He's Back Inside

Remember this guy?

I have an awful feeling this story's not going to end well.

Well, he's back in again.

"His arrest in July came just three days after he had been freed from prison in Perth, 30 miles to the north, after spending six years in solitary for previous offences involving nakedness.

Sheriff James Williamson told Gough, who has also refused legal representation, that he was concerned that he had not met or co-operated with social workers drawing up the background report ordered. The sheriff said: "Will you meet with them and assist them?"
When Gough responded, "No, not really", Sheriff Williamson said he had been left with no choice but to jail him for five months. "

I don't blame him for rejecting the social workers and psychiatrists. But he's engaged in a political struggle (one with which I disagree), hoping that the legal system will be the first to blink. In England, maybe - I wouldn't put it past some judges to agree that the right to expose yourself = basic human right. In Scotland, no way - especially not for a 'Sooth-moother'*.

The sad thing is, he's been inside for five years. And the longer he's inside the more he's invested in the struggle and the more inclined he is to throw good years after bad.












* Shetland expression used about anyone from south of Orkney.       

The Untoward Fate

Guardian prison interview with Steve Gough - the "naked rambler" or serial indecent exposer according to your taste. I'm not sure I'd like to meet him when out for a stroll with the kids, but his periods out seem to be shorter and shorter these days - possibly due to his attempts to live his entire life naked - including his air travel. Apparently ever since his 2006 attempt to walk naked to John O'Groats he's been in a series of Scottish prisons - often being arrested immediately outside them as he leaves, naked, having just completed a sentence.

Eventually Gough's case was heard at Scotland's appeal court, where it was found that breach of the peace should indeed be interpreted to criminalise his behaviour. Since then Scottish sheriffs have fallen in line; his sentences have steadily increased to the maximum and, should he keep refusing to dress, he will be caught in an endless cycle of two-year sentences. He insists if he were allowed to return home naked to Eastleigh, he'd cease being naked in public "when I don't have to do it any more".

I have an awful feeling this story's not going to end well.

Whenever he pops up on the news (usually having been sent to prison yet again) I'm reminded of this passage from Hardy's Far From The Madding Crowd :

George's son had done his work so thoroughly that he was considered too good a workman to live, and was, in fact, taken and tragically shot at twelve o'clock that same day -- another instance of the untoward fate which so often attends dogs and other philosophers who follow out a train of reasoning to its logical conclusion, and attempt perfectly consistent conduct in a world made up so largely of compromise.

Entitled Thieves of all Countries Unite !

from the comments at Steve Sailer's (the riot and looting were because of a lost hockey game):

"steve you may want to take a look at this insane rant, i mean, apology, that one of the asian vancouver rioters who got caught, has posted on her blog. this is the original post she made, before later going back and totally editing out everything because she realized she was a moron.

http://tinyurl.com/4226z6r

and the edited one:

http://tinyurl.com/65jgaw6

we will never really grasp how bonkers her real, original "apology" was. there are so many lines in there that are classic. but note the overwhelming use of modern victimology speak. generic (criminals are the real victims, i'm the hero here), racial (i'm non-white, back off), and sexual (i'm a woman, BACK OFF). "

In the first link, to quote the psychiatrist in Fawlty Towers, 'there's enough material for a whole conference'.

If People Wouldn't Notice Things We Wouldn't Have To Hide Them

Blogger (and English professor) Sarah Annes Brown comments at Shiraz Socialist on 'grooming' :

"The grooming case seemed very complicated – I don’t think it is necessary to think that the men were wrongfully convicted to be able to at least *ask questions* about the way the case was reported. Was it under reported/investigated at first? Was it then over reported? If men of Pakistani origin were over represented in one particular crime in one particular area, does the picture change greatly if you look at a wider area and a wider range of sex crimes? Is it enough to ask whether a particular report of it seemed fair and balanced? Should one also look at whether the attention paid to the crime was (if not inherently objectionable) disproportionate, and thus a possible vector of anti-muslim bigotry? Or was the real problem the initial urge to cover the story up in order to protect sensitivities? Yet of course that initial urge wouldn’t have been felt if it wasn’t for the bigots."

(after the grooming issue appeared to be going mainstream in January, February seems to be business as usual. This story appears to have been completely ignored by BBC/Telegraph/Guardian etc. What's particularly impressive is the total, complete, utter silence on the issue from feminist writers* - saving only the mighty Bindel. As I've said before, race seems to trump gender for most soi-disant feminists. Not so for JB. She doesn't care what race or creed the abusers are - she judges them not by the colour of their skin, but by the contents - indeed the existence - of their scrota.)


* UPDATE - one or two people said 'what about Yazza' - and she has indeed condemned grooming by her co-religionists on more than one occasion and in no uncertain terms :

"The criminals feel they did no wrong. These girls to them are trash, asking to be wasted – unlike their own women, who must be kept from the disorderly world out there."

It's true that Yazza is indeed a feminist, but not a professional one. She has too wide a range of interests, enthusiasms and sympathies - which is why she's my monstre sacré. The missing feminists are the people who would, were the perpetrators white, be all over these cases.

People like the F-Word, or Cath Elliott, who finds time to bewail the involvement of Helena Kennedy in Julian Assange's defence team but has nothing to say about joint enterprises, often involving males from school-age to middle-age, to abuse, rape or prostitute young working class girls. For some bloggers (the Stroppers and Harpy spring to mind) I get the impression (and impression is all it is, garnered from reading their blogs regularly) that it's almost an unconscious decision - it raises all sorts of uncomfortable issues, it gives comfort to the far right - why go there when there are so many other things to blog about? I'm not sure that Cath Elliott, who from her writing seems to be a serious person quite capable of facing unpleasant realities, falls into that category.

Charlie Gilmour - The Gift That Keeps On Giving

Julia is a very perceptive woman. She commented yesterday :

"Well, good grief! The BBC News just ran an interview with Charlie Gilmour, made on the day, before they knew who he was, or what he'd done, and it's pretty clear he's either functionally retarded, or was drunk or stoned at the time."

Not found the BBC video, but take a look at this. He certainly seems to be off his face.

"Forward, break the lines, forward unto death !" With a heroic effort Laban refrains from the obvious response.




Julia : "No doubt Daddy's PR team wrote that statement for him..."

Today's Mail :

"Last night, Gilmour issued a statement through his father's PR firm."

The Mail story also quotes a "friend" - presumably some Facebook friend - as follows:

"Charlie was on acid when he ripped the flag at the Cenotaph. He boasted about being on drugs on his Facebook afterwards but later took down the posts about acid."

Hat-tip to commenter John Horne Tooke at Biased-BBC.


UPDATE - school - Lancing College (via)

UPDATE - you can see how remorseful he was about the trouble at the demo :
























and this (via) :

A friend wrote on Gilmour’s Facebook page: “That is you climbing the flag, yes?”

Gilmour replied: “No. Not me. Someone else.

“Whoever it was was obviously on acid and didn’t know what the f*** he was doing and how much of a massive f***ing backlash there would be…”

The pal wrote, “My mistake” – to which Gilmour replied: “My big f***ing mistake.”

UPDATE - this photo from the Mail today - obviously not someone who was looking for trouble. The rock is just a pose and the latex gloves aren't at all the sort of thing you'd find useful when you're doing some 'free shopping' ...
























Photo: Steve Burton / Daily Mail.

"Charlie Gilmour has admitted being close to the car carrying the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall when it was ambushed by paint-throwing demonstrators in Regent Street. At 8.10pm, less than an hour after the attack on the Royal limousine, he was filmed by the BBC outside Topshop in Oxford Street, half-hiding a woman’s lace-up boot under his coat."

UPDATE - the Sun :

"Another picture showed him apparently trying to light a fire by the doors of the Supreme court on Parliament Square. "

Photo : The Sun/Jeff Moore


Hmm. Gets everywhere, doesn't he ? Busy little bee.

Why on earth didn't Chief Inspector Michael Walsh, one of whose officers stamped out the fire, arrest the twisted firestarter?
















Photo : Daily Mail/Jeff Moore

Not that I can't understand the appeal of smashing other people's things up as part of a mob. The sound of breaking glass has an appeal to young men of all classes. It's because it's such fun that we have to have strict laws against it.

Most Stupid CiF Post Ever ?

Zoe Williams makes a stunning comeback with If sex with HIV is a crime, so is swimming with verrucas.

Or going into work with a cold, sitting in a doctors surgery with flu, etc. You have to wonder if the Guardian's doing what the old Daily Sport used to do - knowingly publishing ridiculous stuff to pull in the punters. Seems to work, too.

Doubtless He's Coming To Terms With It ...

A leading psychiatrist has admitted it was 'unwise' to accept gifts and a legacy of £1.35million from a 'sad and lonely' actress he was treating.

I imagine the 'grieving process' is nearing completion and the 'spending process' is about to commence.

From 'Hosanna!' to 'Crucify Him!' - New Record Established

I don't know. Only a few days ago the concept of the 'progressive majority' was cheering up white liberals the length and breadth of wherever it is they come from.

Now it's the Con-Dem-Nation and some foolish people are looking forward to blood on the streets.

"You can't stop the cities. You can't stop the internet fracturing everything that was solid and safe about the priggish culture that made you. You can't stop the riot that's brewing..."

As well as betraying a complete ignorance of the Cameronian culture, derived more from hedonism and late-80s raves (that scene being the one which saw the rise of the 'no ugly' door policy and the VIP area) than God, Flag and Country, her adolescent rant (remember when 23 was considered grown-up ? It was about 1958, I think) betrays an ignorance of the riot. A full-on riot isn't generally a very nice thing. People get burned to death in their post offices, or stabbed on the street. In Brixton in 1981 a woman was raped in her house and a photographer killed for his gear. A lot of people get robbed or have their property destroyed and are made homeless.

The last major UK riots saw a serious attempt at mass racist murder. Abroad such attempts are often successful. Ms Red really should be more careful what she wishes for.



UPDATE - here's someone else who should really know better - but at least he doesn't actually seem to be looking forward to them.

You Are Jeremy Clarkson ...

And I claim my £5.

"Green Thieves Were My Delight"

The pair found that those in their study who bought green products appeared less willing to share with others a set amount of money than those who bought conventional products. When the green consumers were given the chance to boost their money by cheating on a computer game and then given the opportunity to lie about it – in other words, steal – they did, while the conventional consumers did not. Later, in an honour system in which participants were asked to take money from an envelope to pay themselves their spoils, the greens were six times more likely to steal than the conventionals.

File this finding along with the news that liberals are more racist than conservatives.

Busy Doing Nothing

Marvel at the CV of the new Children's Commissioner, 'Maggie' Atkinson.

Two salient points

a) after writing her "personal summary" she must have gone up a couple of hat sizes. Humility not a key skill (but aromatherapy is).

b) she hasn't had a proper job since May 31, 1989 - more than 20 years ago.

New Children's Commissioner Is Childless

Maggie Atkinson

Born in Barnsley, Dr Atkinson studied at Cambridge University.

She taught English and drama for 10 years before moving into a national training and advisory role on the national curriculum in the late 1980's.

She became director of children's services in Gateshead in 2003.

She was president of the Association of Directors of Children's Services until March 2008, and is currently chair of the National Expert Group on the Children's Workforce and national chair for the new Centre of Excellence in Outcomes.

She is married with two adult stepchildren.

Ms Atkinson has just replaced the unlamented Al Aynsley Green as Children's Commissar for England. Appointed apparently as a non-campaigner by Ed Balls (who must have one of the most annoying voices in politics, btw), she's opened up in fine style by announcing that the Bulger killers shouldn't have been prosecuted :

“The age of criminal responsibility in this country is ten — that’s too low, it should certainly be moved up to 12. In some European countries it’s 14. People may be offenders but they are also children. Even the most hardened of youngsters who have committed some very difficult crimes are not beyond being frightened.”

I like that 'difficult'. Seems to have been all too easy for Thompson and Venables (among others).

“What they did was exceptionally unpleasant and the fact that a little boy ended up dead is not something that the nation can easily forget."

"Ended up" ? Any human agency involved in that, or was it an act of God ? "Exceptionally unpleasant" ? I'd use that phrase to describe something like a 10-year old defecating in the school book cupboard (which somebody did do at my primary school - the teacher burst into tears), not abduction, torture, sexual assault and murder.

It is wrong, Dr Atkinson insists, to describe a child as evil. “None of us is born a good person or an evil person. The backgrounds from which we come, and whether we are nurtured and secure, will shape our character. The adults who role-model for us — or don’t — will change who we become, for better or worse. I’m far more a believer in nurture than nature.”

They're depraved on account of they're deprived !

Now that's true up to a point - most of the disastrous kids come from disaster homes. But (alas) lots of kids are brought up by their lone mothers, and some of those lone mothers are alcoholic, and some of those lone mothers' kids run wild - yet not all of them kill toddlers. Robert Thompson and Jon Venables shared their upbringing with brothers and sisters, and they've managed not to abduct and kill any little ones. Why did Robert and Jon ?

Ms Atkinson, as a believer in the Blank Slate, is a follower of the Utopian Vision - otherwise she'd never have got the job.

By strange chance, a week or so before another childless leftie blogger of a certain age had bemoaned the evil tabloids and their punitive agenda, agreeing with the sentiment :

"Whatever Venables has done he will still need our support."

Prompting Laban to respond :

Shorter Leftie Blogger : “If it wasn’t for those nasty tabloids, no one would ever hate people who abduct and kill toddlers for fun”.

I think we can cut this more simply. The people who feel visceral loathing for Thompson and Venables are called ‘parents’, and every one of them has

a) experienced that awful hole in the stomach when your little one goes missing in the shopping centre – and it happens so easily! – and you find them after seconds or minutes of panic, but that sick feeling is not ever forgotten …
b) seen a shot or video of a little figure tottering through the mall, trustingly holding the hand of the boy who will torture and kill him.

The people who don’t feel that are called ‘non-parents’.

Our game, our rules. In an ideal world only parents would be allowed to vote on any issues affecting children.

We lost our youngest once at Knutsford Services northbound on a dark Friday night. Not a good place to lose a small child. Running from one cashier to another :

"Have you seen a little girl - she's three - in a pink dress ?"

You never forget the feeling even though I can't, thank God, reproduce it in my head. It's too physical. It's a feeling Maggie Atkinson will never know - which is why, in a sane world, her views on child killers would carry slightly less authority than Jon Venables' mother's views - or any mother's views.

Tin Foil Hat Alert (Agrippa Value - 549)

Not since the Bishop of London presided over an act of necrophilia at Buckingham Palace have I felt in such need of a tin-foil titfer.

Bristol Indymedia correspondent dizzy dissident tells all about Charles de Menezes, Blairs Tony and Ian, Ur of the Chaldees and Aleister Crowley.

Please note that this is gematria and is distinct from numerology and bible code. Do some research first if you're going to remark on the gematria and please be assured that I probably know far more about it than you do...

'Kratos' was formally signed off operationally and legally at a meeting on 22 January 2003 at MI5 headquarters in London.

Jean Charles de Menezes was killed 911 days after the introduction of the shoot-to-kill policy known as Operation Kratos. To clarify - I am saying 911 days after the introduction of Operation Kratos. If you do the math there is a difference of 912 days but it is still 911 days after. There is a similarity here that the event known as the Madrid Bombings or 3/11 occurred 911 days after the event known as 9/11 in New York.

An entry for 911 at the Aleister Crowley's 'Sepher Sephiroth' reference reads "beginning" and this is what I have come to understand the number 911 to mean...

The astral chart of Jean Charles de Menezes death is very similar to the Goat of Mendez showing an inverted pentangle. Also present is the alchemical symbol for water - the downward pointing triangle...

Occult gematria is based on the Hebrew alphabet and language. Water corresponds to the Hebrew letter Mem. This gives us a clue that Mem is a letter to watch out for in gematria. Hebrew is written right-to-left. The Mem-final or the left-most Mem is the one to watch out for.

There follows the application of gematria to Jean Charles de-Menezes' name. Remember that Jean Charles was Brizzle-ian...

Brizzle-ian ? Took me a moment to get that one.

I suppose it's just as big a waste of time to be in front of the telly every night.

Robert Kirby 1948-2009

I mentioned a while back Harry Robinson's work with Nick Drake and Sandy Denny, but most of Nick Drake's string arrangements were done by Robert Kirby, a fellow Cambridge student when they met.

Times obituary :

At this stage, Kirby’s ambitions in music extended no further than becoming a music teacher at a public school: “doing the choir, a bit of Gilbert and Sullivan,” as he put it many years later to Drake’s biographer, Patrick Humphries. Five Leaves Left was well enough received by the critics but sold abysmally. Yet despite the poor sales, the cheque for his work was sufficiently substantial to persuade Kirby to leave Cambridge and embark upon a full-time career as an arranger. One of his favourite stories concerned a parting shot to one of his disapproving tutors at Cambridge, who told him that his work sounded like a television commercial. “Gosh, as good as that,” was Kirby’s well-aimed response...

Finding it increasingly hard to make a decent living as an arranger, he took up a career in marketing.

I liked the recorders and strings he did for Vashti Bunyan, on whom I blogged here.

Cognitive Dissonance Alert ...

Liberal Conspiracy on Andrew Marr's (IMHO disgraceful - I agree with Nadine Dorries) 'are you a loony or what' questioning of El Gordo, 28th September 2009 :

... right-wing bloggers kept questioning Gordon Brown’s sanity and calling him ‘bonkers’, demented and other names for partisan reasons. They justified this on the basis that some others within the Labour party had apparently also started these rumours. But no evidence is offered.

Then some national journalists referenced ‘internet rumours’ to repeat that smear, which was then used by the same bloggers to declare that they were justifed in their smears because it had reached national press and so it must be true. And so the BBC’s Andrew Marr bought into that feedback loop and asked a classic variation of: ’so when did you stop beating your wife’.

.... this incident illustrates that most right-wing bloggers come from the same stock. The ‘bonkers’ meme has been viciously repeated by right-wingers to undermine the PM. There is no evidence to it. The PM could be attacked in other ways – through his policies for example – but these people are only interested in character assassination. And yet only a few months ago they screamed hysterically about how the left was beholden to vicious rumours and chartacter assassination. Now they’re saying nothing other than cheering Marr on.

Damn right-wing bloggers, eh ?

I think they must have got the idea from that vicious right-wing Liberal Conspiracy site, 10th September 2009 ?

We have no way of substantiating this rumor, but let’s for a moment run with the assumption that Brown is taking anti-depressants.

My response? Good. Great. If the Prime Minister of Britain is suffering from depression or some other mental health condition, which given the stresses of his current position seems highly likely, then I’m glad he’s getting treatment for it. I’m glad he’s man enough to admit that he might need help.

Anti-depressants are used by millions of people in this country, although the stigma attached means that many of us don’t talk about it... It takes courage to go to the doctor and say that you have a problem...

I only wish more politicians would follow his example – after all, it’s not as if mental health difficulties in government are unheard of. Some of the greatest leaders the Western world has ever seen had serious mental health difficulties ... Winston Churchill ... Lincoln was also chronically depressed and anxious...

So is the ‘Prime Mentalist’, as he has become known, a person who has mental health problems? It certainly seems likely . Would that fact, by definition, make him unfit to lead the country? Absolutely not.

Not only have plenty of great statesmen and women had mental health problems, the experience of overcoming those problems and playing to one’s strengths may even be an advantage in politics – as it is for many people who, like myself, battle mental ill health.

I said at the time that this "isn't it great that the Prime Minister is mentally ill ?" approach romped home in the With Friends Like These Stakes.

Cognitive Dissonance Alert ...

Lynne Featherhead MP at the Lib Dem Conference :

And there has been so much damage done to the image of Muslims with the reporting of news from overseas and here, where so-called Islamic terrorists often feature - but when those fighting the terrorists, or the victims of terrorism, are also Muslim - this often goes unmentioned.

The drip-drip effect of linking the word 'Muslim' and the word 'terrorism' - but not linking "victim" and "Muslim" in the same way - is pernicious.

And at the same time we have seen a rising tide of attacks on Jewish people too.

Er ... do you want to tell her, or shall I ?

CST recorded 609 antisemitic incidents (pdf link) in the first six months of 2009. This is more than the 5441 incidents recorded by CST during the whole of 2008. CST has never before recorded more than 600 antisemitic incidents in a calendar year. The previous annual high was 598 antisemitic incidents recorded in 2006. The 609 antisemitic incidents reported to CST in the first half of 2009 is more than double the 276 antisemitic incidents reported to CST in the first six months of 2008. The main reason for this record number of incidents was the unprecedented number of antisemitic incidents recorded in January and February, during and after the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. The number of incidents recorded did not return to normal pre-Gaza levels until April, some three months after the fighting in Gaza ended.

CST recorded 286 antisemitic incidents in January 2009, by far the highest number
ever recorded in a single month since CST began recording antisemitic incidents in 1984. In January 2008 CST recorded 43 antisemitic incidents. The previous high recorded by CST in a calendar month was 105 in October 2000, the month that the second Palestinian Intifada began.

Must be all those hideous right-wingers, what ? To be fair to Ms Featherstone, I imagine she knows perfectly well where the anti-semitic attacks are coming from. Just another one of those truths that dare not speak its name.


More contradiction :

And then there's religion. In recent years, sadly the spectre of religious discrimination has arisen again. A party born of revulsion at the treatment of Catholics and Non-conformists stands four square behind all those who seek to practice their faith.

Well, yes. As long as they don't practice it too seriously, that is.

Not that long ago it was against the law to be openly gay. Now it is against the law to refuse to register a civil partnership.

And registrars like Lilian Ladele are sacked for practicing their faith and refusing to register civil partnerships - a decision thoroughly approved of by Lynne Featherstone, standing four-square behind Ms Ladele's practice of her faith - with a P45 in one hand and a pitchfork in the other.

"There is no hierarchy between strands of equality"

But you've just proved that there is. Gay trumps Christian - even black Christian. Time to give the old Victimhood Poker pack a shuffle and tweak some of the values for British cultural sensibilities.

To be fair, she's no more full of hot air than her leader. I was on a running machine for pretty much the whole of Clegg's speech. It was a great speech to run to. Normally time crawls by on a running machine - you feel you need to get the miles or calories in, but it seems to take forever to get there. Not so yesterday - the time flew by. Never have so many platitudes been rolled out per unforgiving minute.

"We offer discipline for a purpose. Not just austerity, but progressive austerity"

Even Tony Blair, whose spirit seemed to be have been hovering somewhere in the background when the speech was written, would have had a job delivering that with a straight face.

"I want to say something to teachers, doctors, nurses, police officers, social workers, in fact to everyone who works in our public services. Britain depends on people like you and the services you provide"

Yes, but we depend even more on there being a few people selling things that other people want to buy - and being taxed to pay for the public services. As sterling loses its value our exports should rise - but are we still making anything ?

The whole thing was motherhood and apple pie and could (in the main) have come from any one of the three main party leaders. Pretty much all the sticky issues (where's our energy going to come from ? A 'zero-carbon future', apparently) were glossed over and some of the biggest (like immigration) didn't get a mention at all. The stuff about public sector pensions ('Let me reassure you: my particular focus will always be on the gold-plated pensions enjoyed by senior civil servants, quangocrats ...') was downright dishonest - as if there are enough MPs and senior civil servants to take the whole funding hit which will almost certainly be necessary.

Some ideas were OK. I'd go further than a £10,000 zero-tax band and say that the threshold should be set at the annual salary of someone doing a 40-hour working week for the minimum wage. But some of their other ideas ("abolish safe seats") sounded pretty odd. And if the speech had a theme, it was 'we're nice guys. Trust us' - which Blair and Cameron have already trademarked.

There was one bit in Ms Featherstone's speech which resonated.

The battle lines are drawn at our childrens' feet.

In pessimistic moments I fear that may be all too literally true.

Edlington Child Attacks - Tomorrow's Guardian Editorial Today

Time to get out the all-purpose Guardian piece:

The natural horror felt at (insert appalling crime here) should not blind us to the fact that (crime is actually falling/it is all Thatcher's fault/such crimes have always been with us).

If we surrender to (the tabloid agenda/the Daily Mail hysteria/knee-jerk populism/the politics of the soundbite) and take the easy option of (jailing more of our young people/bringing back the birch/bringing back hanging/walling off the cities then bombing them/demonising our young people) we run the very real risk of (actually achieving something/alienating a generation/an invasion of killer bees).

There is only one answer. An enormous increase in the funding of (Sure Start schemes/outreach workers/emotional intelligence mentors/youth projects/anti-racist 5-a-day smoking cessation co-ordinators).

"being a Muslim has made her a better Christian"

Even the US Episcopal Church has its limits.

The decision was made by Bishop Geralyn Wolf of the Episcopal diocese of Rhode Island. Redding was ordained as an Episcopal priest in 1984 and lives in Washington State, but had kept her canonical ties in the state of Rhode Island.

Redding has said that being a Muslim has made her a better Christian. "Some people don't need glasses, some people need single lenses. I need bifocals," she told CNN in a television interview.

The statement issued by the Rhode Island diocese said that Bishop Wolf found Redding "to be a woman of utmost integrity and their conversations over the past two years have been open, honest and respectful". "However," the statement concluded, "Bishop Wolf believes that a priest of the Church cannot be both a Christian and a Muslim." As a result, Wolf imposed what is officially called "a sentence of deposition", in accordance with the canonical laws of the Episcopal Church.

Another Public School Leftie ...

Brigstocke is ideal for the BBC.

He attended Westbourne House School just outside Chichester before going onto King's Bruton School in Somerset.

Good private boarding school material.

More on Mr Brigstocke here.

In An Ideal World ...

Neither academic papers nor conferences titled 'Beyond ... ' or 'Towards ...' would exist. What does 'beyond' actually mean here, apart from implying (falsely in this case) some notion of progression ? What about 'different from' ?

BEYOND CITIZENSHIP: FEMINISM AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF BELONGING
An international, interdisciplinary conference
30 June - 2 July 2010
Birkbeck, University of London

Confirmed Speakers
- Sara Ahmed
- Davina Cooper
- Antke Engel
- Katherine Gibson
- Julie Graham (a.k.a J.K. Gibson-Graham)
- Rebecca Gomperts
- Ranjana Khanna
- Gail Lewis
- Lynne Segal
- Margrit Shildrick
- Birte Siim
- Gloria Wekker
- Anna Yeatman

I haven't got time to do the Googling, but I would be amazed if any of these people are NOT funded by the taxpayer in whatever country. I see that as well as Dave Public, the Nowegian government is putting some of those oil revenues to good use by supporting this event. There's a doctoral thesis to be written, if not a whole research arm of a think-tank, in tracking the tax revenues diverted towards the cultural Left.

The language of citizenship has, in recent years, been mobilized by feminists to articulate a wide range of claims and demands.

And the language of English has beem mobilised by feminists likewise, but for a whole lot longer. Nothing wrong with that, mind.

The notions of economic, political, social, cultural, sexual/ bodily, and intimate citizenship, for example, have all been developed and explored in terms of their normative potential and their actual realization.

Zzzz ....

In Europe, in particular, there has been a strong steer from research funders and policy makers towards research agendas which address the question of citizenship in the context of increasingly diverse and multicultural societies.

Aka 'they're crapping themselves about the future' - hence conferences on 'the future of Britishness', Gordo wrapping himself in the Union Jack, and worry about/attempts to rebuild the notion of Britishness.

I must say it's going to be entertaining to watch the feminist response to the cultural challenge of an 'increasingly diverse and multicultural society'. This theme will run and run. I hope the proceedings will be reported.





UPDATE - I'm amazed. It may be that two out of the 13 speakers are not tax funded, although it's hard to be sure :

- Sara Ahmed - Professor of Race and Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths. Tax-funded.
- Davina Cooper - Professor of Law and Political Theory, Kent. Tax-funded.
- Antke Engel - Institute of Cultural Inquiry, Berlin, Institute for Queer Theory. Possibly privately-funded via a foundation. I can't find the ICI's accounts.
- Katherine Gibson - Australian National University. Tax-funded.
- Julie Graham (a.k.a J.K. Gibson-Graham) - Professor of Geography, Amhurst. Mass. Tax-funded, although there may be some endowment money, it being America.
- Rebecca Gomperts, abortion promoter and doctor of medicine. Funding unclear, can't find the accounts, but probably not tax-funded.
- Ranjana Khanna, Women's Studies, Duke. If the financial reports are to be believed, only 28% tax-funded. God Bless America.
- Gail Lewis - sociology, OU. Tax-funded.
- Lynne Segal - Gender Studies, Birkbeck. Tax-funded.
- Margrit Shildrick - Gender Studies, Queens Belfast. Tax-funded.
- Birte Siim - Social Sciences, Aarlborg, DK. Tax-funded.
- Gloria Wekker, Gender Studies, Utrecht. Link not work or child-friendly. Tax-funded.
- Anna Yeatman, Citizenship and Public Policy, Western Australia. Tax-funded.