Back to Normality

We have come to the end of that strange but slightly magical limbo period between Christmas and New Year, during which the normal working week doesn't quite manage to re-establish itself, and you continue to eat what's left of the mince pies, Christmas cake, various "nibbles", not forgetting to help it on its way with all that beer and wine that you bought too much of. Just when you are coming round to the idea that you should be doing something more responsible you find New Year's Eve upon you and before you know what's happening you are down to the local pub for yet more food, drink, music and general festivities, and another late night to bed for several hours of weird dreams and indigestion.

We finished off our limbo period by taking our grandson to see a Pantomime in York (Jack and the Beanstalk) - the usual load of corny jokes, outrageous costumes, and an opportunity for 500 children to scream out "He's behind you!" .. "Oh no he isn't" .. "Oh yes he is!"  and ..

.. "What I want is adventure and excitement; I want to see something new and different"

"Well, you can always catch a bus to Pocklington" .. and ..

.. a Pantomime "Dame" in a succession of outrageous gowns and dresses saying "This is no job for a grown man".

No doubt we'll do it all again next year .. a production of Cinderella.

They say Americans don't do Pantomime, and don't understand our obsession with it every Christmas. I suppose the secret is not to analyse or question it at all but just have fun with it, enjoying the way the kids enter willingly into a slightly mad repartee with the characters at the top of their voices.

* * *

I was given a heated coat for Christmas. It has an electric heating element in the back that connects to a small battery/control unit sitting in an inside pocket. The heat settings range from 1 to 9. I set mine to 2 but when I sat in the car and lent back against the seat I was nearly barbecued! I can't imagine cranking it up to 9 unless standing outside in 20 degrees of frost and a horizontal blizzard. When the opportunity arises, I'll report back.

Happy New Year!

I've had a computer-free, blog-free Christmas - apart from firing off the occasional short e-mail - which has been quite liberating in some ways, not so in others. On the one hand you are free to to the important things like spending quality time with family and putting on several pounds in weight with the aid of goose, turkey, Christmas pudding, mince pies, chocolates, beer and wine, etc., but on the other you know there are friends out there in cyberspace (some of whom were kind enough to send boxes of Christmas gifts) wondering if they have been either forgotten or ignored.

Well of course they probably aren't wondering any such thing, but it's a feeling you get when you are used to (or should that be addicted to?) being online regularly. Anyway, no doubt we shall get back to some kind of normality in a few days. Meanwhile I'd like to wish everyone a happy and peaceful 2009 (although it seems that Israel and the Palestinians are already knocking seven bells out of each other again).

Why do human beings have to be so disgustingly mad and evil?

Two Presidents in Denial

You can't help wondering about the state of mind of some of the people who reach the pinnacle of power.

We have George Bush apparently finding it quite amusing to have two shoes thrown at him by an Iraqi journalist, and he wonders "I don't know what his beef is". Then we have Robert Mugabe who denies the existence of cholera in Zimbabwe.

Only an idiot would be amused by an Iraqi throwing his shoes at you, because as most of us know, this counts as an extreme insult in Iraq and some other Middle Eastern countries. "What's his beef?" .. well, I'm guessing the guy did not find his presence in Iraq as something to be welcomed. I'm so glad Bush finds it amusing to be insulted because now he can laugh his smirking head off when I express the view that he's an idiot.

As for Mugabe, clearly this man is deranged. Not only has he ruined what used to be one of the most productive countries on the African continent, but he now comes out with the ludicrous statement that the cholera (which apparently no longer exists) was deliberately visited upon his country by the UK as a form of biological warfare being conducted by Prime Minister Gordon Brown. But even as people are dropping like flies around him, as they have nothing else to drink but sewage-contaminated water, and their money is worthless, Mugabe states the cholera epidemic has been dealt with, so there's "no further need for war".

I find it hugely depressing that we have not dealt with this psycopath with the same enthusiasm that we dealt with Saddam Hussein.

Am in the right Country?

Last weekend I visited my sister in the south-west London suburbs, travelling from North Yorkshire. I used trains and buses for the entire weekend. A couple of years ago I was ranting and raving about the chaotic state of our (privatised) railways, but now I have to acknowledge that things appear to be improving.

On the Saturday, my 08:10 First Trans-Pennine Express (Scarborough/Manchester) arrived in Malton Station at precisely 08:10 and deposited me in York Station bang on time, allowing me ten minutes before catching the 08:45 Grand Central Trains service (Sunderland/London Kings Cross) which arrived and departed at the scheduled times.

One hour and fifty minutes later I was in London (Kings Cross) and within ten minutes was sitting on a bus that got me across London in 25 minutes to Waterloo Station for my third train - South-West Trains service to Hampton Court. 

I got on the train at midday, and it was scheduled to depart at 12:06. I sat on the train gazing out of the window at the digital time display on the platform and as soon as the clock switched 

from 12:05:59 to 12:06:00 the train pulled out. By this time I was having to check that I was in the right Country because all the signs were that I was on the Swiss Railway system!

I arrived at Hampton Court Station on time. After checking into my hotel, I walked back to the station to catch one of two buses that would deliver me almost to my sister's door. At no time did I have to wait longer than 10 minutes for a bus.

The pleasure of all this well-timed public transport was enhanced by the paltry sum of money it cost me. By booking in advance on line, using my Senior Railcard, and taking advantage of a Grand Central Trains half-price offer for December, then travelling on London buses using my Senior Citizens free bus pass, I was able to complete the 230-mile journey from North Yorkshire to south-west London for the princely sum of £22.

I returned on Sunday for another £22, again without a hitch - up to a point .. Sod's Law came into play, and engineering works on the East Coast main line resulted in my train to York being delayed by half an hour. This meant I missed a (free) bus ride home and had to resort to a taxi that cost me the same amount of money that I had just spent for the whole of the weekend's train fares. Every silver lining has a cloud.

But, hats off to First, Grand Central, South-west Trains, and Transport for London for providing me with an enjoyable trouble-free weekend away at affordable prices.

Visiting the US? It's getting more difficult

After 29th January 2009 if a UK citizen wants to apply for a Visa Waiver to visit the USA, he or she will have to fill in an online application form. No other method is available. Whilst this poses no particular hardship to those of us who are enjoy the benefits of the Internet, it is estimated that about 43% of the UK population do not enjoy access to the Web.

When moneysavingexpert.com asked the US Embassy about provisions for those not online it replied, "contact a friend, family member, colleague or travel agent who is online." 

Gee! Thanks guys!

Pleasure Triggers

My previous posting on this Blog listed a few of the things that were Irritation Triggers. 

My dear American friend Roberta (one of the three people who read this Blog) commented that I sounded a bit crabby, and perhaps it would be a good idea to list some of the things that give me pleasure. 

So, always ready to oblige, here are just a few of my Pleasure Triggers ...

• Hearing my 6-year old grandson come out with a new long and complicated word.
  
• Listening to said grandson declaring he's going to keep on asking his Dad to stop smoking.
  

• Putting up Christmas lights inside and outside the house.
  
• Switching them on and finding they all still work.
  
• Forgetting that it won't be long before I have to take them all down again.
  

• Americans' enthusiasm for their democratic processes.
  
• The 2008 results of their enthusiasm.
  

• Having some very good friends, both British and American
  

• My wife's cooking.
  
• Her willingness to keep on doing it.
  

• My wife's love.
  
• The fact that I'm still the recipient of it after 45 years.
  

• Being with children who are happy to see me even when I'm bussing them to school.
  
• The appreciation shown to me by their parents.
  

• The sight, sound and smell of steam locomotives.
  
• Travelling on trains, ancient and modern.
  

• My son's sense of humour.
  
• Watching my son giving devoted attention to his son.
  
• Seeing it reciprocated by my grandson.
  

• The beauty of my daughter-in-law.
  
• Her good relationship with us.
  

• Gazing at the orange and red hues of a winter sunset.
  
• Watching George W Bush riding off into it.
  

Merry Christmas! (Oops - sorry - that's in irrigation trigger: premature Christmas)

Irritation Triggers

The BBC's "One Show" at 7 pm weekday evenings has this week been discussing a couple of related subjects: stress levels and irritating words and phrases. (You can do their simple stress test on the website - and get tips on stress reduction)

My stress level is raised by News readers constantly responding to a correspondent's report with "Thank you very much .. indeed". What's wrong with "Thank you"?

Other contributors to my stress score are ..

"At the end of the day"
"Twenty four seven"
"At this moment in time"
"I should OF"
"..like..like..like.."
"To be quite honest with you"
"Minging" and "Minger"
"Par for the course"
"Horses for courses"

"Pushing the envelope" (What the hell does that mean?)
"Thinking outside the box"
"Blue sky thinking"
"Community leaders" (Who elected them?)
"Helping the Police with their enquiries"
"The VAST majority"
"With great respect" (before saying something disrespectful)
"It affects you and I" (Try removing the words 'you and' - then see how it sounds! Should be "It affects you and me")

All aspects of "text speak".

Finally I am irritated by fanatical pedants like me.

There - that's better! I've just reduced my stress level.

Crunchy Credit (& other biscuits)

As we plunge deeper into world recession it throws into sharp relief the question faced by all of us as we grow older, namely, at what stage of our lives is it sensible to stop saving money and start spending our savings instead?

If we are lucky enough to build up a retirement fund, is there much point in not spending it when we finally retire? The trouble is, you get the savings habit (we hope!) and it's hard to break. Meanwhile we get older and older until you either get too old to spend it usefully or you kick the bucket leaving it all in the bank.

You could decide to keep the money there to pay for a care home, but if you haven't got any money when you need a care home, then Social Services come up with the goods anyway (but only after you have spent all your own dosh). What about leaving money in the bank for your children? Bill Gates clearly doesn't think this is a good idea. My own parents didn't leave me anything and I survived.

The Bank of England has been busy slashing interest rates in recent weeks, and there is even talk of it falling to as low as 1% or even approaching zero%! Under these conditions it would normally be good news for mortgage holders - if only the banks and building societies would be so good as to pass on the rate cuts to the suffering borrowers. Meanwhile it's bad news for savers, since at these rates of interest you might as well stuff your hard-earned lolly under the mattress.

I have at least made one good decision, and that is to take a lump out of my savings to pay off a couple of credit cards completely, since my savings are earning less money than I'm paying in interest on the credit card loans - crazy economics. At such times I appreciate the benefits of online banking which allows me to move money about all over the place just by sitting at home and pressing a few keys.

Of course it's going to be necessary to have some cash stashed away for domestic emergencies.

For example, from time to time the old boiler causes me some problems, but I wouldn't have it any other way: we've been married for 46 years.

Then there's garden maintenance. We live in a road jointly owned by me and my two neighbours, and there's nearly a hundred yards of hedging to be maintained (which I volunteer to do), and that's not to mention another 70 yards of hedges in my own garden. There will come a time when I am too decrepit to do this work, and my neighbours won't be in much better condition either by then, so we'll have to pay for a contractor to do the job. 

Perhaps I'm going to need a Hedge Fund manager.

It's a good time not to have money invested in the stock market. I have studiously avoided placing my money in anything perceived to carry risk. I did make an exception just once. I bought £500 of shares in Harry Ramsden's Fish & Chip shops. A year later, before things got fishy, I cashed in my chips and doubled my investment. I knew how to make BIG money in those days!

Like a lot of people I regarded banks and building societies as a safer bet. How wrong could we have been?! As the frozen food shop TV advert says, "Mum's gone to Iceland". Poor Mum!

Meanwhile, what of the 2012 Olympics? As we all run out money, perhaps we can look forward to the London Olympics being held in a large marquee, with an opening ceremony consisting of London Mayor Boris Johnson cycling round the arena, blond tousled hair blowing in the wind, carrying the Union Flag, with a couple of sparklers attached to the luggage rack.

Chin up - we'll get through it - (Flash) Gordon Brown is going to save the world.

Pleased to be proved wrong

A few months ago, on this Blog, I predicted that John McCain would win the US Presidential Election.

How wrong can one be?!

But I'm pleased I was wrong, and I hope now that we can all stop using the phrase "America's first BLACK President" and start looking at the man himself instead of his colour.

Good decision, America!

US Politics

The fickle nature of political alliances was amply demonstrated the other day by the visit of the French President to Camp David. It was only a few short years ago that the French were being reviled in Washington and French Fries were off the menu. Now Dubya is best mates with President Sarkozy, and has also been referring to "our European partners". Amazing, isn't it, what a financial crisis can bring about?

In the presidential election campaign it is encouraging to see how well Barak Obama is doing in the polls right now, and so far as I can see, the McCain campaign continues to dig itself deeper into a hole by the continued use of negative and personal attacks on Obama. The Alaskan dingbat Palin continued to display her unlikeable character in a recent visit to North Carolina (where the Democrats are making unexpected inroads). The following is taken from the New York Times ..

No Democratic presidential candidate has won North Carolina since Jimmy Carter did so in 1976. The state has long been a bastion of cultural conservatism; it was in Greensboro last week that Ms. Palin said she loved visiting the “pro-America” parts of the country.

How stupidly arrogant and insulting this is .. it implies that those parts of the American population who are NOT sympathetic to the Republican cause are anti-America. What utter garbage!

Colin Powell, a Republican for whom I have a great respect has now come out in favour of Barak Obama, and has also touched on the negative nuances of the Republican campaign. I was impressed by his condemnation of the insidious drip, drip, drip of stories that Obama is a Muslim (and therefore by implication, a terrorist). He pointed out correctly that Obama is a Christian, but then went on to pose the "real question" .. so what would it matter? He referred to the grave of a young man in Arlington Cemetery who had died in military service for his country. At the top of the headstone there was no Christian Cross; there was no Star of David; there was a Crescent and Star.

These people who peddle stories around the Internet implying that Obama is some kind of security threat are beneath contempt.

Religious Fundamentalism

As we continue to read about religious fundamentalists causing grief and mayhem around the world - the latest comes from an eastern region of India where Hindus are forcing Christian villagers to convert or have the homes burned down - it is refreshing to read the comments of the multi-millionaire recruitment entrepeneur James Caan (well known for his appearance on the British TV show "Dragons' Den").

Caan is a Pakistani immigrant to the UK who had the intelligence to realise that the way to be a successful immigrant is to make some effort to blend into the customs and cultures of the host country. As you would expect from a Pakistani, Caan was brought up as a Muslim.

“My view is that you have got to integrate yourself because you choose to live here. The Muslim faith is no different to the Christian faith or the Jewish faith. We believe in all the things that Christians believe in. If you break it down, where are the differences? In rituals, not the fundamentals.” 

I am not sure I entirely agree that what he says about Christianity, Judaism and Islam is strictly factual, but he's close, and I think we have to applaud his attitude.

The most disgusting thing about religious fundamentalists - from whatever faith - is their arrogant assumption that they have some kind of right to impose their views on other people and dictate how others should think and what they should believe.

I'm tempted to yell "Death to all fundamentalists", but I don't, because that would make me just like them.

Role Reversal

It has already been demonstrated that Communism doesn't work; now, apparently, neither does Capitalism.

This week we have come to the strange realisation that Russia is now full of oil-rich capitalists whilst America and Europe are busy bringing financial institutions under State control.

What a topsy-turby world we live in.

Who would have guessed that the American Republican Party, proponents of SMALL government, would end up running HUGE government! Who would have guessed that Britain's New Labour Party, having ditched all that old socialist dogma to bring them back out of the wilderness in 1997, would end up by nationalising banks!

The way things are going at present, those of us who believe it might be better to keep our money under the bed might be forgiven for wondering if we will have beds under which to keep it.

Onwards and downwards.

What a load of Bankers!

I think, in the current financial climate, that Cockney Rhyming Slang is highly appropriate here .. What a load of Merchant Bankers!

Our lords and masters on both sides of the Atlantic have allowed unprincipled, greedy, selfish, so-called financiers to line their pockets with fat profits and bonuses (even for failing), and have only just woken up to the seriousness of having a poorly regulated capitalistic system operate inside a moral vacuum.

So now we have the ludicrous spectacle of governments (again on both sides of the Atlantic) proposing to nationalise banks. It's even more of a ludicrous spectacle in the USA where the mother of all capitalist systems currently in the hands of a right-wing free-market administration is having to consider what can only described as Socialist measures!

I woke up this morning to learn that a quarter of my savings now rests with a Spanish bank, (Santander having agreed to buy the savings section of our collapsing Bradford & Bingley Bank; the mortgage side of the business, i.e., the "toxic" side, is now in the hands of the UK Government, aka the taxpayers).

I can still remember the far-off days when banks were regarded as safe, respectable institutions. When I got my first bank loan I was interviewed by a gentleman old enough to be my grandfather who quizzed me on my job, my prospects, my salary, and my ability to pay back the loan over an agreed number of years. Now, up and until a few short months ago I could get a loan by telling some minion young enough to be my grandson how much I wanted, and then I just filled in a form. Only the other week, I got a cold phone call from some financial institution or other telling me they had received my loan application. When I advised him I had not request a loan recently he asked if I would like one.

As I said before - what a load of bankers! 

The dubious joys of Technology

Sometimes our technological wizardry can drive you nearly insane. The pace of change is such that you have to have a strong will to keep up. One of the problems is that designers often seem to design gadgets with themselves in mind rather than the average man or woman in the street who is going to buy it. 

Why, for example, does our microwave oven have control buttons identified with black text on a dark brown background? They are, to all intents and purposes, invisible. Now, the designer knows perfectly well the functions of all these controls, but I don't. I do not spend my working day thinking about microve ovens, so on the occasions I want to do something specific with my device I want to be able to see at a glance which does what without resort to a torch and a magnifying glass.

Then there's the cooker knobs, where the temperature markings wear off after a year's use, so now it's all guesswork.

The nightmare controls of VHS and DVD television recorders is well known. It is often said that if you want to program your recorder to catch your favourite show on the night that you are taking your wife out to a well-deserved dinner then you call in one of the grandchildren to do it for you. Actually the field of TV recording is one in which I am pleased to be able to admit that things are getting better rather than worse. The advent of the digital TV recorder, and in particular the "Sky+" system (and it's equivalents) make the business of setting up future recordings almost a pleasure; you can even tell it to record an entire series, and moreover you can be watching something totally different at the same time.

Don't get me started on personal computers. I love the things because of the way they (and the Internet) have transformed our lives and relationships, but I also hate their ability to crash at a critical moment and I loath the all-pervading influence of the Microsoft operating system and associated software they have imposed upon us. It's good to see, at last, real challenges to Microsoft: people like Mozilla and Google. It took the Mozilla Firefox web browser to show us that we didn't really have to use Internet Explorer if we didn't want to, and I suspect that without them leading the way with their superior browser we would not have had the benefit of the greatly improved Internet Explorer version 7. Now Google has come along with another browser called "Chrome" (still in beta) and I like it. It's faster than IE7 and has some good extra features. In it's current beta form, if you find any web page failing in some regard because you are using Chrome then you can easily notify Google of the problem and send a screen shot of the problem page.

Our cars now have so much technology in them that laws against the use of mobile phones when driving almost seem irrelevant when you consider the host of other potential distractions in front of you: CD players, MP3 players, radios with complex menu systems, automatic climate control buttons, rear window demisters, front window demisters, cabin lights, reading lights, windscreen wiper settings, fuel levels, miles per gallon right now, miles per gallon on average, hours driven, distance travelled this journey, distance travelled since you last had sex, and satellite navigation displays sending you down country lanes leading nowhere or a voice telling you to turn round on a motorway.

Yesterday my wife and I were doing some decorating in the bathroom and every now and then we could hear this electronic bleep. It occured about once every five minutes and at first we though it was something outside the house. We ignored it for some time, but eventually it began to worm its way into our brains and become annoying. The annoyance grew as we began to look around the house at all things electrical to see what it was trying to attract our attention. We disabled the downstairs smoke alarm, we disabled the upstairs smoke alarm, we looked at wireless "mice", we ripped batteries out of electronic weighing scales, we did the same with an electronic blood pressure monitor. The bleeping continued - a tiny little high-pitched bleep (more of a "blip" I suppose) every five minutes - coming from nowhere in particular. We were now reduced to ripping small battery alarm clocks apart, even though we knew that they had never, never given low-battery warnings, and were not designed to do so.  We took the batteries out of a Nintendo "brain trainer". Still it continued.

We forgot about the electronic intrusion whilst we watched evening television, and then when to bed. But we couldn't sleep; there was that bleep again. I tried to ignore it, but you can't, can you? You are laying there with your eyes closed trying to relax but actually you are just waiting for the next bleep. And you are never disappointed. It comes again.

Eventually I leaped out of bed, went across to my wife's handbag, took out her mobile phone. It was still switched on, and there it was .. "1 new message" .. a service announcement from Vodaphone.

The dubious joys of Technology.

 

Searching for the "God Particle"

Well, the CERN Large Hadron Collider has been switched on, and God knows what the 10,000 scientists involved are going to find when they start smashing these atomic particles together at nearly the speed of light. One wag has already suggested that, far from seeing what happened a millionth of a second after the "big bang", we might see what happened a millionth of a second before the "big bang" and it might be that what we shall see will be scientists switching on the ORIGINAL Collider!!

Anyway, I suspect that even if they find "Higgson's Boson" (or the "God Particle") I suspect we shall not be any the wiser. After all, assuming they find it, one then has to ask the question "Where did THAT come from?"

Was there NOTHING before that? What is the nature of NOTHING? How does NOTHING become SOMETHING?

Answers on a postcard please ..

Georgia - the Smell of Appeasement

There is a smell of 1930s-type appeasement in the air. The recent Russian incursion into Georgian territory and the reaction of the NATO countries to Russia's outrageous behaviour reminds me of the pathetic attempts to appease Adoph Hitler's Germany before the 2nd World War.

Clearly the Georgian President made an error of judgement in trying to act tough with the ethnic Russians of South Ossetia, but this does not excuse the Russian incursion into the sovereign territory of a neigbouring democratic State.

Georgia wants (or had wanted) to join NATO. The lily-livered response by the European NATO countries to the Russian invasion, and their hesitancy over admitting Georgia for fear of upsetting Russia is disgusting. Russia needs to know that we are prepared to draw boundaries on international behaviour, even if it means we put at risk some of our power supplies for which we are increasingly vulnerable to Russian whims. Russia is becoming rich on their supplies of oil and gas and it is inconceivable that they would be happy to start losing their new-found markets for the stuff.

As it is, Russia knows that democratic Europe is frightened of upsetting it. So what's next? Ukraine? Lithuania? Estonia? Latvia? Russia pretends to be a democracy, and I suppose that compared to the Communist era it has some of the trappings of democracy but that is far as it goes. There is no real freedom of expression and the State has a tight grip on the news media. Vladimir Putin has ceased to be President and is now Prime Minister, but still appears to call the shots and is what one might generously describe as a benevolent dictator (if that's not an oxymoron).

It's about time we in the rest of Europe started to stand up for what is right instead of turning a blind eye to what is wrong in the hope that no more wrong will be done.

A World without Religion?

Having seen on the TV news this morning that about 5 million people in the UK have a reading age of 12 I felt bound to reflect how lucky I am to be able to read at all. The ability to read is not only essential in order to get through the business of every-day life, but it is the gateway to knowledge, thought, discussion, escape, pleasure, tears, laughter.

So, why the title of this post - "A World without Religion?"

Well, it's just that many interesting books have passed through my hands in recent years, and the latest one is called "The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins (Professor for the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University).

Now Richard Dawkins is an Atheist, and proud of it, and his avowed intention in this book is to steer us all in the same direction. A short blog post is not the place to rehearse the arguments for and against the existence of God. I have neither the expertise, nor the willingness of you, the reader, to put up with whatever ramblings I could churn out on whether God should be faith-based or evidence-based.

Whether or not Dawkins has the power to turn a believer into a non-believer, he does invite us to consider some interesting points, which is where we come to the title of this post. Imagine a world without religion: the Manhattan skyline would still be dominated by the twin towers of the World Trade Centre; women would not be having their skin lashed for exposing too much of it; 20th century Northern Ireland would never have been the blood bath that it was; the Spanish Inquisition would never have occurred; innocent children would not be blown up by suicide bombers; American presidents could be elected on their merit, compassion, and leadership qualities irrespective of the need to profess a belief in God; there would be no well-heeled, bouffant hair-styled tele-evangalists ordering you to send them large quantities of money because God wants you to.

We are invited to consider the fact that, for the most part, your religion is dictated by accident of birth, so that a child of Christian parents knows that he is following the true path and that Islam is a false religion. Similarly the child of Muslim parents knows that he is following the true path and that Christianity is a false religion.

Also, there is no such thing as a "Christian Child" or a "Muslim Child" because they are too young to have made a decision in these matters. The decision has been made for those children.

We interpret and use the Bible to suit our own ends, cherry-picking the bits that fit nicely into our beliefs, ignoring the clear indication in the Old Testament that God appears to be a most unpleasant character, a jealous, petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sado-masochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.

The death penalty is prescribed for adultery, gathering sticks on the Sabbath, and for cheeking your parents.

Thomas Jefferson described the God of Moses as "cruel, vindictive, capricious and unjust."

But, by the time we get to the New Testament, God has become a gentle, all-forgiving and loving being, exemplified by Jesus.

Organised religion is awash with hate and hypocrisy. During the course of my professional life in environmental management, I had occasion to make regular inspections of the waste water treatment works serving a well-known boys' Roman Catholic public school run by monks and priests. There were, of course, some females on the premises - teachers, domestic staff, etc. We all know, of course, that Catholic priests and monks are celibate. So why, during my inspections, was I always astounded by the huge quantities of used condoms arriving at the treatment plant?

Yes, indeed it is sometimes tempting to look favourably upon a world without religion, and yes, I am so glad that I am fortunate enough not to be one of those 5 million people in the UK with reading difficulties, so that I can read the Bible and the Koran and Richard Dawkins and come to my own conclusions without someone else having the bare-faced audacity to dictate my beliefs.

Englishman for President!

It's going to be a tough call against Barak Obama, and then of course there's the small problem of the American Constitution, but what the hell - I'll give it a go!

Men in Dresses accept Women in Dresses

The Church of England Synod, meeting in York yesterday, accepted the principle of women bishops. Naturally the proposal created much controversy, causing many leading old farts in dresses to call for a breakaway Church loyal to the practice of male domination.

To my mind, once the Church had accepted the ordination of women as priests a few years ago, then the next logical step would be female bishops. I think the Church has made the right decision, and if some Neanderthals in holy orders want to break away, then the Church of England will be much improved without them.

One of the (many) great evils in this world is the existence of societies in which the concept of male domination and the assignment of women to subsidiary roles is regarded as the norm. It is a blight on many religious groups, including both Islam and Christianity. The Roman Catholic Church is a prime example.

It is therefore wholly laudable that the Church of England (which is, after all, the United Kingdom's established Church) has at last aligned itself with the equality laws passed by the UK Parliament.

Reducing the Plastic Bag Mountain

Shopping in Scarborough this morning I was encouraged to note how at last we appear to have succeeded in bringing about a culture change in regard to the use of plastic bags. Until recently (and I also plead guilty to this) we were amassing plastic bags as if they were going out of fashion .. and how appropriate, because they have indeed gone out of fashion.

The routine at supermarket checkouts always used to be the same: your goods fly past the scanner, down the chute and you stuff them straight into a dozen or so plastic bags provided free of charge for your convenience. Then you get home, empty all the bags and add to them the rising pile of old bags that you stuffed away somewhere. You will never take them out with you again next time you go shopping. When one day you realise that you have no possible use for 150 crumpled plastic bags you sling them out with the garbage and they add to the refuse landfill site of non-biodegradable materials, that are rapidly turning holes in the ground into refuse mountains.

Now we are being encouraged to fork out 5 pence for long-lasting re-usable shopping bags, and I noted this morning how many people in the queue for the checkout were now carrying their own permanent or semi-permanent means of carrying their shopping. Hey! just like Grandma and Grandpa used to do!

If you think about it, the old habit of using these millions of bags at supermarkets was completely unnecessary. After all, most of us visit a supermarket using a car. When we get there we pick up a trolley, we fill it with goods, we run the goods past the checkout then we refill the trolley to take our shopping back to the car. Why do we need bags? Empty the trolley into the back of the car .. have a couple of handy boxes in there to make things easier .. job done!