Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Atheist propaganda
The fight back against religious indoctrination has finally begun. A Guardian columnist has organised some atheist advertising for London Buses after being angered by a pro Christianity ad she saw on a bus. The advert promoted a website with your standard, rapture, burn in hell, sin sin sin type tripe.
Now, the pro-atheism ad, funded by more than £10,000 from the public and matched by God Delusion author Dr Richard Dawkins, will tell Londoners, "There's probably no God, now stop worrying and enjoy your life." The anti God ads will adorn 30 London buses for about a month.
A Radio 5 Live phone in has already elicited such comments as, "our religious group raised more money than yours", "I find being told there's no God very offensive" and "this just proves there is a God because you feel the need to defend yourselves." One dissenter did have a point when they mentioned the sign says "probably no God", thus, indicating the atheists were in fact agnostics.
I back this advertising for almost the same reasons that Prof Hawkins gives. For too long us atheists have been told if we don't believe in religion then fine, just ignore it. But then we have to put up with religious people piping up on matters of politics, morals, sport, environmentalism etc... not to mention their tax breaks and instant access to power and money. I also believe a lot of religious people don't really have any faith in god, they just like to belong to a nice club that brings companionship, approval, a good sing-a-along and most importantly tea & biscuits.
Ultimately until there's a separation of church and state and a ban on the promotion of any religious material outside of churches I think we should fight back. The response is not an admission of belief in god (why should I cap up the G for someone that doesn't exist?), it is an admission of worry that the deluded are allowed to continue their program of brainwashing un-hindered while decent moral people are belittled for their logical views that religion does more harm than good.
While forming organised anti-religious groups and promoting counter propaganda is a little ironic, it is becoming more and more necessary for seeing off the very one sided warped view of life that many children and influenceable people get. If they start to realise that large sections of society have quietly lived good moral lives as atheists then maybe we can stop the increasing potency of religious thought in this country. I just wish they'd remove the word "probably" from that ad.
The fight back against religious indoctrination has finally begun. A Guardian columnist has organised some atheist advertising for London Buses after being angered by a pro Christianity ad she saw on a bus. The advert promoted a website with your standard, rapture, burn in hell, sin sin sin type tripe.
Now, the pro-atheism ad, funded by more than £10,000 from the public and matched by God Delusion author Dr Richard Dawkins, will tell Londoners, "There's probably no God, now stop worrying and enjoy your life." The anti God ads will adorn 30 London buses for about a month.
A Radio 5 Live phone in has already elicited such comments as, "our religious group raised more money than yours", "I find being told there's no God very offensive" and "this just proves there is a God because you feel the need to defend yourselves." One dissenter did have a point when they mentioned the sign says "probably no God", thus, indicating the atheists were in fact agnostics.
I back this advertising for almost the same reasons that Prof Hawkins gives. For too long us atheists have been told if we don't believe in religion then fine, just ignore it. But then we have to put up with religious people piping up on matters of politics, morals, sport, environmentalism etc... not to mention their tax breaks and instant access to power and money. I also believe a lot of religious people don't really have any faith in god, they just like to belong to a nice club that brings companionship, approval, a good sing-a-along and most importantly tea & biscuits.
Ultimately until there's a separation of church and state and a ban on the promotion of any religious material outside of churches I think we should fight back. The response is not an admission of belief in god (why should I cap up the G for someone that doesn't exist?), it is an admission of worry that the deluded are allowed to continue their program of brainwashing un-hindered while decent moral people are belittled for their logical views that religion does more harm than good.
While forming organised anti-religious groups and promoting counter propaganda is a little ironic, it is becoming more and more necessary for seeing off the very one sided warped view of life that many children and influenceable people get. If they start to realise that large sections of society have quietly lived good moral lives as atheists then maybe we can stop the increasing potency of religious thought in this country. I just wish they'd remove the word "probably" from that ad.
Thursday, August 21, 2008
Rip off Britain
It's long been said that stuff is unfairly expensive here in Blighty. But now with the credit crunch certain things have reached new levels of stupidity. I just paid £2.90 for a glass of coke in a Huddersfield restaurant. I think that's the most I've ever paid, including the days when I frequented the pubs and clubs of Belgravia and Mayfair.
Why do we put up with it? It's not like we earn double what the Americans or the Germans do or are taxed half as much? It's not like our waitresses and kitchen staff are all on the path to riches, most are still paid minimum wage.
As a business graduate I should be able to come up with the answer but it's looking like I'm going to fail this exam as I just don't get it. Labour say that before the current economic cock up they oversaw ten years of constant growth. Well that may be true in macro-economic terms but it's looking like the gap between rich and poor is wider than ever before. If you vote Labour because the Tories won't help the poor well it's time to think again, because the man who just provided me my coke, i.e the millionaire businessman just put a 3000% mark up on my drink whereas the girl who served me it is earning less than she would have under evil Thatcher. Time to vote Lib Dem I would suggest...
I'd write more but my laptop is broken and I can't afford a new one...thanks to Labour
It's long been said that stuff is unfairly expensive here in Blighty. But now with the credit crunch certain things have reached new levels of stupidity. I just paid £2.90 for a glass of coke in a Huddersfield restaurant. I think that's the most I've ever paid, including the days when I frequented the pubs and clubs of Belgravia and Mayfair.
Why do we put up with it? It's not like we earn double what the Americans or the Germans do or are taxed half as much? It's not like our waitresses and kitchen staff are all on the path to riches, most are still paid minimum wage.
As a business graduate I should be able to come up with the answer but it's looking like I'm going to fail this exam as I just don't get it. Labour say that before the current economic cock up they oversaw ten years of constant growth. Well that may be true in macro-economic terms but it's looking like the gap between rich and poor is wider than ever before. If you vote Labour because the Tories won't help the poor well it's time to think again, because the man who just provided me my coke, i.e the millionaire businessman just put a 3000% mark up on my drink whereas the girl who served me it is earning less than she would have under evil Thatcher. Time to vote Lib Dem I would suggest...
I'd write more but my laptop is broken and I can't afford a new one...thanks to Labour
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Speaking Freely
"Hey Toby. Brilliant when we can just fucking ___ and then paste it straight onto blogs(?) but for now I think this could be the future. People can cut and paste this copy and edit it and it'll be ready for news"
spoken through SpinVox
Speaking Freely
"This new software could be invaluable for answering call reports. As in reports without any time to the type of you know breaking news. They can phone the service and in seconds the report will be on the blog where ___ can cut and paste the report and then it's the news so I think this could be the future"
spoken through SpinVox
Friday, August 01, 2008
Cut backs?
Tomorrow's paper will have been written by just two reporters. Usually there would be 7 or 8.
Wednesday, July 09, 2008
Speed
Huddersfield based road safety charity Brake are often sending us rogues of the press sanctimonious statements about how drivers should slow down.
I have more than once joked in the office that I was going to set up a rival road safety group called Accelerate and this week I think I have accidentally proved myself right.
Now I respect many people die needlessly at the hands of speeding drivers but I'm sorry I find driving slowly more dangerous.
Due to the current fuel crisis and credit crunch double whammy I have been desperately trying to save a few extra quid a week by driving slower than a pensioner in a clapped out Rover 200 diesel towing a rusty caravan to Bognor.
This has led to me hanging with the 18 wheelers in the inside lane of the M62 and M621 at a yawn inducing 58ish mph.
But more than once over the past month I've closed my eyes for more than a nano-second due to the soporific effects of chugging along at such a slow pace.
I also find it hard not to drift around my lane and it's difficult to concentrate on my mirrors - my inner monologue often dominating my thoughts.
There has been no gesticulating at other drivers, no tail-gating, hard accelerating or worrying about dastardly speed cameras.
I've arrived at my destinations totally chilled out usually feeling a bit sleepy.
In short I'm a danger on the road!
You see when we drive faster we have to concentrate and thus we perform better.
The sooner I get back to thrashing around at questionable and possibly illegal speeds the safer I and everyone else will be!
Huddersfield based road safety charity Brake are often sending us rogues of the press sanctimonious statements about how drivers should slow down.
I have more than once joked in the office that I was going to set up a rival road safety group called Accelerate and this week I think I have accidentally proved myself right.
Now I respect many people die needlessly at the hands of speeding drivers but I'm sorry I find driving slowly more dangerous.
Due to the current fuel crisis and credit crunch double whammy I have been desperately trying to save a few extra quid a week by driving slower than a pensioner in a clapped out Rover 200 diesel towing a rusty caravan to Bognor.
This has led to me hanging with the 18 wheelers in the inside lane of the M62 and M621 at a yawn inducing 58ish mph.
But more than once over the past month I've closed my eyes for more than a nano-second due to the soporific effects of chugging along at such a slow pace.
I also find it hard not to drift around my lane and it's difficult to concentrate on my mirrors - my inner monologue often dominating my thoughts.
There has been no gesticulating at other drivers, no tail-gating, hard accelerating or worrying about dastardly speed cameras.
I've arrived at my destinations totally chilled out usually feeling a bit sleepy.
In short I'm a danger on the road!
You see when we drive faster we have to concentrate and thus we perform better.
The sooner I get back to thrashing around at questionable and possibly illegal speeds the safer I and everyone else will be!
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Why go to war for oil and then make it so expensive that your citizen's can't afford it? Today, hauliers from across the country delivered a coffin to Downing Street, warning the Government that it is killing the industry.
A haulage boss told the media that his monthly fuel costs had gone up by £30,000 a month since November.
This is not good.
It's time for the Govt to act. I don't know how, perhaps slash the taxes on fuel and find the money somewhere else?
And let's not tax the poor this time please.
What annoys me even more is the mis-judged opinion that this is great for the environment and will reduce our CO2 emmissions.
Utter rubbish - no one is driving less (yet), it's just costing them a lot more money and hurting the leisure and retail industries, as people cut back on fun and luxury items.
British industry is being made less competitive and at the end of the day its going to hurt everyone.
A haulage boss told the media that his monthly fuel costs had gone up by £30,000 a month since November.
This is not good.
It's time for the Govt to act. I don't know how, perhaps slash the taxes on fuel and find the money somewhere else?
And let's not tax the poor this time please.
What annoys me even more is the mis-judged opinion that this is great for the environment and will reduce our CO2 emmissions.
Utter rubbish - no one is driving less (yet), it's just costing them a lot more money and hurting the leisure and retail industries, as people cut back on fun and luxury items.
British industry is being made less competitive and at the end of the day its going to hurt everyone.
Tuesday, April 01, 2008
Nuts and Eggs
Few things have been annoying me more than nuts and eggs lately. The nuts are the NUT, who in my view are nuts. Never has a union acronym been more apt as these self rightious teachers have voted to strike in a bid for a 10% pay-rise. I can't be bothered to look up the exact figures but I believe nurses recently got about 2.9% and the cops got 2.7% staggering up to about 3.2 or something like that.
Cops and nurses work 40-50 hr weeks + with five weeks of holiday. Teachers get 12 weeks of holiday and work nice regular hours.
Now I'm not criticising teachers' work as I sure as hell wouldn't fancy it, but voting for a pay-rise more than triple that of everyone else just loses you all credibility. It is either incredibly naive or they're hoping a strike threat for 10% will get them 3-4%. A gutsy piece of negotiating considering the cops and nurses have both marched on Westminster and got not a penny more.
And at the end of the day, as crap as it is to work for a so called public service, the pay and conditions tend to be a lot better than they are for the majority of private sector jobs.
So NUTs, yes everyone believes you when you say teaching is getting harder, but come on, suck it up and get on with it. If the Army, cops and nurses can do it, so can you!
Now to eggs, or to be more specific, embryos. Religious types, specifically Catholics, and other cold hearted types, are calling for a ban to stem cell research. They object to the idea of human and animal cells being mixed. The fact that the hybrid cell will be 99.9% human does nothing to ease their worries that mad scientists are on a mission to create some kind of mutant being.
I would say suspicions of such subterfuge are entirely illogical and completely lacking in compassion for humanity. What are you afraid of? This is not a life - it's a bunch of cells - 99% of which are of human origin. You're happy enough to mix human and animal cells when you eat your roast dinner. I just don't get such irrational thought processes? Why do you want to punish people with painful debilitating diseases just because you don't like the idea of something you don't really understand? It staggers me that time after time, so called Christian ideals involve increasing the pain and suffering of others just in case something someone progressive has done for the greater good might offend God, or just isn't right.
And for those of you who aren't religious and are still against it, get over yourselves, why does your instinct that it's wrong come above the health and sanity of critically ill people? I really am yet to hear a reasoned argument against this science and I have a really really big problem with that. When I was kid I didn't like onions. I had no reason not to like onions other than I didn't like the idea of them and that I was a stupid kid. I didn't understand onions because I had no experience of eating them or cooking with them. But then I grew up and now I eat them all the time. Why don't people trust genetic scientists? I think they must have watched too many monster movies. What other reason could there be?
Few things have been annoying me more than nuts and eggs lately. The nuts are the NUT, who in my view are nuts. Never has a union acronym been more apt as these self rightious teachers have voted to strike in a bid for a 10% pay-rise. I can't be bothered to look up the exact figures but I believe nurses recently got about 2.9% and the cops got 2.7% staggering up to about 3.2 or something like that.
Cops and nurses work 40-50 hr weeks + with five weeks of holiday. Teachers get 12 weeks of holiday and work nice regular hours.
Now I'm not criticising teachers' work as I sure as hell wouldn't fancy it, but voting for a pay-rise more than triple that of everyone else just loses you all credibility. It is either incredibly naive or they're hoping a strike threat for 10% will get them 3-4%. A gutsy piece of negotiating considering the cops and nurses have both marched on Westminster and got not a penny more.
And at the end of the day, as crap as it is to work for a so called public service, the pay and conditions tend to be a lot better than they are for the majority of private sector jobs.
So NUTs, yes everyone believes you when you say teaching is getting harder, but come on, suck it up and get on with it. If the Army, cops and nurses can do it, so can you!
Now to eggs, or to be more specific, embryos. Religious types, specifically Catholics, and other cold hearted types, are calling for a ban to stem cell research. They object to the idea of human and animal cells being mixed. The fact that the hybrid cell will be 99.9% human does nothing to ease their worries that mad scientists are on a mission to create some kind of mutant being.
I would say suspicions of such subterfuge are entirely illogical and completely lacking in compassion for humanity. What are you afraid of? This is not a life - it's a bunch of cells - 99% of which are of human origin. You're happy enough to mix human and animal cells when you eat your roast dinner. I just don't get such irrational thought processes? Why do you want to punish people with painful debilitating diseases just because you don't like the idea of something you don't really understand? It staggers me that time after time, so called Christian ideals involve increasing the pain and suffering of others just in case something someone progressive has done for the greater good might offend God, or just isn't right.
And for those of you who aren't religious and are still against it, get over yourselves, why does your instinct that it's wrong come above the health and sanity of critically ill people? I really am yet to hear a reasoned argument against this science and I have a really really big problem with that. When I was kid I didn't like onions. I had no reason not to like onions other than I didn't like the idea of them and that I was a stupid kid. I didn't understand onions because I had no experience of eating them or cooking with them. But then I grew up and now I eat them all the time. Why don't people trust genetic scientists? I think they must have watched too many monster movies. What other reason could there be?
Labels: catholic, embryo, NUT, religion, stem cell, teachers
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
I recommend this column by my colleague Barry Gibson. He distills the recent comments by bushy brows Williams down in a very clear yet compelling way. No doubt he'll be writing for the Guardian before too long.
