Tacitus.

Never in the history of the civilised world have so many laws been enacted in any nation as has been the case in the United Kingdom during the last decade. It is not just that we have had the greatest amounts of (largely useless and often downright vindictive) laws fom the Blair tyranny, but countless further laws have poured in from the power-grabbing imperialism of the EU.

Perhaps the last word should go to Tacitus (AD 55-130):

"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws!"

Trust the Beeb!

A 'gay' mass from San Francisco is to be shown on TV; 50 minutes of quality viewing from a Catholic Church in downtown San Francisco.
The word 'abomination' readily springs to mind.






LINKS: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=450991&in_page_id=1770


http://www.pinknews.co.uk/news/view.php?id=3745


http://www.anglican-mainstream.net/?p=1608

This time it's personal.

I start this entry at 3-50, 20 minutes after becoming a victim of crime. My son's sports car was broken into. It was in our drive 'for safety's sake' as he is currently away in Malawi until early next week.

The quarter light had been forced and the alarm eventually scared off the intruder who left 2 screwdrivers behind - hopefully with fingerprints, I thought. A pause for reflection and then you realise it just does not matter.

Somebody has 'gone equipped', in the middle of the night, wantonly and calculatedly prepared to break, enter and steal.

They have made a sinister, moral choice to damage the life of another human being in order to meet their own selfish ends. Sometimes we forget how deplorable crime truly is.

Apparently, a soft community order which they can then freely breach is the preferred option of the former LCJ Lord Woolf for dealing with such matters. "It will be the fault of drugs." Will be the cry, as if that changed the act into something more intrinsically acceptable.

Just how many years must we go back to find a time when such crimes automatically committed felons to a TV-free incarceration? - Ah. Happy days!

"But you are a Christian" will be the cry of the leftwing do-gooders, as if that excuses me from wanting justice.

In a proper system, society punishes the crime and the Christian victim is prepared to forgive the repentant criminal.

If God will not forgive the unrepentant - it is hardly our place to attempt to outdo Him.

Well said Mel!

Melanie Phillips is not my favourite columnist - no - she has to share that honour with Peter Hitchens!
In her article of the 26th April, "How welfarism is destroying Britain" she comments
"....welfarism detached behaviour from its consequences. It held that material needs MUST be met, regardless of behaviour. It did this to avoid making the distinction between the deserving and undeserving poor that was associated with [so-called] Victorian callousness towards the poverty-stricken."
This is one more social truth which the PC brigade will not allow us to tell; nor even to discuss rationally.
Yet ironically perhaps, success in combating welfarism began in the USA where Clinton's programme of restricting welfare to a limited time period - predicted to cause social catastrophe by the bleeding-heart left - actually succeeded beyond his wildest dreams.
Welfarism causes: moral decay, social atrophying, loss of incentives to work, incentives to 'work the system', crime, apathy, irresponsibility, fecklessness, illegitimacy and fuels the rise of the underclass. [In my definition, 'underclass' has more to do with social attitudes than actual lack of the necessities of life.]
As we encourage the able-bodied to rest on benefits, as a consequence we then must import cheap labour.
Our whole social base is simply unsustainable. Well done Melanie for daring to highlight this. Well done to Frank Field the eminently sensible Labour MP and the gifted, American social scientist, Charles Murray who addressed a Civitas meeting on this topic on the 26th of April.
I suspect that just like the EU, this is a topic which the main parties will continue to flee from until it is too late and society implodes.

LINK: http://www.mailonsunday.co.uk/pages/live/articles/columnists/columnists.html?in_article_id=450789&in_page_id=1772&in_author_id=256

Atheism is easy, is it?

Atheism is an active assertion which must either be made through faith or by facts which may be tested.
Agnosticism requires no such rigour.
Atheists must be challenged as to which position they adhere to.
Christians might respond with Psalm 34:8 - "Taste and see that the Lord is good."
The Christian position may be tested on an individual basis.
A 'step of faith' is required and God will honour that - if done honestly and with an open heart.

[Thanks to Randall Hardy for directing my thoughts in this direction.]

You Could Not Make It Up!

If you lived in Wigan, which would you prefer to have - one new Reassurance Officer or two additional binmen?
Kate Watts has been appointed - obviously not to the bins that would perhaps be seen as cherrypicking - No! She is the new Reassurance Officer who promises to be "Tough on the fear of crime and tough on the causes of fear of crime."
AAAAAgh!

LINK: http://www.gnn.gov.uk/Content/Detail.asp?ReleaseID=274088&NewsAreaID=2

Lord Woolf.

Former Lord Chief Justice Woolf, always renowned for his idiotic stance on sentencing policy, has revealed his true colours since retiring.
He is now insisting that only people who use violence should ever be jailed.
All I can say is that I have sat in enough courts over the best part of a decade to be able to add a few more things to his rather skeletal list:-



Abuse of bail,
Breaking Court Orders,
Persistent Offending,
Dangerous Driving,
Burglary,
Most sexual offences,
Mugging,
Arson,
Driving whilst disqualified,
Serious Theft,
Most Frauds and
Excessive or persistent drink driving.
To name just a few out of many.


The man should himself be locked up. He is clearly an ongoing social menace.

LINK:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/04/18/nprison118.xml

Pack Ice.

When we have a hot summer, it proves global warming. If we have a wet one, it proves global warming.

Mild winters , cold winters, mixed up winters all prove global warming. Pack ice melting, proves global warming.

Over thousands of years there are massive temperature fluctuations - as previously published on this Blog.

I wonder what readers will make of the links below? I wonder if this is yet further proof of .... well... you-know-what.

Canadian pack ice has been so severe this winter, seal boats have been trapped in port.

I can guarantee that some scientist will be wheeled out to PROVE that this is - in effect, actually, not to mince words - global warming.

I simply do not know. But I feel that we are all being sold a [seal] pup.

LINKS: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2007/04/pack

_ice_traps_seal_boats.html

http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Canada/2007/04/18/4056611-cp.html

A moral sliding scale.

It is at least arguable that use of the morning after pill is just a very early abortion. Clearly, as every week advances into a pregnancy and the embryo/foetus develops, the abortion becomes a more brutal act; one which is closer and closer to destroying a human life which the fairminded would admit to being a human life.

I have respect for the view that 'life begins at conception' but still feel that terminations become increasingly, morally repugnant as the pregnancy takes its course.


Those who argue that 'there is no life until birth' see their argument weakening as each day passes.


So-called 'women's rights' groups object to the word 'murder' and call this 'emotive language'.


With a six week old embryo, with the heart beat on the point of being identified they may have a case - but one which is thin in the extreme.


When a child - YES - a correct use of vocabulary - is able to survive outside the womb for any length of time, their argument lies in tatters.


Please read the link below - I apologise if you feel as physically sick as I did on reading it.


If it is too terrible an act to know about, then it is one too terrible to be allowed even in our post-civilised society.

Actual, fully formed children are wrenched from the womb. One in 30 is still alive! They take an average 80 minutes to die. Surely, even the most vociferous of the 'woman's-right-to-choose lobby' must show some human feelings about this second trimester butchery.
The photo above is of a legally aborted foetus aged 24 weeks. Children now regularly survive at 22.
At 17 weeks the child may well breathe and survive for a short but sickening time outside the uterus. Barbarous! Why do they not simply kill the child out of mercy instead of leaving it to gasp its tiny life away in a kidney dish? This scenario occurs at least twice a week in our nation.
Yet executing a brutal killer is considered beyond the pale by countless numbers of the pro-abortion camp.

Link: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=449598&in_page_id=1770

Bible reliability.

The Gospels are the best evidenced and attested to documents ever written in Greek in the ancient world. Attempts to claim that the originals have 'changed over the intervening years' are as crass as they are intellectually dishonest.
"Papyrus P52 in the John Rylands Library in Manchester is dated to around AD 125, only about 30–60 years after it was written. The front contains lines from John 18:31–33, in Greek, and the back contains lines from vv. 37–38. There are over 5,000 manuscripts of the New Testament in Greek, and over 19,000 copies in the Syriac, Latin, Coptic, and Aramaic languages. Compare that with other famous classical authors like Plato, Herodotus, Caesar and Tacitus, represented by only 20 manuscripts at the most, the earliest of which dates to 1,000 years after the original. Yet no classical scholar would claim that these authors ‘have been retranscribed and rewritten many times’ with the implication that we don’t have essentially the loriginals." Russell Grigg:-[http://www.creationontheweb.com/content/view/5029/]

LINK: http://www.carm.org/evidence/textualevidence.htm

Survey results.

The latest SPIRITUS VERITUS POLL shows that 100% of demons surveyed believe in God.

Thanks are due to Creation Research and John Mackay for this information.


[Refer to the Letter of James.]

Morning after pill.

Research by the Cochrane Library Review in the USA, India and China indicates that increased availability of the morning after pill has pushed up its use but has had no notewothy effect on either unwanted pregnancies or abortions. This would seem to indicate that it has increased promiscuity.
Yet of course, our morals-free government wants these morally ambivalent pills handed out like Smarties in our schools.
It does of course have an occasional unpublicised side effect - DEATH. [See 2nd link.]
Links: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/health/womenfamily.html?in_article_id=13548&in_page_id=1799

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=13100&in_page_id=1770

At least he wants to try.

Jimmy Young recently criticised EU politicians’ decision to resurrect the EU Constitution. He naively asked, “Can anyone prevent this relentless march by the Euro bureaucrats?”
Er, no Jim.

The Beatitudes - a reminder!

Beatitudes:

1. Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

2. Blessed are those who mourn for they will be comforted.

3. Blessed are the meek for they will inherit the land.

4. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.

5. Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.

6. Blessed are the pure of heart for they will see God.

7. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.

8. Blessed are they who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

There is a 9th beatitude in the gospel of Mark. It reads: "Blessed are you when they insult you and utter every kind of slander against you because of me. Be glad and rejoice, for your reward is great in heaven...."

Crime and Fear.

When I was a child, I behaved myself in public. This was not because of a liberal upbringing, nor because of a vague sense of public duty. It had a great deal to do with a loving, secure, two parent family, the understood morality of the day as part of education and Sunday School teaching.

In spite of similar backgrounds I still knew some who went on to be criminals - happily these were few.

The underlying reason was however, that in my day, you were too scared to commit criminal offences.

The response awaiting me at home would have been a glimpse into hell; the loss of reputation in the community would have been terrible to behold and beyond that, we all knew that criminal damage and theft could well lead to Borstal or Approved School. This was not a nebulous and distant possibility but a firm and immediate reality. The cane was waiting for any serious bad behaviour in school.

Why can the assorted do-gooders not grasp this simple connection? Why are they so opposed to firm discipline. We are not talking of brutality but a form of chastisement which was understood and broadly accepted throughout society.

The liberal left then began to foist their experimenting onto an unwilling population and society has deteriorated over a period 40 years - but they are simply unable or unwilling to admit that they have been disastrously wrong.

Check out this Guardian link below to see the modern thinking in respect to drug use.

LINK: http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,2057565,00.html

Grammar schools.

"Bright pupils from poor homes achieve significantly higher grades at grammar schools than comprehensives, a study has found.
The benefits are equivalent to the average youngster turning eight Bs at GCSE into eight As.
And the effects were not just evident among the most disadvantaged.
All children in the top quarter of the ability range did better at grammars than comprehensives - boosting their results by four grades on average.
The study concluded that if social background were not a factor, a selective system would not disadvantage those who did not attend grammar schools.
Professor Paul Gregg, who led study, said: "If you could re-engineer the system so the affluent were not segregated into grammar schools and the poor into the remainder, the
grammar school system would be positive overall."
Well what a surprise! The left were wrong - AGAIN!

LINK:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=447572&in_page_id=1770

Ever been had?

Following on from the recent Channel Four programme which debunked the idea that global warming is caused in any way other than by solar interference, we now have serious questions being raised as to what extent there is currently global warming at all.
It is abundantly clear that when pictures are produced of crumbling ice floes, they somehow manage to forget to include those places where ice is actually increasing.
That there are cyclical climate changes is unanswerable but precious little indication of the doomsday scenarios which are being constantly thrust into our faces as 'indisputable fact'.
Perhaps Godfrey Bloom MEP's recent letter in the Yorkshire Post might lend a better perspective to the matter:
IN the 1960s, we lived in fear of a nuclear holocaust, inevitable we were told if we did not disarm unilaterally. In the 1970s, we were entering a new ice age (according to the BBC). In the 1980s, we were all going to die from Aids in Europe. In the 1990s, we were going to die from eating eggs or hamburgers. At the turn of the century, the City of London would collapse if we did not join the common currency and all the planes would fall out of the sky through computer failure.There would be a catastrophic hole in the ozone layer and only 60,000 east Europeans would come to the UK when we threw open our borders. Now we are to become extinct through global
warming. Me? I'm going up the pub.

IMPORTANT LINK: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;jsessionid=BZ2LMJWKTKJPHQFIQMGSFFOAVCBQWIV0?xml=/news/2007/04/08/nrclimate08.xml&page=2

Fun with geology.

In a recent interview Professor Richard Dawkins claimed that the fossil evidence is no longer needed to support evolution "we have enough evidence from genetics".

Funny that, as Dr Steve Jones - another, equally public evolutionist - stated in the Royal Society Lecture on the 11th of April last year: "The finest evidence of evolution comes from fossils."

Good to see us working on absolute certainties, then.

It is like the fun that can be had if you know two geologists. I have tried this - and it really works.

Approach geologist one and ask the main way we date fossils. Once you wade through any side issues the reply will be "The main way we date fossils is by looking at the rocks they are in. We know the age of the rocks, ergo we know the age of the fossils."

Approach geologist two and ask how we date rocks. The reply will say "We mainly rely on index fossils; fossils whose ages are known. Know the age of the fossil and we can then date the rocks."

Ever heard of circular logic? Ever heard of non sequiturs?

And this rubbish is taught as fact in our schools!

Stark, staring mad?

"School tearaways are to be offered mountain bikes and iPods in return for good behaviour.
In a government campaign against soaring indiscipline, teachers are being told to reward disruptive pupils with prizes and privileges.
Badly-behaved youngsters must be praised five times as often as they are punished or criticised under guidelines unveiled by Education Secretary Alan Johnson.
They can be offered prizes and privileges ranging from non-uniform days and extended breaktimes to CDs, cinema tickets, personal music players and state-of-the-art bicycles. "

Of course, the better-behaved children will never think to play up so that they too can join in. All that is needed is for none of these to notice what is happening and then to overcome the fundamental immorality of the scheme and away you go.

I am certain that this will not add to the considerable problems already caused to teachers by the spoilt, the over-indulged and the molly-coddled.

Fancy people thinking that this is the most ill-conceived piece of lunacy to originate from the out-of-touch liberal left amongst countless other pieces of politically correct idiocy.

LINK: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=447743&in_page_id=1770

Abuse of prisoners.

Brutality and abuse in our prisons have now hit new heights.
Apparently there is grave concern that in future, because of TV becoming digital, the incarcerated may only be able to access a mere 9 channels.
It is tragic that such abuse of prisoners can possibly be allowed in a so-called civilised nation.
I for one am scandalised. LINK :http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=447571&in_page_id=1770

Page 36.

When I was a youngster, for a murder to hit only Page 2 of the newspaper was virtually unheard of..
On the 26th March 2007, so common and un-newsworthy is the slaughter of our fellow human beings, that the brutal butchery of Mustapha Charkaul in Aylesbury, at the hands of vicious burglars, rated Page 36. His wife was brutalised but survived the attack.

Hospices and care for the elderly.

As we read the job pages in The Guardian, as far as the eye can see there are non-jobs for coordinators of this, deliverers of that and administrators for things which do not need interfering with in the first place.

These posts swallow up copious amounts of public money!

There is a war in Iraq which has nothing to do with us. There is another in Afghastlystan which history tells us is unwinnable. There are people who have determined that they will never work whom the state happily supports.We pay out astronomical sums to house illegal immigrants who should be on the next plane out.We pay for the feckless and the dishonest. We encourage teen pregnancies with the highest benefit payouts in Europe. We fund bureaucracy which is totally unnecessary at unprecedented levels. We pour money into the European Union so that it can better undermine our personal freedoms.

Incidentally, the government is unable to fund care for our elderly; those who have often worked for 50 years and some of whom have fought a war for us.

Hospices are desperately needed but the few that there are, are largely funded by charitable donations.

What a sick and pathetic bunch our mainstream politicians really are.

LINK: http://re-xs.ucsm.ac.uk/gcsere/revision/xtianpers/chper1/page9.html

Rejoice.

HE IS RISEN! -


HE IS RISEN INDEED!

Idols.

Easter is a good time to look at your life and decide where those idols lie. It is very simple if you call yourself a Christian.

Just consider all aspects of your life and identify the areas which are more important to you than a relationship with the Risen Lord.

End of story. Most idols are not statues.

Not so good Friday.

It is nothing less than a national scandal that when we scan the five principal television channels for Good Friday there is not a single acknowledgement that this is a day in the Christian calendar which puts even a non-commercialised Christmas into the shade.

Shame on you, all you planners and broadcasters and programme makers.

Is there anybody left out there, religious, Christian or secular who doubts that this is part of an orchestrated plot to downgrade the Christian Faith?

It began in education - as frequently shown on this Blog - and it continues systematically in all other areas of society.

Wilberforce.

I find it unbelievably ironic that in the period so many rightly celebrate the successes of William Wilberforce who believed in freedom, that so few are demonstrating about our diminishing freedoms as a nation. By our apathy we allow our quisling politicians to sell us out to the EU.
No. We do not face slavery as such but our hard-earned freedoms as a people are being systematically eroded and few seem to realise or care.
Prosperity and peace have diminished our capacity for pragmatic analysis of the realities of today's society

Mr Brown.

So it has emerged that Gordon Brown had been warned of precisely what the outcome would be if he robbed pension schemes and so did it anyway. The only question is whether this odious man has ruined the retirements of just hundreds of thousands of honest, working folk or whether the figure will ultimately be in millions.

For many months now, the government has been trying to avoid the Freedom of Information Act and hide these facts but the cat is now out of the bag.

Utterly reprehensible!

Responsibility at Easter.

As the songwriter claimed - "You ARE the only Jesus some people ever see." The responsibility we have as Christians is awesome. The Gospels also require us to spread the Word; The Great Commission. Are we just too apathetic? Is it fear that holds us back? Do we simply not care? Do we pretend that our so-called good works are more important? Do we use a 'social gospel' as a replacement for the real one?Is it perhaps that we do not truly believe what God has told us - that the world is condemned and may only be saved from hell through God the Son?

As Easter approaches, we must revisit Calvary. WHY did Jesus come - let alone why did He die in the horrific way he did?

He died to save sinners. He died to save me. BUT He is the only way. There are no backdoor methods whereby 'Loving your neighbour' suddenly becomes the path. It is true "Faith without works is dead" but we may never be saved by them - only by accepting the Grace of God as revealed in the sacrifice He made for us.

Let this Easter change us as Christians. This Easter, may we say a farewell to half-hearted, bolt-on Christianity. Let us embrace, thank, love and KNOW the Living Lord.

He is RISEN! - He is Risen indeed.

Time to secede.

Anglicanism is DEAD. It is time for those tiny pockets of Christian excellence within that naive, politically correct, cumbersome piece of living blasphemy to call it a day and quit. There is no further point in pretending that it can be changed from within. What! - Overstated? The apostasy is too deeply rooted to do any other.

"Anjum Anwar’s appointment as Dialogue Development Officer at Blackburn Cathedral has been welcomed by Muslims and described as “imaginative” by the publicly funded government agency sponsoring the post.Her post will be funded by the North West Development Agency (NWDA) for an initial two years."
I DESPAIR.


*Note the unholy hand of the EU in the funding.*

Worth EVERY penny!

SOUTH Tyneside is to recruit an ambassador for European relations, the Gazette can reveal today.
Applications are being invited for the £100,000-a-year post as part of a drive to keep more in touch with Brussels. The roving representative will be expected to observe best practice from our Euro counterparts and then roll them out in the borough. It is part of the new into Europe strategy, which already has seen the advent of popular continental markets and many business link-ups. Ralf Poilo, a spokesman for into Europe, said: "This is becoming more and more popular as the number of countries within the union increase. "This
creates extra opportunities for us all to share ideas and initiatives.

LINK: http://www.southtynesidetoday.co.uk/ViewArticle.aspx?ArticleID=2194841&SectionID=1111

OKAY. SO IT WAS AN APRIL FOOL, BUT IT WAS SO NEAR TO THE TRUTH...............!