Usain Bolt
I’ve never seen anything like him. I should think bets are off as to whether he finally beats a time of 9.4 seconds. Good luck to him too, as he seems to be a nice bloke too.
I do feel sorry for Tyson Gay though. He’s obviously a great athlete too, and in most generations he would be some distance ahead of the others, but for Usain.
He also has to deal with the problems of some say in his name. When I was growing up, gay was a word that was often paired with happy and girls were often called Gaynor, Gai and Gay. Now like many other words, it’s usage has changed and I don’t think too many people bother. I don’t.
But America’s Christian Right do and automatically change his name on their web sites.
I thought religion was all about loving your neighbour and not hating them for their sexuality. What happened to the parable of the Good Samaritan?
I Couldn’t be a Catholic Priest
This is from this week’s Popbitch.
In August 1994, the Catholic church decreed that you couldn’t be a priest if you were an alcoholic or had coeliac disease (allergic to wheat).
But then I like women too much! And I don’t believe in god.
I have a feeling that the guy who said that is now Pope.
I have discussed this with several devout Catholics and they don’t agree! Wasn’t according to the Bible, Jesus welcoming of all and sundry? Even tax collectors.
The Destroyed and the New
I went to the football at Coventry today and as I was a bit early, I went into the city centre to see the two cathedrals; the destroyed mediaeval one and the new building created in the late 1950s to replace it.
The Two Cathedrals
The new one was designed by Basil Spence and is unusual in that it is aligned north and south, so that it is at right-angles to the old cathedral.
The New Coventry Cathedral
The sculpture is by Sir Jacob Epstein and portrays St. Michael’s victory over the devil.
Inside the Old Coventry Cathedral
The tower still functions as a bell tower, but only it and the walls remain after bombing of the 14th November, 1940. One notice on the walls said that one of the reasons it all came down, was that the heat was so intense the iron supports put in to make it stronger, twisted and destroyed the roof. So perhaps ancient builders did know a lot more than we give them credit for.
Ecce Homo - Sir Jacob Epstein
This is another piece of sculture by Sir Jacob Epstein. It is called Ecce Homo.
Reconciliation - Josefina de Vasconcellos
This is another of several pieces of sculture in the nave of the old cathedral. One poingnent piece was made by an 18 year old schoolbay, who lost his life in the war.
Alain John's Statue of Christ
The inscription under the statue reads.
This is a second casting, in concrete of a statue at Blundell’s School in Devon. It was created by an 18 year old pupil, Alain John. The Headmaster, Neville Corton, later became Bishop of Coventry and on the death of Alain John, an RAF navigator, in 1943 at the age of 23, the statue was recast for Coventry as a memorial to those who lost their lives in the war.
The Window Between the Two Cathedrals
As it was Sunday, I didn’t venture into the new cathedral, but I did take this shot of the window that effectively separates the new from the destroyed.
Let’s hope we do not see such destruction again. But I suspect we will!
Religion or Male Chauvanist Piggery
Stories like this one from the Sudan really get me annoyed.
If Muslims want us to take them seriously, then they really ought to move towards the present day. In the UK, there are many Muslim women who wear trousers, so it can’t be a real religious thing at all.
It’s just another way to keep the women down.
Islam was once a great forward looking religion, which for example guarded and expanded our science for hundreds of years. Now many of its so-called adherents, seem to try to find more ways to bring it to ridicule and disgrace.
Thou Shalt Not Sail on the Sabbath
What poppycock!
There appears to be a bit of a row on the Hebrides, about a ferry to the mainland on a Sunday.
The Hebrides is very much a marginal area of the UK, that needs all of the help it can get. And that includes tourists, who often have jobs to do, to pay for their holidays. They just might want to sail home on a Sunday, to start work on a Monday.
But as Caledonian MacBrayne, the ferry operator, feel it might be a case of human rights, they have to provide the service.
As someone, who believes very much in the rights of people to do what they want within reason, I’m very much behind the ferry company. And what right does a whole load of people, who say they believe in god, have to tell me what to do, provided I don’t break the law? Especially when I don’t hold their views. Although, as I’ve said many times before I stick to the humanist principles of all the world’s major religions.
My late wife originally did believe in god and taught in Sunday School, but in her last twenty years or so, she lost all that belief. As she lay dying, she did not once mention god or religion. That further enforced my personal view, that god is just a figment of those minds that want to control us.
I hope that I’ll die happy, but without help from any supreme being.
Goat Finds God
Lord Myners is discussed in this article, titled “Lord Myners attacks bankers’ greed and finds God” in the Sunday Times. The opening paragraph says it all.
Lord Myners, the minister appointed to clean up the City, is so disenchanted by bankers’ greed and self-aggrandisement that he is planning to become a theology student.
He is one of Gordon Brown’s “Government of all the talents” and was Financial Services Secretary. It’s alright for this goat to find god, as he has already amassed a fortune of about £30 million.
I’m no fan of bankers, but by increasing the top rate of tax in the UK, Gordon Brown is actually playing into their and the smart lawyers’ hands. I sold two technology companies in the seventies and eighties, when top tax rates were at eighty percent and the lawyers had a field day and made large amounts of money, so that my hard earned money didn’t go to government schemes of which I do not approve. So we’ll see increased profits for lawyers and bankers again.
A few collective nouns sum up professionals.
- An anarchy of computer programmers
- A wunch of bankers
- A delay of solicitors
- A self-interest of politicians
Feel free to add some more.
Do It in God’s Name
I’ve just watched the Channel 4 programme, Dispatches about the attacks in Mumbai.
It’s chilling and it shows the callousness of those that controlled the gunmen from Pakistan. Is it alright for them to send young men to their deaths, when they are sitting comfortably at home? The title of this post is what a controller said to a gunman.
They said they did it in God’s name! Whose God? Not mine as I have none but life itself. And any religion that preaches death is some nihilistic cult that goes against all I believe in!
They were not even doing it in the good name of Islam. Much of Islam is now a bastardised version of a religion that looked after our science and made women equal. I’ve read enough history to know that.
But why do I feel so affected by the Mumbai attacks?
I wasn’t there, but I was in the Taj Mahal hotel two weeks previously. How many of those wonderful and kind people that we met in the hotel, died in the attacks?
Taj Mahal Hotel, Mumbai
I shall return to the hotel to show that terrorism will never get the better of me.
Iranian Despots
I use the term despots advisedly and in a measured fashion. But read the first leading article in The Times and you’ll see that they have used measured, but firm tones in denouncing the Iranians for illegally imprisoning employees of the British embassy in Tehran.
To me the real problem with Iran is that the religious leaders have just too much power. I’ve read extensively on Islam and where are sound principles that were inherent in that once great religion when it was founded many hundreds of years ago. In those days, it embraced science with a vengance and women were equal.
It seems to me now that few Muslim countries are economic successes and like Iran, they always blame others for their plight. How many too, are true democracies? You can put forward all sorts of reasons, but the lack of empowerment of women is in my view, one of the main reasons. After all, the one Muslim country, that is a success is Malaysia and what do they do? Educate women properly and let them have a lot of the good jobs.
I’m very worried for Iran. Wounded, desperate and cornered animals have a habit of lashing out and taking quite a few with them.
I hope that the worst doesn’t happen. But I fear it will.
President Ahmadinejad’s Personal Hygiene
This is another from PopBitch.
One of the things Iran’s President Ahmadinejad is most known for in political and diplomatic circles is his B.O. He has been described to us as smelling “musty” and “like a billy-goat”. Our drunk Whitehall source this week gave an interesting take on the West’s attitude towards him. The Chinese are said to be appalled by Ahmadinejad’s standards of personal hygiene – it offends their cultural norms. And so, despite everything – democracy, freedom ‘n all that, Britain and the US don’t mind him staying in power. The Chinese are not likely to give political support to somebody so weird/smelly. Which will help delay Iran getting nuclear weapons.
Let’s hope the last bit of the story is right.
On another serious note, someone who treats his countrymen and especially countrywomen, doesn’t deserve to be in power. The sooner he goes and Iran gets a proper non-religious democracy the better.
But I doubt, I’ll see that in my lifetime.
Can anybody name a Muslim country that has moved from a religius dictatorship to something even a little bit better?
Romanians in Belfast
Over the last few days there have been a lot of attacks on Romanians in Belfast. Racist? Of course they are.
But then Northern Ireland they know all about racism and sectarianism! It may have been pushed under the surface between Catholics and Protestants, but it does appear to have come out again, where these Romanians are concerned.
Here’s a report from the BBC explaining the backround.
I get very heated about racism and immigrants being treated very badly.
Read Robert Winder’s excellent book Bloody Foreigners and there is a piece about poor Jews and Germans coming to work in the fur trade in the East End of London.
An 1854 police report estimated that there were two thousand destitute Germans in what Alexander Herzen called ‘the miry bottom’ of London. Von Meysenburg wrote, ‘Poor German families there are by the hundreds. The work is stamping raw pelts at a German fur factory, Imagine a big barrel in a very warm room, filled to the very top with ermine and sable skins. A man climbs into the barrel stark naked and stamps and works with his hands and feet from morning until night.
That could well have been my father’s antecendents, as they are down in the census as fur skin dressers and they lived in the poorest parts of the East End.
Winder’s book also contains a whole chapter on Huguenots. My mother’s family are all descended from these religious refugees from France.
So when I hear stories like this from Belfast, I reach for my disgust hooter. And use it.
The Anonymous Widower 