Watching Albanese and Macron eulogising the Pope, Starmer's evil, heretical, godless silence is deafening!
For those who commiserate, my heart goes out to them on the death of the Pope.
As an individual human, just perhaps.
But there’s no institution on the planet that has inflicted more war and death and misery and abuse upon humanity than the Catholic Church.
Much of our greatest art, our oldest cathedrals, many ancient universities, schools and hospitals have their origins in the Catholic Church. As do charities, orphanages, food banks, homeless shelters etc.
Your comment is symptomatic of why militant woke leftist secular atheists must be defeated at all costs or western civilisation will be destroyed. You hate our culture, our heritage, the traditional family you name it
I always thought IanB2 was a nice liberal chap with a dog, so am surprised to learn that he's a woke leftie secular atheist who must be defeated before he destroys western civilisation. God knows what you'd make of a proper leftie socialist like me.
The Dog For Scale is a tip to those in the know (rubs nose). It's one of the ways that we members of the Grand Council For The Destruction Of Western Civilisation identify each other.
Yes, everyone with a moderate sized terrier is part of Them.
Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs chair Sen. Ron Johnson says that 9/11 was a "controlled demolition" and there has been a "cover up" of massive amounts of evidence, many "questions" need to be answered:
Pope Francis said during an interview one time that he fell asleep during prayer. The interviewer asked him whether that was allowed, and he said that fathers always love it when their children fall asleep in their arms... https://x.com/jarvis_best/status/1914302332503986181
I’ve not had a classic head cold for at least 6 months, possibly longer, and very few people I know have either. Are we going through a common cold drought?
People always say when “there’s a lot of it going round at the moment” but they never comment when there’s “not a lot of it going round”.
I don't normally get them but have had 2 in the last six months. Got over one then a few weeks later got another.
OK, hypothesis for the day not looking particularly robust so far.
I’m currently at Britain’s poshest railway terminus. It’s a ridiculous place, as if built by a film studio for a costume drama (but with a Burger King and a Pret).
There is an entire hut, occupying what used to be the tourist info booth, decorated in olde English wallpaper and dedicated to suckering rich tourists into visiting Bicester village. And station announcements in Mandarin and Arabic.
St Pancras DOES NOT have a Burger King!
Presumably, the OP is talking about Marylebone. Where the ONLY announcements in Arabic and Mandarin are for departures to Oxford via Bicester Village: most Marylebone departures go elsewhere.
PS Who knows what the Mandarin is for Oxford and why?
Marylebone is rubbish.
Only 6 mainline platforms, none of which are electrified, and served by only one tube line.
It’s posh though. The poshest.
Don't be ridiculous!
Ever been to St Pancras?
St Pancras has a Hamley's, a Carluccio's, a Searcy's, and a Fortnum & Mason.
St Pancras is way too big and garish to be posh. It’s a Westfield idea of posh. And it has that awful statue.
Marylebone has a Burger King, FFS!
And Sir John Betjeman's statue is NOT awful!
Not Betjeman, the giant snogging lovers under the pink Tracy Emin banner.
Yep, you've never been to St Pancras. The supposed lovers are not snogging, they're actually looking at their mobiles instead of each other.
I travel through the shithole regularly. The last time I had to go to the desultory domestic platform at the end that takes you to the glamour spots of the East Midlands.
See, you can catch the Eurostar to Paris, Amsterdam et al. from St Pancras, but you can't from Marylebone.
Though on Marylebone High St there is a brilliantly quirky bookshop with the books arranged by geography Daunts is one of my favourite places in London.
I also finished my stag night in Marylebone Police Station. What japes!
Last year in Spain walking the Camino, I got stopped by a Spaniard who recognised my Daunt Books shopping bag from his time in London
Daunt books is now part of Waterstones. I think the CEO of Waterstones is a Daunt in fact. The Marylebone HS shop has lost some charm in my view. Greater damage has been done by the group to what was Dillons in Bloomsbury. I don't know who owns Foyles now, but they've spread out and the charm of the Charing Cross Road branch has gone. Admittedly that charm used consist of saleswomen that regarded their books as far too good to be sold to the likes of me, and when you decided to purchase one you had to get a slip, take it and queue at the payments section and then return upstairs where they very reluctantly finally handed over the book you had bought.
Watching Albanese and Macron eulogising the Pope, Starmer's evil, heretical, godless silence is deafening!
For those who commiserate, my heart goes out to them on the death of the Pope.
As an individual human, just perhaps.
But there’s no institution on the planet that has inflicted more war and death and misery and abuse upon humanity than the Catholic Church.
Much of our greatest art, our oldest cathedrals, many ancient universities, schools and hospitals have their origins in the Catholic Church. As do charities, orphanages, food banks, homeless shelters etc.
Your comment is symptomatic of why militant woke leftist secular atheists must be defeated at all costs or western civilisation will be destroyed. You hate our culture, our heritage, the traditional family you name it
I always thought IanB2 was a nice liberal chap with a dog, so am surprised to learn that he's a woke leftie secular atheist who must be defeated before he destroys western civilisation. God knows what you'd make of a proper leftie socialist like me.
I would prefer a Catholic socialist like John McDonnell to either of you
Skipping back a few comments HY, is this not an odd defence of the Catholic church?
Much of our greatest art, our oldest cathedrals, many ancient universities, schools and hospitals have their origins in the Catholic Church.
My reading of this is that the Catholic church historically accrued such power that it could delimit acceptable cultural expression (art), institute forms of slavery (to build cathedrals) and stymie free expression (at universities).
(Apologies for the Vance-like crassness of the timing of my comment for anyone mourning the Pope).
The point of universities, contrary to popular belief, was that they were institutions where you could discuss anything at all. Hence the name.
They were originally founded to allow free and frank discussion of canon law (believe it or not) which is why the first university in England was founded at Oxford which hosted the courts for the diocese of Lincoln.
But you could consider anything you liked - scientific or theological - as long as it was within the university.
The whole point of this was to ensure ideas could be tested and argued among men (sorry ladies) who would be smart enough to spot and root out any errors. It wasn't really until the Reformation that there was any serious attempt by the Catholic church to control them.
I’ve not had a classic head cold for at least 6 months, possibly longer, and very few people I know have either. Are we going through a common cold drought?
People always say when “there’s a lot of it going round at the moment” but they never comment when there’s “not a lot of it going round”.
I don't normally get them but have had 2 in the last six months. Got over one then a few weeks later got another.
OK, hypothesis for the day not looking particularly robust so far.
I’m currently at Britain’s poshest railway terminus. It’s a ridiculous place, as if built by a film studio for a costume drama (but with a Burger King and a Pret).
There is an entire hut, occupying what used to be the tourist info booth, decorated in olde English wallpaper and dedicated to suckering rich tourists into visiting Bicester village. And station announcements in Mandarin and Arabic.
St Pancras DOES NOT have a Burger King!
Presumably, the OP is talking about Marylebone. Where the ONLY announcements in Arabic and Mandarin are for departures to Oxford via Bicester Village: most Marylebone departures go elsewhere.
PS Who knows what the Mandarin is for Oxford and why?
Marylebone is rubbish.
Only 6 mainline platforms, none of which are electrified, and served by only one tube line.
It’s posh though. The poshest.
Don't be ridiculous!
Ever been to St Pancras?
St Pancras has a Hamley's, a Carluccio's, a Searcy's, and a Fortnum & Mason.
St Pancras is way too big and garish to be posh. It’s a Westfield idea of posh. And it has that awful statue.
Marylebone has a Burger King, FFS!
And Sir John Betjeman's statue is NOT awful!
Not Betjeman, the giant snogging lovers under the pink Tracy Emin banner.
Yep, you've never been to St Pancras. The supposed lovers are not snogging, they're actually looking at their mobiles instead of each other.
I travel through the shithole regularly. The last time I had to go to the desultory domestic platform at the end that takes you to the glamour spots of the East Midlands.
See, you can catch the Eurostar to Paris, Amsterdam et al. from St Pancras, but you can't from Marylebone.
Though on Marylebone High St there is a brilliantly quirky bookshop with the books arranged by geography Daunts is one of my favourite places in London.
I also finished my stag night in Marylebone Police Station. What japes!
Last year in Spain walking the Camino, I got stopped by a Spaniard who recognised my Daunt Books shopping bag from his time in London
Daunt books is now part of Waterstones. I think the CEO of Waterstones is a Daunt in fact. The Marylebone HS shop has lost some charm in my view. Greater damage has been done by the group to what was Dillons in Bloomsbury. I don't know who owns Foyles now, but they've spread out and the charm of the Charing Cross Road branch has gone. Admittedly that charm used consist of saleswomen that regarded their books as far too good to be sold to the likes of me, and when you decided to purchase one you had to get a slip, take it and queue at the payments section and then return upstairs where they very reluctantly finally handed over the book you had bought.
That’s if you even managed to find the book you wanted. History books would be shelved by author, rather than period, but then you’d probably find poetry books shelved by period or alphabetically by the name of the poet’s muse.
It was an astonishing assault course.
What a contrast Heffer's was In Cambridge - they gave me an account and seemingly never minded if I didn't pay. I think it must have been about 5 years after I left that I eventually did settle the bill.
Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs chair Sen. Ron Johnson says that 9/11 was a "controlled demolition" and there has been a "cover up" of massive amounts of evidence, many "questions" need to be answered:
The conspiracy theorists can’t help themselves. It’s like a drug. One is never enough. Once you’ve bought into the first, maybe around Trump really winning in 2020, the slide to another and another seems to follow. We see it with people here on PB, but the conspiracy theorists have been promoted to senior positions of power in the US. This is what we’ll get if Reform UK come to power.
Be interesting if the Trump administration goes down the Flat Earth rabbit hole.
Last week, DHS and Secretary Noem's staff and spokespeople suggested that because Mr. Abrego Garcia had $1,100 in cash on him when arrested outside Home Depot seeking day labor, that was strong evidence that he was a member of MS-13.
I guess that raises a similar question about her $3,000.
Pope Francis said during an interview one time that he fell asleep during prayer. The interviewer asked him whether that was allowed, and he said that fathers always love it when their children fall asleep in their arms... https://x.com/jarvis_best/status/1914302332503986181
I liked this one too.
there's a lot to admire about Pope Francis but I loved that, when he said he hoped that hell was empty, he had to rush and interject "this isn't dogma or anything" because I'm pretty sure he was speaking off the cuff from the heart and suddenly remembered oh crap, I'm the Pope
Surely hell is a room with Radiohead playing and pineapple,pizza being served.
That's the PB Hell. You also get to spend eternity with all the worst people called Piers (Morgan, Corbyn), the computer allows you to only read Con Home comments and write in Python.
I still think it'll be Parolin based on my friendly/stern alternating theory but 6/4 is prohibitive.
"Pizzaballa" - I have to be rooting for him.
Indeed. Also he has several things in common with the eventually chosen pope in the Conclave film. The College of Cardinals clearly will be streaming the film now for guidance ...
My tip on no knowledge would be Luis Tagle, former archbishop of Manila, on a evangelisation ticket, relatively liberal but solid on the doctrine.
Last week, DHS and Secretary Noem's staff and spokespeople suggested that because Mr. Abrego Garcia had $1,100 in cash on him when arrested outside Home Depot seeking day labor, that was strong evidence that he was a member of MS-13.
I guess that raises a similar question about her $3,000.
The main thing I’ve noticed about Paris since I first visited 25 years ago is that ordinary people (and the kinds of services that support them), have been squeezed out of the inner arrondisements.
Like most global cities, it has steadily become a pastiche of itself.
This is my takeaway: I don't think countries like France or the UK are broken, but they are becoming increasingly difficult for an ordinary person to live a pleasant live within.
A family of four don't get much change out of £100 now for a trip to a destination for a day out. And a takeaway? Probably £50.
So many people can't begin to afford that.
Western Europe is in steep relative decline. Of course it is declining from a very high place - surely the nicest place to live these last decades - nonetheless: declining
The combo of mass migration, Islamification, globalisation, multiculturalism, etc etc, has been catastrophic for so many cities, from Sweden to Britain to Germany, and on to France and Italy
The fact I feel far safer in the large cities of Central Asia than I do in similar cities in Western Europe is tragic. Also, less litter and graffiti, and so on
The relative decline of rich countries is inevitable and healthy. It's about other places catching up. About wealth and power (globally) being more fairly distributed. If Western Europe had pulled up the drawbridge, rejected immigration, multiculturalism, globalisation, all those things that make you shudder, the decline would likely have been steeper.
If relative decline is healthy, and would have been faster if we had rejected immigration, multiculturalism and globalisation, then shouldn't you be in favour of rejecting them so that we get to a more equitable global distribution faster instead of cheating by stealing talented people from the rest of the world?
Purely on economics, arguably yes. But I'm also a fan of breaking the correlation between nation states and specific ethnicities and religions etc. That's more important imo. That's the way to a big beautiful peaceful world. Utopian? Yes, but it should be the direction of travel. Elon Musk has his dreams of colonising space. I have this one. Neither of us will live to see it realised but that's not the point.
We have a case study of what such a world would look like in the Indian subcontinent. There, national boundaries have been eliminated, but at the cost of a stifling caste system.
There's no reason to think that pushing for the same at a global level wouldn't lead to a similar outcome, and plenty of evidence that it is already tending in that direction, with increasing talk of some jobs not being suitable for British people.
Ummm: doesn't the caste system on the subcontinent long predate the current national borders?
That doesn't negate the argument. It was a unified state thousands of years ago containing many different peoples.
The evidence for that is - at best - mixed.
The evidence that it's happening now is very strong. You didn't hear people prior to mass immigration talking about there being jobs that British people won't do - "Who will serve my coffee if we don't have immigrants?"
They were talking about such things in medieval times, in England. The villeins were villainously demanding ever more money. And running off to towns to get jobs that weren't properly tied to the land. The wretches.
See all the attempts at wage fixing, sumptuary laws to prevent the lower orders assuming the expensive ways of their betters....
It was the great achievement of the modern liberal state to achieve a degree of social homogeneity that transcended such attitudes. This is now being thrown away in a mad rush to promote diversity.
You can't say anything other than you want to celebrate diversity if you want to have a career. To do otherwise is to risk being labelled a racist.
Whilst some who don't like it undoubtedly are, and it was originally well-intended - to promote tolerance and the variety other people can bring - it's become dogmatic and totally unchecked, which is now causing social fragmentation and atomisation.
The risk is that countries end up no longer hanging together at all - because there has to be some level of uniformity as well as diversity, otherwise there is no identity.
Yesterday, I hung out with friends for an Easter meal. There was one person from Bulgaria, one from Lebanon, two from Romania, one from France and one from Scotland. I did not sense any social fragmentation. (FYI, the group generally welcomed the Supreme Court decision and were concerned about a system that sometimes discourages moving from benefits to paying work.)
Watching Albanese and Macron eulogising the Pope, Starmer's evil, heretical, godless silence is deafening!
For those who commiserate, my heart goes out to them on the death of the Pope.
As an individual human, just perhaps.
But there’s no institution on the planet that has inflicted more war and death and misery and abuse upon humanity than the Catholic Church.
Much of our greatest art, our oldest cathedrals, many ancient universities, schools and hospitals have their origins in the Catholic Church. As do charities, orphanages, food banks, homeless shelters etc.
Your comment is symptomatic of why militant woke leftist secular atheists must be defeated at all costs or western civilisation will be destroyed. You hate our culture, our heritage, the traditional family you name it
I always thought IanB2 was a nice liberal chap with a dog, so am surprised to learn that he's a woke leftie secular atheist who must be defeated before he destroys western civilisation. God knows what you'd make of a proper leftie socialist like me.
I would prefer a Catholic socialist like John McDonnell to either of you
Skipping back a few comments HY, is this not an odd defence of the Catholic church?
Much of our greatest art, our oldest cathedrals, many ancient universities, schools and hospitals have their origins in the Catholic Church.
My reading of this is that the Catholic church historically accrued such power that it could delimit acceptable cultural expression (art), institute forms of slavery (to build cathedrals) and stymie free expression (at universities).
(Apologies for the Vance-like crassness of the timing of my comment for anyone mourning the Pope).
Without the Catholic church Oxford and Cambridge universities would never have been founded, most of our best cathedrals never built and Michaelangelo not got most of his commissions
Heard my first cuckoo of the year yesterday (North York Moors). Told neighbour, who was visibly relieved. At least something's still working.
Wonder, in my darker moments, how long before it becomes a folk memory in rural England. Like the sound of children playing in the yard of the village school.
On a brighter note...
The wild garlic is in flower alongside the bluebells. The latter, sadly, are noticeably less profuse than a few years back. Still one of nature's most beautiful displays, though.
Still early for bluebells. Peak in a couple of weeks round here.
England hasn't won the World Cup since 1966 and it's time we won it again. But that's nothing. No English pope has been elected since 1154, and that 871 year gap is beginning to be painfully long. I don't know if the College of Cardinals has anyone following PB, but can I suggest that Timothy Radcliffe would do, and it's our turn. Furthermore there hasn't been a Dominican appointment since 1724.
Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs chair Sen. Ron Johnson says that 9/11 was a "controlled demolition" and there has been a "cover up" of massive amounts of evidence, many "questions" need to be answered:
Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs chair Sen. Ron Johnson says that 9/11 was a "controlled demolition" and there has been a "cover up" of massive amounts of evidence, many "questions" need to be answered:
The conspiracy theorists can’t help themselves. It’s like a drug. One is never enough. Once you’ve bought into the first, maybe around Trump really winning in 2020, the slide to another and another seems to follow. We see it with people here on PB, but the conspiracy theorists have been promoted to senior positions of power in the US. This is what we’ll get if Reform UK come to power.
You believe with 100% certainty that Covid-19 came from the wet market
Watching Albanese and Macron eulogising the Pope, Starmer's evil, heretical, godless silence is deafening!
For those who commiserate, my heart goes out to them on the death of the Pope.
As an individual human, just perhaps.
But there’s no institution on the planet that has inflicted more war and death and misery and abuse upon humanity than the Catholic Church.
Much of our greatest art, our oldest cathedrals, many ancient universities, schools and hospitals have their origins in the Catholic Church. As do charities, orphanages, food banks, homeless shelters etc.
Your comment is symptomatic of why militant woke leftist secular atheists must be defeated at all costs or western civilisation will be destroyed. You hate our culture, our heritage, the traditional family you name it
I always thought IanB2 was a nice liberal chap with a dog, so am surprised to learn that he's a woke leftie secular atheist who must be defeated before he destroys western civilisation. God knows what you'd make of a proper leftie socialist like me.
I would prefer a Catholic socialist like John McDonnell to either of you
Skipping back a few comments HY, is this not an odd defence of the Catholic church?
Much of our greatest art, our oldest cathedrals, many ancient universities, schools and hospitals have their origins in the Catholic Church.
My reading of this is that the Catholic church historically accrued such power that it could delimit acceptable cultural expression (art), institute forms of slavery (to build cathedrals) and stymie free expression (at universities).
(Apologies for the Vance-like crassness of the timing of my comment for anyone mourning the Pope).
Without the Catholic church Oxford and Cambridge universities would never have been founded, most of our best cathedrals never built and Michaelangelo not got most of his commissions
Watching Albanese and Macron eulogising the Pope, Starmer's evil, heretical, godless silence is deafening!
For those who commiserate, my heart goes out to them on the death of the Pope.
As an individual human, just perhaps.
But there’s no institution on the planet that has inflicted more war and death and misery and abuse upon humanity than the Catholic Church.
Much of our greatest art, our oldest cathedrals, many ancient universities, schools and hospitals have their origins in the Catholic Church. As do charities, orphanages, food banks, homeless shelters etc.
Your comment is symptomatic of why militant woke leftist secular atheists must be defeated at all costs or western civilisation will be destroyed. You hate our culture, our heritage, the traditional family you name it
I always thought IanB2 was a nice liberal chap with a dog, so am surprised to learn that he's a woke leftie secular atheist who must be defeated before he destroys western civilisation. God knows what you'd make of a proper leftie socialist like me.
The Dog For Scale is a tip to those in the know (rubs nose). It's one of the ways that we members of the Grand Council For The Destruction Of Western Civilisation identify each other.
Yes, everyone with a moderate sized terrier is part of Them.
This @NPR story is total FAKE NEWS based on one anonymous source who clearly has no idea what they are talking about. As the President said this morning, he stands strongly behind @SecDef https://x.com/PressSec
Watching Albanese and Macron eulogising the Pope, Starmer's evil, heretical, godless silence is deafening!
For those who commiserate, my heart goes out to them on the death of the Pope.
As an individual human, just perhaps.
But there’s no institution on the planet that has inflicted more war and death and misery and abuse upon humanity than the Catholic Church.
Much of our greatest art, our oldest cathedrals, many ancient universities, schools and hospitals have their origins in the Catholic Church. As do charities, orphanages, food banks, homeless shelters etc.
Your comment is symptomatic of why militant woke leftist secular atheists must be defeated at all costs or western civilisation will be destroyed. You hate our culture, our heritage, the traditional family you name it
I always thought IanB2 was a nice liberal chap with a dog, so am surprised to learn that he's a woke leftie secular atheist who must be defeated before he destroys western civilisation. God knows what you'd make of a proper leftie socialist like me.
I would prefer a Catholic socialist like John McDonnell to either of you
Skipping back a few comments HY, is this not an odd defence of the Catholic church?
Much of our greatest art, our oldest cathedrals, many ancient universities, schools and hospitals have their origins in the Catholic Church.
My reading of this is that the Catholic church historically accrued such power that it could delimit acceptable cultural expression (art), institute forms of slavery (to build cathedrals) and stymie free expression (at universities).
(Apologies for the Vance-like crassness of the timing of my comment for anyone mourning the Pope).
Without the Catholic church Oxford and Cambridge universities would never have been founded, most of our best cathedrals never built and Michaelangelo not got most of his commissions
Without the Church, Oxford and Cambridge probably wouldn't have wasted their intellectual talents for centuries training priests or have thwarted the establishment of other universities. Nor would they have strangled intellectual thought in this country by crushing anybody who showed any signs of doubting their spurious fairy tales.
Someone the other day made a point that the SC ruling on what a woman is doesn't ban transwomen from women's toilets
It certainly doesn't
Surely though, it offers some legal protection to biological women complaining about biological men in women only spaces
This is definitely progress
The SC has not banned or compelled anything at all. It has answered the question it was asked and neither more nor less. It has told parliament how the SC best makes sense of confused parliamentary legislation, leaving parliament to tidy it up if it is so minded.
This was the question;
Is a person with a full gender recognition certificate (“GRC”) which recognises that their gender is female, a “woman” for the purposes of the Equality Act 2010 (“EA 2010”)?
I see the Dow Jones and the US economy is doing wonderful today…
What economic metrics have been released then?
Trump undermining the independence of the Fed.
Which is not an economic metric which would indicate the health of the US economy. Try reading the question before answering.
Ask better questions then
Economic metrics are currently irrelevant as there's a month + lag in data and the mist destructive economic policies have come out in the last weeks and days. The Fed attack is an example of this.
Markets will trade off economic data once it's relevant again.
It was a straightforward question. I’ll ask what questions I choose and nothing wrong with it. Still if you want to double down because you fucked up, fill your boots. I’ll leave you to it.
Heard my first cuckoo of the year yesterday (North York Moors). Told neighbour, who was visibly relieved. At least something's still working.
Wonder, in my darker moments, how long before it becomes a folk memory in rural England. Like the sound of children playing in the yard of the village school.
On a brighter note...
The wild garlic is in flower alongside the bluebells. The latter, sadly, are noticeably less profuse than a few years back. Still one of nature's most beautiful displays, though.
Still early for bluebells. Peak in a couple of weeks round here.
Climate change, perhaps ? I think it used to be a bit later here too.
This @NPR story is total FAKE NEWS based on one anonymous source who clearly has no idea what they are talking about. As the President said this morning, he stands strongly behind @SecDef https://x.com/PressSec
Watching Albanese and Macron eulogising the Pope, Starmer's evil, heretical, godless silence is deafening!
For those who commiserate, my heart goes out to them on the death of the Pope.
As an individual human, just perhaps.
But there’s no institution on the planet that has inflicted more war and death and misery and abuse upon humanity than the Catholic Church.
Much of our greatest art, our oldest cathedrals, many ancient universities, schools and hospitals have their origins in the Catholic Church. As do charities, orphanages, food banks, homeless shelters etc.
Your comment is symptomatic of why militant woke leftist secular atheists must be defeated at all costs or western civilisation will be destroyed. You hate our culture, our heritage, the traditional family you name it
I always thought IanB2 was a nice liberal chap with a dog, so am surprised to learn that he's a woke leftie secular atheist who must be defeated before he destroys western civilisation. God knows what you'd make of a proper leftie socialist like me.
I would prefer a Catholic socialist like John McDonnell to either of you
Skipping back a few comments HY, is this not an odd defence of the Catholic church?
Much of our greatest art, our oldest cathedrals, many ancient universities, schools and hospitals have their origins in the Catholic Church.
My reading of this is that the Catholic church historically accrued such power that it could delimit acceptable cultural expression (art), institute forms of slavery (to build cathedrals) and stymie free expression (at universities).
(Apologies for the Vance-like crassness of the timing of my comment for anyone mourning the Pope).
Without the Catholic church Oxford and Cambridge universities would never have been founded, most of our best cathedrals never built and Michaelangelo not got most of his commissions
Without the Church, Oxford and Cambridge probably wouldn't have wasted their intellectual talents for centuries training priests or have thwarted the establishment of other universities. Nor would they have strangled intellectual thought in this country by crushing anybody who showed any signs of doubting their spurious fairy tales.
This is ahistorical drivel. For centuries the Catholic Church - for all its flaws - was the great western repository of knowledge. The Venerable Bede wasn’t a pagan. The scribes who wrote the Book of Kells weren’t wiccans. Thomas Aquinas did not worship the moon
They were all recognisably Catholic, and learned, and wisely gifted, yet surrounded by oceans of illiteracy and violence
The Catholic Church encouraged reading and writing, thence came the great universities of Europe - Oxford, Cambridge, Paris, Bologna, Salamanca, et al
Watching Albanese and Macron eulogising the Pope, Starmer's evil, heretical, godless silence is deafening!
For those who commiserate, my heart goes out to them on the death of the Pope.
As an individual human, just perhaps.
But there’s no institution on the planet that has inflicted more war and death and misery and abuse upon humanity than the Catholic Church.
Much of our greatest art, our oldest cathedrals, many ancient universities, schools and hospitals have their origins in the Catholic Church. As do charities, orphanages, food banks, homeless shelters etc.
Your comment is symptomatic of why militant woke leftist secular atheists must be defeated at all costs or western civilisation will be destroyed. You hate our culture, our heritage, the traditional family you name it
I always thought IanB2 was a nice liberal chap with a dog, so am surprised to learn that he's a woke leftie secular atheist who must be defeated before he destroys western civilisation. God knows what you'd make of a proper leftie socialist like me.
I would prefer a Catholic socialist like John McDonnell to either of you
Skipping back a few comments HY, is this not an odd defence of the Catholic church?
Much of our greatest art, our oldest cathedrals, many ancient universities, schools and hospitals have their origins in the Catholic Church.
My reading of this is that the Catholic church historically accrued such power that it could delimit acceptable cultural expression (art), institute forms of slavery (to build cathedrals) and stymie free expression (at universities).
(Apologies for the Vance-like crassness of the timing of my comment for anyone mourning the Pope).
Without the Catholic church Oxford and Cambridge universities would never have been founded, most of our best cathedrals never built and Michaelangelo not got most of his commissions
I didn't realise this, it makes the decisions over this privileges even more crazy...
He moved to Frankland after carrying out an earlier attack on prison officers in London's Belmarsh prison in 2020, for which three years and 10 months was added to his sentence.
Watching Albanese and Macron eulogising the Pope, Starmer's evil, heretical, godless silence is deafening!
For those who commiserate, my heart goes out to them on the death of the Pope.
As an individual human, just perhaps.
But there’s no institution on the planet that has inflicted more war and death and misery and abuse upon humanity than the Catholic Church.
Much of our greatest art, our oldest cathedrals, many ancient universities, schools and hospitals have their origins in the Catholic Church. As do charities, orphanages, food banks, homeless shelters etc.
Your comment is symptomatic of why militant woke leftist secular atheists must be defeated at all costs or western civilisation will be destroyed. You hate our culture, our heritage, the traditional family you name it
I always thought IanB2 was a nice liberal chap with a dog, so am surprised to learn that he's a woke leftie secular atheist who must be defeated before he destroys western civilisation. God knows what you'd make of a proper leftie socialist like me.
I would prefer a Catholic socialist like John McDonnell to either of you
Skipping back a few comments HY, is this not an odd defence of the Catholic church?
Much of our greatest art, our oldest cathedrals, many ancient universities, schools and hospitals have their origins in the Catholic Church.
My reading of this is that the Catholic church historically accrued such power that it could delimit acceptable cultural expression (art), institute forms of slavery (to build cathedrals) and stymie free expression (at universities).
(Apologies for the Vance-like crassness of the timing of my comment for anyone mourning the Pope).
Without the Catholic church Oxford and Cambridge universities would never have been founded, most of our best cathedrals never built and Michaelangelo not got most of his commissions
Without the Church, Oxford and Cambridge probably wouldn't have wasted their intellectual talents for centuries training priests or have thwarted the establishment of other universities. Nor would they have strangled intellectual thought in this country by crushing anybody who showed any signs of doubting their spurious fairy tales.
As they wouldn’t have been founded in the first place they wouldn’t have been doing anything.
Watching Albanese and Macron eulogising the Pope, Starmer's evil, heretical, godless silence is deafening!
For those who commiserate, my heart goes out to them on the death of the Pope.
As an individual human, just perhaps.
But there’s no institution on the planet that has inflicted more war and death and misery and abuse upon humanity than the Catholic Church.
Much of our greatest art, our oldest cathedrals, many ancient universities, schools and hospitals have their origins in the Catholic Church. As do charities, orphanages, food banks, homeless shelters etc.
Your comment is symptomatic of why militant woke leftist secular atheists must be defeated at all costs or western civilisation will be destroyed. You hate our culture, our heritage, the traditional family you name it
He's right, though. Millions killed in religious wars; women and minorities repressed; and countless people hurt by the strictures of a bunch of men who craved power over humanity.
And doing some good does not erase wrongs: Jimmy Saville did raise some money for charity, but that does not condone any of the other evil he did okay.
And your very wording: that it needs to be destroyed at all costs - is telling. What 'costs' would you go to 'defeat' the word-salad of things you evidently hate?
Isn’t the theory Savile did all the philanthropy to make up for his noncing ?
It’s more (I personally believe) that he did the charity stuff in order to a) gain access to vulnerable children directly and b) to provide access to the great and the good to provide air cover should he ever be accused. IOW the charity work was there to enable the abuse, not something he did to compensate for it.
At the time it was notable that the Children in Need producers refused to let him anywhere near their project.
I didn't realise this, it makes the decisions over this privileges even more crazy...
He moved to Frankland after carrying out an earlier attack on prison officers in London's Belmarsh prison in 2020, for which three years and 10 months was added to his sentence.
I didn't realise this, it makes the decisions over this privileges even more crazy...
He moved to Frankland after carrying out an earlier attack on prison officers in London's Belmarsh prison in 2020, for which three years and 10 months was added to his sentence.
Watching Albanese and Macron eulogising the Pope, Starmer's evil, heretical, godless silence is deafening!
For those who commiserate, my heart goes out to them on the death of the Pope.
As an individual human, just perhaps.
But there’s no institution on the planet that has inflicted more war and death and misery and abuse upon humanity than the Catholic Church.
Much of our greatest art, our oldest cathedrals, many ancient universities, schools and hospitals have their origins in the Catholic Church. As do charities, orphanages, food banks, homeless shelters etc.
Your comment is symptomatic of why militant woke leftist secular atheists must be defeated at all costs or western civilisation will be destroyed. You hate our culture, our heritage, the traditional family you name it
Not much of a Protestant are you?
It is a Catholic but Reformed church. In the culture wars we are united against a common enemy, the militant atheist secular woke left
Since when are atheists militant? I have had Jehovah's Witnesses come to my door. I have had Mormons come to my door. I get leaflets from the local Baptist Church and from the local Gospel Hall. Never had an atheist leaflet or an atheist come to my door.
Heard my first cuckoo of the year yesterday (North York Moors). Told neighbour, who was visibly relieved. At least something's still working.
Wonder, in my darker moments, how long before it becomes a folk memory in rural England. Like the sound of children playing in the yard of the village school.
On a brighter note...
The wild garlic is in flower alongside the bluebells. The latter, sadly, are noticeably less profuse than a few years back. Still one of nature's most beautiful displays, though.
Still early for bluebells. Peak in a couple of weeks round here.
Climate change, perhaps ? I think it used to be a bit later here too.
It's been a relatively cool start to the year. I think things are a bit behind this year in places.
I didn't realise this, it makes the decisions over this privileges even more crazy...
He moved to Frankland after carrying out an earlier attack on prison officers in London's Belmarsh prison in 2020, for which three years and 10 months was added to his sentence.
I didn't realise this, it makes the decisions over this privileges even more crazy...
He moved to Frankland after carrying out an earlier attack on prison officers in London's Belmarsh prison in 2020, for which three years and 10 months was added to his sentence.
Watching Albanese and Macron eulogising the Pope, Starmer's evil, heretical, godless silence is deafening!
For those who commiserate, my heart goes out to them on the death of the Pope.
As an individual human, just perhaps.
But there’s no institution on the planet that has inflicted more war and death and misery and abuse upon humanity than the Catholic Church.
Much of our greatest art, our oldest cathedrals, many ancient universities, schools and hospitals have their origins in the Catholic Church. As do charities, orphanages, food banks, homeless shelters etc.
Your comment is symptomatic of why militant woke leftist secular atheists must be defeated at all costs or western civilisation will be destroyed. You hate our culture, our heritage, the traditional family you name it
I always thought IanB2 was a nice liberal chap with a dog, so am surprised to learn that he's a woke leftie secular atheist who must be defeated before he destroys western civilisation. God knows what you'd make of a proper leftie socialist like me.
I would prefer a Catholic socialist like John McDonnell to either of you
Skipping back a few comments HY, is this not an odd defence of the Catholic church?
Much of our greatest art, our oldest cathedrals, many ancient universities, schools and hospitals have their origins in the Catholic Church.
My reading of this is that the Catholic church historically accrued such power that it could delimit acceptable cultural expression (art), institute forms of slavery (to build cathedrals) and stymie free expression (at universities).
(Apologies for the Vance-like crassness of the timing of my comment for anyone mourning the Pope).
Without the Catholic church Oxford and Cambridge universities would never have been founded, most of our best cathedrals never built and Michaelangelo not got most of his commissions
Without the Church, Oxford and Cambridge probably wouldn't have wasted their intellectual talents for centuries training priests or have thwarted the establishment of other universities. Nor would they have strangled intellectual thought in this country by crushing anybody who showed any signs of doubting their spurious fairy tales.
As they wouldn’t have been founded in the first place they wouldn’t have been doing anything.
The church did not generate money; it took it. If they had not got that excess wealth, someone else would, and may well have spent it in similar, or even better, ways.
England hasn't won the World Cup since 1966 and it's time we won it again. But that's nothing. No English pope has been elected since 1154, and that 871 year gap is beginning to be painfully long. I don't know if the College of Cardinals has anyone following PB, but can I suggest that Timothy Radcliffe would do, and it's our turn. Furthermore there hasn't been a Dominican appointment since 1724.
I didn't realise this, it makes the decisions over this privileges even more crazy...
He moved to Frankland after carrying out an earlier attack on prison officers in London's Belmarsh prison in 2020, for which three years and 10 months was added to his sentence.
I didn't realise this, it makes the decisions over this privileges even more crazy...
He moved to Frankland after carrying out an earlier attack on prison officers in London's Belmarsh prison in 2020, for which three years and 10 months was added to his sentence.
I didn't realise this, it makes the decisions over this privileges even more crazy...
He moved to Frankland after carrying out an earlier attack on prison officers in London's Belmarsh prison in 2020, for which three years and 10 months was added to his sentence.
Watching Albanese and Macron eulogising the Pope, Starmer's evil, heretical, godless silence is deafening!
For those who commiserate, my heart goes out to them on the death of the Pope.
As an individual human, just perhaps.
But there’s no institution on the planet that has inflicted more war and death and misery and abuse upon humanity than the Catholic Church.
Much of our greatest art, our oldest cathedrals, many ancient universities, schools and hospitals have their origins in the Catholic Church. As do charities, orphanages, food banks, homeless shelters etc.
Your comment is symptomatic of why militant woke leftist secular atheists must be defeated at all costs or western civilisation will be destroyed. You hate our culture, our heritage, the traditional family you name it
I always thought IanB2 was a nice liberal chap with a dog, so am surprised to learn that he's a woke leftie secular atheist who must be defeated before he destroys western civilisation. God knows what you'd make of a proper leftie socialist like me.
I would prefer a Catholic socialist like John McDonnell to either of you
Skipping back a few comments HY, is this not an odd defence of the Catholic church?
Much of our greatest art, our oldest cathedrals, many ancient universities, schools and hospitals have their origins in the Catholic Church.
My reading of this is that the Catholic church historically accrued such power that it could delimit acceptable cultural expression (art), institute forms of slavery (to build cathedrals) and stymie free expression (at universities).
(Apologies for the Vance-like crassness of the timing of my comment for anyone mourning the Pope).
Without the Catholic church Oxford and Cambridge universities would never have been founded, most of our best cathedrals never built and Michaelangelo not got most of his commissions
That's not particularly relevant, though.
If you can make an argument that universities in general would not exist, and that no artists would have painted things that would cause us to wonder and delight, then we have an interesting argument.
(I could see, for example, that you might argue that you needed a wealth-concentrating institution such as the Catholic church in order to create the surpluses that made studying in a university or creating an artwork possible.)
Cathedrals, I must admit, I simply don't think are worth the human misery needed to create them.
I didn't realise this, it makes the decisions over this privileges even more crazy...
He moved to Frankland after carrying out an earlier attack on prison officers in London's Belmarsh prison in 2020, for which three years and 10 months was added to his sentence.
Watching Albanese and Macron eulogising the Pope, Starmer's evil, heretical, godless silence is deafening!
For those who commiserate, my heart goes out to them on the death of the Pope.
As an individual human, just perhaps.
But there’s no institution on the planet that has inflicted more war and death and misery and abuse upon humanity than the Catholic Church.
Much of our greatest art, our oldest cathedrals, many ancient universities, schools and hospitals have their origins in the Catholic Church. As do charities, orphanages, food banks, homeless shelters etc.
Your comment is symptomatic of why militant woke leftist secular atheists must be defeated at all costs or western civilisation will be destroyed. You hate our culture, our heritage, the traditional family you name it
Not much of a Protestant are you?
It is a Catholic but Reformed church. In the culture wars we are united against a common enemy, the militant atheist secular woke left
Since when are atheists militant? I have had Jehovah's Witnesses come to my door. I have had Mormons come to my door. I get leaflets from the local Baptist Church and from the local Gospel Hall. Never had an atheist leaflet or an atheist come to my door.
That's because they are busy marching up and down a parade ground in their militant atheist uniforms. No time for leafleting. Busy being militant. And woke. Though it does prove tricky to both take the knee, and march militantly at the same time.
Watching Albanese and Macron eulogising the Pope, Starmer's evil, heretical, godless silence is deafening!
For those who commiserate, my heart goes out to them on the death of the Pope.
As an individual human, just perhaps.
But there’s no institution on the planet that has inflicted more war and death and misery and abuse upon humanity than the Catholic Church.
Much of our greatest art, our oldest cathedrals, many ancient universities, schools and hospitals have their origins in the Catholic Church. As do charities, orphanages, food banks, homeless shelters etc.
Your comment is symptomatic of why militant woke leftist secular atheists must be defeated at all costs or western civilisation will be destroyed. You hate our culture, our heritage, the traditional family you name it
He's right, though. Millions killed in religious wars; women and minorities repressed; and countless people hurt by the strictures of a bunch of men who craved power over humanity.
And doing some good does not erase wrongs: Jimmy Saville did raise some money for charity, but that does not condone any of the other evil he did okay.
And your very wording: that it needs to be destroyed at all costs - is telling. What 'costs' would you go to 'defeat' the word-salad of things you evidently hate?
Isn’t the theory Savile did all the philanthropy to make up for his noncing ?
It’s more (I personally believe) that he did the charity stuff in order to a) gain access to vulnerable children directly and b) to provide access to the great and the good to provide air cover should he ever be accused. IOW the charity work was there to enable the abuse, not something he did to compensate for it.
At the time it was notable that the Children in Need producers refused to let him anywhere near their project.
He did the marathons to try to run away from his conscience.
I didn't realise this, it makes the decisions over this privileges even more crazy...
He moved to Frankland after carrying out an earlier attack on prison officers in London's Belmarsh prison in 2020, for which three years and 10 months was added to his sentence.
Watching Albanese and Macron eulogising the Pope, Starmer's evil, heretical, godless silence is deafening!
For those who commiserate, my heart goes out to them on the death of the Pope.
As an individual human, just perhaps.
But there’s no institution on the planet that has inflicted more war and death and misery and abuse upon humanity than the Catholic Church.
Much of our greatest art, our oldest cathedrals, many ancient universities, schools and hospitals have their origins in the Catholic Church. As do charities, orphanages, food banks, homeless shelters etc.
Your comment is symptomatic of why militant woke leftist secular atheists must be defeated at all costs or western civilisation will be destroyed. You hate our culture, our heritage, the traditional family you name it
I always thought IanB2 was a nice liberal chap with a dog, so am surprised to learn that he's a woke leftie secular atheist who must be defeated before he destroys western civilisation. God knows what you'd make of a proper leftie socialist like me.
I would prefer a Catholic socialist like John McDonnell to either of you
Skipping back a few comments HY, is this not an odd defence of the Catholic church?
Much of our greatest art, our oldest cathedrals, many ancient universities, schools and hospitals have their origins in the Catholic Church.
My reading of this is that the Catholic church historically accrued such power that it could delimit acceptable cultural expression (art), institute forms of slavery (to build cathedrals) and stymie free expression (at universities).
(Apologies for the Vance-like crassness of the timing of my comment for anyone mourning the Pope).
Without the Catholic church Oxford and Cambridge universities would never have been founded, most of our best cathedrals never built and Michaelangelo not got most of his commissions
Without the Church, Oxford and Cambridge probably wouldn't have wasted their intellectual talents for centuries training priests or have thwarted the establishment of other universities. Nor would they have strangled intellectual thought in this country by crushing anybody who showed any signs of doubting their spurious fairy tales.
This is ahistorical drivel. For centuries the Catholic Church - for all its flaws - was the great western repository of knowledge. The Venerable Bede wasn’t a pagan. The scribes who wrote the Book of Kells weren’t wiccans. Thomas Aquinas did not worship the moon
They were all recognisably Catholic, and learned, and wisely gifted, yet surrounded by oceans of illiteracy and violence
The Catholic Church encouraged reading and writing, thence came the great universities of Europe - Oxford, Cambridge, Paris, Bologna, Salamanca, et al
Indeed, that's true.
But HYUFD was arguing a hypothetical where the Catholic Church didn't exist. Are you saying there'd have been no other institution that provided a similar repository ? It might have done a worse job, of course.
It's an odd argument on both sides, TBH. Alt history a millennia or more back might be fun fiction, but I don't think it's the basis for any useful conclusions.
England hasn't won the World Cup since 1966 and it's time we won it again. But that's nothing. No English pope has been elected since 1154, and that 871 year gap is beginning to be painfully long. I don't know if the College of Cardinals has anyone following PB, but can I suggest that Timothy Radcliffe would do, and it's our turn. Furthermore there hasn't been a Dominican appointment since 1724.
871 years of hurt doesn't scan as well.
"Papacy's coming home" could sound good in a Gregorian chant though.
England hasn't won the World Cup since 1966 and it's time we won it again. But that's nothing. No English pope has been elected since 1154, and that 871 year gap is beginning to be painfully long. I don't know if the College of Cardinals has anyone following PB, but can I suggest that Timothy Radcliffe would do, and it's our turn. Furthermore there hasn't been a Dominican appointment since 1724.
More likely the first Filipino Pope or an African Pope. We won’t get another English Pope unless Canterbury returned to Rome which is not happening not least as there may soon be a female Archbishop of Canterbury
Watching Albanese and Macron eulogising the Pope, Starmer's evil, heretical, godless silence is deafening!
For those who commiserate, my heart goes out to them on the death of the Pope.
As an individual human, just perhaps.
But there’s no institution on the planet that has inflicted more war and death and misery and abuse upon humanity than the Catholic Church.
Much of our greatest art, our oldest cathedrals, many ancient universities, schools and hospitals have their origins in the Catholic Church. As do charities, orphanages, food banks, homeless shelters etc.
Your comment is symptomatic of why militant woke leftist secular atheists must be defeated at all costs or western civilisation will be destroyed. You hate our culture, our heritage, the traditional family you name it
He's right, though. Millions killed in religious wars; women and minorities repressed; and countless people hurt by the strictures of a bunch of men who craved power over humanity.
And doing some good does not erase wrongs: Jimmy Saville did raise some money for charity, but that does not condone any of the other evil he did okay.
And your very wording: that it needs to be destroyed at all costs - is telling. What 'costs' would you go to 'defeat' the word-salad of things you evidently hate?
Isn’t the theory Savile did all the philanthropy to make up for his noncing ?
It’s more (I personally believe) that he did the charity stuff in order to a) gain access to vulnerable children directly and b) to provide access to the great and the good to provide air cover should he ever be accused. IOW the charity work was there to enable the abuse, not something he did to compensate for it.
At the time it was notable that the Children in Need producers refused to let him anywhere near their project.
I used to know a barmaid from the local pub near his Glencoe cottage. Would barely speak about him apart from to say none of the staff would serve him, and he just hung around being creepy.
Pope Francis said during an interview one time that he fell asleep during prayer. The interviewer asked him whether that was allowed, and he said that fathers always love it when their children fall asleep in their arms... https://x.com/jarvis_best/status/1914302332503986181
I liked this one too.
there's a lot to admire about Pope Francis but I loved that, when he said he hoped that hell was empty, he had to rush and interject "this isn't dogma or anything" because I'm pretty sure he was speaking off the cuff from the heart and suddenly remembered oh crap, I'm the Pope
Surely hell is a room with Radiohead playing and pineapple,pizza being served.
That's the PB Hell. You also get to spend eternity with all the worst people called Piers (Morgan, Corbyn), the computer allows you to only read Con Home comments and write in Python.
England hasn't won the World Cup since 1966 and it's time we won it again. But that's nothing. No English pope has been elected since 1154, and that 871 year gap is beginning to be painfully long. I don't know if the College of Cardinals has anyone following PB, but can I suggest that Timothy Radcliffe would do, and it's our turn. Furthermore there hasn't been a Dominican appointment since 1724.
More likely the first Filipino Pope or an African Pope. We won’t get another English Pope unless Canterbury returned to Rome which is not happening not least as there may soon be a female Archbishop of Canterbury
Watching Albanese and Macron eulogising the Pope, Starmer's evil, heretical, godless silence is deafening!
For those who commiserate, my heart goes out to them on the death of the Pope.
As an individual human, just perhaps.
But there’s no institution on the planet that has inflicted more war and death and misery and abuse upon humanity than the Catholic Church.
Much of our greatest art, our oldest cathedrals, many ancient universities, schools and hospitals have their origins in the Catholic Church. As do charities, orphanages, food banks, homeless shelters etc.
Your comment is symptomatic of why militant woke leftist secular atheists must be defeated at all costs or western civilisation will be destroyed. You hate our culture, our heritage, the traditional family you name it
I always thought IanB2 was a nice liberal chap with a dog, so am surprised to learn that he's a woke leftie secular atheist who must be defeated before he destroys western civilisation. God knows what you'd make of a proper leftie socialist like me.
I would prefer a Catholic socialist like John McDonnell to either of you
Skipping back a few comments HY, is this not an odd defence of the Catholic church?
Much of our greatest art, our oldest cathedrals, many ancient universities, schools and hospitals have their origins in the Catholic Church.
My reading of this is that the Catholic church historically accrued such power that it could delimit acceptable cultural expression (art), institute forms of slavery (to build cathedrals) and stymie free expression (at universities).
(Apologies for the Vance-like crassness of the timing of my comment for anyone mourning the Pope).
Without the Catholic church Oxford and Cambridge universities would never have been founded, most of our best cathedrals never built and Michaelangelo not got most of his commissions
That's not particularly relevant, though.
If you can make an argument that universities in general would not exist, and that no artists would have painted things that would cause us to wonder and delight, then we have an interesting argument.
(I could see, for example, that you might argue that you needed a wealth-concentrating institution such as the Catholic church in order to create the surpluses that made studying in a university or creating an artwork possible.)
Cathedrals, I must admit, I simply don't think are worth the human misery needed to create them.
Watching Albanese and Macron eulogising the Pope, Starmer's evil, heretical, godless silence is deafening!
For those who commiserate, my heart goes out to them on the death of the Pope.
As an individual human, just perhaps.
But there’s no institution on the planet that has inflicted more war and death and misery and abuse upon humanity than the Catholic Church.
Much of our greatest art, our oldest cathedrals, many ancient universities, schools and hospitals have their origins in the Catholic Church. As do charities, orphanages, food banks, homeless shelters etc.
Your comment is symptomatic of why militant woke leftist secular atheists must be defeated at all costs or western civilisation will be destroyed. You hate our culture, our heritage, the traditional family you name it
Not much of a Protestant are you?
It is a Catholic but Reformed church. In the culture wars we are united against a common enemy, the militant atheist secular woke left
Since when are atheists militant? I have had Jehovah's Witnesses come to my door. I have had Mormons come to my door. I get leaflets from the local Baptist Church and from the local Gospel Hall. Never had an atheist leaflet or an atheist come to my door.
Some Christians still get upset about the agnostic bus adverts from 2009.
Someone the other day made a point that the SC ruling on what a woman is doesn't ban transwomen from women's toilets
It certainly doesn't
Surely though, it offers some legal protection to biological women complaining about biological men in women only spaces
This is definitely progress
The SC has not banned or compelled anything at all. It has answered the question it was asked and neither more nor less. It has told parliament how the SC best makes sense of confused parliamentary legislation, leaving parliament to tidy it up if it is so minded.
This was the question;
Is a person with a full gender recognition certificate (“GRC”) which recognises that their gender is female, a “woman” for the purposes of the Equality Act 2010 (“EA 2010”)?
So would you sack a woman for complaining about a man dressed as a woman in a women's single sex space in light of this decision; or would you agree with me that it affords women some reasonable legal protection to complain without being in fear of firing?
Watching Albanese and Macron eulogising the Pope, Starmer's evil, heretical, godless silence is deafening!
For those who commiserate, my heart goes out to them on the death of the Pope.
As an individual human, just perhaps.
But there’s no institution on the planet that has inflicted more war and death and misery and abuse upon humanity than the Catholic Church.
Much of our greatest art, our oldest cathedrals, many ancient universities, schools and hospitals have their origins in the Catholic Church. As do charities, orphanages, food banks, homeless shelters etc.
Your comment is symptomatic of why militant woke leftist secular atheists must be defeated at all costs or western civilisation will be destroyed. You hate our culture, our heritage, the traditional family you name it
I always thought IanB2 was a nice liberal chap with a dog, so am surprised to learn that he's a woke leftie secular atheist who must be defeated before he destroys western civilisation. God knows what you'd make of a proper leftie socialist like me.
I would prefer a Catholic socialist like John McDonnell to either of you
Skipping back a few comments HY, is this not an odd defence of the Catholic church?
Much of our greatest art, our oldest cathedrals, many ancient universities, schools and hospitals have their origins in the Catholic Church.
My reading of this is that the Catholic church historically accrued such power that it could delimit acceptable cultural expression (art), institute forms of slavery (to build cathedrals) and stymie free expression (at universities).
(Apologies for the Vance-like crassness of the timing of my comment for anyone mourning the Pope).
Without the Catholic church Oxford and Cambridge universities would never have been founded, most of our best cathedrals never built and Michaelangelo not got most of his commissions
Without the Church, Oxford and Cambridge probably wouldn't have wasted their intellectual talents for centuries training priests or have thwarted the establishment of other universities. Nor would they have strangled intellectual thought in this country by crushing anybody who showed any signs of doubting their spurious fairy tales.
As they wouldn’t have been founded in the first place they wouldn’t have been doing anything.
The church did not generate money; it took it. If they had not got that excess wealth, someone else would, and may well have spent it in similar, or even better, ways.
But they didn’t, most wealthy Kings, aristocrats and merchants preferred to spend money on building castles, raising armies and wine, banquets and women
Watching Albanese and Macron eulogising the Pope, Starmer's evil, heretical, godless silence is deafening!
For those who commiserate, my heart goes out to them on the death of the Pope.
As an individual human, just perhaps.
But there’s no institution on the planet that has inflicted more war and death and misery and abuse upon humanity than the Catholic Church.
Much of our greatest art, our oldest cathedrals, many ancient universities, schools and hospitals have their origins in the Catholic Church. As do charities, orphanages, food banks, homeless shelters etc.
Your comment is symptomatic of why militant woke leftist secular atheists must be defeated at all costs or western civilisation will be destroyed. You hate our culture, our heritage, the traditional family you name it
I always thought IanB2 was a nice liberal chap with a dog, so am surprised to learn that he's a woke leftie secular atheist who must be defeated before he destroys western civilisation. God knows what you'd make of a proper leftie socialist like me.
I would prefer a Catholic socialist like John McDonnell to either of you
Skipping back a few comments HY, is this not an odd defence of the Catholic church?
Much of our greatest art, our oldest cathedrals, many ancient universities, schools and hospitals have their origins in the Catholic Church.
My reading of this is that the Catholic church historically accrued such power that it could delimit acceptable cultural expression (art), institute forms of slavery (to build cathedrals) and stymie free expression (at universities).
(Apologies for the Vance-like crassness of the timing of my comment for anyone mourning the Pope).
Without the Catholic church Oxford and Cambridge universities would never have been founded, most of our best cathedrals never built and Michaelangelo not got most of his commissions
Without the Church, Oxford and Cambridge probably wouldn't have wasted their intellectual talents for centuries training priests or have thwarted the establishment of other universities. Nor would they have strangled intellectual thought in this country by crushing anybody who showed any signs of doubting their spurious fairy tales.
This is ahistorical drivel. For centuries the Catholic Church - for all its flaws - was the great western repository of knowledge. The Venerable Bede wasn’t a pagan. The scribes who wrote the Book of Kells weren’t wiccans. Thomas Aquinas did not worship the moon
They were all recognisably Catholic, and learned, and wisely gifted, yet surrounded by oceans of illiteracy and violence
The Catholic Church encouraged reading and writing, thence came the great universities of Europe - Oxford, Cambridge, Paris, Bologna, Salamanca, et al
Aquinas is an interesting example of the nuances of this debate.
That he is one of our foremost philosophers says a lot about how stymied our philosophical tradition was right up until the point at which it was academically acceptable to argue for agnosticism rather than faith.
So many famous philosophers skewed so many of their arguments in order to shoehorn a god into the picture. It's really quite tiresome.
Watching Albanese and Macron eulogising the Pope, Starmer's evil, heretical, godless silence is deafening!
For those who commiserate, my heart goes out to them on the death of the Pope.
As an individual human, just perhaps.
But there’s no institution on the planet that has inflicted more war and death and misery and abuse upon humanity than the Catholic Church.
Much of our greatest art, our oldest cathedrals, many ancient universities, schools and hospitals have their origins in the Catholic Church. As do charities, orphanages, food banks, homeless shelters etc.
Your comment is symptomatic of why militant woke leftist secular atheists must be defeated at all costs or western civilisation will be destroyed. You hate our culture, our heritage, the traditional family you name it
He's right, though. Millions killed in religious wars; women and minorities repressed; and countless people hurt by the strictures of a bunch of men who craved power over humanity.
And doing some good does not erase wrongs: Jimmy Saville did raise some money for charity, but that does not condone any of the other evil he did okay.
And your very wording: that it needs to be destroyed at all costs - is telling. What 'costs' would you go to 'defeat' the word-salad of things you evidently hate?
Isn’t the theory Savile did all the philanthropy to make up for his noncing ?
It’s more (I personally believe) that he did the charity stuff in order to a) gain access to vulnerable children directly and b) to provide access to the great and the good to provide air cover should he ever be accused. IOW the charity work was there to enable the abuse, not something he did to compensate for it.
At the time it was notable that the Children in Need producers refused to let him anywhere near their project.
I suspect, given his abuse of vulnerable people there, your theory is more likely to be true than mine.
I didn't realise this, it makes the decisions over this privileges even more crazy...
He moved to Frankland after carrying out an earlier attack on prison officers in London's Belmarsh prison in 2020, for which three years and 10 months was added to his sentence.
Who makes the decision? I bet it isn't the front line staff.
It is, they'll consider if a prisoner is eligible to be moved to another prison, then it gets passed up on the chain for approval or rejection.
The reality is the prison estate isn't fit for purpose to deal with these types of prisoners.
We may need to have a UK supermax with specially trained officers.
Or execute them
So you'd be okay with executing Lucy Letby?
Dunno. Edge case
But in a society which is
1 happy to bomb and drone innocent people abroad
2 happy to kill unborn children in the womb
3 happy - it seems - to encourage sad or old people to commit suicide and to facilitate their self murder
Then I find our outrage at the death penalty both effete and illogical
I remember chatting to a Singaporean student. Junkie off his face wandering down the street. I said it was a shame. He said "You should just execute him".
Watching Albanese and Macron eulogising the Pope, Starmer's evil, heretical, godless silence is deafening!
For those who commiserate, my heart goes out to them on the death of the Pope.
As an individual human, just perhaps.
But there’s no institution on the planet that has inflicted more war and death and misery and abuse upon humanity than the Catholic Church.
Much of our greatest art, our oldest cathedrals, many ancient universities, schools and hospitals have their origins in the Catholic Church. As do charities, orphanages, food banks, homeless shelters etc.
Your comment is symptomatic of why militant woke leftist secular atheists must be defeated at all costs or western civilisation will be destroyed. You hate our culture, our heritage, the traditional family you name it
Not much of a Protestant are you?
It is a Catholic but Reformed church. In the culture wars we are united against a common enemy, the militant atheist secular woke left
Since when are atheists militant? I have had Jehovah's Witnesses come to my door. I have had Mormons come to my door. I get leaflets from the local Baptist Church and from the local Gospel Hall. Never had an atheist leaflet or an atheist come to my door.
Militant atheism is all around us, it wishes to drive bishops out of our upper house, disestablish the church, close faith schools, jail those who disagree with transgenderism and who pray outside abortion clinics and euthanise the terminally and mentally ill and undermine the traditional family.
Traditional conservatives of faith are in constant battle with them
Lively critical discussion is vital to civic life and democratic participation. Unfortunately, on this occasion much of it has been fuelled by misunderstanding, wishful thinking and distortion.
It has been said, for example, that competitive sex-segregated sports and single-sex facilities in workplaces, schools and services can operate on the basis of self-identified gender rather than biological sex. This was false before the Supreme Court judgment, and it is even more false now. Indeed if it were true, the appeal would not have been won.
Single-sex facilities are mandatory in workplaces and schools. The judgment has put it beyond doubt that the Equality Act, with other legislation, requires these to be provided according to biological sex.
Akua Reindorf KC is a commissioner for the Equality and Human Rights Commission
Notably she did not sign off as "writing in a personal capacity", so we can reasonably assume this is the EHRC position, despite all the wishful thinking being spread by peddlers of misinformation.
Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs chair Sen. Ron Johnson says that 9/11 was a "controlled demolition" and there has been a "cover up" of massive amounts of evidence, many "questions" need to be answered:
The conspiracy theorists can’t help themselves. It’s like a drug. One is never enough. Once you’ve bought into the first, maybe around Trump really winning in 2020, the slide to another and another seems to follow. We see it with people here on PB, but the conspiracy theorists have been promoted to senior positions of power in the US. This is what we’ll get if Reform UK come to power.
You believe with 100% certainty that Covid-19 came from the wet market
It's his only defence, Leon. He can only call people who disagree with him and the blob conspiracy theorists because he has nothing left. One of the few things that I'd welcome with a Reform government is the sweeping away of all these bureaucrats there to protect themselves and judges who have a pro-illegal immigration agenda. The country has long needed a blood letting among the ruling classes, the state is rotten to the core and it's our tax that keeps it all running, 43% net rate last year and what do we get for it.
England hasn't won the World Cup since 1966 and it's time we won it again. But that's nothing. No English pope has been elected since 1154, and that 871 year gap is beginning to be painfully long. I don't know if the College of Cardinals has anyone following PB, but can I suggest that Timothy Radcliffe would do, and it's our turn. Furthermore there hasn't been a Dominican appointment since 1724.
More likely the first Filipino Pope or an African Pope. We won’t get another English Pope unless Canterbury returned to Rome which is not happening not least as there may soon be a female Archbishop of Canterbury
It's Dawn French's big moment.
The Vicar of Dibley has a shot at Canterbury if now a bishop but not Rome
Watching Albanese and Macron eulogising the Pope, Starmer's evil, heretical, godless silence is deafening!
For those who commiserate, my heart goes out to them on the death of the Pope.
As an individual human, just perhaps.
But there’s no institution on the planet that has inflicted more war and death and misery and abuse upon humanity than the Catholic Church.
Much of our greatest art, our oldest cathedrals, many ancient universities, schools and hospitals have their origins in the Catholic Church. As do charities, orphanages, food banks, homeless shelters etc.
Your comment is symptomatic of why militant woke leftist secular atheists must be defeated at all costs or western civilisation will be destroyed. You hate our culture, our heritage, the traditional family you name it
I always thought IanB2 was a nice liberal chap with a dog, so am surprised to learn that he's a woke leftie secular atheist who must be defeated before he destroys western civilisation. God knows what you'd make of a proper leftie socialist like me.
I would prefer a Catholic socialist like John McDonnell to either of you
Skipping back a few comments HY, is this not an odd defence of the Catholic church?
Much of our greatest art, our oldest cathedrals, many ancient universities, schools and hospitals have their origins in the Catholic Church.
My reading of this is that the Catholic church historically accrued such power that it could delimit acceptable cultural expression (art), institute forms of slavery (to build cathedrals) and stymie free expression (at universities).
(Apologies for the Vance-like crassness of the timing of my comment for anyone mourning the Pope).
Without the Catholic church Oxford and Cambridge universities would never have been founded, most of our best cathedrals never built and Michaelangelo not got most of his commissions
That's not particularly relevant, though.
If you can make an argument that universities in general would not exist, and that no artists would have painted things that would cause us to wonder and delight, then we have an interesting argument.
(I could see, for example, that you might argue that you needed a wealth-concentrating institution such as the Catholic church in order to create the surpluses that made studying in a university or creating an artwork possible.)
Cathedrals, I must admit, I simply don't think are worth the human misery needed to create them.
How boring that would have been
With respect, I'm not sure you have understood my point.
I am agreeing that a world without eg universities and gifted artists would be not only boring but in many respects worthless.
I am challenging you to make an argument that the Catholic church was a necessary ingredient for us to.get to where we are now, rather than a contingent one.
I see the Dow Jones and the US economy is doing wonderful today…
What economic metrics have been released then?
Trump undermining the independence of the Fed.
Which is not an economic metric which would indicate the health of the US economy. Try reading the question before answering.
Ask better questions then
Economic metrics are currently irrelevant as there's a month + lag in data and the mist destructive economic policies have come out in the last weeks and days. The Fed attack is an example of this.
Markets will trade off economic data once it's relevant again.
It was a straightforward question. I’ll ask what questions I choose and nothing wrong with it. Still if you want to double down because you fucked up, fill your boots. I’ll leave you to it.
Sometimes when someone asks a stupid question, I give them the benefit of the doubt and answer a more relevant one. I do it with my five year old all the time, for example.
England hasn't won the World Cup since 1966 and it's time we won it again. But that's nothing. No English pope has been elected since 1154, and that 871 year gap is beginning to be painfully long. I don't know if the College of Cardinals has anyone following PB, but can I suggest that Timothy Radcliffe would do, and it's our turn. Furthermore there hasn't been a Dominican appointment since 1724.
871 years of hurt doesn't scan as well.
"Papacy's coming home" could sound good in a Gregorian chant though.
Lively critical discussion is vital to civic life and democratic participation. Unfortunately, on this occasion much of it has been fuelled by misunderstanding, wishful thinking and distortion.
It has been said, for example, that competitive sex-segregated sports and single-sex facilities in workplaces, schools and services can operate on the basis of self-identified gender rather than biological sex. This was false before the Supreme Court judgment, and it is even more false now. Indeed if it were true, the appeal would not have been won.
Single-sex facilities are mandatory in workplaces and schools. The judgment has put it beyond doubt that the Equality Act, with other legislation, requires these to be provided according to biological sex.
Akua Reindorf KC is a commissioner for the Equality and Human Rights Commission
Notably she did not sign off as "writing in a personal capacity", so we can reasonably assume this is the EHRC position, despite all the wishful thinking being spread by peddlers of misinformation.
Yes, I agree that's what the EHRC's position has long been and it's what they submitted to the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court agreed with them.
Watching Albanese and Macron eulogising the Pope, Starmer's evil, heretical, godless silence is deafening!
For those who commiserate, my heart goes out to them on the death of the Pope.
As an individual human, just perhaps.
But there’s no institution on the planet that has inflicted more war and death and misery and abuse upon humanity than the Catholic Church.
Much of our greatest art, our oldest cathedrals, many ancient universities, schools and hospitals have their origins in the Catholic Church. As do charities, orphanages, food banks, homeless shelters etc.
Your comment is symptomatic of why militant woke leftist secular atheists must be defeated at all costs or western civilisation will be destroyed. You hate our culture, our heritage, the traditional family you name it
I always thought IanB2 was a nice liberal chap with a dog, so am surprised to learn that he's a woke leftie secular atheist who must be defeated before he destroys western civilisation. God knows what you'd make of a proper leftie socialist like me.
I would prefer a Catholic socialist like John McDonnell to either of you
Skipping back a few comments HY, is this not an odd defence of the Catholic church?
Much of our greatest art, our oldest cathedrals, many ancient universities, schools and hospitals have their origins in the Catholic Church.
My reading of this is that the Catholic church historically accrued such power that it could delimit acceptable cultural expression (art), institute forms of slavery (to build cathedrals) and stymie free expression (at universities).
(Apologies for the Vance-like crassness of the timing of my comment for anyone mourning the Pope).
Without the Catholic church Oxford and Cambridge universities would never have been founded, most of our best cathedrals never built and Michaelangelo not got most of his commissions
Without the Church, Oxford and Cambridge probably wouldn't have wasted their intellectual talents for centuries training priests or have thwarted the establishment of other universities. Nor would they have strangled intellectual thought in this country by crushing anybody who showed any signs of doubting their spurious fairy tales.
As they wouldn’t have been founded in the first place they wouldn’t have been doing anything.
The church did not generate money; it took it. If they had not got that excess wealth, someone else would, and may well have spent it in similar, or even better, ways.
But they didn’t, most wealthy Kings, aristocrats and merchants preferred to spend money on building castles, raising armies and wine, banquets and women
Trinity College, Cambridge, was founded by Henry VIII. King's College by Henry VI. King;s Hall by Edward II. Michaelhouse by a chancellor of the exchequer. Some other colleges were also formed by other non-clerics. So whilst some were also founded by the church, I'd argue you are very wrong. For Cambridge at least...
I didn't realise this, it makes the decisions over this privileges even more crazy...
He moved to Frankland after carrying out an earlier attack on prison officers in London's Belmarsh prison in 2020, for which three years and 10 months was added to his sentence.
Who makes the decision? I bet it isn't the front line staff.
It is, they'll consider if a prisoner is eligible to be moved to another prison, then it gets passed up on the chain for approval or rejection.
The reality is the prison estate isn't fit for purpose to deal with these types of prisoners.
We may need to have a UK supermax with specially trained officers.
Or execute them
So you'd be okay with executing Lucy Letby?
Dunno. Edge case
But in a society which is
1 happy to bomb and drone innocent people abroad
2 happy to kill unborn children in the womb
3 happy - it seems - to encourage sad or old people to commit suicide and to facilitate their self murder
Then I find our outrage at the death penalty both effete and illogical
I remember chatting to a Singaporean student. Junkie off his face wandering down the street. I said it was a shame. He said "You should just execute him".
Unhappily, I find myself increasingly pro-death penalty. I believe we should have a referendum on it, and in that referendum there’s a good chance I’d vote Yes
This, as I say, doesn’t make me happy. It’s a bleak evolution, but it may be necessary
On the upside I also believe technology is developing so fast we will - in a few years - be able to surveil and restrict lifers so intensely the noose won’t be needed (tho the villains may ask for it)
It will be solitary confinement enforced by robots that feed you and exercise you and never talk to you. The android guards will be invulnerable to attack. That will be your hideous life sentence until you die
Watching Albanese and Macron eulogising the Pope, Starmer's evil, heretical, godless silence is deafening!
For those who commiserate, my heart goes out to them on the death of the Pope.
As an individual human, just perhaps.
But there’s no institution on the planet that has inflicted more war and death and misery and abuse upon humanity than the Catholic Church.
Much of our greatest art, our oldest cathedrals, many ancient universities, schools and hospitals have their origins in the Catholic Church. As do charities, orphanages, food banks, homeless shelters etc.
Your comment is symptomatic of why militant woke leftist secular atheists must be defeated at all costs or western civilisation will be destroyed. You hate our culture, our heritage, the traditional family you name it
I always thought IanB2 was a nice liberal chap with a dog, so am surprised to learn that he's a woke leftie secular atheist who must be defeated before he destroys western civilisation. God knows what you'd make of a proper leftie socialist like me.
The Dog For Scale is a tip to those in the know (rubs nose). It's one of the ways that we members of the Grand Council For The Destruction Of Western Civilisation identify each other.
Yes, everyone with a moderate sized terrier is part of Them.
Watching Albanese and Macron eulogising the Pope, Starmer's evil, heretical, godless silence is deafening!
For those who commiserate, my heart goes out to them on the death of the Pope.
As an individual human, just perhaps.
But there’s no institution on the planet that has inflicted more war and death and misery and abuse upon humanity than the Catholic Church.
Much of our greatest art, our oldest cathedrals, many ancient universities, schools and hospitals have their origins in the Catholic Church. As do charities, orphanages, food banks, homeless shelters etc.
Your comment is symptomatic of why militant woke leftist secular atheists must be defeated at all costs or western civilisation will be destroyed. You hate our culture, our heritage, the traditional family you name it
I always thought IanB2 was a nice liberal chap with a dog, so am surprised to learn that he's a woke leftie secular atheist who must be defeated before he destroys western civilisation. God knows what you'd make of a proper leftie socialist like me.
I would prefer a Catholic socialist like John McDonnell to either of you
Skipping back a few comments HY, is this not an odd defence of the Catholic church?
Much of our greatest art, our oldest cathedrals, many ancient universities, schools and hospitals have their origins in the Catholic Church.
My reading of this is that the Catholic church historically accrued such power that it could delimit acceptable cultural expression (art), institute forms of slavery (to build cathedrals) and stymie free expression (at universities).
(Apologies for the Vance-like crassness of the timing of my comment for anyone mourning the Pope).
Without the Catholic church Oxford and Cambridge universities would never have been founded, most of our best cathedrals never built and Michaelangelo not got most of his commissions
Without the Church, Oxford and Cambridge probably wouldn't have wasted their intellectual talents for centuries training priests or have thwarted the establishment of other universities. Nor would they have strangled intellectual thought in this country by crushing anybody who showed any signs of doubting their spurious fairy tales.
As they wouldn’t have been founded in the first place they wouldn’t have been doing anything.
The church did not generate money; it took it. If they had not got that excess wealth, someone else would, and may well have spent it in similar, or even better, ways.
But they didn’t, most wealthy Kings, aristocrats and merchants preferred to spend money on building castles, raising armies and wine, banquets and women
Trinity College, Cambridge, was founded by Henry VIII. King's College by Henry VI. King;s Hall by Edward II. Michaelhouse by a chancellor of the exchequer. Some other colleges were also formed by other non-clerics. So whilst some were also founded by the church, I'd argue you are very wrong. For Cambridge at least...
Henry VIII ascended the throne 516 years ago, today
Watching Albanese and Macron eulogising the Pope, Starmer's evil, heretical, godless silence is deafening!
For those who commiserate, my heart goes out to them on the death of the Pope.
As an individual human, just perhaps.
But there’s no institution on the planet that has inflicted more war and death and misery and abuse upon humanity than the Catholic Church.
Much of our greatest art, our oldest cathedrals, many ancient universities, schools and hospitals have their origins in the Catholic Church. As do charities, orphanages, food banks, homeless shelters etc.
Your comment is symptomatic of why militant woke leftist secular atheists must be defeated at all costs or western civilisation will be destroyed. You hate our culture, our heritage, the traditional family you name it
Not much of a Protestant are you?
It is a Catholic but Reformed church. In the culture wars we are united against a common enemy, the militant atheist secular woke left
Since when are atheists militant? I have had Jehovah's Witnesses come to my door. I have had Mormons come to my door. I get leaflets from the local Baptist Church and from the local Gospel Hall. Never had an atheist leaflet or an atheist come to my door.
Some Christians still get upset about the agnostic bus adverts from 2009.
Watching Albanese and Macron eulogising the Pope, Starmer's evil, heretical, godless silence is deafening!
For those who commiserate, my heart goes out to them on the death of the Pope.
As an individual human, just perhaps.
But there’s no institution on the planet that has inflicted more war and death and misery and abuse upon humanity than the Catholic Church.
Much of our greatest art, our oldest cathedrals, many ancient universities, schools and hospitals have their origins in the Catholic Church. As do charities, orphanages, food banks, homeless shelters etc.
Your comment is symptomatic of why militant woke leftist secular atheists must be defeated at all costs or western civilisation will be destroyed. You hate our culture, our heritage, the traditional family you name it
I always thought IanB2 was a nice liberal chap with a dog, so am surprised to learn that he's a woke leftie secular atheist who must be defeated before he destroys western civilisation. God knows what you'd make of a proper leftie socialist like me.
I would prefer a Catholic socialist like John McDonnell to either of you
Skipping back a few comments HY, is this not an odd defence of the Catholic church?
Much of our greatest art, our oldest cathedrals, many ancient universities, schools and hospitals have their origins in the Catholic Church.
My reading of this is that the Catholic church historically accrued such power that it could delimit acceptable cultural expression (art), institute forms of slavery (to build cathedrals) and stymie free expression (at universities).
(Apologies for the Vance-like crassness of the timing of my comment for anyone mourning the Pope).
Without the Catholic church Oxford and Cambridge universities would never have been founded, most of our best cathedrals never built and Michaelangelo not got most of his commissions
Without the Church, Oxford and Cambridge probably wouldn't have wasted their intellectual talents for centuries training priests or have thwarted the establishment of other universities. Nor would they have strangled intellectual thought in this country by crushing anybody who showed any signs of doubting their spurious fairy tales.
This is ahistorical drivel. For centuries the Catholic Church - for all its flaws - was the great western repository of knowledge. The Venerable Bede wasn’t a pagan. The scribes who wrote the Book of Kells weren’t wiccans. Thomas Aquinas did not worship the moon
They were all recognisably Catholic, and learned, and wisely gifted, yet surrounded by oceans of illiteracy and violence
The Catholic Church encouraged reading and writing, thence came the great universities of Europe - Oxford, Cambridge, Paris, Bologna, Salamanca, et al
Aquinas is an interesting example of the nuances of this debate.
That he is one of our foremost philosophers says a lot about how stymied our philosophical tradition was right up until the point at which it was academically acceptable to argue for agnosticism rather than faith.
So many famous philosophers skewed so many of their arguments in order to shoehorn a god into the picture. It's really quite tiresome.
Is this a comment on Aristotle and Plato? Or Kant?
"Militant atheist secular woke left" ? Well, that covers a multitude of sins and presumably sinners. I suppose it's possible to be atheist and secular and be on the "right" of politics whatever the terms "left" and "right" mean nowadays other than terms of abuse.
I'm not sure everyone is "happy" to see innocents killed abroad or unborn children killed in the womb but that's why we have political parties and movements. If someone wants to stand on a platform of anti-abortion and pro-death penalty, fine, go ahead, join the democratic process but restoration of the death penalty has been debated in the Commons and always been soundly defeated and while the abortion rules have been tightened, there's never been a serious attempt to instigate a complete ban.
The latest Canadian polling from our old friends Angus Reid has the Liberal lead down from six to five while Research Co's fortnightly poll has the Liberal lead down from eight to five (CPC +2, LPC -1).
I'd really like some regional polling - the sub samples in the Federal polls are really small and probably aren;t telling the whole story. The Liberals seem to be leading in Ontario and to have improved their position in British Columbia while the CPC has strengthened its grip on Alberta but a lot of salt needed.
In Australia the final Leaders' Debate coincices with the start of advance polling tomorrow (already today over there). The latest seat projection off the Freshwater Strategy poll which had the LNP Coalition and Labor tied at 50% in the 2PP polling has the Coalition on 69, Labor on 68, the Greens on 1 and 12 Independents. Given the vagaries of electorate polling, it's impossible to be too confident in those numbers even at this stage.
Lively critical discussion is vital to civic life and democratic participation. Unfortunately, on this occasion much of it has been fuelled by misunderstanding, wishful thinking and distortion.
It has been said, for example, that competitive sex-segregated sports and single-sex facilities in workplaces, schools and services can operate on the basis of self-identified gender rather than biological sex. This was false before the Supreme Court judgment, and it is even more false now. Indeed if it were true, the appeal would not have been won.
Single-sex facilities are mandatory in workplaces and schools. The judgment has put it beyond doubt that the Equality Act, with other legislation, requires these to be provided according to biological sex.
Akua Reindorf KC is a commissioner for the Equality and Human Rights Commission
Notably she did not sign off as "writing in a personal capacity", so we can reasonably assume this is the EHRC position, despite all the wishful thinking being spread by peddlers of misinformation.
Yes, I agree that's what the EHRC's position has long been and it's what they submitted to the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court agreed with them.
Actually the EHRC submitted "the GRA changes sex" and therefore we need to change the law because this causes problems for lesbians, gays & bisexual people " - the Supreme Court said "no, the law is clear" and you had it wrong:
Previously the prevailing interpretation had been that a “woman” for the purposes of the act was either a biological woman or a trans woman (biologically male) who held a Gender Recognition Certificate.
The Equality and Human Rights Commission intervened in the appeal, arguing that this interpretation caused intractable problems for the rights of women and of lesbian, gay and bisexual people. In its 88-page judgment, the court agreed. The commission’s position was that solving this problem was a matter for parliament. On this the court disagreed, and instead did the job itself.
The Trump Slump continues in American markets, open Easter Monday: Stocks fell, with the Dow industrials dropping 1,200 points and on track for their worst April since 1932. The dollar hit fresh multiyear lows against the euro and other major currencies. Yields on longer-term Treasurys rose. Gold surged to a fresh record high.
Watching Albanese and Macron eulogising the Pope, Starmer's evil, heretical, godless silence is deafening!
For those who commiserate, my heart goes out to them on the death of the Pope.
As an individual human, just perhaps.
But there’s no institution on the planet that has inflicted more war and death and misery and abuse upon humanity than the Catholic Church.
Much of our greatest art, our oldest cathedrals, many ancient universities, schools and hospitals have their origins in the Catholic Church. As do charities, orphanages, food banks, homeless shelters etc.
Your comment is symptomatic of why militant woke leftist secular atheists must be defeated at all costs or western civilisation will be destroyed. You hate our culture, our heritage, the traditional family you name it
I always thought IanB2 was a nice liberal chap with a dog, so am surprised to learn that he's a woke leftie secular atheist who must be defeated before he destroys western civilisation. God knows what you'd make of a proper leftie socialist like me.
I would prefer a Catholic socialist like John McDonnell to either of you
Skipping back a few comments HY, is this not an odd defence of the Catholic church?
Much of our greatest art, our oldest cathedrals, many ancient universities, schools and hospitals have their origins in the Catholic Church.
My reading of this is that the Catholic church historically accrued such power that it could delimit acceptable cultural expression (art), institute forms of slavery (to build cathedrals) and stymie free expression (at universities).
(Apologies for the Vance-like crassness of the timing of my comment for anyone mourning the Pope).
Without the Catholic church Oxford and Cambridge universities would never have been founded, most of our best cathedrals never built and Michaelangelo not got most of his commissions
That's not particularly relevant, though.
If you can make an argument that universities in general would not exist, and that no artists would have painted things that would cause us to wonder and delight, then we have an interesting argument.
(I could see, for example, that you might argue that you needed a wealth-concentrating institution such as the Catholic church in order to create the surpluses that made studying in a university or creating an artwork possible.)
Cathedrals, I must admit, I simply don't think are worth the human misery needed to create them.
How boring that would have been
With respect, I'm not sure you have understood my point.
I am agreeing that a world without eg universities and gifted artists would be not only boring but in many respects worthless.
I am challenging you to make an argument that the Catholic church was a necessary ingredient for us to.get to where we are now, rather than a contingent one.
Would the Iliad have been written without the Catholic Church? Would we have had Plato or Socrates? The Epic of Gilgamesh? Some of the finest pyramids built? What about the Old Testament?
I didn't realise this, it makes the decisions over this privileges even more crazy...
He moved to Frankland after carrying out an earlier attack on prison officers in London's Belmarsh prison in 2020, for which three years and 10 months was added to his sentence.
Who makes the decision? I bet it isn't the front line staff.
It is, they'll consider if a prisoner is eligible to be moved to another prison, then it gets passed up on the chain for approval or rejection.
The reality is the prison estate isn't fit for purpose to deal with these types of prisoners.
We may need to have a UK supermax with specially trained officers.
Or execute them
So you'd be okay with executing Lucy Letby?
Dunno. Edge case
But in a society which is
1 happy to bomb and drone innocent people abroad
2 happy to kill unborn children in the womb
3 happy - it seems - to encourage sad or old people to commit suicide and to facilitate their self murder
Then I find our outrage at the death penalty both effete and illogical
I remember chatting to a Singaporean student. Junkie off his face wandering down the street. I said it was a shame. He said "You should just execute him".
Unhappily, I find myself increasingly pro-death penalty. I believe we should have a referendum on it, and in that referendum there’s a good chance I’d vote Yes
This, as I say, doesn’t make me happy. It’s a bleak evolution, but it may be necessary
On the upside I also believe technology is developing so fast we will - in a few years - be able to surveil and restrict lifers so intensely the noose won’t be needed (tho the villains may ask for it)
It will be solitary confinement enforced by robots that feed you and exercise you and never talk to you. The android guards will be invulnerable to attack. That will be your hideous life sentence until you die
Watching Albanese and Macron eulogising the Pope, Starmer's evil, heretical, godless silence is deafening!
For those who commiserate, my heart goes out to them on the death of the Pope.
As an individual human, just perhaps.
But there’s no institution on the planet that has inflicted more war and death and misery and abuse upon humanity than the Catholic Church.
Much of our greatest art, our oldest cathedrals, many ancient universities, schools and hospitals have their origins in the Catholic Church. As do charities, orphanages, food banks, homeless shelters etc.
Your comment is symptomatic of why militant woke leftist secular atheists must be defeated at all costs or western civilisation will be destroyed. You hate our culture, our heritage, the traditional family you name it
I always thought IanB2 was a nice liberal chap with a dog, so am surprised to learn that he's a woke leftie secular atheist who must be defeated before he destroys western civilisation. God knows what you'd make of a proper leftie socialist like me.
I would prefer a Catholic socialist like John McDonnell to either of you
Skipping back a few comments HY, is this not an odd defence of the Catholic church?
Much of our greatest art, our oldest cathedrals, many ancient universities, schools and hospitals have their origins in the Catholic Church.
My reading of this is that the Catholic church historically accrued such power that it could delimit acceptable cultural expression (art), institute forms of slavery (to build cathedrals) and stymie free expression (at universities).
(Apologies for the Vance-like crassness of the timing of my comment for anyone mourning the Pope).
Without the Catholic church Oxford and Cambridge universities would never have been founded, most of our best cathedrals never built and Michaelangelo not got most of his commissions
Without the Church, Oxford and Cambridge probably wouldn't have wasted their intellectual talents for centuries training priests or have thwarted the establishment of other universities. Nor would they have strangled intellectual thought in this country by crushing anybody who showed any signs of doubting their spurious fairy tales.
As they wouldn’t have been founded in the first place they wouldn’t have been doing anything.
The church did not generate money; it took it. If they had not got that excess wealth, someone else would, and may well have spent it in similar, or even better, ways.
But they didn’t, most wealthy Kings, aristocrats and merchants preferred to spend money on building castles, raising armies and wine, banquets and women
Trinity College, Cambridge, was founded by Henry VIII. King's College by Henry VI. King;s Hall by Edward II. Michaelhouse by a chancellor of the exchequer. Some other colleges were also formed by other non-clerics. So whilst some were also founded by the church, I'd argue you are very wrong. For Cambridge at least...
Though it would be fair to say that these were seen as religious endowments. A more intellectual version of endowing monasteries and other foundations.
The secular nature of University education is a very modern phenomenon.
Watching Albanese and Macron eulogising the Pope, Starmer's evil, heretical, godless silence is deafening!
For those who commiserate, my heart goes out to them on the death of the Pope.
As an individual human, just perhaps.
But there’s no institution on the planet that has inflicted more war and death and misery and abuse upon humanity than the Catholic Church.
Much of our greatest art, our oldest cathedrals, many ancient universities, schools and hospitals have their origins in the Catholic Church. As do charities, orphanages, food banks, homeless shelters etc.
Your comment is symptomatic of why militant woke leftist secular atheists must be defeated at all costs or western civilisation will be destroyed. You hate our culture, our heritage, the traditional family you name it
He's right, though. Millions killed in religious wars; women and minorities repressed; and countless people hurt by the strictures of a bunch of men who craved power over humanity.
And doing some good does not erase wrongs: Jimmy Saville did raise some money for charity, but that does not condone any of the other evil he did okay.
And your very wording: that it needs to be destroyed at all costs - is telling. What 'costs' would you go to 'defeat' the word-salad of things you evidently hate?
Isn’t the theory Savile did all the philanthropy to make up for his noncing ?
Or cover it up. A stroke of psychopath-in-plain-view genius really.
I didn't realise this, it makes the decisions over this privileges even more crazy...
He moved to Frankland after carrying out an earlier attack on prison officers in London's Belmarsh prison in 2020, for which three years and 10 months was added to his sentence.
Who makes the decision? I bet it isn't the front line staff.
It is, they'll consider if a prisoner is eligible to be moved to another prison, then it gets passed up on the chain for approval or rejection.
The reality is the prison estate isn't fit for purpose to deal with these types of prisoners.
We may need to have a UK supermax with specially trained officers.
Or execute them
So you'd be okay with executing Lucy Letby?
Dunno. Edge case
But in a society which is
1 happy to bomb and drone innocent people abroad
2 happy to kill unborn children in the womb
3 happy - it seems - to encourage sad or old people to commit suicide and to facilitate their self murder
Then I find our outrage at the death penalty both effete and illogical
I remember chatting to a Singaporean student. Junkie off his face wandering down the street. I said it was a shame. He said "You should just execute him".
Unhappily, I find myself increasingly pro-death penalty. I believe we should have a referendum on it, and in that referendum there’s a good chance I’d vote Yes
This, as I say, doesn’t make me happy. It’s a bleak evolution, but it may be necessary
On the upside I also believe technology is developing so fast we will - in a few years - be able to surveil and restrict lifers so intensely the noose won’t be needed (tho the villains may ask for it)
It will be solitary confinement enforced by robots that feed you and exercise you and never talk to you. The android guards will be invulnerable to attack. That will be your hideous life sentence until you die
Watching Albanese and Macron eulogising the Pope, Starmer's evil, heretical, godless silence is deafening!
For those who commiserate, my heart goes out to them on the death of the Pope.
As an individual human, just perhaps.
But there’s no institution on the planet that has inflicted more war and death and misery and abuse upon humanity than the Catholic Church.
Much of our greatest art, our oldest cathedrals, many ancient universities, schools and hospitals have their origins in the Catholic Church. As do charities, orphanages, food banks, homeless shelters etc.
Your comment is symptomatic of why militant woke leftist secular atheists must be defeated at all costs or western civilisation will be destroyed. You hate our culture, our heritage, the traditional family you name it
I always thought IanB2 was a nice liberal chap with a dog, so am surprised to learn that he's a woke leftie secular atheist who must be defeated before he destroys western civilisation. God knows what you'd make of a proper leftie socialist like me.
I would prefer a Catholic socialist like John McDonnell to either of you
Skipping back a few comments HY, is this not an odd defence of the Catholic church?
Much of our greatest art, our oldest cathedrals, many ancient universities, schools and hospitals have their origins in the Catholic Church.
My reading of this is that the Catholic church historically accrued such power that it could delimit acceptable cultural expression (art), institute forms of slavery (to build cathedrals) and stymie free expression (at universities).
(Apologies for the Vance-like crassness of the timing of my comment for anyone mourning the Pope).
Without the Catholic church Oxford and Cambridge universities would never have been founded, most of our best cathedrals never built and Michaelangelo not got most of his commissions
Without the Church, Oxford and Cambridge probably wouldn't have wasted their intellectual talents for centuries training priests or have thwarted the establishment of other universities. Nor would they have strangled intellectual thought in this country by crushing anybody who showed any signs of doubting their spurious fairy tales.
As they wouldn’t have been founded in the first place they wouldn’t have been doing anything.
The church did not generate money; it took it. If they had not got that excess wealth, someone else would, and may well have spent it in similar, or even better, ways.
But they didn’t, most wealthy Kings, aristocrats and merchants preferred to spend money on building castles, raising armies and wine, banquets and women
Trinity College, Cambridge, was founded by Henry VIII. King's College by Henry VI. King;s Hall by Edward II. Michaelhouse by a chancellor of the exchequer. Some other colleges were also formed by other non-clerics. So whilst some were also founded by the church, I'd argue you are very wrong. For Cambridge at least...
So the first significant Oxbridge college founded by a King was centuries after the universities were founded and by Henry VI who at the time was considered effete and not good at wars as Kings then were expected to be above all (same for Edward II)
Watching Albanese and Macron eulogising the Pope, Starmer's evil, heretical, godless silence is deafening!
For those who commiserate, my heart goes out to them on the death of the Pope.
As an individual human, just perhaps.
But there’s no institution on the planet that has inflicted more war and death and misery and abuse upon humanity than the Catholic Church.
Much of our greatest art, our oldest cathedrals, many ancient universities, schools and hospitals have their origins in the Catholic Church. As do charities, orphanages, food banks, homeless shelters etc.
Your comment is symptomatic of why militant woke leftist secular atheists must be defeated at all costs or western civilisation will be destroyed. You hate our culture, our heritage, the traditional family you name it
Not much of a Protestant are you?
It is a Catholic but Reformed church. In the culture wars we are united against a common enemy, the militant atheist secular woke left
Since when are atheists militant? I have had Jehovah's Witnesses come to my door. I have had Mormons come to my door. I get leaflets from the local Baptist Church and from the local Gospel Hall. Never had an atheist leaflet or an atheist come to my door.
Some Christians still get upset about the agnostic bus adverts from 2009.
God, buses. I remember buses.
You ‘ad buses?
{prybars lid off a double case of Château de Chasselas}
Watching Albanese and Macron eulogising the Pope, Starmer's evil, heretical, godless silence is deafening!
For those who commiserate, my heart goes out to them on the death of the Pope.
As an individual human, just perhaps.
But there’s no institution on the planet that has inflicted more war and death and misery and abuse upon humanity than the Catholic Church.
Much of our greatest art, our oldest cathedrals, many ancient universities, schools and hospitals have their origins in the Catholic Church. As do charities, orphanages, food banks, homeless shelters etc.
Your comment is symptomatic of why militant woke leftist secular atheists must be defeated at all costs or western civilisation will be destroyed. You hate our culture, our heritage, the traditional family you name it
I always thought IanB2 was a nice liberal chap with a dog, so am surprised to learn that he's a woke leftie secular atheist who must be defeated before he destroys western civilisation. God knows what you'd make of a proper leftie socialist like me.
I would prefer a Catholic socialist like John McDonnell to either of you
Skipping back a few comments HY, is this not an odd defence of the Catholic church?
Much of our greatest art, our oldest cathedrals, many ancient universities, schools and hospitals have their origins in the Catholic Church.
My reading of this is that the Catholic church historically accrued such power that it could delimit acceptable cultural expression (art), institute forms of slavery (to build cathedrals) and stymie free expression (at universities).
(Apologies for the Vance-like crassness of the timing of my comment for anyone mourning the Pope).
Without the Catholic church Oxford and Cambridge universities would never have been founded, most of our best cathedrals never built and Michaelangelo not got most of his commissions
Without the Church, Oxford and Cambridge probably wouldn't have wasted their intellectual talents for centuries training priests or have thwarted the establishment of other universities. Nor would they have strangled intellectual thought in this country by crushing anybody who showed any signs of doubting their spurious fairy tales.
As they wouldn’t have been founded in the first place they wouldn’t have been doing anything.
The church did not generate money; it took it. If they had not got that excess wealth, someone else would, and may well have spent it in similar, or even better, ways.
It did generate money, on a considerable scale, through its use of landed estates which were developed using their own resources of labour (yes, monks) to support economic activity including substantial building works.
In particular, there was a considerable amount of development in the wool trade owing to the work of religious foundations.
And since it tended to spend its money on useful things - architecture, land improvements, managing archives, and indeed also education and welfare - rather than building big armies to go and kill lots of French people, however worthy TSE may find that, it seems unlikely that others would have spent it better.
There are some subjects where PB, for all its excellence in many areas, really falls down. One is where it cannot discuss transgender matters without descending into unpleasant slanging matches, and the other is religion where any discussion seems to become a rapid pile in on any religion based on a level of ignorance and prejudice that would even embarrass Dawkins.
I didn't realise this, it makes the decisions over this privileges even more crazy...
He moved to Frankland after carrying out an earlier attack on prison officers in London's Belmarsh prison in 2020, for which three years and 10 months was added to his sentence.
Who makes the decision? I bet it isn't the front line staff.
It is, they'll consider if a prisoner is eligible to be moved to another prison, then it gets passed up on the chain for approval or rejection.
The reality is the prison estate isn't fit for purpose to deal with these types of prisoners.
We may need to have a UK supermax with specially trained officers.
Or execute them
So you'd be okay with executing Lucy Letby?
Dunno. Edge case
But in a society which is
1 happy to bomb and drone innocent people abroad
2 happy to kill unborn children in the womb
3 happy - it seems - to encourage sad or old people to commit suicide and to facilitate their self murder
Then I find our outrage at the death penalty both effete and illogical
I remember chatting to a Singaporean student. Junkie off his face wandering down the street. I said it was a shame. He said "You should just execute him".
Unhappily, I find myself increasingly pro-death penalty. I believe we should have a referendum on it, and in that referendum there’s a good chance I’d vote Yes
This, as I say, doesn’t make me happy. It’s a bleak evolution, but it may be necessary
On the upside I also believe technology is developing so fast we will - in a few years - be able to surveil and restrict lifers so intensely the noose won’t be needed (tho the villains may ask for it)
It will be solitary confinement enforced by robots that feed you and exercise you and never talk to you. The android guards will be invulnerable to attack. That will be your hideous life sentence until you die
I didn't realise this, it makes the decisions over this privileges even more crazy...
He moved to Frankland after carrying out an earlier attack on prison officers in London's Belmarsh prison in 2020, for which three years and 10 months was added to his sentence.
Who makes the decision? I bet it isn't the front line staff.
It is, they'll consider if a prisoner is eligible to be moved to another prison, then it gets passed up on the chain for approval or rejection.
The reality is the prison estate isn't fit for purpose to deal with these types of prisoners.
We may need to have a UK supermax with specially trained officers.
Or execute them
So you'd be okay with executing Lucy Letby?
Dunno. Edge case
But in a society which is
1 happy to bomb and drone innocent people abroad
2 happy to kill unborn children in the womb
3 happy - it seems - to encourage sad or old people to commit suicide and to facilitate their self murder
Then I find our outrage at the death penalty both effete and illogical
I remember chatting to a Singaporean student. Junkie off his face wandering down the street. I said it was a shame. He said "You should just execute him".
Unhappily, I find myself increasingly pro-death penalty. I believe we should have a referendum on it, and in that referendum there’s a good chance I’d vote Yes
This, as I say, doesn’t make me happy. It’s a bleak evolution, but it may be necessary
On the upside I also believe technology is developing so fast we will - in a few years - be able to surveil and restrict lifers so intensely the noose won’t be needed (tho the villains may ask for it)
It will be solitary confinement enforced by robots that feed you and exercise you and never talk to you. The android guards will be invulnerable to attack. That will be your hideous life sentence until you die
On balance I'd still vote no, but I would vote for much tougher sentencing, even for trivial crime and instant deportation with no chance of appeal for any foreign criminals, even for trivial crimes such as fare evasion on trains etc... we just don't need people like that in the country. They add nothing positive to the nation.
I think the only crime I would bring the death penalty back for is treason with a definition that would catch the likes of Shamina Begum and the other terrorists who went overseas to fight for a foreign enemy and commit acts of terrorism against innocent people.
The UK is seen as a soft target by terrorists and foreign criminals, we should do something about it.
The Trump Slump continues in American markets, open Easter Monday: Stocks fell, with the Dow industrials dropping 1,200 points and on track for their worst April since 1932. The dollar hit fresh multiyear lows against the euro and other major currencies. Yields on longer-term Treasurys rose. Gold surged to a fresh record high.
Watching Albanese and Macron eulogising the Pope, Starmer's evil, heretical, godless silence is deafening!
For those who commiserate, my heart goes out to them on the death of the Pope.
As an individual human, just perhaps.
But there’s no institution on the planet that has inflicted more war and death and misery and abuse upon humanity than the Catholic Church.
Much of our greatest art, our oldest cathedrals, many ancient universities, schools and hospitals have their origins in the Catholic Church. As do charities, orphanages, food banks, homeless shelters etc.
Your comment is symptomatic of why militant woke leftist secular atheists must be defeated at all costs or western civilisation will be destroyed. You hate our culture, our heritage, the traditional family you name it
I always thought IanB2 was a nice liberal chap with a dog, so am surprised to learn that he's a woke leftie secular atheist who must be defeated before he destroys western civilisation. God knows what you'd make of a proper leftie socialist like me.
I would prefer a Catholic socialist like John McDonnell to either of you
Skipping back a few comments HY, is this not an odd defence of the Catholic church?
Much of our greatest art, our oldest cathedrals, many ancient universities, schools and hospitals have their origins in the Catholic Church.
My reading of this is that the Catholic church historically accrued such power that it could delimit acceptable cultural expression (art), institute forms of slavery (to build cathedrals) and stymie free expression (at universities).
(Apologies for the Vance-like crassness of the timing of my comment for anyone mourning the Pope).
Without the Catholic church Oxford and Cambridge universities would never have been founded, most of our best cathedrals never built and Michaelangelo not got most of his commissions
That's not particularly relevant, though.
If you can make an argument that universities in general would not exist, and that no artists would have painted things that would cause us to wonder and delight, then we have an interesting argument.
(I could see, for example, that you might argue that you needed a wealth-concentrating institution such as the Catholic church in order to create the surpluses that made studying in a university or creating an artwork possible.)
Cathedrals, I must admit, I simply don't think are worth the human misery needed to create them.
How boring that would have been
With respect, I'm not sure you have understood my point.
I am agreeing that a world without eg universities and gifted artists would be not only boring but in many respects worthless.
I am challenging you to make an argument that the Catholic church was a necessary ingredient for us to.get to where we are now, rather than a contingent one.
Would the Iliad have been written without the Catholic Church? Would we have had Plato or Socrates? The Epic of Gilgamesh? Some of the finest pyramids built? What about the Old Testament?
Think, man. Think!
Ironically, with the exception of the pyramids we wouldn't have had the actual work any of the examples you cite, because it was the church that preserved them...
"Militant atheist secular woke left" ? Well, that covers a multitude of sins and presumably sinners. I suppose it's possible to be atheist and secular and be on the "right" of politics whatever the terms "left" and "right" mean nowadays other than terms of abuse.
I'm not sure everyone is "happy" to see innocents killed abroad or unborn children killed in the womb but that's why we have political parties and movements. If someone wants to stand on a platform of anti-abortion and pro-death penalty, fine, go ahead, join the democratic process but restoration of the death penalty has been debated in the Commons and always been soundly defeated and while the abortion rules have been tightened, there's never been a serious attempt to instigate a complete ban.
The latest Canadian polling from our old friends Angus Reid has the Liberal lead down from six to five while Research Co's fortnightly poll has the Liberal lead down from eight to five (CPC +2, LPC -1).
I'd really like some regional polling - the sub samples in the Federal polls are really small and probably aren;t telling the whole story. The Liberals seem to be leading in Ontario and to have improved their position in British Columbia while the CPC has strengthened its grip on Alberta but a lot of salt needed.
In Australia the final Leaders' Debate coincices with the start of advance polling tomorrow (already today over there). The latest seat projection off the Freshwater Strategy poll which had the LNP Coalition and Labor tied at 50% in the 2PP polling has the Coalition on 69, Labor on 68, the Greens on 1 and 12 Independents. Given the vagaries of electorate polling, it's impossible to be too confident in those numbers even at this stage.
Looks like the Teals will have the balance of power in Australia
Watching Albanese and Macron eulogising the Pope, Starmer's evil, heretical, godless silence is deafening!
For those who commiserate, my heart goes out to them on the death of the Pope.
As an individual human, just perhaps.
But there’s no institution on the planet that has inflicted more war and death and misery and abuse upon humanity than the Catholic Church.
Much of our greatest art, our oldest cathedrals, many ancient universities, schools and hospitals have their origins in the Catholic Church. As do charities, orphanages, food banks, homeless shelters etc.
Your comment is symptomatic of why militant woke leftist secular atheists must be defeated at all costs or western civilisation will be destroyed. You hate our culture, our heritage, the traditional family you name it
I always thought IanB2 was a nice liberal chap with a dog, so am surprised to learn that he's a woke leftie secular atheist who must be defeated before he destroys western civilisation. God knows what you'd make of a proper leftie socialist like me.
I would prefer a Catholic socialist like John McDonnell to either of you
Skipping back a few comments HY, is this not an odd defence of the Catholic church?
Much of our greatest art, our oldest cathedrals, many ancient universities, schools and hospitals have their origins in the Catholic Church.
My reading of this is that the Catholic church historically accrued such power that it could delimit acceptable cultural expression (art), institute forms of slavery (to build cathedrals) and stymie free expression (at universities).
(Apologies for the Vance-like crassness of the timing of my comment for anyone mourning the Pope).
Without the Catholic church Oxford and Cambridge universities would never have been founded, most of our best cathedrals never built and Michaelangelo not got most of his commissions
Without the Church, Oxford and Cambridge probably wouldn't have wasted their intellectual talents for centuries training priests or have thwarted the establishment of other universities. Nor would they have strangled intellectual thought in this country by crushing anybody who showed any signs of doubting their spurious fairy tales.
As they wouldn’t have been founded in the first place they wouldn’t have been doing anything.
The church did not generate money; it took it. If they had not got that excess wealth, someone else would, and may well have spent it in similar, or even better, ways.
But they didn’t, most wealthy Kings, aristocrats and merchants preferred to spend money on building castles, raising armies and wine, banquets and women
Trinity College, Cambridge, was founded by Henry VIII. King's College by Henry VI. King;s Hall by Edward II. Michaelhouse by a chancellor of the exchequer. Some other colleges were also formed by other non-clerics. So whilst some were also founded by the church, I'd argue you are very wrong. For Cambridge at least...
Henry VIII ascended the throne 516 years ago, today
It's also the 107th anniversary of the Red Baron being shot down and killed
And the 2,777th anniversary of the founding of Rome by Romulus
I didn't realise this, it makes the decisions over this privileges even more crazy...
He moved to Frankland after carrying out an earlier attack on prison officers in London's Belmarsh prison in 2020, for which three years and 10 months was added to his sentence.
Who makes the decision? I bet it isn't the front line staff.
It is, they'll consider if a prisoner is eligible to be moved to another prison, then it gets passed up on the chain for approval or rejection.
The reality is the prison estate isn't fit for purpose to deal with these types of prisoners.
We may need to have a UK supermax with specially trained officers.
Or execute them
So you'd be okay with executing Lucy Letby?
Dunno. Edge case
But in a society which is
1 happy to bomb and drone innocent people abroad
2 happy to kill unborn children in the womb
3 happy - it seems - to encourage sad or old people to commit suicide and to facilitate their self murder
Then I find our outrage at the death penalty both effete and illogical
I remember chatting to a Singaporean student. Junkie off his face wandering down the street. I said it was a shame. He said "You should just execute him".
Unhappily, I find myself increasingly pro-death penalty. I believe we should have a referendum on it, and in that referendum there’s a good chance I’d vote Yes
This, as I say, doesn’t make me happy. It’s a bleak evolution, but it may be necessary
On the upside I also believe technology is developing so fast we will - in a few years - be able to surveil and restrict lifers so intensely the noose won’t be needed (tho the villains may ask for it)
It will be solitary confinement enforced by robots that feed you and exercise you and never talk to you. The android guards will be invulnerable to attack. That will be your hideous life sentence until you die
Given the AI discussions, perhaps a more Minority Report style pre-crime future?
Comments
Yes, everyone with a moderate sized terrier is part of Them.
As if they started this weekend.
How did he know?
Foyles was sold to Waterstones a 7 years ago see https://www.foyles.co.uk/about-us mainly because no-one else was interested at the time.
They were originally founded to allow free and frank discussion of canon law (believe it or not) which is why the first university in England was founded at Oxford which hosted the courts for the diocese of Lincoln.
But you could consider anything you liked - scientific or theological - as long as it was within the university.
The whole point of this was to ensure ideas could be tested and argued among men (sorry ladies) who would be smart enough to spot and root out any errors. It wasn't really until the Reformation that there was any serious attempt by the Catholic church to control them.
What a contrast Heffer's was In Cambridge - they gave me an account and seemingly never minded if I didn't pay. I think it must have been about 5 years after I left that I eventually did settle the bill.
Last week, DHS and Secretary Noem's staff and spokespeople suggested that because Mr. Abrego Garcia had $1,100 in cash on him when arrested outside Home Depot seeking day labor, that was strong evidence that he was a member of MS-13.
I guess that raises a similar question about her $3,000.
https://bsky.app/profile/reichlinmelnick.bsky.social/post/3lndfpwtu4s2w
My tip on no knowledge would be Luis Tagle, former archbishop of Manila, on a evangelisation ticket, relatively liberal but solid on the doctrine.
It certainly doesn't
Surely though, it offers some legal protection to biological women complaining about biological men in women only spaces
This is definitely progress
This weekend seems to be something of a new high.
WHITE HOUSE HAS BEGUN THE SEARCH FOR A NEW SECRETARY OF DEFENSE -NPR
https://x.com/DeItaone/status/1914368345027104786
Something similar undoubtedly.
https://x.com/PressSec
This was the question;
Is a person with a full gender recognition certificate (“GRC”) which recognises that their gender is female, a “woman” for the purposes of the Equality Act 2010 (“EA 2010”)?
I think it used to be a bit later here too.
Just check out the image The Democrats have just Tweeted.
https://x.com/TheDemocrats/status/1914377890566721761
WH Press Secretary claims that the “entire Pentagon” is working against Pete Hegseth.
https://x.com/RpsAgainstTrump/status/1914331671198847158
Okaaay.
They were all recognisably Catholic, and learned, and wisely gifted, yet surrounded by oceans of illiteracy and violence
The Catholic Church encouraged reading and writing, thence came the great universities of Europe - Oxford, Cambridge, Paris, Bologna, Salamanca, et al
He moved to Frankland after carrying out an earlier attack on prison officers in London's Belmarsh prison in 2020, for which three years and 10 months was added to his sentence.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cde2xy2gw4ro
At the time it was notable that the Children in Need producers refused to let him anywhere near their project.
You don't get 3 years added on to your sentence for giving a prison officer a wedgie or a dead arm. It must have been another serious attack.
I have had Jehovah's Witnesses come to my door.
I have had Mormons come to my door.
I get leaflets from the local Baptist Church and from the local Gospel Hall.
Never had an atheist leaflet or an atheist come to my door.
The reality is the prison estate isn't fit for purpose to deal with these types of prisoners.
We may need to have a UK supermax with specially trained officers.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/apr/16/muslim-prisoners-in-england-more-likely-to-be-subjected-to-force-charity-finds
Almost as though Muslim prisoners are, unsurprisingly, more likely to be absolute c***s.
If you can make an argument that universities in general would not exist, and that no artists would have painted things that would cause us to wonder and delight, then we have an interesting argument.
(I could see, for example, that you might argue that you needed a wealth-concentrating institution such as the Catholic church in order to create the surpluses that made studying in a university or creating an artwork possible.)
Cathedrals, I must admit, I simply don't think are worth the human misery needed to create them.
But in a society which is
1 happy to bomb and drone innocent people abroad
2 happy to kill unborn children in the womb
3 happy - it seems - to encourage sad or old people to commit suicide and to facilitate their self murder
Then I find our outrage at the death penalty both effete and illogical
©Jerry Sadowitz.
But HYUFD was arguing a hypothetical where the Catholic Church didn't exist. Are you saying there'd have been no other institution that provided a similar repository ?
It might have done a worse job, of course.
It's an odd argument on both sides, TBH.
Alt history a millennia or more back might be fun fiction, but I don't think it's the basis for any useful conclusions.
That he is one of our foremost philosophers says a lot about how stymied our philosophical tradition was right up until the point at which it was academically acceptable to argue for agnosticism rather than faith.
So many famous philosophers skewed so many of their arguments in order to shoehorn a god into the picture. It's really quite tiresome.
Traditional conservatives of faith are in constant battle with them
It has been said, for example, that competitive sex-segregated sports and single-sex facilities in workplaces, schools and services can operate on the basis of self-identified gender rather than biological sex. This was false before the Supreme Court judgment, and it is even more false now. Indeed if it were true, the appeal would not have been won.
Single-sex facilities are mandatory in workplaces and schools. The judgment has put it beyond doubt that the Equality Act, with other legislation, requires these to be provided according to biological sex.
Akua Reindorf KC is a commissioner for the Equality and Human Rights Commission
https://x.com/AudreySuffolk/status/1914378549030740465
Notably she did not sign off as "writing in a personal capacity", so we can reasonably assume this is the EHRC position, despite all the wishful thinking being spread by peddlers of misinformation.
https://x.com/JamboReido/status/1914266873702625405
If trans people can use it its "mixed sex" then everyone can use it.
See for example: https://x.com/peter_daly/status/1914382215493955636
I am agreeing that a world without eg universities and gifted artists would be not only boring but in many respects worthless.
I am challenging you to make an argument that the Catholic church was a necessary ingredient for us to.get to where we are now, rather than a contingent one.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5dgvPtHNpT4
This, as I say, doesn’t make me happy. It’s a bleak evolution, but it may be necessary
On the upside I also believe technology is developing so fast we will - in a few years - be able to surveil and restrict lifers so intensely the noose won’t be needed (tho the villains may ask for it)
It will be solitary confinement enforced by robots that feed you and exercise you and never talk to you. The android guards will be invulnerable to attack. That will be your hideous life sentence until you die
Seen who?
{offers strange handshake}
"Militant atheist secular woke left" ? Well, that covers a multitude of sins and presumably sinners. I suppose it's possible to be atheist and secular and be on the "right" of politics whatever the terms "left" and "right" mean nowadays other than terms of abuse.
I'm not sure everyone is "happy" to see innocents killed abroad or unborn children killed in the womb but that's why we have political parties and movements. If someone wants to stand on a platform of anti-abortion and pro-death penalty, fine, go ahead, join the democratic process but restoration of the death penalty has been debated in the Commons and always been soundly defeated and while the abortion rules have been tightened, there's never been a serious attempt to instigate a complete ban.
The latest Canadian polling from our old friends Angus Reid has the Liberal lead down from six to five while Research Co's fortnightly poll has the Liberal lead down from eight to five (CPC +2, LPC -1).
I'd really like some regional polling - the sub samples in the Federal polls are really small and probably aren;t telling the whole story. The Liberals seem to be leading in Ontario and to have improved their position in British Columbia while the CPC has strengthened its grip on Alberta but a lot of salt needed.
In Australia the final Leaders' Debate coincices with the start of advance polling tomorrow (already today over there). The latest seat projection off the Freshwater Strategy poll which had the LNP Coalition and Labor tied at 50% in the 2PP polling has the Coalition on 69, Labor on 68, the Greens on 1 and 12 Independents. Given the vagaries of electorate polling, it's impossible to be too confident in those numbers even at this stage.
Previously the prevailing interpretation had been that a “woman” for the purposes of the act was either a biological woman or a trans woman (biologically male) who held a Gender Recognition Certificate.
The Equality and Human Rights Commission intervened in the appeal, arguing that this interpretation caused intractable problems for the rights of women and of lesbian, gay and bisexual people. In its 88-page judgment, the court agreed. The commission’s position was that solving this problem was a matter for parliament. On this the court disagreed, and instead did the job itself.
The Trump Slump continues in American markets, open Easter Monday:
Stocks fell, with the Dow industrials dropping 1,200 points and on track for their worst April since 1932.
The dollar hit fresh multiyear lows against the euro and other major currencies.
Yields on longer-term Treasurys rose.
Gold surged to a fresh record high.
https://x.com/afneil/status/1914401578972225878
Think, man. Think!
https://x.com/maxtempers/status/1914391937819214169
* Bangladesh Nationalist Party
The secular nature of University education is a very modern phenomenon.
A stroke of psychopath-in-plain-view genius really.
{prybars lid off a double case of Château de Chasselas}
In particular, there was a considerable amount of development in the wool trade owing to the work of religious foundations.
And since it tended to spend its money on useful things - architecture, land improvements, managing archives, and indeed also education and welfare - rather than building big armies to go and kill lots of French people, however worthy TSE may find that, it seems unlikely that others would have spent it better.
There are some subjects where PB, for all its excellence in many areas, really falls down. One is where it cannot discuss transgender matters without descending into unpleasant slanging matches, and the other is religion where any discussion seems to become a rapid pile in on any religion based on a level of ignorance and prejudice that would even embarrass Dawkins.
Big Ange P45 incoming
I think the only crime I would bring the death penalty back for is treason with a definition that would catch the likes of Shamina Begum and the other terrorists who went overseas to fight for a foreign enemy and commit acts of terrorism against innocent people.
The UK is seen as a soft target by terrorists and foreign criminals, we should do something about it.
And the 2,777th anniversary of the founding of Rome by Romulus