Judgment

In my other blog, at http://tonyklinger.blogspot.co.uk I write entertainment related stories. Over the last couple of days that has caused me to research Walden Media and their film The Chronicles of Narnia – Prince Caspian and the original series of books it was based on, written by the British author, CS Lewis.

It transpires that both the Walden organization and the author are linked in a wish to deliver a religious or spiritual message to their viewers and readers. Walden want to teach their audience, in the guise of their being an educator. I have no particular problem with them being educators, as long as this intent is transparent and acceptable to the consumers.

This covert method at “education” strikes a similar chord as it is seems to be increasingly evident, however surreptitiously, within the framework of entertainment celebrities and their beliefs, and their choices of creative material.

An obvious example, cited many times, is Tom Cruise and his Scientology beliefs. Tom, it is now claimed, is the number two man in the entire church, which he appears to deny. He is accompanied in this church by John Travolta. He starred in the flop of the decade, and that’s tough competition, in Battlefield Earth. The Scientologist religion’s late founder, L Ron Hubbard, didn’t live to see the film based on his book of the same name. It is self evident that Ron was very strange and so are the beliefs of this Church.

I have spent some time looking at the Church of Scientology and to me it seems more bizarre than most religions. There are not too many other religious groups, which are formed by novelists such as L Ron Hubbard. I do recommend some of his science fiction books by the way, and the key word in this sentence is fiction. The beliefs in a science fiction type basis for religion, such as that which appears to be the case in Scientology, isn’t much more strange than the beliefs of the Mormons. However there is a difference that makes the Scientologists more threatening than any other recently created and fast growing religion. The key difference is that Scientology seeks to proselytize, sometimes by stealth. I know this to be true from personal experience. I have seen their underhand methods when an unnamed organization offered free educational opportunities to someone in my family in the USA. It was only later that the offer was linked to the Church of Scientology.

Another great running story of a similar nature is the Kabbalah lite followed by the pop singer and mega media icon, Madonna. It does not seem as if Madonna has done anything to influence others to follow her own spiritual path, but because of who she is there are bound to be many who will follow her path purely because she does.

Kabbalah, in its more conventional sense means, literally, “receiving” and in its true sense concerns the mystical aspects of Judaism. It is a set of extremely esoteric teachings to explain the significance of Jewish religious observances. It is so complex a belief system that learned scholars spend decades to explore it. Madonna and her friends seem able to grasp it with a minimal amount of study and some well-placed donations.

What a shame our celebrity examples don’t demonstrate better judgment in their spiritual journey.

Blank

There are days when you think you have nothing to write about, simply blank. Today was such a day. I woke up thinking it was a good day for me to use one of my stockpiled stories, perhaps something a bit timeless but nevertheless worthy.

I looked into my electronic files and soon realized that there was nothing appropriate. I searched my brain for a humorous anecdote but came up without a smile. I looked at the newspaper for inspiration but they were leading with stories about that son of a Fascist, sex fun boy Max Mosley. In this blog we have already discussed the Formula 1’s supremo and his sexual peccadilloes. This is a chap that sees nothing wrong with consenting adults dressing up as Nazi concentration camp guards and whipping each other into a sexual frenzy. Fun boy Max denies that the nubile young women in the striped uniforms were dressed as inmates in a concentration camp, and that the German language being used was intended to simulate that situation.

Oh dear, perhaps I’m just not broad minded enough. I just don’t get the joke, or the sexual thrill. Then again I’m not the son of an anti-Semitic rabble rousing Fascist, so I suppose there’s something lacking within me.

Max, so his court defense goes, is of the opinion that his privacy has been invaded and this has brought him into public ridicule and that has affected his business and personal life. No, it’s the other way round Max; some might consider that you lose the right to anonymity when you hire a room full of female playmates to indulge your sick and depraved sexual fantasies. None of us can know whether Max shares his father’s political persuasion of just loving those Nazis, but I wouldn’t take a big bet against it. The amazing thing is that Mosley should think it was a good idea for him to take the tabloid newspaper to court, after he admitted the basic facts which included more or less everything except his disputing of the notion that these sex games indicated that he is a Nazi sex deviant, rather than a simple run of the mill sex deviant. From my perspective I have to admit that I do prefer the normal type of sex deviant, to the Nazi type that is. Go on Max; prove you’re just a regular sex deviant. We’re all having fun a great deal of fun watching you do so.

Then there’s the story about the young Yorkshire country cricket player who had captained the England under 15 and under 16 teams over the last couple of year. The trouble was that he has a Pakistani passport, as he was born in that country and was not registered as a foreign player in England as the rules state he must. The problem comes from the fact that the powers that be knew about this for a week but they and his county hadn’t got their act together in that time and apparently didn’t seek to stop the game until the crowd was already at the fixture.

Knowing that they couldn’t possibly be this stupid I don’t think I should bother with this story. Surely it simply isn’t possible for all these senior figures in the game of cricket to allow a situation in which thousands of people have paid for their tickets and even entered the ground before the game was cancelled. The clowns who run the game only have to apply their make up and costumes.

Let’s check the calendar, I often do so when a story appears that is so bizarre that I simply can’t believe someone hasn’t fabricated it. Such is my disbelief at the story repeated in many places that there is serious interest in purchasing Newcastle United Football club from its present owner, Mike Ashley. The prospective purchasers are the family of Osama Bin Laden. You couldn’t make this up, and the next bit makes it even better or worse of juxtaposition, depending on your point of view. This is the same Newcastle United who employs the convict footballer, Joey Barton, currently serving time at Her Majesty’s pleasure for having attacked an innocent victim, and whom last week was found guilty of another admitted attack this time on a professional player in a separate incident.

The great debate amongst the fans of Newcastle United was whether or not their team should take a moral stance and throw Joey out for his crimes and misdemeanors. It is my view that they should not do so based on his recent behavior, because he will have been punished under law already, and you shouldn’t punish a person more than once. I think they should throw him out because he is clearly unable to control himself. But the idea of the Bin Laden family being the possible arbiters of how British people in their employment might have to behave is almost too delicious to contemplate. Imagine the conversation, “Joey, so you think you’re hard?” I bet he’d behave.

It looks like we found something to write about after all.

Differences

There is a difference between the actions of terrorists and the reactions of democratic states trying to combat them. It has become acceptable, even fashionable, among the chattering liberal classes to blur these differences, even to equate the actions and reactions.

In this thinking a person can randomly bomb you or yours in a bus, train or while you’re out shopping or fly a plane and kill you while you are sitting at your desk, and that is naughty. But, should your country’s armed forces target the people who did this, and manage to target them with killing force then that’s an exact equivalent. Of course it isn’t the same, and secretly, even the idiot liberal left knows it isn’t.

This is further complicated when the Guardian reading, BBC adoring, left leaning liberal elite is involved. Because when they are the judges it is obvious that should the country seeking justice for the murder of their civilians be called Israel or America, or even our own UK, then, by definition, it must be wrong.

Last week there was a murderous attack in Jerusalem by a Palestinian. He drove a big tractor over and through two buses and several cars. He killed several people and injured many more in a clear, terrorist attack before an off duty soldier managed to kill him. This took place in what is commonly regarded as the Jewish part of Israel’s capital. The BBC reported this awful event by framing it within the context of the relative numbers of dead Jews and Palestinians there have been this year.

Even by the BBC’s own distorted standards of bias against Israel this was sick reporting. The blood and body parts of the innocent Israeli civilians had not even been cleared from the street behind the reporter when he was trying to make this odious comparison, for which he and his employers should be deeply ashamed. Have the BBC and their fellow travelers rendered Israel so illegitimate in their minds that anything a crazed murderer did was permissible and understandable? That is the inescapable conclusion unless the truth is that the BBC has become constitutionally anti Israel and is simply not able to render an impartial opinion?

The same can be said for very similar coverage of the American actions, particularly in Iraq. That is the only reason there can be for the apparent belittling of the recent American achievements after the surge by their additional troops in that country. It is now measurable that the Americans have reduced fatalities, their own, as well as those of the Iraqi civilian population. Order is slowly being restored after a bloody attempt at anarchy inspired, funded and supplied by Al Qada, Syria and Iran. Even when these facts are inescapable the left leaning media simply continue to ignore the facts in front of them. In Iraq there has been an 80% reduction in casualties whereas in Israel, since the hated Israeli protective wall was built, there has been a 97% decrease in suicide bombings.

Both places have something else in common. The terrorists fight the dirty way that terrorists usually fight. They hide in mosques, and in school, they use ambulances to hide and transport themselves and their weapons in. They don’t care about civilian casualties; in fact they wallow in them. They enjoy the collateral damage they cause by hiding themselves within groups of civilians. Whilst the Israeli, British and American military do their best to avoid the non-combatants from the other side, the terrorist enemy intentionally aims to kill and maim as many of our non-combatants as possible.

There is no symmetry or logic to this, no fairness in its reporting. We are simply to understand that by their very existence they, the Israeli, American and the British governments are in the wrong, and therefore anything the other side, which includes a motley bunch of fanatics and terrorists, perpetrates is legitimate, because, in this Alice Through The Looking Glass world, we are illegitimate.

In this reverse world George Bush and the last British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, are rated as more dangerous, disingenuous and evil than Osama Bin Laden and others of his ilk. Personally I am not a fan of either Bush or Blair but how could any sane person compare them to a mass murdering, crypto Fascist, and religious bigot of a fanatic like Bin Laden?

In the real world the self-hating liberal media will not wake up to the truth until it is too late. The truth is that there are bad people out there, and they want our whole world to vanish in a puff of smoke. It isn’t smart and cute to wrap yourself in a terrorist flag, because they hate your liberalism even more than you hate your own society. If you love the people that hate you it doesn’t make you hip, or liberal, it simply demonstrates your stupidity as you wait to be destroyed.

Lies

A few weeks ago I made a fuss in this series of blogs at the behavior of one of the contestants in the television show, The Apprentice. That was Lee McQueen, who went on to win the show, despite the fact that he was discovered to have falsified part of his history in his resume applying to appear on the Apprentice.

Should we all feel free to sprinkle future job applications with white lies, is there a cost to lying in our modern society?

McQueen claimed that he attended Thames University for two years when he’d been there four months.

"I'd call it information that was miscommunicated, rather than an outright lie," said McQueen, the 30-year-old winning Apprentice.

At the beginning of this weekend the Deputy Mayor of London, Ray Lewis, resigned, despite protesting his innocence of accusations that he had falsified his history when he was enlisted to his job. It turns out that he this man had proven to be unreliable when dealing with other people’s money, according to the Bishop who had been his boss, amongst others.

Oh, by the way, did I mention that he was also a vicar? This same man, it is alleged by a social worker, had also relieved a parishioner of some of his money. It is further alleged that this same chap, undaunted, when vicar in the Windward Islands, managed to write dud checks.

This seems to be the perfect person to be selected as a Deputy Mayor of London. You are left to ask what’s going on. I know that when I fill in any official document to do with anything remotely official or governmental is that you are supposedly strictly vetted. This was the case when I was simply doing some hourly lecturing and had to undergo a full criminal records check.

So how, if this is so, does this joker walk straight past this entire system as if it doesn’t exist? How does our much discussed, very recently elected Mayor of London, Boris Johnson hire and praise this man to the heavens, without apparently having the results of any kind of checking process. David Cameron, the Conservative Party leader, also praised Ray Lewis in the past, which only reinforces the question marks about the efficiency and judgment surrounding the leadership of that party.

Whilst we question the efficiency and honesty of the Conservatives let us not forget that the Labour party is still wallowing in its own cesspit of smelly and corrupt misuses and abuses of expenses. It seems that the only major party not tainted by these types of irregularities might be the Liberal Democrats, for which we must commend them. However this is tempered somewhat by the fact that no one cares about them as they have no realistic chance of winning a general election.

I think the American slang term, employed by their military during the Second World War still applies. SNAFU they would say about both our leading political party’s, by way of an appropriate acronym. It stood for Situation Normal, All F…ed up!

At this point I should declare a special interest regarding London’s new Mayor, Boris Johnson. He looks exactly like a chap who haunted my past when he stole my identity and later admitted that he had been undergoing long-term psychiatric care, including medication. He caused me and mine great aggravation and was Boris’s physical twin. I therefore cannot look at Boris without fear and loathing permeating every fiber of my being. Irrational, of course, but then again my nutcase did look exactly like Boris.

“I’m very sad that Ray Lewis has had to resign” said Boris “we won’t solve the difficulties of this city by hiring antiseptic guys to deal with the knife crime and gangs.” The Mayor explained, after Lewis resigned.

Boris, your man is a liar and a villain and he had to go. What you need, what our wonderful city demands, is efficient and honest policing, being run by incorruptible politicians.

It all comes back to a simple truth; there can be little or no tolerance for misleading your colleagues because it will inevitably lead to disaster. When the guy lied to the people on The Apprentice he should have been thrown out rather than humored. It wasn’t shaving the truth, it was a lie. How do you ever know if you can trust him again?

If society accepts one lie from one person, what’s the difference when a second person covers up a few inconvenient facts?

We simply don’t have any moral certainties any more. Our compass telling us what is wrong and right has been discarded in the pursuit of wealth. We will never be happy or content until we regain our core values and self- respect. We have to re-learn, as a society, the difference between the truth and lies and the importance of absolute values. It is time to stop walking by and shrugging our shoulders when we see something is wrong. If we don’t the consequences will always be bad.

You don’t have to be priest or a moralist to insist that we will sacrifice civilization itself if we don’t clean up the mess this moral vacuum is creating.

Devolution

I want to resume my one-person campaign in favor of further devolution in the United Kingdom. I very much want to hive off Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, which are still part of the UK, leaving England to run its own affairs. The monarch could be allowed to remain head of all these states, just as at present, she is monarch of countries like Canada, without that country being part of the UK. As far as I’m concerned if the Welsh, Scottish and Northern Irish don’t want to be part of one country, our United Kingdom, they should go it alone, and so should we. That means that each of our countries can be virtually independent, although not entirely so. The reason being that our ruling Labour Party will realize that they would never win the newly independent English parliamentary elections. The proof for this is that whenever they have won the UK general elections in the past, they have done so by winning thumping majorities in Wales and Scotland whereas the Conservatives almost always carry England.

The breakup of the United Kingdom into four smaller countries does fly in the face of all common sense since these countries have not flown solo for several hundred years and simply don’t have the critical mass to do so other than as European backwaters.

As matters stand the population of England is about five times greater than the rest of the nation put together and this disparity is set to become wider. The forecasters calculate that by mid century the population of England will pass the current population of the United Kingdom, sixty million, with the rest taken as a whole, amounting to a further ten to twelve million. This is largely due to large scale immigration.

I think an outcome of separation is a great pity since this diminishes all the parts of the great British Isles. When I was growing up I was encouraged to think of myself as British first and English second. In Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland it was always clear that they considered themselves Scottish, or Irish or Welsh first, then British. My identity was, admittedly, more confused, because of my Jewish, Eastern European heritage. As a child I always put English behind British as English had an almost tribal connotation to it. How could I, being of Jewish, Polish, Russian and some German background possibly call myself part of this English tribe?

It reminds me of what an American cousin once said to me. He and I were once chatting over how our family had bobbed along on the ebb and flow of the world’s flowing tides. He turned to me and said, “You know that Chamberlain of yours really let us all down.” I paused, unsure of how to reply, after all I was in his home, “Do you mean Neville Chamberlain?” I asked, quite politely, “yes, “ he continued, “what he did at Munich with Hitler.” A thousand thoughts crossed my mind, first was that my cousin had mislaid the fact that America had arrived a little late for that particular war, but then the proper response bubbled to the surface, “How can you be annoyed at Chamberlain for Munich when our common ancestor was probably selling matches on a street corner in Warsaw?”

That’s the trouble with national identity it’s all so totally fake. Most of the people who think themselves to be pure English or Scottish or anything else for that matter have a bit of the mongrel about them, and are, more than likely all the better for it.

But it feels like England has long subsidized and looked after these little brother countries at our borders. It is ironic that during this great debate we have a situation in which our Prime Minister and quite a few of the leading members of the Cabinet that governs our country is born in Scotland, whereas there is no possibility of similar representation of English power in Scotland. We have, in fact, got England being governed by the Scottish, Scotland governed by the Scottish and the UK being governed by the Scottish. This is like Italy being governed by the Romans, oh yes, that was the case wasn’t it, and that was called the Roman Empire. Should we call Britain today, the Scottish Empire?

This is exacerbated by the fact that there is more spent per Scottish person than there is spent on per English person and it’s English people who pay the majority of this bill. The Scots who run our country will protest that is not the case, but their own Treasury department has confirmed these figures. It is time this was stopped and the answer lies with the ballot box. It is time that these inequities were voiced and sorted out by the Conservative and Unionist party. That is what their name means, and it is high time they stood their ground and made themselves clear as an alternative government.

Hello

Happy July 4th. to all my American and Canadian friends. Though why you Americans should celebrate your independence from the United Kingdom I don’t quite understand.

Yesterday marked the arrival of my fourth grandchild, Oliver. Or Ollie as we shall all call him. He is without doubt the most handsome, clever and alert 6 pounds 11 ounce young man in the known universe.

There are moments in life when the world seems to suddenly move in glutinous slow motion, everything leading to doubts and uncertainties. Your optimism slipping into brave smiles to obscure the hot breath of fear enveloping you. Yesterday morning was such a time for the family and me. Phone calls in the middle of the night, premature visits to the hospital, things going slightly wrong, and then the decision to deliver the baby by Caesarian section.

Because I had a cold I was relegated to a safe distance. Sitting in the corridors, trying to think positively, but for a while there, it was all too easy to remember that phrase, there are no atheists in a foxhole. I offered up all the prayers I could think of in my quiet corner for my little girl to be OK. I don’t know if there is a higher being, which is why I qualify as an agnostic, but I do want to say thank you, if he or she is there, because it did all turn out fine.

Whilst thanking any infinite Almighty I also want to pay tribute to the maternity unit of the Queen Elizabeth 2 Hospital in Welwyn who were a shining example of when the National Health service gets something resoundingly right. The staff were helpful, informative, polite, efficient, hygienic and above all very human under somewhat trying circumstances. The upshot was our very happy and enhanced family smiling hugely.

Furthering my somewhat tenuous medical link I ask you what do Dwain Chambers the runner, and Majid Ahmed, the student have in common?

Both committed offences for which they were punished but are still suffering the consequences.

Dwain Chambers admitted taking substances that enabled him to train harder and recover quicker which enabled him to run 100 meters at around 10 seconds. He was caught, and his punishment was a lengthy ban. After the ban was finished the British Olympic movement reminded him, that under their rules he must never run for our Olympic team again. He is taking them to court to challenge this ruling.

Majid Ahmed is a gifted student, born in the North of England, in Bradford, who dreamed of becoming a doctor. He had qualified as the best student of his school in all of his exams, having received 4 A’s at A level. He even raised a considerable sum for charity and worked as a volunteer. Everything was coming up roses for Majid as he heard from the university of his choice, the world ranked Imperial College in London, that they had selected him to be a student. That’s when the good news stopped because Majid had also told the university that when he was 16 years old he had a criminal conviction for a small part in a burglary that led to his receiving a 4 month long community service. Imperial College withdrew their offer of a place based on their belief that this young man could never be trusted as a doctor.

There is no doubt that both Majid and Dwain had broken the rules and laws of our society. Equally there can be no reservation that their crimes and misdemeanors warranted punishment. Both men, having received their penalties, showed remorse, and have, according to all reports, behaved in an exemplary manner ever since. How can society then justify, after all this, their punishment continuing for the rest of their lives? This is not justice, it is society seeking revenge that exceeds punishment.

Maternity

The best laid plans of mice and men. That should be my theme for the last few days. I had planned a rather clever blog about the gradual separation between England and Scotland and what this will mean but circumstances have again intervened. Yesterday I had one of those awful summer colds, which we men refer to as either the flu, or the dreaded lurgy, and our women call the sniffles. I alone know how terribly afflicted I have been for the last couple of days, and in particular the nights. If my daughter only knew how indisposed I was with this flu she wouldn’t make such a fuss about having a baby.

The article will have to wait this time because our first born, Georgia, is again back at the maternity ward. The latest word, and men, turn away if you’re a bit delicate, is 3 centimetres. I am on my way and will update you tomorrow. By the way I am purchasing a surgical mask on route. I don’t want to catch anything!