The Politics of Dancing

Pope Benedict XVI sent an uncompromising message to the people of Britain at the start of the first papal state visit to the UK since the Reformation.But he urged Britain to maintain its respect for traditional values and cultural expressions that more aggressive forms of secularism no longer valued or even tolerated.’ [1] Aggressive secularism, excuse me, I cannot remember the last time I saw someone carrying a placard bearing the legend Behead all those who insult Voltaire, or militant secularist’s murdering anti abortion doctors in the US, protesting outside cinemas showing Mel Gibson’s Life of Christ, whilst burning copies of the bible. This is simply pernicious nonsense, the desperate cries of a church loosing it’s influence, not least because of the proclivity of its priest to indulge in the sexual assault of young children. Even in catholic Ireland and Spain its influence is on the wane and it is this that it cannot stomach, hence this pathetic whinge as it seeks to hold on t...

So now we are to be ruled by a firm of undertakers, Cameron, Clegg and Osborne, men of little genuine compassion, who know the price of everything and the value of nothing, whose windy empty rhetoric speaks only of a sour prejudice, the disdain of those who do not need the state, for the state. A government without a mandate. I listened yesterday to Nick Robinson, the BBC’s political correspondent as he smugly dismissed the prospect of widespread unrest as a consequence of the government’s draconian spending cuts. At the same time a senior policeman was warning that cutting police numbers could threaten their ability to handle the consequent unrest resulting from the government’s spending cuts, (incidentally how disgusting is this latter statement at so many levels.). Cameron, Mr nice guy, all teeth, oozing good looks and sincerity, the face of this Condemn trick, represents all that is most unpleasant in contemporary politics, the victory of PR over anything resembling substance, the ...

“I had a dream,” I said. “Oh yes,” he sat up and took up an interested pose, “tell me about it.” “Well I was having breakfast a rather large English breakfast with toast and fresh coffee. It was Sunday; I know it was Sunday as I could hear the sound of a church bell tolling in the distance. All of a sudden a strange man appeared. He asked if he could sit at my table. I could see no reason to refuse him and I invited him to join me. He was very well dressed; in his early sixties I would guess, perhaps a little old fashioned in his three piece suite and soft felt hat, which he laid to one side. He was handsome for his age with a slight goatee beard and piercing blue eyes. We talked about how fine the weather was, about the pleasures of a full English breakfast and quite Sunday mornings. He then said “I am going to have a Brandy, care to join me?" “Well it’s a little early for me. Excuse me but aren’t you the Devil?" “Yes I am as a matter of fact,” he smiled a soft reassuring s...

3 Line Poem. Sometimes I Laugh and when I laugh I laugh Sometimes I cry and when I cry I cry, But in between there is only the silence of the drum weary heart. Collapse When men collapse they collapse like buildings, the implosion of the inner skyscraper descending to leave a cloud of snowy dust like nuclear fallout covering the apartment of a life.

The Words of Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf who is attempting to construct a Multi-faith Centre on the site of the Trade World centre. ‘Rauf said he intends to go ahead with the "multifaith" centre near the site where Islamic terrorists killed nearly 2,800 people because not doing so would unleash fury abroad. "If we move from that location, the story will be that the radicals have taken over the discourse," Rauf told CNN. "The headlines in the Muslim world will be that Islam is under attack. "There is a certain anger here [in America ], no doubt," he said later in the interview. "But if we don't do this right, anger will explode in the Muslim world. If we don't do things correctly, this crisis could become much bigger than the Danish cartoon crisis [over images depicting the Prophet Mohammed], which resulted in attacks on Danish embassies in various parts of the Muslim world. And we have a much bigger footprint in the Muslim world." ABC Ne...

As I write this there now seems some doubt about whether the so called Burn The Koran day due to take place tomorrow will take place. There is something grotesquely atavistic about burning books, it is a form of violence, an attack on the life of the mind. Any society in which the burning of books is seen as acceptable erodes its own cultural life and as Heinrich Heine famously remarked, 'where books are burned they will eventually burn people.' There is however something rather ironic about the outrage amongst Muslim communities throughout the world given recent history, the tendency in many Muslim communities to burn effigies and flags as well as books. Burning an effigy is incidentally of course a demonstration of a desire to burn real people.

In the 1960’s and 70’s if you moved in left wing circles the word liberal was often spat out like a profanity, liberals representing all that was worst in bourgeoisie culture, wanting to have their cake and eat it, to enjoy the feeling of being ‘good,’ without any personal commitment or engagement, turning a blind eye to the realities and implications of inequality. I was never completely at ease with this view; liberal minded my self respecting civil liberties, free speech and pluralism in political discourse. I distanced my self. However when I see Nick Clegg I am minded of this older characterisation and boy does it hit home. Even before the coalition agreement he always left me feeling uneasy, positively queasy, all that smug middle of the road, ‘a plague on both your houses,’ platitudinising claptrap. We use to shout ‘Take the politics out of politics vote SDP.’ For the first time in my life, since February 1974 I did note vote in the last general election. I could not vote for th...