Simon Morgan – Freelance

The recent Cambridge report on primary school teaching methods has recommended that formal lessons do not begin before the age of six. Once again the tired old dirge of cant, hypocrisy and prejudice that is the United Kingdom’s education policy is given an outing. Never has there been a more important subject so consistently badly handled. Followers of this blog will know that as far as I am concerned the disaster visited upon education is second only to the Black Death in the scale of social cataclysms that have befallen this country. However, I was generally referring to secondary education and the ghastly catastrophe of the Comprehensives. Primary education has always been a comparative success; but now they are threatened and why? Because the body politic refuses to confront the huge elephant sat in the living room that is parental indifference to their children’s education. Large numbers of children are in households where academic prowess, reading ability and scholarship are despised and teachers regarded with suspicion. It is these unfortunates who find formal lessons so difficult to understand. It is they who seem to need a further period of assimilation in order to respond to teaching. But, rather than tackle the fecklessness of their parents the wisdom is seen to be in holding those who can engage in lessons back. This is wrong, wrong, wrong. Equality of opportunity comes from levelling up, not levelling down.

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The Cern Haladron Collider has not been working for some time but it is hoped that it will be up and running again soon. However I have been intrigued to read that two eminent physicists are convinced that it will never work properly because the particle that it is attempting to locate is actively preventing it from operating by coming back from the future. They liken it to the age-old science fiction conundrum about time travel: what would happen if you were to travel back in time and kill your great grandmother? This particle, the Higgs Boson, apparently operates at a speed and frequency that means it is ahead of space time and is therefore able to prevent the Collider from locating it! This all adds to my theory that science is about to give all of us, and Atheists in particular, a very severe shock; probably within my lifetime. It will explain all about the Big Bang and, in particular, who set the bugger off.

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I read that the United States is about to follow Britain in removing all restrictions on homosexuals serving in the Armed Forces. Without being funny about it I am very ambivalent about homosexuality.  On the one hand I find their physicality stomach churning and cannot see how a love of leather posing pouches and wearing make up is a wholesome example to our male youth. However on the other hand if two men or two women want to live together who am I to condemn them or what they might want to get up to in the intimacy of their bedroom. This ambivalence seems to be shared by our two principal Christian churches. Both Roman Catholics and the Anglicans seem to regard homosexuality as essentially sinful yet their clergy are hopelessly compromised. Perhaps I can offer a solution: think of Julian Clary. One look at him is all you need to know that Mr. Clary could never be anything other than homosexual. I am sure that all of us in our lives have met persons of both sexes who are similarly marked out. This must mean that such people are a natural manifestation and therefore, from a religious point of view, God made. That means they must be accepted upon their own merits but only up to a point. They might be formed in the image of God but I am certain that buggery has no part in the Almighty’s plans. Unhappy people! We might now let them into the daylight but their activities must remain very much in the dark!

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I am increasingly convinced that the Western allies in Afghanistan are in the wrong place fighting the wrong war against the wrong enemy. I have a horrible feeling that hostilities are continuing there as a sort of proxy action designed to make everybody feel that we are doing something when the real enemy is situated in the Pakistani tribal areas and able to operate there openly without any risk of attack. Now, aroused by the violent attacks made upon them, the Pakistani security forces seem finally to be able to take the battle to Al Quaeda’s backyard and confront them on the ground where they should be fought. This is a crucial moment. If Pakistan does the job properly then there is a real chance that Islamic fundamentalist terrorism can be dealt a real blow. But will the inevitable backlash create more martyrs? Not if moderate Muslims throughout the world especially Muslim clerics can proclaim fundamentalism to be inimical to the teachings of the Koran and that properly practised Islam is as much a religion of peace and love as Christianity. What chance of that?

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I see the Conservative party have decided to adopt a new and novel approach to politics. They have decided to tell the truth! A number of commentators consider this to be unwise. That really is insulting. To be told that us voters cannot be trusted with the truth and must be fed with anodyne soundbites lest we be frightened into voting for someone ridiculous. In fact a dose of truth is long overdue and it is the cynical manipulation of truth by politicians over the years that have really contributed to their almost universal unpopularity. I recommend that they all take up telling the truth and not just over the question of their expenses.

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Jensen Button is the new Formula One motor racing champion. Following Lewis Hamilton last year Britain has now produced consecutive motor racing champions both of whom drive for British-based racing teams. Formula One is owned by a Briton and the International motor racing body has been presided over by a Briton for many years. Arguably one of the most popular programmes on British television is Top Gear, a riotous and orgiastic celebration of petrol hedonism. To me it is all good fun but surely such oil-based activities are no longer viable given the threat of climate change and the need to reduce carbon emissions. Personally I’m with Jeremy Clarkson on all this and our response is: ‘bollocks!’ This debate needs to be opened up and stripped of its socio political baggage. That the climate is changing is very clear, the question is: how much of this change is our fault and how much part of the natural climatic cycle? My view is, like Clarkson’s, that our carbon emissions have sod all to do with the melting of the polar ice caps and accordingly by reducing them we are making ourselves miserable and doing absolutely nothing for the environment. Obviously we should be as efficient as we can and pollution is an abhorrence but Carbon Dioxide is not pollution and whilst there is blood in my veins and oil in the ground I see no reason to stop burning petrol.

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The head of the British National Party, Nick Griffin, has appeared on BBC’s ‘Question Time’ programme and proclaimed, among other weird and wonderful things, that if Winston Churchill was alive today the only party he could exist in would the BNP. Mr Griffin is another person who does not know his history. Winston Churchill’s attitude to far right politics is well documented. In 1940, on his orders Mr Griffin’s predecessor on the extreme right Sir Oswald Mosely and his British Union of Fascists were all interned without trial.