigrant or that abusing the welfare or human rights laws – and mistaking it for government policy.

Actually, the reason for this "the steady pressure" to increase "punitive responses" is precisely because the right wing are STYMIED in their desire to give the poor a kicking.

Far from "deserving" and "undeserving" poor", it seems very much that Mr Drunken-Swerve's reforms are designed to treat people more EQUALLY, to protect the vulnerable while breaking down the barriers that keep people who want to work in the poverty trap.

I've spoken before about how I quite like the idea of just giving EVERYONE a citizen's income, something between £50 and £100 a week, and no means-tested benefits at all.You'd probably want extra for old-age and incapacity. Everyone gets a bit to get by on and there's no poverty trap.But this breaks down with housing benefit because the disproportionately high cost of housing, especially for larger families, would leave some families unable to afford to live anywhere.

Am I a big fan of the way that disability and sickness benefits are being targeted in particular? I am not!

I hate that the most vulnerable are going to have to prove they are incapacitated. I hate that it seems to be being done on the cheap by some uncaring box-ticking test. I hate the whole Victorian attitude with which the Tories approach the issue.

But that Victorian "work is the cure of all ills" attitude is NOT limited to the Conservatory benches; it was very much the Protestant-Work-Ethic mantra of Mr Frown too, and all that talk of "hardworking families": yes, your eminence, THAT'S code for "deserving" and "undeserving" too.

For years Hard Labour and the Conservatories before them HID the unemployed by moving them onto incapacity benefit. Now, Mr Drunken-Swerve, however cackhandedly, is trying to move the not-actually-incapacitated back to the unemployment or, ideally, EMployment lists.

Personally, I'd be a whole lot more RELAXED about so-called "abuses", but then I'm not a Conservatory!

Conservatories don't believe in giving money to the poor. But SOCIALISM (remember that?) expects people who CAN work TO work, as well: that whole "from each according to his abilities…" part.

It's only LIBERALISM thatsays if you can live without working then it's not a problem for us. Who introduced the first pension so people could "retire" rather than working till they dropped? It was a Liberal. It's only LIBERALISM that lets people make their own choices.

And I bet the Beardy Weirdy of Canterbury doesn't come out and say THAT!
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Day 3622 (again): On World AIDS Day… Some People SHOULD be Ashamed

Wednesday:


December 1st is World AIDS Day.

Across the world, people with HIV continue to face not just the prospect of a horrible disease, but also genuine prejudice, that can cost them their jobs, their homes, even their lives.

And yet today, the former Beardy Weirdy of Canterbury has decided that he's going to IGNORE that and bang on about HIS so called "right" to EXTRA SPECIAL treatment being under attack.

These SPECIAL "rights" include the "right" to hate gay daddies, the "right" to ignore employment law and the "right" to a free seat in the House of Lords Club (where he very nearly never bothers to show up).

He has set up a special website to tell the stories of some of the people who have SUFFERED for their Christian faith. (Please note: like they say in the movies, no people suffered actual SUFFERING in the course of these stories.)

I should like to direct you to Mr Unity at the Ministry of Truth who can explain better than me why none of these people deserve anything but your choice of pity or contempt.

This morning the The Today Programme programme chose to interview one of these people, a Mr Gary McFarlane, a man who was sacked from his job when he refused to treat gay daddies with equal respect because it "conflicted with his religious principles". This decision was judged correct by the employment tribunal and by the court of appeal.

Would the Today Programme have interviewed a man who was sacked for erecting a huge burning cross on Mr McFarlane's front drive and claimed it was because HE was just expressing his "religious principles"? I rather think not.

Mr McFarlane's problem is not that he is BAD because he is a Christian; no, he is obviously bad because he is a BAD CHRISTIAN.

You are probably familiar with the story of the Good Samaritan. It is a PARABLE told by Mr Jesus, and in the story a Jewish gentleman is mugged. Several other Jewish gentlepersons go past and, shockingly, ignore the crime! And then along came a Samaritan gentleman and he looked after the injured man. Hooray, a happy ending. What you ALSO ought to know, though, is that the Jewish people and the Samaritan people did not get on. They had, what you might call, "religious differences". So you see the POINT of the story is that the Samaritan was GOOD not just because he HELPED a Jewish person, but because he OVERCAME PREJUDICE in order to do so.

I think you can see where I am going here.


Is it wrong of Christian people to say that they are not ashamed? No, not really.

I have no problem with the Beardy Weirdy wanting to wear a dress to work. Why shouldn't he, if he wants to.

The Liberal Democrats are VERY TOLERANT of WEIRD SEXUAL PRACTICES, even including CELIBACY. What you do or don't do in the privacy of your own home/dungeon/secluded part of the common is nobody's business but your own.

And if all two billion Christians worldwide are doomed to be fed to the RAVENOUS BUGBLATTER BEAST of TRAAL for their failure to appease the GREAT GREEN ARKLESEIZURE, then honestly that is a matter for their consciences and not mine. It's not like we can't all make up our own minds to believe our own made-up stuff. Just ask the FLYING SPAGHETTI MONSTER.

But today is a day for thinking about OTHER people who are worse off than you by LOTS, so it is TACTLESS and SELFISH and STUPID to try and stomp all over World AIDS Day.

And as Daddy said to Mr Paul earlier, it's not like you haven't GOT a Day in December for advertising your Christian beliefs, is it?

Best wishes for World AIDS Day!
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Day 3268: Government treats religious faith as an "eccentricity" practised by "oddities"… says man wearing frock*!

Saturday:

So, the Beardy-Weirdy of Canterbury wants to know why we don't like hearing about our politicians' beliefs and why, if we do, we think it makes them a bit… peculiar.

Two words for you, your weirdiness: LORD BLAIRIMORT.

Yes, Britain's most famous (living) GENOCIDAL THEIST, author of pamphlets: "How I Did It!"; "I would have did it ANYWAY!" and "Nozink in ze vorld can SCHTOPP ME NOWWWWW!", back in the news with the revelation that he DIDN'T GIVE TWO HOOTS about the legality of invading that Middle Eastern county.

Religious convictions? We'd settle for convictions for War Crimes!


We have been INCREDIBLY LUCKY in Great Britain to have got away with being only slightly sucked in to the centuries of religious conflict that have wracked Europe since… well, I was going to say the Reformation, but before that there was the Islamic Invasion and the Cursader Counterstrike and before that it was all barbarians and martyrs so it's pretty much since the Council of Nicaea and Emperor Constantine spotting a get-rich-quick scheme that involved seizing the wealth of all the religions in the Roman Empire by forcibly converting everyone to the unpopular one with no money (guess which).

That's not to say that we've avoided it entirely. Hen-er-ry the Eighth's Break with Rome (NOT a cheap holiday away-day) was a POLITICAL act. Everyone knows that. (Although of course ALL religion is a political act, really.) But his kids turned it into something of a personal cursade, what with Eddy going one way then Bloody Mary going the other.

And Earl Conrad Russell (of sainted memory) wrote of how the Bishop Wars of the early Seventeenth Century led into the English Civil War of the mid Seventeenth Century and how RELIGIOUS conflict was at the root of that strife too.

And even today there are STILL deep religious divisions in some parts of the country, not least Northern Ireland (obviously) and some parts of Scotland (often with the same roots again).

HOWEVER, what we've managed to do is find a very British COMPROMISE. And in fact a very LIBERAL compromise, with successive Liberal Governments in the Nineteenth Century legislating to remove religious prejudice from the (Unwritten) Constitution.

The compromise is this: don't mention the RELIGIOUS war… I did it once, but I think I got away with it!

The thing about religious belief is that it TRANSCENDS rational argument. As a militant atheist baby elephant I would have to say that it HAS to. For most people, faith is something that they FEEL, not something that they DEBATE.

(I say most people; obviously the Beardy-Weirdy's PROBLEM stems from the fact that he is an ANGLICAN BISHOP – debating his faith is practically all the job description he's got!)

If you hitch the cart of policy to the donkey of personal faith, you end up with a simile from I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue… but also you make people invest literally their VERY SOULS in your politics (other fish are available); it makes debating IMPOSSIBLE and even agreeing to differ very, very hard.

So, extremely wisely, Britain has chosen to SEPARATE religious views from political ones. We call this a SECULAR STATE. There is a space for people to do religion (or to not do religion if you are a militant atheist baby elephant) and a SEPARATE space for people to debate politics and BECAUSE they are separate, no one needs to get burned at the stake over a disagreement about the interpretation of the Agriculture and Fisheries Bill!

Not that Archpillock Williams wants to get his hands dirty with the nitty gritty of the Agriculture and Fisheries Bill; Bishops almost NEVER turn up in the House of Lords Club when there's REAL work to be done (unless they're out to ban Gay Daddies from getting something everyone else already has!).

But what he means, when he says politicians are "side-lining" religion, is that he doesn't just want to play in his OWN place for doing religion but wants the special right to come and play in the political sandpit too when he wants to be able to give special little favours to his special personal friends.

(For more on how this "marginalisation" works, see HERE!)

Fortunately, and even more wisely, Britain didn't make that separation with the LAW but used the MUCH MORE POWERFUL force of FAUX PAS!

Ban something and you create underdogs and martyrs (again) and will strengthen and perpetuate it – just look at the Hunting Ban. But put mentioning religion on the same level as farting at the Christmas table and you kill it stone dead – look at the decline in smoking BEFORE Hard Labour legislated to ban it!

That's why we think that the Beardy-Weirdy is a bit, er, WEIRD!

That is why people associate Lord Blairimort "getting religion" with Lord Blairimort going BONKERS.

In all honesty, the former Prime Monster could have painted his bottom BRIGHT BLUE and called himself the Queen of Marzipan and people would have thought him less peculiar. THAT would have been "eccentric", but religion… it's just not CRICKET! No wonder Mr Alistair Henchman kept us from finding out about Lord B's "proclivities" with his "we do not do God" quote.

We're not dubious of Lord Blairimort IN SPITE of him turning out to be a closet Catholic.

We are dubious of Lord Blairimort precisely BECAUSE OF his turning out to be a religious whack-job!

His latest self-justification, which EVERYONE can see is because he's going to get hauled in front of the Chilcot Commission, is that Mr Saddam was "BAD" and so ought to have been removed.

But what MAKES a "bad" person "bad"? And who gets to decide and based on what rules and evidence? Because if it is merely "people Lord Blairimort SAYS are bad" then we are into VERY dangerous territory indeed. We're DANGEROUSLY CLOSE to a religious condemnation of the INFIDEL.

Suppose there is a particularly militant anti-Western Muslim in Iraq (I don't think that's TOO hard to imagine): from their perspective they could see Lord Blairimort as "BAD" – after all, he has (according to them) the "wrong" religion and he's certainly launched wars of invasion. Does that mean that the Iraqis would be justified in invading and occupying OUR country to catch HIM and put him on trial so that the Government that they pick for us can have him executed? In Lord Blairimort's world it does!

Look, I am NOT saying that Mr Saddam was all fluffy and nice. He was a TYRANT, a military dictator who invaded other countries (sometimes with our tacit support) and had lots and lots of people killed (even if stories of "people shredders" turned out to be made up propaganda).

But that's NOT a reason for invading his country and killing a lot of people who were frankly his victims. It IS a reason for not giving him lots of money and weapons and egging him on to attack Iran. Which, funnily enough, is something else we failed not to do.

Believing things to be true JUST BECAUSE YOU BELIEVE THEM is the very DEFINITION of a religious conviction. Which may be fine for Eternal Verities, but when it comes to impartial weighing of evidence, never mind deciding to take the Country to WAR, it's RUBBISH.


Bishops – like the Beardy-Weirdy of Canterbury – would like to have the POWER that comes with political control. Politicians – like Lord Blairimort – would like to have the UNQUESTIONING support that comes with FAITH.

Thank goodness our compromise keeps them apart!

PS:

*And what's wrong with men wearing frocks?


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Day 2825: Credit Crisis – Church Takes Action

Thursday:


The Beardy-Weirdy of Canterbury and Mr Dr John Sent-to-Moo, the Archpillock of York have joined forces to attack MERCHANT BANKERS.

Apparently the Bishops condemn people for investing faith in an INVISIBLE POWER that inexplicably acts for BENIGN reasons, and for selling a product that is of no MATERIAL benefit to anyone…

…hang on; this is a JOKE, isn't it?

Day 2595: Fire and Brimstone

Saturday:


Camden Market ablaze.

Archpillock of Canterbury.

You can make you own jokes up, frankly.

Day 2597: Every Burkha has a Silver Lining

Monday:


If there is one GOOD thing come from the Beardy Weirdy of Canterbury's daft pro-theocratic pronouncement it is that the people of Great Britain have risen up and said with many different voices and for many different reasons: "Noooooo!"

Because if people have misunderstood the Archbishop, it is that they have misunderstood the SCOPE and BREADTH of his offence.

He has not, as some people seem to believe, suggested that the Sharia should be the law of Great Britain.

No, he has said that HE – silly old buffoon that he is – HE should be the law of Great Britain.



And sorry, but if HE'S not going to shut up about this, then neither am I!

(It is a mealy mouthed EXCUSE for an APOLOGY, anyway, saying "I shall take responsibility, but I was right and no one understands me!")

Now, in spite of Daddy Alex's help, I have had to spend all weekend thinking VERY HARD about the Archpillock's speech.

So now my fluffy head HURTS!

He begins with an examination of the Sharia law, and it would appear that this is what he has been invited to speak about. So rather than a, perhaps ill-chosen, example in a broader topic, in fact he has chosen to use it as the basis from which to set out a far broader suggestion of, basically, religion taking over the law.

He says as much himself:

"But, as I hope to suggest, the issues that arise around what level of public or legal recognition, if any, might be allowed to the legal provisions of a religious group, are not peculiar to Islam"

He also repeats the usual whinges that secular justice is somehow overriding the SPECIAL PRIVILEGES that he thinks religious people somehow deserve, for example referring to:

"…a risk of assuming that 'mainstreram'(sic) jurisprudence should routinely and unquestioningly bypass the variety of ways in which actions are as a matter of fact understood by agents in the light of the diverse sorts of communal belonging they are involved in."

Implicitly bringing up the idea that BACKGROUND makes a difference to the RIGHTNESS or WRONGNESS of actions.

He also alludes to…

"some examples of legal rulings which have disregarded the account offered by religious believers of the motives for their own decisions"

…and…

"the right of religious believers in general to opt out of certain legal provisions"

…specifically citing the Catholic Cardinal's desire to be biased against gay daddies.

Quite simply, he is saying that some people are SPECIAL and deserve to have special EXCUSES to let them off the law.

In essence, and despite his subsequent denials, he IS suggesting that there could be multiple parallel legal systems. To say afterwards: "ah it was only a notion I was toying with" is, well, flexing honesty into what Cuddly Cthulhu suggests is a non-Euclidean dimension. OK, he doesn't say "parallel" he says "plural" but the difference is SOPHISTIC.

He specifically mentions:

"'a scheme in which individuals retain the liberty to choose the jurisdiction under which they will seek to resolve certain carefully specified matters, so that 'power-holders are forced to compete for the loyalty of their shared constituents'"

Now to be fair, this is a quote of a quote from author Ms Ayelet Shachar but the ENTIRE THRUST of his speech is to suggest a "what if" game of how would parallel systems WORK.

He suggests that there are three objections to this (only three, your worshipfulness?) and raises them to knock them down:

1. "vexatious appeals to religious scruple"


2. "reinforcing in minority communities some of the most repressive or retrograde elements in them"


3. "everyone stands before the public tribunal on exactly equal terms, so that recognition of corporate identities or, more seriously, of supplementary jurisdictions is simply incoherent"
   

I go for "simply incoherent". Well HE said it!

His offered solution to 1, that there should be a religious authority to say which complaints count as "real", is surely biased in favour of the religious complainant. And how does this do more than just add an extra bureaucracy to the legal process? At the moment, the judge would decide if the case if frivolous; why shunt that decision to someone else to make? "Ah ha!" you might say, "but doesn't the present secular system bias the choice AGAINST the religious?" NO! Because "secular" does NOT mean atheist, it means NEUTRAL regarding religion. The Archpillock raises examples – a woman who refuses to handle Bibles, and the British Airways cross woman – to illustrate the types of conflict that arise, but does NOT say how in his new framework these WOULD BE RESOLVED.

For 2 he mentions forced marriage, then shies away from discussing it, turning instead to widow's inheritance – where he fails to describe what the current position actually IS and thus again offers no explanation of how this would be resolved. He also examines the penalty for apostasy – i.e. death. Essentially, his counter-argument – that violent reprisals were considered necessary in a time when abandoning the faith automatically meant joining a violently opposed faction – reduces to "it's out of date; we'll see if we can find some loopholes in the set text".

This demonstrates the PRIMARY PROBLEM with a "revealed" statute. It tends to be – MYSTERIOUSLY for a revelation from an omniscient divinity whose wisdom SHOULD transcend the centuries – biased towards the conditions prevailing at the TIME when it was "revealed". Almost as though it was thought up by people OF that time, rather than the aforementioned ALL-WISE ONE. No doubt HE was just putting it in language they understood. Though it is a SHAME that HE did not leave footnotes for those of us living in post-mediaeval centuries. As an example, the Bible dwells on the laws for treating slaves, unnecessarily you might think when it could just say "in about 1800 years time, you'll work out that this is a really BAD thing."

It is with 3, though, that the Archpillock really has to work to find a get-out for himself.

He had already FRAMED the third question as a problem of our "modern thinking" that is "dominated by European assumptions about universal rights", which is IRONIC when your central tenant is the Sharia, a law that SELF-DEFINES as "universal".

Then, rather than reaching for his promised examples, he instead launches into a discussion of the Enlightenment, mainly with the aim of saying that the great throwing-off of the dead hand of the Church's authority was all down to Christianity anyway.

Why attack the Enlightenment? Because, for the theocrat, THAT is where it all started to go down the big gold pontifical TOILET.

There has been no Enlightenment in Islam. Quite the reverse: the period of European colonialism saw often enlightened and liberal states driven back into Feudal BARBARISM (and fundamentalist Islam's quite BERSERK attitude towards gay daddies comes STRAIGHT from the VICTORIANS not their own history).

And – and I remember the "joke" that Inayat Bunglawala of the Muslim Council of Britain contributed to Any Questionables on Friday, suggesting that Dr Row'n might like to apply some chastisement and flogging – WOULDN'T the Archpillock prefer to have all the power that goes with THAT?

He attests:

"The great protest of the Enlightenment was against authority that appealed only to tradition and refused to justify itself by other criteria."

And this certainly IS key: the idea that law should proceed from principles that can be clearly stated and understood, and moreover that can be CHALLENGED.

Indeed the appeal to authority (this is true because a wise person says so) or tradition (this is true because we've always said it was true) are both FALLACIES – false arguments.

You would think that this sinks his "law should come from "revelation" (i.e. traditional sources)" thesis. And it does. But he never says anything to refute this.

Instead, he embarks on an enormous CIRCUMLOCUTION in order to try and rephrase the principle of the Rule of Law in such a way that he can guilelessly discard it.

When he says…

"Perhaps it helps to see the universalist vision of law as guaranteeing equal accountability and access primarily in a negative rather than a positive sense…"

…you almost expect him to conclude the solipsism by saying:

"so now that I've said it is bad you can see that it is bad!"

To be fair he is PROBABLY trying to use a construction that forms a "negative freedom" (i.e. a freedom from interference, see Hobbes or Berlin), but this is maddeningly vague and, in a speech that is repeatedly described by his supporters as "academic" and "thoughtful", very poor argument.

What he ACTUALLY arrives at is a definition of the Rule of Law as:

"a mechanism whereby any human participant in a society is protected against the loss of certain elementary liberties of self-determination and guaranteed the freedom to demand reasons for any actions on the part of others for actions and policies that infringe self-determination".

There is a certain MEANNESS to this definition, eliding as it does any sense of levelling of terms between participants in life and dropping any notion of redress of wrong when those protections fail. But you could see it as an attempt at stripping back to first principles, if he were not about to strip it out ALTOGETHER!

Because this is the point where he does his theosophical PAUL DANIELS turn.

"…the point of defining legal universalism as a negative thing is that it allows us to assume, as I think we should, that the important springs of moral vision in a society will be in those areas which a systematic abstract universalism regards as 'private' – in religion above all, but also in custom and habit."

In translation: all moral vision proceeds from, above all, religion.

But see: he is using his verbosity to excise the idea that equality before the law might be a moral good IN AND OF ITSELF.


Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment thought has spent a great deal of time considering the question: "what is good?", from Hume to Kant to Nietzsche, not forgetting Mr J.S. Mill and Ms Harriet Taylor.

And if there is one thing that they can tell you from all that thinking it is that you should be able to start from PRINCIPLES that you can explain, and NOT a dusty tome.

That doesn't mean that they do not arrive at conclusions that you can find IN religion. But it DOES mean that they showed their working-out, and you can follow it and agree or disagree.

And even though religions sometimes end up with answers that we agree with, sometimes they DON'T (e.g. slavery; e.g. death by height reduction for people who change to another religion) and the very fact that we can tell the difference proves that our moral sense DOES NOT COME FROM RELIGION.

Indeed, when the Archpillock HIMSELF said that we would not want to import the more "primitivist" aspects of Islam he was making a choice that CANNOT have been informed from religion. Religion says "Islam YES/NO" or "Christianity YES/NO", not "these bits are good and we know that these bits are bad even though scripture SAYS they are good because er, um, St Augustine had a long bath about this one, didn't he…"

In translation: moral vision in no way proceeds from religion.

In which case, why should RELIGION claim any special position over the law?


Don't be mistaken. This old buzzard in a dress is NOT trying to talk up notions of how we could all get along a bit better. He is deliberately setting out his stall for the rolling back of centuries of freedom from theocratic intellectual tyranny.

At the CORE of his speech is this:

"There is a position – not at all unfamiliar in contemporary discussion – which says that to be a citizen is essentially and simply to be under the rule of the uniform law of a sovereign state, in such a way that any other relations, commitments or protocols of behaviour belong exclusively to the realm of the private and of individual choice. As I have maintained in several other contexts, this is a very unsatisfactory account of political reality in modern societies"

Let me put that slightly another way:

It is very unsatisfactory that citizenship is essentially and simply to be under the rule of the uniform law of a sovereign state

What ADDITIONAL requirement for citizenship can there POSSIBLY be?

For "any other relations, commitments or protocols of behaviour" (and let's be blunt here, he means RELIGIOUS affiliation) to be OTHER than "private choice" means that they are MANDATORY. How else is this sentence to be understood?


But guess what: in the culture wars, we WON. Secular, liberal democracies are what people WANT, and that is why they vote with their feet for them – often literally, hence the immigration. We won and the Beardy Weirdy of Canterbury LOST.

Which is a SHAME for him, but perhaps he would like to apply his "intelligence" and "wisdom" to living in the MODERN world, rather than trying to find ways to sneak us back to the Tenth Century.

Freedom of religion and freedom FROM religion are the beginning of our modern culture. Secularism means that you can enjoy the comforts and consolation of religion IF YOU WANT TO.

And I, as a Militant Atheist Baby Elephant, can enjoy being RIGHT! (… KIDDING!)