We had feet washing at my local Church. Not for me, I'm afraid. When I've been wearing boots all day, I don't like being in the same room as my feet when I take my boots off.
On the religion theme, I'd like to put in a word for the King James Bible. Someone on this board was mocking Michael Goves' distribution of Bibles to secondary schools. It was the King James Version in commemoration of 400 years since its publication in 1611. The King James Version had an enormous impact on the English language. Melvyn Bragg presented a very interesting TV programme on the topic. The theatre director Patrick Garland was also a big fan and intended giving a talk at Chichester Festival Theatre on the subject but was prevented by ill health. I feel those that mock, including many teachers at the time, show their own cultural vacuum.
One thing that's annoying me this week: people referring to this week as "the long bank holiday weekend".
No, it isn't: t's the Easter bank holiday weekend.
It's remarkable that they are almost always the same people who are first out the gates on LGBT+ history month or to applaud the celebration of Ramadan.
Can't say I've come across people being shy about calling it Easter myself. Is this something concerted or just some general trend?
Nor me. I think people refer to the long bank holiday weekend because that’s what it means to a lot of us. An extended and welcome 4 days off and the start of our UK string of spring bank holidays that culminate at Whitsun. Time to head to IKEA/B&Q/Garden centre, have a nice leg of lamb on Easter Day and if you’re young enough do a 2 day clubbing marathon.
I like the Christian bits of Easter too, not because I’m religious (I’m not) but because the biblical texts and the music that accompanies them are pretty epic: cornerstones of our literary universe. Tonight and Good Friday in particular:
The last supper; Judas kiss; the garden of gethsemane; Pilate washing his hands; let his blood be upon us; Centurions playing dice; crown of thorns; Eloi Eloi lama sabactani; gave up the ghost; the earth rent in twain etc etc. It’s probably the only story in “Western” literature as influential on English language and idiom as Shakespeare.
Yes, that's all fine, so call it the Easter weekend.
My objection was to one or two Woke people at work deliberately omitting the word Easter because of equity and diversity bollocks.
Step back and consider the obvious non-woke reason for calling it a long bank holiday weekend, which is to emphasise how much time you get off work, grouping it with other long bank holiday weekends, all of which are also named individually when you wish to focus on the particular.
It's the Easter bank holiday weekend. Not a "normal" bank holiday weekend. It'd be like calling Christmas a bank holiday break or a Winterval.
We all know this. So do you.
Perhaps you have never worked where people book use their holiday entitlement to maximise consecutive days off. People really do talk about long bank holiday weekends.
If you want to focus on forgetting Easter, better examples would be schools (in some areas) not breaking up until yesterday, or this Telegraph story about Westminster Council rushing to put together an Easter display in their window after they realised they'd only done Ramadan. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/03/28/westminster-council-celebrates-ramadan-not-easter/ (£££)
Forgetting to put up an Easter display is an interesting phenomenon. Hitherto 'Christian' was the default background cultural context for everyone. The shops are all full of "Easter" decorations etc. so presumably no-one thought a special display was needed.
However, "regular practicing Christianity" is now a minority activity. Easter itself is such a secular, chocolate-focused event for the vast majority of people that it is very easy to forget that there's any Christian religious aspect at all.
So it probably does need a council window display these days. I'm glad that they put something together when reminded.
ETA: though having now seen it I note that they tended to "egg" rather than "man nailed to tree" so there's room for doubt that they are referencing Christianity there!
We had feet washing at my local Church. Not for me, I'm afraid. When I've been wearing boots all day, I don't like being in the same room as my feet when I take my boots off.
On the religion theme, I'd like to put in a word for the King James Bible. Someone on this board was mocking Michael Goves' distribution of Bibles to secondary schools. It was the King James Version in commemoration of 400 years since its publication in 1611. The King James Version had an enormous impact on the English language. Melvyn Bragg presented a very interesting TV programme on the topic. The theatre director Patrick Garland was also a big fan and intended giving a talk at Chichester Festival Theatre on the subject but was prevented by ill health. I feel those that mock, including many teachers at the time, show their own cultural vacuum.
It really depends whether you're looking for a work of English literature or a religious text. If the content of the text is of the least importance to them, people should at least prefer the Revised Version, which tries to preserve the traditional language as far as possible, but not at the cost of misrepresenting the meaning of the original text.
One thing that's annoying me this week: people referring to this week as "the long bank holiday weekend".
No, it isn't: t's the Easter bank holiday weekend.
It's remarkable that they are almost always the same people who are first out the gates on LGBT+ history month or to applaud the celebration of Ramadan.
Can't say I've come across people being shy about calling it Easter myself. Is this something concerted or just some general trend?
Nor me. I think people refer to the long bank holiday weekend because that’s what it means to a lot of us. An extended and welcome 4 days off and the start of our UK string of spring bank holidays that culminate at Whitsun. Time to head to IKEA/B&Q/Garden centre, have a nice leg of lamb on Easter Day and if you’re young enough do a 2 day clubbing marathon.
I like the Christian bits of Easter too, not because I’m religious (I’m not) but because the biblical texts and the music that accompanies them are pretty epic: cornerstones of our literary universe. Tonight and Good Friday in particular:
The last supper; Judas kiss; the garden of gethsemane; Pilate washing his hands; let his blood be upon us; Centurions playing dice; crown of thorns; Eloi Eloi lama sabactani; gave up the ghost; the earth rent in twain etc etc. It’s probably the only story in “Western” literature as influential on English language and idiom as Shakespeare.
Yes, that's all fine, so call it the Easter weekend.
My objection was to one or two Woke people at work deliberately omitting the word Easter because of equity and diversity bollocks.
Step back and consider the obvious non-woke reason for calling it a long bank holiday weekend, which is to emphasise how much time you get off work, grouping it with other long bank holiday weekends, all of which are also named individually when you wish to focus on the particular.
Just leave them to it. This anti-woke stuff does not survive contact with the general public, and if they insist on bringing it up on the doorstep they will deserve all the electoral hammering they get.
The Conservatives are in a tight doom spin which means that the remaining members, councillors and MPs who are shameless enough to keep campaigning tend to be more and more on the extreme right of the party.
I think this is now more of an issue than it was for Labour under Corbyn. Consider the latest anti-Khan video. Everyone sensible has left. They desperately need a Ruth Davidson type figure at CCHQ .
@Casino_Royale is making a valid point but not a new one: progressives are embarrassed by tradition, preferring anything exotic and 'more interesting'; and provocatively renaming traditional religious holidays is a symptom of this. I don't think there are massive political implications but it all gets a bit tiring when their own vision of the future is failing all around them but there is little self reflection or criticism.
I suspect that CRs colleagues were just teasing him for sport, as they often seem to do.
One thing that's annoying me this week: people referring to this week as "the long bank holiday weekend".
No, it isn't: t's the Easter bank holiday weekend.
It's remarkable that they are almost always the same people who are first out the gates on LGBT+ history month or to applaud the celebration of Ramadan.
Can't say I've come across people being shy about calling it Easter myself. Is this something concerted or just some general trend?
Nor me. I think people refer to the long bank holiday weekend because that’s what it means to a lot of us. An extended and welcome 4 days off and the start of our UK string of spring bank holidays that culminate at Whitsun. Time to head to IKEA/B&Q/Garden centre, have a nice leg of lamb on Easter Day and if you’re young enough do a 2 day clubbing marathon.
I like the Christian bits of Easter too, not because I’m religious (I’m not) but because the biblical texts and the music that accompanies them are pretty epic: cornerstones of our literary universe. Tonight and Good Friday in particular:
The last supper; Judas kiss; the garden of gethsemane; Pilate washing his hands; let his blood be upon us; Centurions playing dice; crown of thorns; Eloi Eloi lama sabactani; gave up the ghost; the earth rent in twain etc etc. It’s probably the only story in “Western” literature as influential on English language and idiom as Shakespeare.
Yes, that's all fine, so call it the Easter weekend.
My objection was to one or two Woke people at work deliberately omitting the word Easter because of equity and diversity bollocks.
Step back and consider the obvious non-woke reason for calling it a long bank holiday weekend, which is to emphasise how much time you get off work, grouping it with other long bank holiday weekends, all of which are also named individually when you wish to focus on the particular.
Just leave them to it. This anti-woke stuff does not survive contact with the general public, and if they insist on bringing it up on the doorstep they will deserve all the electoral hammering they get.
The Conservatives are in a tight doom spin which means that the remaining members, councillors and MPs who are shameless enough to keep campaigning tend to be more and more on the extreme right of the party.
I think this is now more of an issue than it was for Labour under Corbyn. Consider the latest anti-Khan video. Everyone sensible has left. They desperately need a Ruth Davidson type figure at CCHQ .
@Casino_Royale is making a valid point but not a new one: progressives are embarrassed by tradition, preferring anything exotic and 'more interesting'; and provocatively renaming traditional religious holidays is a symptom of this. I don't think there are massive political implications but it all gets a bit tiring when their own vision of the future is failing all around them but there is little self reflection or criticism.
Getting upset about someone calling a long weekend a long weekend is the kind of "snowflake" behaviour that the left is supposed to engage in.
It's not an "Easter bank holiday weekend", as Casino puts it. For a start, Good Friday is not a bank holiday in England as it is not defined by statute - it is merely a public holiday.
And England does not explicitly get an additional day off in lieu for Easter Sunday (as we might if Christmas Day fell on a weekend). Therefore, the Sunday does not form part of a "Easter bank holiday weekend" either.
Therefore, the only part of Casino's "Easter bank holiday weekend" that is a bank holiday in Easter Monday. A single day.
This is correct from the perspective of the Church of England's liturgical calendar, because Easter only starts on the Sunday. Good Friday is part of Lent, as is 'Easter Eve' - the Saturday.
Conversely, in Scotland, only Good Friday is a national bank holiday. Some councils, such as Edinburgh, include Easter Monday as a local public holiday.
To further complicate matters, some Christians, as in the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland, do not celebrate Easter at all. And they are certainly not Woke.
We were caught out by Easter Day not being a bank holiday when the people negotiating our holiday payments did not realise their shiny new agreement treated it as just another Sunday.
Interesting. Does that mean that shop workers, who are banned from working on Easter Sunday because the government caved into a religious minority, are not paid?
I must head out but, gosh, I didn’t realise the description of this as a long weekend was woke
I thought it just described the length of the weekend, which in my case is Thursday (Maundy Thursday) to Wednesday incl. hence calling it a loooong weekend.
Happy Easter. Passover (22/4). Long weekend. Multiple bank holiday. Equinoctial. Whatever. I can’t see what’s woke about it.
Except to note that if Jesus of Nazareth was crucified, as the later gospels claim, then it was around the Jewish Passover.
Peace. Shalom. Have a nice time - surely that’s the main thing
One thing that's annoying me this week: people referring to this week as "the long bank holiday weekend".
No, it isn't: t's the Easter bank holiday weekend.
It's remarkable that they are almost always the same people who are first out the gates on LGBT+ history month or to applaud the celebration of Ramadan.
Can't say I've come across people being shy about calling it Easter myself. Is this something concerted or just some general trend?
Nor me. I think people refer to the long bank holiday weekend because that’s what it means to a lot of us. An extended and welcome 4 days off and the start of our UK string of spring bank holidays that culminate at Whitsun. Time to head to IKEA/B&Q/Garden centre, have a nice leg of lamb on Easter Day and if you’re young enough do a 2 day clubbing marathon.
I like the Christian bits of Easter too, not because I’m religious (I’m not) but because the biblical texts and the music that accompanies them are pretty epic: cornerstones of our literary universe. Tonight and Good Friday in particular:
The last supper; Judas kiss; the garden of gethsemane; Pilate washing his hands; let his blood be upon us; Centurions playing dice; crown of thorns; Eloi Eloi lama sabactani; gave up the ghost; the earth rent in twain etc etc. It’s probably the only story in “Western” literature as influential on English language and idiom as Shakespeare.
Yes, that's all fine, so call it the Easter weekend.
My objection was to one or two Woke people at work deliberately omitting the word Easter because of equity and diversity bollocks.
Step back and consider the obvious non-woke reason for calling it a long bank holiday weekend, which is to emphasise how much time you get off work, grouping it with other long bank holiday weekends, all of which are also named individually when you wish to focus on the particular.
Just leave them to it. This anti-woke stuff does not survive contact with the general public, and if they insist on bringing it up on the doorstep they will deserve all the electoral hammering they get.
The Conservatives are in a tight doom spin which means that the remaining members, councillors and MPs who are shameless enough to keep campaigning tend to be more and more on the extreme right of the party.
I think this is now more of an issue than it was for Labour under Corbyn. Consider the latest anti-Khan video. Everyone sensible has left. They desperately need a Ruth Davidson type figure at CCHQ .
@Casino_Royale is making a valid point but not a new one: progressives are embarrassed by tradition, preferring anything exotic and 'more interesting'; and provocatively renaming traditional religious holidays is a symptom of this. I don't think there are massive political implications but it all gets a bit tiring when their own vision of the future is failing all around them but there is little self reflection or criticism.
Getting upset about someone calling a long weekend a long weekend is the kind of "snowflake" behaviour that the left is supposed to engage in.
It's not an "Easter bank holiday weekend", as Casino puts it. For a start, Good Friday is not a bank holiday in England as it is not defined by statute - it is merely a public holiday.
And England does not explicitly get an additional day off in lieu for Easter Sunday (as we might if Christmas Day fell on a weekend). Therefore, the Sunday does not form part of a "Easter bank holiday weekend" either.
Therefore, the only part of Casino's "Easter bank holiday weekend" that is a bank holiday in Easter Monday. A single day.
This is correct from the perspective of the Church of England's liturgical calendar, because Easter only starts on the Sunday. Good Friday is part of Lent, as is 'Easter Eve' - the Saturday.
Conversely, in Scotland, only Good Friday is a national bank holiday. Some councils, such as Edinburgh, include Easter Monday as a local public holiday.
To further complicate matters, some Christians, as in the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland, do not celebrate Easter at all. And they are certainly not Woke.
A friend of mine had a father who ran a factory in Wigtown in the Fifties. Employees made a point of working on Christmas Day to show they weren't celebrating a pagan festival.
The hard line that some Protestants take on Christmas, Easter and similar is from opposition to feast days in general, with the associated frivolity, drunkeness and frivolity. The position taken is that they mark the birth and resurrection of Christ everyday.
Anyway. Happy Easter everyone. I bloody love Easter. Easter asks absolutely nothing of you. It doesn't give you a list of things to do; doesn't ask you to wear fancy dress, or to feel a certain emotion. Greetings cards companies might see a market for their product, but they're fooling no-one. All Easter does is come along without you really budgeting for it and gives you a lovely long weekend. I'm going to have a lie in tomorrow. Christ may be risen, but I'm not planning on following his example until gone 10.
The rising will be on Sunday. I'm afraid the Friday didn't go that well for him.
Could have been worse. Jesus was an ascetic and in fairly good shape so he survived longer on the cross than usual. A kind-hearted Roman soldier administered the coup de grace but missed his vital organs. Jesus was still alive when they took him to Gethsemane and sealed the tomb. Luckily, for Jesus, tomb robbers turned up on Saturday (when the locals were otherwise engaged) and had the freight of their lives when they rolled away the boulder and were met with a cheery 'Shalom' from a bloke in a shroud. They scarpered pdq and Jesus wandered off looking for a bite to eat. When Mary'n'Mary showed up on the Lord's Day they jumped to the obvious, if fallacious, conclusion. The rest, as they say, is History.
Yep, three options.
1. He wasn't dead. 2. Someone or some people removed his body. 3. He rose from the dead.
Actually, four options...
4. The biblical account is a fictionalised version of events.
If someone was offering odds, I think number 3 would be the 1,000,000/1 outsider.
Then you get to the C S Lewis question.
If you are right then why were so many of the apostles - who presumably knew the truth - willing to suffer torture and martyrdom for a lie?
People die for lies all the time, for regimes or groups they must know have done terrible things as just one example. But in any case a simple answer would be that even people very closest to the actual historical events, whatever those might have been, may have perceived or interpreted the truth very differently, may have believed in miraculous explanations.
If 'why would X do Y if it were not true?' wouldn't all religions be true, since people at the start of them must have 'known' and died (or killed) for it?
Not really buying that.
Christianity is the only real example (I think) of a subversive movement which was systematically persecuted by the authorities (both Jewish and Roman).
Judaism was pre-history; Islam was a tribal power play. Don’t know enough about the origins of Hinduism or Buddhism to apply the theory.
You're not familiar with the origins of Sikhism, then ?
One thing that's annoying me this week: people referring to this week as "the long bank holiday weekend".
No, it isn't: t's the Easter bank holiday weekend.
It's remarkable that they are almost always the same people who are first out the gates on LGBT+ history month or to applaud the celebration of Ramadan.
Can't say I've come across people being shy about calling it Easter myself. Is this something concerted or just some general trend?
Nor me. I think people refer to the long bank holiday weekend because that’s what it means to a lot of us. An extended and welcome 4 days off and the start of our UK string of spring bank holidays that culminate at Whitsun. Time to head to IKEA/B&Q/Garden centre, have a nice leg of lamb on Easter Day and if you’re young enough do a 2 day clubbing marathon.
I like the Christian bits of Easter too, not because I’m religious (I’m not) but because the biblical texts and the music that accompanies them are pretty epic: cornerstones of our literary universe. Tonight and Good Friday in particular:
The last supper; Judas kiss; the garden of gethsemane; Pilate washing his hands; let his blood be upon us; Centurions playing dice; crown of thorns; Eloi Eloi lama sabactani; gave up the ghost; the earth rent in twain etc etc. It’s probably the only story in “Western” literature as influential on English language and idiom as Shakespeare.
Yes, that's all fine, so call it the Easter weekend.
My objection was to one or two Woke people at work deliberately omitting the word Easter because of equity and diversity bollocks.
Step back and consider the obvious non-woke reason for calling it a long bank holiday weekend, which is to emphasise how much time you get off work, grouping it with other long bank holiday weekends, all of which are also named individually when you wish to focus on the particular.
Just leave them to it. This anti-woke stuff does not survive contact with the general public, and if they insist on bringing it up on the doorstep they will deserve all the electoral hammering they get.
The Conservatives are in a tight doom spin which means that the remaining members, councillors and MPs who are shameless enough to keep campaigning tend to be more and more on the extreme right of the party.
I think this is now more of an issue than it was for Labour under Corbyn. Consider the latest anti-Khan video. Everyone sensible has left. They desperately need a Ruth Davidson type figure at CCHQ .
@Casino_Royale is making a valid point but not a new one: progressives are embarrassed by tradition, preferring anything exotic and 'more interesting'; and provocatively renaming traditional religious holidays is a symptom of this. I don't think there are massive political implications but it all gets a bit tiring when their own vision of the future is failing all around them but there is little self reflection or criticism.
Getting upset about someone calling a long weekend a long weekend is the kind of "snowflake" behaviour that the left is supposed to engage in.
It's not an "Easter bank holiday weekend", as Casino puts it. For a start, Good Friday is not a bank holiday in England as it is not defined by statute - it is merely a public holiday.
And England does not explicitly get an additional day off in lieu for Easter Sunday (as we might if Christmas Day fell on a weekend). Therefore, the Sunday does not form part of a "Easter bank holiday weekend" either.
Therefore, the only part of Casino's "Easter bank holiday weekend" that is a bank holiday in Easter Monday. A single day.
This is correct from the perspective of the Church of England's liturgical calendar, because Easter only starts on the Sunday. Good Friday is part of Lent, as is 'Easter Eve' - the Saturday.
Conversely, in Scotland, only Good Friday is a national bank holiday. Some councils, such as Edinburgh, include Easter Monday as a local public holiday.
To further complicate matters, some Christians, as in the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland, do not celebrate Easter at all. And they are certainly not Woke.
A friend of mine had a father who ran a factory in Wigtown in the Fifties. Employees made a point of working on Christmas Day to show they weren't celebrating a pagan festival.
The hard line that some Protestants take on Christmas, Easter and similar is from opposition to feast days in general, with the associated frivolity, drunkeness and frivolity. The position taken is that they mark the birth and resurrection of Christ everyday.
It's similar to the outlook of the Emulation Lodge of Improvement in Freemasonry.
I must head out but, gosh, I didn’t realise the description of this as a long weekend was woke
I thought it just described the length of the weekend, which in my case is Thursday (Maundy Thursday) to Wednesday incl. hence calling it a loooong weekend.
Happy Easter. Passover (22/4). Long weekend. Multiple bank holiday. Equinoctial. Whatever. I can’t see what’s woke about it.
Except to note that if Jesus of Nazareth was crucified, as the later gospels claim, then it was around the Jewish Passover.
Peace. Shalom. Have a nice time - surely that’s the main thing
xx
It's not Passover until the end of April.
While the last supper was a Passover meal, the date of Easter has not been set by the same Callander in a very long time.
We had feet washing at my local Church. Not for me, I'm afraid. When I've been wearing boots all day, I don't like being in the same room as my feet when I take my boots off.
On the religion theme, I'd like to put in a word for the King James Bible. Someone on this board was mocking Michael Goves' distribution of Bibles to secondary schools. It was the King James Version in commemoration of 400 years since its publication in 1611. The King James Version had an enormous impact on the English language. Melvyn Bragg presented a very interesting TV programme on the topic. The theatre director Patrick Garland was also a big fan and intended giving a talk at Chichester Festival Theatre on the subject but was prevented by ill health. I feel those that mock, including many teachers at the time, show their own cultural vacuum.
It really depends whether you're looking for a work of English literature or a religious text. If the content of the text is of the least importance to them, people should at least prefer the Revised Version, which tries to preserve the traditional language as far as possible, but not at the cost of misrepresenting the meaning of the original text.
One thing that's annoying me this week: people referring to this week as "the long bank holiday weekend".
No, it isn't: t's the Easter bank holiday weekend.
It's remarkable that they are almost always the same people who are first out the gates on LGBT+ history month or to applaud the celebration of Ramadan.
Can't say I've come across people being shy about calling it Easter myself. Is this something concerted or just some general trend?
Nor me. I think people refer to the long bank holiday weekend because that’s what it means to a lot of us. An extended and welcome 4 days off and the start of our UK string of spring bank holidays that culminate at Whitsun. Time to head to IKEA/B&Q/Garden centre, have a nice leg of lamb on Easter Day and if you’re young enough do a 2 day clubbing marathon.
I like the Christian bits of Easter too, not because I’m religious (I’m not) but because the biblical texts and the music that accompanies them are pretty epic: cornerstones of our literary universe. Tonight and Good Friday in particular:
The last supper; Judas kiss; the garden of gethsemane; Pilate washing his hands; let his blood be upon us; Centurions playing dice; crown of thorns; Eloi Eloi lama sabactani; gave up the ghost; the earth rent in twain etc etc. It’s probably the only story in “Western” literature as influential on English language and idiom as Shakespeare.
Yes, that's all fine, so call it the Easter weekend.
My objection was to one or two Woke people at work deliberately omitting the word Easter because of equity and diversity bollocks.
Step back and consider the obvious non-woke reason for calling it a long bank holiday weekend, which is to emphasise how much time you get off work, grouping it with other long bank holiday weekends, all of which are also named individually when you wish to focus on the particular.
Just leave them to it. This anti-woke stuff does not survive contact with the general public, and if they insist on bringing it up on the doorstep they will deserve all the electoral hammering they get.
The Conservatives are in a tight doom spin which means that the remaining members, councillors and MPs who are shameless enough to keep campaigning tend to be more and more on the extreme right of the party.
I think this is now more of an issue than it was for Labour under Corbyn. Consider the latest anti-Khan video. Everyone sensible has left. They desperately need a Ruth Davidson type figure at CCHQ .
@Casino_Royale is making a valid point but not a new one: progressives are embarrassed by tradition, preferring anything exotic and 'more interesting'; and provocatively renaming traditional religious holidays is a symptom of this. I don't think there are massive political implications but it all gets a bit tiring when their own vision of the future is failing all around them but there is little self reflection or criticism.
Getting upset about someone calling a long weekend a long weekend is the kind of "snowflake" behaviour that the left is supposed to engage in.
It's not an "Easter bank holiday weekend", as Casino puts it. For a start, Good Friday is not a bank holiday in England as it is not defined by statute - it is merely a public holiday.
And England does not explicitly get an additional day off in lieu for Easter Sunday (as we might if Christmas Day fell on a weekend). Therefore, the Sunday does not form part of a "Easter bank holiday weekend" either.
Therefore, the only part of Casino's "Easter bank holiday weekend" that is a bank holiday in Easter Monday. A single day.
This is correct from the perspective of the Church of England's liturgical calendar, because Easter only starts on the Sunday. Good Friday is part of Lent, as is 'Easter Eve' - the Saturday.
Conversely, in Scotland, only Good Friday is a national bank holiday. Some councils, such as Edinburgh, include Easter Monday as a local public holiday.
To further complicate matters, some Christians, as in the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland, do not celebrate Easter at all. And they are certainly not Woke.
We were caught out by Easter Day not being a bank holiday when the people negotiating our holiday payments did not realise their shiny new agreement treated it as just another Sunday.
Interesting. Does that mean that shop workers, who are banned from working on Easter Sunday because the government caved into a religious minority, are not paid?
While visiting the USA at Easter a few years ago, we noticed an advertisement for a supermarket which said they were closing until lunchtime on Easter Sunday to allow the employees to spend time with their families. The advertisement went on to say that the management hoped this would not inconvenience customers too much!
Anyway. Happy Easter everyone. I bloody love Easter. Easter asks absolutely nothing of you. It doesn't give you a list of things to do; doesn't ask you to wear fancy dress, or to feel a certain emotion. Greetings cards companies might see a market for their product, but they're fooling no-one. All Easter does is come along without you really budgeting for it and gives you a lovely long weekend. I'm going to have a lie in tomorrow. Christ may be risen, but I'm not planning on following his example until gone 10.
The rising will be on Sunday. I'm afraid the Friday didn't go that well for him.
Could have been worse. Jesus was an ascetic and in fairly good shape so he survived longer on the cross than usual. A kind-hearted Roman soldier administered the coup de grace but missed his vital organs. Jesus was still alive when they took him to Gethsemane and sealed the tomb. Luckily, for Jesus, tomb robbers turned up on Saturday (when the locals were otherwise engaged) and had the freight of their lives when they rolled away the boulder and were met with a cheery 'Shalom' from a bloke in a shroud. They scarpered pdq and Jesus wandered off looking for a bite to eat. When Mary'n'Mary showed up on the Lord's Day they jumped to the obvious, if fallacious, conclusion. The rest, as they say, is History.
Yep, three options.
1. He wasn't dead. 2. Someone or some people removed his body. 3. He rose from the dead.
Actually, four options...
4. The biblical account is a fictionalised version of events.
If someone was offering odds, I think number 3 would be the 1,000,000/1 outsider.
What’s wrong with: he died on the cross, his body was in the tomb, the apostles hallucinated seeing him.
Betfair wouldn't pay out until the event concluded ie never
One thing that's annoying me this week: people referring to this week as "the long bank holiday weekend".
No, it isn't: t's the Easter bank holiday weekend.
It's remarkable that they are almost always the same people who are first out the gates on LGBT+ history month or to applaud the celebration of Ramadan.
Can't say I've come across people being shy about calling it Easter myself. Is this something concerted or just some general trend?
Nor me. I think people refer to the long bank holiday weekend because that’s what it means to a lot of us. An extended and welcome 4 days off and the start of our UK string of spring bank holidays that culminate at Whitsun. Time to head to IKEA/B&Q/Garden centre, have a nice leg of lamb on Easter Day and if you’re young enough do a 2 day clubbing marathon.
I like the Christian bits of Easter too, not because I’m religious (I’m not) but because the biblical texts and the music that accompanies them are pretty epic: cornerstones of our literary universe. Tonight and Good Friday in particular:
The last supper; Judas kiss; the garden of gethsemane; Pilate washing his hands; let his blood be upon us; Centurions playing dice; crown of thorns; Eloi Eloi lama sabactani; gave up the ghost; the earth rent in twain etc etc. It’s probably the only story in “Western” literature as influential on English language and idiom as Shakespeare.
Yes, that's all fine, so call it the Easter weekend.
My objection was to one or two Woke people at work deliberately omitting the word Easter because of equity and diversity bollocks.
Step back and consider the obvious non-woke reason for calling it a long bank holiday weekend, which is to emphasise how much time you get off work, grouping it with other long bank holiday weekends, all of which are also named individually when you wish to focus on the particular.
Just leave them to it. This anti-woke stuff does not survive contact with the general public, and if they insist on bringing it up on the doorstep they will deserve all the electoral hammering they get.
The Conservatives are in a tight doom spin which means that the remaining members, councillors and MPs who are shameless enough to keep campaigning tend to be more and more on the extreme right of the party.
I think this is now more of an issue than it was for Labour under Corbyn. Consider the latest anti-Khan video. Everyone sensible has left. They desperately need a Ruth Davidson type figure at CCHQ .
@Casino_Royale is making a valid point but not a new one: progressives are embarrassed by tradition, preferring anything exotic and 'more interesting'; and provocatively renaming traditional religious holidays is a symptom of this. I don't think there are massive political implications but it all gets a bit tiring when their own vision of the future is failing all around them but there is little self reflection or criticism.
Getting upset about someone calling a long weekend a long weekend is the kind of "snowflake" behaviour that the left is supposed to engage in.
It's not an "Easter bank holiday weekend", as Casino puts it. For a start, Good Friday is not a bank holiday in England as it is not defined by statute - it is merely a public holiday.
And England does not explicitly get an additional day off in lieu for Easter Sunday (as we might if Christmas Day fell on a weekend). Therefore, the Sunday does not form part of a "Easter bank holiday weekend" either.
Therefore, the only part of Casino's "Easter bank holiday weekend" that is a bank holiday in Easter Monday. A single day.
This is correct from the perspective of the Church of England's liturgical calendar, because Easter only starts on the Sunday. Good Friday is part of Lent, as is 'Easter Eve' - the Saturday.
Conversely, in Scotland, only Good Friday is a national bank holiday. Some councils, such as Edinburgh, include Easter Monday as a local public holiday.
To further complicate matters, some Christians, as in the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland, do not celebrate Easter at all. And they are certainly not Woke.
A friend of mine had a father who ran a factory in Wigtown in the Fifties. Employees made a point of working on Christmas Day to show they weren't celebrating a pagan festival.
The hard line that some Protestants take on Christmas, Easter and similar is from opposition to feast days in general, with the associated frivolity, drunkeness and frivolity. The position taken is that they mark the birth and resurrection of Christ everyday.
It's similar to the outlook of the Emulation Lodge of Improvement in Freemasonry.
You're not meant to enjoy yourself.
The dour grimness of Calvinism and English Puritanism doesn't have obvious appeal in the modern consumerist world, but was very popular in its day, being a major bottom up change in society. It created the modern work ethic and is key to understanding the development of modern Scotland, England and Netherlands.
I see the popularity of the more austere forms of Islam as very similar.
I must head out but, gosh, I didn’t realise the description of this as a long weekend was woke
I thought it just described the length of the weekend, which in my case is Thursday (Maundy Thursday) to Wednesday incl. hence calling it a loooong weekend.
Happy Easter. Passover (22/4). Long weekend. Multiple bank holiday. Equinoctial. Whatever. I can’t see what’s woke about it.
Except to note that if Jesus of Nazareth was crucified, as the later gospels claim, then it was around the Jewish Passover.
Peace. Shalom. Have a nice time - surely that’s the main thing
xx
It's not Passover until the end of April.
While the last supper was a Passover meal, the date of Easter has not been set by the same Callander in a very long time.
I didn’t realise Scotland had so much power in religious matters!
We had feet washing at my local Church. Not for me, I'm afraid. When I've been wearing boots all day, I don't like being in the same room as my feet when I take my boots off.
On the religion theme, I'd like to put in a word for the King James Bible. Someone on this board was mocking Michael Goves' distribution of Bibles to secondary schools. It was the King James Version in commemoration of 400 years since its publication in 1611. The King James Version had an enormous impact on the English language. Melvyn Bragg presented a very interesting TV programme on the topic. The theatre director Patrick Garland was also a big fan and intended giving a talk at Chichester Festival Theatre on the subject but was prevented by ill health. I feel those that mock, including many teachers at the time, show their own cultural vacuum.
It really depends whether you're looking for a work of English literature or a religious text. If the content of the text is of the least importance to them, people should at least prefer the Revised Version, which tries to preserve the traditional language as far as possible, but not at the cost of misrepresenting the meaning of the original text.
The Church of England is becoming iconoclastic. Soon belief in God will be irrelevant. The Authorised version is the Only version. Gove was right.
One thing that's annoying me this week: people referring to this week as "the long bank holiday weekend".
No, it isn't: t's the Easter bank holiday weekend.
It's remarkable that they are almost always the same people who are first out the gates on LGBT+ history month or to applaud the celebration of Ramadan.
Can't say I've come across people being shy about calling it Easter myself. Is this something concerted or just some general trend?
Nor me. I think people refer to the long bank holiday weekend because that’s what it means to a lot of us. An extended and welcome 4 days off and the start of our UK string of spring bank holidays that culminate at Whitsun. Time to head to IKEA/B&Q/Garden centre, have a nice leg of lamb on Easter Day and if you’re young enough do a 2 day clubbing marathon.
I like the Christian bits of Easter too, not because I’m religious (I’m not) but because the biblical texts and the music that accompanies them are pretty epic: cornerstones of our literary universe. Tonight and Good Friday in particular:
The last supper; Judas kiss; the garden of gethsemane; Pilate washing his hands; let his blood be upon us; Centurions playing dice; crown of thorns; Eloi Eloi lama sabactani; gave up the ghost; the earth rent in twain etc etc. It’s probably the only story in “Western” literature as influential on English language and idiom as Shakespeare.
Yes, that's all fine, so call it the Easter weekend.
My objection was to one or two Woke people at work deliberately omitting the word Easter because of equity and diversity bollocks.
Step back and consider the obvious non-woke reason for calling it a long bank holiday weekend, which is to emphasise how much time you get off work, grouping it with other long bank holiday weekends, all of which are also named individually when you wish to focus on the particular.
Just leave them to it. This anti-woke stuff does not survive contact with the general public, and if they insist on bringing it up on the doorstep they will deserve all the electoral hammering they get.
The Conservatives are in a tight doom spin which means that the remaining members, councillors and MPs who are shameless enough to keep campaigning tend to be more and more on the extreme right of the party.
I think this is now more of an issue than it was for Labour under Corbyn. Consider the latest anti-Khan video. Everyone sensible has left. They desperately need a Ruth Davidson type figure at CCHQ .
@Casino_Royale is making a valid point but not a new one: progressives are embarrassed by tradition, preferring anything exotic and 'more interesting'; and provocatively renaming traditional religious holidays is a symptom of this. I don't think there are massive political implications but it all gets a bit tiring when their own vision of the future is failing all around them but there is little self reflection or criticism.
Thank you.
The name in English is believed to derive from the name of the Germanic pagan god of spring, and in most Romance languages from the Jewish Passover. There’s nothing Christian about the name, and little about the actual bank holiday, for most folks. Indeed the festival and holiday itself likely existed in centuries BC. There’s no need to meddle with the name. It would however be handy if someone could fix the date, as having it hop about from year to year is just silly.
One thing that's annoying me this week: people referring to this week as "the long bank holiday weekend".
No, it isn't: t's the Easter bank holiday weekend.
It's remarkable that they are almost always the same people who are first out the gates on LGBT+ history month or to applaud the celebration of Ramadan.
Can't say I've come across people being shy about calling it Easter myself. Is this something concerted or just some general trend?
Nor me. I think people refer to the long bank holiday weekend because that’s what it means to a lot of us. An extended and welcome 4 days off and the start of our UK string of spring bank holidays that culminate at Whitsun. Time to head to IKEA/B&Q/Garden centre, have a nice leg of lamb on Easter Day and if you’re young enough do a 2 day clubbing marathon.
I like the Christian bits of Easter too, not because I’m religious (I’m not) but because the biblical texts and the music that accompanies them are pretty epic: cornerstones of our literary universe. Tonight and Good Friday in particular:
The last supper; Judas kiss; the garden of gethsemane; Pilate washing his hands; let his blood be upon us; Centurions playing dice; crown of thorns; Eloi Eloi lama sabactani; gave up the ghost; the earth rent in twain etc etc. It’s probably the only story in “Western” literature as influential on English language and idiom as Shakespeare.
Yes, that's all fine, so call it the Easter weekend.
My objection was to one or two Woke people at work deliberately omitting the word Easter because of equity and diversity bollocks.
Step back and consider the obvious non-woke reason for calling it a long bank holiday weekend, which is to emphasise how much time you get off work, grouping it with other long bank holiday weekends, all of which are also named individually when you wish to focus on the particular.
Just leave them to it. This anti-woke stuff does not survive contact with the general public, and if they insist on bringing it up on the doorstep they will deserve all the electoral hammering they get.
The Conservatives are in a tight doom spin which means that the remaining members, councillors and MPs who are shameless enough to keep campaigning tend to be more and more on the extreme right of the party.
I think this is now more of an issue than it was for Labour under Corbyn. Consider the latest anti-Khan video. Everyone sensible has left. They desperately need a Ruth Davidson type figure at CCHQ .
Oh, but it does. It plays into all sorts of concerns about identity and cohesion the consequences of which we see in our deeply polarised society today.
It's not an election winner by itself but the reflexive dismissal of it by you and your ilk is a real problem for your world view and values in the medium-long term, yet you're too blind to see it. Indeed, you laugh at it.
Thankfully, not everyone is the same - there are some intelligent posters on the left/liberal wing who get it - like @darkage and @Gardenwalker- and journalists like Matthew Syed and Trevor Phillips.
Learn from them.
There's lots I'd like to change about our society but what a lot of progressives don't realise is that it's easier to bring the public along if popular traditions are celebrated and maintained at the same time. This is why I am a monarchist and enthusiastically celebrate Christmas. A lot of conservatives think that progressives want to change Britain because they hate it, whereas for most of us it's the opposite - we want to change Britain because we love it and it breaks our heart to see it suffering in its current state.
One thing that's annoying me this week: people referring to this week as "the long bank holiday weekend".
No, it isn't: t's the Easter bank holiday weekend.
It's remarkable that they are almost always the same people who are first out the gates on LGBT+ history month or to applaud the celebration of Ramadan.
Can't say I've come across people being shy about calling it Easter myself. Is this something concerted or just some general trend?
Nor me. I think people refer to the long bank holiday weekend because that’s what it means to a lot of us. An extended and welcome 4 days off and the start of our UK string of spring bank holidays that culminate at Whitsun. Time to head to IKEA/B&Q/Garden centre, have a nice leg of lamb on Easter Day and if you’re young enough do a 2 day clubbing marathon.
I like the Christian bits of Easter too, not because I’m religious (I’m not) but because the biblical texts and the music that accompanies them are pretty epic: cornerstones of our literary universe. Tonight and Good Friday in particular:
The last supper; Judas kiss; the garden of gethsemane; Pilate washing his hands; let his blood be upon us; Centurions playing dice; crown of thorns; Eloi Eloi lama sabactani; gave up the ghost; the earth rent in twain etc etc. It’s probably the only story in “Western” literature as influential on English language and idiom as Shakespeare.
Yes, that's all fine, so call it the Easter weekend.
My objection was to one or two Woke people at work deliberately omitting the word Easter because of equity and diversity bollocks.
Step back and consider the obvious non-woke reason for calling it a long bank holiday weekend, which is to emphasise how much time you get off work, grouping it with other long bank holiday weekends, all of which are also named individually when you wish to focus on the particular.
Just leave them to it. This anti-woke stuff does not survive contact with the general public, and if they insist on bringing it up on the doorstep they will deserve all the electoral hammering they get.
The Conservatives are in a tight doom spin which means that the remaining members, councillors and MPs who are shameless enough to keep campaigning tend to be more and more on the extreme right of the party.
I think this is now more of an issue than it was for Labour under Corbyn. Consider the latest anti-Khan video. Everyone sensible has left. They desperately need a Ruth Davidson type figure at CCHQ .
Oh, but it does. It plays into all sorts of concerns about identity and cohesion the consequences of which we see in our deeply polarised society today.
It's not an election winner by itself but the reflexive dismissal of it by you and your ilk is a real problem for your world view and values in the medium-long term, yet you're too blind to see it. Indeed, you laugh at it.
Thankfully, not everyone is the same - there are some intelligent posters on the left/liberal wing who get it - like @darkage and @Gardenwalker- and journalists like Matthew Syed and Trevor Phillips.
Learn from them.
I'm sure they exist but I have never come across a single person who doesn't refer to Christmas or Easter with those names. I'm an atheist myself and I celebrate both, just not in a religious way. Happy to call them Christmas and Easter because that is what they are, although we might define them differently, especially for children.
One thing that's annoying me this week: people referring to this week as "the long bank holiday weekend".
No, it isn't: t's the Easter bank holiday weekend.
It's remarkable that they are almost always the same people who are first out the gates on LGBT+ history month or to applaud the celebration of Ramadan.
Can't say I've come across people being shy about calling it Easter myself. Is this something concerted or just some general trend?
Nor me. I think people refer to the long bank holiday weekend because that’s what it means to a lot of us. An extended and welcome 4 days off and the start of our UK string of spring bank holidays that culminate at Whitsun. Time to head to IKEA/B&Q/Garden centre, have a nice leg of lamb on Easter Day and if you’re young enough do a 2 day clubbing marathon.
I like the Christian bits of Easter too, not because I’m religious (I’m not) but because the biblical texts and the music that accompanies them are pretty epic: cornerstones of our literary universe. Tonight and Good Friday in particular:
The last supper; Judas kiss; the garden of gethsemane; Pilate washing his hands; let his blood be upon us; Centurions playing dice; crown of thorns; Eloi Eloi lama sabactani; gave up the ghost; the earth rent in twain etc etc. It’s probably the only story in “Western” literature as influential on English language and idiom as Shakespeare.
Yes, that's all fine, so call it the Easter weekend.
My objection was to one or two Woke people at work deliberately omitting the word Easter because of equity and diversity bollocks.
Step back and consider the obvious non-woke reason for calling it a long bank holiday weekend, which is to emphasise how much time you get off work, grouping it with other long bank holiday weekends, all of which are also named individually when you wish to focus on the particular.
Just leave them to it. This anti-woke stuff does not survive contact with the general public, and if they insist on bringing it up on the doorstep they will deserve all the electoral hammering they get.
The Conservatives are in a tight doom spin which means that the remaining members, councillors and MPs who are shameless enough to keep campaigning tend to be more and more on the extreme right of the party.
I think this is now more of an issue than it was for Labour under Corbyn. Consider the latest anti-Khan video. Everyone sensible has left. They desperately need a Ruth Davidson type figure at CCHQ .
@Casino_Royale is making a valid point but not a new one: progressives are embarrassed by tradition, preferring anything exotic and 'more interesting'; and provocatively renaming traditional religious holidays is a symptom of this. I don't think there are massive political implications but it all gets a bit tiring when their own vision of the future is failing all around them but there is little self reflection or criticism.
Getting upset about someone calling a long weekend a long weekend is the kind of "snowflake" behaviour that the left is supposed to engage in.
It's not an "Easter bank holiday weekend", as Casino puts it. For a start, Good Friday is not a bank holiday in England as it is not defined by statute - it is merely a public holiday.
And England does not explicitly get an additional day off in lieu for Easter Sunday (as we might if Christmas Day fell on a weekend). Therefore, the Sunday does not form part of a "Easter bank holiday weekend" either.
Therefore, the only part of Casino's "Easter bank holiday weekend" that is a bank holiday in Easter Monday. A single day.
This is correct from the perspective of the Church of England's liturgical calendar, because Easter only starts on the Sunday. Good Friday is part of Lent, as is 'Easter Eve' - the Saturday.
Conversely, in Scotland, only Good Friday is a national bank holiday. Some councils, such as Edinburgh, include Easter Monday as a local public holiday.
To further complicate matters, some Christians, as in the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland, do not celebrate Easter at all. And they are certainly not Woke.
A friend of mine had a father who ran a factory in Wigtown in the Fifties. Employees made a point of working on Christmas Day to show they weren't celebrating a pagan festival.
Until fairly recently, parts of this country were deeply religious and socially conservative to an extent I'd recoil at.
I'd hate to have lived in Scotland, South Wales or some of the more Puritan places in the North well into the 1980s.
My uncle, who emigrated to Canada and was born in the 1930s, said Toronto was particularly bad for this when he first moved there.
One thing that's annoying me this week: people referring to this week as "the long bank holiday weekend".
No, it isn't: t's the Easter bank holiday weekend.
It's remarkable that they are almost always the same people who are first out the gates on LGBT+ history month or to applaud the celebration of Ramadan.
Can't say I've come across people being shy about calling it Easter myself. Is this something concerted or just some general trend?
Nor me. I think people refer to the long bank holiday weekend because that’s what it means to a lot of us. An extended and welcome 4 days off and the start of our UK string of spring bank holidays that culminate at Whitsun. Time to head to IKEA/B&Q/Garden centre, have a nice leg of lamb on Easter Day and if you’re young enough do a 2 day clubbing marathon.
I like the Christian bits of Easter too, not because I’m religious (I’m not) but because the biblical texts and the music that accompanies them are pretty epic: cornerstones of our literary universe. Tonight and Good Friday in particular:
The last supper; Judas kiss; the garden of gethsemane; Pilate washing his hands; let his blood be upon us; Centurions playing dice; crown of thorns; Eloi Eloi lama sabactani; gave up the ghost; the earth rent in twain etc etc. It’s probably the only story in “Western” literature as influential on English language and idiom as Shakespeare.
Yes, that's all fine, so call it the Easter weekend.
My objection was to one or two Woke people at work deliberately omitting the word Easter because of equity and diversity bollocks.
Step back and consider the obvious non-woke reason for calling it a long bank holiday weekend, which is to emphasise how much time you get off work, grouping it with other long bank holiday weekends, all of which are also named individually when you wish to focus on the particular.
It's the Easter bank holiday weekend. Not a "normal" bank holiday weekend. It'd be like calling Christmas a bank holiday break or a Winterval.
We all know this. So do you.
Perhaps you have never worked where people book use their holiday entitlement to maximise consecutive days off. People really do talk about long bank holiday weekends.
If you want to focus on forgetting Easter, better examples would be schools (in some areas) not breaking up until yesterday, or this Telegraph story about Westminster Council rushing to put together an Easter display in their window after they realised they'd only done Ramadan. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/03/28/westminster-council-celebrates-ramadan-not-easter/ (£££)
Forgetting to put up an Easter display is an interesting phenomenon. Hitherto 'Christian' was the default background cultural context for everyone. The shops are all full of "Easter" decorations etc. so presumably no-one thought a special display was needed.
However, "regular practicing Christianity" is now a minority activity. Easter itself is such a secular, chocolate-focused event for the vast majority of people that it is very easy to forget that there's any Christian religious aspect at all.
So it probably does need a council window display these days. I'm glad that they put something together when reminded.
ETA: though having now seen it I note that they tended to "egg" rather than "man nailed to tree" so there's room for doubt that they are referencing Christianity there!
Not at all, people are softly and culturally Christian in the background - they all know what Easter is about.
Don't forget your hot cross buns today and lamb on Sunday.
I seem to be the only person on here who admires the Scottish Parliament building from an architecture perspective. It is a genuinely interesting, actually highly complex, building in a country that lacks good modernist architecture. It is designed to its function and unusually also to the landscape, when most big buildings are just plonked down regardless of the surroundings.
It replaced a derelict brewery and not some other favourite building. Even if you dislike the design there has been much worse damage to Edinburgh's townscape. Edinburgh University's destruction of an early Georgian square or the post sixties development of Princes Street for example.
What point would that be ? Dura seems takes the piss out of everyone, without regard to creed or political persuasion.
Though he has an inexplicable regard for the Russian empire in all its various manifestations.
He's exactly of the ilk I described.
He has a bipolar superiority/self-hatred complex which he likes to exercise by trolling others who he feels represent those who lie behind all the ills he's experienced in life, despite being them fundamental part of it all the way, so he likes to paint as his intellectual inferiors as well.
One thing that's annoying me this week: people referring to this week as "the long bank holiday weekend".
No, it isn't: t's the Easter bank holiday weekend.
It's remarkable that they are almost always the same people who are first out the gates on LGBT+ history month or to applaud the celebration of Ramadan.
Can't say I've come across people being shy about calling it Easter myself. Is this something concerted or just some general trend?
Nor me. I think people refer to the long bank holiday weekend because that’s what it means to a lot of us. An extended and welcome 4 days off and the start of our UK string of spring bank holidays that culminate at Whitsun. Time to head to IKEA/B&Q/Garden centre, have a nice leg of lamb on Easter Day and if you’re young enough do a 2 day clubbing marathon.
I like the Christian bits of Easter too, not because I’m religious (I’m not) but because the biblical texts and the music that accompanies them are pretty epic: cornerstones of our literary universe. Tonight and Good Friday in particular:
The last supper; Judas kiss; the garden of gethsemane; Pilate washing his hands; let his blood be upon us; Centurions playing dice; crown of thorns; Eloi Eloi lama sabactani; gave up the ghost; the earth rent in twain etc etc. It’s probably the only story in “Western” literature as influential on English language and idiom as Shakespeare.
Yes, that's all fine, so call it the Easter weekend.
My objection was to one or two Woke people at work deliberately omitting the word Easter because of equity and diversity bollocks.
Step back and consider the obvious non-woke reason for calling it a long bank holiday weekend, which is to emphasise how much time you get off work, grouping it with other long bank holiday weekends, all of which are also named individually when you wish to focus on the particular.
Just leave them to it. This anti-woke stuff does not survive contact with the general public, and if they insist on bringing it up on the doorstep they will deserve all the electoral hammering they get.
The Conservatives are in a tight doom spin which means that the remaining members, councillors and MPs who are shameless enough to keep campaigning tend to be more and more on the extreme right of the party.
I think this is now more of an issue than it was for Labour under Corbyn. Consider the latest anti-Khan video. Everyone sensible has left. They desperately need a Ruth Davidson type figure at CCHQ .
@Casino_Royale is making a valid point but not a new one: progressives are embarrassed by tradition, preferring anything exotic and 'more interesting'; and provocatively renaming traditional religious holidays is a symptom of this. I don't think there are massive political implications but it all gets a bit tiring when their own vision of the future is failing all around them but there is little self reflection or criticism.
The idea that progressives are renaming traditional religious holidays in the UK is a myth. It’s importing a US thing and looking for the same thing happening over here.
Personally I think religion is unfortunately not based on reality, but I've no qualms about wishing people a happy Easter, and I have Muslim friends who send Christmas cards. In a way I think it's part of the semi-secularisation of religion as a source of joint festivals. How many people really believe every word of the Easter story, even in the CoE? Not many, I suspect. But it's certainly part of the tradition of our community, and socialism is about community, so we can take and give pleasure in its celebration. Equally, if someone chooses not to call it Easter, that shouldn't be a problem in a free society.
I don't think that it's an issue where right and left in Britain need to argue - we have real differences, but that doesn't mean that we need to argue about everything.
I seem to be the only person on here who admires the Scottish Parliament building from an architecture perspective. It is a genuinely interesting, actually highly complex, building in a country that lacks good modernist architecture. It is designed to its function and unusually also to the landscape, when most big buildings are just plonked down regardless of the surroundings.
It replaced a derelict brewery and not some other favourite building. Even if you dislike the design there has been much worse damage to Edinburgh's townscape. Edinburgh University's destruction of an early Georgian square or the post sixties development of Princes Street for example.
I was in Edinburgh last May, and wouldn't claim to know the city well, but quite liked the parliament building.
As Christopher Columbus said: the more you travel the more you know
I had to leave for 6 months to see London for what it is. Cold rainy sometimes violent - but absolutely astonishing. A peak moment in human civilisation
It’s back. Again.
It IS!
BACK
Even better, it is still YOUR capital city. Just rejoice in that news
I take comfort in the knowledge that you’re only a sleety bank holiday & restricted late licence away from calling it a shit hole again.
One thing that's annoying me this week: people referring to this week as "the long bank holiday weekend".
No, it isn't: t's the Easter bank holiday weekend.
It's remarkable that they are almost always the same people who are first out the gates on LGBT+ history month or to applaud the celebration of Ramadan.
Can't say I've come across people being shy about calling it Easter myself. Is this something concerted or just some general trend?
Nor me. I think people refer to the long bank holiday weekend because that’s what it means to a lot of us. An extended and welcome 4 days off and the start of our UK string of spring bank holidays that culminate at Whitsun. Time to head to IKEA/B&Q/Garden centre, have a nice leg of lamb on Easter Day and if you’re young enough do a 2 day clubbing marathon.
I like the Christian bits of Easter too, not because I’m religious (I’m not) but because the biblical texts and the music that accompanies them are pretty epic: cornerstones of our literary universe. Tonight and Good Friday in particular:
The last supper; Judas kiss; the garden of gethsemane; Pilate washing his hands; let his blood be upon us; Centurions playing dice; crown of thorns; Eloi Eloi lama sabactani; gave up the ghost; the earth rent in twain etc etc. It’s probably the only story in “Western” literature as influential on English language and idiom as Shakespeare.
Yes, that's all fine, so call it the Easter weekend.
My objection was to one or two Woke people at work deliberately omitting the word Easter because of equity and diversity bollocks.
Step back and consider the obvious non-woke reason for calling it a long bank holiday weekend, which is to emphasise how much time you get off work, grouping it with other long bank holiday weekends, all of which are also named individually when you wish to focus on the particular.
Just leave them to it. This anti-woke stuff does not survive contact with the general public, and if they insist on bringing it up on the doorstep they will deserve all the electoral hammering they get.
The Conservatives are in a tight doom spin which means that the remaining members, councillors and MPs who are shameless enough to keep campaigning tend to be more and more on the extreme right of the party.
I think this is now more of an issue than it was for Labour under Corbyn. Consider the latest anti-Khan video. Everyone sensible has left. They desperately need a Ruth Davidson type figure at CCHQ .
@Casino_Royale is making a valid point but not a new one: progressives are embarrassed by tradition, preferring anything exotic and 'more interesting'; and provocatively renaming traditional religious holidays is a symptom of this. I don't think there are massive political implications but it all gets a bit tiring when their own vision of the future is failing all around them but there is little self reflection or criticism.
The idea that progressives are renaming traditional religious holidays in the UK is a myth. It’s importing a US thing and looking for the same thing happening over here.
Personally I think religion is unfortunately not based on reality, but I've no qualms about wishing people a happy Easter, and I have Muslim friends who send Christmas cards. In a way I think it's part of the semi-secularisation of religion as a source of joint festivals. How many people really believe every word of the Easter story, even in the CoE? Not many, I suspect. But it's certainly part of the tradition of our community, and socialism is about community, so we can take and give pleasure in its celebration. Equally, if someone chooses not to call it Easter, that shouldn't be a problem in a free society.
I don't think that it's an issue where right and left in Britain need to argue - we have real differences, but that doesn't mean that we need to argue about everything.
Couldn't agree more. Live and let live. If people don't want to use the words Christmas or Easter that is fine by me, although I have never met anyone who does this and would think them a bit weird if they did. There are far more important things in life than what you call a bank holiday.
I seem to be the only person on here who admires the Scottish Parliament building from an architecture perspective. It is a genuinely interesting, actually highly complex, building in a country that lacks good modernist architecture. It is designed to its function and unusually also to the landscape, when most big buildings are just plonked down regardless of the surroundings.
It replaced a derelict brewery and not some other favourite building. Even if you dislike the design there has been much worse damage to Edinburgh's townscape. Edinburgh University's destruction of an early Georgian square or the post sixties development of Princes Street for example.
It may have been less awful if it didn’t have those stupid things stuck to the outside walls . I can’t see a single redeeming feature of it. Quite how you spend 400 million quid and come up with that abomination is beyond me !
One thing that's annoying me this week: people referring to this week as "the long bank holiday weekend".
No, it isn't: t's the Easter bank holiday weekend.
It's remarkable that they are almost always the same people who are first out the gates on LGBT+ history month or to applaud the celebration of Ramadan.
Can't say I've come across people being shy about calling it Easter myself. Is this something concerted or just some general trend?
Nor me. I think people refer to the long bank holiday weekend because that’s what it means to a lot of us. An extended and welcome 4 days off and the start of our UK string of spring bank holidays that culminate at Whitsun. Time to head to IKEA/B&Q/Garden centre, have a nice leg of lamb on Easter Day and if you’re young enough do a 2 day clubbing marathon.
I like the Christian bits of Easter too, not because I’m religious (I’m not) but because the biblical texts and the music that accompanies them are pretty epic: cornerstones of our literary universe. Tonight and Good Friday in particular:
The last supper; Judas kiss; the garden of gethsemane; Pilate washing his hands; let his blood be upon us; Centurions playing dice; crown of thorns; Eloi Eloi lama sabactani; gave up the ghost; the earth rent in twain etc etc. It’s probably the only story in “Western” literature as influential on English language and idiom as Shakespeare.
Yes, that's all fine, so call it the Easter weekend.
My objection was to one or two Woke people at work deliberately omitting the word Easter because of equity and diversity bollocks.
Step back and consider the obvious non-woke reason for calling it a long bank holiday weekend, which is to emphasise how much time you get off work, grouping it with other long bank holiday weekends, all of which are also named individually when you wish to focus on the particular.
Just leave them to it. This anti-woke stuff does not survive contact with the general public, and if they insist on bringing it up on the doorstep they will deserve all the electoral hammering they get.
The Conservatives are in a tight doom spin which means that the remaining members, councillors and MPs who are shameless enough to keep campaigning tend to be more and more on the extreme right of the party.
I think this is now more of an issue than it was for Labour under Corbyn. Consider the latest anti-Khan video. Everyone sensible has left. They desperately need a Ruth Davidson type figure at CCHQ .
@Casino_Royale is making a valid point but not a new one: progressives are embarrassed by tradition, preferring anything exotic and 'more interesting'; and provocatively renaming traditional religious holidays is a symptom of this. I don't think there are massive political implications but it all gets a bit tiring when their own vision of the future is failing all around them but there is little self reflection or criticism.
The idea that progressives are renaming traditional religious holidays in the UK is a myth. It’s importing a US thing and looking for the same thing happening over here.
Personally I think religion is unfortunately not based on reality, but I've no qualms about wishing people a happy Easter, and I have Muslim friends who send Christmas cards. In a way I think it's part of the semi-secularisation of religion as a source of joint festivals. How many people really believe every word of the Easter story, even in the CoE? Not many, I suspect. But it's certainly part of the tradition of our community, and socialism is about community, so we can take and give pleasure in its celebration. Equally, if someone chooses not to call it Easter, that shouldn't be a problem in a free society.
I don't think that it's an issue where right and left in Britain need to argue - we have real differences, but that doesn't mean that we need to argue about everything.
On my work WhatsApp I have just had our first Easter good wishes posted by one of my Hindu colleagues.
I seem to be the only person on here who admires the Scottish Parliament building from an architecture perspective. It is a genuinely interesting, actually highly complex, building in a country that lacks good modernist architecture. It is designed to its function and unusually also to the landscape, when most big buildings are just plonked down regardless of the surroundings.
It replaced a derelict brewery and not some other favourite building. Even if you dislike the design there has been much worse damage to Edinburgh's townscape. Edinburgh University's destruction of an early Georgian square or the post sixties development of Princes Street for example.
" It is designed to its function " is also, I fear not true. As well as being massively costly to build, it is also massively costly to maintain - stupidly so for a modern, recently-built building.
Yes, I know Westminster is vastly costly to maintain (and always has been); but that was built nearly 200 years ago. We know how to build structures that should be low-maintenance for the first two or three decades of their life. Architects and politicians care little about that, and especially when they get together on a project.
Interesting meeting last night of 50 Labour members in Didcot where Annaliese Dodds (party chair and a nearby MP) was the guest speaker. We decided to make it a private meeting so that people would feel free to challenge her on policy or anything else without worrying about whether the Daily Mail would distort something. What struck me was the realism of everyone there, including Corbynistas and Blairites - everyone argued for their particular interests, but there was general acceptance that the situation is difficult and instant solutions aren't on the table.
We organised the event partly because the local party had a difficult couple of years (my predecessor quit in a fury over dislike of Starmer, shortly before I turned up) and the remarkable revival in membership and activity is quite recent, so we wanted to give a chance to everyone to get any concerns off their chests. I came away feeling optimistic that we aren't going to quickly see massive disillusion among members with a cautious Labour government. I'm probably more impatient than most with our super-centrism, but I do recognise the need for it.
We had feet washing at my local Church. Not for me, I'm afraid. When I've been wearing boots all day, I don't like being in the same room as my feet when I take my boots off.
On the religion theme, I'd like to put in a word for the King James Bible. Someone on this board was mocking Michael Goves' distribution of Bibles to secondary schools. It was the King James Version in commemoration of 400 years since its publication in 1611. The King James Version had an enormous impact on the English language. Melvyn Bragg presented a very interesting TV programme on the topic. The theatre director Patrick Garland was also a big fan and intended giving a talk at Chichester Festival Theatre on the subject but was prevented by ill health. I feel those that mock, including many teachers at the time, show their own cultural vacuum.
It really depends whether you're looking for a work of English literature or a religious text. If the content of the text is of the least importance to them, people should at least prefer the Revised Version, which tries to preserve the traditional language as far as possible, but not at the cost of misrepresenting the meaning of the original text.
The Church of England is becoming iconoclastic. Soon belief in God will be irrelevant. The Authorised version is the Only version. Gove was right.
For anyone interested, there is a new translation of Mark's Gospel by David Bentley Hart. Taken from the original Greek, I believe.
One thing that's annoying me this week: people referring to this week as "the long bank holiday weekend".
No, it isn't: t's the Easter bank holiday weekend.
It's remarkable that they are almost always the same people who are first out the gates on LGBT+ history month or to applaud the celebration of Ramadan.
Can't say I've come across people being shy about calling it Easter myself. Is this something concerted or just some general trend?
Nor me. I think people refer to the long bank holiday weekend because that’s what it means to a lot of us. An extended and welcome 4 days off and the start of our UK string of spring bank holidays that culminate at Whitsun. Time to head to IKEA/B&Q/Garden centre, have a nice leg of lamb on Easter Day and if you’re young enough do a 2 day clubbing marathon.
I like the Christian bits of Easter too, not because I’m religious (I’m not) but because the biblical texts and the music that accompanies them are pretty epic: cornerstones of our literary universe. Tonight and Good Friday in particular:
The last supper; Judas kiss; the garden of gethsemane; Pilate washing his hands; let his blood be upon us; Centurions playing dice; crown of thorns; Eloi Eloi lama sabactani; gave up the ghost; the earth rent in twain etc etc. It’s probably the only story in “Western” literature as influential on English language and idiom as Shakespeare.
Yes, that's all fine, so call it the Easter weekend.
My objection was to one or two Woke people at work deliberately omitting the word Easter because of equity and diversity bollocks.
Step back and consider the obvious non-woke reason for calling it a long bank holiday weekend, which is to emphasise how much time you get off work, grouping it with other long bank holiday weekends, all of which are also named individually when you wish to focus on the particular.
Just leave them to it. This anti-woke stuff does not survive contact with the general public, and if they insist on bringing it up on the doorstep they will deserve all the electoral hammering they get.
The Conservatives are in a tight doom spin which means that the remaining members, councillors and MPs who are shameless enough to keep campaigning tend to be more and more on the extreme right of the party.
I think this is now more of an issue than it was for Labour under Corbyn. Consider the latest anti-Khan video. Everyone sensible has left. They desperately need a Ruth Davidson type figure at CCHQ .
Oh, but it does. It plays into all sorts of concerns about identity and cohesion the consequences of which we see in our deeply polarised society today.
It's not an election winner by itself but the reflexive dismissal of it by you and your ilk is a real problem for your world view and values in the medium-long term, yet you're too blind to see it. Indeed, you laugh at it.
Thankfully, not everyone is the same - there are some intelligent posters on the left/liberal wing who get it - like @darkage and @Gardenwalker- and journalists like Matthew Syed and Trevor Phillips.
Learn from them.
I'm sure they exist but I have never come across a single person who doesn't refer to Christmas or Easter with those names. I'm an atheist myself and I celebrate both, just not in a religious way. Happy to call them Christmas and Easter because that is what they are, although we might define them differently, especially for children.
Well, you should have been in my office last week where several leaders felt this the way to go.
As Christopher Columbus said: the more you travel the more you know
I had to leave for 6 months to see London for what it is. Cold rainy sometimes violent - but absolutely astonishing. A peak moment in human civilisation
It’s back. Again.
It IS!
BACK
Even better, it is still YOUR capital city. Just rejoice in that news
I take comfort in the knowledge that you’re only a sleety bank holiday & restricted late licence away from calling it a shit hole again.
Much as I love @leon's posts nothing is just ok or maybe mildly disappointing. It is always extreme. Although not obvious from my posts sometimes I do have a slight tendency to this myself to events It is exhausting but maybe more exciting way to live.
Interesting meeting last night of 50 Labour members in Didcot where Annaliese Dodds (party chair and a nearby MP) was the guest speaker. We decided to make it a private meeting so that people would feel free to challenge her on policy or anything else without worrying about whether the Daily Mail would distort something. What struck me was the realism of everyone there, including Corbynistas and Blairites - everyone argued for their particular interests, but there was general acceptance that the situation is difficult and instant solutions aren't on the table.
We organised the event partly because the local party had a difficult couple of years (my predecessor quit in a fury over dislike of Starmer, shortly before I turned up) and the remarkable revival in membership and activity is quite recent, so we wanted to give a chance to everyone to get any concerns off their chests. I came away feeling optimistic that we aren't going to quickly see massive disillusion among members with a cautious Labour government. I'm probably more impatient than most with our super-centrism, but I do recognise the need for it.
You will get the Greens up polling at 20% and Labour down at 30% within 18 months.
I seem to be the only person on here who admires the Scottish Parliament building from an architecture perspective. It is a genuinely interesting, actually highly complex, building in a country that lacks good modernist architecture. It is designed to its function and unusually also to the landscape, when most big buildings are just plonked down regardless of the surroundings.
It replaced a derelict brewery and not some other favourite building. Even if you dislike the design there has been much worse damage to Edinburgh's townscape. Edinburgh University's destruction of an early Georgian square or the post sixties development of Princes Street for example.
Well, quite. Not to mention the various nasties around the Grassmarket too
However, the fact that PB's resident reactionary has rather reactionary views about architecture, which he expresses with his usual unhinged vehemence is just part of the game, albeit a predictable one
Incidentally, I'd argue that the adjacent 'Dynamic Earth' building is ten times the architectural achievement of the Scottish Parliament building. Simple yet complex, with clear, unfussy design and styling.
The amphitheatre outside is also a very neat and well-executed idea.
In other Easter culture war news, Farage has decided that not eating enough chocolate is woke, and thinks that by eating lots of chocolate he is annoying all the right people. Baffled, I am.
Interesting meeting last night of 50 Labour members in Didcot where Annaliese Dodds (party chair and a nearby MP) was the guest speaker. We decided to make it a private meeting so that people would feel free to challenge her on policy or anything else without worrying about whether the Daily Mail would distort something. What struck me was the realism of everyone there, including Corbynistas and Blairites - everyone argued for their particular interests, but there was general acceptance that the situation is difficult and instant solutions aren't on the table.
We organised the event partly because the local party had a difficult couple of years (my predecessor quit in a fury over dislike of Starmer, shortly before I turned up) and the remarkable revival in membership and activity is quite recent, so we wanted to give a chance to everyone to get any concerns off their chests. I came away feeling optimistic that we aren't going to quickly see massive disillusion among members with a cautious Labour government. I'm probably more impatient than most with our super-centrism, but I do recognise the need for it.
There is a difference between centrism and caution. Centrism is about finding solutions from both right and left wing toolboxes, imo at least. You can get cautious or risk taking governments of left, right and centre.
In other Easter culture war news, Farage has decided that not eating enough chocolate is woke, and thinks that by eating lots of chocolate he is annoying all the right people. Baffled, I am.
Isn't a large part of the diminishment of 'Easter' mostly to do with the fact that fewer people in the country are acting Christians, if not actually agnostic or atheist?
So perhaps the answer is for Christianity, and Christians, to appeal to the general population to gain followers. Given the way 'Christian' churches have behaved over history, I fear that's an impossibility.
I seem to be the only person on here who admires the Scottish Parliament building from an architecture perspective. It is a genuinely interesting, actually highly complex, building in a country that lacks good modernist architecture. It is designed to its function and unusually also to the landscape, when most big buildings are just plonked down regardless of the surroundings.
It replaced a derelict brewery and not some other favourite building. Even if you dislike the design there has been much worse damage to Edinburgh's townscape. Edinburgh University's destruction of an early Georgian square or the post sixties development of Princes Street for example.
I was in Edinburgh last May, and wouldn't claim to know the city well, but quite liked the parliament building.
If only they’d consulted the Duke of Rothesay, we’d now have a chi chi, neo neo gothic flummery that wouldn’t say boo to spinster aunts and Leon.
Isn't a large part of the diminishment of 'Easter' mostly to do with the fact that fewer people in the country are acting Christians, if not actually agnostic or atheist?
So perhaps the answer is for Christianity, and Christians, to appeal to the general population to gain followers. Given the way 'Christian' churches have behaved over history, I fear that's an impossibility.
Made me wonder if they have a tiktok account. Yes, but with just 2,530 followers. Bukayo Saka has 2.4m.
One thing that's annoying me this week: people referring to this week as "the long bank holiday weekend".
No, it isn't: t's the Easter bank holiday weekend.
It's remarkable that they are almost always the same people who are first out the gates on LGBT+ history month or to applaud the celebration of Ramadan.
Can't say I've come across people being shy about calling it Easter myself. Is this something concerted or just some general trend?
Nor me. I think people refer to the long bank holiday weekend because that’s what it means to a lot of us. An extended and welcome 4 days off and the start of our UK string of spring bank holidays that culminate at Whitsun. Time to head to IKEA/B&Q/Garden centre, have a nice leg of lamb on Easter Day and if you’re young enough do a 2 day clubbing marathon.
I like the Christian bits of Easter too, not because I’m religious (I’m not) but because the biblical texts and the music that accompanies them are pretty epic: cornerstones of our literary universe. Tonight and Good Friday in particular:
The last supper; Judas kiss; the garden of gethsemane; Pilate washing his hands; let his blood be upon us; Centurions playing dice; crown of thorns; Eloi Eloi lama sabactani; gave up the ghost; the earth rent in twain etc etc. It’s probably the only story in “Western” literature as influential on English language and idiom as Shakespeare.
Yes, that's all fine, so call it the Easter weekend.
My objection was to one or two Woke people at work deliberately omitting the word Easter because of equity and diversity bollocks.
Step back and consider the obvious non-woke reason for calling it a long bank holiday weekend, which is to emphasise how much time you get off work, grouping it with other long bank holiday weekends, all of which are also named individually when you wish to focus on the particular.
Just leave them to it. This anti-woke stuff does not survive contact with the general public, and if they insist on bringing it up on the doorstep they will deserve all the electoral hammering they get.
The Conservatives are in a tight doom spin which means that the remaining members, councillors and MPs who are shameless enough to keep campaigning tend to be more and more on the extreme right of the party.
I think this is now more of an issue than it was for Labour under Corbyn. Consider the latest anti-Khan video. Everyone sensible has left. They desperately need a Ruth Davidson type figure at CCHQ .
Oh, but it does. It plays into all sorts of concerns about identity and cohesion the consequences of which we see in our deeply polarised society today.
It's not an election winner by itself but the reflexive dismissal of it by you and your ilk is a real problem for your world view and values in the medium-long term, yet you're too blind to see it. Indeed, you laugh at it.
Thankfully, not everyone is the same - there are some intelligent posters on the left/liberal wing who get it - like @darkage and @Gardenwalker- and journalists like Matthew Syed and Trevor Phillips.
Learn from them.
I'm sure they exist but I have never come across a single person who doesn't refer to Christmas or Easter with those names. I'm an atheist myself and I celebrate both, just not in a religious way. Happy to call them Christmas and Easter because that is what they are, although we might define them differently, especially for children.
Well, you should have been in my office last week where several leaders felt this the way to go.
I have no doubt they exist and if endemic in your organisation I would leave. If just one or two I would make clear that we should be focusing on the job not this nonsense (which I'm sure you do).
I have been to quite a few LD events recently because I am in a target seat. These are the sort of people who are normally accused of such, but woke stuff just never gets raised. If it did I would certainly react.
In other Easter culture war news, Farage has decided that not eating enough chocolate is woke, and thinks that by eating lots of chocolate he is annoying all the right people. Baffled, I am.
We had feet washing at my local Church. Not for me, I'm afraid. When I've been wearing boots all day, I don't like being in the same room as my feet when I take my boots off.
On the religion theme, I'd like to put in a word for the King James Bible. Someone on this board was mocking Michael Goves' distribution of Bibles to secondary schools. It was the King James Version in commemoration of 400 years since its publication in 1611. The King James Version had an enormous impact on the English language. Melvyn Bragg presented a very interesting TV programme on the topic. The theatre director Patrick Garland was also a big fan and intended giving a talk at Chichester Festival Theatre on the subject but was prevented by ill health. I feel those that mock, including many teachers at the time, show their own cultural vacuum.
It really depends whether you're looking for a work of English literature or a religious text. If the content of the text is of the least importance to them, people should at least prefer the Revised Version, which tries to preserve the traditional language as far as possible, but not at the cost of misrepresenting the meaning of the original text.
The Church of England is becoming iconoclastic. Soon belief in God will be irrelevant. The Authorised version is the Only version. Gove was right.
For anyone interested, there is a new translation of Mark's Gospel by David Bentley Hart. Taken from the original Greek, I believe.
The quest for accurate translation is to translate the meaning of the words as much as the actual words. Hence scholarly study of original text and classical Greek,though of course there is no evidence that Jesus or his immediate followers spoke Greek, so these are necessarily imperfect translations already. Such a search does intrinsically carry theological and cultural baggage from the translator in their interpretation of meaning. The KJV is an example of this with its reinforcement of 17th century social norms.
Personally I find such attempts at Literalism a dead end, and at risk of being as idolatrous as any other trappings. Bible study matters to any Christian, but that is the beginning, not the end, of understanding.
I seem to be the only person on here who admires the Scottish Parliament building from an architecture perspective. It is a genuinely interesting, actually highly complex, building in a country that lacks good modernist architecture. It is designed to its function and unusually also to the landscape, when most big buildings are just plonked down regardless of the surroundings.
It replaced a derelict brewery and not some other favourite building. Even if you dislike the design there has been much worse damage to Edinburgh's townscape. Edinburgh University's destruction of an early Georgian square or the post sixties development of Princes Street for example.
Well, quite. Not to mention the various nasties around the Grassmarket too
However, the fact that PB's resident reactionary has rather reactionary views about architecture, which he expresses with his usual unhinged vehemence is just part of the game, albeit a predictable one
One thing that's annoying me this week: people referring to this week as "the long bank holiday weekend".
No, it isn't: t's the Easter bank holiday weekend.
It's remarkable that they are almost always the same people who are first out the gates on LGBT+ history month or to applaud the celebration of Ramadan.
Can't say I've come across people being shy about calling it Easter myself. Is this something concerted or just some general trend?
Nor me. I think people refer to the long bank holiday weekend because that’s what it means to a lot of us. An extended and welcome 4 days off and the start of our UK string of spring bank holidays that culminate at Whitsun. Time to head to IKEA/B&Q/Garden centre, have a nice leg of lamb on Easter Day and if you’re young enough do a 2 day clubbing marathon.
I like the Christian bits of Easter too, not because I’m religious (I’m not) but because the biblical texts and the music that accompanies them are pretty epic: cornerstones of our literary universe. Tonight and Good Friday in particular:
The last supper; Judas kiss; the garden of gethsemane; Pilate washing his hands; let his blood be upon us; Centurions playing dice; crown of thorns; Eloi Eloi lama sabactani; gave up the ghost; the earth rent in twain etc etc. It’s probably the only story in “Western” literature as influential on English language and idiom as Shakespeare.
Yes, that's all fine, so call it the Easter weekend.
My objection was to one or two Woke people at work deliberately omitting the word Easter because of equity and diversity bollocks.
Step back and consider the obvious non-woke reason for calling it a long bank holiday weekend, which is to emphasise how much time you get off work, grouping it with other long bank holiday weekends, all of which are also named individually when you wish to focus on the particular.
Just leave them to it. This anti-woke stuff does not survive contact with the general public, and if they insist on bringing it up on the doorstep they will deserve all the electoral hammering they get.
The Conservatives are in a tight doom spin which means that the remaining members, councillors and MPs who are shameless enough to keep campaigning tend to be more and more on the extreme right of the party.
I think this is now more of an issue than it was for Labour under Corbyn. Consider the latest anti-Khan video. Everyone sensible has left. They desperately need a Ruth Davidson type figure at CCHQ .
@Casino_Royale is making a valid point but not a new one: progressives are embarrassed by tradition, preferring anything exotic and 'more interesting'; and provocatively renaming traditional religious holidays is a symptom of this. I don't think there are massive political implications but it all gets a bit tiring when their own vision of the future is failing all around them but there is little self reflection or criticism.
Getting upset about someone calling a long weekend a long weekend is the kind of "snowflake" behaviour that the left is supposed to engage in.
It's not an "Easter bank holiday weekend", as Casino puts it. For a start, Good Friday is not a bank holiday in England as it is not defined by statute - it is merely a public holiday.
And England does not explicitly get an additional day off in lieu for Easter Sunday (as we might if Christmas Day fell on a weekend). Therefore, the Sunday does not form part of a "Easter bank holiday weekend" either.
Therefore, the only part of Casino's "Easter bank holiday weekend" that is a bank holiday in Easter Monday. A single day.
This is correct from the perspective of the Church of England's liturgical calendar, because Easter only starts on the Sunday. Good Friday is part of Lent, as is 'Easter Eve' - the Saturday.
Conversely, in Scotland, only Good Friday is a national bank holiday. Some councils, such as Edinburgh, include Easter Monday as a local public holiday.
To further complicate matters, some Christians, as in the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland, do not celebrate Easter at all. And they are certainly not Woke.
A friend of mine had a father who ran a factory in Wigtown in the Fifties. Employees made a point of working on Christmas Day to show they weren't celebrating a pagan festival.
The hard line that some Protestants take on Christmas, Easter and similar is from opposition to feast days in general, with the associated frivolity, drunkeness and frivolity. The position taken is that they mark the birth and resurrection of Christ everyday.
Interesting meeting last night of 50 Labour members in Didcot where Annaliese Dodds (party chair and a nearby MP) was the guest speaker. We decided to make it a private meeting so that people would feel free to challenge her on policy or anything else without worrying about whether the Daily Mail would distort something. What struck me was the realism of everyone there, including Corbynistas and Blairites - everyone argued for their particular interests, but there was general acceptance that the situation is difficult and instant solutions aren't on the table.
We organised the event partly because the local party had a difficult couple of years (my predecessor quit in a fury over dislike of Starmer, shortly before I turned up) and the remarkable revival in membership and activity is quite recent, so we wanted to give a chance to everyone to get any concerns off their chests. I came away feeling optimistic that we aren't going to quickly see massive disillusion among members with a cautious Labour government. I'm probably more impatient than most with our super-centrism, but I do recognise the need for it.
You will get the Greens up polling at 20% and Labour down at 30% within 18 months.
Depending on why that has happened, that might be no bad thing.
One of the things Maggie realised and Blair didn't was that governments should be unpopular mid-term; the first year or two is the only chance to do things that are necessary but initially unpopular.
That doesn't mean that Starmer will do those things, or that I will like them, let alone you. But Conservatives shouldn't get too excited by the poll ratings in late 2026.
What point would that be ? Dura seems takes the piss out of everyone, without regard to creed or political persuasion.
Though he has an inexplicable regard for the Russian empire in all its various manifestations.
He's exactly of the ilk I described.
He has a bipolar superiority/self-hatred complex which he likes to exercise by trolling others who he feels represent those who lie behind all the ills he's experienced in life, despite being them fundamental part of it all the way, so he likes to paint as his intellectual inferiors as well.
Makes him feel better. Or he thinks it should.
Or he's just a particularly eccentric eccentric. And Britain has a pretty long tradition of tolerance for eccentrics.
Avoiding amateur psychoanalysis makes for a less troubling life.
Not eating easter eggs this year. Weight loss now 18.4kg / 2 stone 12.5 so far this year. And still going. So no chocolate for me.
EDIT - that includes several occurances of going out on the smash for the weekend. Beer, pizza, filty burger etc. I appear to have got my body into gear where it just wants to burn fat.
Isn't a large part of the diminishment of 'Easter' mostly to do with the fact that fewer people in the country are acting Christians, if not actually agnostic or atheist?
So perhaps the answer is for Christianity, and Christians, to appeal to the general population to gain followers. Given the way 'Christian' churches have behaved over history, I fear that's an impossibility.
You speak for a certain section of society.
There are very active Christians in Britain, both indigenous and imported. Easter is very important as a festival to our Polish, Lithuanian, Filipino, Keralan, and African communities. Its just that these are not considered mainstream British culture yet.
Interesting meeting last night of 50 Labour members in Didcot where Annaliese Dodds (party chair and a nearby MP) was the guest speaker. We decided to make it a private meeting so that people would feel free to challenge her on policy or anything else without worrying about whether the Daily Mail would distort something. What struck me was the realism of everyone there, including Corbynistas and Blairites - everyone argued for their particular interests, but there was general acceptance that the situation is difficult and instant solutions aren't on the table.
We organised the event partly because the local party had a difficult couple of years (my predecessor quit in a fury over dislike of Starmer, shortly before I turned up) and the remarkable revival in membership and activity is quite recent, so we wanted to give a chance to everyone to get any concerns off their chests. I came away feeling optimistic that we aren't going to quickly see massive disillusion among members with a cautious Labour government. I'm probably more impatient than most with our super-centrism, but I do recognise the need for it.
You will get the Greens up polling at 20% and Labour down at 30% within 18 months.
Depending on why that has happened, that might be no bad thing.
One of the things Maggie realised and Blair didn't was that governments should be unpopular mid-term; the first year or two is the only chance to do things that are necessary but initially unpopular.
That doesn't mean that Starmer will do those things, or that I will like them, let alone you. But Conservatives shouldn't get too excited by the poll ratings in late 2026.
I like the concept, wonder if it still holds now though. Fall and recovery feels easier in a world where news is delivered through a couple of tv channels and a handful of press papers rather than social media and 15 second soundbites.
Interesting meeting last night of 50 Labour members in Didcot where Annaliese Dodds (party chair and a nearby MP) was the guest speaker. We decided to make it a private meeting so that people would feel free to challenge her on policy or anything else without worrying about whether the Daily Mail would distort something. What struck me was the realism of everyone there, including Corbynistas and Blairites - everyone argued for their particular interests, but there was general acceptance that the situation is difficult and instant solutions aren't on the table.
We organised the event partly because the local party had a difficult couple of years (my predecessor quit in a fury over dislike of Starmer, shortly before I turned up) and the remarkable revival in membership and activity is quite recent, so we wanted to give a chance to everyone to get any concerns off their chests. I came away feeling optimistic that we aren't going to quickly see massive disillusion among members with a cautious Labour government. I'm probably more impatient than most with our super-centrism, but I do recognise the need for it.
You will get the Greens up polling at 20% and Labour down at 30% within 18 months.
I think you're likely wrong about that - but it would make for an interesting Betfair market. I hope they put one up somewhere along those lines after the GE.
One thing that's annoying me this week: people referring to this week as "the long bank holiday weekend".
No, it isn't: t's the Easter bank holiday weekend.
It's remarkable that they are almost always the same people who are first out the gates on LGBT+ history month or to applaud the celebration of Ramadan.
Can't say I've come across people being shy about calling it Easter myself. Is this something concerted or just some general trend?
Nor me. I think people refer to the long bank holiday weekend because that’s what it means to a lot of us. An extended and welcome 4 days off and the start of our UK string of spring bank holidays that culminate at Whitsun. Time to head to IKEA/B&Q/Garden centre, have a nice leg of lamb on Easter Day and if you’re young enough do a 2 day clubbing marathon.
I like the Christian bits of Easter too, not because I’m religious (I’m not) but because the biblical texts and the music that accompanies them are pretty epic: cornerstones of our literary universe. Tonight and Good Friday in particular:
The last supper; Judas kiss; the garden of gethsemane; Pilate washing his hands; let his blood be upon us; Centurions playing dice; crown of thorns; Eloi Eloi lama sabactani; gave up the ghost; the earth rent in twain etc etc. It’s probably the only story in “Western” literature as influential on English language and idiom as Shakespeare.
Yes, that's all fine, so call it the Easter weekend.
My objection was to one or two Woke people at work deliberately omitting the word Easter because of equity and diversity bollocks.
Step back and consider the obvious non-woke reason for calling it a long bank holiday weekend, which is to emphasise how much time you get off work, grouping it with other long bank holiday weekends, all of which are also named individually when you wish to focus on the particular.
Just leave them to it. This anti-woke stuff does not survive contact with the general public, and if they insist on bringing it up on the doorstep they will deserve all the electoral hammering they get.
The Conservatives are in a tight doom spin which means that the remaining members, councillors and MPs who are shameless enough to keep campaigning tend to be more and more on the extreme right of the party.
I think this is now more of an issue than it was for Labour under Corbyn. Consider the latest anti-Khan video. Everyone sensible has left. They desperately need a Ruth Davidson type figure at CCHQ .
@Casino_Royale is making a valid point but not a new one: progressives are embarrassed by tradition, preferring anything exotic and 'more interesting'; and provocatively renaming traditional religious holidays is a symptom of this. I don't think there are massive political implications but it all gets a bit tiring when their own vision of the future is failing all around them but there is little self reflection or criticism.
Getting upset about someone calling a long weekend a long weekend is the kind of "snowflake" behaviour that the left is supposed to engage in.
It's not an "Easter bank holiday weekend", as Casino puts it. For a start, Good Friday is not a bank holiday in England as it is not defined by statute - it is merely a public holiday.
And England does not explicitly get an additional day off in lieu for Easter Sunday (as we might if Christmas Day fell on a weekend). Therefore, the Sunday does not form part of a "Easter bank holiday weekend" either.
Therefore, the only part of Casino's "Easter bank holiday weekend" that is a bank holiday in Easter Monday. A single day.
This is correct from the perspective of the Church of England's liturgical calendar, because Easter only starts on the Sunday. Good Friday is part of Lent, as is 'Easter Eve' - the Saturday.
Conversely, in Scotland, only Good Friday is a national bank holiday. Some councils, such as Edinburgh, include Easter Monday as a local public holiday.
To further complicate matters, some Christians, as in the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland, do not celebrate Easter at all. And they are certainly not Woke.
A friend of mine had a father who ran a factory in Wigtown in the Fifties. Employees made a point of working on Christmas Day to show they weren't celebrating a pagan festival.
The hard line that some Protestants take on Christmas, Easter and similar is from opposition to feast days in general, with the associated frivolity, drunkeness and frivolity. The position taken is that they mark the birth and resurrection of Christ everyday.
As Christopher Columbus said: the more you travel the more you know
I had to leave for 6 months to see London for what it is. Cold rainy sometimes violent - but absolutely astonishing. A peak moment in human civilisation
What would you say elevates it above other major cities? There are bigger ones, ones which are very diverse and vibrant etc
Genuine question.
Sophistication, culture, architecture, history, elegance, vibe, and... a certain... THING
If you'te in the middle of central London drinking on a rainy Thursday night you are probably quite elite in some way: beauty, money, class, style, youth, talent, knapping skill. You are surrounded by similar people. It feels right and good, you are chosen, this is how the world should be
A great world city functions like a kind of private members' club. Its innate expense and hassle excludes the boring, the old, the stupid, and the poor
Yeah manchester is probably our 2nd city but it feels nothing like london at all and round Piccadilly Gardens is pretty sketchy. However compared to shitholes like Bradford its still a veritable metropolis.
To be a little more serious, Edinburgh is surely the UK's second city. It has political power and cultural prestige that Manchester can only dream of, and it is infinitely more beautiful than Manchester, indeed its more beautiful than London in terms of architectural coherence. Edinburgh has a good claim to be in the top ten most beautiful cities on the planet - London. by contrast, is too varied and weird to ever claim this. London has many moments of intense beauty, and many moments of intense ugliness
But, fuck me, Edinburgh, you need to knock down the Jobbie Building, and the Holyrood Parliament. They are two of the horriblest things ever made and a good summary of Scotland under the SNP
New Labour, afiak. Everyone else was in favour of using an older historic building.
There's a whole book to be written about how Scotland and Edinburgh ended up with the grotesque and ferociously expensive wart that is Holyrood. NO ONE LIKES IT. Look on Trip Advisor. It is universally despised, tourists hate it and locals hate it, worldwide opinion polls consistently rate it as one of the most fugly buildings on earth, beating out modernist horrors like Boston City Hall, Monparnasse Tower and the Hoover building in DC (and I have seen all three, and if you are uglier than those: wow)
How do terrifyingly hideous yet fantastically expensive buildings get made? There seems to be a point where so much money is invested - and so much emotion and time - no one is willing to stand up and say Wait, this is shit. Huge movies that turn out to be turkeys are similar, as are prestige railways - like HS2
So the horrific expense of Holyrood - ten times over budget - is actually one of the reasons it was completed, and why it now blights one of the most beautiful cities on earth, seemingly forever. Sunk Cost
One thing that's annoying me this week: people referring to this week as "the long bank holiday weekend".
No, it isn't: t's the Easter bank holiday weekend.
It's remarkable that they are almost always the same people who are first out the gates on LGBT+ history month or to applaud the celebration of Ramadan.
Can't say I've come across people being shy about calling it Easter myself. Is this something concerted or just some general trend?
Nor me. I think people refer to the long bank holiday weekend because that’s what it means to a lot of us. An extended and welcome 4 days off and the start of our UK string of spring bank holidays that culminate at Whitsun. Time to head to IKEA/B&Q/Garden centre, have a nice leg of lamb on Easter Day and if you’re young enough do a 2 day clubbing marathon.
I like the Christian bits of Easter too, not because I’m religious (I’m not) but because the biblical texts and the music that accompanies them are pretty epic: cornerstones of our literary universe. Tonight and Good Friday in particular:
The last supper; Judas kiss; the garden of gethsemane; Pilate washing his hands; let his blood be upon us; Centurions playing dice; crown of thorns; Eloi Eloi lama sabactani; gave up the ghost; the earth rent in twain etc etc. It’s probably the only story in “Western” literature as influential on English language and idiom as Shakespeare.
Yes, that's all fine, so call it the Easter weekend.
My objection was to one or two Woke people at work deliberately omitting the word Easter because of equity and diversity bollocks.
Step back and consider the obvious non-woke reason for calling it a long bank holiday weekend, which is to emphasise how much time you get off work, grouping it with other long bank holiday weekends, all of which are also named individually when you wish to focus on the particular.
Just leave them to it. This anti-woke stuff does not survive contact with the general public, and if they insist on bringing it up on the doorstep they will deserve all the electoral hammering they get.
The Conservatives are in a tight doom spin which means that the remaining members, councillors and MPs who are shameless enough to keep campaigning tend to be more and more on the extreme right of the party.
I think this is now more of an issue than it was for Labour under Corbyn. Consider the latest anti-Khan video. Everyone sensible has left. They desperately need a Ruth Davidson type figure at CCHQ .
@Casino_Royale is making a valid point but not a new one: progressives are embarrassed by tradition, preferring anything exotic and 'more interesting'; and provocatively renaming traditional religious holidays is a symptom of this. I don't think there are massive political implications but it all gets a bit tiring when their own vision of the future is failing all around them but there is little self reflection or criticism.
Getting upset about someone calling a long weekend a long weekend is the kind of "snowflake" behaviour that the left is supposed to engage in.
It's not an "Easter bank holiday weekend", as Casino puts it. For a start, Good Friday is not a bank holiday in England as it is not defined by statute - it is merely a public holiday.
And England does not explicitly get an additional day off in lieu for Easter Sunday (as we might if Christmas Day fell on a weekend). Therefore, the Sunday does not form part of a "Easter bank holiday weekend" either.
Therefore, the only part of Casino's "Easter bank holiday weekend" that is a bank holiday in Easter Monday. A single day.
This is correct from the perspective of the Church of England's liturgical calendar, because Easter only starts on the Sunday. Good Friday is part of Lent, as is 'Easter Eve' - the Saturday.
Conversely, in Scotland, only Good Friday is a national bank holiday. Some councils, such as Edinburgh, include Easter Monday as a local public holiday.
To further complicate matters, some Christians, as in the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland, do not celebrate Easter at all. And they are certainly not Woke.
Eh? Good Friday certainly is a bank holiday in England.
What point would that be ? Dura seems takes the piss out of everyone, without regard to creed or political persuasion.
Though he has an inexplicable regard for the Russian empire in all its various manifestations.
He's exactly of the ilk I described.
He has a bipolar superiority/self-hatred complex which he likes to exercise by trolling others who he feels represent those who lie behind all the ills he's experienced in life, despite being them fundamental part of it all the way, so he likes to paint as his intellectual inferiors as well.
Makes him feel better. Or he thinks it should.
Or he's just a particularly eccentric eccentric. And Britain has a pretty long tradition of tolerance for eccentrics.
Avoiding amateur psychoanalysis makes for a less troubling life.
He has been pretty frank in the past about his PTSD following his military service. I cut him a lot of slack for that. He enjoys baiting authority, and ground level mocking of the powers that be is a strong part of English tradition. DA would have been a Lollard in times past.
I seem to be the only person on here who admires the Scottish Parliament building from an architecture perspective. It is a genuinely interesting, actually highly complex, building in a country that lacks good modernist architecture. It is designed to its function and unusually also to the landscape, when most big buildings are just plonked down regardless of the surroundings.
It replaced a derelict brewery and not some other favourite building. Even if you dislike the design there has been much worse damage to Edinburgh's townscape. Edinburgh University's destruction of an early Georgian square or the post sixties development of Princes Street for example.
It may have been less awful if it didn’t have those stupid things stuck to the outside walls . I can’t see a single redeeming feature of it. Quite how you spend 400 million quid and come up with that abomination is beyond me !
Its a much nicer building inside than it is outside and the use of space inside has much to commend it. The exterior was a disaster from the point it was built and has weathered very badly. In my experience most people who live in Edinburgh like to forget it is there. Thankfully, it is tucked away at the bottom of the Canongate and no one has to see it unless they want to.
Isn't a large part of the diminishment of 'Easter' mostly to do with the fact that fewer people in the country are acting Christians, if not actually agnostic or atheist?
So perhaps the answer is for Christianity, and Christians, to appeal to the general population to gain followers. Given the way 'Christian' churches have behaved over history, I fear that's an impossibility.
You speak for a certain section of society.
There are very active Christians in Britain, both indigenous and imported. Easter is very important as a festival to our Polish, Lithuanian, Filipino, Keralan, and African communities. Its just that these are not considered mainstream British culture yet.
I know I speak about a certain section of society, and I have no wish to demean those who believe.
But AIUI, the certain section of society that is Christian is decreasing, and has been for decades. And you have to separate those who define themselves as 'Christian', say on the census, from those who are active and regularly attend church.
However, when I mention that the churches (Catholic and Protestant especially) have behaved deplorably in the past, I'd hope that even the more vehement Christians such as yourself would agree.
Interesting meeting last night of 50 Labour members in Didcot where Annaliese Dodds (party chair and a nearby MP) was the guest speaker. We decided to make it a private meeting so that people would feel free to challenge her on policy or anything else without worrying about whether the Daily Mail would distort something. What struck me was the realism of everyone there, including Corbynistas and Blairites - everyone argued for their particular interests, but there was general acceptance that the situation is difficult and instant solutions aren't on the table.
We organised the event partly because the local party had a difficult couple of years (my predecessor quit in a fury over dislike of Starmer, shortly before I turned up) and the remarkable revival in membership and activity is quite recent, so we wanted to give a chance to everyone to get any concerns off their chests. I came away feeling optimistic that we aren't going to quickly see massive disillusion among members with a cautious Labour government. I'm probably more impatient than most with our super-centrism, but I do recognise the need for it.
You will get the Greens up polling at 20% and Labour down at 30% within 18 months.
Depending on why that has happened, that might be no bad thing.
One of the things Maggie realised and Blair didn't was that governments should be unpopular mid-term; the first year or two is the only chance to do things that are necessary but initially unpopular.
That doesn't mean that Starmer will do those things, or that I will like them, let alone you. But Conservatives shouldn't get too excited by the poll ratings in late 2026.
Indeed, but it doesn't follow they'll all rally round come the time of the next GE.
I seem to be the only person on here who admires the Scottish Parliament building from an architecture perspective. It is a genuinely interesting, actually highly complex, building in a country that lacks good modernist architecture. It is designed to its function and unusually also to the landscape, when most big buildings are just plonked down regardless of the surroundings.
It replaced a derelict brewery and not some other favourite building. Even if you dislike the design there has been much worse damage to Edinburgh's townscape. Edinburgh University's destruction of an early Georgian square or the post sixties development of Princes Street for example.
It may have been less awful if it didn’t have those stupid things stuck to the outside walls . I can’t see a single redeeming feature of it. Quite how you spend 400 million quid and come up with that abomination is beyond me !
The facade facing the Palace and the Park is the parliament building's least successful aspect but it's what people who don't use the building notice the most.
I seem to be the only person on here who admires the Scottish Parliament building from an architecture perspective. It is a genuinely interesting, actually highly complex, building in a country that lacks good modernist architecture. It is designed to its function and unusually also to the landscape, when most big buildings are just plonked down regardless of the surroundings.
It replaced a derelict brewery and not some other favourite building. Even if you dislike the design there has been much worse damage to Edinburgh's townscape. Edinburgh University's destruction of an early Georgian square or the post sixties development of Princes Street for example.
" It is designed to its function " is also, I fear not true. As well as being massively costly to build, it is also massively costly to maintain - stupidly so for a modern, recently-built building.
Yes, I know Westminster is vastly costly to maintain (and always has been); but that was built nearly 200 years ago. We know how to build structures that should be low-maintenance for the first two or three decades of their life. Architects and politicians care little about that, and especially when they get together on a project.
I seem to be the only person on here who admires the Scottish Parliament building from an architecture perspective. It is a genuinely interesting, actually highly complex, building in a country that lacks good modernist architecture. It is designed to its function and unusually also to the landscape, when most big buildings are just plonked down regardless of the surroundings.
It replaced a derelict brewery and not some other favourite building. Even if you dislike the design there has been much worse damage to Edinburgh's townscape. Edinburgh University's destruction of an early Georgian square or the post sixties development of Princes Street for example.
" It is designed to its function " is also, I fear not true. As well as being massively costly to build, it is also massively costly to maintain - stupidly so for a modern, recently-built building.
Yes, I know Westminster is vastly costly to maintain (and always has been); but that was built nearly 200 years ago. We know how to build structures that should be low-maintenance for the first two or three decades of their life. Architects and politicians care little about that, and especially when they get together on a project.
In a parliament people are constantly moving between set piece public sessions, committees and private meetings. By "designed to its function" I mean the Holyrood building supports that activity unlike any other parliament building I have visited. I have been to a few.
Not eating easter eggs this year. Weight loss now 18.4kg / 2 stone 12.5 so far this year. And still going. So no chocolate for me.
EDIT - that includes several occurances of going out on the smash for the weekend. Beer, pizza, filty burger etc. I appear to have got my body into gear where it just wants to burn fat.
Good for you. Easter eggs are a load of shit anyway, cheap rubbish chocolate that cloys and burns your throat.
Isn't a large part of the diminishment of 'Easter' mostly to do with the fact that fewer people in the country are acting Christians, if not actually agnostic or atheist?
So perhaps the answer is for Christianity, and Christians, to appeal to the general population to gain followers. Given the way 'Christian' churches have behaved over history, I fear that's an impossibility.
You speak for a certain section of society.
There are very active Christians in Britain, both indigenous and imported. Easter is very important as a festival to our Polish, Lithuanian, Filipino, Keralan, and African communities. Its just that these are not considered mainstream British culture yet.
I know I speak about a certain section of society, and I have no wish to demean those who believe.
But AIUI, the certain section of society that is Christian is decreasing, and has been for decades. And you have to separate those who define themselves as 'Christian', say on the census, from those who are active and regularly attend church.
The principle function of our village church appears to be as a bat sanctuary. They have peregrinatory Sin Bosun who does something on a Sunday for about 20 minutes then fucks off in her Corsa to do exactly the same 20 minute gig at another two semi-derelict churches.
One thing that's annoying me this week: people referring to this week as "the long bank holiday weekend".
No, it isn't: t's the Easter bank holiday weekend.
It's remarkable that they are almost always the same people who are first out the gates on LGBT+ history month or to applaud the celebration of Ramadan.
Can't say I've come across people being shy about calling it Easter myself. Is this something concerted or just some general trend?
Nor me. I think people refer to the long bank holiday weekend because that’s what it means to a lot of us. An extended and welcome 4 days off and the start of our UK string of spring bank holidays that culminate at Whitsun. Time to head to IKEA/B&Q/Garden centre, have a nice leg of lamb on Easter Day and if you’re young enough do a 2 day clubbing marathon.
I like the Christian bits of Easter too, not because I’m religious (I’m not) but because the biblical texts and the music that accompanies them are pretty epic: cornerstones of our literary universe. Tonight and Good Friday in particular:
The last supper; Judas kiss; the garden of gethsemane; Pilate washing his hands; let his blood be upon us; Centurions playing dice; crown of thorns; Eloi Eloi lama sabactani; gave up the ghost; the earth rent in twain etc etc. It’s probably the only story in “Western” literature as influential on English language and idiom as Shakespeare.
Yes, that's all fine, so call it the Easter weekend.
My objection was to one or two Woke people at work deliberately omitting the word Easter because of equity and diversity bollocks.
Step back and consider the obvious non-woke reason for calling it a long bank holiday weekend, which is to emphasise how much time you get off work, grouping it with other long bank holiday weekends, all of which are also named individually when you wish to focus on the particular.
Just leave them to it. This anti-woke stuff does not survive contact with the general public, and if they insist on bringing it up on the doorstep they will deserve all the electoral hammering they get.
The Conservatives are in a tight doom spin which means that the remaining members, councillors and MPs who are shameless enough to keep campaigning tend to be more and more on the extreme right of the party.
I think this is now more of an issue than it was for Labour under Corbyn. Consider the latest anti-Khan video. Everyone sensible has left. They desperately need a Ruth Davidson type figure at CCHQ .
@Casino_Royale is making a valid point but not a new one: progressives are embarrassed by tradition, preferring anything exotic and 'more interesting'; and provocatively renaming traditional religious holidays is a symptom of this. I don't think there are massive political implications but it all gets a bit tiring when their own vision of the future is failing all around them but there is little self reflection or criticism.
The idea that progressives are renaming traditional religious holidays in the UK is a myth. It’s importing a US thing and looking for the same thing happening over here.
Personally I think religion is unfortunately not based on reality, but I've no qualms about wishing people a happy Easter, and I have Muslim friends who send Christmas cards. In a way I think it's part of the semi-secularisation of religion as a source of joint festivals. How many people really believe every word of the Easter story, even in the CoE? Not many, I suspect. But it's certainly part of the tradition of our community, and socialism is about community, so we can take and give pleasure in its celebration. Equally, if someone chooses not to call it Easter, that shouldn't be a problem in a free society.
I don't think that it's an issue where right and left in Britain need to argue - we have real differences, but that doesn't mean that we need to argue about everything.
+1 Indeed. Anyhow, I thought the whole idea of the CofE is being for people who don't really believe all that nonsense but for social and cultural reasons are willing to pretend?
Isn't a large part of the diminishment of 'Easter' mostly to do with the fact that fewer people in the country are acting Christians, if not actually agnostic or atheist?
So perhaps the answer is for Christianity, and Christians, to appeal to the general population to gain followers. Given the way 'Christian' churches have behaved over history, I fear that's an impossibility.
You speak for a certain section of society.
There are very active Christians in Britain, both indigenous and imported. Easter is very important as a festival to our Polish, Lithuanian, Filipino, Keralan, and African communities. Its just that these are not considered mainstream British culture yet.
I know I speak about a certain section of society, and I have no wish to demean those who believe.
But AIUI, the certain section of society that is Christian is decreasing, and has been for decades. And you have to separate those who define themselves as 'Christian', say on the census, from those who are active and regularly attend church.
However, when I mention that the churches (Catholic and Protestant especially) have behaved deplorably in the past, I'd hope that even the more vehement Christians such as yourself would agree.
Pretty much every strand of society with the power to do so has abused its powers in the past, and with religion being so powerful in society then it is little surprising to me that Christians too have abused their power.
I am an LD Orange Booker, but have strong anarcho-syndicalist leanings. We should be very suspicious of those with political power or trying to get it. They are very likely to abuse it.
I seem to be the only person on here who admires the Scottish Parliament building from an architecture perspective. It is a genuinely interesting, actually highly complex, building in a country that lacks good modernist architecture. It is designed to its function and unusually also to the landscape, when most big buildings are just plonked down regardless of the surroundings.
It replaced a derelict brewery and not some other favourite building. Even if you dislike the design there has been much worse damage to Edinburgh's townscape. Edinburgh University's destruction of an early Georgian square or the post sixties development of Princes Street for example.
It may have been less awful if it didn’t have those stupid things stuck to the outside walls . I can’t see a single redeeming feature of it. Quite how you spend 400 million quid and come up with that abomination is beyond me !
The facade facing the Palace and the Park is the parliament building's least successful aspect but it's what people who don't use the building notice the most.
I seem to be the only person on here who admires the Scottish Parliament building from an architecture perspective. It is a genuinely interesting, actually highly complex, building in a country that lacks good modernist architecture. It is designed to its function and unusually also to the landscape, when most big buildings are just plonked down regardless of the surroundings.
It replaced a derelict brewery and not some other favourite building. Even if you dislike the design there has been much worse damage to Edinburgh's townscape. Edinburgh University's destruction of an early Georgian square or the post sixties development of Princes Street for example.
" It is designed to its function " is also, I fear not true. As well as being massively costly to build, it is also massively costly to maintain - stupidly so for a modern, recently-built building.
Yes, I know Westminster is vastly costly to maintain (and always has been); but that was built nearly 200 years ago. We know how to build structures that should be low-maintenance for the first two or three decades of their life. Architects and politicians care little about that, and especially when they get together on a project.
I seem to be the only person on here who admires the Scottish Parliament building from an architecture perspective. It is a genuinely interesting, actually highly complex, building in a country that lacks good modernist architecture. It is designed to its function and unusually also to the landscape, when most big buildings are just plonked down regardless of the surroundings.
It replaced a derelict brewery and not some other favourite building. Even if you dislike the design there has been much worse damage to Edinburgh's townscape. Edinburgh University's destruction of an early Georgian square or the post sixties development of Princes Street for example.
" It is designed to its function " is also, I fear not true. As well as being massively costly to build, it is also massively costly to maintain - stupidly so for a modern, recently-built building.
Yes, I know Westminster is vastly costly to maintain (and always has been); but that was built nearly 200 years ago. We know how to build structures that should be low-maintenance for the first two or three decades of their life. Architects and politicians care little about that, and especially when they get together on a project.
In a parliament people are constantly moving between set piece public sessions, committees and private meetings. By "designed to its function" I mean the Holyrood building supports that activity unlike any other parliament building I have visited. I have been to a few.
And that's fair enough. But by using that definition, you also miss another massively important part of 'designed to function' - unless that 'function' was to be massively difficult and costly to maintain.
Isn't a large part of the diminishment of 'Easter' mostly to do with the fact that fewer people in the country are acting Christians, if not actually agnostic or atheist?
So perhaps the answer is for Christianity, and Christians, to appeal to the general population to gain followers. Given the way 'Christian' churches have behaved over history, I fear that's an impossibility.
You speak for a certain section of society.
There are very active Christians in Britain, both indigenous and imported. Easter is very important as a festival to our Polish, Lithuanian, Filipino, Keralan, and African communities. Its just that these are not considered mainstream British culture yet.
The problem is that we are no longer bound together by a shared 'cultural Christianity' that underpins our history and institutions. Christianity used to be taught to children as a matter of fact but is now presented on a smorgasbord of alternative belief systems of supposedly equal validity. You could argue that we have grown up, but at the expense of growing apart.
My wife will be taking her 88 year old mother to church today and for Easter Sunday. My MiL has been looking forward to this for a few weeks and selected her outfit some time ago. She is even wearing a hat.
My MiL sadly has vascular dementia and there is not a lot of joy in her life. She gets comfort from attending Church and from the community there. As I have got older the irrationality of religious belief has started to irritate me more, especially when you see the damage such beliefs do in the world. But it is hard to deny that an institution that gives such comfort to people in need of it is a good thing.
What point would that be ? Dura seems takes the piss out of everyone, without regard to creed or political persuasion.
Though he has an inexplicable regard for the Russian empire in all its various manifestations.
He's exactly of the ilk I described.
He has a bipolar superiority/self-hatred complex which he likes to exercise by trolling others who he feels represent those who lie behind all the ills he's experienced in life, despite being them fundamental part of it all the way, so he likes to paint as his intellectual inferiors as well.
Makes him feel better. Or he thinks it should.
Or he's just a particularly eccentric eccentric. And Britain has a pretty long tradition of tolerance for eccentrics.
Avoiding amateur psychoanalysis makes for a less troubling life.
He has been pretty frank in the past about his PTSD following his military service. I cut him a lot of slack for that. He enjoys baiting authority, and ground level mocking of the powers that be is a strong part of English tradition. DA would have been a Lollard in times past.
Yes - I think reinforces my argument.
In any event, he's one of our most interesting posters, even if you think some of it nonsense or offensive.
Interesting meeting last night of 50 Labour members in Didcot where Annaliese Dodds (party chair and a nearby MP) was the guest speaker. We decided to make it a private meeting so that people would feel free to challenge her on policy or anything else without worrying about whether the Daily Mail would distort something. What struck me was the realism of everyone there, including Corbynistas and Blairites - everyone argued for their particular interests, but there was general acceptance that the situation is difficult and instant solutions aren't on the table.
We organised the event partly because the local party had a difficult couple of years (my predecessor quit in a fury over dislike of Starmer, shortly before I turned up) and the remarkable revival in membership and activity is quite recent, so we wanted to give a chance to everyone to get any concerns off their chests. I came away feeling optimistic that we aren't going to quickly see massive disillusion among members with a cautious Labour government. I'm probably more impatient than most with our super-centrism, but I do recognise the need for it.
You will get the Greens up polling at 20% and Labour down at 30% within 18 months.
Quite probably, if they don't undergo a remarkable transformation after election.
How come Nick is chair of a Labour Party in Oxfordshire but still a councillor in Surrey, anyway?
Isn't a large part of the diminishment of 'Easter' mostly to do with the fact that fewer people in the country are acting Christians, if not actually agnostic or atheist?
So perhaps the answer is for Christianity, and Christians, to appeal to the general population to gain followers. Given the way 'Christian' churches have behaved over history, I fear that's an impossibility.
You speak for a certain section of society.
There are very active Christians in Britain, both indigenous and imported. Easter is very important as a festival to our Polish, Lithuanian, Filipino, Keralan, and African communities. Its just that these are not considered mainstream British culture yet.
I know I speak about a certain section of society, and I have no wish to demean those who believe.
But AIUI, the certain section of society that is Christian is decreasing, and has been for decades. And you have to separate those who define themselves as 'Christian', say on the census, from those who are active and regularly attend church.
However, when I mention that the churches (Catholic and Protestant especially) have behaved deplorably in the past, I'd hope that even the more vehement Christians such as yourself would agree.
Pretty much every strand of society with the power to do so has abused its powers in the past, and with religion being so powerful in society then it is little surprising to me that Christians too have abused their power.
(Snip)
Wow. That's quite a whitewashing of the evils that have performed in the past in the name of 'Christianity' - and at present, too. "Yeah, everybody did it, so nothing to see here. Please look away."
Not eating easter eggs this year. Weight loss now 18.4kg / 2 stone 12.5 so far this year. And still going. So no chocolate for me.
EDIT - that includes several occurances of going out on the smash for the weekend. Beer, pizza, filty burger etc. I appear to have got my body into gear where it just wants to burn fat.
Good for you. Easter eggs are a load of shit anyway, cheap rubbish chocolate that cloys and burns your throat.
Is that one of those weird Aldi/Lidl Vindaloo flavoured Easter Bunnies? Stick with Lindt.
Not eating easter eggs this year. Weight loss now 18.4kg / 2 stone 12.5 so far this year. And still going. So no chocolate for me.
EDIT - that includes several occurances of going out on the smash for the weekend. Beer, pizza, filty burger etc. I appear to have got my body into gear where it just wants to burn fat.
Good for you. Easter eggs are a load of shit anyway, cheap rubbish chocolate that cloys and burns your throat.
Cadburys Mini Eggs are the crack cocaine of chocolate.
Interesting meeting last night of 50 Labour members in Didcot where Annaliese Dodds (party chair and a nearby MP) was the guest speaker. We decided to make it a private meeting so that people would feel free to challenge her on policy or anything else without worrying about whether the Daily Mail would distort something. What struck me was the realism of everyone there, including Corbynistas and Blairites - everyone argued for their particular interests, but there was general acceptance that the situation is difficult and instant solutions aren't on the table.
We organised the event partly because the local party had a difficult couple of years (my predecessor quit in a fury over dislike of Starmer, shortly before I turned up) and the remarkable revival in membership and activity is quite recent, so we wanted to give a chance to everyone to get any concerns off their chests. I came away feeling optimistic that we aren't going to quickly see massive disillusion among members with a cautious Labour government. I'm probably more impatient than most with our super-centrism, but I do recognise the need for it.
You will get the Greens up polling at 20% and Labour down at 30% within 18 months.
Quite probably, if they don't undergo a remarkable transformation after election.
How come Nick is chair of a Labour Party in Oxfordshire but still a councillor in Surrey, anyway?
What point would that be ? Dura seems takes the piss out of everyone, without regard to creed or political persuasion.
Though he has an inexplicable regard for the Russian empire in all its various manifestations.
He's exactly of the ilk I described.
He has a bipolar superiority/self-hatred complex which he likes to exercise by trolling others who he feels represent those who lie behind all the ills he's experienced in life, despite being them fundamental part of it all the way, so he likes to paint as his intellectual inferiors as well.
Makes him feel better. Or he thinks it should.
Or he's just a particularly eccentric eccentric. And Britain has a pretty long tradition of tolerance for eccentrics.
Avoiding amateur psychoanalysis makes for a less troubling life.
He has been pretty frank in the past about his PTSD following his military service. I cut him a lot of slack for that. He enjoys baiting authority, and ground level mocking of the powers that be is a strong part of English tradition. DA would have been a Lollard in times past.
Yes - I think reinforces my argument.
In any event, he's one of our most interesting posters, even if you think some of it nonsense or offensive.
I too find @Dura_Ace entertaining, but he also falls into the category of someone who never says anything positive about anyone; and therefore his views become devalued. If he says everyone's sh*t, he can be safely ignored.
The same for posters who always post negative stuff and seem to lack any joy in their souls.
Isn't a large part of the diminishment of 'Easter' mostly to do with the fact that fewer people in the country are acting Christians, if not actually agnostic or atheist?
So perhaps the answer is for Christianity, and Christians, to appeal to the general population to gain followers. Given the way 'Christian' churches have behaved over history, I fear that's an impossibility.
You speak for a certain section of society.
There are very active Christians in Britain, both indigenous and imported. Easter is very important as a festival to our Polish, Lithuanian, Filipino, Keralan, and African communities. Its just that these are not considered mainstream British culture yet.
I know I speak about a certain section of society, and I have no wish to demean those who believe.
But AIUI, the certain section of society that is Christian is decreasing, and has been for decades. And you have to separate those who define themselves as 'Christian', say on the census, from those who are active and regularly attend church.
However, when I mention that the churches (Catholic and Protestant especially) have behaved deplorably in the past, I'd hope that even the more vehement Christians such as yourself would agree.
Pretty much every strand of society with the power to do so has abused its powers in the past, and with religion being so powerful in society then it is little surprising to me that Christians too have abused their power.
(Snip)
Wow. That's quite a whitewashing of the evils that have performed in the past in the name of 'Christianity' - and at present, too. "Yeah, everybody did it, so nothing to see here. Please look away."
No, I am quite happy to decry the evils that various Christians have done in the past. I am heartened that many churches have come to recognise this and apologise as well as make amends, the recent Anglican statements on slave trading for example.
That evil is not unique to Christianity though. I am happy to also condemn the evils of Islam, Hinduism, Communism, Nazism, Capitalism, Monarchism amongst many others.
It's a sinful world and are all sinners when we get the chance.
Isn't a large part of the diminishment of 'Easter' mostly to do with the fact that fewer people in the country are acting Christians, if not actually agnostic or atheist?
So perhaps the answer is for Christianity, and Christians, to appeal to the general population to gain followers. Given the way 'Christian' churches have behaved over history, I fear that's an impossibility.
You speak for a certain section of society.
There are very active Christians in Britain, both indigenous and imported. Easter is very important as a festival to our Polish, Lithuanian, Filipino, Keralan, and African communities. Its just that these are not considered mainstream British culture yet.
I know I speak about a certain section of society, and I have no wish to demean those who believe.
But AIUI, the certain section of society that is Christian is decreasing, and has been for decades. And you have to separate those who define themselves as 'Christian', say on the census, from those who are active and regularly attend church.
However, when I mention that the churches (Catholic and Protestant especially) have behaved deplorably in the past, I'd hope that even the more vehement Christians such as yourself would agree.
Pretty much every strand of society with the power to do so has abused its powers in the past, and with religion being so powerful in society then it is little surprising to me that Christians too have abused their power.
(Snip)
Wow. That's quite a whitewashing of the evils that have performed in the past in the name of 'Christianity' - and at present, too. "Yeah, everybody did it, so nothing to see here. Please look away."
And, unfortunately, still are. See the grim news coming out of the Diocese of London,
Isn't a large part of the diminishment of 'Easter' mostly to do with the fact that fewer people in the country are acting Christians, if not actually agnostic or atheist?
So perhaps the answer is for Christianity, and Christians, to appeal to the general population to gain followers. Given the way 'Christian' churches have behaved over history, I fear that's an impossibility.
You speak for a certain section of society.
There are very active Christians in Britain, both indigenous and imported. Easter is very important as a festival to our Polish, Lithuanian, Filipino, Keralan, and African communities. Its just that these are not considered mainstream British culture yet.
I know I speak about a certain section of society, and I have no wish to demean those who believe.
But AIUI, the certain section of society that is Christian is decreasing, and has been for decades. And you have to separate those who define themselves as 'Christian', say on the census, from those who are active and regularly attend church.
However, when I mention that the churches (Catholic and Protestant especially) have behaved deplorably in the past, I'd hope that even the more vehement Christians such as yourself would agree.
Pretty much every strand of society with the power to do so has abused its powers in the past, and with religion being so powerful in society then it is little surprising to me that Christians too have abused their power.
(Snip)
Wow. That's quite a whitewashing of the evils that have performed in the past in the name of 'Christianity' - and at present, too. "Yeah, everybody did it, so nothing to see here. Please look away."
No, I am quite happy to decry the evils that various Christians have done in the past. I am heartened that many churches have come to recognise this and apologise as well as make amends, the recent Anglican statements on slave trading for example.
That evil is not unique to Christianity though. I am happy to also condemn the evils of Islam, Hinduism, Communism, Nazism, Capitalism, Monarchism amongst many others.
It's a sinful world and are all sinners when we get the chance.
You're just digging yourself into a hole. Christianity is *supposed* to be better than that. And your last line is just a crass excuse wrapped up as a truism. It's also not that true: we don't all sin when we get the chance. We don't all give in to temptation.
A friend's dad was a vicar, and had a mortgage organised by the church. They've paid in for decades, and when they come to sell the house they'll get next to nothing, as the church's mortgage terms and rates were (ahem) uncompetitive.
Interesting meeting last night of 50 Labour members in Didcot where Annaliese Dodds (party chair and a nearby MP) was the guest speaker. We decided to make it a private meeting so that people would feel free to challenge her on policy or anything else without worrying about whether the Daily Mail would distort something. What struck me was the realism of everyone there, including Corbynistas and Blairites - everyone argued for their particular interests, but there was general acceptance that the situation is difficult and instant solutions aren't on the table.
We organised the event partly because the local party had a difficult couple of years (my predecessor quit in a fury over dislike of Starmer, shortly before I turned up) and the remarkable revival in membership and activity is quite recent, so we wanted to give a chance to everyone to get any concerns off their chests. I came away feeling optimistic that we aren't going to quickly see massive disillusion among members with a cautious Labour government. I'm probably more impatient than most with our super-centrism, but I do recognise the need for it.
You will get the Greens up polling at 20% and Labour down at 30% within 18 months.
Quite probably, if they don't undergo a remarkable transformation after election.
How come Nick is chair of a Labour Party in Oxfordshire but still a councillor in Surrey, anyway?
He is good at multitasking and has a track record of doing things for two bodies simultaneously.
What point would that be ? Dura seems takes the piss out of everyone, without regard to creed or political persuasion.
Though he has an inexplicable regard for the Russian empire in all its various manifestations.
He's exactly of the ilk I described.
He has a bipolar superiority/self-hatred complex which he likes to exercise by trolling others who he feels represent those who lie behind all the ills he's experienced in life, despite being them fundamental part of it all the way, so he likes to paint as his intellectual inferiors as well.
Makes him feel better. Or he thinks it should.
Or he's just a particularly eccentric eccentric. And Britain has a pretty long tradition of tolerance for eccentrics.
Avoiding amateur psychoanalysis makes for a less troubling life.
He has been pretty frank in the past about his PTSD following his military service. I cut him a lot of slack for that. He enjoys baiting authority, and ground level mocking of the powers that be is a strong part of English tradition. DA would have been a Lollard in times past.
Yes - I think reinforces my argument.
In any event, he's one of our most interesting posters, even if you think some of it nonsense or offensive.
I too find @Dura_Ace entertaining, but he also falls into the category of someone who never says anything positive about anyone; and therefore his views become devalued. If he says everyone's sh*t, he can be safely ignored.
The same for posters who always post negative stuff and seem to lack any joy in their souls.
That's utter bollocks from you as usual another of your very good posts!
Comments
On the religion theme, I'd like to put in a word for the King James Bible. Someone on this board was mocking Michael Goves' distribution of Bibles to secondary schools. It was the King James Version in commemoration of 400 years since its publication in 1611. The King James Version had an enormous impact on the English language. Melvyn Bragg presented a very interesting TV programme on the topic. The theatre director Patrick Garland was also a big fan and intended giving a talk at Chichester Festival Theatre on the subject but was prevented by ill health. I feel those that mock, including many teachers at the time, show their own cultural vacuum.
However, "regular practicing Christianity" is now a minority activity. Easter itself is such a secular, chocolate-focused event for the vast majority of people that it is very easy to forget that there's any Christian religious aspect at all.
So it probably does need a council window display these days. I'm glad that they put something together when reminded.
ETA: though having now seen it I note that they tended to "egg" rather than "man nailed to tree" so there's room for doubt that they are referencing Christianity there!
I really like Rayner and would be sad to see her go .
I thought it just described the length of the weekend, which in my case is Thursday (Maundy Thursday) to Wednesday incl. hence calling it a loooong weekend.
Happy Easter. Passover (22/4). Long weekend. Multiple bank holiday. Equinoctial. Whatever. I can’t see what’s woke about it.
Except to note that if Jesus of Nazareth was crucified, as the later gospels claim, then it was around the Jewish Passover.
Peace. Shalom. Have a nice time - surely that’s the main thing
xx
Personally I’m suspicious of people who like plain chocolate!
You're not meant to enjoy yourself.
While the last supper was a Passover meal, the date of Easter has not been set by the same Callander in a very long time.
Yale: https://humanities.yale.edu/special-courses/hums-380-bible-literature
Princeton: https://complit.princeton.edu/courses/bible-literature
The advertisement went on to say that the management hoped this would not inconvenience customers too much!
I see the popularity of the more austere forms of Islam as very similar.
The Authorised version is the Only version. Gove was right.
Apologies.
Dura seems takes the piss out of everyone, without regard to creed or political persuasion.
Though he has an inexplicable regard for the Russian empire in all its various manifestations.
Thoroughly deserved, Sir Philip Davies.
I'd hate to have lived in Scotland, South Wales or some of the more Puritan places in the North well into the 1980s.
My uncle, who emigrated to Canada and was born in the 1930s, said Toronto was particularly bad for this when he first moved there.
Don't forget your hot cross buns today and lamb on Sunday.
It replaced a derelict brewery and not some other favourite building. Even if you dislike the design there has been much worse damage to Edinburgh's townscape. Edinburgh University's destruction of an early Georgian square or the post sixties development of Princes Street for example.
He has a bipolar superiority/self-hatred complex which he likes to exercise by trolling others who he feels represent those who lie behind all the ills he's experienced in life, despite being them fundamental part of it all the way, so he likes to paint as his intellectual inferiors as well.
Makes him feel better. Or he thinks it should.
I don't think that it's an issue where right and left in Britain need to argue - we have real differences, but that doesn't mean that we need to argue about everything.
Slightly premature, but well meant.
Yes, I know Westminster is vastly costly to maintain (and always has been); but that was built nearly 200 years ago. We know how to build structures that should be low-maintenance for the first two or three decades of their life. Architects and politicians care little about that, and especially when they get together on a project.
We organised the event partly because the local party had a difficult couple of years (my predecessor quit in a fury over dislike of Starmer, shortly before I turned up) and the remarkable revival in membership and activity is quite recent, so we wanted to give a chance to everyone to get any concerns off their chests. I came away feeling optimistic that we aren't going to quickly see massive disillusion among members with a cautious Labour government. I'm probably more impatient than most with our super-centrism, but I do recognise the need for it.
However, the fact that PB's resident reactionary has rather reactionary views about architecture, which he expresses with his usual unhinged vehemence is just part of the game, albeit a predictable one
The amphitheatre outside is also a very neat and well-executed idea.
https://www.politico.eu/article/uk-nigel-farage-anti-establishment-health-warning-easter-eggs-chocolate-nhs-kelso/
So perhaps the answer is for Christianity, and Christians, to appeal to the general population to gain followers. Given the way 'Christian' churches have behaved over history, I fear that's an impossibility.
I have been to quite a few LD events recently because I am in a target seat. These are the sort of people who are normally accused of such, but woke stuff just never gets raised. If it did I would certainly react.
Personally I find such attempts at Literalism a dead end, and at risk of being as idolatrous as any other trappings. Bible study matters to any Christian, but that is the beginning, not the end, of understanding.
One of the things Maggie realised and Blair didn't was that governments should be unpopular mid-term; the first year or two is the only chance to do things that are necessary but initially unpopular.
That doesn't mean that Starmer will do those things, or that I will like them, let alone you. But Conservatives shouldn't get too excited by the poll ratings in late 2026.
Avoiding amateur psychoanalysis makes for a less troubling life.
Not eating easter eggs this year. Weight loss now 18.4kg / 2 stone 12.5 so far this year. And still going. So no chocolate for me.
EDIT - that includes several occurances of going out on the smash for the weekend. Beer, pizza, filty burger etc. I appear to have got my body into gear where it just wants to burn fat.
There are very active Christians in Britain, both indigenous and imported. Easter is very important as a festival to our Polish, Lithuanian, Filipino, Keralan, and African communities. Its just that these are not considered mainstream British culture yet.
https://www.gov.uk/bank-holidays
But AIUI, the certain section of society that is Christian is decreasing, and has been for decades. And you have to separate those who define themselves as 'Christian', say on the census, from those who are active and regularly attend church.
However, when I mention that the churches (Catholic and Protestant especially) have behaved deplorably in the past, I'd hope that even the more vehement Christians such as yourself would agree.
In a parliament people are constantly moving between set piece public sessions, committees and private meetings. By "designed to its function" I mean the Holyrood building supports that activity unlike any other parliament building I have visited. I have been to a few.
I am an LD Orange Booker, but have strong anarcho-syndicalist leanings. We should be very suspicious of those with political power or trying to get it. They are very likely to abuse it.
NEW THREAD
My MiL sadly has vascular dementia and there is not a lot of joy in her life. She gets comfort from attending Church and from the community there. As I have got older the irrationality of religious belief has started to irritate me more, especially when you see the damage such beliefs do in the world. But it is hard to deny that an institution that gives such comfort to people in need of it is a good thing.
In any event, he's one of our most interesting posters, even if you think some of it nonsense or offensive.
How come Nick is chair of a Labour Party in Oxfordshire but still a councillor in Surrey, anyway?
The same for posters who always post negative stuff and seem to lack any joy in their souls.
That evil is not unique to Christianity though. I am happy to also condemn the evils of Islam, Hinduism, Communism, Nazism, Capitalism, Monarchism amongst many others.
It's a sinful world and are all sinners when we get the chance.
https://twitter.com/tswyatt/status/1773340166402224140
A friend's dad was a vicar, and had a mortgage organised by the church. They've paid in for decades, and when they come to sell the house they'll get next to nothing, as the church's mortgage terms and rates were (ahem) uncompetitive.
Very much like, but not quite identical to, this situation:
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2024/mar/17/church-of-england-accused-of-acting-like-a-loan-shark-over-vicars-widow-falling-313000-in-debt