So, it went through the Com­mons, after some wheeler-​​dealing, and now has to get through the Lords.

At the risk of sound­ing like someone writ­ing to The Times, I am appalled and dis­gus­ted that it’s got this far. There is no jus­ti­fic­a­tion for hold­ing mem­bers of the pub­lic for so long. A week sounds about right to me, any more than that is simply wrong. Whatever happened to “inno­cent until proven guilty”?

Right now, I’m ashamed that I ever voted Labour, and I never will do again.

I just couldn’t believe it when I read it; two men have been caught chip­ping frag­ments from the Heel Stone at Stone­henge. The BBC refers to them as both van­dals and “souvenir hunters,” and, while I sus­pect it’s tech­nic­ally true, I can’t help feel­ing that the second term lends an undeserved air of legit­im­acy to what they did. Let’s be clear about this; there is no excuse for their actions. They thought it was accept­able beha­viour to dam­age a beloved and fas­cin­at­ing national treas­ure, which belongs to us all, in order to claim exclus­ive own­er­ship of a tiny frag­ment of it. They’re scum, pure and simple.

Excel­lent news! The Com­mons has voted in sup­port of research on hybrid embryos. Need­less to say, the unin­formed are up in arms about the “army of Frankesteins” about to be unleashed, but I think every­one who under­stands the issues knows this is the right outcome.

So, the votes on the Human Fer­til­isa­tion and Embry­ology Bill are tak­ing place over the next couple of days, with the big one — hybrid embryos — hap­pen­ing today.

The BBC has sum­mar­ised the key points on both sides of the debate:

What are the argu­ments in favour of this process?

Sci­ent­ists who advoc­ate the work say the cells would allow them to study how genetic defects, which cause dis­eases such as Parkinson’s, develop.

They also say that stem cells’ abil­ity to develop into dif­fer­ent tis­sues mean it could be pos­sible to use cells formed in this pro­cess to cure diseases.

Using animal eggs would enable sci­ent­ists to over­come the prob­lem that human eggs are in short supply.

What are the argu­ments against?

Oppon­ents say it is tam­per­ing with nature, and is unethical.

On the one hand we have a set of reasoned argu­ments detail­ing spe­cific pre­dicted health bene­fits for thou­sands of people, and on the other we have “eewwww!”.

I really wish people would stop con­flat­ing their own squeam­ish­ness with their eth­ical pos­i­tion; it clouds import­ant issues, like this, where the eth­ical pos­i­tion is surely the one that saves lives.

Oh look, Church lead­ers are up in arms about some new piece of legis­la­tion. Are we really sur­prised? After so many thou­sands of years of them pro­claim­ing that any­thing which makes them, per­son­ally, feel uncom­fort­able is evil, how can we be any­thing but bored when they keep at it in the present time? Last year it was equal rights for homo­sexu­als, this year it’s advanced research into human genet­ics. Before long it’ll be arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, neur­os­cience, or some other thing which chal­lenges, and advances, our view of ourselves.

Oh, and of course the cries are going to be led by the Cath­olic Church this time; they’re the ones with a huge theo­lo­gical invest­ment in the sub­ject. We’re talk­ing about a cult whose insane super­sti­tions about human genetic mater­ial lead them to declare male mas­turb­a­tion a “sin against God”, and to deduce that tens of mil­lions of people in the third world dying of AIDS and hun­dreds of mil­lions more liv­ing in miser­able, starving poverty due to over­pop­u­la­tion is prob­ably OK com­pared to the much greater sin of let­ting them use con­doms. These are people whose core val­ues are utterly incom­pat­ible with the human rights and human dig­nity they claim to be the guard­i­ans of, and our response to their claims of being some sort of author­ity on eth­ics (espe­cially bioeth­ics) should be to laugh dis­dain­fully and get on with try­ing to make the world a bet­ter place.

I gather this isn’t exactly news, but it’s the first I’ve heard of it.

The Lords have just approved the change, by a sig­ni­fic­ant major­ity. I couldn’t be hap­pier; blas­phemy is a ridicu­lous, archaic offence that has no place being enshrined in the law of a civ­il­ised nation. In fact I’ll call it the first good news about the Brit­ish legal sys­tem I’ve heard in a long time.

Well, I sup­pose it’s good that someone in author­ity has finally real­ised that whole thing is a colossal waste of time and money, in which the only pos­sible win­ners are the publicity-​​seeking oppor­tun­ists who’re still, after ten years, try­ing to make some money or grab some fame through their asso­ci­ation with the princess.

Really, we don’t _​need_​ an inquest into her death; I would have thought that the fact her car hit a con­crete wall at speed, while she wasn’t wear­ing a seat-​​belt, would be clue enough into how she died. Of course, there are always con­spir­acy the­or­ists when a much loved pub­lic fig­ure dies sud­denly, but that doesn’t mean we should give them a pub­licly fun­ded plat­form from which to shout.

A coun­cil in Durham has spent tax­pay­ers’ money on a ‘psychic’ to per­form an exor­cism on a home in the town:

Eas­ing­ton Coun­cil employed medium Suz­anne Had­win after Peterlee ten­ant Sab­rina Fal­lon repor­ted paranor­mal activ­ity includ­ing mov­ing objects.

Miss Fal­lon had even called police after hear­ing bangs which ter­ri­fied her chil­dren Shan­non, nine, and Amie, one.

A coun­cil spokes­man said it paid half the psychic’s fee as it was the most cost-​​effective solution.

The coun­cil hasn’t sug­ges­ted that it put’s any stock in the claims, and has attemp­ted to dis­tance itself from that suspicion:

Mr Burnip said: “This fam­ily was abso­lutely dis­traught and believed what was hap­pen­ing — that is not to say that the coun­cil believed.

“What we saw was a rel­at­ively small amount to pay for an out­come which in effect saved the tax­payer many hun­dreds, if not thou­sands of pounds.”

It should go without say­ing that this is utter non­sense. Some woman has got her­self worked up over some­thing (prob­ably a few spooky noises,) and passed her fear onto her kids, and the coun­cil has paid someone to do noth­ing more than say “there, there, it’ll be OK” in a way she was pre­pared to believe.

I’d have much rather seen the coun­cil spend a little more money to edu­cate this woman’s super­sti­tions away, than to pander to them and, ulti­mately, rein­force them. This would have had the fringe bene­fit of the money going to someone who battles against ignor­ance and mys­ti­cism, rather than someone who preys on it. Remem­ber; the data sug­gests that the prob­ab­il­ity of Ms Had­win pos­sess­ing actual super­nat­ural powers is van­ish­ingly small.

I’ll bet Dr Wil­li­ams is taken aback at the response his com­ments has gen­er­ated, and I have to say, I think a lot of people are over­re­act­ing. Obvi­ously, I make no secret of the fact that I dis­agree with him and I’ll argue my point, but heck­ling the poor man out­side his Church? Call­ing for his resig­na­tion? Not even remotely called for, and noth­ing more than an attempt to limit his right to hold an opin­ion and express his views.

At this stage it’s prob­ably worth point­ing out that there are — at least — two sep­ar­ate groups who’re being crit­ical of his pos­i­tion, and it’s not the sec­u­lar­ists and the lib­er­als who’re call­ing for his resig­na­tion. Those voices are raised from within his own Church, and they’re not object­ing on gen­eral grounds to reli­gious accom­mod­a­tion in the law, they’re object­ing very spe­cific­ally to accom­mod­a­tion of reli­gions that aren’t theirs. Need­less to say, I dis­agree with those people at least strongly as I do Dr Williams.

In fact, on a re-​​reading his lec­ture, I real­ise just how badly mis­rep­res­en­ted by the media Dr Wil­li­ams was. I’m not say­ing I agree with him; far from it, but I don’t think he was call­ing for whole­sale modi­fic­a­tion of Brit­ish law, either. He makes some subtle points, and his words are, at times, ambigu­ous (one might say disin­genu­ous,) but there is cer­tainly a way to inter­pret what he said as noth­ing more con­tro­ver­sial than “just because the law gives someone a right, doesn’t mean we should neces­sar­ily force them to exer­cise that right at all times.” That much is obvi­ously true.

So, surely true enough is fair enough? Well, yes, but the assump­tion that someone might not want to exer­cise their rights is a dan­ger­ous one to estab­lish leg­ally, and an even more dan­ger­ous one to nation­ally con­sol­id­ate through the estab­lish­ment of local courts around the coun­try, which (will inev­it­ably) pre­sume the com­pli­city of the entire local pop­u­la­tion. Wil­li­ams talks about these supplementary-​​jurisdictions as being purely vol­un­tary, but offers no sug­ges­tions as to how to ensure duress of any kind does not play a role. Mat­thew Par­ris puts it excel­lently, in his piece in The Times:

Faiths cap­ture people. I do not mean this dis­par­agingly. So of course do pat­ri­ot­isms, ideo­lo­gies, fam­il­ies. But a reli­gion, prop­erly under­stood, makes pro­found claims on an indi­vidual and com­munity, quite unlike the demands of a golf club. It involves the use of pub­lic places and pub­lic ser­vices, the sub­or­din­a­tion of the individual’s will; and may demand that he sub­or­din­ate his spouse’s and children’s wills too. Hence our unease about duress, and the com­plete­ness of “consent”.

Dr Wil­li­ams, in a wel­ter of words, makes no ser­i­ous attempt to resolve this. Those who read his speech prop­erly will see that his entire argu­ment turns upon the free­dom of the group mem­ber to “opt out” of the “sup­ple­ment­ary jur­is­dic­tion” and choose Brit­ish law instead. But repress­ive faith groups make it cul­tur­ally dif­fi­cult — some­times well-​​nigh impossible — for a mem­ber to opt out. This gives them the very togeth­er­ness and focus that Dr Wil­li­ams wants to foster.

A reli­gion is more than a col­lec­tion of rules and habits: it is a com­plete moral and philo­soph­ical sys­tem with deep claims upon the inner and outer life of the adher­ent, from cradle, through school­ing, and bey­ond. The rules it lays down — the private laws — are of a more com­mand­ing kind than the rules of Scrabble or the High Peak Hunt because they are mor­ally joined-​​up: joined with a loy­alty bey­ond the State; joined within an over­arch­ing faith and its explan­a­tions of the Universe.

How can we expect someone who’d been raised, edu­cated and gov­erned accord­ing to cer­tain cul­tural and reli­gious pre­scrip­tions to real­ise, when it mat­ters, that they are able to “opt-​​out” of all that? Every­one they know believes and acts a cer­tain way; they have been raised to do the same. They might not even know there is a wider law guar­an­tee­ing them greater liberty. Paris, char­it­ably, talks about reli­gions as provid­ing “togeth­er­ness” and “focus,” and I dare-​​say he’s right, but the other side of that coin is obed­i­ence, con­form­ity and acqui­es­cence; not traits that I believe will lead to people look­ing out­side the sys­tem for redress.

Put simply, reli­gion and gov­ernance are a bad mix at any level. Reli­gions are, by their very nature, strongly ideo­lo­gical, and strongly ideo­lo­gical gov­ern­ments, reli­gious or oth­er­wise, fall all too eas­ily — some might say, inev­it­ably — into oppres­sion of dis­sent­ing views.

Addi­tion­ally, and as I’ve said before, there are real risks with intro­du­cing even small-​​scale sup­ple­mental jur­is­dic­tions in the con­text of the cur­rent Brit­ish pop­u­la­tion. By grant­ing legal status to aspects of cul­tural codes, we run the risk of grant­ing a ven­eer of legit­im­acy to the entirety of those codes, includ­ing ele­ments that the major­ity find abhor­rent, and by grant­ing already insu­lar com­munit­ies even greater autonomy, we don’t increase social cohe­sion on a wide scale, so much as splinter into a series of small, inde­pend­ent com­munit­ies with little in the way of com­mon­al­ity to bind them into a cohes­ive whole.

Well this is some­what heart­en­ing; it seems like pretty much every­one agrees with me on the recent state­ment from Dr Rowan Wil­li­ams, that the UK should adopt aspects of Sharia Law.

This also neatly demon­strates some­thing I’ve been say­ing for a while; The UK really is a much more sec­u­lar nation that the US, state reli­gion not­with­stand­ing. Brit­ish people tend to know this, but some (by no means all) Amer­ic­ans seem to labour under the impres­sion that the Church here is actu­ally wields some real power. This is the Arch­bishop of Can­ter­bury, the head of the Church of Eng­land, and yet pretty much every­one in gov­ern­ment has come out and pub­licly cri­ti­cised him for speak­ing rub­bish. Can you ima­gine the US pres­id­ent speak­ing out against a reli­gious leader like this?

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