Telly news and double standards

It would be 'too distressing' to show footage of the two horses being electrocuted in the paddock at Newbury, said the telly reporter moments ago.


Hm.  Why not show the same compunction when it is film of mere human beings being kicked to death by thugs?  That doesn't usually bother telly newspeople.

English as She are Spok - 2

...and while we're at it, could the club of broadcasters that lives in a closed little bubble stop forcing abominable mispronunciations on people in the big world outside?   People who proTEST take part in PROtests.  They are proTESTers, not PROtesters.  So fuddled are broadcasters that some of them now talk about people PROtesting.  For heaven's sake, can any of them actually read?  If so, there are books called dictionaries, which usually offer advice on pronunciation and where the stresses go.  They might try using them once in a while.

English as She are Spok

A correspondent in today's Times bewails the tendency of telly people to pronounce 'sixth' as 'sikth'.


Where have you been, bewailer?  'Fifth' has been 'fith' since ever since I can remember.  People who join in protests are called PRO-testers.  People who export are called EX-porters.  The distinction between 'less' and 'fewer' got lost in about 1949.  And of the rich panoply of prepositions that English offers, only one survives in telly-speak - 'over'.


I long to see the headline - Obama Craps Himself Over Africa.


The way things are going, it's inevitable.

Women in the Church - WATCH

The draft Measure that would allow women clergy to become bishops in the English provinces of the Church of England (in other Anglican provinces they've had women bishops for years) fell at the last hurdle in General Synod in July 2010. The House of Bishops had passed it; the House of Laity had passed it, but it was lost by a narrow vote in the House of Clergy, where a selective reading of Paul's often contradictory epistles supports a small but influential minority of conservative evangelists in their institutional chauvinism.


Sop after sop was offered to this minority, leading last July to the promise of a Code of Practice that would provide a safe house for those clergy and their congregations who 'in conscience' could not accept that the apostolic succession could ever include laying hands on the heads of people of the female gender (we never use the word 'sex' in the CofE - 'sex' is rather dirty, so we avoid it by pinching a specialised term from the jargon grammatists use, and effectively and subtly neuter women in the process.  Quite how 'sex' can be omitted in arguments about the role of women eludes me, since even popes and archbishops have to have had mothers, and I only know one story about an immaculate conception. But that is by the by.)


The conservative evangelists - the conscience-clause chauvinists - immediately latched onto the Code of Practice, and argued that it amounted to a poisoned chalice.  According to them, the parliamentary process doesn't allow a Code of Practice even to be drafted until its Measure has received Royal Assent, so they would be voting for a pig in a poke (scaremongering nonsense - they know very well that a code was being drawn up immediately after the votes in General Synod July last year; that they could see it and form their views; and that they would be able to debate and vote on it in 2012 before they even began to consider the primary legislation.)


So the Bishops' Council, determined not to let six years of very public infighting in the CofE count for nothing, issued an Article 8 to sound the views of dioceses (only dioceses, mind - not deaneries.  Deaneries could discuss:  they could even vote.  Their votes might be invalid, but at least they could vote if they wanted to.)


So our deanery synod met, and was to be addressed by diocese-appointed speakers for and against.


Now the House of Clergy in our deanery synod probably know exactly what is going on, and what the stakes are, but surprise surprise!  The background material that was given out to lay members as they filed into the meeting was deficient in one respect - it didn't mention anything about a certain Code of Practice, so when the speakers started putting their respective points of view few of us had a clue what they were getting so heated about.  It got even more complicated when one of the anti-women speakers tried to tell us that we were not allowed to vote - that is, make out views known.  It took a lay chairperson to disabuse him (and the result of the vote might suggest why this speaker was so anxious to mislead us.)


And the results of our vote at deanery synod? Clergy 6 for, 2 against.  Laity 25 for, none against, 3 abstentions (including me, who abstained because of lack of proper briefing, and an instinctive reluctance to be treated as lobby fodder.)


In our parish church we've had women clergy for years. For us, they are clergy first and women second.  It simply isn't something that we get worked up about.  Congregations in chauvinist churches will have had very different experiences, though.  How, if they have never had the opportunity to see women clergy at work, can they be said to have an informed opinion?


Bullying - which is what the far-right in the CofE engage in, as well as dirty politics - is unacceptable in any circumstances.


So I have had enough of church males assuming that because I am of the male sex, sorry gender,  I am automatically a member of their exclusive club.


My wife and I have done something this evening that we should have done a long time ago - we've joined WATCH - Women in the Church.  WATCH is a lot more socially inclusive than the present CofE - it welcomes men into its ranks as well as women,  Its membership includes  women who have risen as far as the Anglican glass ceiling allows them at present to rise - deans, theologians, moral philosophers, original thinkers - people with vision who could be running the church - if only they had had the good fortune to be born with a you-know-what dangly thing.


Every one of the women clergy in this group will at some time have been publicly humiliated by a willy dressed in a posh frilly frock who protests his conscience (and if it hasn't happened yet, it will.)  If it wasn't for women clergy there wouldn't be a CofE any more to give flying bishops their moment of earthly glory in some Alice-in-Wonderland non-geographical Third Province. Just look at the stats.

You can sign up here. It costs less than 50p a week. Consider it a contribution to a very different conscience clause, and one which has overwhelming support from the pews.


http://womenandthechurch.org/join.htm