So, it looks like St Tony Blair will finally admit to what seems to be the worst kept secret in Politics – that he is a Roman Catholic.
To a certain extent, this is not news – it has been spoken about since 2004 (although denied vigorously at the time, of course) however, people are entitled to believe in whatever crazy old garbage they want.
Where that becomes a problem, of course, is where they have executive power over a government and seek to worm their religious nonsense into public policy. You can point to an increase in the emphasis put on faith schools, despite the evidence that they harm social cohesion, or the greater influence that fringe groups – and we really do mean fringe groups here – have enjoyed to the highest level of power, but that’s not the worst.
The most unsettling discovery for me has been the revelation by Lord Harrison that the government has been adding deliberately anti secular language into it’s documents, such as “Building Civil Renewal: A review of Government support for community capacity building and proposals for change” – pulled from the home office website after Lord Harrison mentioned it – which contained this little gem:
“by preparing to mount publicity and media-handling strategies to answer adverse criticism from the secular quarter”
Now, hang on a minute here! Nearly sixty percent of the UK population is secularist – higher if you take on board the various surveys that the Humanist Society has published in recent years.
It’s bad enough that Bliar has been pushing his religious nonsense for the past ten years – and making our country a less free, more divisive place in the process – but to find out that his government has been deliberately briefing departments to ignore the views of atheists and secularists like me?
Time for some action, I think.