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

Phishing PayPal

If you ever get anything this in your e-mail, trash it immediately - it's a phish.  Reply to it, and your bank account will be emptied, just like that.

No reputable bank or financial institution ever asks for sensitive information in an e-mail, because e-mails are not secure.

Read this, and be web-wise:

http://www.spamlaws.com/paypal-scam.html

Egypt

After the outrages in Alexandria at Christmas, it was Muslims who put themselves up as human shields so that Coptic Christians could attend Midnight Mass. There are not enough words to thank our Islamic brothers and sisters in Egypt for their bravery and their compassion.  By their deeds there is hope for us all yet.

Tele-bloody-coms - just give us your wallet

The chap from BT was most beguiling.  The package was irresistible, and we'd been specially chosen as loyal customers.  Free broadband, free phone calls, help with the mortgage and use of a private Lear jet whenever we wanted.  All we had to do was switch my broadband from Talk-talk to BT. 'Tell them you want a Big Mac code', said the nice Geordie. 'Get them to send it to your mobile. I''ll ring you back at 4:30.'


I wonder whether anybody from Oftel has ever donned disguise and tried to get a Big Mac code out of Talk-talk. They would be horrified. Talk-talk's response to a polite request for the code is a threat to cut you off instantly from your mobile and your broadband (illegal), followed by a sweetener - "oh - your loyalty compels us to offer you free calls for life and the free use of a Jumbo jet."


It is absolutely impossible, even for a reasonably intelligent punter who just wants to keep costs of landline and mobile phone calls and internet use down to a level which his pension can accommodate  comfortably, to choose between fish and cheese, because like is never compared to like.


Even last month's itemised bill from Talk-talk was unintelligible. I've no doubt the sums charged were correct, but the headings under which they were grouped were utterly meaningless to someone who doesn't speak fonejarg.


I had the Talk-talk bill yesterday for the mobile calls I made trying to make contact with them to request a Big Mac code.  It was over £8, waiting for a reply, and this is the dirty side of telecoms - the invisible charges.


Oftel is failing in its job.  Telecoms is now utterly obfuscatory to ordinary mortals.


I still haven't made a decision.  Since Talk-talk took over Tiscali the broadband service has tightened up, and  TT warn you when to expect a day or so of mild disruption, but they bully you with implied threats if you say you are thinking of migrating. BT owns the infrastructure and doesn't like intruders, and is marginally more persuasive, but it tries too hard when it's going for the kill, and doesn't like taking no for an answer, so it makes nuisance calls to people who've been on the telephone preference scheme for yonks.


And we, the people who fund the big players, are treated with contempt if we protest at their doorstep salesmanship.


That Thatcher woman, doyenne of the car-boot market-place, has a hell of a lot to answer for.

Rochdale Liberals & Oldham East & Saddleworth

I'm sorry for Phil Woolas, who has lost his seat in Oldham East & Saddleworth, but there's a background that never gets into the press.


Red and blue have always respected each other's political differences in Rochdale and in this new ungainly parliamentary constituency, to the extent that they had gentlemen's (and gentlewomen's) agreements not to queer each other's pitch at local or national elections when they went out on the knocker.  Neither party wanted to be involved in unseemly brawls in the street or on the doorstep.  Members of both main parties conducted themselves with dignity and with mutual respect.


That made them ripe for exploitation by the yellow brigade, whose strategists are recruited from St Trinian's and the Bash Street Kids, judging by their behaviour at the hustings (fundamentally juvenile).  It was the yellow brigade who dreamed up the bright idea of doing their last leaflet drop just before midnight on pre-election day, turning on all the security lights in sleeping households and causing every dog to bark, or shadowing other parties' door- knockers in the hope of engineering a punch-up.


The difficulty the two main parties have in this constituency is that there isn't just one yellow peril to contend with, but two - one hungry for power by adopting Conservative policies, the other by adopting Labour policies, and they squabble amongst themselves like children in the school playground. Power at any price - that is the unspoken slogan of the Liberal Party, and that is why they can't risk having a serious manifesto of their own: just opportunistic fluff to allow them to move either way when a  chance arises.


Ugh.

Human Rights Legislation & Alice in Wonderland

Isn't it fitting that it's in pantomime season that an illegal immigrant with a string of motoring offences gets protected by European human rights legislation despite having killed a 12-year-old child with the vehicle he was driving illegally?


This legislation is binding on our judicial system, but it is proving to be bad law because it is not balanced by a Human Obligations principle, which could take into account the circumstances  in which somebody sought protection for their human rights.  Bad law creates injustice and compounds the injury suffered by victims of crime.  Human rights are not absolutes - they are relatives,  which go hand in hand, as all rights do, with duties and obligations.


People who engage in criminal activity surrender their right to be treated equally with their victims or with the rest of society, and until legislators builds this principle of Human Obligations into Human Rights law we will continue to live in an Alice in Wonderland world of topsy-turvy.