• “The Executive Committee (Sabbs) holds a lot of influence on the student population in your University, so it is very beneficial to have Christians in these positions. When there are Christians on the exec it means that there is a Godly influence on the SU and that the CU can be represented, understood and helped more in the SU and with what it aims to do on campus.”
• “Therefore if you organise your friends and fellow CU members to stand with you by ballot boxes for the day and ask people to vote for you, you can have a good chance of winning.”
• “ The other important thing to know for elections is that the best way to get elected is to run with other people who are running for the other positions in the election, and therefore run as a group (aka a “slate”) So a group of 8 people can get their friends and course mates to vote for them and also for the other 7 people in the group, so you would each get 8 times the amount of votes. In my experience there is usually 1 organised group/slate and they will get elected. So it’s well worth finding other people in the CU who might want to run and then talk to other people who are running for the other positions and try and work together. Just check that your SU allows slates as a few of them have banned it because it’s too effective and can make it too easy for a group to get in together.”
• And apparently they recommend prayer

But when you see responses to Edd’s blog post such as “Still too much of a scumbag” and “did I say you were a cunt?” you know the discourse of the debate has gone out of the window. While I don’t fully get behind everything Edd has done, on this occasion he handled the…”criticisms”…rather well. This is in stark contrast to some “criticisms” from the former and outgoing Anti-Racism & Anti-Fascism (ARAF) Officer of the Guild who regard Edd as a leader of a “cult” (don’t get me wrong, this isn’t an outright defence of Edd). Now I recognise I may well get some stick for this but to be honest I don’t care, it’s critique of the idea not the person. But as someone who regards ALL religions as cults and then for practising Jews to scream at Edd for leading a “cult” I find that highly ironic and a little bit hilarious. FYI: If you’ve taken offence to the latest observation you need to grow up, 1. I regard ALL religions along those lines and 2. I’m criticising the idea of religions NOT the people, so don’t flatter yourself if you think I’m picking on one particular group. Attacking an idea or an artificial social construct is not hate speech.

Now don’t get me wrong, as the title of this post says, both sides are to blame for the conflict in the middle-east and here in the west-Midlands. This fine video will demonstrate my point in a nutshell.

This is the point both sides are distinctly unable to grasps. You are BOTH to blame for this. Neither side is capable of facing up to the significant inconsistencies in the side they support. Friends of Palestine, guess what? In Gaza there is a terrorist organisation in charge. They do persecute women and gays. And they do want to utterly destroy Israel and it’s people. While I can understand and to a degree sympathise with the people of Gaza for resorting to such measures (to the same degree I can understand and to a degree sympathise with the people of Israel). But what ever injustices the people of Palestine face (and I’ll admit there are plenty), those who align themselves as a “friend of Palestine” have to actually own up, admit and criticise these flaws and inconsistencies.

Friends of Israel, guess what? Criticising the state Israel to whatever degree is not anti-Semitism. An attack or criticism of an artificially made human social construct such as the state of Israel, even if it’s along the lines of “apartheid” (even though this is not something I condone in any way), is not anti-Semitic. To do that you’d have to attack the people directly. And you have to recognise Israel does not act within proportion of any attack it receives. This is brilliantly highlighted in the video above between 0.31 and 0.36 where the Israeli rocket argues: “This war will bring me peace and security.” to which the Palestinian rocket replies: “Oh yeah, like the last time? Or the time before that?”. While I can understand and to a degree sympathise with the state of Israel for resorting to such measures (to the same degree I can understand and to a degree sympathise with the people of Palestine). But what ever injustices the people of Israel face (and I’ll admit there are plenty), those who align themselves as a “friend of Israel” have to actually own up, admit and criticise these flaws and inconsistencies.

I recognise I’m going to get a lot of sh*t for this from both sides. There may well be comments from those who point out the good or bad things one side does or vice-versa that I may well have overlooked (like I said I’m no expert on this). But I’m beyond caring and plus, I wont be leaving the house much until Monday and then I leave Birmingham for good the day after. Essentially I have nothing to lose. But if we are to have any progress, both sides will need to own up to the way they have acted and their own inconsistencies and flaws.

Right now I’d love to bash their heads together (metaphorically of course).

This is a tweet from Conservative Central Head Quarters (CCHQ) twitter account from the middle of the results night.

http://cdn.labourlist.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/ric-holden-500×187.jpg

Labour had a net-gain of 824 councillors by the next day.

Now for those of you who know me personally as an ‘angry atheist’ may start worrying “Oh no, what’s he going to come out with now, destruction of all religious buildings?”. Fear not, while many of you do see that side of me I’m also an ardent secularists. I recognise the right of religious organisations to play a legitimate part in society but I also am opposed to having the state play any part in religious affairs. So this is why we need to tax religious organisations like any other organisation that has an income.

Some of you may have reeled back from such a suggestion, but hear/read me out. To become a legally recognised religion with a tax-exempt status an organisation has jump through a large variety of hoops set by the state. That’s right, the state sets the criteria and by extension determines which organisations are worthy of having tax-exempt statuses. I’m not proposing we take religious rights away from organisations and individuals, rather to take away the privileges granted by the state a select group of institutions based on no sound secular reason.

If you want to ensure true neutrality from the state in regards to religion (aside from a much needed separation of church and state, but that’s a whole other post) no tax-exempt status should be granted to any religious institution and yes even atheist/humanist/secularist groups that may have won a tax-exempt status. Churches are free to continue with any charity work they so wish and I think we can all agree that area will remain tax-exempt but separate from the organisation.

On a more personal note, with the billions upon billions of pounds that go into religious organisations world-wide only to spent on other churches, missionaries and aid to foreign countries which is too often conditioned upon meeting certain religious criteria. This money could be far better spent on real secular matters like schools, hospitals and roads.

Please take 15 minutes to watch this and think.

Enjoy!

Now the first thing I began to notice with this video was the reasons behind the individuals joining UBCU. “Swamped by worries…”, “There must be something more to this life…”, “I suffered really badly with feelings of worthlessness and I hated myself…”, “I struggled with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder for years…”, “A blurred, aimless and hopeless life…”, “Bullied and told I was worthless. Hid insecurity behind a fake smile…” and “Feeling dead inside from guilt and shame…”. Now, I don’t know if it’s still me but I believe there is a trend emerging. It seems (based on the video) UBCU seem to derive most (or at least a large section) of its followers from those (who many) may have distinct psychological problems. This is a distinct problem with Christianity itself, it preys on those who are down in life, promises them to solve all their problems with wishful thinking yet these do little to solve the problems and merely pave over the cracks. Something I also noticed as a theme throughout the video and throughout campus and cardboard signs was, “Is this it?” or “Is this all there is to life?” which is entirely degrading question. This life is so full of natural wonders and beauty, humanity need not arrogantly demand a special place in the universe on top of that. To be here to witness and experience the breathtaking brilliance of our earth ought to satisfy any decent human being. Demanding a life after this one can only degrade and devalue the only life we’ll ever have, the one we’re living right now. In the words of Penn Jillette:

“Believing there is no God gives me more room for belief in family, people, love, truth, beauty, sex, Jell-o, and all the other things I can prove and that make this life the best life I will ever have.“

Now each day presented a different topic/theme for those visiting the tent/marquee, namely; “Hasn’t science buried God?”, “How can Christians claim to have the truth?”, “Why wont God end all suffering?”, “What’s wrong with living for pleasure?” and “Doesn’t Christianity take away your freedom?”. Now I only attended the third (where I heard little due to poor microphones but had a good conversation with two Christians after), listened to the first on-line and heard parts of the last one. For the first topic which I listened to on-line, I didn’t necessarily understand all the points the speaker was making (very confusing take on shooting down the scientific method but then referring to the default position “therefore it is apparent God did it” line), but the main problem I would like to take up was the constant referencing to the “atheistic world viewpoint”. I’m very sorry that you couldn’t type “atheism” into google and hit “search” but there’s no such thing as an “atheistic world viewpoint”, there’s absolute no set doctrine for atheism. Atheism is a rejection of ideas on one position, nothing more, nothing less.

The conversation I had with the two pleasant (don’t get me wrong, the people were friendly enough) Christians was on the most part successful in challenging their views. Sadly I didn’t finish on a triumphant Hitchens style victory as in the second half of the conversation we became bogged down in proof of Jesus of the Bible, the Bible and God himself (very easy to do when your position is based primarily on blind faith and random “facts” can be thrown out).

Now given I based most of my argument on Hitchens brilliant work, it’d be a lot easier for you to watch this as this is how the discussion effectively panned out, enjoy:

What is beginning to emerge is that Europe’s (and more specifically, the UK’s) austerity programmes are not working. If you make too harsh a cuts to the public sector you’ll also damage the private sector as numerous contracts are arranged between the two sectors. That’s right, they’re intertwined, you attack one part too harshly it will have a knock on effect on the other.

It is hugely unlikely Cameron, Clegg and Osborne will take notice of Obama’s successes. But at least the American people hopefully will this November.

Andrew Lansley recently showed a prime example of how not win your case by describing the ever growing opposition to his NHS reforms as being motivated by “political” reasons.

I’m sorry but “political” reasons? The British Medical Association (BMA), Royal College of GPs, Royal College of Nurses, the Conservative dominated Commons Health Select Committee and Norman frigging Tebbit all oppose the reforms, which will open up the NHS to EU competition law, for “political” reasons? These are not organisations (with the exception of the latter obviously) that sit from the outside and attempt to vaguely analyse the inner workings of the NHS. No, these are organisations that deal with the inner workings of the NHS every single day. They know how it works. They know what will be detrimental. And they are the ones that will know that these reforms will fundamentally destroy the NHS.

Cameron said it himself, no top down reorganisations of the NHS. Now drop this bill!