I challenge George Monbiot to test out which is the most dangerous fuel - coal or nuclear power. I am prepared to go into a room full of CO2 [sic] for two minutes, if he is prepared to go into a room full of radiation for two minutes.

Okay, let’s try that. He can stand in “a room full of CO₂” for two minutes, and then, when the paramedics have resuscitated him and explained that you can’t breathe carbon dioxide, we can discuss what “a room full of radiation” might be.

Presumably he has in all his years seen at least one dimmer switch. He might like to explain at what point the room becomes “full” of light. Because you could easily endure a small amount of radiation for two minutes with no ill effects. You do exactly that every two minutes of your life. In the same way, you can endure a small amount of carbon dioxide.

So first we need to work out exactly how much of each thing each room will need to be “full”. Then we need to decide if Scargill will be allowed to supplement his CO₂ with any oxygen — bearing in mind that if there’s room for oxygen, it can’t really be “full” of CO₂ now, can it?

We should also decide what kind of radiation to use. We could use alpha, beta, gamma, or anything we like from the EM spectrum including long-wave radio, heat or visible light.

After we’ve done that, and Scargill and Monbiot have spent the required minutes in their respective rooms — personally I vote to up Scargill’s sentence to five minutes as it’s by no means unheard of for people to simply hold their breath for two and that’s cheating — we can discuss what the hell any of that was supposed to prove because CO₂ is dangerous because a sodding greenhouse gas, not because it’s poisonous.

Scargill’s challenge is like the NRA saying guns are safe and proving it by standing in a room full of bullets for two minutes and failing to die. Or a company showing their new Arsenic Sandwich is safe by sitting in a room with it for two minutes. Or Dan challenging the claim that cigarette smoke is more toxic than car exhaust fumes by challenging me to inhale thousands of times more of the latter than he willof the former.

Another interesting bit of his article is this:

…we live on an island with more than 1,000 years of coal reserves from which we can provide all the electricity, oil, gas and petrochemicals that people need, without causing harm to the environment.

I was going to mock him for this too, but I’ve looked into it, and it turns out he’s right. Modern coal-fired power stations are really quite clever. You don’t actually need to burn the coal. Instead, a kitten gently caresses the coal, and the coal starts to give off heat. This is used to drive a turbine and create electricity. Meanwhile magical pixies suck any CO₂ the kitten may have exhaled into magic pixie bottles, which then vanish in a puff of pure joy. It’s true.

This brand of puritanical secularism is little more than inverted religion. It substitutes reason for god, science for theology, relentless progress for original sin and human fall. Its followers see secularism not as mere separation of religion and politics, or as state neutrality vis a vis matters of faith and belief. To them, it is a set of dogmas to be embraced willingly or imposed coercively by the force of the state.

I don’t think that’s a fair assessment of the “militant secularism” I know, but I shall ignore that. I think the major problem stems from a disagreement about what the new headscarf reforms in Turkey mean: Grayling says that “Turkish Islamists are encouraging more women to hide that automatic trigger of unbridled male lust, the tresses on the female head”, whereas Ghannoushi says “those genuinely committed to civil liberties and individual freedoms would applaud the relaxing of an oppressive law that denies women their basic right to decide their dress”. Personally, I’m not going to comment on who is right — pretty clearly the ideal is that women should be allowed to wear whatever they like, but there’s every chance that without the headscarf ban 95% of wearers would be wearing them against their will, and in that situation I think a ban can be justified easily.

Grayling’s thesis was really much more wide-reaching than that:

If the Brian-sandalistas cannot succeed by direct assault, they will do it by constant nibbling and encroachments: prayers in American publicly-funded schools, headscarves in Turkish publicly-funded universities, a little bit of anti-evolutionary biology there, a little alcohol ban there – and if that doesn’t work, they try more robust means. So it goes: creep creep, whisper, soothe, murmur a prayer with the kids in assembly, ecumenicalise, interfaith-schmooze, infiltrate, subvert, complain, campaign, scream, threaten, explode.

And that’s the point. It’s all well and good Ghannoushi saying

This crude interventionism practised in the name of secularism in Turkey and France, and religion in Iran and Saudi Arabia can only be described as despotic. Individuals’ minds and bodies are not part of the state’s jurisdiction. The state is only the manager of citizens’ public affairs, not a judge of their consciences, appearances, habits, and preferences.

but in a society like Turkey, with a 99% Islamic population, if you have completely open democracy then there’s a very real possibility that people are going to vote for an alcohol ban, the death penalty for apostasy, a ban on dogs as pets, legalisation of forced marriage, and yes, a mandate to women about what they can wear on their heads, because what unites the people is their irrational conviction that a load of nonsense in a rather silly book, as well as a lot of other nonsense that even Mohammed never thought of, handed down by word of mouth, is How You Absolutely Should Live. And before you know what’s happening, you’re living under Sharia law in an Islamic state in all but name. And then they’ll vote to change the name. Because that’s what Islam is:

“Islam is not like Christianity. It doesn’t just aim to be practised in the realm of belief but also to regulate and rule the state,” — Omer Faruk Eminagaoglu, “chairman of the association of judges and prosecutors (Yarsav) and deputy to Turkey’s chief prosecutor”

The aim of a secular democracy then, cannot be to do what the people want, but to do what the general underlying values of the people dictate — just as in this country I don’t want the Chancellor of the Exchequer to do what the people think he should do; I want him to do what the people would think he should do if we were smarter and in possession of all the information and a good working knowledge of economics. Otherwise there’s no point in having anyone remotely qualified doing the job. You end up with lowest-common-denominator politics and the country’s de facto run by the editor of the Sun. (Frankly “tabloidism” can be treated as a religion for all practical purposes.)

The problem is, though, that if you have a large majority of one religion, it stands to reason that any candidate for government office would do well to make a big deal of subscribing to that faith. If they say things like “my religion guides my values and my values guide my politics” then he’ll do well in an election because he’s playing to something that’s seen as very important by the majority of the electorate — lowest-common-denominator again — but he’s just promised to act totally unsecularly. (That’s a word. Don’t say it isn’t.) And you end up living in a theocracy, no matter how secular the values enshrined in your law may be. You only have to look to America to see how strong this effect is. That Ghannoushi refers to this as “the neutral soft secularism of the United States” baffles me.

But what can you do? You can’t simply not tell the electorate what religion the candidates are; that would never even nearly work, and in any case it wouldn’t stop a candidate championing the teachings of their religion explicitly. You can’t demand that only atheists stand for office (or only atheists vote); again it’s unenforceable (unless perhaps you make the ballot out of ham) and it’s not exactly liberal. You can’t expect religious people, either government or voters, to set their faiths aside when making decisions, because it’s too big a part of who they are.

The problem isn’t secularism; the problem is that the religion exists in the first place. You can’t justly govern lunatics without recourse to the sane, and in a population 99% Islamic, you really have no baseline level of sanity to refer back to. Don’t get me wrong, in a pluralistic, multi-cultural society like Britain religion is mostly harmless and I think any attempt to stamp it out would fail and end up doing far more harm than good. The issue, though, is that if one of the many religions present in a society is somehow ‘fitter’ than the others, it will prosper. It’s easy to imagine a large majority of Muslims or Evangelical Christians establishing itself in such a society, feeding off the good-will towards faith that the other religions have fostered.

I believe that the only solution to this problem is to make sure that children are not indoctrinated with dogma. By all means they can be taught the various customs and traditions of their parents’ religion. But threats of eternal damnation or literal Earthly punishment, for breaking stupid and arbitrary rules are not okay. Of course we can’t legislate how parents raise children. (I have no particular ethical problem with that — it just wouldn’t work.) But we can grant them all the fundamental human right to an objective, neutral and secular education. With that in place, there’s not much parents can do to stop their children becoming tolerant and balanced members of society.

Religious parents will object to this, of course. Some non-religious ones will as well. They will say that they have a fundamental human right to raise their child any way they like. I say no. I say they don’t have the right to fuck up a child’s mind any more than they have the right to fuck up the child’s body. You can very easily totally ruin someone’s life before it’s even begun if you teach them to live in an imaginary version of the real world. They grow up and experience agonising dilemmas caused by a conflict between what they want and care about and some made-up rule implanted by their parents when they were small. I’ve seen it happen. But I think that children’s rights must always trump parents’ rights because they are in every way more vulnerable (although since parents can vote and children can’t this isn’t perhaps a view shared by everyone in government). So give them a decent secular education and I think they will, in the vast majority of cases, grow up to be balanced, liberal, tolerant people — even if they do still pay mostly-harmless lip-service to their faith. They’ll be a people who can be justly governed by democracy without religion taking over. Is that “crude interventionism”? Maybe. But I think it’s a good goal and a practical and fair means by which to achieve it.

See, Odone? I’ll see your choice of “faith schools or terrorism”, and I’ll raise you a choice of “secular education or Sharia law”. They’re both false dilemmas, of course, but I’d rather live in a secular democracy that gets bombed periodically than the peace that comes with the brutality of Sharia.

…to ask [them] to investigate fully the plight of increasing numbers of people who have become electro-sensitive (ES) or electro-hypersensitive (EHS) in the UK due to electricity or the new pulsed microwave radiation technologies such as TETRA, mobile phones and masts, WiFi, radar, cordless phones and a host of “wireless” gadgets.

ES and EHS are made-up conditions. They’re technophobic knee-jerk idiocy kept alive by people like Alasdair Philips so that they can sell you utterly useless shit. At first it was “wifi is dangerous, phone masts are cancer factories, and so on” but when it became too obvious even for them that the population at large was bathed in radiation and still basically limping on okay they decided to say it was just some people and give it a name. The prefix “hyper” was added to the condition to make it seem like they were just more suceptible to microwave radiation, rather than having a whole new way of getting disease. That makes it seem more plausible.

They also want:

1. Demand independent research into this “FUNCTIONAL IMPAIRMENT CAUSED BY ENVIRONMENTAL TRIGGERS” - which does have a distinguishing feature from other illnesses/conditions with similar symptoms i.e. the ES/EHS CAN AND DO recover if they are isolated from the cause(s) of the sensitivity.

The research has been done. The condition does not exist^[1-3]. (The third abstract there includes the phrase “Sham-Math” and is therefore excellent.) I’ve never seen a petition before which so repeatedly strives to establish some objective statement of (supposed) fact. It’s as if they think people don’t believe EHS is a real condition.

2. Demand monitoring by personnel trained or researching in this field who are aware of the effects of pulsed microwave radiation/electricity.

You’re demanding monitoring done specifically by people who know the monitoring is pointless.

“Pulsed” microwave radiation is just regular microwave radiation that turns on and off quickly. That doesn’t make it somehow more dangerous any more than turning a light on and off a lot makes it dangerous (assuming you don’t have epillepsy, anyway). I assume they go after pulsed radiation because that’s what’s used for modern things like mobiles and wifi, whereas regular, continuous modulated radiation must be safe because the wireless was around when they were little and nothing was dangeous then because they didn’t have the Daily Mail then.

3 Ensure that the Human Rights of the ES/EHS are observed fully and recognise electro-sensitivity as a disability in the UK, as in Canada and Sweden.

Maybe we should officially recognise stupid as a disability while we’re at it.

4 Provide safe zones so that the ES/EHS have places to recover/live in OR replace pulsed microwave radiation with a safer technology.

A safer technology? Like what? I hope you’re not advocating yoghurt-pots-and-string, because that string, stretched tight across streets, is a real hazard to cyclists, especially when it’s dark.

Just… no. Go and do something else.

Part of me hopes they get a lot of names on this, so I can see the government response. You can only say “your concerns are imaginary and we fully intend to ignore them” so diplomatically.

1. Rubin et al, Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity: A Systematic Review of Provocation Studies. Psychosomatic Medicine 67:224-232 (2005)
2. Seitz et al, Electromagnetic hypersensitivity (EHS) and subjective health complaints associated with electromagnetic fields of mobile phone communication—a literature review published between 2000 and 2004. Science of the Total Environment 349(1-3):45-55 (2005)
3. Lyskov et al, Provocation study of persons with perceived electrical hypersensitivity and controls using magnetic field exposure and recording of electrophysiological characteristics. Bioelectromagnetics 22(7):457-62 (2001)

The witch hunt is on. A Government obsessed with phoney egalitarianism and control freakery is aligning itself with the strident secularist lobby to threaten the future of faith schools in Britain.

I shall defer responding to this to the rather brilliantly ranty article published by Andrew Copson in the Guardian:

Few apart from than Odone can have noticed this dangerous development. Under Labour governments since 1997 more new state-funded faith schools have opened than under any other government, and there is no sign that this increase is being stemmed or about to be. Certainly no evidence for such a change of direction is presented in today’s pamphlet, a mish-mash of anecdote, selective factoids and non-sequiturs (”The schools are not divisive. Not one of the 72 British citizens convicted under the Terrorism Act of 2000 attended a faith school.”).

So what’s the problem?

[Faith schools] are out with Gordon Brown.

The Prime Minister may acknowledge that his faith is important to him. But so is his standing with the Labour party – all the more so given his record-low popularity with the voters. Gordon Brown knows that for the ‘Old Labour’ rump of the party, equally committed to secularism and comprehensive education, faith schools are anathema. Tony Blair and ‘New Labour’ were ready to ignore this constituency, but Gordon Brown cannot afford to.

It occurs to me that what people voted for in the last election was not faith schools, not Blair, nor Brown, but it was Labour. If Labour are largely against faith schools then surely Odone is accusing Brown of nothing more than keeping the promise Blair reneged on?

Here is her example of a faith school that’s good:

In contrast to the graffiti that covers the neighbouring buildings, and the litter on the streets and pavements, the Sir John Cass complex is impressively tidy and clean. Youngsters (the school is co-ed) in navy blue uniforms walk briskly but quietly in the corridors, greeting teachers with ‘Hello Sir’ or ‘Hello Miss’. When they spot the head, Haydn Evans, they fall silent to attention. It is easy to understand their awe: when one boy arrives with his tie askew, Evans, eyebrow raised, picks him up on it: ‘Where’s your uniform?’

He sounds like a dick who rules by fear to me. I mean, I’d hate to generalise just from that, but it’s hardly convincing me that faith schools are worth the rampant discrimination and segregation required to sustain them. In any case, this is a Church of England school with 60% Muslim students (just like most faith schools, I’m unwilling to bet), and yet they persist in the pointless and rather silly charade of having a little prayer that most of the students don’t believe in. If this school, with students from a broad mix of (parents’) faiths, is the best example in favour of faith schools you can find, surely that’s an argument against them? At least it’s an argument against the aribtrary suspension of discrimination laws for their special case?

After this she bangs on for a while about the good results faith schools get in league tables. Now I don’t know a lot about schools, but I do know a bit about science. I know that you can’t just say they’re good because “they account for a third of all primary schools but make up almost two-thirds of the top 209 primaries”. That could mean anything. It could mean that selection works. It could mean they’re largely in areas where people get good results. You have to compare them with a matched control group, not just every other school. That’s a meaningless comparison.

In any case, to be frank I’d not be at all surprised if faith schools gave good exam results. I just think that those good exam results will be on the CVs of fucked up children. That, to me, isn’t progress. I for one would rather my children, should I ever have any, grew up to be well-balanced people with poor grades than unlikeable conservative nerds. Obviously I’m exaggerating, but it’s the children of ultra-religious people who need secular education most, and saying “if you don’t like it, pick another school” is like saying “let’s legalise murder, and if you don’t like it, don’t kill anyone”: it very much misses the point. Faith schools are a Catch-22: the people who want them are the people it is most important shouldn’t get them.

She also makes an appeal to populatity, saying

Among Christian parents, faith schools are so popular that they are allegedly pushing their children into late baptisms to secure places at these schools. Meanwhile, parents who were turned away from over-subscribed faith schools refuse to accept the alternative: about 70,000 appeals are launched each year.

But this is also misleading: the public in general are against faith schools. Parents want their kids to go to good schools. They don’t care what religion that school is.

In chapter two, Odone makes a poor attempt to address the idea that selection may be responsible for the better results:

Critics maintain that faith schools use the admissions procedure to usher in a better-off intake. As evidence, they point to the schools’ under-representation of children on Free School Meals (FSM)…

But the National Audit Office warns that FSM do not necessarily serve as the best proxy for poor income. Its reservations were corroborated by research carried out last year for the Centre for the Economics of Education.

Fair enough perhaps, but let’s not forget you’re happy to use league tables against a hopelessly unmatched control as a proxy for efficacy. Besides, she’s in favour of selection:

To the Government, as Ed Balls’s attack revealed, a request for a marriage certificate as part of an application form is an ignominious attempt to flush out single mothers. To the Orthodox Jewish school, it is the only way to verify that both parents are born Jews.

Yes, but here in Britain we don’t stand for that kind of shit. Born Jews? That’s not “maintaining the religious ethos of the school”, that’s racism. I’d think Jews, of all people, would know better than that. She lists other, similar examples, which yes, do ensure that the school’s religious makeup is controlled, but plainly also act as proxies for performance selection.

Chapter four (chapter three saying nothing of any consequence) again opens with what Odone wrongly considers a lovely story about what she hopefully-wrongly perceives to be one of the better faith schools. Since the schools featured are her choice from the minority of ones that responded, from the minority of ones she contacted, I dismissed it out of hand. After that she starts explaining the idea that Muslim students or their parents might be offended by many aspects of what she quite wrongly describes as our “secular” state school system. These include “gym where their modesty is affronted” — believe me, at secondary school I would have liked little more than a decent affront to modesty in gym class and it really doesn’t happen — and “the school trip to a farm where they might come into contact with a pig” — which did happen. It was a Gloucester Old Spot. It wasn’t scary or offensive in the least. Of course, I’m not a Muslim, but screw them; if they want to complain about the prospect of their child maybe meeting a pig then they should have a better reason than “oh, we just don’t like pigs”. But Odone says that “feeling misunderstood or rejected by their peers at school, and frustrated in their ambitions beyond it, these youngsters are likely to be receptive to radical messages.” People will blow up trains because they met a pig? Are you serious?

Next is her observation, if you can call it that, that “not one of the 77 convicted on terrorism charges since the Terrorism Act 2000 attended a Muslim school”. What the Guardian article didn’t tell me was the comedy gem hiding after the semicolon: “one, Ader Ahmed, was home-schooled.” So basically he went to a really small faith school? I’m against home-schooling too. That plays right into my existing prejudice. (I realise the pamphlet isn’t aimed just at me, but then, I tend to think that people who share one opinion with me probably share other related ones too.)

Next, she starts implying that the alternative to proper Muslim schooling is little girls being packaged off to Pakistan to marry close relatives:

“The Drugs sex and rock and roll scene is not an option for Muslim girls,” Humeira Khan points out, “or if it is, it sparks huge conflict. So suddenly marrying them early or sending them home [to Pakistan or Bangladesh] becomes a huge pressure.”

Trust me, it’s not an option for anyone at school. Did you never even watch The Inbetweeners? Unless you’ve been sitting up all night watching Skins, which frankly raises even more worrying questions, there’s no reason to be afraid of what happens in the average British school. I’d be far more concerned about the effects of a Muslim education on a young girl. If that results in some people sending their children to more illiberal countries, I think we have to accept that as a consequence of being ahead of the rest of the world. Lead by example. You know or “liberate” Pakistan and Bangladesh.

The fifth chapter (by which point I was skipping the “example” schools entirely) points out that far from “educational ghettos where Christian children learn about Creationism and Muslim children about jihad, while Jewish children are taught they alone are Chosen People” (an accusation I would never make — they’re not educational! Ho ho!), “faith schools in the state system must follow the National Curriculum, including Citizenship education.” Well that’s swell and all, but — and again I don’t know a lot about schools so this may be totally wrong — surely a school which actually is pluralistic, multicultural and inclusive is going to be more effective than a school which is monoreligious, monocultural and exclusive, with a lesson (eating up an hour a week of expensive teaching time) in place to teach students tolerance as if it’s something that can be examined? Odone points out that “all maintained schools are under an ‘obligation’ to promote community cohesion,” but that doesn’t mean they actually do it. The government could mandate that all bank clerks must fly to work on jetpacks, it wouldn’t make it so.

Chapter six, ‘Smears’, mentions creationism. Odone claims that creationism in Britain is basically a myth:

Creationism, then, is not a wild fire sweeping the country’s schools; it is not taught in science classes in place of, or as an alternative to, evolution. Instead, Creationism is taught, in a handful of schools, as part of their study of the Bible in RE. Those Christian students who subscribe to a literal interpretation of the Bible will believe that God made the world, and man, in seven days; but thanks to the National Curriculum they will also know that science has proved otherwise. In this way their Christianity has to accommodate their learning.

Channel 4 say otherwise. And so does the scary Jewish headmaster in their film.

After that there is a summary saying “as we have seen, the charges against faith schools can be
dismissed one by one” which as I think we have seen, she didn’t actually do with any kind of success.

And that’s why she’s awarded this month’s Crackpot title.

There are some scary quotes in there, but the stats are worse. From their own survey, 80% of 50 Muslim, Jewish and ‘accelerated Christian education’ schools taught Creationism as fact and ignore evolution. Of those, five were state-funded schools. That’s 74% of 19 Jewish schools, 100% of 21 Evangelical schools and 50% of 10 Islamic schools. None of these schools is breaking a law*, although of course Paul Kelley would have been had he been reckless enough to educate in a secular way. The law, as has been mentioned, is an ass.

Personally, I think the best argument for teaching evolution in schools is that it’s the only way I know that you can make biology into a passably interesting subject. I for one always found it crushingly dull — because it was mostly a list of information presented in a “here’s what happens; don’t ask why, just learn it” kind of a way. Throw in evolution and you can explain why these things happen. You can talk about DNA and all the weird ways genes try to get copied. You can tie biology in to all kinds of other subjects much more effectively. I’m sure you can teach vast tracts of biology without mentioning genes or evolution, but I defy you to make it interesting.

That aside, the best reason I know of not to teach Creationism is simply that it’s patently false. Of course, Creationists won’t accept that, so a better argument is that there is no evidence to support it (because it’s so false). The only argument in favour is the whole stupid “parents’ rights” thing. And I do accept that parents have a right to educate their children in whatever way they want — but I think they should be made to look up the word “educate” before they start paying someone to preach at them, because filling impressionable young minds with damaging lies to promote an ideology is nothing more or less than exploitation — and it’s not even for personal gain: we’re talking about exploitation for the sake of an abstract concept. And I think it’s utterly abhorrent that the government would fund this.

I blame the parents for this. They should be outraged if their kids are being taught such bullshit, and they should get something done. The government are also in the wrong, of course, but you can hardly expect the government to act if the people don’t care. (You know, because the government only ever does what the people want.) People listen to parents. God knows why.

I’m not against the ides of schools being different and parents having choice. I’m not against the idea that some of those differences might be based on a religion — a school aimed at Muslims that makes sure the textbooks don’t have illustrations in articles about Mohammed, or a school aimed at Jews that only serves kosher food, that’s fine. And hopefully the genuine followers of those religions would be able to get places in those schools, because since all schools would be required to teach the same curriculum non-religious parents presumably would just pick the nearest school, or the one the kid’s friends were going to. The moment you let them teach different things then the idea of “choice” becomes an illusion: when you’re presented with one good school and one bad school, you don’t have a choice. Everyone with a brain will try to get into the good school and then you’re back to pot luck (or selection, if it’s a faith school). It’s just the same as the ridiculous claim made by the Department of Health the other day, that “operation success rates help patients choose treatment”. Their theory is that by publishing statistics on survival rates at different hospitals, they give patients a choice. No, you don’t. You just make life difficult for everyone, and worry people who can’t get into the best one. The stats should be public, certainly, but not for that reason. I think that all schools and hospitals should be good enough that you don’t care which one you use, and I think that if they’re not then you should fix it rather than shifting the onus onto patients and parents to find an acceptable one.

More to the point, if it’s legal to teach Creationism, that must mean there is no requirement for schools to teach facts that are true.

But of course, I don’t get a say. Because I don’t live in Normanton. If I did, I’d be allowed to vote against Ed Balls’ continuing reign of lunacy over the Department of Children, Schools, Families and Kittens, or whatever they’re calling Education now. (Honestly, the system of government we have here is utterly mad if you look into it for any length of time.)

They didn’t seem to think the Czechoslovakia thing was important, and you can make a good case for that, but their reasons are ridiculous:

“This is basic elementary school geography. I don’t care what excuses you make for them. It also illustrates their level of awareness of the world.”

Can you draw an accurate map of Africa?
How about if I draw the lines, can you put in the names?

Nobody can do that. How is that even remotely like not knowing what countries are called while discussing their politics?

Kinda depends on which week you left elementary school.

What? For the record, Obama studied law at Harvard, and McCain was 5th from bottom of his class of almost 900.

I’ll tell you, as a truck driver, the average person person can tell you the name of the next town.

One of my favorite stories–I was lost, trying to find a consignee–instructions from the dispatcher were bad, nothing matched up with the map. Called the consignee and talked to several people who, given the intersection of major (for the area) highways where I was sitting could not tell me how to get from where I was to where they were.

I finally found the place by circling town (it was just a little bitty place) in decreasing-radius circles until I spotted a likely candidate in the dark.

I have literally no idea why this story is here. Possibly it’s a failed attempt to reference the Kentucky thing (see below) but probably he started thinking about something else and just kept typing.

The Czech Republic is very important to lots of people, and given that they ought to quit changing names every few years. They have been through, what, four since I left grammar school?
Larry Sheldon | 07.18.08 - 2:03 am | #

The Czech Republic has been the Czech Republic since its inception in 1993, and while the full name of Czechoslovakia changed many times before then, “Czechoslovakia” was never wrong for long, assuming that Sheldon left grammar school some time after 1918. They stopped being Czechoslovakia when the country broke in two — what the hell where they supposed to do? Both be Czechoslovakia?

Still, here goes nothing, a full round-up of all the gaffes they accused Obama of making, and a few other things they said about him. Are they worse than McCain’s total ignorance of how to work a computer? Are they worse than his apparent failure to read and understand the Constitution? Let’s have a look.

Fifty Seven States

One of their favourite Obama ‘gaffes’ is his supposed assertion that there are 57 states. The first problem I have with this is that it clearly demonstrates Republicans can’t count, because what Obama actually said was this:

I’ve now been to 57 states, [with] one left to go. Alaska and Hawaii I was not allowed to go to, even though I really wanted to go, but my staff would not justify it.

That makes sixty states, you feeble-minded buffoons. Of course, that would make it harder to draw absurd parallels with the 57 member states of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference, except that it wouldn’t because there are only 57 states in that if you exclude the three ‘observer’ states. (I wonder if it’s ever the same people who promoted the Jeremiah Wright clips who think Obama is a Muslim.)

But the biggest problem is that what Obama actually said was this:

I’ve now been to fifty… seven states? I think one left to go. One left to go. Alaska and Hawaii I was not allowed to go to…

Pretty clearly, Obama said “fifty” instead of “forty”, because he was thinking about the number of states that there are. That’s the kind of mistake people make all the time. And afterwards he acknowledged his error, rather than repeating it as McCain did with Czechoslovakia.

No dice on the 57 states thing, I’m afraid. I’m not a hypocrite yet. I just missed a clip of a mildly amusing error.

Which States Border Illinois

Again, Obama’s knowledge of US geography is called into question. One (presumably conservative) ‘news’ website reports this as “Media Snoozes While Obama’s ‘Altered States’ Gaffes Continue”. If this is as serious an error as they’re implying then the media is clearly complicit in some kind of propaganda campaign. We can’t have a President who doesn’t know the local geography of the state that elected him to the Senate, can we? So what’s the deal?

Well, Obama said this:

Sen. Clinton, I think, is much better known [in Kentucky], coming from a nearby state of Arkansas. So it’s not surprising that she would have an advantage in some of those states in the middle.

And the not-so investigative journalists at News Busters cleverly dug out their atlas and noticed that Kentucky shares a border with Illinois. Therefore, they conclude, Illinois is zero miles from Kentucky and Obama is a fool. We need a map.

(All maps taken from Wikipedia)

Note that I had to Google search to find this — Sheldon simply assumed that we all knew about this.

They’re right, too. Illinois is closer to Kentucky than Arkansas, which by what is clearly a really significant amount. Here, for those interested, is the same map with the population densities shown. (By which I mean I looked at the population maps on Wikipedia and pasted them on top of the state map, ignoring the projection differences as hard as I could. I made this in a couple of minutes in Paint.NET, so it’s not very good.)

You can clearly see that the entire population of Illinois lives almost as far from Kentucky as they possibly can. In fact, probably further from Kentucky’s borders than the population of Arkansas live. That’s not really fair, though, as the population of Kentucky are over to the west of the state, away from Arkansas, so the population centre of Illinois is still nearer to that of Kentucky than that of Arkansas is, but I think this shows that simply going by closest borders isn’t a good plan.

Really, taken in context, Obama’s statement was about politics. I don’t know much about state-level politics, beyond the fact that everyone in Texas is insane and Louisiana is apparently doomed, and California is governed by a robot from the future, but I was able, thanks again to Wikipedia, to find out what larger ‘regions’ the states are usually divided into (Guess how long this map took me):

So is seems likely to me that Arkansas is probably much closer, politically, to Kentucky than Illinois is. Of course, Obama’s statement is still mildly silly — you obviously shouldn’t refer to distances between states when your state is zero miles away — but I can’t bring myself to consider this a “gaffe”. And nor, apparently, can anyone else much, because the media didn’t bother reporting it. “Snoozed”, if you won’t.

I’m still not a hypocrite. I am, however, heartened that the US media would ignore inconsequential things instead of sensationalising them (you know, this one time).

Obama is a Marxist

This is something a couple of Republicans have said, and I can’t even be bothered deconstructing it. Learning Marxism for the sake of a blogpost would be going far above and beyond and I’m not doing it. The actual odds that this is anything other than another Republican who can’t tell Marxism from Liberalism from Communism from Socialism are so vanishingly small that the possibility isn’t worth considering.

Hell, one commenter said McCain was a Marxist, although he called himself “a “bleedingheart” libertarian”, which is like calling yourself a tree-hugging capitalist.

Obama can’t tell ’surrender’ from ‘re-deployment’

This accusation doesn’t make any sense without context and no context was given. I genuinely don’t know what point is being made here. I had a look on Google and that didn’t seem to help. I presume it’s a reference to Iraq, and I know Obama wants to slowly take troops out of there, and I think he’d send a few more to Afghanistan, which I think would be called “re-deployment”. I imagine the commenter here decided that that constitutes “surrender” and phrased his accusation in a way designed to make himself look as foolish as possible: you can’t conflate two concepts then accuse people of not being able to distinguish them. It’s so absurd as to be almost brilliant.

I’m still not a hypocrite.

Obama is a communist (implicit)

See above.

The Bomb that Fell on Pearl Harbor

Yeah, that was pretty dumb. I’ll give you that one. And even though it was the same Larry Sheldon who said it as said all that other rubbish, I’ll even refrain from cancelling it out against his nonsense. In fairness, Obama did say it only once rather than repeatedly, and the significance of the attack on Pearl Harbor was the timing and lack of warning rather than the actual weapons used, but still, Obama messed up pretty good there.

On the other hand, this was an isolated incident, whereas what I did was to combine three McCain issues — his age, his repeated references to countries that don’t exist and his inability to work a computer — and wrap them up into one coherent package of 1992-ness. This is just pointing and laughing at a mistake. I think I’m okay with myself here.

Obama Went To Harvard

Yes. Yes, he did. Isn’t that good?

Lastly, I feel for the sake of completeness, I should lay out what I consider the better case for Saying “Czechoslovakia” Doesn’t Matter, since I defended Obama just now and if I’m being fair I should do it properly. First of all, he could be discussing the Czech Republic and Slovakia. If this is the case he should say “the former Czechoslovakia” as we do with Yugoslavia, but that’s still just a speech thing rather than a shocking ignorance thing. Secondly, he may just be in the habit of saying “Czechoslovakia” — that happens — but if that was true I’d expect him to reliably pronounce it correctly. To be honest, though, I don’t think any of that case matters, because it only dents one of the three things I flagged up as indicators that McCain may be living in 1992. In context, I think it looks pretty bad for him, and even if it doesn’t matter, he and his staff should be able to spot things that make him look dumb and change them. The fact that they can’t or don’t is at least as worrying as the mistake itself.

Obviously I don’t think that an election should be decided or fought on a Who Said The Dumbest Thing competition. But if this is the best collection of “gaffes” they have then I’m happy to keep poking fun at McCain, safe in the knowledge that I’m not indulging in too much selective reporting.

Yay. I was right.

Well, he can’t use the Internet.

And he still thinks Czechoslovakia is a country.

(Nice analogy, by the way. Not in the least patronising.)

And that it’s pronounced “Czechlosovakia”.

So yes, he is. Czechoslovakia broke up on the first day of 1993, when McCain was 56 and therefore had no excuse for not being able to learn new things. The Internet was just getting widespread around the same time. Clearly, whatever year it is inside John McCain’s head, it’s no later than 1992.

Only the GOP, a political party so insane that GOP stands for “Grand Old Party”, could possibly think this idiot could make a passable world leader.

The main points in summary. Ministers want to increase the offsales age from 18 to 21, to set a minimum price for drink based on alcohol content, to end discount offers, to introduce alcohol-only checkouts at big shops, to levy a social responsibility fee on some retailers and to boost spending to address alcohol problems.

Now, ending discount offers I think might help. When you’re selling soft drinks with vodka in them cheaper than regular soft drinks, three bottles at a time, you’re basically selling drunkenness, not refreshment. That’s targeted at the problem. That’s a sensible policy. A minimum price per unit of alcohol sounds not unreasonable too — it’s a small change from the existing alcohol duty.

I can’t work out what use a “social responsibility fee” will be. According to the proposals (pdf link),

We propose that a fee should be applied to some alcohol retailers to help offset the costs of dealing with the adverse consequences of alcohol and invite views on our proposals. We do not intend that this would apply to small businesses where the sale of alcohol is incidental to the main purpose of the business and the amount of alcohol sold may be small.

The aim being that “the costs associated with the wider impacts of a commercial activity should be borne by those who benefit from it”. Well, okay, but we already have alcohol duty — if you want to tax people based on how much alcohol they sell, raise the duty on it. That won’t work and this won’t either. If the cost is high enough to affect business then the drunken vandals will just go elsewhere, maybe to a small business where the sale of alcohol is incidental to the main purpose of the business and the amount of alcohol sold may be small. Or to a pub, which isn’t covered by the proposals.

But mostly, I think it’s insane to try raising the age from 18 to 21. The minimum ages for various activities in this country are messed up enough already without moving them any further apart. So their theory is that you can have sex with your girlfriend at 16, marry her at 18, but you can’t have a glass of wine with her in front of the TV until you’re 21? That is fucking mental, and that’s before you start considering the civil liberties implications of banning about 200,000 people from off-licenses just because you can’t control vandalism. I find it impossible to believe that even 5% of those people are problematic, which would leave 190,000 people, all old enough to vote, essentially being discriminated against by the government, based on their age. Really, who thought that would be smart? Certainly none of these people did.

They tried these ideas in one town, and they say it’s helped, reducing various measures of crime by around half. But they’ve tested a whole raft of ideas all at once as a package, for a short time. We’ve no idea if it would work in other places, for longer times or which of the ideas helped. And it doesn’t address the civil liberties issues.

Are you people beginning to see yet why you can’t just kowtow to any old thing just because a religion says you should?

Bit of a nightmare getting there: I was picked out at random by the metal detector and frisked, then I was the 25th person through the gate so I was questioned by the government survey woman. Then KLM lost my bag with all my spare clothes, although to be fair they did give me a little bag with an XXL t-shirt, a toothbrush, some other toiletries (including no soap or shower gel) and some detergent. To me, that was just mean. Then the train was rerouted, so a 2-and-a-half hour journey became a three hour journey. My one set of fitting clothes was becoming less and less suited for prolonged use. My bag arrived at 10pm the following day, with a voucher for €25 off any flight of €100 or more — which frankly is the second shittest attempt at compensation anyone’s ever given me (first place going to N at the National Express). Anyhow.

Actually, bit of a nightmare getting back, too. The plane was delayed for two hours because there wasn’t a pilot and apparently KLM don’t have anyone on standby. We couldn’t wait in the bar or get anything to eat or drink, of course, because Schipol’s security checks are after those things and they couldn’t be bothered checking us again. Then literally all the trains from Manchester Airport were cancelled for no stated reason, and the monitor that said where the bus went was broken. But at least I had my bag. Anyhow.

The Netherlands are of interest just now. While I was there I learned that I’d got there about a week before they caught up with other European countries and implemented a smoking ban, one year to the day after we did. This ban relates specifically to tobacco. It has to, because technically marijuana is as illegal there as it is here, and you can’t really ban something without first legalising it. It’s allowed in ‘coffee shops’, as there’s a long-standing policy of not enforcing the laws against it (if you follow the rules), because, well, because enforcing it is very expensive and clearly doesn’t work. (Personally, I’m not sure what exactly the aim of drug laws are in the first place: be it to reduce crime, or cut off funding to the suppliers — who are mostly pretty unpleasant, but then so are Nestlé and chocolate is legal — or to stop people taking it. But since the bikes I saw in Holland were left unlocked, and the locked ones I see in Manchester have no wheels, seats or chains, I’m pretty sure none of those things has happened.)

So given this very mature, liberal and pragmatic attitude, you’d think the Dutch authorities would say, perhaps, that tobacco is okay when mixed with marijuana in a licensed coffee shop. Okay, so perhaps people would go there just to smoke it, but is that a major problem? That’s exactly what happens anyway; the only difference would be they’d be smoking something legal.

No.

The Food and Consumer Product Safety Authority, which is responsible for enforcing the ban, said it had trained around 200 inspectors. “They can tell the difference between a mix or a pure joint from its smell and appearance,” said a spokesman.

I expect that was a pretty easy vacancy to fill.

So now mild joints are banned, and strong ones are allowed? You’re allowed to buy any strength joint you want, but you have to go home to smoke the mild ones? Smoking tobacco in a café is not allowed, but smoking cannabis is? Tobacco can be smoked in the street but not a café; marijuana can be smoked in cafés but not in the street? The whole thing is just surreal. I can see how they got there, but where they’ve got is mad in anyone’s books.

It might be time to tear up all laws and start again.

Well, first of all, it’s at least trying to be progressive. They ordain women, much to the chagrin of Anne Widdecombe, a woman so conservative she even objects to equal rights for women, and gay people (although they do ask them not to actually have sex, although in fairness that’s as much the government’s fault for failing to legalise gay marriage as such). If there really has to be an Established church (which there clearly doesn’t) then I’d rather it be them than most of the others.

And what happens?

A breakaway sect of Anglicanism (a phrase I never imagined I’d have to type — cake or death, anyone?) forms, designed to keep those dirty gays out. And people (like the aforementioned Tory notjob) desert the Church for the safety of Catholicism, where of course there is no danger at all of anything remotely resembling liberalism, progressivism, or any form of acknowledgement that it’s not the middle ages or that making stuff up is different from research. These people usually justify their actions by saying things like “you can’t just ignore the parts of the bible you don’t like”, while wearing cotton-polyester blend. So either you’re being selective, and therefore will need to either stop being a sexist homophobic bigot or find a better reason, or else you’ve got to accept the whole bible, including all the really fucked-up stuff with rape and murder and slavery and so on and so forth. Honestly I’d be happier if they just came right out and said “I think homosexuality is wrong and I won’t be a member of any church that supports it”. They’d be flat out wrong, but at least they’d be honest. When did palatable become better than honest?

If all this is right, then to say the C of E is doomed because it’s losing people is like saying that a cancer surgery patient is doomed because they’re losing cells. If enough of the fools abandon the ship then the Church may even end up being a force for good.

Of course, I’ll still want it disestablished.

(There are some really fucking weird versions of Cake Or Death on Youtube…)

NOTICE IS HEREBY GIVEN that … In order to be of assistance to persons carrying out religious duties within the community, the Council [of the London Borough of Barnet] are, on an experimental basis, introducing a Community Parking Permit that will enable the permit holder to park in any permitted parking place within the Borough’s Controlled Parking Zones.

From the BBC:

Religious leaders on official business in part of north London will be able to park for free using special permits.

…

Applications from worshippers on faith business will also be considered.

Mike Freer, leader of the council, said: “The importance of religion to many Barnet residents cannot be underestimated and the council has acknowledged this with a policy that will assist spiritual leaders when engaging with people in times of illness or crisis.”

And from the Barnet Times:

A new permit introduced by Barnet Council will allow people carrying out religious duties to use residents’ parking bays, to avoid the struggle to find a parking space. … Councillor Mike Freer [said] “This new permit shows our commitment to improving the quality of life for local residents and increasing wider participation for all in religious, cultural and community life.”

Religions currently recognised by the council include Baha’i, Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Jainism, Judaism, Rastafarianism, Sikhism, Unitarianism and Zoroastrianism. Applications from any other religions will be considered “on their own merit” in consultation with the Barnet Multi-Faith Forum, according to the council.

The following is their attempt at humour:

In the 2001 census 390,000 people across England and Wales declared that their religion was “Jedi”, a belief inspired by the conflict between good and evil in the Star Wars series of films. Census officials bowed to public pressure to include Jedi on the list of chosen religions, but it remains to be seen if the parking badge will be awarded to people carrying out Jedi duties.

This definitely gets my new ‘religion taking the credit’ tag: if these people are doing vital work then their entitlement to permits to help them do so should depend on that, not on their faith. That would allow Humanist, atheist and secular people doing similar work to benefit, and help filter out people abusing the system for indoctrination purposes.

A few weeks before that, a report was published by the Church of England and something improbably named “the Von Hugel Institute” called Moral But No Compass. I would link to the report, but despite being both designed and likely to influence government policy, it isn’t freely available to the public. It costs £9.95. They’re charging for propaganda! (Only religious people ever do that. Well, them and McDonald’s.)

This report, according to the BBC, whose writings I am allowed to read,

The report … suggests the Church is discriminated against in competition with private companies who provide welfare, which Bishop Lowe suggested was partly the result of a continuing process of secularisation under the Labour government.

Well, surely secularisation is a good thing? I realise the Church of England are the last people who are likely to agree with that idea, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have to defend their alternative. That means they have to defend it more — they clearly have a vested interest. (It’s hard to imagine what Labour government he’s been watching that he thinks are “secularising” anything at all.)

It also calls for a level playing field for faith-based organisations including churches, and for a “Minister for Religion” to be appointed.

What the hell would he do? “Hello, I’m the Minister for Religion. Are you doing religion? Yes? Splendid. How about you? Are you doing religion? No? Well, that’s fine too.” There’s no Minister for Videogames, is there? There’s not even a Minister for Sex, and that’s a potentially dangerous activity vital for the future of the country that far more voters practice that religion. I honestly cannot think of even one thing that a Minister for Religion would do. (As such, I’d love that job.) It’s also worth noting that we already have Alun Michael MP running the government’s new “Faiths Taskforce”, and Stephen Timms MP, Labour’s Vice Chair with special responsibility for Faith Groups. And the Lords Spiritual. Is that not enough?

Nor do I understand what the accusation that the government is “religiously illiterate” might mean. I might assume it means that the government doesn’t understand that religion is dangerous, divisive and discriminatory and should abandon its various faith-based initiatives, but it seems more likely that a report commissioned by the Church is using it to mean that the government doesn’t take an active interest in their particular brand of dogmatic pastimes. But since they won’t let me read the report without paying, I don’t know.

The Bishop of Hulme Stephen Lowe, spokesman on urban affairs, told BBC Radio Four’s Sunday Programme that the Church was far and away the biggest voluntary organisation in the country, and had been for centuries.

Good for you.

The bishop said the Church was providing help and support to groups as diverse as elderly, homeless and unemployed people, drug addicts and asylum seekers. It also provides hundreds of chaplains to hospitals, prisons and the armed services, and thousands of schools, he said.

Well aren’t you nice?

However, the report, published on Monday and entitled “Moral, but no Compass”, said the government showed a “significant lack of understanding of, or interest in, the Church of England’s current or potential contribution in the public sphere”.

…

He said if the government wanted to benefit from the huge amount of work being done by the Church, it would have to change the way it dealt with it.

No. No, you’re not nice. What you’re implying, essentially, is that if the government doesn’t start handing you huge piles of public money then you’re going to stop providing help and support to elderly, homeless and unemployed people, drug addicts and asylum seekers. Is that a threat? It looks like a threat.

And it worked:

The event also marked the launch of a Labour consultation with faith groups, entitled Believing for a Better Britain, run by the new Faiths’ Taskforce, chaired by Alun Michael MP. It will be led by Malcolm Duncan, leader of the Faithworks Movement. The consultation aims to hear first-hand the concerns of faith communities and those motivated by their beliefs, in order to reflect those concerns in the next manifesto. Duncan’s lead role will ensure that the reporting remains independent.

That makes perfect sense. You don’t want your consultation into religion (about which disconcertingly little information is available and none from official sources as far as I can tell) to be at all biased, so you should get an independent arbiter in, such as the former Head of Church and Mission for the Evangelical Alliance, priest, and leader of an organisation which “exists to empower and inspire individual Christians and every local church to develop their role at the hub of their community”. He should be just nicely detached. He says:

People of faith are making a vital contribution to the United Kingdom. It is impossible to talk about community cohesion, joined up service delivery or strong and sustainable partnerships without understanding this.

and that’s true, but I bet almost all of those people also own cars, and I think it’s pretty clear the government doesn’t consider car-ownership something that should be rewarded.

Ultimately, I’m not against faith groups being involved in anything they might want to play at, but I don’t like the focus being on the faith. Faith is irrelevant at best. Focussing on faith excludes secular and Humanist groups, and it distracts from the main issue, which should surely be the work that’s being done. Charities and voluntary organisations should be judged on their work, not on their ‘ethos’. That way, a faith group that doesn’t discriminate would be at no disadvantage, and nor would a secular group who don’t discriminate.

I maintain that the government should be totally secular: it shouldn’t care at all about the religion of its people or organisations. If you want to run a religious charity, you go right ahead, but you’re still bound by all UK law regardless of what the Bible might say about gay people. “The advancement of religion” shouldn’t be a valid activity for a registered charity (PDF, page 5, although this whole document is ridiculous) any more than the advancement of drinking Coca-cola is, because the government shouldn’t care what religion, if any, you have. If ‘faith leaders’ want to talk to MPs, that’s fine, but they can damn well talk to their own MPs like everybody else. Religion shouldn’t exempt anyone from any law, and nor should it grant you any extra protections — don’t expect the law to act just because something someone says offends your faithful sensibilities. Churches wouldn’t get tax breaks. Obviously any bishops who wanted to sit in Parliament would just have to win an election like everyone else — or maybe make a large cash donation to the Labour Party. (Also I would not allow any private groups to run schools. All schools would be entirely secular and run by the state, and homeschooling would be legal only for those parents who demonstrated they wanted their children to learn a balanced curriculum and have access to support outside the home — which they would be required to demonstrate by not asking to homeschool them.) Ideally, religious discrimination rules would be axed: the government wouldn’t recognise religion at all, but it would recognise that you believe things — and that is a perfectly good basis on which to make employment decisions. Pragmatically, they’d probably be necessary as long as religion was widespread, although I think a general “you must only consider relevant things when making employment decisions” might be a suitable compromise. There would be no law against inciting religious hatred, but there would be a law against preaching any form of bigotry: atheists are evil; gay people are evil; Muslims are evil; whatever. The same law would thereby protect and condemn religious groups as and when they deserve either. And the government wouldn’t deal with organisations like Faithworks, because they exist to promote something that the government wouldn’t recognise.

That’s how I’d run a country. I feel sure it’d save a lot of bother.

Organised religion is always ambiguous. It can be both an instrument for good or for great evil.

When I consider the history of organised religions the world over and look at the present state of our world and the countless acts of violence committed in the name of God, is it any wonder that the third commandment given to Moses on Mount Sinai was not to misuse the name of the Lord?

Well maybe, although I can’t help feel God should have been a bit more specific. It must have occurred to him that the people misusing his name might think they were using it properly.

Such acknowledgements of wickedness give succour to those dogmatic atheists or illiberal secularists for whom any Utopian vision requires the eradication of all religion.

Succour is the wrong word here. Succour really means relief, whereas really what this provides is justification. Not sure what an illiberal secularist is. Sure, the two aren’t mutually exclusive, but they’re not common bedmates. And then he said…

Yet we only have to look to the Third Reich, the former Soviet Union and the present regimes of North Korea and Burma to consider that a society without religion rapidly loses faith in humanity.

This is just classic Atheists Are Immoral bullshit, isn’t it? And given that Hitler was a Christian it’s hard to see his point about the Third Reich.

In our new century organised religion has become not so much the enemy to be eradicated but the tool to be abused.

Whether it be the so called Salafi-Jihadism of Al Qaeda claiming the lives of innocent people perversely in the name of Allah or those narrowly focussed political parties attempting to usurp religious values and heritage, the purveyors of hatred and violence cover their wickedness with a religious cloak, or to use the words of Rabbi Lionel Blue, “the terrorists covering their own inner violence under a fig leaf of faith”.

Such abusers of religion lay easy claim to centuries of heritage with their lip service whilst their actions, and in some cases perverse ideologies, twist out of shape the garment of faith woven over centuries by faithful scholars and adherents.

I can’t fathom what the hell kind of mind comes up with this. What the hell is “the garment of faith woven over centuries by faithful scholars and adherents”? Either you think that a religion is true, in which case it was woven by God, or you don’t, in which case both sides are wrong. The sheer arrogance exhibited when he says “those people are wrong, you should listen to me if you want to know what God thinks” is astonishing. Why are they wrong? How do we know God isn’t on the terrorists’ side? They have as legitimate a claim to know God’s will as anyone else, surely?

Of course there are some for whom this business of our worship of God and the loving and serving our neighbour means that we should have no place in the political arena.

No, there aren’t. We don’t think the religious should be excluded from politics; we think that religion should be excluded from politics. If you want to sit in Parliament that’s fine; if you want to sit there and enact laws based on what you imagine an all-powerful being would like (but apparently chooses not to enforce) then there’s clearly something wrong there. Secularism is a lot easier to defend when you realise that God doesn’t exist and ‘his’ teachings were invented by superstitious people long before the advents of science and democracy, but it’s pretty easy to defend anyway, as long as you’re talking to someone passably rational.

It is perhaps no surprise that it is when I receive a letter from a correspondent–

From whom else does one receive letters?

–supporting my views I am congratulated for my apparent bravery in speaking out, whilst those who disagree with my stance castigate me in the most telling terms for getting involved in politics – didn’t I know that religion and politics should not mix?

The word Politics derives from the Greek for Polis – the City, for the place where life was lived and public business was done. How can anyone think that God is unconcerned or unconnected with any parts of our lives, public or private, or that we can build arenas which become no go areas for God?

How is that remotely relevant? If God existed then he would of course be able to go anywhere he liked (indeed, he’d already be there) and do what he wanted. He could rule the world if he chose to. But it would appear that he has chosen not to. His only contribution to the world is to write one of many indistinguishable but contradictory books of prophecy and instruction, and nobody can agree on which one it was, much less how it should be read or what it all means. We have no idea what the hell God thinks about anything, if he exists at all. And I for one don’t see what gives him any more right to a say than me. Frankly I think I should have more say than he does: he’s a mass-murdering misogynistic megalomaniac who thinks that just because he says he made the universe (a big claim for a guy with no proof who was conveniently the only witness) that means he gets to decide what’s Right and what’s Wrong. He shouldn’t get a vote: he should be sectioned.

Religion concerns the spirit in humanity, whereby we are able to recognize what is truth and what is justice;

This is true. You can recognise justice because it’s unconscionably vindictive and arbitrary.

whereas law is only the application, often imperfectly, of truth and justice in our everyday affairs.

…

Speaking in a Christian context, Desmond Tutu put it this way: “I don’t know what Bible people are reading when they say religion and politics do not mix”.

Isn’t that quite a lot like arguing “I don’t know which episode of Doctor Who people are watching when they say that the Daleks aren’t real”? Of course the Bible is going to be largely unsecular: it’s the fucking Bible. That’s what it’s for. If it was secular, it’d be an encyclopædia.

Not only do religion and politics mix, they must mix because religion enables politics to rediscover our duties and obligations to one another, to focus on service and community and to maintain a sense of liberty as a bulwark against an over-reaching state.

No, it doesn’t. It’s quite simple to do that without religion and religion is an active hinderance in many cases. Look at Islamic countries like Sudan or Saudi Arabia. You want to tell me that religion helps politics “maintain a sense of liberty” then you’d damn well better address those — especially after your little list of evil irreligious regimes, which notably failed to include modern secular democracies such as France, who are not what you’d call known for their genocidal nature. (Feel free to make a joke about their army surrendering to the oppressed minority.) And as for “over-reaching state” — until this year it was illegal to blaspheme! There were actual laws about which expletives I was allowed to use — me, an atheist. Granted the law was only really there as long as nobody tried to use it, but nevertheless…

I would like to consider each of these briefly in turn.

…

Is it any wonder that organisations in Britain such as the Hospice Movement, Amnesty International, Shelter, the Samaritans and countless other organisations and movements have been founded and motivated by those with a religious faith who recognise the responsibility and duty towards the other?

Hang on, Amnesty International? This would be the same Amnesty International who are “independent of any … religion” and who the Pope asked Catholics to boycott because he was worried they weren’t upholding his arbitrary stance on abortion? Nice example. Do you think these lists through at all?

More recently the Drop the Debt campaign, and Jubilee campaigns, taking the Biblical idea of Jubilee to reinterpret it as a measure of freeing the most indebted in our world from crippling debt, have demonstrated that such care and concern is not limited to the religious alone but are founded on religious ideas which are adopted by a wider society.

No, they’re not. Care and concern are part of being human. They might even by part of being some animals. They’re not inherently religious ideas. As an atheist, I find the implications of the idea that they are somewhat offensive. He goes on…

The trumpet which was once the herald of this nation’s greatness was the imperative of moral responsibility, of doing the right thing, where what was right was informed by a faith based understanding.

Now we are told, if we push for the end of religion in the public arena, in our politics and the public square, we will free ourselves from the shackles of an enslaving and moribund moral responsibility. However, if this is the direction which will shape our politics moral responsibility will be displaced not by reason, science or ethics but by sheer consumerism.

Notice again that he’s conflating the concepts of religion and moral responsibility, as if faith has some claim to morality. He even makes a distinction here between morality and ethics. Not really sure what the difference is but I think ‘morality’ is What God Says and ‘ethics’ involves committees.

He explained that ‘if each man and woman is a child of God, whom God loves and for whom Christ died, then there is in each a worth absolutely independent of all usefulness to society.”

This is a principle we need to hear afresh–

Yes, if only there was some kind of purely secular document that laid out that all men are created equal.

–not least in our treatment of the elderly, those refused asylum, young people in the care system, and the severely disabled, who, in my book, are clearly our teachers.

This explains a lot. (Sorry.)

Human rights without the safeguarding of a God-reference tends to set up rights which trump others’ rights when the mood music changes.

I wonder if he realises that the alternative to that is a system whereby only one person is alive at a time.

This religious vision needs once more to become a political vision for all to create a more just society and usher in God’s rule of justice upon earth.

Let us all do it, and let us do it now.

I always start to get a bit worried when people talk about “[ushering] in God’s rule of justice upon earth”. Sounds a bit culty to me. Religion is so commonplace that the absurdity of people discussing morality in terms of the opinions of an invisible grandad tends to pass me by, but once they start talking as if he’s actually coming back to rule the actual world the absurdity is just too in-your-face for anyone to miss.

Speaking of which, here’s an extract from the Q and A on his website:

Have you been to heaven before?

No, but I am trying to serve a God who I know is loved and worshipped in heaven. In heaven there’s no tears, no more crying, no more pain, there will be no sea either. The sea has always stood for violence. There will be no buildings because God Almighty will be giving it light and sun so that will be my destination. I also hope you’ll join me when I get there!

What kind of a ridiculous question is that? And more to the point, there will be no sea in heaven because the sea means violence? What the hell? Revelation 21:1 is presumably his source for this information, although the following verse does seem to imply buildings, or else the “holy city” will be a major let-down. There will be no sea in heaven, and no buildings. And no cuttlefish, and no two of spades. And none of those little figure-of-eight power adapters. And no brie. What kind of bizarre, arbitrary paradise is this? I like buildings! I like the sea!

McCain might be one of the lucky ones who can hit 80 and still be spry, smart, and in touch. Or he might be one of the others, who by 70 is feeble, losing it, and/or clinging to an out-of-date worldview. Or, and this is a slightly scary thought, he might be one of the first group now and become one of the second while in office. Okay, so we have the 25th Amendment to protect the world from the actions of a president with dementia, but that rather relies on having a vice-president who is better at running a country than a demented old man, and I’ve seen the list of likely candidates for McCain’s running mate. It includes Charlie Crist, who opposes gay rights despite (reportedly) being gay, Mitt Romney, who thinks that “freedom requires religion”, Mike Huckabee, who wants to amend the constitution to ban gay marriage, Sam Brownback, who is a creationist, and Bobby Jindal, who thinks he has met a demon (and cured cancer to boot).

So the big question is, is McCain the kind of old person who is still in touch with the modern world, or will he sit on a rocking chair on the White House steps shouting “get off my lawn”? I don’t know. But I know he can’t work a computer at all. That could be a clue, there.

I also found out, via Wired, that his campaign involves what is essentially a spamming campaign. And I saw a video of McCain explaining that the constitution “established the US as a Christian nation” (compare and contrast to Obama’s speech on secularism), so we can safely say that either McCain has not read the Constitution (in which case he’s a dick), or he has read it but did not understand it (which would seem to suggest that he’s the kind of old person who is a moron and probably still was when they were young).

Or, he’s a liar.

It’s certainly possible that he’s a liar. These videos would seem to suggest that that is a possibility. (The second one’s better, mostly because of the dubious gay marriage bit in the first.)

(He must have the Animation Shop 2 text effects turned right up, there.)

I appreciate that a lot of this is probably posturing to big voting blocks, but I must confess it baffles me that people use that as a defence: that’s not an extenuating circumstance — that’s electoral fraud!

Come on. This is getting silly now. If Obama doesn’t win the election by some kind of unprecedented landslide then I think the most humane option would be to release some kind of virus and wipe out the whole stupid population.

Something must be done.