Dangerous times...

Some people are so mad it is almost impossible to take them seriously – unfortunately we have to take them seriously, because they are so damned dangerous! http://www.patheos.com/blogs/progressivesecularhumanist/2014/06/muslims-outraged-after-saudi-soldier-puts-foot-on-holy-rock/ That’s a shame. Much that Islam does raises few eyebrows (because it’s so patently nuts!) these days (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-27633227; http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-27619669; http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2510542/Britains-white-honour-killing-Teenager-brutally-murdered-Muslim-lover-exposing-relationship-family.html) and we in the UK seem so damnably sensitive to not upset ‘their’ sensitivities. This results in the UK being trampled, legally and socially, and it is getting worse, because few people are in a position to stand up and object. The UKIP successes in the recent MEP elections raises a few eyebrows, too. Are they racist? Are they left wing or right wing? And who cares – really, who cares? Not even 40% of those who could vote did vote! That means that fewer than 40% of the British public have bothered, and made their stamp, and the other 60% have got to put up with the results. And this is a democracy? I think it’s a failing democracy, and it is sadder by the fact that we are supposed to be the home of democracy and decent elections. It will be interesting to see what happens this time next year, at the UK elections. Will UKIP do damage, or will the fickle UK public fall back on the two-party scenario? We shall see… The current power-plays around the world are a real threat to world peace – we have had centuries of blood and tears, and having survived the mess of the 1900’s I hoped that the 21st century would be a time of enlightenment, not a reversion to primitive mentality from hundreds of years ago. Whatever happens in the elections – and I include the USA ones, which are not far away – is vital for the next few decades. Do we submit to ancient ideologies that honestly have no place in the modern world, or do we identify borders and limits, and enforce them? In spite of the limitations of the modern political systems in the West, they are the best that we have! To allow Islam to destroy is literally suicide for millions of people, and it must be prevented. We must have decent legal processes in place for all of us to survive.

A waste of good Oxygen

There are people on this planet who clearly should not be. On this planet, that is. It would be better for all if they were under it (about 6 feet will do) or off it completely. It's not hard to find these 'people' (I use the term loosely...). They are animals, with no real understanding of the world today. They live in some centuries-old mentality, and expect all others to accept this! http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/05/05/boko-haram-girls-nigeria-kidnap_n_5267267.html?1399303308&icid=maing-grid7|ukt3|dl1|sec1_lnk2%26pLid%3D262236 These animals are a waste of good Oxygen. They really would not be missed if we could move them to the moon, or somewhere else.

War is declared!

Just in case you are someone who has not yet heard, the war has been declared. War? What? A war, declared? Where is this war, I hear you ask? It is all around you, people – all around. All you have to do is open your eyes, and take a look – take a good look. Just to confuse you, it is not one of those ‘offence’ wars, one where one side tries to beat the crap out of the other. It is a very subtle war, one that has been developing for the last few decades. It is a war of ideologies, where my ‘God’ is better than your ‘God;, or better than your ‘no-God’. It is a war that pitches a dark, hidden foe against many main-stream countries – notably what we currently call the West. It is in the press, mainly using Islam as the main antagonist, but it is more widespread, and far more ‘dirty’ then we first thought. In the USA, that so-called ‘bastion’ of humanity, the country with the moral high-ground (it does not have the moral high-ground, by the way. It has not had that for many years) we find that the two main parties – the Republicans and the Democrats are at war, fighting for the next election to go their way. The dirty tricks abound, and the Republicans (how does anyone actually vote for these people?) are out to control your lives, from the top down. The war that has been running for some years now is being fought over control – it is little different to the ideals of early Russia where the elite kept the rest in ignorance for decade after decade. It continues still, in other guises, true, but it is still the same war, the same battles. The two main parties are poles apart: http://www.diffen.com/difference/Democrat_vs_Republican In Britain we have recently been told that people want the Christian ‘way of life’ back into the main-stream. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/21/jack-straw-support-david-cameron-christian-britain Why? In the name of whatever you may hold holy, why? I had to read this, with a shock at some of the phrasing: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/apr/17/christianity-compels-me-to-make-difference We are still faced with Governments and their ministers promoting their faith-based agendas – if it is of a faith, then it must be OK, somehow acceptable. This brings me neatly on to the depressing subject of the Middle East. Almost all of those countries are despotic, ruthless, religious-doctrine ruled. And it shows. We have Saudi Arabia and all the nightmares of that country, Iran, with its ever-closer nuclear program, and all the rest. I will include a nuclear Israel in this list, as it is physically within the Middle East, but may as well be a million miles from it, and centuries ahead of the level of the thinking for that area. I see no reason to trust any single country within that area, except Israel. They truly stand alone, against all their neighbours. The current fiasco of the USA government has not helped them recently. Any government, wherever it is, but be a secular one. To be a government run on religious doctrine and other antiquated ideas is to damn that country – it simply does not belong in the 21st century!

Religion? You call this a Religion? Nah, I'll pass.

I suppose that, after the 'wonders' of Christianity, I just had to have a few words about its sort-of cousin, Islam. This is the one that preaches that it is a religion of peace, all the while stoning women to death in obscure villages in Pakistan, and burning people as witches elsewhere. I could easily find a fuller list of modern-day horrors from this faith. In the 21st century! I will state here that I am sure I have worked with followers of Islam, and I either haven't known or haven't cared. They have been really nice people, a joy to know. Elsewhere we can only recoil in horror at the news entries which assault us on a daily basis. Sunni and Shi'ite simply do not get along, and the other denominations (yes, there are a few: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam#Denominations) simply cannot agree on the ground rules. Every week in Afghanistan or Iraq someone has blown up a market-place, killing dozens, and injuring dozens more. This is what passes for 'normal' in some parts of the world. In the time that we have had so far of the 21st century it has been something of a nightmare. That horrific day in the USA that we call 9/11 brought it home to the world - terror is here, and now. It is no longer in some far-off country that we simply couldn't point to - it is in the town of city that you live in! Yes, there is a list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_terrorism#21st_century I remember the London 2005 only too well – one of my daughters sent me a text, saying that she was alright, and up to then I hadn’t heard. So no-one is safe, these days, and it all stems from Islam. Or does it? What is this Islam? If you read up on it (and I am no expert!) then it is the revelations told to Muhammed by Gabriel, and presumably others. A good insight is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam although it tends to go on a bit… The overall result of this is that like all the other faiths, Islam cannot agree! A branch of Islam is at odds with another branch or Islam, in the same way that the Catholics and the Protestants of Northern Ireland are both Christian, but disagree enormously on just about everything! If any faith cannot agree within itself, then how are we expected to take it seriously? How are we expected to listen to any form of discussion from these different sects? Anyway, back to Islam… look up Sharia law – it is the form of internal legal processes that Islam has. On the face of it, it would seem to be a good idea, as it would take a lot of the pressure off the already strained British legal system. But then you start to investigate, to look behind the scenes… what does this Sharia ‘law’ actually offer? Not much it seems. Islam is a faith that defaults all women to the class of second-rate – no woman can have the status of a man – it’s in the print! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_Islam I really think that state and faith have no part to play in each others lives: http://www.secularism.org.uk/what-is-secularism.html http://www.light-of-life.com/eng/reveal/ http://www.islamswomen.com/ and then reality will creep in: http://www.answering-islam.org/Authors/Arlandson/women_inferior.htm http://www.clarionproject.org/understanding-islamism/womens-rights-under-sharia the articles, and people you may speak to, will promote the equality, but in reality there is no such thing. Islam is a farce, damning all women be second class – and worse!

Religion? Nah, I'll pass...:(

Religion. There, I have started, and so I'll finish. What is this 'religion' thing? Point by point, if anyone would ever look at it, it fails, miserably. You are not born a Christian person, anymore than you are born an Islamic person or a Jewish person, or any one of the hundreds of other flavours of Religion. You are, most likely, someone who is born with complete innocence, a total lack of understanding of hatred, bigotry, and Religion. What are these things to you, when you have just been born? They are nothing. Unfortunately, whatever household you are born into will have its own history of 'sheeple' - no-one really analyses it, or gives it any kind of rational explore. Your father may well be Christian, as his father was before him, and so on, for as long as the records will show. You are then exposed to the Church, and effectively brainwashed for the next few years. You will be told that this is the right way to do things. In fact, you will be told that this is the only way to do things! The exposure to the Bible will be selective - you will not get to see the Dark Side of the Bible, unless you actually sit down, and read it through, cover to cover. You will certainly not be told of the many inconsistencies within those pages - how one book tells you one thing, and then that is contradicted by somewhere else. Back when I was growing up, we only had Christianity, and in the sleepy suburbia that I got to know there was virtually no exposure to anything other than Christianity. We had school assembly, all sang lahdida, said the prayers, etc, etc, much as we did in Church. So, what is this Bible? The version we have - version! That's a good start. The word of God, and we are looking at a particular version of the word of God! Anyway, the version we mainly use is this King James one - http://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/. This is where we get into muddy waters. Point number one - the Bible was most definitely NOT written in English! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_James_Version. The Bible is a collection of various texts, all from various sources. Whatever happened to this, then? Talk about selective editing! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_apocrypha I really doubt that the translators would have been impartial, as they were all (I don't doubt) extremely intelligent people, obviously capable of dealing with more than just English, but they were of the Church! Since they were all Clergy, how accurate and impartial would their translations have been? Seriously, if you think for a moment that they would have done a good professional job of translating, then you are a fool! So we have a Bible that has been translated from previous translations, possibly quite a few times, by different people, in different centuries, each with different ‘reasons’, so how accurate is this Word of God? Since we have some of the history http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vetus_Latina is shocking reading, as it outlines some of the starting points which eventually lead up to the current Bible. Then came http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vulgate and along the way http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hexapla, and http://jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/11765-origen#374 and http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Catholic_Encyclopedia_%281913%29/Hexapla We clearly have a Bible which has grown over centuries, been changed, added to (and one must assume deleted from?) by many, many people. How can you truly say that the modern interpretation of the writings that amount to the current Bible can be even remotely the Word of God?

Amicable separation? Divorce? Ha! Sort that paperwork out!

Many years ago my wife and I split up. After wasting my time for 9 months going to Relate it turned out that she had already made her mind up. I was appallingly down, so miserable and most likely depressed, and she walked all over me. She took 75% of everything - we sold the house, she moved into a 250,000 house, with no mortgage, and the salary that she had been siphoning away for over a year, and I walked away with about 90,000. I then had to get a mortgage of around 88,000 to get a small house. After three years of this I had had enough, and filed for divorce. What elese? She wants nothing to do with me, nor do any of her family - not a single person called me, dropped me a line...nothing. They just left me to drown. Having been trampled at the separation, I though I had put the paperwork in place so that no-one would be making claims later on - I have my pensions to take care of! She remarried, and then after a while I did, too (not to each other!) A word to the wise, for anyone who has separated or divorced, and left a joint life policy running. Cancel it. It may be that you lose out on quite a bit of money, but the alternative is that you let it run for the duration of the policy, and then find out that the ex-partner is still entitled to half of the payout! That ex-partner may very well have paid nothing into the policy for its time (never paid a penny in premiums) but they are on the policy, and therefore 'entitled' to half. It all depends on what your solicitor may (or may not) have done, should have tried to sort out the finances at the separation or divorce. Did they get the right phrasing in - no future claims, that sort of thing? How good at grabbing your money can your ex-partner be? Was it a 'civilised' separation, or did they take you for almost everything, and then still want more? It's very sad, the way some people behave. I have contacted my solicitor, but from what I can find on the web I am not optimistic.

It's a very difficulat time for so many people across this tiny planet. In the last few days we have heard that the UK and other countries (USA among them) are considering some form of military intervention in Syria. Say what? They have been having civil war in Syria for ages, killing and being killed on all sides. Not too many year ago and various governments lied to their populations over the so-called WMD in Iraq (there were none) and here we are thinking of going in to yet another Middle East country! While I symathise with the thousands who are caught in the middle of that unholy mess I can't look forward to more of our soldiers getting shipped off to Syria. What will the body count be over there? :(