George Carey: Silly Silly Man

Oh George Carey, you silly man.

Once the Archbishop of Canterbury, representative of a religion that claims to be about love, compassion and forgiveness but increasingly seems to be one of bitterness, hatred and desperation, George Carey addressed a rally at the Conservative Party Conference on 'gay marriage'.

George is against gay marriage. He's a religious man. He reckons his God wouldn't approve.

So bad is this situation according to George that being a Christian against gay marriage is like being a Jew in Nazi Germany.

Like being a Jew in Nazi Germany.

Look at that sentence again. Read it slowly. Run it through your mind a few times. Think about what being a Jew in Nazi Germany actually meant.

Yes, it truly is a statement of epic idiocy. Not to mention offensive as hell.

Being a Christian against gay marriage is NOTHING like being a Jew in Nazi Germany. No one has you walking the streets with yellow stars on your clothes, no one is stripping you of your humanity and fundamentally - and perhaps most important George - NO ONE IS ROUNDING YOU UP AND SENDING YOU OFF TO CAMPS TO BE MURDERED IN HUGE NUMBERS!

You small-minded Clerical nincompoop.

Being a Christian against gay marriage is probably a bit annoying. People think you're a bit odd perhaps. A bit old fashioned. We might think this posturing about marriage is a little funny coming from a religion whose sacred text appears to accept polygamy. But you are not Jews in Nazi Germany.

It says something about how ridiculously highly you see yourselves that you'd even dare to make the comparison. Christians against gay marriage are not being persecuted. They might be some mockery involved but that's nothing compared to what gay people have to put up with - still - as a result of Christian's and their anti-gay crusade. Gay people died in concentration camps (as did many good religious people) but gay people are still attacked, murdered, broken and beaten for being gay and Christians of a certain type: the ones who are comfortable with the Old Testament but find actually listening to Jesus and doing what he asks a bit of a struggle. Jesus asks a lot of people and it is easier to ignore him and get on with persecuting people who don't fit in that even try.

To steal Gandhi's quote: "I like your Christ but not so much your Christians."

So George. Please think just a little bit before you pontificate on this subject again. By all means carry on being a small-minded pick bits of the Bible I agree with, ignore the other bits, historically ignorant bigot but don't ever compare yourself to Jews in Nazi Germany.

It's a pathetic, offensive and just plain wrong comparison and I suspect you know it.

Louise Mensch & Thatcher's Death

Ah Louise Mensch, the media friendly Tory MP for Corby (Majority, 1,950) has got a bee in her bonnet about members of the Labour Party who are wishing Lady Thatcher dead & intending to celebrate her passing. She thinks this is something the Labour Party should act upon.

I think she's wrong.

I think it is an issue of free speech and free thought. No one she's RT'd is threatening to kill Lady Thatcher. They're just waiting for the moment it happens naturally. They maybe wrong-headed about this but they're perfectly entitled to an opinion. Even if the Labour Party were to issue a statement saying they deplore such thoughts it isn't a reason to kick someone out of the Labour Party, just as rampant homophobia seems OK in the Tory Party.

Pretending that Lady Thatcher isn't a hugely hated figure, especially in the North of England, Scotland and Wales is to be a fool. Just those people who lived and worked in the mining towns of Britain which were destroyed in the wake of the Miner's strike purely for ideological revenge would be enough. Perhaps Louise should read some modern history books.

Personally I don't wish her dead. I won't celebrate afterwards either. I think both of those things are signs of weakness, not strength. We should seek to get one over on Lady Thatcher by undoing her legacy, not standing at her graveside waving bottle of beer singing 'ding dong the witch is dead'. Victory over her ideas is the only victory worth a damn. Anything else is petty childishness.

That's not because I like her but because Lady Thatcher is the reason I'm on the left. I was only 8 when she was elected Prime Minister but there was something about her I didn't like. It wasn't because she snatched my milk. I hated the milk. It was always warm & full fat. But it was after the Miner's strike that I decided that whatever Lady Thatcher stood for, it wasn't something I wanted to be part of.

Yes, I was only 12 but I was an annoyingly precocious little brat and it seemed to me that there was something wrong with Lady Thatcher's support for Solidarity in Poland, which was led by a Trade Unionist and her utter contempt and hatred for Trade Unionists in the UK attempting to exercise the sames rights as Lech Wałęsa. It seemed hypocritical to allow British policemen to batter Miner's (or Print Workers etc) whilst preaching at the Polish government. You either believe that workers have the right to strike, even for purely political reasons. Or you don't. You either believe in free speech for everyone, including the mad and bad, or you don't believe in free speech.

It was that which turned me into a leftie for which I will always be grateful to Lady Thatcher. I might have become a tilting at windmills romantic lefties since then rather than a practical 'let's win elections' New Labourite one but I can live with that. To mangle a quote from Edward R Murrow: If we confuse dissent with disloyalty — if we deny the right of the individual to be wrong, unpopular, eccentric or unorthodox... then what kind of freedom do we have.

So Louise Mensch in my view the right to be wrong is fundamental to everything that a true democracy should stand for. You have a perfect right to challenge it, to dislike it and to rant about it but you have no right to censor it or demand other people censor it.

Trolling...and other animals

Internet trolls come in many forms. Some are just angry. Not just at you or me or whoever they're trolling but the world in general. Mean spirited, nasty and suffering from self-inflated self-importance.

Some internet trolls though come in a more sophisticated form. They have blogs or even columns on respectable sites or in respectable newspapers. Or the Daily Mail. They have realised that the best way to drive traffic to their sites, increase hits and attract advertisers is to write (and write again) in a way that is certain to cause outrage. The outrage will cause people to draw attention to them and clickity-click-click people come to their site to have their outrage confirmed.

Some journalists have carved out entire careers doing this, even before the internet came along. Pressing buttons - usually the tedious ones about 'political correctness gone mad' - that lead to them being talked about. All publicity is good publicity they seem to think. If you can do this and pander to your natural constituency at the same time then it is a win-win situation.

Now of course the internet has given us all - in theory - a voice. This is mine. A veritable mouse in the wainscotting of the mighty internet but I can say what I like.

I could froth on to my hearts content drawing attention to myself by writing a fact free rant about women in the world of technology for example. This would be a deeply tragic waste of virtual space of course. But somewhere out there someone is doing just that just now. It's been picked up, RT'd and traffic is tripping along to that column to be outraged.

Now there is - as always in these situations - a difficulty. Can you let misogynistic bullshit go unchallenged? Should you? Perhaps not. But I'd suggest cutting off the oxygen of attention might do a better job of stopping people writing this kind of bullshit than any criticism.

People that write this kind of stuff do so knowing the effect it is going to have* and they don't care. I suspect they are also the sort of people that wouldn't be swayed by argument, especially if it comes reinforced by facts. Facts aren't of interest to these people. They're interested in perceptions and opinions. Not facts. Facts just get in the way of a damn good argument.

They've not interest in your story, they're just here for the clicks.

So next time let's just ignore the bastards. Or at least make sure that they're columns are put somewhere where clicking on them has no possible benefit to them.


*Stewert Lee (the British comedian) explains this best when he gives the following example: "Jeremy Clarkson, who has his political incorrect opinions for money." (That may be slightly inaccurately remembered but you get the jist.

PS I've not even touched on the freedom of speech arguement.  That's a whole other kettle of rabbits.

The Blame Game

Here's a thing: it turns out there's some dirty goings out taking place in the City. Who'd have thunk it? There seems to be an attitude amongst our great financial institutions that just as they are too big to fail, they are also too big to not cheat.

Since the 'Crash' rogue deals seems to have popped up on a semi-regular basis. One would start to think that there is a cultural problem amongst companies based in the Square Mile.

However that's just a sarcastic introduction to what I really wanted to talk about, which is the blame game. Obviously whenever something like this happens our esteemed political leaders like to shout a lot at each other & blame anyone but themselves. It's happening now in the House of Commons as we speak.

And whilst the shit hit the fan on this one whilst the Tories are in power the seeds of it were sown...well..a long time ago. Just as our politicians became too close to Rupert Murdoch and News International so to have our politicians been hypnotized by the bling, bling, bling of the City of London.

The consensus emerged - and Osborne likes to pretend he didn't believe this, but he did - that a light touch was needed to regulate the City of London. It was too big a part of the economy and in a competitive landscape no one wanted to rock the boat too much. Even after the 'Crisis' not much changed. The rhetoric became nastier and bonuses became a bigger issue but apart from that the City seems to carry on as before. Bob Diamond himself felt that they'd been given enough of a kicking and unwisely decided to say so.

But here we are again.

The Labour Party had thirteen years in government but they too got caught up in the web. LIBOR could have been regulated then, but it wasn't. Osborne chose not to regulate it in the last Finance Act. No one comes out of this looking good, which is why I'd like Ed Miliband to take a more mature stance than the usual political one and say something along the lines of...

"It's obvious banking regulation needs to be properly reviewed. None of us come out of this looking good. We failed to act when we had the chance. We all got too close to the City of London. Like it or not the City is a significant chunk of the UK economy but perhaps both we and the party opposite have become over-enamoured of it to the expense of other parts of the economy. Happy to continue with the light touch of regulation we all made a mistake. I therefore propose that all the parties work together to find a new consensus. That instead of trying to pin the blame on each other we put our heads together to find the right solution."

That might be a better use of everyone's time. And money.

But I suspect we'll just get the usual blame game followed by cosmetic changes & another 'rogue' in a few months time.

Champagne Socialism & Other Animals

I'm middle-class. I earn over the national average income.

This apparently is supposed to disqualify me from being a socialist. There seems to be a belief amongst Tories that once you earn over a certain amount of money (or if you've been bought up in a style somewhat similar to the average Tory MP) that you automatically should divest yourself of all left-wing beliefs and sign up to support them.

That a high income or 'posh' upbringing automatically makes you some kind of hypocrite if you suggest a fairer distribution of incomes. That wealth somehow makes you incapable of empathy fit only to sit there selfishly demanding 'What's in it for me' rather than asking 'What can contribute to help others.'

Tax is - I have come to realise - the price we pay for living in a reasonably civilised society. No one enjoys paying it & a lot of it is spent on things I don't agree with and may never even benefit from but other people do. People who need that support more than I do.

Because I'm aware that I've been lucky. Even when things have looked bad and I've thought dark, dark thoughts I've always been aware that I have the support of a loving family and good friend and I've usually been working in reasonably well paid jobs that don't require overtime (paid or unpaid). I should remind myself of that fact every single day.

Apparently though I am supposed to put aside my left-wing beliefs or be a hypocrite. I'm not sure where the actual income cut off is according to the Tories but I know that once I've crossed that line voting Tory is what I should be doing as they're best placed to look after me.

But I'm quite happy being a champagne socialist. In the 21st century we seem to have become a much more selfish species - or at least because the rules have been loosened we've reverted to type. So instead of looking at the poor, the disabled, the unemployed and asking what can we do to help, we seem to be asking what can they do to help me get a tax cut. We hear words like 'feckless' chucked about and the rhetoric on disability recently has become poisonous as if disability in and of itself is an insult to the British people regardless of whether it is genuine or not.

No one seems to want to ask how in the 21st century in a wealthy country we can still have genuine poverty, sink estates, under-educated children attending flaking schools...etc and then be lectured by governments about 'responsibilities' and 'entitlement'.

In the end I have always felt that my life is better when other people's are better. And if government is for anything it should be for everyone. Not just the few. It should be about bringing us together, not driving us apart. It should be about pulling people up, not dragging them down.

Yes we have our own role to play as citizens in that but that doesn't mean we should blindly obey or live as if we are part of The Prisoner's Village. Paraphrasing something that Ed Murrow once said surely the right to disagree, the right to be wrong is fundamental to a free society.

And I disagree with much of what the current set of suits full of bugger all are doing, even if I stand to come out of it quite nicely thank you. If that makes me a 'Champagne Socialist' then so be it.

The Thatcher Thing

It dawned on me this morning, whilst listening to our Prime Minister dribbling on that I have come to dislike David Cameron more than I disliked Margaret Thatcher.

This sudden shock has little to do with the merits of Thatcher's Britain but more to do with them as people. The thing with Thatcher was that at least you go the impression that she'd worked her way through to being PM with ideas that she had developed through time and experience. Her solutions might have been wrong but she did - at least - work hard to get where she was and that for her being PM was a chance to do something 'good' and meant something to her. She also seemed to work hard.

It's a faint praise but it'll have to do for now.

But Cameron...was he ever going to stop to think about what he believes?

From Eton to Oxford to PR to SpAD to MP to PM. All without ever having to break sweat too much. The impression with Cameron is that being PM was something he is doing for a bet or as a gap year job before going off to do something better paid. There's no sense that he's doing the job for any other reason than that.

All the guff about changing the Tory Party was just enough bullshit to look real. Say what you like about Blair (another ex-PM with whom I have certain issues) at least the fights he had within his party were real rather than cosmetic.

Has Cameron ever really had a Clause Four moment? (And no gay marriage doesn't count. That's a basic issue of civility and civil rights imo)

And what does he actually do? PMQs has exposed his lack of understanding of his own governement policies over & over again. It also exposes his irritation whenever his divine right to rule is questioned. He seems to be the most hands off Prime Minister in my life time at a time when Britain could do with some genuine direction he seems more interested in chillaxing (whatever the fuck that means).

The same could be said of the Invisible Chancellor who rises from his bunker on rare occassions to smirk & sneer.

So David Cameron congratulations by combining Toryness with laziness and an air of smug entitlement you have managed to make Thatcher look slightly less awful. It's not much of an accolade I agree but I think your worth it.

Moral Courage-A Quotation

I saw this quote today from Robert Kennedy and I felt it was worth sharing:

"Few are willing to brave the disapproval of their peers, the censure of their colleagues, the wrath of their society. Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence. Yet it is the one essential, vital quality for those who seek to change a world that yields most painfully to change.”

I'll admit to lacking that 'moral courage' myself but it is, as Kennedy says, 'a rarer commodity..."

Politics as Personal

I found myself today thinking about the use of Twitter for making political points, especially when aimed at individuals. This was the result of three seperate things: a blog by my brother, Dan Hodges' articles supporting Boris over Ken and Louise Mensch favouriting some of the tweets she receives attacking her that have crossed a line inton misogyny.

Firstly I have to admit to having been quite rude about and to politicians on Twitter. I like to think I've never crossed the line into dumb abuse but I'd be a hypocrite not to recognise my own role in this limited though it is.

Secondly it made me think about how personally I take politics and accordingly how one reacts when someone you disagree with is pontificating in a public forum, e.g. the House of Commons, Question Time etc and how easy it is to throw up an instant, rude judgement. I suppose it is part of the fun of Twitter particularly. After all it is incredibly difficult to have a serious debate on a political issue in 140 characters.

I do take politics seriously - probably too seriously for some people. I also admit to having the blinkers of an old-schoolish leftie with a visceral hatred of the Conservative Party. I'm aware that this makes it hard for me ever to see the positives in any arguement or policy put forward by a Tory, even when it might actually make sense (which is rarely obviously) and I'm aware that it makes me look for excuses for bad arguements, bad policies or bad behaviour by Labour politicians. It's dangerously tribal and to repeat words I used in a tweet earlier today I'm starting to believe that political parties whilst making elections simpler to manage and allowing MPs from all backgrounds to be elected - should they miraculously be able to get themselves in between all the public school Oxbridge mob - they are damaging for democracy.

I also have built up a layer of cynicism about politicians that leads me to think of them - or a lot of them - as one body of careerist, ego-scoffing parasites who demands things of the people that they rule that they themselves seem incapable of doing: where are the cuts to MPs pensions, demands for performance related pay, less holidays etc for them. Plus there's the artificial civility that means you can't call a politician a liar to his face, even when he or she is demonstrably lying but that a speech at the dispatch box can contain lie after lie and no one bats an eyelid. The Speaker won't tolerate rudeness but seems happy to tolerate repeated lies or spin.

That attitude means it is easy to think 'oh that's just a politician, I pay their wages and if I want to be rude to them then that's my democratic right.' But that's not going to help win an argument and it isn't going to help us free political debate and discourse from the lowest common denominator levels to which it has sunk now.

Social media should open up a channel for us to debate those who disagree with us in a civilised, intelligent manner and not just be an excuse for partisan abuse and tribal short-sightedness. It won't be easy and it means politicians themselves who use social media should do so in a less tribal manner to. After all feeding the prejudices of your own party is easy but it could be something truly beneficial to democracy.

The question is can we do it?

United Around Bigotry - Christianity Goes Back To The Ston(ing) Age

So our - the UK - Churches are united around an issue. It must be a biggy for the CoE and the Catholic Church to put their squabbles aside. Is it poverty? Is it inequality? Is it the demonising of the poor and the glorification of wealth? Is it tyranny? Is it injustice?

Is it hell.

It's gay marriage. Once more the selective reading of an old book has caused a number of middle-aged men who should know better to start frothing at the mouth and talking about the end of civilisation as we know it.

Apparently allowing marriage to be available to everyone is just about the worst thing that can possibley happen. Not a long history of paedophilia and cover ups, not sitting on large chunks of wealth whilst people suffer or propping up unpleasent dictatorships that serve your cause. No, none of that matters because out there are evil people who want equal marriage rights.

Marriage has never been an issue I've been particularly bothered with one way or another. It's a nice thing to do, if you wish to make a committment to a partner. I don't think it is particularly necessary but if you want to get married then feel free. It's a committement to love and to fidelity. What's the hell is Christianity about if it isn't about LOVE?

The Bible simply allows bigots a cloak of respectability and this stuff matters. Whilst gay people are still being killed, bullied to suicide or abused because some men decided that this is what God wanted several thousand years ago I suggest our Churches might be better off shutting up and condemning those people who are preaching hate in the name of Jesus Christ.

I have said before that if the gay thing was such a big deal - to both God and Jesus - you'd think the Gospel's would put some good solid words of condemnation into Jesus's mouth. But they don't. He doesn't mention homosexuality once. At all.

He does say 'let he who is without sin cast the first stone' so some of our religious friends must be feeling particularly sin free with the cairns of stones they've been chucking about recently. "Do unto others as you would have done to you." What about that you Old Testament focused zealots? I hear you whinging about the 'war against Christianity' but I don't read stories about Christian children in schools being bullied to the point of suicide and beyond. A little bit of mockery and some expectation that you might put common humanity above the small print of an old book and you start crying in the press. Imagine what it must be like to be a gay teenager? Where do they go for help?

So if you're going to unite over something unite on an issue for the common good of humanity. Unite over an issue of love, not an issue of hate. If Jesus wants me for a sunbeam I don't think he's going to want me to spend my life persecuting people for their sexuality. I think he'd probably think there are bigger priorities that the Churches should unite around.

The Moment When...

You know I try. I do. I try to keep a sense of humour about things, especially as us 'bleeding hearts' are often accused of having 'no sense of humour'.

I try to give people the benefit of the doubt. That the Condems aren't just heartless evil bastards who went into to politics to make people's lives worse. Especially those people whose lives are already a tad more challenging that that of an Old Etonian, Oxbridge Binge Drinker par excellence, for example. I try & give them some credit & assume that just because George Osborne looks like the sneering villain from a Victorian melodrama bought through a crack in time & dumped on the front benches with the real world experience of a expensively educated tadpole it doesn't mean that he is actually a total bastard.

Then I read an article like THIS and I am forced to come to the conclusion that they are actually a gang of Satantic time travelling Victorian right-wingers bent on driving us back to 19th century as fast as they possibly can. Probably in a time machine sponsored by Tesco.

Yes, I know that's a rather tediously silly thing to say but what other explaination can fit their behaviour: a rabid commitment to cuts in the face of mounting evidence that all the cuts are doing is making things worse. Even the IMF is standing there now, like a slightly embarrassed colleague watching a drunk falling apart at the office Christmas Party, saying "well when I told him it was a free bar I didn't think he'd get that wasted.". But no it is carry on with Plan A regardless. Hey, George might turn out to be right but it isn't looking good so far is it?

There's been no real attempt to deal with the causes of the financial difficulties. Partly because it might turn out that 'it's the Labour Party's fault' might not stand up to proper, independent analysis and partly because it is hard to be horrible to the people who are funding your party. So let's blame it on profligate public spending shall we. That public spending that George pledged to match until the banking crisis hit. Hey, that's all history now anyway. Let's get on with hammering the real culprits. Those feckless, lazy bastards: the unemployed (hereafter referred to as work shy benefit cheats), the disabled (hereafter the 'not quite as disabled as they look'), the sick (if they can stand up, they can earn their benefits - even the ones that paid taxes for ages as members of the workforce on the assumption that there was a safety net there if something went horribly wrong.)

And that is the worst of it. We're all going to die & for some of us it might be a long, painful process. There might be remissions, recoveries etc. I might want to work to stop myself dwelling on my illness or to prove to people that just because I'm disabled doesn't mean I can't do a job. And that's fine but people who want to work & who can genuinely work should be allowed to & they should be paid a proper wage for doing so. Not hired as free labour for a private company thereby effectively getting the state to subsidise said private company. Something I thought right-wing libertarian types got all hot & bothered about.

So imagine you or one of your loved one gets sick & because you've done a less than fantastically paid job you are forced on to benefits. Then you have to go through a series of tests to prove you are sufficiently disabled/sick enough to deserve said benefit. Having done those tests you're told that your judge fit for work & if you don't take up 30 hrs/week of employment with Tesco, Poundland or whichever vampiric company has decided it wants to benefit from this scheme to save itself a few quid you'll have your benefits cut.

Oh, say the government we wouldn't be as heartless as to stop the benefits of a cancer patient with only eight months to live. And will you put that in writing dear government. Er, no. No. There's no need. It'll never happen. Well forgive me if I fail to trust you then.

And forgive me if I don't think you're a bunch of heartless bastards.

David Miliband speaks....

I've read David Miliband's article in the New Statesman, which seems to have got annoyed a few people and I can't quite work out why.

There's not much in there that you would not expect David Miliband to say. He's always been seen as the keeper of the Blairite flame by the Blair fanboys so I would only have been surprised if the article had started: "I've been thinking this through and decided that my Dad was right."

It isn't particularly poetic and it isn't a passionate vision. In fact most of it is pretty bog standard politicalese. Phrases full of sound & fury signifying...nothing: "decentralisation...active government...choices....decisions...champion...reform...modernise...blah-di-blah-blah".

What I don't see is an attack on Ed particularly. There's an attack on the 'Reassurance Tendency' - which implies that the Labour Party has moved so far now even its radical wing doesn't have the energy to get 'Militant'. It's the classic position of a Blairite. Nothing more, nothing less. A lot of what he says is an echo of Ed's comments about 'responsible capitalism'. 

Quite why everyone's got their bees a-buzzin' is beyond me but it does prove that David seems to have lost his right to have an opinion on Labour issues because his brother is in charge. Why we can't agree that disagreement - even public disagreement - is the sign of maturity is beyond me. We should be able to have public discussions about policies and politics without it being seen as 'treachery'.

Yes, I'm sure David Miliband is still smarting over losing to Ed. He's worked his way quite high up the greasy pole so he's not going to be without an ego. I know from my own personal experience that you can love your brother but still get a bit uncomfortable when he starts treading on what you stupidly consider your own territory. Certain things define you as a person, however much you wish they didn't and I suspect losing to Ed shook David up a bit. However none of that means he should be silenced. In fact I'd like to see him on the front bench again. He might be a Blairite but he's an effective Blairite.

So I don't agree with David Milliband when he thinks that "...not a single major business endorsed Labour, and we cannot afford that again." I think being too close to business and too far from the people the Labour Party is supposed to represent - at least in my little part of the cosmos - is one of the reasons it has lost it's way.

The battle over the centre ground is key to winning elections. There's no point pretending otherwise but I'd argue that a good politician representing a party that has built a coherent political identity for itself should be capable of going out and selling policies that aren't necessarily within the electoral comfort zone. That politician should be able to argue against convential wisdom and be able to present a genuine alternative, as opposed to a diet version of someone elses policies.

Yes, it is a harder path to travel but since when should we be afraid of the harder path?

Rick Santorum & His Hateful God

Rick Santorum is apparently a Christian.

Yes, the sort of Christian that thinks God gives gifts to women through the medium of rape. That kind of God. The sort of God that hates gays so much but seems to have made them a part of his creation. A bit odd that God. A God of Hate, not a God of Love.

I never quite understand how someone like Rick Santorum can call themselves a Christian when they clearly skipped all the bits about love and peace. The Beatitudes for example. Or that bit about throwing the first stone. Perhaps Rick thinks he is without sin so can chuck stones about to his bitter little heart's content. Don't worry your little head about the pain the stones might cause Rick.

The amusing thing about these Republican primaries is watching what amounts to a panel of arch-hypocrites trying to out God each other in a country where Church and State are expressly supposed to remain seperate. So you get evangelicals voting for serial adulter Newt Gingrich even though Jesus clearly doesn't like adultery. In fact he says much more about adultery in the New Testament than he does about most of the other subjects that tend to arose the ire of the Christian fundamentalists. There's nothing on homosexuality from Jesus. Not a word. He seems to have over-looked how important that issues was going to become a bit further down the line, which was a bit crass of him. But he's got a lot to say about divorce. Perhaps they are being forgiving. After all who can't forgive a chap who dumps his first wife whilst she's being treated for cancer. That's the kind of integrity that makes for great Presidential material apparently.

I've been working my way through the Bible - slowly but surely - as an exercise. I wanted to get an idea of what it actually contained as opposed to what I could vaguely remember from school or what I was told was in it. What I've realised is that you can take from the Bible whatever you wish to suit your politics. If you like a hateful God like Rick Santorum there's a lot you can pick to support whatever prejudices you might be pimping in the name of electoral support. The Old Testament is full of that kind of material, although there's some stuff in there about the Ezekiel about profit that seems to get over-looked by the right when talking about 'God's Will'.

Indeed it is why you can make a case for Jesus as a proto-Communist. After all he's not big on the whole money thing is he? Give it up and follow him seems to be a common thread. As is all that stuff about how hard it is for a rich man to get into heaven and that the rich get their reward on Earth so are likely to find heaven less welcoming than they might think. Remember folks, don't store your treasures on earth, store yourself for treasures in heaven. Then there's that quite strong admonishen about not being able to serve God and Money. But let's ignore all of that a round up Jesus for a celebration of the wealthy and the privaleged. I'm sure he'd be proud as punch.

It is the poor, the sinners and the wretched that Jesus reached out to. It is that Jesus I like, even though I'm aware that this suits my pre-existing beliefs about life. I'm not a hypocrite - well, not in this instance anyway - I know how I'm ignoring the stuff I don't like.

So I say unto you "If there is a God I hope he isn't Rick Santorum's God."

A Few Thoughts Before Holocaust Memorial Day

"Still Dachau seemed to me the most suitable place in Europe to hear the news of victory.. For surely this war was made to abolish Dachau, and all other places like Dachau. and everything that Dachau stood for, and to abolish it forever." Martha Gelhorn

But it did not. And the further we get away from the reality of the Holocaust the easier it is for the memory of it to be become indistinct that people can think it is amusing to dress up as SS Officers on their Stag Weekends as opposed to an insult.

When I first read about the Holocaust I could not understood what could make one group of civilised human beings so despise another group of human beings that they would want them wiped off the planet. The more I read the more frightening the explanations. The manipulation of a people struggling with economic uncertainty on a grand scale who had never properly come to terms with their defeat in the First World War was masterful. Hitler scapegoated entire races of people, they were dehumanised and debased. They were compared to diseases and to rats. Old anti-semitic tales were dug up and re-told. The result was to create an atmosphere where mass murder could eventually be the solution, the Final Solution, to a question that did not need an answer: the Jewish Question.

Of course it was not just the Jews that suffered under Hitler. It was pretty much anyone who did not fit the criteria: Jews, Roma, Gays, Jehovah's Witnesses, Freemasons, Communists, Trade Unionists...the list goes on and on into the shadows. Not all of them were doomed to extermination, but extermination was their fate. Or experimentation. Or both. The stories are too well known to repeat but have to be re-told for fear that we may forget what man is capable of. What a man can justify in the name of ideology.

Martin Niemoller wrote famously, "First they came for the Jews. But I didn't speak up because I was not a Jew...Then they came for me. And by that time no one was left to speak up." This poem has had a great impact on me. It has informed my view of the world. It is why I believe that if any of us are to have 'rights', all of us must. That means those people who hate and despise us have as much right to speak as we do. We will not win by silencing them, for who is truly silenced in those circumstances? We win by taking them on in arguement and showing people that a commitment to human rights is not the usual hypocriscy. That if our values are to mean anything we can not abandon them at the first sign of difficulty or danger. That the price we pay for freedom is the risk of a terrorist getting through.

It is easy, when things go wrong, to find scapegoats. To pin the blame. The Nazi's had an excellent way of clipping a nation's conscience. They did it in France, in Italy and elsewhere. They would introduce anti-Semitic laws but start with the stateless (made stateless in their flight from Germany & Austria). After all who can quibble about the rounding up and dispatch of illegal immigrants? Then they'd introduce the laws more widely and suddenly hardly anyone has a conscience left. It's why you have to be careful with the laws you pass and the language you use in politics, even now. Once you take away the rights of the people no one likes, cares about or even notices then it is easier to justify taking them away from the next group and the next group. Until there is no one left to speak up.

So as we approach Holocaust Memorial Day we should remember how easily neighbour can be turned against neighbour. How fear and desperation can be twisted into something darker and nastier. How justice denied to even a single individual in the name of ideology can just be the beginning of a process that destroys hundreds and thousands of lives.

Remember also that there are people out there that deny it happened. Or that the numbers have been exaggerated. It takes some historical blindness to believe that. The Nazis were very thorough, there's a lot of paperwork out there. All it takes is a little effort to read one or two books. The danger of course is that as old age removes the last of both the survivors and the perpetrators this historical trickery becomes easier to push but the evidence is there. Read The Hon Mr Justice Gray's summing up in the Irving Trial, read Hitler's Bureaucrats by Yaakov Lozowick or The Origins of the Final Solution by Christopher R Browning. Read.

I'm sorry if this is a little rambling but I wanted to try and sum up what impact the study of the Holocaust had on me. I don't need to make the case for its importance, that would appear to be self-evident.

Never forget.

Something Old, something New, Something Borrowed, Something Bozier

So a chap called Bozier has left the Labour Party in a flounce and joined the Conservatives because they are the keepers of the sacread Blairite flame. The Labour Party isn't a serious political force anymore apparently.

I don't know much about Luke Bozier. He isn't an MP, a Shadow Cabinet Minister or a member of the House of Lords. As far as I can tell he blogs a lot and writes articles, which I suppose makes him not disimilar to a lot of us. He's just made something of a career out of pontificating. That's fine. I'd do it if I could. It must be more fun than actually working for a living.

However two things have irritated me about the follow-up to this.

One is the pomposity and ego of the man himself with his talk of statements as if his departure should be greeted with wailing and gnashing of teeth. As if a Bevan or Crossman has left the Labour Party.

The second thing is that people seem to think we should be nice to him. Yes, it is a bit sad when someone leaves a party they've spent time supporting but it was people like Bozier who greeted the potential departure of the old school left from the Labour Party with glee. I don't remember anyone trying to bend over backwards to be nice to me when I had concerns about the 'reformist agenda' (whatever that actually means in non-politicalese). We were 'Old', they were 'New'. The force was with Tony Blair and if we didn't like it that was tough. Leave if want I was told. You won't be missed. Political parties change I was told. This isn't about YOU, it is about the party and victory.

But at the first sniff of change - and it doesn't look like much of a change over here outside the party - Bozier goes running off into the sunset and joins the Tories. That doesn't seem like a political act to me, that seems like a selfish careerist thing to do. Having supported the Labour Party since the 80s it looks to me like Bozier doesn't actually have the stomach to fight his corner.

At least Bozier has a choice. My disillusionment with the Labour Party leaves me without much of a home to go to, except the Green Party. I feel like I've been disenfranchised. I can't jump to the Conservative Party or the Lib-Dems. But then I'm just an ordinary voter. My views won't get me a column in the Independent. I'm expected just to put up and shut up.

The blogosphere has created a sub-division of the political class. People who can't - or won't - stand for political office but build up a following or influence through their internet activities. Their opinions are expected to count for something, hence the puffery abut Bozier. I think there's something a bit wrong with that. But the only way to fight it would be to multiply the number of voices out there and reduce the dominance of the one or two political blogging sites that seem to be working hard at being the 21st centuries example of 'power without responsibility' as the old media dies.