The views on religion seem much more congenial.
A charity set up by an ardent Christian to fight slavery and the opium trade has identified a new social evil of the 21st century — religion.
A poll by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation uncovered a widespread belief that faith — not just in its extreme form — was intolerant, irrational and used to justify persecution.
Pollsters asked 3,500 people what they considered to be the worst blights on modern society, updating a list drawn up by Rowntree, a Quaker, 104 years ago.
The responses may well have dismayed him. The researchers found that the “dominant opinion” was that religion was a “social evil”.
I think I’d fit right in.
Hooray for the U.K.! Almost makes me proud to live here. Although I live in Wales. I think we’re just slightly behind England, there are still a lot of Sunday chapel-goers in the rural parts.
Yes, but just think about the 40% income taxe (I won’t swear to that number, but I know its up there). However, if thats what it takes it might not be a bad idea. But didn’t we come over here from England to get away from religious persecution? Talk about irony…
Fancy the Dawkins chair P.Z.? Beer’s good here too.
I wouldn’t move too soon. We still have an established Church, and 26 seats in the House of Lords are reserved for Church of England bishops.
It’s definately better in this regard than the US from what I can tell, though. Highly ironic since our blasphemy laws are only now just being removed.
PZ, you’ll be very welcome. Didn’t Richard Dawkins email you regarding the chair at Oxford? You’d be a worthy successor, at least in my opinion.
UK’s standard rate of Income Tax just went down to 20% a few days ago. The 40% rate comes in for higher earners. The problem as ever and everywhere is squeezing any serious amount of tax out of the disgustingly rich!
Of course, you *could* do what I did and move to Sydney.
You get that taste of British culture (like decent fish’n’chips and all things ‘cricket’) but the beer is better!
And it is t-shirt weather much of the year, too. (Fancy a surf? Sydney has *heaps* of beaches.)
That’s the beauty of having a state religion here – nobody takes it very seriously, except as a good source for comedy.
Hooray for us! Restores my faith in my fellow Britons.
I have to give credit to the established church. It’s done wonders for secularism, having a state religion.
Kirk shouldn’t worry about income tax. It’s only 40% on income over £36,000. Below this the basic rate is 20%. Though it may be high for American tastes, thanks to my taxes I pay nothing for health cover and have no fear of being bankrupted by a long illness.
How long before the first claim that this poll is in fact persecution of Christians? I mean, come on, people expressing an opinion that religion is bad? That’s clearly persecution.
unfortunately the blasphemy laws are being replaced by equally tiresome ones, just not dedicated to the c of e.
the churches are getting more and more strident as well which is a bit of pain since, as martin fox alludes to, in theory they have quite a bit of power.
oh and the faith schools are definitely an annoyance.
I do not acknowledge the truth of this (he said, pulling out his dogeared CAMRA guide).
Thans kevinj for reminding me of our beloved ‘faith schools’, which claim to get good results through teaching religious values rather than the fact that they can be selective. Honest.
As a movie star in the new “documentary” Expelled I’m sure you’re thrilled about this.
“Also opening, creationist propaganda piece, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, being pitched as a documentary in a manner similar to Michael Moore’s fare, inherited a windy estimated $3.2 million at 1,052 venues. Though meager, it wasn’t a total flunkout given the genre and its independent release.” http://www.boxofficemojo.com/news/?id=2486&p=.htm
I wonder how much of that money may goto paying legal fees and lawsuits settlements with Harvard, PBS and Yoko.
No doubt they will bleat, cheerfully ignoring the years of dominance by that crypto-papist Blair–a man who came within a whisker of endorsing ID–and our current muscular Christian occupying Number 10.
I’m not complacent about things, though. There is plenty of scope for unctuous god-botherers to throw a spanner in the works. Ulster remains a powder-keg and we have our fair share of Islamic nutters plotting and muttering.
On the other hand, you might want to give Ireland a miss:
“THE EU is to drop a case aimed at forcing Irish religious schools to employ teachers who don’t believe in the religious “ethos” of the school and may even hold anti-religious beliefs.”
http://www.independent.ie/national-news/churchrun-schools-can-keep-atheists-off-their-staff-1353365.html
But isn’t it cold a rainy in the winter? Oh wait a minute, I live in Michigan…
@ NC Paul
the UKs (leaving aside some variation in the countries) has jsimilar “faith” schools with a very high number being c of e (or equiv) and then a bunch of catholic.
the relevant church gets quite a lot of say in who gets appointed particularly at the senior teacher level.
in theory every school has to have a daily act of christian worship as well (in practice neither my c of e primary or catholic secondary bothered with their religious observance being limited to a couple of services a year) but you get the full range up to and including creationist types.
the number of parents who suddenly start attending church is amazing (they have the advantage that they can covertly, or less covertly, select pupils).
In the UK you get surveillance cameras on every corner, Phorm-infested Internet access, an absurdly high crime rate, endemic binge drinking, severely decaying public infrastructure, and almost an entire generation of ‘yoof’ who are little better than thugs.
There are much better places to live.
How refreshing. I knew I liked those Britons for a reason!
I find, in my own American life, that people can deal with me being an atheist as long as I never dare criticize religion, because it does so much good for our society. I’d love to see some tangible evidence of this “good”…
On the plus side, in Britain one can be a public atheist without so much as a second glance. Richard Dawkins gets his own TV show. Our politicians downplay their faith, as it is an electoral liability (in the metropolitan constituencies at least) to be seen as a holy roller. Our state religion is genuinely a brilliant advert for secularism; who can forget the Bishop of Southwark making such a fool of himself over Python’s Life of Brian?
Oh, and the beer is great; don’t let some Ocker transplant convince you otherwise. The nation is liberal enough that one of the highest-rated children’s shows on TV featured a bisexual action hero and man-on-man kiss that passed with surprisingly little comment in the national press. And the profoundly uncloseted Stephen Fry holds the status of national treasure.
On the downside there are state-financed faith schools that practice pupil selection (something that reinforces their status at the expense of the state schools). Certain parts of Ulster and Scotland are hotbeds of sectarianism. Moslems feel sufficiently alienated that a tiny handful of them were moved to turn terrorist. And Britons are just as susceptible to new-aged horoscope-toting bollocks as the next man. Our National Lottery TV show, in shades of Network, even used to have its own soothsayer.
The lack of critical thinking is evident in the screams of outrage by the Daily Mail at all things liberal and good. It is read by many hundreds of thousands of cnuts each day across the country. (Sorry, but if you are a Daily Mail reader you are an abject, grasping, mean-spirited tosser. Deal with it.) Meanwhile Murdoch’s Sun continues to give the yellow press a bad name.
Oh, and don’t get me onto the subject of the death of Diana and the wooly-headed national wailfest that ensued. Those were ugly times and I can tell you I was frightened by them.
I know this is off the topic, but, can I ask a human DNA question?
They don’t call it Great for nothing! Come one, come all ye free thinkers ;)
To the denizens of Oz and the UK, there’s no denying that you make good beer and ales, but when transported across oceans they lose a great deal by the time they reach here. On the other hand, we who understand the seriousness of real ale in the US now have thousands of microbreweries and brew pubs where we too can get a wide variety of excellent ales.
Since you Brits seem to have outgrown religion, I’m not sure who drinks the ullage and gas produced by the major commercial brewers — Bass, et al. (or who drinks Fosters in Oz). However, I can assure you that the vast majority of the stale, flat, and unprofitable beers produced by Messers Coors, Miller, and Anheuser-Busch are consumed by Christians (which may explain why they are so gullible about other matters concerning “spirit”). Those who know good ale are not so deceived.
I know this is off the topic, but, can I ask a human DNA question?
Please do.
You are so right about certain American beers, chezjake. I used to actually enjoy Coors “Banquet Beer” until I got my hands on some imported stout. Big (read, good) difference.
It was in reference to Coors that I first heard the one about having sex in a canoe.
Now if only America could emulate Great Britain’s attitude toward religion as she has lately begun to address the value of good brew!
This is the link to the original report
http://www.socialevils.org.uk/documents/social-evils-report.pdf
I know this is off the topic, but, can I ask a human DNA question?
Depends. Does your DNA question have anything to do with the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics not allowing an increase in information? Or how all DNA mutations are deleterious mutations? Or how “junk DNA” has some functions, and therefore evolution is wrong?
If so, no, you may not ask a DNA question.
I’ve been hearing a lot about the much-differing religious views in the UK. I’m 21, currently in the USA and working to get some computer/networking certificates. I’ve been seriously entertaining the idea of moving there soon.
I’m going to read up on things more before I take any steps though. I just know that I don’t think there’s much hope for common sense and rationality in this country right now. I’d prefer not to be surrounded by the ignorance (my harsh views are partly due to my living in the southeast).
You’re all wrong
the best beer comes from the Monteiths brewery in NZ
Though judging australian beer by fosters – which in australian of my acquaintance, including my boorish uncles, has ever admitted drinking, even in an emergency – may seem harsh, by my estimation the other beers aren’t much better. The more mass-produced kiwi ales, such as Lion Red and DB, are also deservedly maligned. But the older and stronger breweries, Speights, Tui, and Monteiths, as well as the boutique newcomer Mac’s, can hold their own against any brewery in the world. Monteith’s New Zealand Lager recently won the award of Best Beer In The World
Beat that.
You’d have to put up with lots of love for homeopathy. And one of the next highest populations of creationists in the Western world. Doesn’t seem like THAT much of a bargain.
No, this is an honest DNA question…I was kinda hanging out here to see if it would get discussed because I don’t know shit from Shine-ola.
I do genealogy as my hobby, so we got my brothers DNA tested a couple of months ago to track the male line. What returned is a bunch of words and numbers I don’t know how to understand. They must have a lot of thick customers, because they also sent a color coded world map of my ancestors. The colors are to denote thousands of years. Ancestor A is in Africa, and his color is dark red/ 60,000 years ago. (That much I expected from high school biology class) My question is this, how can the guys at the lab tell ancestor A was 60,000 years ago? I think the whole thing is cool, but I don’t get that part. Thanks! (Oh, I do know gawd had nothing to do with it.)
The British have always tended to take a pragmatic view of religion. That’s why we managed to quietly export most of our religious hotheads to the colonies and then arranged to lose the War of Independence which meant that they stayed there.
As for the taxes, they help pay for the National Health Service which, for all its shortcomings, does provide good, basic medical care to everyone. There is no significant part of the population without access to any healthcare and no one goes bankrupt because they are unable to pay their medical bills.
The beer’s better, too.
Wazza (we had a novel plot conversation elsewhere, I think): Timothy Taylor’s Landlord bitter from Yorkshire (England) is, all authorities agree, the best beer in the world. I agree Genesis got to that novel plot first, let’s not fall out over beer. I’m right.
Back on topic: Britain is teaching humanism in state schools. SUnday Times article: http://tinyurl.com/3pdd55
oh, just you wait – all this charismatic speaking-in-tongues American-style new fangled evolution-denying Christ-blood-washing Christianity is brewing up a whole new generation of young student-generation fundies here in the UK. just you wait a few years indeed.
it’s horrifying.
Sorry, Patricia — I was getting a bit tired of hearing the same canards all the time.
I am not a scientist either, but this is cool stuff. It has to do with alleles, which is a kind of identifiable variant on a gene. You can track populations as they migrated out of Africa by the presence or absence of certain alleles.
The National Geographic Genographic Project has all kinds of cool stuff about this for nonscientists like us.
The most recent common ancestor in the male line of all people on earth (“Y-chromosome Adam”) lived something like 60,000 years ago. So sounds like that’s the A on your chart?
Start with some group of people, they could be all men on Earth, or a smaller group. In this case, you are looking at the most recent ancestor in the male line of all those people, so A is defined as wherever all those male lineages meet. Researchers compare genetic markers in a bunch of descendants of A, and see how many mutations they have accumulated. Then they get an estimate of the mutation rate (how often mutations happen in the markers you are looking at; for example, by looking at genetic information from living families), and from this they can estimate how long ago the ancestor lived.
I live in Newcastle (of the brown ale) UK. In my day to day life I encounter not one single overtly religious person. Every single one of my circle of friends is non-religious (and I know a lot of people). I only ever encounter religion on the internet or while randomly surfing TV channels on a Sunday. Religions is dead or dying here (though I can’t speak for the whole of the UK).
This is why I can only laugh when I hear believers fretting about an atheistic society, I live in one. We’re not all routinely baking kittens or mugging old ladies, it’s actually pretty damn nice over here.
Thankyou! I honestly did spend 50 years being a dipshit… That word allele is on the Y-DNA certificate with a bunch of numbers. I’ll go look at your links, but I may not understand them. Looks like I wrongly ‘assumed’ that biology profs spent all their time discussing these kind of topics. Who knew you had to spend SO much time dicing the livers of dorks…Thanks.
Of which the best, of course, are the Belgian-style ales. Sorry, Brits…
“I think I’d fit right in.”
Yep, a country full of douchebags and you fit perfectly right in line with them.
So, what are you waiting for? LEAVE
The certificate should probably tell you what haplogroup your relatives belong to. Once you find that there’s a lot of information online (some of it less reliable, though)
You all have it wrong the best beer is the one in my fridge, becuase is it in MY fridge so that I may drink it when I wish. All the beers you mention I can not drink so they are mearly teasing me and thus suck, the Beer Store is also closed right now so they really suck.
In Canada with the expection of the occasional raving nutter it seems to be taken as poor manners to mention religion at all, unless you know the person quite well or there is very direct context suck as being Muslim and preffering the hallal resteraunt.
For myself for most of my adult life I have wondered about the power of words and their implications and on this matter I have always found a lack…. agnostic means you don’t know if there is a god with implications that you actually spend time worring about it, athiest means you don’t believe in god with implications that you spend time railing agaisnt those that do. I think a fair number of the educated masses are more Apathists then anything else they just don’t care if there is a god.
So, what are you waiting for? LEAVE
I’ll tell you what, moron, if you want this country all to yourself, you can bribe me for one to leave you the fuck alone.
I won’t tell you where I’m going, but I can guarantee you it will be a different continent, as I wanna be as far away from you demented fuckwits as possible.
so, if you would like to contribute to my speedier emigration, you can just email me the password to any Pay-Pal account you manage to set up.
c’mon, moron, put your money where your blithering cake-hole is!
Hey, Planet Killer’s turned up. Time to pppppaaaaaarrrrrttttyyyyy!!!!!
I’m going first. Planet Killer, you are a total wanker.
Bugger, Ichthyic beat me.
The beer’s better, too.
that’s a given, pretty much anywhere outside of the continental US.
excluding homebrew/microbrew
Bugger, Ichthyic beat me.
She’s lying! I’ve never, ever beat a woman, not even my wife!
:p
I don’t drink beer because it makes me fart ( what can I say- I never described myslf as a lady). However, I’m more than a little partial to a Marlborough Bay Sauv Blanc from NZ. There you go Wazza, I’ve let slip another nice comment about New Zealand. Next thing you’ll be thinking I reallly, really love the place, and I’ve been there eight times, and Mr Shrek ,myself and the Shreklettes are thinking abut moving over.
That’s true, I have honestly never been slapped by a fish.
Hey, an idiot on my blog telling me to leave! I can’t resist. Bye-bye, Planet Killer! You get to leave now.
myself and the Shreklettes are thinking abut moving over.
well now that PK is gone, and my extra source of funding is gone [/sarcasm], I can say that is where I’m heading in a few months too.
I’d love to hear about what you saw when you were down there.
shoot me an email if you get the chance:
fisheyephotosAThotmailDOTcom
@PZ:
Hey, an idiot on my blog telling me to leave!
go figure, Joe Blow did the same thing to you yesterday, in an even more absurd fashion!
what’s with these morons?
And this is different from the USA how? We have no habeas corpus, warrantless wiretaps, high crime rate, ridiculous pollution from cars that are larger than my house, public infrastructure that no one cares about, people dying every day of easily treated diseases because of a crap health care system, and a generation of youth who really are no better than thugs (I teach them).
Sadly, this may not be one of them. :(
Ichthyic
I’ll jot you a note about the virtues of NZ in a bit to your hotmail address. So you don’t junk me accidentally keep an eye for an email from David & Victoria.
Planet Killer’s gone? Effective immediately, we won’t have Planet Killer to kick around anymore. Nevermind. I do have to check its’ dungeon entry. It’ll probably morph back a few times.
North Dakota has its’ very own Rough rider beer, but modisty forbids…
For a lighter take on fundamentalists….
http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1750360
Not a new evil per se – just the overlapping set of the two evils originally named in the Rowntree mission statement.
“a country full of douchbags” he says. Gosh, it’s kind of a shock to find Planet Killer not knowing what the fuck he’s talking about, huh?
Will all the drinkers present kindly raise their mugs to Patricia C and her brief words here?
She found the right blog for a scientific field unknown to her, politely spoke up and asked a sincere if utterly off-topic question, picked up quickly on which answer pertained to the data in her hand, dissed the babble-pushers with impressive succinctness, and continued her quest.
As passing encounters on the Internet go, Patricia C’s visit to Pharyngula is positively exemplary, and should not go unappreciated.
I’d have to agree with you Stephen…but Chimay is not an ale to drink to quench ones thirst or have a social evening at the pub…unless you wish to get totally shit faced and spend a lot of money!
Martin
Eh, Rowntree *might* not have minded. Quakers were basically a bunch of pacifistic humanists who happened to generally be deists and/or Christians, right? At least, that’s what today’s Quakers are — there’s no rule that you accept Jeebus as your personal ego-inflater or whatever, just that you be pro-human and anti-violence and whatnot.
I made the USA-UK move in 2003 and have been lovin it! People here even joke about the Anglican church being an atheist establishment. Although judging from the students I teach, creationism/evolution-skepticism is slightly on the rise; yet still only 1-2% based on my yearly surveys.
Indeed. FSM willing, she’s still “listening,” and will take this as an invitation to stick around.
I third that, stick around Patricia C. I started here about a year or so ago and the things I’ve learnt since then have really opened my eyes. I was never a religious person and was brought up non-practising Catholic but since being here I’ve “converted” fully to atheism not just the ambivalence I had before. I used to be a scientist and am now a lawyer ( yes, thankyou, I went to the dark side of the force) but still maintain an active interest in science and reasoned thinking. Given I hang around lawyers most days this blog is my main contact with intelligent people and I think I’d wilt without it. I promise you’ll learn lots and be fascinated by the breadth of knowledge that exists here.
Patricia C,
Oh, and remember, there’s no such thing as a “dumb” question. If you ask something honestly because you’re trying to understand an area a bit better or just don’t know the underlying concepts then ask away, even if you think its really basic stuff, there will be someone here in that field with the patience and desire to want to help you learn.
I’m going now, I’m bringing a tear to my own eye with my mother hen routine.
Ah, have you ever seen such a perfect display of Christian charity? Truly, Planet Killer is one of the elect.
I always enjoy the ‘love it or leave it’ types. They’d never dream of taking their own advice when policy and social trends are agin’ them.
Goodbye, Planet Killer! Farewell, mean spirit! In the brief time I’ve been around here you have proven yourself one of the most obtuse, mean-minded of people. We have seen you cheerlead for the forces of ignorance, bigotry and theocracy. You are evil, but in that banal way that leads men to villainy while protesting their righteousness. You don’t have the wit to realize how wicked you are.
Anti-slavery to anti-religion sounds like the logical extension to me. To be fair, though, Leviticus is one of the more batshit insane books in the bible. Whoever wrote that one seriously loved stonings.
I’m sure that’s always been true. The 16th and 17th Centuries were times of turmoil in religion. Passions were unleashed in a manner that was anything but pragmatic.
However, certainly by the 19th Century the urban lower classes had largely abandoned religion. The East End of London (where I am from) was, in Dickensian times, so dark and godless that missionaries were sent into it. A working man might respect the existence of religion but would feel that it was not for men of his sort.
I recommend God’s Funeral, A.N. Wilson’s history of Victorian and Edwardian atheism, for more information on this.
More a case of accident than design. Oliver Cromwell would have become an American if Parliament had not withstood the King. Many Godly came back from the colonies to fight popery and malignancy in the wars of the three kingdoms. (The King, though not a papist, was married to one, and could never shake off the allegation that he was alienated from the True Religion of the sectaries.)
When the Republic collapsed and the crown restored many Godly left for America. They went because they were afraid of retribution from the Royalists, because they dreamed of building the New Jerusalem across the ocean, or simply because they were disgusted by the re-emergence of episcopalianism and could no longer oppress the papists.
kevinj said (#11): “unfortunately the blasphemy laws are being replaced by equally tiresome ones, just not dedicated to the c of e.”
That might have happened, but didn’t. As a result of a rebellion in Parliament, led by popular demand, the following section got added to the Racial and Religious Hatred Act 2006:
29J – Protection of freedom of expression:
“Nothing in this Part shall be read or given effect in a way which prohibits or restricts discussion, criticism or expressions of antipathy, dislike, ridicule, insult or abuse of particular religions or the beliefs or practices of their adherents, or of any other belief system or the beliefs or practices of its adherents, or proselytising or urging adherents of a different religion or belief system to cease practising their religion or belief system”.
(The government had wanted to secure the Muslim vote by inhibiting speech that offended. They lost by one vote. The rest of the Act attempts to prohibit incitement of violence and hatred. I don’t find it worrying).
Vagrant,
AFAIK Phorm has only been live for a test on BT. There are strong arguments that it’s illegal under multiple laws, and I expect it to die. And good riddance.
Phorm technical overview in case anyone is interested. Lots of stories on The Register too.
I am moving out to Great Britain. I moving from Italy though, which share many similarities with USA.
Italy is practically controlled by the Pope while USA is from Bush Junior. Both are man of god, albeit a very bastard one, that approves child abuse, torture, prefers cellular life (potentially human)against living humans etc
Isn’t it ironic that their actions are so different from their so called messiah
Let’s not forget:
We (UK) have Darwin on our 10-pound note!
(And our notes don’t mention God).
To Peter Mc #34
Every time I hear ‘TT Landlord’ mentioned, I imagine I can hear celestial music, the clowds parting and a sunbeam radiating a pint of the gorgeous stuff lovingly placed on a pedestal.
To those unfortunates who haven’t had the pleasure: you can’t rate beer if you haven’t tasted the very best.
I also like how tolerance by the blogger and many people on here is for everything but religion. Yeah, you guys got me! You are so much better at tolerance than anyone else.
We don’t need another Hitler in this world. We really don’t.
I also like how tolerance by the blogger and many people on here is for everything but religion.
gee, PK, you think you would have at least managed to do better than morph your original handle into just the initials.
hell, I often called you PK anyway.
There’s another person we really don’t need another of ’round these parts, and I think it was made abundantly clear who that was…
Correct, we are. You miss the point. We tolerate religion, because that is the correct and moral thing to do. None of us are firebombing churches or burning books or (contrary to the lies of Expelled) putting the godly out of work.
HOWEVER, though we tolerate religion, we do not respect it. You mistake disrespect for intolerance. It is a common error. The difference is as distinct as that between words and actions.
If we were truly intolerant we would be doing all the things that Christians have done and continue to do to unbelievers and heretics.
I’ll jot you a note about the virtues of NZ in a bit to your hotmail address. So you don’t junk me accidentally keep an eye for an email from David & Victoria.
will do!
cheers
Lee Brimmingham Wood I am glad to see I am not the only person who thinks the inestimable Mr Fry is a National Treasure. I suggest we clone him and subject the clones to an identical formative period. We could call it The Boys From Norfolk.
Might have to put my campaign for the ending of taxpayer funded perks for public schools on hold for a while but. Got to give the little blighters somewhere to be expelled from and teach at.
Great, I’ve got this mental image of PZ singing “let’s all move to Great Britain” to the tune of “let’s all go to the lobby” stuck in my head now. :)
#34 & #74 NYAAAH! – my local “The Nag’s Head”, Walthamstow, London, E17 9LP (That postcode will tell you how to find it!) Sells one of the best two pints of TT Landlord in London!
More seriously, there is are MANY GOOD REASONS for us Brits to distrust religion.
Her we go:
1] Tony B. Liar – our ex-prime minister was heavily into “God” – and an obvious liar.
2] Geo W. Shrub.
3] We have got small numbers of resident muslim extremists. ( 7/7 & all that )
4] We have got small, vociferous numbers of usually US-funded evangelical loonies – who are thoroughly despised, if not hated.
5] The antics of the Catholic church, especially in Ireland are well-known and despised.
6] There is still a strong anti-catholic tradition here, if only unconsious, and historical. It’s not just the 1605 plot, but try Googling for “Huguenot” or “Revocation of Edict of Nantes” or “Edict of Fontainbleu” fro explanations – incidentally I’m a Huguenot.
7] etc …….
Whoops. sorry Lee, relied on memory for your surname.
Wazza, since when are Mac’s newcomers? they were new back in the ’80s, I remember them being new, and a breath of fresh air. Even if as a poor student I could rarely afford to drink them. It is a bit of a stretch for a good Southern Man, but variety is the spice of life. My biggest regret on when we left? I have yet to try Old Dark.
And Patricia I second that there is no such thing as a dumb question if you truly don’t know the answer. It is dumb to need to know and not to ask. Beware of the more recent and especially specific claims about geography from these testing companies, the science from these things is a bit shaky suffers from small sample size bias and unproven assumptions about population movements. Having said that, a Y-chromosome can be tied to a surname, or group thereof. Not much use in my case, my family tree shows we changed from Ashby to Underwood and back again with regularity. Not much choice in small villages in the Midlands it seems.
HERE:
http://fancyapint.com/pubs/pub1978.html
Is a link showing you the pub …
less than 4 minutes walk from my front door.
The old pub-pcat died, but the new one, a small tabby, will sit on you lap, if you talk to her nicely …..
AND THIS (hopefully) will show you my house right on extreme left-hand edge of picture (Woodbury Road) and the pub is under the inset-map at bottom right.
Note all the trees and greenery – and this is well inside London ….
BUGGER!
Trying again:
http://www.multimap.com/maps/?hloc=GB|e17#map=51.58476,-0.01261|19|256&loc=GB:51.58686:-0.02045:16|e17|E17
Pub is NOW visible, & I live just off-screen!
I never used to drink in Walthamstow. I was brought up in Leytonstone though I did most of my drinking in the City.
‘We don’t need another Hitler in this world. We really don’t.’
This ‘Hitler was an atheist’ meme is really doing the rounds, isn’t it? The Pope said over the weekend that Nazism “banished God and thus became impervious to anything true and good”.
Here’s a picture of Hitler being mean to some Catholics:
http://history1900s.about.com/library/holocaust/blhitler19.htm
Here’s him banishing God:
http://www.alamoministries.com/content/english/Antichrist/nazigallery/19hitlerwithmuller.jpg
What I think’s very interesting is that Christians – ones who are clearly not in cahoots: half the fundies think Ratzinger is the anti-Christ, and I don’t think he popped over to see Expelled – have switched tack from ‘we should downplay Hitler’s Christianity and he’s not exactly typical’ to ‘he was an atheist, the Nazis were all atheists’. Or, in other words, from a perfectly understandable bit of brave-faced spin to a barefaced flat out lie. They obviously think it’ll have traction.
The thing is … it doesn’t work, now. If you want to assess Hitler’s religious beliefs, it’s easily to see the evidence. If Christians want to pick a fight over this one, let’s bring it all out into the open. Yes, privately, it’s reported that Hitler was sceptical about religion. Yes, Nazism was a weird mix of all sorts of myths and fertility cults and social Darwinism was in there (along with Catholicism). Perhaps the Pope means they banished ‘traditional’ religion (the line before that in the speech suggests that) … but the one thing Nazism certainly wasn’t was atheist. And the church was utterly complicit, the few that spoke out had to leave the church to do so, and the vast majority of Nazis were Christians and saw no contradiction. The whole of Germany was swept along by it, and what it offered was (false) hope and certainty. Which is religion’s game, not atheism’s.
Churchgoers will always be more prone than atheists to the Nazi mindset of conformity, social engineering, revisionist history and science, destruction of rival viewpoints and doing evil on the name of good and obeying authority. If for no other reason than showing up at the church in the first place is a step in that direction.
The ‘neo atheist’ (or, as we Brits call it, ‘British’) attitude to religion has really started to shift things around.
It’s interesting how the Christian response has been to paint us in their light. You have people saying ‘atheistic evolution is dogmatic, too certain of itself, based on little evidence, repeats the same tired old points, it’s illogical … it’s a religion!’. Which is quite funny – like that old joke about a man who was charged with indecent behaviour, public urination, being drunk and disorderly and impersonating a policeman.
For a long time, the churches have been competing with each other to increase their congregations. So it’s probably natural enough that they see atheism as a new, rival church. Atheists really have to resist the temptation to play along. And, y’know, we’re great at not playing along, to be fair.
I know PZed is not serious (unless he does get the Simonyi professorship) but it’s interesting to read the debate about the state of the UK as far as religion (and real ale) is concerned.
Just to throw an amusing snippet in; years ago I worked for one of the American corporation (in the food industry). We were based in Banbury and every few years they would send a youngish (early thirties) VP over to ‘run Europe’ for a few years then disappear back into the corporate machine. The look of wonder and delight on his face are etched into my memory when he arrived in work one Monday after settling into the rented home we set up for him and his family. He had read the pack we put together with the house and he found out it was the Washington family home before they left for the New World :)
Let’s not get too smug, fellow Brits – especially those of you up in Geordie country. We’ve still got the (creationist) Vardy schools to contend with.
They fail to imagine a life without faith, poor dears. All they can think is that it is like belief in a false god. It is all they understand.
There are several million forms of atheism, and my one is mine and mine alone!
#49 try Martinborough Pinot Noirs, they are supurb
‘We’ve still got the (creationist) Vardy schools to contend with.’
Fifteen years ago, I read Dawkins saying that creationism would be taught here soon and laughed and thought it was ridiculous. We’d won.
Now, he was clearly prophetic. But Vardy has to hide what he’s doing and lie when he’s asked. Rowan Williams’ power grabs have discredited him, not empowered him. Blair had to hide his Catholicism and only gets paid to be religious in America.
Absolutely we need to quarantine religion here, and can’t be complacent. But it’s so much healthier here than in the States.
Hey Ichthyic, good to hear that you are still thinking of moving to “Godzone”. And you Bride of Shrek. Obviously I’ve made the move the other way (to Australia that is), and Mrs KiwiInOz and I are sorely tempted to head off to Europe for a year or two, and then maybe back to NZ (pronounced EnZed for you Merkins).
‘We have got small, vociferous numbers of usually US-funded evangelical loonies – who are thoroughly despised, if not hated.’
It was so funny at Christmas when Christian Voice went up against Doctor Who.
Christian Voice is one man, Stephen Green, who was literally laughed out of court by the judge when he tried to sue the BBC for blasphemy. The judge, splendidly, noted that the seventeenth century blasphemy law didn’t mention television, so decided that meant the Act didn’t cover the broadcast media. In EPL soccer parlance, that’s what we call ‘an own goal’ for Christian Voice.
He then complained about religious imagery in Doctor Who ‘degrading Christ’. And the Church of England *picked Doctor Who over Christ*.
Oh, and the British public did, too. Fourteen times more people watched the Doctor Who Christmas special on Christmas Day than attended any form of religious service in Christmas Week.
The point is: the Church of England realised if kids had to choose between Doctor Who and Christianity, the Church wouldn’t just lose the fight, you’d have had to play it in super slow motion to realise it had even been a fight.
Steve Jeffers – Amazing, what was his ‘evidence’ for blasphemy? Did he use the episode where they went and met Satan, or the Christmas special with the robot angels, or was it just an “in general sci-fi makes me feel tingly in a way that church doesn’t” argument?
PK, the intolerance for you is not based on religion, it’s based on your immense stupidity and boorishness.
We’re certainly better placed than the US with regard to religion (despite the bishops in the House of Lords) homicide and guns, but in wider political, economic and social issues we have many of the same problems and disturbing tendencies as the US, and a few of our own: a grossly unfair electoral system, lack of real choice between parties (in England – living in Scotland I’m luckier), involvement in immoral and disastrous wars, far too many CCTV cameras, governmental assaults on habeus corpus, the world’s largest individual DNA database, an ongoing attempt to introduce ID cards and an accompanying personal information database, growing inequality, an economic “boom” largely based on asset inflation and credit (we’re a few months behind the US on the house price crash), a huge balance of payments deficit, a binge-drinking culture, and increasingly moronic media – to mention those that come immediately to mind.
Hey KiwiInOz if you come over try not to do the the boring thing and live in Earls Court or Norwood huh? and bear in mind that the pound isn’t doing too well (apart from against the US dollar of course), so earning Euros might be a better bet. You could try Ireland for eg if the foreign languages are a bit rusty. I hear Dublin is a really happening place.
Bringing it back on topic ;-) the range of continental beers available now in the British Isles is just wonderful. One of our locals has Weihenstaphaler Weissbeir on tap and Pilsner Urquell and Staropramen are in danger of becoming mundane. So if warm flatish beer isn’t your thing there is more than Fosters (spit!) or Kronenborg (spit, spit). Stay away from the Hoegarden but, it isn’t a good weissbeir in the first place and it gives a very bad hangover.
As for warm beer, a distressing modern phenomenon is to serve British beers cold. I was served a cold Directors the other week, had to sit and watch it for a while. Terrible it was.
Unfortunately I’m black, so moving to Britain is not a good idea in my case…
Nick Gott why don’t you look on the bright side of life? Besides half of your complaints apply to the folks over the pond too. They live in a surveilance society too, remember the Patriot act? it just operates differently from ours.
I helped a US colleague get UK citizenship, that person is even very mildly religious too and wanted out badly. So it isn’t just atheists.
Re #97 “Unfortunately I’m black, so moving to Britain is not a good idea in my case” – Laser Potato
I’m not sure what you’re basing this on. I can’t speak from first-hand experience, but I don’t think you’d be more likely to be on the end of more, or more serious racism here than in the US (I’m assuming that’s where you are, and that by “black” you mean substantially of sub-Saharan African ancestry a few centuries back). Rates of black/white intermarriage are much higher in the UK than the US, which probably indicates more social mixing in a broader sense. It is the south Asian Muslim communities which are most isolated, whose children do worst in school, and against which there is most prejudice.
Re #98. Peter Ashby, why don’t you try to get my name right? I did recommend you try cutting and pasting, since it seems your memory is not up to the task.
Besides half of your complaints apply to the folks over the pond too.
Also, why don’t you try reading what I write before responding? I specifically noted:
“we have many of the same problems and disturbing tendencies as the US, and a few of our own”?
Plus a religiously derived symbol, Britannia, is being dropped from the coinage. Though we do still have to put up with a royal family (whose very limited benefit includes preventing Blair etc from being like your president and getting to do all the posing).
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article3666992.ece
I would have favoured putting Newton on the coinage, since he had a lot to do with the mint and it would be good to get as many scientists as possible onto and thus into common currency.
Laser Potato, I don’t think you’d have much of a problem with racism here in the UK. The racists are mostly concerned about muslims these days; you’d probably get more hassle for having an American accent.
As to CCTV cameras, as I understand it, the USA has as many per capita, but the authorities are a lot quieter about it. Nearly all the cameras in the UK are in shopping areas, or outside nightclubs, and most of them belong to shops and banks, rather than the local constabulary. Besides, the constant drizzle makes them almost useless, other than for encouraging criminals to commit their crimes off the high street.
As to endemic binge-drinking, I can’t deny that, but it’s not as though you’re required to join in.
SEF, we used to have Newton on the one pound note, though this was as much for his role as Warden of the Royal Mint as for his scientific accomplishments.
To all the heretics promoting Timothy Taylor: try Black Sheep Brewery’s “Riggwelter”. Seriously. (I’ve never seen it on tap outside Yorkshire though.)
And everyone, please ignore the Brits whining about the downsides of the UK, they’re just indulging in the British national pastime: complaining.
*Ahem* Anyway, the C of E does seem to be an establishment where the average religiosity of the clergy is actually less than that of their parishioners; indeed it would appear that it’s possible to become a Bishop without actually having to believe in god. If my current career ever goes belly-up, I think that as an atheist, I could be ordained into the C of E with a clear conscience.
If there’s any REAL ale drinkers here, I heartily recommend Sharp’s Brewery’s ‘Doom Bar’. It’s gorgeous.
As for #102’s comment regarding hassle for having an American accent…. most English people I know (and I’m one of them) would love to meet an American, it would be rather quaint.
Very interesting discussion. #43: “athiest means you don’t believe in god with implications that you spend time railing agaisnt those that do.” This seems like a pretty good description of those who regularly frequent this blog.
But, more seriously: have any of you actually bothered to read the report? “Pollsters asked 3,500 people what they considered to be the worst blights on modern society” is not very accurate. This was a web-based poll. The respondents were not selected by the pollsters. They were simply those who chose to respond. From the executive summary of the report: “This group is unlikely to be representative of the British population generally…”
Moreover, the six major themes that emerged in the survey did not include religion, which is listed as #9 out of 12 major issues. Participants were allowed to name three evils, so religion was almost certainly not raised as an issue by the majority of the respondents. Furthermore, while the majority voice among respondents who discussed religion at all identified religion itself as a social evil, others, including even some atheists, identified the decline of religion as a social evil, and associated the decline of religion with a loss of “moral compass” and a general decline in values. All in all this seems a lot more complicated than the Times article suggests.
Well, the problem with Britain, is that interference of religion in politics has been substituted with the ROYAL FAMILY interfering in politics. The head of the Church of England (the Queen) is on the bank-notes. Can you imagine if they tried to put Jerry Falwell on the dollar bill? Not only is the head of the church on the money, but she opens the parliament every year and she gets paid by the taxpayers. How anywhere that calls itself a DEMOCRACY can sit by and watch a bunch of in-bred toffs run their country, is unbelievable. Yes it’s “cute” and it boosts the tourist trade, but it’s still up there alongside theocracy. Call it “tradition” or whatever you need to justify it, but don’t kid yourselves that it’s any better than the US.
Then there are the rampant racial tensions, which are easily on a par with France but have not erupted largely due to it being a police state. If you think Homeland Security and the Patriot Act are scary, just take a look at the Prevention of Terrorism Act, which has been in place since the troubles in Northern Ireland, and took away most civil rights during the 1980s. The UK has the most security cameras per capita – it is the most “watched” country on the planet. 8% of the population is Asian born (primarily Indian and Pakistani), and they are simply not integrated… they build mosques, they are subject to racial taunts by whites on a daily basis. There is also tension regarding Eastern European immigration – those who have entered the country in the last 5 years account for a massive proportion (more then half) of all violent crime.
The country has zero natural resources left, and imports just about everything it eats (can you say Spanish strawberries flown in during the winter?). There are no forests left to speak of. All the North Sea Oil is gone. There is no large industry (that was all killed off by Thatcher in the ’80s and Blair finished the job). Education is a mess – far too many standardized tests. Gas is $9 a gallon. Everyone is obsessed with reality TV (they invented “idol”, and “survivor”, and “big brother” and all the rest) – there is an unhealthy obsession with celebrity, to the point where headlines about football players or high-profile pedophile cases dominate the news over more important things. House prices are too high except for the wealthiest – average first time buyer homes are 5 times the average salary. It costs a fortune to get anywhere ($4 for the cheapest one-way ride on the London Underground). There is no democracy in the media (Rupert Murdoch owns everything, except the BBC which is government-run and mandates that everyone pay for their services if they own a TV). Oh, and just in case anyone forgot, they support the Iraq war.
So, by all means, move there on the basis of religion alone, but most sensible people will look at a balance of issues, of which religion is just one, before deciding where to live. (BTW, yes I’m English).
‘what was his ‘evidence’ for blasphemy? Did he use the episode where they went and met Satan, or the Christmas special with the robot angels’
The blasphemy thing was Jerry Springer the Opera. The Doctor Who thing was http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/tv_and_radio/article3080608.ece
with a slightly misleading headline (it wasn’t plural Christians). The comments are funny.
‘The head of the Church of England (the Queen) is on the bank-notes.’
Well … she’s the head of state. American money has former heads of state on it.
We appreciate that Americans went a different way – you rebelled against an idiot called George who only got the job because his dad, George, had it. How’s that working out for you?
Virgil:
I’ve lived in the UK for 60 years, and still do. Yes, there are problems, but much of what you say doesn’t resemble the UK I know! The Monarchy doesn’t have the effect on politics that you suggest, and probably wished they COULD have interfered over the last 10 years.
Given the topic here, about 2.7% of the population are Muslims, including non-Asians. As you suggest, many of them are not integrated. Other Asians are Hindus, Christians, and Sikhs, etc. They don’t build mosques! Integration and racialism in their communities varies.
Please don’t take what I say as being diametrically opposed to what you say – I am trying to identify that the facts are not as exaggerated as you suggest.
Whew. I don’t have the time to take them apart one by one right now but I’d just like folk to be aware that many of the claims made by Virgil (#108) are hysterical falsehoods or grotesque exaggerrations.
Virgil: I think you must live in a different England than the one I do. Police state? Try living in Zimbabwe. (And while, no, I haven’t lived there, I’ve met plenty who have. You’re not likely to have the police kick your baby to death in the UK just because you voted against the current ruling party.)
‘8% of the population is Asian born’
Um … 2.8%
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4385768.stm
And I don’t really see how Muslims being allowed to build mosques is a sign of *in*tolerance.
‘imports just about everything it eats’
Britain gets 74% of its food from Britain – http://www.theyworkforyou.com/lords/?id=2005-02-22a.1096.3 – the balance are either things that don’t grow well in Britain, or things we can get cheaply from Europe.
‘Everyone is obsessed with reality TV (they invented “idol”, and “survivor”, and “big brother” and all the rest)’
Idol’s British, Survivor’s American, Big Brother’s Dutch.
‘except the BBC which is government-run’
It’s government *funded*, and while that has an influence, it’s not ‘government run’. Here’s a BBC journalist kicking Tony Blair in the face for being stupid enough to believe in God:
But we don’t have a one pound note any more. So the pound etc coins would be a way to bring him back. I’d like Rosalind Franklin on some high value note (perhaps the 50 given the era) or, jokingly, on franking machine stamps.
I did hear on NPR that Britain has the most serveillance of any democracy on the planet. There’s a government spy cam for very 14 citizens.
Town Coucils are using it to nab people for littering, school issues… nothing to do with terrorism.
Yes please……DO move and take your stereotypical ideas about “religion” with you. You are certainly what is wrong with America today. You sound like a hypocrate.
Looks who’s filling the stereotype quite well.
Thanks Mish! hehe.
‘There’s a government spy cam for very 14 citizens.’
No.
CCTV in Britain is a problem, and there is a lot of it. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/334853.stm
But these are not ‘government spy cams’, they were not introduced to fight terrorism. As in America, a lot of shops and train stations and airports have them. Others are used in city centres to monitor traffic.
The problem isn’t that the government has control over millions of cameras. It’s almost the opposite – local councils, local police, local businesses have all adopted them, leading to a huge proliferation. They’re used for low level crime – parking offences, littering.
We don’t, though, routinely wiretap our own citizens: http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/2006/09/13/spying/index.html
Virgil, I do believe you’re beginning to froth at the mouth, old boy. The Queen has even less power than the presidents of those countries which have both a president and prime minister. She’s got less power than Black Rod when you come down to it; she could theoretically refuse to sign-off on the Queen’s Speech that the prime minister gives her, but if that happened Parliament would boot her out and put someone else more tractable in the role. As they’ve done before.
We aren’t a police state, any more than downtown Los Angeles is. The CCTVs are simply not efficient at picking up criminals; we still don’t have an ID card system, and you’re still a lot less likely to get shot by a policeman than in many other countries.
I live opposite a mosque, as a matter of fact, and the chanting of the hate-filled mobs outside my window every night doesn’t keep me awake… because there aren’t any. I’ve worked with muslims, and none of them were subject to insults every day.
We have forests; they aren’t big, but we’re not a big country, and a little crowded, like many European countries. And neither has all the North Sea oil run out quite yet. And we didn’t invent reality TV, that was the Dutch. Murdoch doesn’t own all the media, you can still pick up a national paper or two that don’t have anything to do with him. And I bloody didn’t support no war.
I can’t call myself English, being half-Scottish, but I’m beginning to suspect that I’m more English than you, Virgil.
If you want results, rather try Fontainebleau…
Why does he sound like a hypocrite?
I also like how tolerance by the blogger and many people on here is for everything but religion. Yeah, you guys got me! You are so much better at tolerance than anyone else.
We don’t need another Hitler in this world. We really don’t.
Posted by: PK
Ah, the final whine of poor little Shit Killer. The little schmuck cannot tell the difference between kicking an annoying twit from a blog from rounding up and killing people. Nice moral equivalency.
You see, Shit Killer, kicking you off of here is like a bunch of people crossing a street to avoid the ranting idiot on the sidewalk.
Enjoys your days of fearing little Hitlers hiding behind every corner. Perhaps someday you can find a fuhrer to lead you to safety.
(Oh, I’ve been busy the past few days. See you all in a couple of days.)
Someone calls themselves “Virgil” and prophesises that the doom of the UK is upon us?
Oh Noes! Enoch Powell is haunting teh interwebs!
Seriously though, whoever posted that tripe is clearly rather less English than Queen Elizabeth II and that takes some doing.
Virgil reads suspiciously like a troll. I also see he uses the American (i.e. Wrong) spelling of “paedophile”.
Almost every statement is false. The cost of a gallon of petrol is about right – although it does help if people realise a British gallon is larger than an American gallon. Around 80% of the cost of British petrol is tax.
Get an Oyster for London. £1 within zones on pay-as-you-go.
The royals are constitutionally banned from party politics. The only time a monarch could exercise real power IIRC is if parliament is so divided it can neither elect a government nor decide to call new elections. This has never happened, and is highly unlikely to happen.
Murdoch owns too much, but he does not own ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5, ITV News nor Virgin Media, nor numerous national and local papers.
I would be fascinated to hear Virgil’s source for >50% of violent crime committed by recent immigrants.
And I didn’t support the Iraq war. IIRC support amongst the public peaked at around 50%.
Virgil’s hysterical views remind me of Charlie Brooker’s ‘Daily Mail Island’, about what a society would be like if their only contact with the outside world was the Daily Mail. I think that they’d hold view fairly close to Virgil’s nonsense…
The Daily Mail, presumably.
Glad I wasn’t the only one thinking that, then.
OK, so my #s were off a bit, but the underlying principal of my post is still valid… The UK is little better (and in many cases worse) than the rest of the world, when it comes to a variety of factors such as an economy built on credit, excessive government power, racism & immigration problems, freedom of speech, going to war, open media, unsustainable use of natural resources, attitudes of the people and what they care about (cell-phones and reality TV), rampant over-development of the countryside, an obesity epidemic, over-population (60M in an area double that of NY state) &c.
The numbers may be different, the absolute details are open to discussion, but the basic idea remains true… The UK has a lot of big problems that are not going to disappear just because you deny they exist at all. Who cares if the numbers are off, or the magnitude of the effects is over/under-estimated? The important thing is to wake up from your “Britain is perfect” little dream, and look at the big picture. Britain is going down the tubes, has been for years.
And don’t even get me started on life-science funding in the UK, which was the reason I left there in the first place.
Virgil,
The Queen, as head of state, has little influence on policy. We cut off the head of the last King who tried to assert his authority over Parliament.
Yes, the toffs largely run the country, as the moneyed classes do America. This seems to be the way of all democracies that age and decline into oligarchies. (France is much the same.) Let’s not forget that your current Prez was born with a silver spoon in his mouth. It will take some doing in all our countries to turn this around.
Racial tensions? Yes. Lack of civil rights? Nowhere near as harsh as you maintain, though we must be vigilant against incursions such as ID cards. 8% Asian-born? Kindly check your facts. Lack of integration? Yes, more must be done here. Eastern European Immigration? Yes, we have taken a lot of people from Eastern Europe. Their skills are in demand.
Zero resources? True, though there’s always the option of reviving king coal, which was neglected in favour of cheaper fuels from abroad. Oil gone? Yes, production in steep decline. Education? yes, testing has taken over from teaching–a legacy of Blairite pandering to Daily Mail cnuts. (Did I mention that all Daily Mail readers are cnuts? Good.) Fuel? High, but perversely we can absorb the shock of hiked prices more easily than the US. The obsession with celebrity and sports? No difference from America there. House prices? Very high and in need of chronic recorrection, that I suspect the market will provide.
The media? A strong right wing press balanced by a more liberal (if establishment) BBC. We have a liberal counterweight in papers such as the Mirror or Guardian, though not as heavy. Thatcher wielded the press like a mace. Murdoch fancies himself as kingmaker in our elections and he’s only half correct, as he’s opportunist enough to back only that side he perceives as the winner. the war is deeply unpopular in the country.
Iraq war? I suspect the PM’s commitment on this to be less than Blair’s. That said he has yet to pull us out.
Nobody has said Britain is perfect, Virgil. And Britons will be the first to admit that. However, having spent time in the US I know that for all Britain’s faults I’d rather live here than there.
There’s a curious phenomenon with ex-pats. They have a tendency to ‘go native’ and proselytise about their adopted homeland. I’ve never been sure whether it is insecurity that drives their need to assert their commitment to their new home, but I’ve found the migrant ex-pat to be a tiresome companion when they begin to disrespect their old home.
So please spare me the whinging. I have heard it many times already.
Thankyou all for your kind comments! I’m getting old so I had to go to bed… I have been reading at the links you provided. Most of it is over my head. The National Geographic site gave me a glimmer of brightness, but my dome light hasn’t switched on just yet.
Does it go that the scientists carbon date the fossil hominids and humans and then go to all the painstaking work of mapping where they found them? Or do they take DNA from the fossils? I bought a little fossil at a rock show, and it beats me how you could get DNA out of it. Thanks again for your patience.
Couldn’t leave this list you folks have made me snort coffee or sangria out my nose in laughter four times already!
No we didn’t. The last to try was James II, and parliament kicked him out on his ear, replacing him with William of Orange in 1688. The 1689 Bill of Rights finally established that Parliament was in charge.
An amusing recent story on the monarchy: government ministers are attempting to make the hereditary monarchy more equitable by making the heir the first born regardless of gender, and removing the ban on marrying Catholics. There’s got to be an irony in there somewhere. Maybe because an hereditary monarchy is inherently unjust and unequal?
I’m of the opinion that Britain’s best newspapers are Scottish – the Scotsman and Herald. The BBC has its own set of biases, and all too often seems to slip into the role of stenographer for power.
The Assoc. of Chief Police Officers have found that crime rates amongst immigrants are the same as those in the general population. A quick Google doesn’t show any raw numbers – but there are alarmist and largely unsourced Daily Mail articles. For all I know the Mail is just making shit up.
Virgil seems somewhat right-wing, so when you read his posts, remember that reality has a liberal bias.
Don’t know whether it was mentioned in one of the 100+ comments above me: GB now has a law where you can sue fortune-tellers for not getting their predictions right. I’m beginning to love this country.
@ dvizard
and we might be able to get the quacks as well.
oh the fun to be had.
ps. for the beer debate, the main advantage of Britain is we get the real ale (which dont tend to travel well) and all the continental beers and lagers too.
heaven
right time to pop down the local beer store.
‘GB now has a law where you can sue fortune-tellers for not getting their predictions right.’
They also have to make truthful claims in advertising. Leading to hilarity like:
http://www.asa.org.uk/asa/adjudications/Public/TF_ADJ_44111.htm
One already exists: the 1951 Fraudulent Mediums Act.
http://www.statutelaw.gov.uk/content.aspx?ActiveTextDocId=1100678
…any person who with intent to deceive purports to act as a spiritualistic medium or to exercise any powers of telepathy, clairvoyance or other similar powers, or in purporting to act as a spiritualistic medium or to exercise such powers as aforesaid, uses any fraudulent device, shall be guilty of an offence.
I’m not sure he is. But there seems to be a pathology in which people who fail in their home country and go abroad tend to rail against the motherland. I recall they used to refer to the British ex-pats in Hong Kong as ‘Filth’, which stood for ‘Failed in London, Try Hong Kong’.
Thanks for the correction. The Stuarts were an unhappy lot, on the whole.
Is it true what they say about British cooking?
It is, but thanks to Delia and the fragrant Nigella, it’s getting better.
What I think’s very interesting is that Christians – ones who are clearly not in cahoots: half the fundies think Ratzinger is the anti-Christ
…and even funnier is that the previous Pope had postulated George Bush as the antichrist!
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0MKY/is_9_27/ai_108881880
that’s what you get when you rely on fictional authority to base your arguments on.
I was massively proud of my fellow countrymen – until I looked at the actual report. It’s not as promising as the Times would have you believe. See here for a brief explanation as to why.
Not sure a Daily Mail reader would go on an anti monarchy rant.
In 2002 some jubilee or other (like I care) coincided with the FIFA World Cup. On one day, there was a glorious display of newspaper front pages – football, football, and football, except the Mail which was Queen on Union Flag.
The Mail’s priorities must be seriously messed up. Clearly, patriotic_importance(Beckham)>patriotic_importance(Queen).
I had a fun thought about the monarchy. It attracts tourists partly because it is a functioning monarchy. But if we remove it from the UK’s constitution, it would still function for another 15 Commonwealth nations. All the palaces are in the UK, so it would stay too. So we could have a constitution worthy of the 21st century, and still pull in the “gosh, isn’t this quaint” tourists. We just need to think of a way to make the Aussies pay for it…
It’s being repealed, apparently. It had protections for “genuine mediums”. The .gov link is down though, so I can’t see for myself.
Grauniad
They do that too :) but it is not used directly in making the genealogy, since you can’t tell from a particular fossil whether it was your direct ancestor or not. But once scientists have built a “family tree” out of genetic data, they can compare the results with archaeological findings. (for example, the date 60,000 years for the earliest common male ancestor comes from genetic data; but we would be less sure that he lived in Africa, if not for the fossils.)
In fossils like that the organic material has been replaced by minerals, so to get ancient DNA you need something that isn’t yet completely fossilised. For example, mummies.
Shorter Virgil: I got all my facts wrong, but that doesn’t mean I’m wrong.
Yeah, yeah, Britain is a shithole, but it’s not a bad one as shitholes go. Seriously, PZ writes a short humourous bit about emigrating, and you interpret that as a serious “Britain is perfect” peaen? Get a grip, man. Not in front of the colonials, what?
Us Brits aren’t precisely an areligious lot – most of us have some sort of faith, but it’s so vague and noncommittal that it passes for atheism.
You know the kind of thing – “I believe there’s something comforting out there but I don’t know what it is and whatever it is I’m not going to let it affect my life. It’s just nice to believe sometimes.”
So, when Brits say they’re afraid of “religion”, what they’re really afraid of is passionate religion. And seeing as Anglicanism is by definition almost never passionate, they’re afraid of other religions being passionate. And in practice that means…Islam.
When my countryfolk talk about the evils of religion, they’re talking about mosques, the Quran and ramadan. But what they’re thinking about is bombs.
So you see we’re not so elightened after all.
I´m drinking Brakspear Oxford Gold right now. Thanks, Britain!
AMK are you mad? The Scotsman is a nasty, sneering, parochial rag since Andrew Neil and the Barclays got their claws into it. It’s coverage of the Parliament is never less than sneering. The Herald on the other hand is a good paper, unfortunately it is also a bit parochial so living here in the East of Scotland it can have less relevance. So I read more UK papers topped up with our local parochial, the inestimable Dundee Courier and Auntie’s coverage.
The Scotsman enters this abode occasionally on Fridays, but purely for the job adverts.
Virgil,
I doubt if this is the place to try the ‘Never mind the facts, my convictions are still true.’ line. People here are a bit picky about just making up facts and figures.
The change in the law about mediums basically means that previously you had to prove they were fakes. Now they have to prove they are not – or give a disclaimer.
Plus we have Ben Goldacre.
Truth be told, I formed my opinion of The Scotsman when I was in Scotland a few years ago. It’s somewhat harder to get down here in SW England, so I’ve not read it for a long while. I wasn’t aware it had gone down hill. Shame.
Breaking the “Obama aide says Clinton a monster” story was funny though.
This is just me talking, because I know everyone has a different perspective… For me, as an IT worker in California, the UK would be a huge step backwards. The salaries, the commutes, the cost of living; it all just adds up. My mother is from Manchester, England, and we used to go there a lot when we were kids. There are a lot of interesting places in the UK, for sure.
It has been a long time since I’ve been there (1993 or so), but I loved the Lakes district. Beautiful.
I just prefer California, that’s all. If I want a “British Climate”, it’s just not that far to Humboldt County (I’ve often wondered why tourists from the UK would even bother going to the Northern California coast).
I’ll sort of go halfway with you here, though. I think California would be far better off as its own country. I think we should secede.
Has anyone heard of the proposal for Mecca Mean Time replacing Greenwich Mean Time?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7359258.stm
I have to admit, I sorta like it. It’s not gonna happen, I know. I think their reasoning is a little flawed, too.
Thanks for the answer Windy. The glimmer gets brighter. You lucky folk are saved by the book store. My new copy of The Counter-Creationism Handbook by Mark Isaak just came in. (That’ll learn me!)
Hey, someone mentioned The Scotsman, our local national newspaper.
Yes, it went downhill in the 90’s when the BArclay brothers took over, and ANdrew Neil sacked most of the experienced staff. What is left now is a bunch of reporters who mangle science on a regular basis, copy stories word for word from the press releases, and misspell things.
Looking back, I see that AMK is going by past impressions. THe SCotsman was bought by the Barclays in 1995, so its been going downhill ever since then. Even then, I do not think that it was ever a really good newspaper when the entire country is taken into consideration. There has been a continnued decline in newspaper quality in the past 20 years in the UK, covering all the newspapers.
The Scotsman, our local national newspaper.
Yes, it went downhill in the 90’s when the BArclay brothers took over, and ANdrew Neil sacked most of the experienced staff. What is left now is a bunch of reporters who mangle science on a regular basis, copy stories word for word from the press releases, and misspell things.
…so it’s no longer the True Scotsman?
:p
I see my mention of the Dundee Courier had no takers. It is so parochial that its report on the sinking of the Titanic is legendary, it was headlined: Dundee Man in Shipwreck. This tradition continues to this day and I often check it just to see how they will twist a story to get the local angle. Ah, us Scots and parochialism. Hence of course the origin of the One True Scotsman.
Oh shit! yet another drink meets monitor episode.
Virgil; My facts are wrong but my feelings are right so please agree with me!
Oh hahahahahahahaha.
Anyway, onto the UK stuff; it’s horrible here so don’t come (that should keep the undecideds away; can’t have the blighters coming back after all this time, we only packed them onto the bloody Mayflower a few years ago.)
And didn’t the Brits a couple years ago vote “Life of Brian” the best comedy film of all time? That’s another reason to love Britain: British comedy, some of the best in the world.
Coming in late to update #81 (G Tingey), speaking of distrusting religion, apart from the Huguenot-related terms you suggest, also look up “gordon riots”, from 1780 — Charles Dickens even wrote a book (Barnaby Rudge) including them. For a bit of background, heres one link at a good history site, though there are quite a few around.
There’s a link to US history as well, because John Wilkes was the main parliamentary supporter of the interests of the American colonists in the lead up to the break away from Britain.
(There seem to be a lot of George Gordons around. It’s possible this one is related to Lord Byron, but following through the tangled web of upper-class UK genealogy is too long & complex for my time & patience. )
Which beer goes best with diced dork liver?
We appreciate that Americans went a different way – you rebelled against an idiot called George who only got the job because his dad, George, had it. How’s that working out for you? – Steve Jeffers
Sorry to kill a beautiful analogy with a nasty, ugly little fact – but George III was his predecessor George II’s grandson. His father was Frederick Prince of Wales, who predeceased his father, and of whom someone said:
“If it was his father,
I had much rather,
If it was his sister,
no-one would have missed her,
But as it’s just Fred,
Who was alive and is dead,
There’s no more to be said”.
Except Fredrick, Price of Wales left all of us, the whole planet, a great legacy.
The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.
See:
http://www.kew.org/
Re #162 I didn’t know that! Incredible, a member of the royal family who did something useful.