What to do when the Jolly Wallies come knocking

It’s an age old problem isn’t it? What to do when the Jehovah’s Witnesses come knocking at your door. I, being the sort of person that has too much spare time on their hands, usually invite them in for a coffee and a chat. I look forward a great deal to these great theological arguments but the problem is that they and I are at the polar opposite ends of the theological spectrum so finding any common ground to even start the conversation is difficult.

“What evidence is there that god exists” I say, and then have to sit back in glazed amusement as my visitors trot out some verbatim repetition from some old book written 2,000 years ago which, apparently establishes the existence of a deity without any room for doubt or dissent.

“But could you point me to the evidence” say I, wildly waving my arm in the general direction of the outside world. But of course, we are miles apart, my visitors and I, so we have to part company reluctantly a few hours later, neither side having made any headway at all against the other’s intransigence.

My friend has hit upon a much more fun and interesting procedure.

“Do come in” he says delightedly as they wave a copy of The Watchtower under his nose. “We have much to discuss. Would you like a drink?”

His guests usually concur that a drink would be fine and having sat them in his lounge, he disappears into the kitchen, returning shortly with glasses for his guests.

“What’s this?” they ask nervously, after smelling the contents of the glass.

“It’s a cup of bleach” he says, smiling in a manner of someone who knows how to welcome a person with very strong religious beliefs into his house. “You are surely familiar with “Mark Chapter 16, verse 18”

they will pick up snakes with their hands; and when they drink deadly poison, it will not hurt them at all; they will place their hands on sick people, and they will get well.”

“Oh no” they say, horrified. “That part’s not to be taken literally”.

And then the conversation can really get going!

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Ed Miliband - What's going on with this new baby?

Am I the only one around here who thinks it’s wrong that Ed Miliband and his partner have just given birth to a baby without being married? The news makes no mention of the fact that they are are unmarried nor that it might be morally wrong to give birth to children outside wedlock. I know of no Prime Ministers that fathered (or mothered) legitimate children without being married to their partner. Has this kind of behaviour now become acceptable?

I know it’s quite normal these days for the chavs to have children without giving a second thought to marrying the father of the child, but I would have thought that, even in this day and age, respectable members of the community would be trying to set a good example to the chavs and be married before embarking on having a family. Certainly most senior members of the three main political parties seem to subscribe to this view; I don’t recall Mr Cameron, Mr Blair, or Mr Brown, all of whom have recently had children, saying in any way shape or form that they thought it was a good idea to father children outside wedlock. Indeed, all three seem to be very happily married. What kind of message does Mr Miliband wish to convey to his new son? That it’s ok not to enter into a lifetime commitment with the boy’s mother – that it all might be a “here today gone tomorrow” arrangement?

I think it’s wrong and that we should campaign for Mr Miliband to take the logical, and, most would say, normal step of marrying his partner. Does the word "bastard" no longer carry any overtones? What do you think?

What does "Working Class" really mean?

From a blogger called "The answer's 42" comes the following blog. Very interesting - makes some very valid points...

"One of the Labour leadership hopefuls, Andy Burnham, talks of returning the party to its "traditional" roots and is proud of his "working-class" background. Not surprising then that he's got the worst record of all the contenders when it comes to LGBT issues. "Working-class" people never used to be particularly tolerant of homosexuality; their men were men and their women were women.

But I'm not sure that the "working-class" that Andy claims to speak for exists any more. There are lots of manual workers, men and women, who earn considerably more than the down-trodden workers of the past. The most poorly paid are in the service industries, mainly women, earning the minimum wage. On sink estates around the country there are socially-deprived, poorly educated people who have little in common with working-class men like the ones featured in the recent BBC TV Fatherhood series. Many of them read to their children at night after work and encouraged them to pass their 11+ and better themselves. Pre-contraception and modern domestic appliances, mothers were still chained to the sink.

A few years ago I did a funeral for a man who'd been a civil engineer, at the top of his company, who'd worked on projects all round the world. His family told me that when he was a child in the 1930s his family was so poor that he and his brother shared a pair of shoes and took it in turns to go to school in them. His family didn't want me to mention this at first. They were embarrassed about his early poverty. I pointed out that his story was inspirational. His family couldn't afford to keep him at school so he'd left early and gone to work. He got an apprenticeship and went to evenings classes to gain additional qualifications, got a job in civil engineering and worked his way up from the bottom. It wasn't unusual for children to share shoes when he was a child. It is unusual to hear about people who've made such progress now. When he grew up, his children were used to all the privileges their father had earned, and all went to university. They had working class roots, but had never known working class life.

Now, if welfare benefits are properly managed, no one needs to go without shoes. Many of the socially-deprived have all sorts of problems. Many don't aspire to improve themselves by educating themselves; they just resent all the people who have more than they do. Are they "working-class"?

Then there's the "middle-class" that the Labour Party's fought so hard to attract and keep over the last decade or so. They read the Guardian and the Independent, have several cars, own their own homes, send their kids to the "best" schools, drink wine most days of the week, have foreign holidays, and fret about things like "fulfilment".

The "upper-class" used to mean people with inherited wealth; aristocrats or those on the fringes of the aristocracy. Now there's a new layer of wealthiness; people paid silly money as top executives, celebrities who are famous for being famous, and other millionaires (a million doesn't go far these days).

My dad was a book-keeper. He aspired to be middle class but was never well paid and lived in rented accommodation most of his adult life. I remember the Christmas he came home with tears in his eyes after accidentally breaking a bottle of whisky by knocking it against a lamp post as he got out of a car, having been given a lift by a colleague (he didn't have a car). He'd bought it with a discount from work, and he watched it all drain away. On a tight budget, it wasn't something he could replace easily.

I was the first in my family to have a higher education, though I didn't get any encouragement from my parents. They wanted me to stay out of trouble and get married. I did neither. What with one thing and another, I've hardly had any money for most of my adult life, though I've worked in one of the so-called "professions". So what class do I belong to? Hard to say, so I don't. I don't have one.

Mr Burnham's working-class roots were pulled up ages ago. Class isn't so easily defined these days."

Religion?

Just saw this, and had to post it. Brilliant!!