What use Rowan Williams as Archbishop of the Church of England?

I was at the Hay on Wye Festival and saw Rowan Williams’ conversation with AN Wilson [as opposed to AN Other...] and was strangely affected by the conversation (reported Here in a very curtailed manner but what do expect from an hour?) and Rowan’s answers to questions…

Now, I feel, I must point out that Rowan is not one of my heroes – true I did admire the way he was not outright derided, rail-roaded, cut or spliced by either Dawkin’s conversation with him in his last outing – or by his editing department… but I do think Rowan Williams is a great mind and a spiritual giant in his own way – which doesn’t seem to be mine…

Later after the conversation I saw AN Wilson and almost approached him to ask ‘Why did you give him such an easy ride?’ but turned aside when I came to the realisation that grilling the Archbish wasn’t on the agenda… some of the questioners were obvioulsy trying to merely curry favour and point out their own goodness whilst others were of a more cunning ilk… This is to be expected with the head of a denomination but I was disappointed, pointedly, over one question and Rowan’s answer…

A humanist [self-confessed] asked Williams about whether he would want to join the humanist cause as some in his denomination did not have the same views over various issues – this is of course a cunning question and Rowan asnwered it in like manner. He basically turned the invitation around and asked whether or not he could count on the questioner, and their ilk, to be an ally…

Not that he was prepared to defend folk under his leadership.

It is this casual casting off that I found troubling. Either you agreed with his views or you were under a critical appraisal by the great leader. As the Archbishop I, from the outside of the anglican fold I have to admit, assume that he should defend those within his fold – alright, both sides have thrown brickbats at each other so there is no easy line to hold them all together but from the front of a meeting he was prepared to just cut adrift a raft of his clergy. Shouldn’t he be standing up for them despite their disagreements?

As a leader of a faction such a stance would be the norm. As the leader of the whole Anglican shebang I found it less than wholesome.

Other than this Rowan Williams has indeed used his position to, umm, effect…

He has been able to give Dawkins a target that, despite his best attempts, he failed to hit. Rowan also put out a report about the drastic state of our children is in. These are not small things and no doubt they are not the only ones…

However he did sanction the great apologist for totalitarianism the job of writing the A Good Childhood report – Lord Layard. And gave the rather double-speak equivalent regarding selfishness – ‘extreme individualism’…

Being able to use his position and take a stand but feel unable to come to the crunch and use the exact words he means and then ask for help from outsiders rather than defend others who differ in their views despite being his clergy I have to ask -

What use Rowan Williams as Archbishop of the Church of England?

When is a little Fascism acceptable?

In this day and age of ever increasing legislation into our private spaces I’m going to start this post with an imaginary situation…

I’m writing in my study. I’m on my own and so I smoke my pipe, happily as it happens. Of course I have to stop smoking as soon as anybody else comes into the room despite two windows being open – enough to allow the smoke to leave rather than just build up into a cloud but small enough to give the smoke time to weave into strange patterns I find almost mesmerizing and a little inspiring. No, it’s just tobacco swirling from the pipe bowl. If I don’t stop smoking then I may be charged as the laptop can be used as a spy in my study…

Alright, so we are not there but lets go over where we are…

Our mobile phones can be used as microphones for those with the ‘right’ software and clearance… and the government is looking at how to make our internet lives more, well, ordered… and if my study was down as a place of work then I would have to cease smoking if anybody came in…

As I’m writing this I wonder about the new legislation that is being proposed regarding smoking in cars. Some want it banned, after all these years of endangering our lives, because they want to stop everything that might distract the driver but the new drive is for the sake of our children…

New research has indicated that the cost to the NHS from smokers is much higher than previously thought, here the story goes that the cost is £5.2 billion for 2005. The researchers go on about how bad the figures of £1.something billion are but fail to say how they then count for the £2.7 billion figure for last year, found here…

There are all sorts of problems with this stuff. First we have to decide what is private and what is not and secondly we might actually want to see the full picture when it comes to a. health and b. other contributing factors… I cannot say that I know everything but I am trying to do part of the work for those lazy thinkers with their righteous motives…

Do we want to move into a society where the question of bad and good parenting as a moral one has been left behind and we have legal parenting and illegal parenting. It seems an awkward question that we should never have to face but in Endinburgh as reported here and explored by me in a post it seems that de facto the socail services won their case that it was illegal for an elderly couple to look after their grandchildren. Do we want to move into a society where a child could be taken from it’s parent/s if they smoke in it’s presence?

Parenting has always been subjected to some legalities – it was wrong and illegal to kill your little dearlings and there are other guidelines that empower socail services [if they are up to using them] which give them reason to remove the child and they are moving into more dubious areas. Alright it might not be the best thing for a parent to smoke in front of their little one/s but could they not on the whole still be good parents? Why is smoking in your own vehicle now becoming subject to this ‘moral’ imperative in a legal fashion and after our cars what about our homes?

Years ago I wrote a post about Scotland and the effects or, rather, lack of effects that the smoking ban will have on the health of the Scotish – no doubt those who read that sentence will have some problems with it but after years of having a smoking ban obesity is doing it’s job now… I said then that the most important factor in someone’s health is, statistically speaking, their diet and asked the rather nasty question of whether the Scotish Government would ban the chippy. Well, not yet but obesity has been tracked to help cancer along rather than your health whereas a good diet can help your body fight off or reduce the risks of cancer – including the ones you might get from smoking…

The last thing I’m going to throw in is that there is research out there to show the trouble with walking in suburban areas and town centres. Given vehicle emissions we breathe in carcinogens, amongst other things, which would – the story goes – be like having soot in our lungs. This raises issues in the sense of How can we reckon the cost of smoking tobacco and factor in the effects of where we live? It might prove an interesting research project…

Lord Tebbit and I or The Strangest of Allies…

To folk who think that spoiling your ballot paper is a wasted throw in the democratic world – I’ve found that Lord Tebbit [the tory bulldog with little room for any sympathy for the working men and women who famously gave the 'on your bike' quote...] has indeed done the same as me.

After being warned if he voted for anybody else other than the conservative party he would be thrown out – he has declared that he spoilt his ballot paper… You can find his reasoning here but you’ll have to scroll down a bit.

Now, as he was a faithful Thatcherite, I’m no fan of Tebbit and from my vantage point in The North whilst Thatcher ran the whole place down he seemed to be personally unmoved by the plight of the unemployed and as someone intrinsically wrapped up within and a supporter of the government of the few [How many MPs? How many people do they represent?] I have little time for him but even he can see the point in doing what you think appropriate in the polling booth – whatever that might be…

No doubt he was just fustrated at not being able to vote for UKIP and rather than feeling he could lie he maintained as much of his position as he could to be able to say what he did. Torturous logic to be sure but therein lies his willingness to be able to be honest and open about what he did and being prepared to take the consequences. Whatever I think about Tebbit, I do acknowledge the stand he took.

If more of us thought we could vote according to our consciences rather than believeing we have to vote for the least disagreeable candidate would not our system have to adjust or would the political parties actually try to represent us more fully – thereby openning up for a good debate over political issues and perhaps the odd referendum?

To Happiness or a Good Life?

Let me unpack what I mean here. Happiness is standing in for Utilitarianism [as you can see 'Happiness' is comparatively user friendly] – Bentham the great grandaddy of this school defined it as the greatest total sum of happiness which has been rather cheaply reduced to the phrase ‘the greatest happiness of the greatest number’ [see Note 2 on Chapter 8: The Greatest Happiness: Is that the goal? in the slim volume Happiness: Lessons from a new science] on the other hand ‘a good life’ is standing in for an even older way of looking at the world – the ancient greeks and romans used to ask themselves just what made a good life…

Socrates championed being true to yourself and your values. If you think that’s an argument for Happiness he took the poisoned cup prescribed for him as not to do so would have broken his own values – hardly something that made him, his followers or even his detractors happy. Socrates thought that a good life was about living to standards – ethics and the one work we see this sort of thing [Plato's Republic] at work – those who cannot live a good life need to be controlled…

Orwell, in one of his essays, attacked the supposed utopia of Swift’s Houyhnhnms as totalitarian of a very dark shade – that those peacefull beasts had to impose constrictions on their very thoughts and speech. Given that utilitarianism had not risen above communism and was still [I believe] a defence of liberty when he wrote his essay he would not have criticized it per se. Now we are leaving utilitarianism behind as a defence for liberty – let folk seek their own happiness as long as it does not harm others to a more pro-active ‘happy’ agenda… where we can discover what would make us happy and then legislate towards that end…

I prefer the idea that we should construct what is a good life built on principles – sometimes the decisions we make which make us grieviously unhappy are the ones we ‘know’ are right. How does that sit with the ‘happy’ agenda? How could you so formulate a world where there are no unhappy choices or to ask another question- how meaningless would that world be?

Just recently on the run up to the Euro and the local elections we’ve had clergy telling us to go out and vote… but what if we don’t like the political reality enough to more than hesitate over the voting slip – and what if we know that before we even get up in the morning… Now I’m sure that Lord Layard [that guru of New Labour] would want us to be happy to vote as much as the clergy.

But to take this as the nutshell to crack the the arguments about with…

I doubt the clergy would expect you to change your internal reality for the sake of the electoral process whereas Layard’s view is much more to do with our internal motivators – in short he would want us to have an internal reality that gave us a kick for expressing our views on the ballot paper…

Now I doubt either of these schools of thought would appreciate my deliberate spoiling of the ballot papers I was given yesterday [Yes - I did vote 'Liberty!' even though I had to write that myself... you'll be gald to know, Dear Reader.] the questions I’m trying to get to are who would be the most displeased with my disposition? why? and what does that mean about how we should live?

In the end various members of clergy would have different views on how I behaved… so I’ll try to stick to the mentality that declared I should get out and Vote! and I’m sure they’d be dissapointed but understanding that I decided my own path despite the diferent values meant a diferent course of action to the one proposed. Perhaps Layard would be happy to know I was happy enough to vote against the entire status quo of the political situation. Perhaps not as it says that positively voting is meaningless in a world that should be seen as meaningful – boxes are to be ticked or crossed.

Layard does argue for electoral change in a world of diminishing turn out – so let’s stop being gentle and take the ideas he promulgates full on. My protest vote would be wrong. I was not happy, for whatever reason, to vote for anybody. In Layard’s world we should either change the choice until I am happy to vote or we should change me until I am happy to vote. Perhaps a mixture of both. What freedom then?

We return to the Houyhnhnms – do we want a society where we cannot express things which disturb the minds of others around us? In this sense I prefer the idea that we should be able to decide what pursuits make us happy but that we should seek to live a good life… We may not be happy but we can be right – not only in our own minds but that we can be acknowledged as having the right to decide what we think that is.

Call me hopelessly romantic [and I'll reply with a very hard nosed reply made from a mixture of anthropology and game theory to defend my view] but I think if we were developped as individuals with a sense of our own responsibility we would not seek to harm those around us.  As opposed to the current state of affairs where we are taught there have to be losers and they are to be trampled by the system until they reach a certain low point in which case the government will look after them – so we don’t need to worry our little heads about them…

Courting Power – a lesson in politics

I am currently training to become a professional… No really but this post isn’t about that. You see at the moment the profession is not regulated. It has bodies that can be appealed to if the practitioner in question is one of their members – of course not everybody is a member and that’s why they got suckered so badly…

At the beginning of the course we were informed how great regulation would be for us – the biggest professional body was going to fight for the right regulations and protect it’s current members’ practice… of course this was not because they could see a way of swelling their ranks and gaining even more authority within the profession and to be able to crush all other competitors out of existance… sorry – that should read: gaining more members who joined because they saw how affectively that particular professional body stood up for them and their profession… and thus migrate from the other professional bodies to show their gratitude.

So, it’s about a year later and the government still wants to legislate the profession but it’s decided that it’s taken enough advice and can now carry on with it’s policies without any more help… and the professional body now argues against the proposed legislation – which is now bad and draconian… I’m afraid my tutor seemed to be a mouthpiece for that body and as Orwell said about faithful communists  – as the body the tutor owed their allegiance to changed it’s mind, so did the tutor…

And the moral of the story?

Well, governments and groups are drawn to power [to exercise it only for the Greater Good, you understand] and then jealously guard it from others. The government was never going to wave a magic wand for one particular professional body when there are at least three other bodies large enough for me to think of off the top of my head… Never…

What happened was similar to what happened to the hospitality industry – pubs/hotels/etc. they got into talks thinking they could influence government and then when the government said it would proceed [re the smoking ban] irrespective of their actions or advice the hospitality industry kind of threw it’s hands in the air… and so it is repeated…

If you think you can change the system by using the system first and foremost think about how much leverage you have in comparison because most folk when they are at the top of a union or professional body think ‘We’ve got x amount of members to represent therefore they cannot ignore us…’ The trouble with is that the government thinks that they represent those folk in the first place and that they represent everybody else as well. [Even if they don't like it.]

And so the government sticks to its ideas – whatever they might be and carries on regardless, but thanks for coming round for the chat – it’s been interesting hearing your point of view…

A genuine and real threat of complete non-compliance from the outset could have done a better job of representing the profession and before you say that can’t be true – well, it couldn’t have made things worse… Government has always relied on compliance – non-compliance means having to exert effort – deploying police and lawyers, even court rooms and judges… whereas we’ve been conditioned – individually and as a society – to comply from the first day we set foot in school or nursery and so want to.

Therefore the government has the whip hand in any dealings except with rebels willing to be problematic but that’s not enticing – it is the vision of hard living and protest and possibility of jail and fines… being invited into tea at Downing Street, well now, that’s comfort and appreciation – but only for as long as the government’s whim lasts.

and it’s more problematic than a walk in a dark, bear infested forest…

Wanted: Liberty!

I was listenning to Hearts and Minds, on Radio4, the second episode about Isaiah Berlin is the one I think has more going for it…. and was struck by one of the quotes of Isaiah about dictators and happinness that reminded me of one of the prominent thinkers of New Labour.

Lord Richard Layard,that economist come cheap hack, in his book ‘Happinness: Lessons from a new science‘ says that we can find out what will make us happy and thus the government should then ‘provide’ that – either by limiting behaviour in certain respects or by forcing us to have these things…

Berlin states in the second episode that Hitler, amongst other dictators, knew what would make folk happy and that once the regime was in place then the governed would appreciate the new regime…

Setting aside the seat belt regulations which declare we must have fasten our seat belts front and back in the privacy of our own vehicles for safety reasons this government has banned hunting and smoking in public whilst gearing up for alcohol amongst a host of  restrictions in other areas of our lives… We have had a shift towards a totalitarian view – ID cards and the like. And here I’ll add the proviso that at the moment the current government has decided that it can’t get enough support for the ID card not that they  would not want it…

A symptom of this is that we have, quite recently, the Archbishop Rowan Williams swat away at selfishness with the phrase ‘excessive individualism’ here and in other articles, despite the fact that not only is the phrase down right misleading and erroneous [somebody excessively individualistic would also be excessively responsible, if that's possible] it also attacks the basis of defending individuals’ rights…

In a time when CCTV cameras are sprouting up everywhere and ever more details of our lives are being catalogued and liberties curtailed – is it right that someone dropping litter should have a photo of them in the local paper with the words [in effect] saying ‘Wanted‘? Becuase that’s what happens in a town in the north of the UK where the CCTV operators not only watch but can tell people to ‘behave‘… as documented in the first episode of Who’s Watching You?

Perhaps it’s time to shake the political tree and try to get the political class to rethink the value of Liberty…

Because, in the end, even if Layard can find out what would make us, generally, happy other studies show that once you repress folks’ ability to be responsible – that, Dear Reader, that makes us all unhappy… and we are on the path here in the UK with the biggest prison population of any comparable society by a large margin…

So, I ask you to join my cry and Vote ‘Liberty!‘ in the coming elections and try to give a shock to all those jockeys who think they know best…

Voting ‘Liberty!’ – The Reasons Why

To start with a provocative statement – I know folk who have so much faith in the ‘democratic process’ that they were reduced to idiocy when I told them I had not voted; claiming that I had no view worthy of debate…

So why spoil your vote?

In a representative democracy, which is what the U.K. and the E.U. has, you vote for folk to represent your views. If no-one represents your views the question becomes do you vote for someone nearest your point of view, do not bother to vote at all or go along and ’spoil’ your ballot paper? and if you choose the latter – why bother?

The First Reason is that you can foil any argument that you do not hold your views so lightly that you did not bother to turn up to the polling station. Thus you do have views worth debating.

The Second Reason is that this is a completely peaceful protest and without ‘them’ getting a judge’s permission to go through the ballot papers and their coding it is also completely anonymous.

The Third Reason is that this is a fundamental challenge to the system. Either you do not agree with representative democracy and want to be able to vote on stuff issue by issue or you refuse to endorse candidates you do not agree with… There is the argument that you vote for the best candidate for your aims – this allows for a political consencus over various views with differences being at fringe areas over whatever the parties think will make you vote for them as opposed to the other fellow/s.

Some parties say that a vote for them is a vote for change and that is true depending on who you vote for but should we vote for folk when the rest of the stuff they say we do not agree with?

The Fourth Reason rests on every political party having bought into the system enough for them to stand candidates. Despite the varying degrees of discontent they have with the ’system’ they wish to use that very same system to change it. Of course once the system empowers them enough to actually change things the first thing they would want to do is to get their ideas implemented and then change things in a way that would allow them to be able to do so again…

The Fifth Reason for spoiling your vote is that every political party wants your vote and if we turn up in a time which has seen a constant decline of folk willing to turn up to the polling stations – then a spoiled vote is something that they would give their eye teeth for if enough folk do so…  It is a fundamental declaration that you are not satisfied with the status quo.

If enough folk spoil their vote in the same way they would see it as a way of gaining votes. Therefore it may shock the political consensus enough to shift it in a direction we want.

If that’s not democracy in action – I don’t know what is…

On another note it could also show how dissatisfied we are with the system we have and therefore make them think about how they could reshape the system for our votes… It might, and I can’t stress the slimness of this chance, make them think we could actually deal with issues and gain ground towards a system which is more issue driven democracy – with referendums and stuff…

Personally, I’m for consencus politics in that if someone is willing to stick their thumb up at tens of millions of people then they either have a very strong reason why they do not agree or they have been allowed (by the system) to be ignored enough that they are now willing to do the same back…

I’m not saying I think that would bring about an utopian society just that it would be a better one than we presently have where tens or hundreds of thousands of folk are left completely forgotten by either the present system or would be even by democracy ran on issues…

So vote ‘Liberty!‘ and hope for the best – whatever reason/s you agree with.

VOTE “LIBERTY!”

If enough folk do, they’ll have to count ‘em…

and before I get going I want to say that this post is open to being posted by anybody anywhere – and if anybody has there own pet peeve – throw it in. I want, from this post, to get to as many folk as possible because if enough of us vote Liberty ‘THEY’ will have to count our votes…

Vote Liberty

to say you don’t want an ID card.

to say you don’t want ever more CCTVs.

to say we don’t need our fingerprints or retina patterns captured on our passports because of a few countries’ paranoia…

to say we want our private calls to be private – there’s a CIA listenning post which picks up ALL mobile phone calls in the UK and if you think that’s a paranoid conspiracy theory why did Blair admit the CIA was permitted to do this for ‘our own good’ or some such words… in no less a place than the House of Commons. [I forget the actual quote.]

Vote Liberty to say you want to be responsible for how you defend your own home.

to say you want to be free from paying endless expenses for sitting MPs, or even the endless expenses of MEPs – with the European finances repeatedly being found to be short of good accountancy practises…

to say you want to be free from ever more laws from Europe. The Metric Laws, the growing list of plants seeds we can no longer buy, the general bearucratic consencus that means we don’t, nor does anybody else, have a real debate over the future of Europe… Just look to see how many countries say ‘NO’ in a referendum only to have to vote again until they get it right…

Vote Liberty for your own reasons…

If enough folk do, they’ll have to count ‘em.

How do we vote Liberty? We simple write it with the pen they give us in the polling booth on the voting slip and pop it in the box and then we wait to see what happens…

Vote ‘Liberty’…

If enough folk do, they’ll have to count ‘em…

The European Elections are coming and I had a look at the Party Political Broadcasts so far on the BBC iPlayer… As a caveat I’d add that I only looked at the main broadcast [ie the general UK one and not the regional broadcasts for the same party] and whilst I found myself thinking of the good times back in Belfast as I watched the Northern Ireland broadcasts I also saw no sign of liberty as a theme.

The same goes almost shockingly with the Green Party which wishes to proclaim a libertine theme in its broadcast and in the documents on it’s website but they couch their terms well – no harm to be done… which is what the totalitarian approach Labour has been following [and whose film was a shock fest of 'scare 'em good' clips...] True the Greens would not want an ID card but would they grant the freedom to have a smokers’ bar? I think not.

This issue is an old and tried one here but the figures for 2008 are out – cost to the NHS £2.7 billion and the cost in taxes of tobacco generated £10.1 billion. Not as much as six times the amount as in previous years but still a good whack above three times as much… Where is the freedom and responsibility in this?

Liberty goes further than this and touches upon a host of other issues…

I saw a BNP leaflet and one of its claims was that it would stop ‘muslim’ protests over the armed forces – How would they do this? Politicize the Police? What would they do if other folk decided to protest against the armed forces? During their minutes of fame they proudly announced that they managed to get two cctv cameras in an area…

Vote ‘Liberty‘ and lets try to stop the Prison State mentality.

The UKIP party are virtually neo fascists regarding the right to wander – no strangers here please, unless of course you are rich…

Over the years folk have complained that in prisons there exist televisions and other gadgetry. Is this because we have lived in a state that progressively limits our freedom? Another small part is the welcomed by-laws that make it illegal to leave your dogs droppings – ok so its not a romantic issue but in the days of yore it would have eventually been allowed to break down and fertilise the ground and we had to be wary about the turn of nature [or even turd of nature to show I don't miss a bad pun] and recognise our path through that reality.

Now we do not have to and its not just this – the list of how our lives and environment has become increasingly clipped includes our entertainment – under the present totalitarian regime I sat outside a cafe with a couple of friends and they were asked to stop their impromptu strumming as the premises were not licensed for entertainment… and the number of cctvs grows.

When do we say we are in a grand open prison or do we just keep saying that the risks are decreasing and our lives are safer? What about happier or fulfilled? And when you start legislating for happiness do we end up giving out happy pills from the doctor when someone says they are unhappy? Drugs in prisons are a constant ‘problem’ and the reason I use the quote things is because many prison regimes, de facto, turn a blind side to them if they keep the inmates quiet… What is good for inmates might turn into a regime where legalized and tested drugs are given to us so that the rest of us say we are ‘happy’…

I once wrote ‘N.O.T.A’ with an X next to it on a polling card. None of the above… but this time I’m going to scrawl something positive because there are no parties that champion my view – I had thought I’d vote UKIP to at least protest against the imposition of the meta-state the EU has become but on seeing their braodcast I can see that there is only a choice of flavours between totalitarians and fascists…

So I’m going to vote ‘Liberty‘…

If enough folk do, they’ll have to count ‘em…

Never meet your heroes or How did Bakunin feel when he met Marx?

I recently went to a Mark Thomas gig.

And to be unfair – here’s the email I sent off today

Dear Mark Thomas or whoever gets to check this mail box…

I must say that I enjoyed, laughed and applauded during your stand-up routine. I even signed a petition and got a couple of badges for the wife.

Perhaps this bit goes under the general heading of ‘Never Meet Your Heroes…’ – I was near enough to the front to note that you had a bunch of ideas [including mine I admit] that you did not even bother to reject. I understand that my suggestion could have seen to be coming from an industrial interest due to the facts and figures I used – this is not the case. My point would be that you would seek to champion a minority point of view – atheism at around 20% of UK population and feel happy enough to prosecute smokers who also make up around 20%… Where does one group become righteous and another guilty? Or to put it another way – How many lives would you save if you banned smoking tomorrow?

On a more positive note, as I was talking to some of the chaps in red jackets – they mentioned that there was a ‘group’ up in ——–. If you’d be so good as to pass on a contact number, or forward them my email address (no spam, please) I’d like to see what I could get involved in [no to ID and other such issues].

I look forward to hearing from you.

I will post whatever reply I get in either this post or in another as I deem best practice or whatever. [Bearing in mind as I've covered up my personal info - I'll do likewise for reply.]

So why pick on Bakunin and Marx?

Well, I’m no Bakunin but then again Mark – though he has written good books on topics we should know about and actually manned the barricades more than Marx, he has not writted something along the lines of Das Kapitol… But perhaps Mark has spent too much time with radical Marxists and no longer would champion Liberty but rather The Way…

Of course everybody has their own view of The Way – mine includes long afternoons sipping gin, writing thousands of words and smoking my pipe to some interesting music with a mug of cooling coffee by my side… and I reckon if more folk spent their time doing that we’d have less people doing bad things if for no other reason then they are already preoccupied.

I also don’t think that the whole atheists are winning is an appealing concept, not least because I’m an old fashioned diest and believe in a ‘higher being’ – when I look back at the history of ideas and ideals it is when one (any one – atheism included) is feeling the boldness of ascendancy that they do the most harm (atheism included). So to think of ideological battles to be ‘won’ invites ‘losers’ to be devalued. I think I’m right and Mark thinks he’s right (even though he’s an atheist)  we cannot both be right but – and here’s the thing – neither can prove the other wrong.

Learning that our ‘opponents’ are not thick clods who just need to be enlightened but are our equal despite our differences would be a positive way forward – though it might not make for a good joke…

And Mark knows how to deliver a good joke…
Oh, and sorry for being away for so long.