With the news today did, and how.

It’s bad enough that Pope “king of the paedos” Benedict tries to weasel out of a proper apology for the Irish victims by blaming priest child rape on Secularism, but now, in the most misguided attempt to come out fighting in history, he has decided that faith will help him resist “petty gossip”.

Sorry? Petty Gossip?

When your organisation is being investigated by journalists worldwide, and they are producing documents which YOU SIGNED, that is not “gossip”.

And when we are talking about your organisation’s conspiracy to prevent child rapists from being brought to justice, that is anything but “petty”.

When there is clear evidence that your organisation, and you personally, oversaw the relocation of paedophiles, allowing them to abuse fresh victims, then you have blood on your hands – quite literally, as many of these poor people have committed suicide.

I am sickened that this organisation is not being brought to it’s knees by the criminal courts for large scale perversion of justice – and they thought that they feel empowered to make comments about how other people should live their lives?

It’s beyond belief.

I’m appalled at the attempt, and quite happy with the outcome, but I was having a think about this last night. It’s not actually what I would want to ask Jim Murphy about, if I got the chance. I’m intrugued as to why he thought it would go any differently, but honestly… there’s a more serious question at stake here.

See, I know Jim Murphy – not as a friend, but I went to University at the same time as him (and Ed Byrne too, but that’s another story), and he was a pretty prominent fixture on campus. He was almost universally known as “Megaphone Murphy”, due to the permanent attachment of either a megaphone or a placard. Always involved in organising protests against the Tories and their latest horror policy.

The thing I would love to know, more than anything about atheism or secular politics is this…

Why, when he was a campaigner and protester in his student days, is he happy to serve in a government which is happy to use riot police as shock troops to crush protests?

Why, when he saw protest and activism as a path into politics, and to eventually to rise to be secretary of state for Scotland, is he happy to serve in a government which labels any protester as a “terrorist”?

Why, when he was always to be heard chanting and leading protest about “the people”, was he the man who championed an act through parliament which removed more freedoms and rights from “the people” than almost any other bit of legislation in History?

Seriously Jim, how do you sleep at night? Don’t you cry into your pillow thinking about how completely and utterly you have betrayed the younger you? (not to mention the rest of us)

Back in 1992, when I left University, I didn’t think for one second that I would like to see Megaphone Murphy again – but I would rather that than see what Politician Murphy has become.

the problem is that sparkelbox has just been banned by the government, with educational authorities being advised to block the site until it can be fully checked out… because it is run by a convicted paedophile. That’s unpleasant enough, but when you look at the website itself… there it is, loud and proud in the top left corner – a shiny big glowing ichthus.

So, set up a site full of nice shiny bright things for kids, and proclaim the faith… just don’t mention being a pedo… classy! Where I live just now, there are plenty of businesses who feel the need to plaster an ichthus all over their building/stationary… and it’s actually something that will stop me from buying from them. It’s not that I particularly care about the religion of people I buy stuff and services from.

That’s their business.

On the other hand, when someone goes out of their way to say “buy from me, because I am a christian (or jew, or muslim, or…)” that’s a bit of a turn off right there.

The thing is – even when I was a christian, I didn’t like this – as a believer, this smacks of the money changers in the temple. Reducing your faith to a marketing tool just seems wrong.

Firstly, they rip off artists more than any teenager downloading music ever could, with one sided contracts, stealing royalties etc.

Secondly, they have ushered in ever more draconian laws which will restrict our freedoms online, just so that they don’t have to come up with sales models that suit the age. Even prominent Artists don’t agree that piracy is the problem

There will always be freeloaders who just want something for nothing – but Illegal downloading truly thrived for one reason and one reason only – the copyright industry treated normal consumers like criminals rather than provide a legal way to download music and video that could be freely used on any of our devices.

They are so desperate to control us that they have made illegal downloads attractive. I buy my music from Amazon now because they give me unrestricted MP3 files without DRM, that I can play in the house, in the car, on my Zen… and I would love to do the same with TV shows, but that industry is still desperate to stop me from using content I have paid for as I wish.

it’s been a while since I posted, largely because I have been quite content with the world. Sure, there’s a lot of stuff there to annoy a Scottish Atheist if you look hard enough, but for a while at least, things are ticking along nicely.

Labour has been self destructing nicely, eating itself to death, culminating in them losing Glasgow East to the SNP – good days indeed. The SNP government have been getting on with governing (and doing a darn good job of it) and drawing praise from the Scottish business community to boot.

But this one caught my eye today – I was following the hoo-hah of the Olympics banning the ‘other’ UK flags – the Saltire, St George’s Cross and the Welsh Dragon.. it’s because of Tibet, naturally, but annoying nonetheless. I don’t really have the stomach for waving a Union Jack. So, on the forum, someone linked in the Fair Flags campaign..

The basic upshot of the campaign is that lots of food is labelled as ‘English’, then has a Union Jack added, rather than the English flag – which is the St George’s Cross.

Now this is one I can really get behind – it’s a natural justice thing. I remember as a schoolkid being taught how to make up a Union Jack from the Saltire, St George’s Cross, and the St Patrick’s Cross of Ireland. While we have a Union, we have to remember that we are the United Kingdoms plural, not the United Kingdom singular.

It seems only natural that just the same way a Scotsman would wave a Saltire in support of his team, an Englishman would wave the St George’s cross – and you would expect that just the same way butter from Dumfries and Galloway or cheese from Ayrshire was labelled as local produce with a Saltire, there would be no problem with cider from Somerset, or Bacon from Yorkshire carrying the English flag – loud and proud.

Tesco, on the other hand, thinks otherwise – they claim that this is because Scots and Welsh would not buy produce with an English flag.. well maybe during the world cup qualifiers, but seriously? this is ridiculous. It’s like authorities falling over themselves to avoid offending muslims when the vast majority of muslims just don’t care. A completely non scientific straw poll of opinions here says that this is just wrong – English strawberries in particular are highlighted as being extra juicy: the climate further south is much better for them apparently.

This is basically like the West Lothian question all over again – and in the same way, it’s not a difficult problem. The West Lothian question, of course, is whether Scottish MPs (elected to the UK parliament) should be able to vote on issues affecting only England.. and the answer is obviously no – what moral right does one population have to inflict policies on another population that didn’t vote for them.

And that’s, unfortunately, where the Fair Flags campaign turns  a bit ugly – England is currently enduring a Labour government (well, really, we are all enduring a labour government) that they did not vote for. It’s unfair, and a lot of English people are unhappy about it. I would be too… and I was, when it was happening to us. England voted in Thatcher’s government, Scotland didn’t want her, and she set about dismantling and destroying our industry as punishment. We had the Poll tax inflicted on us two years before England as a trial – because she knew fine well it wouldn’t make a difference: Scotland’s votes didn’t matter to her.

The commentors trot out The Barnett Formula (where Scotland is funded at a higher rate than England), but oddly enough, fail to consider the income to the treasury *FROM* Scotland (hint – Scotland puts in a lot more than it gets out, even when you don’t consider THE OIL. Remember? The Oil off Scotland’s coast?)

All this does is underline that Scotland and England have wildly different electorates – and the ‘Union’ is like the front end of a pantomime horse stitched onto the back end of a pantomime cow. It’s fooling nobody – and it’s time to bring the whole sorry thing to an end.

Oh, and in the meantime, please let Tesco know that Real Scots are not so petty as to avoid fruit and veg because it comes from England.

Denis McKenna – I worked with him in my first real IT job, at the Blood Transfusion Service based in Law Hospital. Denis was one of the developers there – and had a wicked sense of humour.

He suffered from  a degenerative condition which meant that he used a wheelchair and only worked three days a week (much to the annoyance of the management!). It looks very much like he was trapped in the house, and couldn’t get out.

in coding we often have to make little variables for general purposes – looping through some records, or just keeping a count of something. We used to code in Clipper S87 – a language designed for working with dbase databases, and there were a huge number of reserved words (that you can’t use for variable names, because the system handles them in a special way), which included “count”.

We usually abbreviated it to “cnt” – not Denis. He always abbreviated it to “cunt” – again, much to the annoyance of the management.

he was a real character – and the world is a slightly less interesting place today because he’s no longer here.

The taxi driver was quite chatty, talking about going for a walk during the day – we made polite chit chat, despite being quite pleasantly gassed… until it took a rather unpleasant turn.

We discussed being up north at the top of Scotland – Dunnet Head, one of the most beautiful parts of the country. He asked if we had ever seen the Northern Lights (I have – it’s a wonderful thing). Then he asked “Have you seen a shooting star?”.

One of our late night expeditions last year was to go and watch the Leonid shower in November – not the best year, but we saw a few… I answered yes, with a sudden sense of where this was going.

Sure enough, he asked “do you know what that is?”.

My hackles went up… and so would anyone else who has ever “debated” with this strange breed of Muslim who considers themselves a “scholar” whilst really doing little more than regurgitating the same old nonsense. Jen asked him “well that depends – most of them are just bits of rock or old space hardware burning up.”

“no, those are demons trying to enter our atmosphere and being hit with a rock”.

It only went downhill from there. He asserted that the quran was flawless and everything in it had been scientifically proven (I insisted that this was absolutely not the case).

He then launched off on another wackjob explanation – again involving “djinns” – before I really had heard too much. I came up with the argument which got him to shut up – which I was quite pleased with considering how much fine Islay malt I had consumed…

Those explanations are obviously just the people of the first and second century trying to explain the world around them in a way that made sense to them. Now that we have tools like science to examine the world, we don’t need books of old myths any more.

He didn’t speak again until we made it home…

naturally, they are somewhat upset… why? because they KNOW that it’s a pile of nonsense.

about blooming time!!

Being an Atheist trying to make a difference can be a fairly lonely pursuit – and that’s here in Scotland, a country where there are a lot of us! We live in an incredibly free environment where Atheism is, if not actually promoted, certainly accepted. Our lot appears to be better than our colleagues in the United States, for instance.

That’s always one of my key reasons for doing this – for being involved in things like godless heathens and so on. I feel a bit of responsibility that I should give something back to the Atheist and Secular community.

It’s kinda cool then, to get a reminder of just how many of us there are – to realise that Atheists are not in any way a small group. The best one I have seen in a long time is the Atheist Blogroll

There are now in excess of 650 blogs listed there, and I have spent a couple of happy hours trawling through just a handful. I’m quite happy that my own little efforts are now included.

Together, we Atheists are strong!

Blair says Politicians sidestep questions on God because…

And what do you know – he’s right on every point.

Normal people don’t talk to voices in their head, or look for fantastical explanations for everything. When I see some murderer on the news, I don’t think “wow, the devil must have made him do that”.  People like Blair who see god in everything ARE weird, and it’s questionable whether someone who suffers such delusions should be in charge of, oh, nuclear weapons for instance?

There is, indeed, an assumption that these people engage in a cultish interaction with their religion before taking a decision. Otherwise what was all that business about demanding a “free” vote over the Human Fertilisation and Embryo bill for catholic MPs? It was precisely to allow them to have a “cultish” interaction with their religion, so that they could be told how to vote by a priest, rather than the labour whip.

Third, they DO want to impose their religion on others. That’s why Blair allowed people like Vardy to get control of Academy schools for a paltry donation, and push their own religious doctrines. If they didn’t want to impose their religion on others, why do the MPs with “faith” insist that I have to suffer a painful death rather than opting to end my own life with dignity? Why does their religion mean that I cannot choose the health care options that I wish to use?

And of course, the religious DO believe that they are better than everyone else!! witness Hypocrite Cardinal O’Brien, lecturing scientists about basic morality (this from an organisation which presided over the sexual abuse of children, and covered it up). These people believe that their belief in the supernatural gives them a straight line to the moral high ground, when frankly nothing could be farther from the truth.

Finally, and most troubling of all… Blair says that the religious politician can “somehow messianically trying to co-opt God to bestow a divine legitimacy on your politics”.

And of course, Tony, when you prayed with George W Bush for guidance before launching an illegal and ill conceived invasion of Iraq, then tried to justify this on UK television by indicating that you answer to God, not the people, that’s now what you were doing, was it?

Bloody Hypocrite.

Ironically, in trying to rally support for the cause, Blair shows us in the clearest possible terms precisely why we do NOT need more faith in public life.