The Sun's gone down .. Time for Bed

Light was on the face of the deep. And the Energy Minister said, “Let there be darkness” and there was darkness.

Apparently, here in Britain, we have been rather lax in securing our future energy requirements. We have been keen to shut down so-called “dirty” power stations, and reluctant to start building new nuclear power stations. Now there is talk about a looming energy crisis in which we face winter-time power cuts, and the Government might have to instruct industries to cease consuming energy at certain times.

How might this affect us? Should we be worried? Perhaps we might rediscover that old Wartime Spirit that apparently held our communities together when Adolph set out on his Grand European Tour and started bombing the hell out of us. Keep calm and carry candles.

I’m trying to be optimistic. There must be some upside to the threatened loss of heat and light. For starters, in order to reduce the risk of excessive demand  there could be an upturn in employment prospects by commissioning thousands of street wardens (steel helmet optional) parading up and down shouting “Put that light out!”

Without television, radio, computers or smartphones, we would be forced to reintroduce the concept of conversation. Without heating we would increase the employment of clothing manufacturers (obviously doing everything manually) to provide the extra layers of clothing we would need. Here in Britain we already have the advantage of winter clothing being equally useable as summer clothing, since it is often hard to tell the difference between these two seasons (if you ignore the presence or absence of leaves on the trees).

On the more cautionary side of the argument, we must be prepared for a sudden surge in population as couples give up on the herculean task of talking to each other and retire to bed when the sun goes down. The inevitable increase in amorous couplings is also more likely following the necessary eating of evening meals by candlelight – often a romantic activity.

Talking of candles (again a welcome surge in prospects for candle makers) another advantage for those of us who are workaholics would be the unlimited opportunity to burn them at both ends.

Those of us who are fortunate enough to live near the Houses of Parliament, or perhaps even near provincial town council chambers, will be able to sit around collections of national or local politicians and benefit from the hot air that they exude.

Perhaps we should have woken up to this energy problem years ago. At the moment all we can point to as evidence of some thought to the matter are the woeful inadequacies of the so-called green energy schemes such as wind turbines and solar panels.

Wind turbines have achieved the mutually-exclusive emotions of a false sense of security combined with anger and jealousy against the landowners who appear to be the main (financial) beneficiaries of these monstrous windmills that blight our landscape, kill birds, cause an annoying hum, and provide very little energy. When the wind isn’t blowing they are useless, and when the wind is blowing hard they have to be shut down to protect them from damage.

Solar panels are undoubtedly useful, but have the downside of making your house roof appear extremely unattractive. If you live in a National Park that imposes stringent planning restrictions on pretty much everything you might want to do, you can be refused permission for windows, walls or doors that do not “fit in” with the surrounding area, but it’s apparently OK to replace a tiled roof with huge shiny grey panels.

Britain lives on top of a good supply of coal, but we closed down most of the mines in the 1980s and now have to import most of our requirements. Coal-fired power stations are apparently going to kill the planet, although technology exists to capture and store carbon dioxide. Gas is seen as the way forward, and we’ve now discovered that Britain lives on top of massive quantities of the stuff trapped in subterranean rocks. It can be released by a process called “fracking”, involving drilling deep into the rock , fracturing it, and releasing the gas.

The risks of earthquakes and contamination of water supplies is not a problem in the wide open spaces of the USA, but in this tiny overcrowded country of ours? Fracking hell!

London politicians are wetting themselves with excitement about this, especially as the biggest deposits appear to be in the North of England, from Blackpool in the west to Scarborough in the east. In the 19^th century, the North of England was characterised by those dark satanic mills. Will the 21^st century be one of dark satanic drills?

So switch those lights out! Light a candle. Enjoy seeing the stars; there’s bound to be a couple of nights without cloud cover this year.

Time for bed.

 

 

Gardening and Peace of Mind – The Ultimate Contradiction

Don’t get me wrong. I love sitting in a garden, so long as someone else has created and nurtured this piece of heaven on earth.

No, the problem arises when, in order to have my own peace of heaven on earth, I actually have to create it and maintain it.

A garden is nature’s way of telling you that you can’t win; no matter how hard you try you are made constantly aware that given half a chance (or even a small fraction of that) nature will take over and turn your piece of heaven into a jungle of dandelions, ivy, long grass and assorted weeds and predatory shrubs: another kind of ‘heaven’ in fact – one for slugs, snails, moles, other people’s cats, and the odd travelling eco-beardy who wants to protect wasps.

I am pretty much in favour of wild flowers and grassy meadows with all kinds of furry creatures running about, but not necessarily in my garden.

I have three significant problems with a garden being defined as a place of peace and beauty.

The first is the disproportionality between the amount of investment (financial and physical) put in and the amount of returns I get.

The second is being surrounded by other people’s gardens which are infinitely more productive and beautiful.

The third is the amount of noise generated by 21^st century gardening. No doubt many of you who are as long in the tooth as I am will remember the somewhat agreeable click-click sound of a neighbour clipping a hedge; or the low-decibel whirring of a lawn mower being pushed. As for trimming a lawn edge, that was a virtually noiseless occupation with a pair of long-handled shears designed for the job.

Now hedges are clipped by petrol engine-driven hedge trimmers, and they are surely the spawn of the devil.

Lawns are mowed either with mowers driven by petrol engines that should have had their exhaust silencers replaced ten years ago, or by equally noise electric mowers connected to the power by a trailing cable that wraps itself around every available stone or twig it encounters before being chopped in half by its own machine and blowing the fuse box off the house wall. (Unfortunately, thanks to various safety devices, the operator of this high-decibel machine is spared electrocution).

Tidy lawn edges are the perfect excuse for making high-pitched wining noises reminiscent of your last visit to the dentist, by the use of the Blessed Strimmer.

With all this going, the chances of a peaceful interlude in your garden are fairly remote.

We are all guilty of making some of this noise, but I do try to keep it to a minimum. My mower is a battery-powered machine (by Bosch if you’re interested). It is efficient, and neighbours have commented on how quiet it is. I have a large total area of grass, and this machine easily does half of it in one battery charge; then whilst it is re-charging (30 minutes) I spend that time trimming the lawn edges – but not with a strimmer. I can do a perfectly good job, thanks very much, using the long-handled edging shears. When that’s done I reconnect the battery to the mower and complete the job.

I have about 30 yards of 5ft high hedging to trim, and much as I would like to do all of this with a pair shears I confess to resorting to a battery-powered electric hedge trimmer (Flymo if you’re still interested) – which is very quiet. One battery charge appears to go on forever, and I’ve never had to stop a hedge trimming job in mid-cut, so to speak. (Memo to self: I need a haircut).

If I have tree or shrub branches to cut, my first choice is not the Chain Saw! There are, however, many who have hours of noisy fun conducting their own version of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. No, I use a hand saw. That way, not only do I keep the peace, but I get much-needed exercise as well.

As the train of life that I’m riding in hurtles with increasing speed towards the inevitable buffers, I am more likely to want to resort to mechanical aids (if only to get up the bloody stairs after a day’s work within the conspiracy of nature against man that I call my garden). But I’m not sure why young, fit and healthy people should have to resort to them.

So there we have it – my rant on the peace of the garden, and if it stops raining I might just go out into my piece of peace to ponder on why my peonies produced buds that failed to open, why my laurel bush has turned black, and why my vegetables should be in the Guinness Book of Records under “Smallest in the World” category. 

Thatcher the Marmite Politician

I want to say, honestly, before writing anything else, that Margaret Thatcher always gave me the creeps. She made my skin crawl every time she opened her mouth. She was truly the "Marmite Politician". (For anyone not familiar with Marmite , it's a savoury spread made from yeast extract, and people either love it or hate it). Thatcher produced an equivalent divergence of opinion throughout the UK. I was one of those who hated her, with every fibre of my being.

 I am not such an idiot that I cannot recognise she had some positive qualities, and I am ready to acknowledge that she deserved some credit in certain areas; and I do not subscribe to the current torrent of abuse and vitriol populating the pages of Facebook and Twitter. Nor do I condone the idea of dancing in the streets because someone has died (with the possible exception of Adolph Hitler).  Ironically Thatcher was in part responsible for what has become a more brutalised society that is prepared to indulge in such behaviour. She implied there was no such thing as society, and encouraged an ethos in which the advancement of "self" was the way to go.

So now she has departed this life, it is time not to indulge in vitriolic abuse and bad behaviour. I would like to look back on her time in office dispassionately at why she was such a divisive figure. There were positives and negatives. In my own view (and apparently the view of about 40% of the country) the negatives hugely outweighed the positives. Here is my own (far from exhaustive) list of "positives" and "negatives" ..

Positives

1. In 1979, Britain was a basket case. The Trade Unions ran the country, i.e., mostly held it to ransom. Dictatorial union leaders and shop stewards brought their members out on strike at the drop of a hat. We made cars that fell to bits. Our public services were hide bound in inefficiency and bureaucracy. Our power supplies were unreliable.  Domestic rubbish piled up in the streets. The dead were left unburied.

Margaret Thatcher's government introduced controversial legislation to democratize the trade union movement, preventing wildcat strikes and emasculating the powers of individual trade union leaders to pursue their own political interests (which at that time seemed to be driven by an insane belief in the benefits of Communism). In this respect, over the coming years British Industry was able to start functioning again, based on the premise that in order to survive it was necessary to produce goods that other people wanted to buy.

OK - so that's one Positive.

I've only got two others:

 

2. She was not prepared to countenance the idea that a foreign power could engineer a military take-over of a group of islands in the south Atlantic considered to be British Sovereign territory.  I have always been prepared to consider the counter claim made by Argentina, but to my mind you do not settle it by military invasion, and so Margaret Thatcher did right, in the circumstances of the day, to send a British Task Force to take back the Falklands.

On the back of that successful operation, she was able to secure a second election victory by a grateful nation (which up to then was increasingly wary of everything else she was doing).

3. On the world stage she stood up to any other country's leaders without fear, and usually got her way.

I'm afraid that's the end of my Positives. In my opinion - job done. Thank you and good-bye; sadly not to be.

Negatives

1. She gave tenants of Council Houses (social housing) the legal right to purchase their home from the Local Authority, at a discounted price. This should have been a Positive (and it was for many people) but it became a Negative because she prohibited Local Authorities from investing the receipts from Council House sales in the building of new homes to rent. The theory, of course, is that property owners seem more likely to vote Conservative, than Council Tenants. Consequently local authorities were piling up huge financial reserves none of which could be used for the very important purpose of providing much-needed homes. That problem is still with us today.

2. She encouraged the closure of great swathes of manufacturing industry, including 99% of the country's coal mines, on the grounds of their financial inefficiency. This was done with such speed and apparent scant regard for the consequences on the hundreds of thousands of people thrown out of work, that the bitterness engendered survives to this day. No thought was given to making these industries efficient and serving the country. Just close them down.

3. Local Council services used to be funded (in addition to government grants) by the imposition of a tax system known as "The Rates". What you paid depended upon the notional "Rateable Value" of your house. The bigger and grander the property, the more you paid. Council tenants were exempt, and if you didn't own property you didn't pay rates. This was clearly unfair and needed reform. Margaret Thatcher's solution was a disaster .. The "Community Charge" - which came to be known as the "Poll Tax". Quite simply this stated that every individual paid a set sum per year, irrespective of whether you were a low-paid worker living in a two-up/two-down Victorian terrace house, or whether you were a member of the "landed gentry" living in a great stately pile on a country estate. Basically the richest man in the country paid the same local taxes as the poorest. Clearly this was no fairer than the system it replaced. It was foisted on Scotland first as an experiment, and then on the rest of the country. It caused social unrest, protests, and riots in the streets.

The legacy of this is that the whole of Scotland can now boast only one Conservative Member of Parliament.

One of the first actions of Margaret Thatcher's Conservative successor was to abolish the "Poll Tax".

Well, it seems I've listed three Negatives and three Positives. I could go on and on with the Negatives but I fear I have gone on for too long already, so I'll leave it here as an even split between good and bad; back to the Marmite analogy!

Anyone for Gardening?

Oh to be in England now that Spring is here! Wait a minute, I am in England and the spring weather is a howling gale, snow drifts and temperatures below freezing.

What hope for my garden? Last summer was so terrible that large swathes of the country were actually under water for weeks on end. I suppose I was lucky where I live in that all I had to complain about was a collection of flower beds more suited to supporting fish than flowers.

The other day my wife decided to fill some pots with compost and insert some seedlings. She walked out of the greenhouse with a tray of plastic pots that immediately took flight to land in various parts of the garden. She gave up at that point.

The next day I put on about six layers of clothing and a hat to brave the elements, in the cause of tidying up the garden, picking up branches that had broken off the trees, and removing dead leaves and plants from flower beds. Since the abundance of moisture was in a semi-frozen state I didn't have to do too much wading. As fast as I placed dead material in my wheelbarrow it was blown out of it again. It should have been recorded on video so you could have all had a good laugh.

My mood was not good, and my time in the garden definitely lacked that therapeutic value that gardening is supposed to imbue. Imagine how much better I felt when my wife came out and drew my attention to our TV aerial and supporting pole spreadeagled across the roof, supported only by its cable. (Note to self: phone Ryedale Aerials!)

Last year's incessant rain caused so much saturation that stuff has been dying all over the place, and I don't hold out much hope for a decent looking garden this year. But then I'm lucky to have a garden at all, so shut up Beck!

As I look out of my window now watching the springtime snow falling I've made a decision to stay in the warm.

On the bright side, there are a few snowdrops and daffodils making an appearance.

Progress is Circular

Isn’t it interesting how much of our “progress” is “regress”? One normally thinks of progress as moving forward, whereas in many respects we are, so to speak, recycling.   Back in the 1940 and 50s, so-called “working-class” families in cities lived in terraced housing. They went to work using buses, trolley-buses, and trams (see left).

This is a bit confusing for American readers, because I believe what the British call trams, the Americans call trolleys. If I talk about trolley-buses I mean electric buses using the roadway but powered by overhead cables. If I talk about trams I mean ‘buses’ running on rails (again powered by overhead cables). (See below left).

As for the trains, most of the national network was running on steam.

By the time we had entered the “Swinging Sixties” trolley-buses and trams in London had been phased out, all replaced by diesel buses. Other cities around the country followed suit (with the notable exception of the iconic trams running along the sea-front in Blackpool).

During the same period we bull-dozed the streets of terraced houses and replaced with them with high-rise apartment blocks.

British Rail phased out steam locomotives, broke them up or consigned them to scrapyards, and started pulling trains with diesel and electric locomotives.

Fifty years later, cities that ripped up their tramway lines have reintroduced – or are in the process of reintroducing, tramway systems. Cities that tore down the trolley-bus overhead cables and consigned the silent buses to the transport dustbin, are now considering the reintroduction of trolley-buses. (Below: Sheffield tram and proposed Leeds trolley-bus)

There are currently eight new city tramway systems in the UK. Four more systems are proposed or in preparation. Leeds and London are looking at plans for trolley-bus routes.

Last week a policy “think tank” recommended that high-rise apartment blocks should be demolished and replaced by – guess what? – terraced housing.

Whilst mainline train routes are unlikely to return to steam, it is notable that enthusiasts rescued hundreds of those discarded steam locos and restored them to running order. They bought up abandoned branch lines and developed a hugely successful collection of “heritage” railways around the country. Even more remarkable is the fact that a group of lunatics (sorry, enthusiasts) got together in 1990 and actually built, from scratch, a brand new Peppercorn A1 Pacific from the original 1940s plans found in the National Railway Museum in York. They named it Tornado and by 2008 it was up and running. It is now pulling special steam excursion trains on the national network all over the country.

Tornado

And so it seems that the more we progress away from the past, we simultaneously return to it, albeit in different (and hopefully improved) forms.

As for flying .. have I mentioned hot-air ballooning?

 

 

 

 

Going to the Theatre without Going to the Theatre

Last week we went to the theatre. Or rather, we didn't.

We saw the stage production of the 19th century farce, The Magistrate, starring American actor John Lithgow.

It was being performed at the National Theatre on London's South Bank. We were watching it on a cinema screen in York.

It was broadcast live to cinemas around the country as it was being performed on stage.

I must say that the experience was a good one. Initially it was clear that we were "in" a theatre inasmuch as the audience and the stage were visible. Once the performance was under way, however, the camera(s) moved in so that to all intents and purposes we were right up against, or on, the stage, and there were useful close-ups of the key performers. This was especially beneficial considering John Lithgow's usual masterful display of facial expressions.

For many of us, getting to a cinema is sometimes easier than getting to a particular theatre that's presenting something we want to see, so this method of bringing stage to screen is a great idea, and we look forward to seeing more performances like this.

Coming up soon at the National Theatre is Alan Bennett's play, People

starring Frances de la Tour.

It's getting the same treatment, so we'll back in the cinema to enjoy it.

 



Northern Ireland Unionists - Listen up!

For decades the rest of Britain has listened to Northern Ireland "Unionists" banging on about how much they are "British" and how important it is for them to remain "British".

Well, listen up, you guys ..

The British are renowned for their tolerance .. you are not.

The British do not go in for triumphal marches through towns with pipes & drums, wearing sashes and stupid-looking bowler hats .. you do. (By the way the British gave up wearing bowler hats 50 years ago. You still use them as some kind of sectarian uniform.)

The British do not generally care one iota about their neighbour's religion .. you do.

The British are generally relaxed about religion in general .. you are not.

The British do not erect 14ft high concrete walls to separate communities .. you do.

The British are an amalgam of ethnic and religious groups who, for most of the time, rub along together pretty well .. you are Christians who cannot even live with other Christians.

The British do not get overly worked up about The Flag .. you do.

The British do not harbour centuries old grudges .. You do.

So, it's beginning to look as though you are not so much "British" as members of a completely alien culture. Be like the rest of us, or cut yourself loose. Speaking for myself, I am bored with you. Please go away if you can't change.

Democracy - Why don't we care about it?

We've just had elections for Police & Crime Commissioners (for the first time ever).

We also had three Parliamentiary Byelections at the same time.

The turn-out was between 10% and 18%. This is disgraceful. The number of people bothering to exercise their precious right to vote has been falling dramatically in recent years and it makes me angry.

It makes me angry because over the centuries people have campaigned, fought and died in order to obtain the right to be heard, and the right to elect the people who govern.

I have no sympathy for anyone who doesn't care about exercising this right and then has the gall to complain about whatever governments are doing.

It is undeniable that over the years we have developed an understandable scepticism about our politicians and governments; they can't be trusted, they don't keep their promises, they are dishonest, they are in it for themselves, and so on. But these are not reasons to turn our back on democracy; they are reasons to increase our activity in it!

What do these people who don't care really want? Do they want dictatorship?

We are all human beings with manifold flaws in our characters, and people who aspire to be politicians are no different. But it is better to have imperfect human beings whom we elect than suffer oppression under imperfect human beings with absolute control over us.

Here in the UK we could improve things by abandoning this long-held tradition of voting on Thursdays. Why the hell does that happen? What's so special about Thursdays? What's wrong with voting on Saturdays or Sundays? There's also a lot to be said for making voting a statutory obligation. After all, we are legally obliged to pay our taxes, and the old cry is "No taxation without representation". So, why not a legal obligation to vote?! And before anyone says, "Well, I don't like any of these cretins", ballot papers in a compulsory vote would have to have a box for "Abstention", "None of the Above", "Anti-Democracy" .. call it what you will.

Come on Britain, wake up!

Brave Girl in Pakistan

That brave 14-year old campaigner for the education of girls has done the world a great favour. Unfortunately she had to take a bullet in the head to do it.

We must all be thankful that she survived this hideous attack by the Taliban, thanks to the efforts of the Pakistani doctors who successfully treated her.

The favour she has done the world is to remind us all, in the most graphic way possible that these people calling themselves the Taliban are ignorant and uneducated bullies with a medieval mindset and 21st century weapons. It is a lethal combination, and we must hope that the ceaseless campaigning by this young girl in recent years for the proper education of girls will result in something positive.

The signs are good.  As a consequence of this disgusting attack there have recently been massive demonstrations in favour of female education and against the Taliban. The signs are particularly hopeful because for the most part these demonstrations have been carried out by women.

Perhaps it will take armies of angry women to do what various national governments have failed to do .. destroy the Taliban for good.

We can but hope.

God and Religion

Who, or what, am I?

I  pray to a (probably) non-existent God .. sometimes .. when troubled.

Or do I?

Or is He?

Why do I do this?

It is to do with childhood conditioning, which is why I spent most of my life as a ‘Christian’ for no other reason than my parents had me baptised as a Christian, and when I was old enough to comprehend speech, told me I was a Christian.

I was made to go to Sunday School and to Church Services, and I was taught that God created the world in six days, was everywhere, knew my every thought. I learned that I should say prayers; indeed I didn’t even have to think about what to say, because several hundred years ago someone else had decided what I should be saying and had written it all down in the Book of Common Prayer.

Apparently mankind started with ‘Adam and Eve’ in the ‘Garden of Eden’. They produced a couple of sons, one of which killed the other and also found himself a wife, though no one ever explained how she had materialised!

I learned that I was a ‘sinner’, and that ‘Jesus died for my sins’ (whatever that means), even though this was nearly two thousand years before I existed. I learned that there was somewhere called ‘heaven’ and somewhere else called ‘hell’. ‘Hell’ was where I was going to burn for eternity if I did wrong; and it seemed to me, from my mother’s endless criticism, I was doing wrong for quite a lot of the time!

This is powerful stuff for a child, because all a child knows when he has entered the human amalgam is what he is told by grown-ups; and stuff that is instilled in the first few years tends to become a permanent fixture in our brains, and difficult to break away from even with the help of rational thought and education. (“Give me the child until he is seven and I’ll give you the man” – Francis Xavier.)
 

Why are we religious?

So, the reason most Christians are Christians are because they were raised that way from Day One in their lives. And it is for that same reason that most Muslims are Muslims, most Hindus are Hindus, Sikhs are Sikhs, Buddhists are Buddhists, and – dare I say – Atheists are Atheists.

This nonsense is compounded by the various sub-sects of each religion. Are you a Protestant Christian or a Catholic Christian? If you are Protestant, are you an Evangelical or Baptist or Presbyterian, or Methodist, or Anglican, or Quaker, or Plymouth Brethren? (Or are you someone who throws money at some Television Evangelist who has hypnotized you into supporting his personal extravagant lifestyle?!) Are you a Sunni Muslim or a Shia Muslim or Ahmadi, or Sufi or Wahabbi? Are you a Jew or a non-Jew, a Hassidic Jew or a progressive Jew? All of them believe they are possessors of God’s Truth. Each is right, the others are wrong. But they can’t all be right. It is a kind of mental slavery, and inside which branch of mental slavery you are shackled is determined by accident of birth. How stupid is that?

It’s taken me over seventy years to start breaking the chains, by re-examining the beliefs by which I was raised, and by reading books by respected scientists and philosophers with better brains than mine, such as (to name but a few) The God Delusion by Professor Richard Dawkins, God is not Great by the late Christopher Hitchens, Letter to a Christian Nation by Sam Harris, and The Language of God by Francis S Collins (this last one arguing on the side of God’s existence, by an eminent scientist involved in the Human Genome Project). They persuaded me to re-examine my battered Bible with an enquiring mind rather than a passive one.

I once wrote a piece about my daughter when she was a little girl in hospital after an appendix-removal operation. She was in terrible pain and begging for relief. She was denied more drugs because the doctor had said she had had the required dose. I went outside and begged God to do something. I went back inside and found her relaxed. The doctor had made a mistake and had corrected it. To me, that was a prayer answered and it sustained my Faith for a considerable period.

But of course that might anyway have happened with or without my appeal to a supernatural being. In all the years before that incident, and in all the years since, there has been no other obvious response to any of my many prayers. I am not a statistician, but I would think that within a 74-year life span there must be a chance that at least one of my prayers would actually coincide with something that was going to happen anyway. In spite of my prayers, and those of millions of others, sick people continued to get sicker and die; famines, floods, earthquakes, tsunamis, landslides, wars, torture, and religious wars continued (and continue) unabated. Epidemics of killer diseases continued (and continue) – though less so with advances in medical science.

A few years after my daughter was the subject of that earnest prayer, she was killed in a car crash.

The thing about prayer is this: if what you pray for comes about, then God has answered your prayer. If what you pray for doesn’t come about, then it’s “all part of God’s plan” – live with it!

The Word of God

Whether or not God, or a supernatural Creator of the universe, exists is a matter for which my mind remains open, but on the matter of accepting the Bible or the Koran as ‘holy’ books, or ‘the Word of God’, or template for a worthy life, my mind is now pretty much made up: they are not the Word of God. They are the Word of Man. They are an amalgam of history, fiction, poetry, indoctrination, superstition, primitive fear, and power-play – much of it written hundreds of years after the events described. Moreover they have been translated so many times (including various forms of English) that one cannot be certain of the true meaning of the original texts as laid down thousands of years ago by members of primitive and superstitious societies.

For the most part over the centuries organized religion has been a force for evil rather than good. It has been the foundation on which corrupt power has been built, the rationale behind the exploitation and subjugation of women, the genital mutilation of both girls and boys, the excuse for the adoption and maintenance of slavery, and the inspiration for torture and killing on a gargantuan scale.

Having started to re-read the Bible (after many years of ignoring it) I now find most of it to be utterly incredible. It is full of contradictions, hate, vengefulness, and orders by ‘God’ to kill thousands of innocent men, women and children (whatever happened to “Thou shalt not kill”?) Thousands are condemned for the sins of one. We cherry-pick the bits that are suitable to be read in church services. The accounts of the life and death of Jesus do not match up. I am not prepared to accept that any woman can – or did – give birth to a child without sexual intercourse; and even some prominent churchmen have difficulty with this, not to mention the little business of life after death. (And by the way, many other religions refer to weird and impossible methods of birth, often using virgins, for the existence of their “gods”.) There is serious doubt about the use of the word “virgin” instead of, perhaps, a “young maiden”.

The Bible is, to me, a collection of histories and edicts written by priests and/or leaders of primitive tribes of people in order to exercise power. This seems to have been the purpose of religion(s) throughout the centuries. As society develops more knowledge, and accumulates more scientifically provable facts, and makes changes to what is and what is not acceptable to society, it seems that religious leaders are in perpetual disagreement with scientific discoveries and society’s changes until they eventually have to “catch up” and make adjustments to their theological arguments purely in order to make them more acceptable to us as religious leaders. No doubt one day the Catholic Church will subject itself to whatever contortions it finds necessary to endorse the use of condoms, not only as a means of birth control, but as a means of preventing the spread of killer diseases. But by then, religion’s game of catch-up will be too little too late (again).

There is more hate, conflict, war, and unspeakable terror committed around the world by people of Faith than by people of No Faith. Christians and Muslims not only fight each other, but Christians fight Christians and Moslems fight Moslems because they are not believing the “right” things!

The history of Judaism, Christianity and Islam is awash with the blood of innocent men, women and children; moreover it continues to this day. In spite of (or I wonder if that should be because of) our education the superstition, prejudice, fear, and willingness to kill others in pursuit of our beliefs appears as strong as ever.

The stuff we are taught in church

Although passages from the Old Testament are read out as part of regular Christian church services, they are for the most part passages that have been cherry-picked for acceptable consumption. Even when the passive congregation receives the message, they are hearing it rather than listening to it and analyzing it, for to do so is too confusing and uncomfortable. It is just an accepted routine.

For example, how useful would it be for us to receive the following pieces of wisdom from Chapter 8 of Leviticus ..

22 And he presented the other ram, the ram of consecration: and Aaron and his sons laid their hands upon the head of the ram.

23 And he slew it; and Moses took of the blood thereof, and put it upon the tip of Aaron’s right ear, and upon the thumb of his right hand, and upon the great toe of his right foot.

24 And he brought Aaron’s sons; and Moses put of the blood upon the tip of their right ear, and upon the thumb of their right hand, and upon the great toe of their right foot: and Moses sprinkled the blood upon the altar round about.

25 And he took the fat, and the fat tail, and all the fat that was upon the inwards, and the caul of the liver, and the two kidneys, and their fat, and the right thigh:

 
26 And out of the basket of unleavened bread, that was before Jehovah, he took one unleavened cake, and one cake of oiled bread, and one wafer, and placed them on the fat, and upon the right thigh:

27 And he put the whole upon the hands of Aaron, and upon the hands of his sons, and waved them for a wave-offering before Jehovah.

Here endeth the Lesson.

Fantastic. Laughable. There are pages and pages of this kind of stuff.

By Chapter 16 we are still labouring under instructions about killing, dismembering and burning animals for the glory of God, to atone for sin, as a peace offering, as thanksgiving. Then there are instructions that deformed people, i.e., blind people, people with broken hands or feet, flat-nosed, (!) etc., shall not be deemed fit to make offerings to Jehovah. (I thought God made man in His own image!)

From Chapter 21 .. daughters of priests who act like harlots shall be killed, specifically, burnt with fire.

As I said before, we cherry-pick the bits that are suitable to be read in church services.

I have been looking through sections of the Bible to find examples of God’s morality. It is a tedious business and so I was very grateful for stumbling across a piece of work by Daniel C Dennett (included within Christopher Hitchens’ book, The Portable Atheist).  Dennett is the Austin B. Fletcher Professor of Philosophy, University Professor, and Co-Director of the Center for Cognitive Studies (with Ray Jackendoff) at Tufts University (near Boston, Massachesetts).

I found that Daniel Dennett had done some of the trawling for me ..

Consider first God’s moral character, as revealed in the Bible. He routinely punishes people for the sins of others. He punishes all mothers by condemning them to painful childbirth, for Eve’s sin. He punishes all human beings by condemning them to labor, for Adam’s sin (Gen. 3:16-18). He regrets His creation, and in a fit of pique, commits genocide and ecocide by flooding the earth (Gen. 6:7). He hardens Pharaoh’s heart against freeing the Israelites (Ex. 7:3), so as to provide the occasion for visiting plagues upon the Egyptians, who, as helpless subjects of a tyrant, had no part in Pharaoh’s decision. (So much for respecting free will, the standard justification for the existence of evil in the world.)

He kills all the firstborn sons, even of slave girls who had no part in oppressing the Israelites (Ex. 11:5). He punishes the children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and great great-grandchildren of those who worship any other god (Ex. 20:3-5). He sets a plague upon the Israelites, killing twenty-four thousand, because some of them had sex with the Baal-worshiping Midianites (Num. 25:1-9). He lays a three-year famine on David’s people for Saul’s slaughter of the Gibeonites (2 Sam. 21:1). He orders David to take a census of his men, and then sends a plague on Israel, killing seventy thousand for David’s sin in taking the census incorrectly (2 Sam. 24:10-15). He sends two bears out of the woods to tear forty-two children to pieces, because they called the prophet Elisha a bald head (2 Kings 2:23-24). He condemns the Samarians, telling them that their children will be “dashed to the ground, their pregnant women ripped open” (Hosea 13:16). This is but a sample of the evils celebrated in the Bible.

Now, how much of this stuff is regularly read in churches these days as our “Lesson” for the day?

And how much of it would you regard as morally defensible?

And on the subject of The Flood, just in passing, how did Noah physically manage to get together all those animals .. especially, for example, kangaroos (existing on an entirely different continent)? And how did he prevent them all from killing each other? And how did he deal with the waste disposal problem?

Creation

I have no problem with evolution. The truth of the evolved and evolving state of our planet and its inhabitants is there for all to see. But who or what set the necessary seeds for evolution?

 “The origins of evolution” are, to me, the true “Creation”. Therefore I am open to the argument that a higher deity may be behind all this, and I am open to the concept of a spiritual relationship with that Deity, but He is not the God of the Bible, or of the Koran.

Morality

I do not deny some of the good aspects of religion, or Christianity in particular: the creation of beautiful buildings, inspiring music, great literature, and charitable works, but I fear they are outweighed by the negatives. In spite of thousands of years of devotion to all sorts of gods (including the “God” of which we now speak) it seems they (or He/She/It) have been indifferent to the millennia of suffering, deprivation, fear, war, torture, tyranny, earthquakes, tsunamis, poverty, genocide, and the interminable prayers offered up. And why did this “Creation” by an omnipotent and omniscient Deity include such things as pathogenic bacteria, killer viruses, and cancers? And why were so many of his creatures destined to be born deformed, or born dead .. take note, “Pro-Lifers”, God also practices abortion on a daily basis.

The enthusiastic adherents of religion suppose that without religion there is no morality. Society falls apart. No, it doesn’t! All civilized societies work within a system of laws designed to maintain law, order and common decency between people, in order to survive. A society that is prepared to condone wanton cruelty, unbridled selfishness, theft, violence, or murder, cannot survive.

Morality is hard-wired into most of us. We know what is right and what is wrong. We know what is good and what is evil. This has nothing to do with religion.

“Ah, but” .. says the religionist, “There is much in the Bible that tells us how to behave well towards one another, especially in the New Testament.”

One cannot argue with this, and I don’t try to .. I acknowledge it. But we have already seen that there is much in the Bible also that we find so morally reprehensible that we forget, ignore, or rapidly pass over those bits. Cherry picking again. The conclusion must be, therefore, that far from shaping our morality, the ‘good’ bits we pick out of the Bible are reflecting our own morality.

Religion itself is no guarantee of a well-behaved society. The United States of America is probably one of the most pious nation in the “Christian” world. Hartford Institute estimates there are roughly 350,000 religious congregations in the United States, and a disturbingly high proportion of American Christians believe in the literal truth of the “Creation Story”. And yet the USA has roughly four times the murder rate than Great Britain which is one of the least religious countries. Not only is the USA a religious country, it also practices Capital Punishment.

Dangers of religious fanaticism

I believe the biggest threat to our well-being comes from politicians who declare themselves to be driven by God. If these people believe half the clap-trap found in the Bible or the Koran as the literal truth and Word of God, then they are going to cause us nothing but trouble. When Tony Blair was the UK Prime Minister, his press aide once famously declared, “We don’t do God”. Interestingly, Blair later converted to Catholicism once safely out of office. He is now making a personal fortune. (The words “camel” and “eye of a needle” come to mind.)

If the President of the USA failed to end a public speech with “God bless America” he would be crucified (if you’ll excuse the expression). If a British Prime Minister ended a public speech with “God bless Great Britain”, half his audience would be baffled, and the other half would be rolling in the aisles.

In the 2012 American Presidential election campaign one of the contenders is a professed Christian accused by some of his opponents of being a Muslim, and the other is a very rich member of a church running an ancestral database so that dead people can be posthumously baptized into their church. In New York a Sikh who wore a turban in obedience to his religion was assassinated by an idiot who assumed he was an Islamic terrorist because he wore that turban.

In 2002 a group of Islamist fanatics flew airliners into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in the cause of their religion, killing thousands of innocent people (including many of their own Faith). They considered themselves to be martyrs and due to be rewarded by being transported to some great brothel in the sky where they could enjoy the pleasures of the flesh that they so earnestly denied themselves and others whilst on this earth.

A few years later a similar group of religious lunatics blew up London Underground trains and a bus, killing or maiming hundreds.

The problem with people “driven by God” is that if they reach a powerful position and have access to weapons of mass destruction they may find ways and means of hastening their journey to the prophesized “end time”, “apocalypse”, “rapture” – call it what you will – taking us all with them in their crazed belief that believers will be “saved” and non-believers (including those who have never had the chance to even consider belief, for example, babies) will be cast into the fiery cauldron of “Hell” for all eternity.

As I write this I am reading reports from Afghanistan that a group of Taliban came across some people dancing to music and summarily executed them. God’s work has been done again.

It’s difficult to believe that such people have been in receipt of any worthwhile education, and indeed some haven’t, which is part of the problem. There are young children in parts of the Islamic world forced to commit large parts, or all of, the Koran to memory. This process vastly reduces those children’s capacity to think and reason for themselves. Analysis of what they read is out of the question, since it is indisputably the Word of God handed down to Mohammed about 1,300 years ago. It is a dogmatic religion build on shaky foundations lacking in historical evidence. Some will grow up to become “God’s bombs” in pursuit of “Paradise”.

Christianity has also frequently, and relatively recently, been perverted to suit the egotistical, testosterone-charged desires of maniacs like David Koresh and his Branch Davidians.

How do I relate to “believers”?

If I have, somewhat late in life, come to the view that Religion is not only hogwash but dangerous, then I am faced with a personal dilemma regarding all those people with whom I have a sincere and loving relationship who are themselves sincere believers in God, virgin birth, resurrection, and the Bible as the living truth.

But, on second thoughts, there is no dilemma. The only way I am going to be in trouble is by trying to instill into my friends a pressing need for them to come round to my way of thinking. But that is exactly what is wrong with so many religious sects. They take it upon themselves to come knocking on my door with the express view of challenging my logical thought processes, and I take exception to their view that I have some kind of duty to think as they do.

So, the last thing I am going to do is to aggressively chip away at my friends’ core beliefs. Needless to say I consider my friends to be good people, otherwise they would not be my friends, and I have absolutely no desire to “convert” them. I am not so blind that I cannot see they are comforted in their beliefs. (It might well be that they will revise their view about me. I hope not, but there’s little I can do about it.)

Atheists, Humanists, Agnostics, do not go to war with other people or other countries or indulge in torture in order to enforce their way of thinking.

Looking at the remarkable species that is the human race, with its amazing achievements, and looking at (what appears to be, so far) this unique planet in an unfathomable universe, I am even prepared to concede the possibility of a “divine” power beyond our understanding being responsible for it all. But it won’t be the “God” of the Bible or the Koran. It is even possible that I might have some kind of spiritual potential connection with that power, in which case I certainly do not need men (mostly), in ridiculous fancy dress performing staggeringly boring ceremonies and rituals to intercede on my behalf.

So, all I can ask of my believing friends is that they understand and accept me as I understand and accept them.

I made my own choice to read books that persuaded me to re-examine the “Holy scriptures” in a different light. I do not wish to insist that others read them, because, in all honesty, the experience is initially uncomfortable – even scary - for the reasons outlined right at the start of this essay. We are naturally inclined to avoid reading stuff that invades our comfort zones.

I do not fear death, though I admit to be being a bit queasy about the means of getting there.

©Lionel Beck 2012

A Cock-up of Olympic Proportions

The Government announced today that the private security company "G4S" had failed to recruit sufficient staff to meet their obligations towards the provision of effective security at the London 2012 Olympic Games.

Apparently they did not even start recruiting until January of this year. What a shambles.

Now the Government is proposing to fill the security gap by sending in the Army to the tune of 3,500 soldiers.

What was it the Conservative Party has been ramming down our throats for several decades now? Oh yes, I remember .. the only way to get things done properly and efficiently is to have them done by private enterprise.

The hackneyed argument has always been, Private Enterprise good, State Control bad. What we have seen in recent years is evidence that Private Enterprise can be both good or bad, and State Control can also be both good or bad. The banking fiascos of recent years knocks further nails into the coffin of the "Private Enterprise is best" philosophy.

UK Local Elections May 2012

Well, it would seem that David Cameron's Conservatives and Nick Clegg's Liberal Democrats (partners in Coalition Government) received a good drubbing in these elections, losing many hundreds of Council seats and losing control of several major cities.

Ed Milliband's Labour Party made an impressive showing, picking up hundreds of Council seats and gaining control of the cities the other two Parties were busy losing.

Bucking the trend, Conservative Boris Johnson just managed to get re-elected as London's Mayor with "Red Ken" Livingstone snapping at his heels.

As usual we have been regaled with all the usual stories by the Party "spin doctors", and for all they tell us that the Labour Party has regained the trust of the British Electorate, this, and all the other stuff peddled by the winning and losing Parties means not one row of beans, for the most shocking number to come out of all this is that only 32% of the electorate bothered to vote. So when the political parties are trotting out their analysis of whatever votes they managed to pick up, they are indeed just talking about a percentage of a small percentage of the electorate.

You need a massive imagination or mental excursion into fantasy land to pretend that these elections tell you anything much about what the British people are feeling about each Party - except that most of them just don't give a damn! That's what it tells us.

Our attitude to democracy is a national disgrace. It is appalling that nearly 70% of the country is content to let a small proportion of its fellow citizens to decide how we are governed.

Paris Notes

We were in Paris for a few days last week with our 9-year old grandson; (York to London, then Eurostar from St Pancras International to Paris Gare du Nord.)


I'd like to thank the weather forecasters for getting their forecast spectacularly wrong. Instead of the promised wind, rain, and thunderstorms, we enjoyed mainly calm and dry days with sunny periods.


The first evening was a bit wet and windy, which accounts for the doubtful quality of this photograph. I should call it "From one tower to another" as I took the picture from the observation deck of the Montparnasse Tower which is a modern skyscraper building set above a shopping mall off the Boulevard Montparnasse (6th Arrondissement). It has 56 floors, allegedly the fastest elevator in Europe, with a restaurant and observation deck at the top.

Two Views of Montparnasse Tower

We couldn't get up the Eiffel Tower because three out of the four lifts were closed for maintenance, causing queues of two hours or more. The Montparnasse Tower made a pretty spectacular substitution!

We only had a couple of full days, so not a lot of time to see much, but we had bought Paris Visite passes which included "beat-the-queues" entry to Le Louvre and a couple of other museums, and also tickets for the Metro system. The Metro tickets proved to be invaluable, for I consider this system to be the only way to get around Paris. If you use buses you are in traffic jams; if you use taxis you are in traffic jams. Of course, thousands of other people know this also, so the Metro trains - it has to be said - are very crowded. But on the other hand, they are frequent and fast, so you don't have to suffer for too long. Line 1 is worth trying just for the experience of riding on very new and classy driver-less trains! The connecting corridors between coaches are open so you can walk through the entire train, and at each end you have a clear view of where you are going (or where you have been). The system is easy to use: just ascertain from the Metro Map where you want to go, note both the Line Number and the name of the terminus at each end of the line (so you catch the train going in the right direction!) There are automatic ticket barriers, and once you are through these you are free to walk the relevant passageways to whichever line you want, and to switch from one line to another at interconnecting stations.


Our hotel was "Le Littre" in Rue Littre just off Rue de Rennes just north of the junction with Boulevard du Montparnasse.

This is a well-appointed hotel, with comfortable rooms and helpful and friendly staff. The English are lazy linguists so another reason I would recommend it is the fact that the staff are multi-lingual.


Typically for French hotels, provision of meals is limited to breakfast, but this is taken in a large and bright dining room, with a good selection of fresh fruit, fruit juices, cereals, cheese, cold meats, and hot food consisting of scrambled eggs, bacon and sausages. For other meals of the day there are more cafes, brasseries, restaurants, bistros, etc. in Paris than you can shake a stick at.


If you have young children who want to look at toys, then go to the Passage des Princes just off Boulevard Italien (nearest Metro Richelieu Druot Lines 8 and 9). This is a small shopping arcade given over entirely to toy-shops. Alternatively go to the Galleries Lafayette department store on Boulevard Haussmann (a short walk from the junction of Boulevard Italien and Boulevard Haussmann). Go the 5th floor of this extraordinary building for toys.


Of course, everyone goes to the Musee du Louvre and you could spend an entire week in there, but like many people we only had a few hours to spare, so joined the inevitable crowd heading to Salle No.6 to view the Mona Lisa. Well, you have to do it, don't you? But then there's all that other stuff to look at as well. We managed to have a walk around the Roman, Greek and Egyptian antiquities before having lunch in a nearby cafe and on to the next destination.

Eiffel Tower viewed from a river Seine cruise boat

Although we couldn't get up the Eiffel Tower it was worthwhile just visiting it at night to see it lit up in all its glory (use Metro Line 6, Bir-Hakeim station). On every hour it becomes festooned with flashing white lights from top to bottom. This is a truly amazing structure (the biggest Meccano set I've ever seen!) and it's re-painted every 7 years by 25 painters climbing all over the structure using about 60 tons of brown paint (applied by brush, would you believe?!) over a period of 18 months.


No trip to Paris would be complete without a cruise on the river Seine. If you are sloshing about in lots of money then you can get an evening dinner cruise, but otherwise there are frequent hour-long cruises (with multi-lingual commentaries) run by a number of operators.


We had pre-purchased tickets on-line with Bateaux-Mouches. These boats operate from a jetty just upstream of Pont de l'Alma. (Metro Alma Marceau Line 9). Our on-line purchase actually just produced an email with an invoice number on it. On arrival at the Bateaux-Mouches ticket office you just go to a machine, punch in the number and out come your tickets.

Bateaux-Mouches Departures

On board

Approaching Ile de Cite

Our grandson enjoyed his first trip to France and he was sorry to be leaving Paris. We returned to London with good memories.

A quick note about the Parisiens:

They are popularly believed to be rude and arrogant. We did not experience this. All the people we dealt with were polite, helpful, and in many cases happy to have a go at speaking English if we couldn't make ourselves understood in French. I believe that if you treat people with politeness and respect, then that is what you get back - where ever you happen to be. My theory, for it's worth, is that if you go somewhere expecting hostility then you tend to transmit that expectation and engender a reciprocal response.

Here's another thing .. for the most part, both women and men were smartly dressed (even casually) and evidence of obesity was conspicuous by its absence (in spite of all those wonderful patisseries, boulangeries, cafes and restaurants .. and McDonalds!) It was - in short - a "Slob-free Zone".