Police clash with right-wing demonstrators during protest against plans for new mosque
About 2,000 members of the English Defence League descended on Dudley town centre in the West Midlands, breaking down metal fences of a car park and throwing brackets at officers.
04 April 2010 4:17 AM
Our nice, furry Archbishop... lost in a barbarous world
No doubt he is right to point out that Christians elsewhere suffer more. I would like to hear more protests from 'human rights' campaigners against the nasty treatment of Christians in the Muslim world, not least under the rule of the Palestinian Authority which many leftist Christians idiotically admire.
But so what? In those rough neighbourhoods, under the grudging scowl of Muslim so-called 'tolerance', this has been the case for centuries. Here, things are and ought to be different. Dr Williams is the head of the Established Church in England. The laws of this country, the shape of its cities and countryside, its language, morals, literature, architecture, family structure and politics are all based upon Christianity.
Take it away and it will be like removing the mortar from a great building, leaving its bricks and stones loose and trembling in the storm to come. And yet there are many people who want to do this. In this Century of Selfishness, Christianity is an annoying obstacle, with its infuriating insistence on active unselfishness and its unalterable rules which say that there are some things you just cannot do, like for instance murder unborn babies and walk out on your marriage.
Last week, there was yet another case of someone being in trouble for being a Christian, in an officially Christian country. I collect these incidents: preachers arrested and fined; nurses disciplined for offering to pray for patients; registrars disciplined for declining to officiate at homosexual civil partnerships; adoption societies forced to close because they will not place children with same-sex couples. Just 30 years ago, they would have been unthinkable. Another few decades and Christianity will be against the law.
I expect that before long there will be cases of teachers being fired for resisting compulsory sex education in primary schools. Last week's example was that of a nurse, Shirley Chaplin, badgered by superiors for wearing a crucifix on a chain.
Does anyone really believe that she would have been pestered by authority if she had worn a Muslim symbol on a chain round her neck? Does anyone believe that a Muslim preacher would have been put in the cells, and fined �1,000 - as happened to Shawn Holes in Glasgow - for callinghomosexuality a sin in a public place? Each of these cases lets others know that they had better be careful, and makes many faithful Christians fear that they may have to choose between their faith and their livelihood.
Does Dr Williams even know about the oppressive new codes of practice in the professions and the public sector, which compel employees to adopt the new secular faith of 'Equality and Diversity'? Now the Archbishop has strangely chosen this weekend to attack his fellow Christians in the Roman Catholic church. They must be beginning to wonder how long they have got before they are arrested. Yet nobody seems to ask, in all the justified fury against Roman Catholic priests who have disgraced themselves and wounded others, an interesting question. Here it is. This Easter weekend, a film was released into British cinemas called 'Kick-Ass', which features an 11-year-old girl, Chloe Moretz, who speaks in filthy language and wears outfits obviously designed to sexualise her.
I find this repellent, disgusting and immoral. Yet this film, which members of Britain's exciting post-Christian elite helped to make, is receiving generous praise in the liberal media. Why? If this isn't the corruption of the young, then what is? Yet I have no doubt that those who defend this sewage are in the ranks of those howling at the Pope for supposedly condoning priestly child abuse (which he doesn't).
Phooey. What they hate is not the abuse, which happens in liberal state institutions just as it does in the Roman church. What they hate is the Christian church. And at the moment they are winning the argument partly because the Church won't fight back with any spirit. Dr Williams seems actually to be on the side of the anti-God battalions.
Cam Jong II, a not-so-very-dear leader
David Cameron's strange appearance in 'casual' gear made him look as if he had been dressed by a committee, perhaps of his enemies, perhaps of people who are not very bright.
What were they hoping for? That these clothes would further infuriate the remaining conservatives daft enough to support this liberal in biker's clothing? That he would get the votes of ageing women who still hanker after the young Marlon Brando?
As it happens, he ended up looking faintly like North Korea's leader, Kim Jong Il, who also seems to have consulted the wrong style advisers in a bid to appear to be something other than he is.
Given that one of Mr Cameron's key media supporters this week issued a stern condemnation of conservative journalists such as me for failing to show 'discipline' by continuing to criticise Mr Cameron, I think I may start calling him Cam Jong Il, the notvery-dear leader of the Democratic People's Blue Labour Party.
Discipline, indeed. Who do these people think they are?
Time to put the clock back, not further forward
I've never seen the point of British Summer Time as it is. It's like jetlag without the travel. But what if the clocks never went back, but went forward even further? Bar-haunting trendies living in London may not see anything wrong with pushing time as far forward as they can. The disadvantages are only clear to early risers, who dislike being forced to go to work in the dark for half the year.
I also rather like the lamplit dusks of late autumn, a very English time of day designed for tea and hot buttered toast, which would vanish if we had our clocks permanently on Berlin time, as these zealots want.
I read last week that this plan now has the support of all the major political parties, plus a lot of metropolitan journalists who plainly seldom come out from under the duvet before 11am. Once again, it's time to put the clock back.
- The police have sabotaged the attempt to ban mephedrone, before it has even begun. A spokesmoron for the Association of Chief Police Officers has announced that the police will not actually be enforcing the law, by arresting and charging people for possessing this stupid poison. Oh no, that would be 'criminalising' them. It will be only the 'evil dealers' who are targeted
What this uniformed cretin should realise is that young people criminalise themselves by buying an illegal drug. It is completely illogical to say that something is so dangerous that you should go to jail for selling it, yet when you buy it, nothing should happen to you.
Drug-takers are criminals, not victims, and if we took this view there would be many fewer of them.
A fitting symbol for a nation dominated byphonies
Only a nation on the way down, whose culture was dominated by phonies and jokers, could allow the building of the stupid and ugly tower planned to adorn London's Olympic Park.
I suppose that, since it looks like part of a collapsed steelworks, it might symbolise our lost industrial greatness. Compare this, and the vast, tatty zero of the London Eye (which ruins many fine prospects of Central London) with the things we used to build - St Paul's Cathedral, now hemmed in by brutalist concrete, Big Ben, a soaring stone hymn to Victorian selfconfidence, and even the lost twin towers of Wembley.
Now all we propose is a futile tangle of metal that will look as if it has fallen down when it is up.
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