What is in Kelvin's Head?

  • Sermon – Hagar, Ambridge, Church Abuse, Eid Mubarak

    If I think back to my grandfather, now long passed away, I have a number of memories. One strikes me in particularly today.

    And it was a particular devotion. Almost a religious ritual.

    It could be performed at lunchtime or it could be performed in the early evening. But the important thing was that it had to happen every day.

    I believe my grandfather may well have had some connection with country living in his youth though he was a city dweller for all the life that I ever knew him to have. But his devotion to an everyday story of country folk was a thing of legend.

    For those who don’t know what I’m talking about, I refer to the longest running radio soap opera – the Archers, broadcast now on Radio 4.

    Actually, it may be the only radio soap opera for all I know – it does not seem to be a particularly crowded field.

    It was a part of my grandfather’s life. He listened with a passion.

    In the way of families, my own father inherited no love of the Archers and only has to hear the cheery, bouncing signature tune to prompt him to reach for the off switch.

    For myself, I have found a good old-fashioned Anglican via media (more…)

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One response to “British Values and Education”

  1. Alan McManus Avatar
    Alan McManus

    A friend of mine, blogging about Remembrance, remembered that: “[t]he Lancet estimated that over one million people were killed in our invasion of Iraq” (http://www.2ndcouncilhouse.co.uk/blog/2013/12/05/their-blood-runs-red/). There is no link between progressive values and the UK. We hide or deny our state sponsored genocide and torture, as British imperialism has always done. The Amritsar Massacre was not an anomaly but our modus operandi (http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/apr/23/british-empire-crimes-ignore-atrocities). Our much-vaunted kindness to animals, surely the most heart-warming of ‘British’ values, along with our famous fairness, is not compromised by fox-hunting rather, as we torture animals to death in every university it is seen for the sentimentality that it is. Those of us who are not naive to the real motivation of this animal torture (exactly the same as the human torture) know that ‘getting in-vivo experience on my CV’ (as a friend of mine put it) is attractive to those who seek the material gain and prestige accompanying advancement in Academia. The eventual aid to humans of a tiny proportion of this sadistically inflicted pain is convenient – and keeps the funding flowing. All these values we can wrap up in the Union Jack. And then set it on fire. when these values can no longer be associated with that flag and when the explicitly anti-RC Act of Settlement is repealed and when liberal clergy have successfully railed against the sectarian marches (http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/home-news/orange-order-and-glasgow-council-at-war-over-marches.20248665) so that citizens and visitors can walk down (and across) the streets of our cities any tine they like wearing any colours they like, then AND ONLY THEN is it the time to talk about forcing parents and guardians to pay a premium if the values they want their children to be educated in differ from those of the British state.

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