Six sentences which sum up the problem ...

These sum up the root problem with the Socialist dream:

1. You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity.

2. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving.

3. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else.

4. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it!

5. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that is the beginning of the end of any nation.

6. Maggie Thatcher: Socialism fails when it runs out of other people’s money!

Cranmer's Law ...

The terrific Blog, Cranmer, has come up with one of those definitions that requires considerably wider circulation. In his own words -

His Grace promulgates ‘Cranmer’s Law’, in honour of the memory of the one who was ‘an heretick’ no matter what he wrote, recanted, preached or proclaimed. He dared to articulate a view contrary to the state’s received orthodoxy, and duly paid the price. ‘Heretic’ has today simply been supplanted with ‘bigot’; ‘heresy’ with ‘hate speech’. But it is the same spirit of blind intolerance which is seen to possess even the most intelligent of commentators.

CRANMER’S LAW: “No matter how decent, intelligent or thoughtful the reasoning of a conservative may be, as an argument with a liberal is advanced, the probability of being accused of ‘bigotry’, ‘hatred’ or ‘intolerance’ approaches 1 (100%).”

Observe, declare and disseminate far and wide.

It encapsulates very succinctly the problem with almost every attempt at debate by those whose views are not shared by the extreme Left, Liberals or the terminally Politically Correct. It does deserve further dissemination.

New Cover Art for Their Lordships Request ...

A change of artwork for the cover of Their Lordships Request is in progress, the new cover was designed by Kura Carpenter in New Zealand at the behest of the ePublisher, 46 South Publishing. As I was never terribly happy with the artwork (my own!) for the original cover, I've decided to withdraw it and use the new cover.

I tested the response to it with a large slice of my readers and others and the cover you now see incorporates some of their comments and is the one identified by most as "the one!" Suffice it to say the Publisher loved it and, since he's the man selling it ...

The "face of Harry" is a young man from Wiesbaden named Lukas who thought it hugely amusing to be posing as an 18th Century British/Irish Midshipman...

Ten Years On ...

Ten years ago today probably the worst act of premeditated mass murder of all time was perpertrated on the citizens of the US. It was marked by disgraceful displays of public rejoivcing in almost every Islamic country, yet today this is forgotten by the likes of the BBC and the Guardian who continue to spread the lie that it was a response to "Israeli intransigence and 'apartheid' activity."

Ten years on, Afghanistan is still a running sore, Islamism is on the rise, Israel is now the target of Left-wing mis-information and boycotts and Islamism continues to spread unchecked. There are still morons in the US and elsewhere who believe that the whole thing was somehow "engineered" by US President G W Bush and that Michael Moore's trashy film "Fahrenheit 911" is a "documentary."

One has to ask what the Liberal/Left think they may achieve by promoting the destruction of Israel and their support for openly terrorist organisations that make no secret of their intention of carrying out genocide at the first opportunity they have ...

The "West Lothian Question"

Ever since Blair meddled with the UK Constitution, unwritten though it was, the English have suffered the indignity of having Scottish, Welsh and Irish MPs, most of the first two socialist Liebor Members, voting on issues that did not apply to their own constituents. This enabled Blair to ram through legislation that was deeply unpopular in England and only adopted in a very different and watered down form in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

The present government has now begun to consider how best to address this issue. A report from Associated Press says they are setting up a "Commission" to consider the options. One you may be absolutely certain will never appear on the table is to give England its own Parliament, free of Welsh, Scottish or Irish MPs.

One of the more difficult issues here is the Union itself and though, if you travel to Wales or Scotland you will hear how the "English" have oppressed and "robbed" both those nations, what you will not be told is that Scotland has a disproportionate number of MPs in Westminster, or that most of the most Socialist Prime Ministers have been either Scottish or Welsh. Nor will you hear how England has been deliberately villianised and its internal divisions fostered and deliberately multiplied by successive Liebor governments.

What Blair (Scottish), Brown (Scottish), John Smith (Scottish), Kinnock (Welsh), Callaghan (Scottish) or any of their predecessors will not admit, particularly now, is that the only way Liebor can gain a majority is to have all the Welsh and Scottish MPs they can get. It is the Liebor propaganda which has now come back to haunt them. Over the years they have preached that the English have oppressed and suppressed Scottish and Welsh prosperity while pouring funds into both from England. Now they face increasingly powerful separatist movements in both "heartlands." Sadly, the poison, once spread, has damaged relations between three peoples almost, I suspect, to destruction.

I doubt very much the Commission will address anything other than a mechanism to ensure that only those MPs whose constituents are affected by a piece of legislation will vote on it. At least it is a start.

Book Review: Sydney Anglicans and the threat to world Anglicanism

Written by Muriel Porter, an Australian Anglican member of the General Synod and wife of an Anglican priest, this well researched book is a compelling account of the manner in which the Sydney Diocese of the Anglican Communion has been dragged back into the distant Reformation model of an anti-catholic, Puritanical and congregational model of the church. I have found it exceptionally readable. The author is an Anglican, one who grew up in a very different Sydney Anglicanism in the 1950s and now lives, worships and celebrates in a different style of Anglicanism in Melbourne. She certainly knows her subject and the protagonists. Her descriptions of what is happening in the Sydney Diocese mirrors my own experiences and impressions from having attended services there in the late 1990s and the start of this century and it should worry every real Anglican.

The Sydney "Brand" of "Anglicanism" - and it is my belief that that 'label' no longer applies to this Diocese - is the sort of images smashing, idol hunting and intolerant Puritanism of the 16th Century. It has been fueled and fed by a number of extreme Evangelicals who have held key positions in this Diocese since the beginning of the 20th Century and it has become an entirely incestuous system of appointments. As the author states, the selection process for ministers makes it all but impossible for any trained outside Sydney to be appointed to a position in the Diocese. Even the selection for Bishops is handled by a deeply fundamentalist oriented commission selected and appointed entirely by the equally deeply fundamentalist Governing Board. But the real threat is the unholy alliances the current leadership of this rogue diocese have forged with African and North American dissidents, most of whom, ironically, share only two things with Sydney. Their opposition to women in ordained ministry and the belief that homosexuality is a learned and adopted lifestyle. Almost all their allies in the GAFCON alliance are from the ultra-catholic wing of Anglicanism, but this has not stopped Sydney from exporting and "planting" congregations carrying its poisonous brand of extreme evangelicalism into every Province and National Church.

She deals at length with the many facets of Sydney's departure from Anglican tradition and structure, including the practice of appointing only "deacons" into ministries traditionally requiring a "priest," of reserving that to the "leader" of a "Ministry Team" and of allowing Deacons and Licensed Lay Ministers to "Preside" at what passes for the Eucharist in their churches. "Services" are no longer held, instead congregations hold "meetings" or "gatherings." The symbol of Christianity is excluded from most of their churches (It isn't actually banned - yet!) because the Cross is considered idolatrous (Read the history of the Puritan rampage in the 16th and 17th Century under Edward VI and Cromwell when priests who dared to speak out against the Puritanical view were dragged from pulpits and barred from their own churches and weep.) and the Crucifix is denigrated as being a near blasphemy.

The current Archbishop and his brother, the Dean of Sydney's Anglican Cathedral, appear to fancy themselves as leaders of a world-wide Evangelical Puritanism. The Archbishop makes no bones about this in speeches in the UK to Evangelical groups there. Even, to the alarm of one of England's Evangelical Bishops, Tom Wright, encouraging Evangelical Parishes and congregations to break away from their proper Diocesan authority and bishop and seek to realign themselves, presumably with him.

Anglicanism has, traditionally, embraced both the catholic extreme and the Evangelical or, perhaps more properly, the Puritan extreme. What the Sydney Diocese is attempting to do is to tear that tolerance to shreds, to impose a Puritanical intolerance of anyone and everyone that does not share their narrow interpretation of scripture or their vision of "proper" worship. This book should be a wake up call to all Anglicans, but especially to the leaders of the church. The Sydney Diocese constantly threatens schism and uses it to blackmail and bully everyone else into adopting their stance. Perhaps it is time to simply accept that they will never be Anglicans - and caste them adrift. That would, at least, free real Anglicans to re-establish themselves in Sydney.

In defence of Israel ...

Below I am posting in its entirety a letter to the Edinburgh University Student Association by Dr Denis MacEoin. Dr MacEoin is an expert on the Middle East and is responding to the Student Body's vote to ban the use of all Israeli produce and goods in protest at the "Apartheid Regime" in Israel and "Nazi State." That the students are as ill-informed as they are racist, anti-semitic and misguided goes without saying - but I've said it anyway. Dr MacEoin is a brave man to respond directly to these morons and one can only hope that the likes of the National Union of Students and the Anti-Nazi League don't respond as they are wont to do by taking "direct action" to stifle him and drive him out of post ...

I have taken the liberty of reproducing his letter here in the belief it needs to be read and circulated as widely as possible, my source is the blog Cranmer.

The Committee
Edinburgh University Student Association

May I be permitted to say a few words to members of the EUSA? I am an Edinburgh graduate (MA 1975) who studied Persian, Arabic and Islamic History in Buccleuch Place under William Montgomery Watt and Laurence Elwell Sutton, two of Britain’s great Middle East experts in their day. I later went on to do a PhD at Cambridge and to teach Arabic and Islamic Studies at Newcastle University. Naturally, I am the author of several books and hundreds of articles in this field.

I say all that to show that I am well informed in Middle Eastern affairs and that, for that reason, I am shocked and disheartened by the EUSA motion and vote. I am shocked for a simple reason: there is not and has never been a system of apartheid in Israel. That is not my opinion, that is fact that can be tested against reality by any Edinburgh student, should he or she choose to visit Israel to see for themselves.

Let me spell this out, since I have the impression that those members of EUSA who voted for this motion are absolutely clueless in matters concerning Israel, and that they are, in all likelihood, the victims of extremely biased propaganda coming from the anti-Israel lobby. Being anti-Israel is not in itself objectionable. But I’m not talking about ordinary criticism of Israel. I’m speaking of a hatred that permits itself no boundaries in the lies and myths it pours out. Thus, Israel is repeatedly referred to as a ‘Nazi’ state. In what sense is this true, even as a metaphor? Where are the Israeli concentration camps? The einzatsgruppen? The SS? The Nüremberg Laws? The Final Solution? None of these things nor anything remotely resembling them exists in Israel, precisely because the Jews, more than anyone on earth, understand what Nazism stood for. It is claimed that there has been an Israeli Holocaust in Gaza (or elsewhere). Where? When? No honest historian would treat that claim with anything but the contempt it deserves. But calling Jews Nazis and saying they have committed a Holocaust is as basic a way to subvert historical fact as anything I can think of.

Likewise apartheid. For apartheid to exist, there would have to be a situation that closely resembled things in South Africa under the apartheid regime. Unfortunately for those who believe this, a weekend in any part of Israel would be enough to show how ridiculous the claim is. That a body of university students actually fell for this and voted on it is a sad comment on the state of modern education. The most obvious focus for apartheid would be the country’s 20% Arab population. Under Israeli law, Arab Israelis have exactly the same rights as Jews or anyone else; Muslims have the same rights as Jews or Christians; Baha’is, severely persecuted in Iran, flourish in Israel, where they have their world centre; Ahmadi Muslims, severely persecuted in Pakistan and elsewhere, are kept safe by Israel; the holy places of all religions are protected under a specific Israeli law. Arabs form 20% of the university population (an exact echo of their percentage in the general population). In Iran, the Baha’is (the largest religious minority) are forbidden to study in any university or to run their own universities: why aren’t your members boycotting Iran?

Arabs in Israel can go anywhere they want, unlike blacks in apartheid South Africa. They use public transport, they eat in restaurants, they go to swimming pools, they use libraries, they go to cinemas alongside Jews – something no blacks could do in South Africa. Israeli hospitals not only treat Jews and Arabs, they also treat Palestinians from Gaza or the West Bank. On the same wards, in the same operating theatres.

In Israel, women have the same rights as men: there is no gender apartheid. Gay men and women face no restrictions, and Palestinian gays often escape into Israel, knowing they may be killed at home. It seems bizarre to me that LGBT groups call for a boycott of Israel and say nothing about countries like Iran, where gay men are hanged or stoned to death. That illustrates a mindset that beggars belief. Intelligent students thinking it’s better to be silent about regimes that kill gay people, but good to condemn the only country in the Middle East that rescues and protects gay people. Is that supposed to be a sick joke?

University is supposed to be about learning to use your brain, to think rationally, to examine evidence, to reach conclusions based on solid evidence, to compare sources, to weigh up one view against one or more others. If the best Edinburgh can now produce are students who have no idea how to do any of these things, then the future is bleak. I do not object to well documented criticism of Israel. I do object when supposedly intelligent people single the Jewish state out above states that are horrific in their treatment of their populations. We are going through the biggest upheaval in the Middle East since the 7th and 8th centuries, and it’s clear that Arabs and Iranians are rebelling against terrifying regimes that fight back by killing their own citizens. Israeli citizens, Jews and Arabs alike, do not rebel (though they are free to protest). Yet Edinburgh students mount no demonstrations and call for no boycotts against Libya, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and Iran. They prefer to make false accusations against one of the world’s freest countries, the only country in the Middle East that has taken in Darfur refugees, the only country in the Middle East that gives refuge to gay men and women, the only country in the Middle East that protects the Baha’is... Need I go on? The imbalance is perceptible, and it sheds no credit on anyone who voted for this boycott.

I ask you to show some common sense. Get information from the Israeli embassy. Ask for some speakers. Listen to more than one side. Do not make your minds up until you have given a fair hearing to both parties. You have a duty to your students, and that is to protect them from one-sided argument. They are not at university to be propagandized. And they are certainly not there to be tricked into anti-Semitism by punishing one country among all the countries of the world, which happens to be the only Jewish state. If there had been a single Jewish state in the 1930s (which, sadly, there was not), don’t you think Adolf Hitler would have decided to boycott it? Of course he would, and he would not have stopped there. Your generation has a duty to ensure that the perennial racism of anti-Semitism never sets down roots among you. Today, however, there are clear signs that it has done so and is putting down more. You have a chance to avert a very great evil, simply by using reason and a sense of fair play. Please tell me that this makes sense to you. I have given you some of the evidence. It’s up to you to find out more.

Yours sincerely,

Dr. Denis MacEoin

It also shows that it is high time the government stepped into the activities of groups such as the NUS and EUSA and reminded them of the laws which forbid the "stirring up of racial or religious hatred" in force in the UK. Actions such as that taken by the EUSA and the groups and individuals who spread the anti-Israel lies should be dealt with. The Legislation exists, Blair put it on the books, its time to use it.