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If you arrived here directly, then don't miss Holford Web Home of David's Mental Meanderings If you just want to find out who this strange bloke is, you'll need to go there as well. Your feedback about anything you read here is always welcome. Other blogs I enjoy reading: Doxos St. Stephen's Musings Robert's Cogitations This is Life Paradosis Natalie Solent Mere Comments Little Geneva Antioch Road The Edge of England's Sword flyingchair.net Samizdata Joshua Claybourn Between Heaven and Hell PC Watch Notes From a Hillside Farm Simeon's Hit and Miss of Filosofical Thought George Grant Lileks a conservative blog for peace You can also find me listed at Blogs4God Currently down from the bookshelf: Celtic Christianity in Early Medieval Wales: The Origins of the Welsh Spiritual Tradition by Oliver Davies Women in Purple: Rulers of Medieval Byzantium by Judith Herrin Recently finished: Give Me My Father's Body: The Life of Minik, The New York Eskimo by Kenn Harper John Quincy Adams: A Public Life, A Private Life by Paul C. Nagel Lancaster & York: The Wars of the Roses by Alison Weir Most recent acquisitions: John Major: The Autobiography Retreat from New Jerusalem: British Politics 1951-64 by Kevin Jefferys 
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Friday, June 13, 2003
As promised, today there is a new Mental Meandering. Yesterday's constitutional changes were confused by more changes today. The Government dismantles everything - read all about it. Thursday, June 12, 2003
I've been taken away from blogging today by a discussion in which I am participating on Doxos and by today's massive constitutional changes announced by the Prime Minister's Official Spokesperson (PMOS). The latter was going to be a blog, but has turned into a Meandering, hopefully available for you tomorrow. In the meantime, have a nice cup of tea and a sit down. Wednesday, June 11, 2003
Consequences Some extraordinary statistics were released by the Parliamentary Health Select Committee. There has been an alarming rise in sexually transmitted diseases in the UK. One in ten sexual active young women in England is infected with Chlamydia. 42% of them are under the age of 20. Many of these women won�t have to worry about going on the pill, getting abortions, or helping to replenish the ever-decreasing European population. Chlamydia often causes infertility. The rates of syphilis have gone up by 500% in the last six years. Gonorrhoea rates have doubles over the same period. Figures for 2002 will show 6,600 new cases of AIDS diagnosed, which is the biggest single increase ever. Of the cases reported in 2001, 56% were acquired through heterosexual sex. And who is to blame? According to one Liberal Democrat member of the committee, �People are dying through ignorance and the Government must take a large part of the blame.� So it is the Government�s fault. It appears to me that most of these instances as caused by sin. Yes, innocent people get venereal disease, but they usually get it because the person they got it from got it from some place they shouldn�t have been. The only blame the Government has in the promotion of �safe sex�. The Government has been putting out the message that sex is great, everyone should get as much as they can from wherever they can, so have a good time, but put a raincoat on your willy. Sexually transmitted diseases are by their very nature behaviourally contracted. Everyone one and every institution may be saying that your behaviour is your own business and you are free to do as you please. Governments may legalise sin and promote it, but they can�t prevent its consequences. Tuesday, June 10, 2003
Better Days As I was doing the dishes tonight I was listening to the Corrs, one of my favourite groups, as it often my custom. And I was jamming to one of my favourite songs� We are so young now And then it hit me: no we aren�t. They may be, but I�m less than a year from 40. If I live to my life expectancy, in the word of Moses� only Psalm, �if by reason of strength they are eighty years,� I�m a middle as middle-aged can get. I�m crippled, fat, bald, blind, and half-deaf (from all that loud music when I really was �so young, so young�). I have seen better days. �Through the Lord's mercies we are not consumed.� So I think I�ve got it bad, but then I think about the genealogy work I was doing the other night. I was spurred on by a question my father asked about his grandfather�s brother. Realising that he is the oldest heir male (i.e., person to carry the Holford surname) of his grandfather, he wonder if he was the oldest of his great-grandfather. I determined that he would appear to be the oldest heir male of his great-great-grandfather Holford. But that�s not the point of my story. I just thought you might find it interesting. Anyhow, as I was looking at census records for 1870. I found the entry for my great-great-grandfather Holford�s family. He wasn�t listed, because he didn�t come back from the War Between the States. My great-great-grandmother was there, aged 32, having already been a widow for five or six years. Then there was my great-grandfather, 12 years old. And Uncle Don, 11 and with no idea whatsoever that he would be dead at 30. And little girls 9 and 5, the youngest born after the last time my great-great-grandmother ever saw her husband. We have a picture of my great-great-grandmother Holford. It�s a rather well-known picture because she is so strikingly unattractive. If you saw that picture, you would think she is an old woman. A particularly ugly old woman. It was certainly taken late in life. But she died six months shy of her 50th birthday. (She died the same year as her father, who was 88.) I�m sure it had been a hard life. She was only outlived by Uncle Don for 18 months. Aunt Mary, the little 9-year-old in 1870, would be dead two years after that, in the winter of �91, buried with her infant child. They are all interred in a mostly forgotten family cemetery that�s covered chest-high with weeds and briars most of the year. I may not be so young, so young now. But I haven�t had it so bad. Monday, June 09, 2003
Don't You Believe It Hillary Clinton says she has no intentions of running for the presidency in 2008. I believe that as much as I believe Bill didn�t not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky. 2008 is a long way off and in the collective Alzheimer�s of the American public, what�s she�s said today will have been long forgotten when the run-up to that campaign starts. Right now Hillary is primarily concerned with selling a few more books, especially since no one believes the bits concerning what she knew about the scandals surrounding her husband. Even the papers here, known for their sycophantic love for Slick Willie as much as for their loathing of Curious George, don�t put any credence to Hillary�s story. But this takes the cake: she and Bill were so close to Tony and Cherie Blair because they share the same faith. In a 1997 visit to the Prime Minister�s country home, she says they talked about �the connection between a religious faith and public service. Both of us rooted our political beliefs in our faith, which moulded our social actions�. Now admittedly she doesn�t actually come out and say that faith is Christianity. The Blairs do actually seem to adhere to the Christian faith, except for a propensity for political prevarication. Tony is even tries to sneak up and receive the Body and Blood at Westminster Cathedral (the Catholic cathedral in London). Even the Pope had to tell him off. Strange though that he wants to receive Catholic communion, but appoints someone like Rowan Williams as Archbishop of Canterbury. Sunday, June 08, 2003
Not a Tooth in His Head Soon Scottish Gaelic will be spoken with a funny accent. This is because soon the Gaels will have no teeth. According to a report in The Sunday Times, more than 14,000 people in the north of Scotland have been waiting more than 2 � years to see a dentist. Scotland already has the worst dental health in all of Europe. Only 61% of children in the Highlands are registered with a dentist, which is far more than adults, of whom on 34% are on the books. Because dentist are usually the first to spot illnesses of the mouth and throat, the rate of oral cancer in Scotland is 22% higher than in England. My Two Dads Everyone knew it was going to happen sometime under this Government. Plans will be put forward by the Government this month to give gay and lesbian couples the same rights as married couples. This will extend to tax provisions, property, and pensions. They would be the legal next of kin, including the right to make decisions regarding medical treatment and funeral arrangements. They could apply for alimony if the relationship breaks down. They would have the same immigration rights. All they have to do is have a new form of civil ceremony. In other words, a gay marriage. This is not an example of the Government going it alone. They are just following the EU�s equal treatment directive. Being a part of Europe, this is just part of the package. Get Them While They�re Young The Southeast Sheffield Education Action Zone is doing its part in preparing youngsters for the possibilities of gay marriage. They are teaching 10-year-olds how to put on condoms. �I do the demo and then I tell them about the drop-in clinics available to them from the age of 11 where they can get supplies and advice,� said Charlotte Hall, who runs the programme in primary schools in Sheffield. Other classes in the programme include lessons which ask children to �consider how different people might express their sexuality�. They have teacher-led discussions on sadomasochism, a �naughty bits bingo� game and classroom role plays of �a married man who was �done� for cottaging�. (You may remember what cottaging is from Thursday�s blog.) |