MortiBlog

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I just wanted to make a quick blog post to express my thoughts on the release of Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi, convicted murderer of 270 people. I must stress though that I don’t know anybody who was affected by the tragedy and my understanding of the case is limited entirely to what I’ve been watching on BBC News last night and for the last couple of hours. I’ve been following this news with interest because it’s so rare that we see an example of pure grace in international news.

Let’s look at what happens now. The relationship between Scotland and the US will be sour, the families of the people who died in the 1988 tragedy will understandably be upset and feel that justice is not being served. The only recognisable and universally acknowledged goodness that comes from this applies solely to Mr al-Megrahi, a mass murderer, and his family. Despite this I believe that the Scottish government did the right thing.

Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi did not show any compassion for his victims, he did not allow his victims the luxury of returning to their families to live out their last days. He committed a terrible act which is entirely indefensible and just how bad it was isn’t something that I or anyone else can express. So why would anyone show him grace and compassion? To most people it’s a massive scandal, it doesn’t make any sense.

I’m reminded of the old saying “two wrongs don’t make a right”. It sounds overly simplified and it probably is but saying that he showed no compassion is not a reason that we also should avoid compassion. Of course he doesn’t deserve to be released back to his family, I’m not saying that, after what he did he certainly could never deserve that. Doesn’t mean we shouldn’t care about him and show him compassion though.

Something that has been confusing me about all this is the response from America, with people saying that there was already compassion shown to him when he was given a life sentence; presumably the implication is that he should receive a death sentence. This is what I don’t understand, when many Americans say “we love Jesus, also we like the death sentence” they are showing a complete misunderstanding of the gospel and it’s very sad to see.

The Bible tells us that we are all sinners and that all sin is equally abhorrent to God. Me, you, Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi… none of us is perfect so all of us have done something wrong. God’s response? Grace. Absolute total undeserved grace. To put it simply, how do you think you could possibly deserve life in the first place? Life is an amazing gift and however much pain you go through in life it’s great that you get the opportunity to live it in the first place and to have free thought and, mostly, freedom to pursue whatever passions take your fancy.

God not only gave us life and free will in the first place but when we strayed from Him we weren’t left to our own devices. God’s response to us rejecting Him was to send Jesus to die for us on the cross and rise again, defeating death, so that not only do we have life but we have the option of eternal life. None of us deserve it, it’s a massive scandal, but it’s the love of God. It’s nonsensical, we will never fully understand just how much God loves us and how He loved us enough to give up His only son to the most painful death anybody has ever experienced or will ever experience. We’ve all seen The Passion of The Christ or at least the promotional material for it, that only goes some way to describing the pain Jesus went through. The biggest pain of all, for Father and Son, was the separation. They had been together loving one another in a perfect relationship since before the universe was created and the pain of their separation was so much greater than the pain Jesus suffered from His wounds for our sins.

So why then do so many Americans believe that Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi should die in prison or be given the death sentence? God showed so much grace to us that we never deserved, why should this man not get the same? The abhorrence of his crimes to us is less than the abhorrence of our crimes against God and yet God sent His only son to die for us. In fact more than that, if Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi was the only man in the world Jesus would have died for him.

There was a woman on BBC News just now, I don’t know who she was, claiming that releasing this murderer showed weakness. I don’t see how. The easy thing to do would be to deny the appeal, America is a big country and the vast amount of people there (and in the UK it seems) want him to rot in jail. That would have been the weak choice. What Kenny MacAskill did was so difficult but he remains strong in his conviction that this is the right decision. That takes more guts than most people have and doesn’t show any weakness at all. Grace and compassion are hard things to do, it’s so much easier to follow the majority and pass judgement. I applaud Mr MacAskill for what he did today and pray that this decision won’t lead to the end of his career. He should go down in history as a man who made the difficult choice and took responsibility for that choice which the UK government was not willing to take.

Mr al-Megrahi does not deserve freedom but who among us does? I submit to you that all the good that we have is a result of God’s grace for us and MacAskill’s decision to free al-Megrahi was a small example of how grace works and how all of us are made in His image. I don’t think anybody has the capacity for love and grace that God has, I don’t think I could sacrifice my only son to give al-Megrahi eternal life, but being made in God’s image we have a smaller but still significant capacity for grace and compassion and that has been shown today by Mr MacAskill.

I pray that the victims of the Lockerbie bombing will be able to experience God’s grace themselves, that their questions about the tragedy would be answered and that they will be able to go on with their lives. I cannot begin to understand what they dealt with in 1988, what they are dealing with now and what they have to deal with for their whole lives as a result of that terrible tragedy. I know I have a tendency to muscle in with my opinion without thought for those who could be hurt by it so I feel I should emphasise that while I feel Mr MacAskill made the right decision today in showing compassion I don’t want to belittle the pain and suffering felt by people on that day and since.

As it stands this is undiluted grace with no conceivable good outcomes for those people hurt by the bombing. My hope is that out of this an enquiry would come for the good of the people of Lockerbie. More important to my mind though is the example of grace and compassion shown with a great amount of bravery and how it reflects, in some small way, the mind and heart of God. I think it would be good for us to use this as a chance to look at ourselves and our flaws and how many good things we’ve received despite those flaws.

Ephesians 2:8-9 (ESV): For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.

Luke 6:35-37 (ESV): But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil. Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful. Judge not, and you will not be judged; condemn not, and you will not be condemned; forgive, and you will be forgiven.

Amen.

Have a read of this post from NHS Blog Doctor. He links to this story in which a nurse offered to pray for a patient and got suspended.

Forgive the cliche but what is the world coming to? Apparently it’s because the nurse was “failing to show a commitment to equality and diversity” in doing this. I kind of see what they’re getting at but has our culture become so insensitive that an offer to pray is somehow offensive?

I can understand people not believing in God because they’ve not encountered Him. After all, how could you? But I’ve had this response a couple of times as well, where people have specifically asked me not to pray for them. This is one I have trouble getting my head around. The closest example I can think of is that as a Christian I don’t believe in luck, when people wish me “good luck” I tend to think “I don’t need luck, I have Jesus” but rather than saying that out loud I tend to thank them because I see the good intentions behind what they’re saying. “Good luck”, even though luck doesn’t exist, is still a nice friendly thing to hear.

Is someone not a Christian responding to an offer of prayer the same as me with luck? Whether or not it is I still see no reason for getting someone suspended. Not praying with someone (laying on hands and all that) is fair enough, in our culture such a thing could be rather awkward. So here is the question.

If you don’t believe in God, what’s the harm if someone does go away and pray for you?

The only thing I can think of is that the person refusing prayer is angry at God, Christianity or the Church. Some slight with a Christian in their past perhaps or just feel (like many do) as though Christianity has been rammed down their throats in more offensive ways in the past so that a simple offer to pray comes under that mental heading of “annoying Christians being annoying” to just the same extent.

I’ve said it before and in fact still say quite often that Christians evangelise out of love but some of us (myself included) have trouble doing so sensitively. The reason is often due to the Christian’s own insensitivity (the case with me for many years) but it is also because the gospel is offensive by nature. It’s a scandalous story that sounds ridiculous and demands a complete change in somebody’s lifestyle. It says that everyone is a sinner and everyone requires saving. What’s not offensive about that? Of course it’s offensive. Offering to pray for someone, however, that’s not offensive. That’s a kind Christian person trying to show love to someone in the best way they know how. As Christians we believe that the prayer that follows the offer will be heard by God and He may intervene and change the situation.

In church yesterday we were encouraged to offer to pray for people and not to shy away from it because we might be ridiculed or whatever. If this is the sort of thing that can happen when Christians offer prayer then that makes it all the more challenging. However we must still not shy away and I hope that Caroline Petrie won’t shy away from offering prayers in the future either.

And to those who aren’t Christians, if somebody offers to pray for you and you would prefer them not to then by all means say so but don’t kick up a fuss. Once the offer’s made they’ll probably pray for you anyway because they care about you and believe it will help you.

I think this is another case where in fearing the necessity of the ideas of “equality and diversity” an element of freedom has been lost. It’s like the government would want us all to be quiet little robots getting on with our jobs and keeping our core beliefs and opinions to ourselves. What’s the point in that kind of life? God gave us the free will to turn to Him or turn away from Him and face the consequences ourselves, He does not try to control us, despite what you might think. The Alpha Course is, I think, a fine example of God’s way of doing things. Ask any question you like, discuss anything you like, as long as you’re searching for an answer it will be beneficial and, once you are genuinely searching for answers and open to receive them, the answers will be given to you.

Us Christians do not go out of our way to anger people or to make them uncomfortable. Our goal in our workplaces is to glorify God by what we do and to share the love that God gives us with those around us. We’re not saying we’re better than anyone else or trying to force our beliefs on you, all we want to do is show you something of the glory and the love of God because He’s been so good to us.

If the Christians can be suspended for offering prayer then the atheists can be suspended for saying “good luck”. And that, my friends, is madness.

We are stubborn people, aren’t we? It’s okay to admit it, most of us are. We are all brought up in a society that has a certain set of moral values and, for no particular reason other than “it feels right” we are likely to hold to those our whole lives. This has led to a disturbing trend among new Christians where they try to marry the word of God with the world. The most obvious example is where the Bible says “no sex before marriage and you only ever have one marriage”, the world says “it is right and normal to have multiple sexual partners”, the compromise is “no sex outside of a committed relationship”. Some would go so far as to belittle the nature of God Himself where the Bible says that the God of the Bible is the one true God, society has many different contradictory religions and all are equally valid (though we daren’t talk about which is true) so the new Christian would try to marry those into this idea that the God of the Bible is one route to salvation and other religions provide other ones.

As you may be able to tell from this point, I’m writing something potentially quite challenging. Stick with me though, if we don’t allow ourselves to be challenged I think we naturally fall into a position of arrogance and self-righteousness whereas accepting the odd challenge encourages our humility.

I feel that anyone who tries to find these compromises is really missing the point. Society and the teachings of the Bible (which, if you are a Christian, you believe to be the absolute word of God, by the way) cannot be taken together when they contradict one another. The choice there is to follow God or not, it’s all very binary. In the examples above where people try to find middle ground they have chosen away from God without realising it.

Let’s look back a bit at one example where the Bible unashamedly challenges society. This is an easy one and hopefully nobody reading this would have a problem with this verse:

Ephesians 5:25 Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her

All fine and good, right? But in the ancient Roman society that would have been hugely challenging as it still is in some parts of the world today. The very idea that a man should lay his life down for a woman is ridiculous. People then would have taken the “wives submit to your husbands” part and stop reading whereas here it says men are to love their wives as Christ loves the church. I cannot begin to explain what kind of love this entails. Ephesians 25 promotes different roles for men and women but equal importance with each partner prioritising the other over the self. Madness, at the time.

So let’s look at one we’re having trouble with today, a very famous verse at the moment:

Leviticus 20:13 If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall surely be put to death; their blood is upon them.

Put aside all arguments about shrimp and validity of the Old Testament and answer this simple question. Is God saying here that homosexual sex is right and good? I’m not going to get into further argument about this issue and anyone who takes up an argument with me on this verse or this issue is entirely missing the point. All I’m saying by bringing up this verse is that the Bible often contains things that are incompatible with what our society tells us.

Here’s the bottom line:

Luke 9:57-62 As they were going along the road, someone said to him, “I will follow you wherever you go.” And Jesus said to him, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” To another he said, “Follow me.” But he said, “Lord, let me first go and bury my father.” And Jesus said to him, “Leave the dead to bury their own dead. But as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.” Yet another said, “I will follow you, Lord, but let me first say farewell to those at my home.” Jesus said to him, “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.”

Jesus calls us to lay down everything to put Him at the centre and follow Him. As we are creatures of society and habit our temptation is always going to be to sway towards the morality of society. Everyone is committed to something whether it’s a job, a family, friends or perhaps an ideal. Some give their lives to the support and promotion of various causes such as the aforementioned homosexuality or vegetarianism or various political ideals or whatever. We all have them.

Think about your lifestle and what you do and what you believe about it to be good and right, premarital sex is an easy place to start if you’re not sure. The question you have to consider (before figuring out what the Bible says about that issue specifically) is “if God wanted me to give up this thing that’s so important to me, would I?”. When I first became a Christian my answer, when really thinking about it, was “no”. I tried to reconcile my thinkings that had come from my society, from my peer group, with what the Bible says. Eventually the inescapable conclusion was that God breathed the words of the Bible to be the absolute truth for all eternity, therefore what the Bible says must take priority over what I said at the time and what the people around me say. This is the challenge of the modern Christian and it doesn’t start with arguing about whether homosexuality is right or wrong, it starts with figuring out whether you are open to being challenged and changed by the word of God.

I cannot instruct your mind to think a certain way or believe certain things. All I can do is attempt to challenge your thinking such that you read further into the things mentioned and discover for yourself what God wants for your life. And take it from me, once you get there life gets so much better and makes so much more sense, God really does know what He’s doing and really does want the best for you so, please, think about the controversial issues and, while doing so, read your Bible as it was meant to be read: as the living word of God.

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WordPress database error. Doesn’t seem to be causing any issues with the functionality of the site though. I’m trying to decide if I should get rid of it but after it’s been there so long the blog would look odd without it. 

I wrote this post already. I’m writing it again and backing it up this time. Here we go.

Cold isn’t it? On my way home from university yesterday I took a bit of a long walk because I had to pick up some tender vittles on my way. I was wrapped up fairly warmly so I was mostly fine against the harsh weather conditions (it was a bit cold) as long as I kept walking but when I stopped at a traffic light I began to shiver. Personally I hate shivering, it’s weird. Makes me feel like I’m not manly or something, unlike all the other people who are really tough and radiate extra heat that makes all the cold air that gets near them turn to steam. Or something. Anyway it’s not something I find pleasant, my body convulsing through no will of my own makes me feel in some small way that I’m not in control as much as I should be and, hence, weak.

And I think this topic can make people feel like that. I didn’t have the free will to stop shivering, I think naturally the very idea that we don’t have free will can be something that weakens us. We cling to the free will that gives us control over our own destiny as something that shows we are strong, resiliant and just generally powerful. When asked whether or not you have free will I reckon the answer would be in the affirmative and any notion otherwise would be preposterous.

This is a very modern way of thinking. When the early church first found its way into Africa they came across thought processes that put everything down to “the gods”. Even after becoming Christians some of these people would say things like “I shouldn’t have stolen the camel but God controls my destiny, He made me do it” and “I shouldn’t have slept with my neighbour’s wife but God’s sovereign”. It’s the ultimate “I didn’t do it”.

Were they right in saying that? I don’t think so. So then, do we have complete free will? Again, not by my reckoning. Can you choose to fly? Didn’t think so. Perhaps then you might define free will as the choice we make to do something rather than actually acting out that choice. If I can’t fly can I still choose to fly? For the purposes of this discussion, let’s assume no. To have the choice to do something you have to be able to do it in the first place and free will is merely exercising decision-making when the choice is available.

But that might fall down as well. Do we actually have any choices or is every decision we make simply a result of our DNA and upbringing in ways we can’t control? Let’s say I had an apple with my lunch today and chose to do so because yesterday I had a banana and I fancied something different. I had a banana yesterday because that particular supermarket had a sale on bananas, I went to that supermarket because it was on my way home, I live where I do because a trusted friend recommended it to me, I met that friend through university, I went to this university because it was the best academic option my grades allowed, I got low grades because my parents didn’t bring me up with the greatest work ethic…

See? Follow any decision far back enough and perhaps you’ll find that it all stems from something that was out of your control. I don’t know if that’s true about my parents by the way, it probably isn’t and I certainly don’t blame them, but I didn’t choose to be lazy at school I just was, whatever the reason. So maybe the guys in Africa had a point, that predestination does play a large role in the decisions we make, whether or not that predestination comes from God or our upbringing/surroundings.

In responding to the very idea we’re touching on here, the early church preached to the people about how they should exercise their free will and along came Pelagius. Pelagius put forward what I mentioned earlier as a modern individualism. He put forward a wishy-washy self-help sort of solution, anyone can live free from sin if they choose to do so regardless of whether or not they know God. Man is born into a position of neutrality, neither good nor bad, and can go either way. Following his logic on a bit then his teaching came to man having the free will to turn away from sin and turn to God with no actual intervention from God being necessary.

Then came correction from Augustine who said that man was created in Genesis with free will but then lost that free will once Adam used it badly (by eating the fruit). He stressed the necessity of God choosing us and until the reformation that’s where things were left. Around the time of the reformation John Calvin comes along and plays a big role in bringing what we now know as Calvinism or Reformed Theology which essentially agrees with Augustine.

Let’s test this out. If you’re not a Christian right now try declaring in all honesty that Jesus is Lord. Can’t do it, can you? And indeed, why should you? It’d be ridiculous to declare something honestly that you honestly don’t believe. We cannot choose what we believe, we cannot choose faith, we cannot choose God, therefore we don’t have free will. God chooses us.

One of the things Calvin said is that the dead do not know things of life. So just as a corpse cannot choose to come back to life those who are spiritually dead cannot choose spiritual life in God. Whether you want to take this idea of spiritual death as a fact or an analogy or metaphor it makes sense. We cannot choose things of which we are not aware and we are not aware of God until He reveals Himself to us.

Jonathan Edwards (born 1703, not an athelete), after the centuries of arguing about this, actually came up with a definition of “will”. He said the will is that by which the mind chooses any thing and the motive for that choice is self-interest. He also adds that therefore nobody will refuse salvation if persuaded of the value of it. So if I say the choice is live as you are and go to Hell or make a change and go to Heaven there’s one choice there which is clearly in your best interests. Why would you choose what’s not in your best interests? Because your will is not free to make that choice and indeed my will was not free to make that choice.

There is still hope. Jeremiah 29:13 says (and this is God speaking) “You will seek me and find me, when you seek me(B) with all your heart.” We cannot choose God, of course not, but we can choose to seek Him. Every bit of evangelism I do and every argument I make can never make you believe in God, all I can do is encourage you to search and assure you that it is in your best interests. God has chosen me and God chooses all who He saves, I’m not saved by my own merit or anything I’ve done to deserve it. I don’t know if He’s chosen you or not and if you’re not a Christian then you probably can’t say for sure either.

How many of you then would put off seeking God because of that? Saying that if you choose not to seek Him then surely it’s because He hasn’t chosen you? Remember the Africans I mentioned earlier? It’s funny how when understood by the world free will is absolutely true, we always have it, but as soon as God is mentioned immediately everything’s down to Him. I put it to you that there’s a balance between them.

I said earlier in the example about the apple that perhaps ultimately I chose the apple because of how I was raised. Well, not necessarily, because that’d mean I just made the decision based on having a banana yesterday. I could well have chosen to have an apple because it was closest to my hand or I could have picked another base for my decision which would have ended in a packet of crisps, avoiding the fruit aisle altogether! We do have decisions we can make and we can base our decisions on any kind of logic we like, free will exists to a point.

Therefore while it is up to God whether someone is saved or not it is still up to the individual whether or not they wish to seek God. There is evidence in the Bible of people asking God for things and God responding because they asked, as He’s the father He can choose to make Himself vulnerable to our petitions.

I didn’t choose to be a Christian, I just chose to go to church once and God chose me. I didn’t repent and get saved, I was saved so I was able to repent. Therefore free will exists but not completely, there’s a point at which we must all admit we’re not perfect and not powerful enough to make every decision. Free will suggests a complete freedom from compulsions and we certainly don’t have that. None of us do. My point is that Jesus or Christianity (however you want to look at it) increases rather than decreases my capacity for free will.

So, just to those of you who, like me, don’t like to shiver and hold onto free will because of the power it gives you: God does not take that away from you. It’s not in my power to save people but I’d urge everyone to seek God to increase their personal free will.

The smoking ban put into effect by the UK government this year has been a source of annoyance for me. I admit I enjoy the occasional smoke, not all the time but sometimes when I’m out. Yes, smoking indoors was nice, but to be honest I like the outside and for me personally having to encourage a few friends to sit outside rather than inside when I go to the pub is not a big deal. A bit annoying but not something worth making a big blog post about. I don’t say these things and make the proposal I make here for my own needs, although it would be kind of nice.

For some people however, the smoking ban is a source of anguish rather than simply annoyance. The Bury Times reported that a pub landlord has been forced out of business since the smoking ban and this is just one example of many across the country. Some pubs are seeing increased profits as the non-smokers come out more often but while some businesses are doing better, many hard working people are losing their jobs and their livelihood to this new piece of government legislation.

Also, on the aforementioned link, notice that the poll on the page indicates only 28.5% of people actually want the smoking ban. I realise this is only a poll on a website but surely if the ban was as universally desired as the government suggests then the number wouldn’t be quite that small. So why is this ban in place? In fact, Mike Oldfield hates it enough to leave the country entirely.

The fact is that, up to this point, the anti-smoking campaigners have been louder. Organisations such as ASH have lobbied very loudly for this, fake statistics have been created (fact is, passive smoking is a bother but no death has been conclusively linked with it, the statistics that say thousands die from it have been mostly fabricated) and the government has responded.

Okay, fair enough that there is some disagreement on whether or not passive smoking does kill people and it’s worth protecting the health of the nation by restricting smoking in public places in case it does. It’s a pollutant and while it hasn’t been proven to kill it’s probably not very good for you and if you’re inhaling second-hand smoke it’s probably not your choice to do so. What bothers me is that while it is up to the government to take steps to look after publc health and safety it is not up to them to restrict our personal freedom as much as they have done with the smoking ban. The government has far overstepped the mark on this one, far reducing our civil liberties beyond what is necessary.

The smoking ban has made the air in our country cleaner and it will make people in our country healthier, no doubt about it. However, if you’re a pub landlord who caters to smokers then you don’t want to have to ban smoking in your pub and force your clients out into the cold. You also don’t want to have to pay money to put up mandatory non-smoking signs when you’re already going out of business due to the ban. Similarly as a regular patron of pubs (although not a heavy drinker myself) I would like the freedom to choose a smoking pub and decide for myself whether or not the risks outweigh the benefits. I don’t see a government telling me whether I can or I can’t skydive, it’s up to me to weigh the benefits and the risks, smoking should be the same. Or, a more relevant example, no government agent has come to me and said I should cut back on the chocolate cakes.

So, what can we do? Cleaner air and better health is good, the reducing of our freedom and closing of businesses is not. What we need is some sort of middle ground that keeps the health of the nation as a primary concern while still allowing certain members of society the freedoms they used to have to do something they enjoy and keeping certain businesses from closing. The people who want to smoke or want to allow smoking in their establishments are, to my knowledge, a minority group but why not meet their needs as well as the needs of everyone else?

So my proposal is this. By issuing a small number of smoking licenses to each local council (depending on how large the area, perhaps) that pubs/restaurants/clubs/venues/etc can apply for it means that the smokers have somewhere to go, some businesses that would close down have another choice that will allow them to stay open and those who abhor smoke can still go to the majority of pubs which will remain non-smoking. This passes the choice from the wider government down to the individual landlords in partnership with local councils which, in turn, gives more freedom of choice to the consumer.

It sounds so perfect. The positives of the smoking ban remain (cleaner air, health improvements, non-smokers can enjoy an evening without smelling of smoke) while removing the negatives (pub closures, smokers being forced outside where there is pneumonia, restriction of personal freedoms and liberties). I’ve created a petition for it, all we need to do is sign it and make the government realise that this is worthwhile and very workable proposal. They can even charge for the smoking licenses so as not to cost too much in taxes, if a pub landlord sees that they need to obtain a license in order to stay in business then they will gladly pay for it rather than go out of business entirely.

Before the smoking ban there were far too few non-smoking pubs, even as a smoker I thought that. I am all in favour of people being able to spend an evening in a pub or club and not smelling of smoke. However, a small number of pubs do face loss of profits or closing completely and it is for that small number of pubs and their small number of clientelle that we should allow a limited number of smoking licenses. Licenses should be accompanied by signs that landlords can post on their doors to warn/inform consumers that it is a smoking establishment so that people can still look after their health in a well-informed fashion as they see fit rather than the government babysitting everyone. This could even create an entirely new business in the form of smokers clubs making for more entertainment potential and more money going into local business ventures.

Anyway, sign the petition. It’s good for everyone, not just for you.

http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/smokinglicenses/

Pass the link around to… well, everyone. Feel free to link people to this post as well.

If you have any comments to make, go for it. I have told this idea to many people and have yet to hear anyone tell me it wouldn’t work or that it would be a bad idea in the first place. I’m open to criticism and will discuss in an open and friendly fashion why I think this is a good idea.

Been a while since I’ve written here but that’s largely because it’s been a while since I’ve written anything of value.

These days I am being impressed by the stupidity of my electricity and gas companies for different reasons. Nicely, at the moment at least, their failings are working in my favour but I’m still paranoid it’s only a matter of time until they bite me on the arse. Here their incompetence is detailed through the medium of the “vaguely amusing anecdote”.

In my house we have not paid an electricity bill for six months. Over a year ago now my good friend John left the house to move elsewhere and left the electricity bill in his name. We made the request to change the name on the bill shortly after he left but for a few months continued to pay the bills anyway while they were in his name and the electricity company (naming no Southern Electric) were being useless and not changing it. We decided to stop paying them until they started charging the right person (me) and this process took a good six months. It perhaps makes a statement about the responsibleness our society that the company failed to understand the request of “please charge me the money rather than someone else”.

So after six months of Jo calling them and failing to get them to change the name I manage it in one phone call because I am scary or worded the request better or something. For some reason they were trying to get Jo to fax them tenancy agreements and things. Something I should explain, the department we were dealing with has its call centre in Scotland but the company has only one fax machine and it’s in Cardiff. But I digress, one week after they change the name I receive an envelope from them containing three bills. One is about £450, the other is about £650 and the other is -£34.02. Yeah, that’s a minus there and (as they confirmed when I called to query this) it’s that bill that turned out to be correct and they sent me a cheque. After six months of not paying them and them sending us increasingly large numbers they received a meter reading from us (although neither me nor Jo actually gave them one, we reckon it was either an angel or our other housemate and if you know our other housemate at the time you’d know an angel is far more likely) and realised they owe us money. Not entirely sure how that works, we’re not complaining.

The gas people are interesting too. We have EDF supplying our gas who took over gas duties from Southern Electric in February 2006. For a while after they got involved we were giving EDF regular meter readings and they still sent us estimated bills. In one phone call to them querying this it turned out they had the wrong type of meter on file for us and refuse to believe us when we say otherwise (the “no, it’s in front of me and it looks like this” argument fails to wash when their database says different). Consequently every month they send an estimated bill and we call up to tell them it’s wrong and request a non-estimated one. Then we give them readings and they get confused and just freeze our account. I think we’ve had our account frozen a few times now.

Today I got a bill through the post from Southern Electric claiming to be a gas bill for 1st February to 13th February. It was £193. Turns out they had their estimated reading for us from January but when the companies changed over in mid-February EDF sent them a reading back in order that they could charge us for a period while we were with them just before the changeover. It apparently didn’t occur to them that it wasn’t entirely likely we’d owe them nearly £200 for two weeks of gas, although bearing in mind this was February 2006 I don’t think they’d actually billed us this amount before then. I called to query it, they worked out what the bill should be based on old estimates they had for our meter at around that time and worked out we owed them… 0. Exactly nothing because we’d already (probably around the time) paid what was the “correct” estimate and what EDF had said is that, for the two week period, we should have paid £193 in addition to that. This gives some idea of how much EDF are trying to overcharge us and why we’re not paying them until they can give us a bill that isn’t an estimate based on some weird numbers they’ve made up. CUrrently neither we nor they have any idea what we actually owe for our gas usage.

So for six months we have not paid for gas or electricity and the electricity company has given me thirty quid. I realise this blog entry perhaps isn’t entirely exciting but I think this is about the most fun you can have with utility bills.

Currently I’m offline (for the most part) due to my failing to pay BT (again, slightly odd that these are the times I choose to update my blog). I’ve paid them now, just waiting until Monday when I can call up my ISP (Eclipse, who I have written about in another entry). This has it’s good and bad points, the bad is that O2 charge me £10 a month for a paltry 20MB of data transfer but on the flip side it’s kinda funky that I can leave my phone in my pocket while my laptop uses it as a modem. It’s been many years now since it was introduced but bluetooth is still cool.

I have Internet access right now, obviously. This post was written a while ago (and has been timestamped as such). 

For years I have been trying different cheap ISPs in Canterbury. The first connection I set up here was, I believe, with PlusNet. They were cheap, but slow, unreliable and had poor customer service. When I moved house I switched to Bulldog who, again, were cheap, slow, unreliable and with the worst customer service I have ever dealt with. With both these companies, when something was wrong they always made me go through a selection of debugging processes my end (things I’m quite capable of doing alone) before telling me whether or not there was a fault on my line. Bulldog also impressed me when I lost my BT phone line due to an unpaid bill to BT and they cancelled my contract and tried to charge me basically the rest I’d pay over the contract period without giving me the option of simply resuming the contract.

Oh, a useful tip for anyone else this happens to, if an ISP charges you after BT cut you off, you don’t have to pay it. In order to take you to court over it they have to provide evidence that you chose to cancel the contract, so something in writing or a recording of a call to customer services. Obviously I didn’t cancel it, they did under order of BT, so there’s nothing they can do to make me pay. So I didn’t and they stopped asking.

Currently I’m with Eclipse. As with the others they are cheap, slow and unreliable but they have the best customer service I have ever dealt with. Previously I’ve called them when there’s a problem and it’s taken 30 seconds to speak to an actual person (no dealing with really long answering things where I have to press the correct combination of numbers to get something other than a recorded message that tells me what I already know, all you do with Eclipse is press “2″ then wait a bit). I asked if there were any problems they knew of with my line, the man on the other end said no and asked if I wanted help debugging it my end. I said no, he said fine, I thanked him, end of call. Took under a minute whereas this took at least five with both PlusNet and Bulldog.

Now, I don’t have Internet access right now for the same reason, I missed a payment to BT and they cut me off. I just got off the phone with Eclipse, took me about 4 minutes to get through to someone at customer services this time but that’s a reasonable amount of time to wait and the people I dealt with were friendly, straightforward and didn’t make any stock responses or anything. The first guy I spoke to wasn’t aware of what you’d normally do in my (slightly rare) situation so he asked his supervisor, which is great. Perhaps it’d be nicer if he knew to start with but I know he’s not just looking stuff up from a book.

After this he answered my questions clearly and then put me through to the sales department so I could set up a new line. This is another luxury, Bulldog made me call a different number and stay on hold again for ages whereas this guy transferred me through and passed on my details to the other department so from then on to set up the line the only questions I had to answer about the new line could be answered with “yes”.

It’s my belief that all cheap Internet services in Canterbury will be slow and will drop occasionally, ADSL down this way is a bit cack, the difference is in customer service. Too many companies seem to forget this, they outsource all their customer service operations to other companies/countries and provide them with a book of stock answers and when confused they read as many of them as they can as fast as they can using words that are vaguely relevant to the query. I remember once I was on to Bulldog with some billing query and the person on the other end started telling me about parental controls.

So I continue to recommend Eclipse to people who want cheap Internet access. It works as well as any other of the cheap options down here, sometimes better, and their customer service is second to none. It’s a simple principle, treat your customers nicely and they stick with you. This is the only reason Bulldog are failing or have failed (I forget which). All ISPs should follow Eclipse’s example, pour more resources into decent customer service and less into complex, irritating phone systems. Costs more but at the end of the day it could be what keeps such companies afloat.

I will have regular Internet access this time next week, all being well.

Planet Lazer and Studio 41 in Canterbury are coming under some danger at the moment, basically a planning application has been made to the council to tear it down and build a housing development on top of it. A phone call to a very helpful man at Planet Lazer revealed to me a couple of interesting facts about this:

• The housing will allegedly not be cheap first-come sort of housing (which Canterbury is more in need of), it will be more expensive developments like others already in progress in the city.
• Those who own Planet Lazer and Studio 41 are protesting the plans and have petitions going. They are also encouraging people to email the council and make their views known if they don’t want 41 St George’s Place torn down for another overpriced housing estate.
• Planet Lazer and Studio 41 management believe that the only people who will benefit from this housing development are the people developing it.

So yes, I think now is the time for us young Canterbury residents to become outraged. I’m not a huge fan of Studio 41 myself but I know that there are already limited places to go in Canterbury to go for an evening clubbing and I wouldn’t support it being torn down. Also, Planet Lazer is entirely unique in Canterbury and one of the few things that teenagers and young adults can do besides either see a movie or sit and eat/drink; the availability of fun, healthy and socially constructive activities available to teenagers in the area is already limited enough without Planet Lazer having to go.

What I’m doing is suggesting to everyone that you drop the council an email over the next two days (comments will not be considered after that time, apparently) and say, in a useful and constructive manner but still in your own words, that you oppose the plans and think it will be a detriment to Canterbury and its residents. Once I’ve emailed them I will modify my email to form a “stock email” which will sit in this post, although I’d suggest you only use it if you really can’t be bothered to write your own.

So email development.control@canterbury.gov.uk quoting REF: CA/06/00395/CAN with your comments, perhaps also email savetheplanet@planetlazer.co.uk to let them know they have your support but that’s not quite so useful. Those wishing to read the plans can either look here or go to the council’s website and search for CA//06/00395. I would also encourage everyone with a website, blog, or just a big email list of contacts in Canterbury to spread the word about this. We’re saving a good and useful local business and saving the city from the terror that can be brought on by thousands more bored teenagers and students.

Please comment on my blog if you wish to discuss this, it supports nested comments now for better arguing.

Thanks for reading. Let’s save Planet Lazer (and also Studio 41).

EDIT: This is the letter I sent to the council. I don’t claim to be perfect at writing letters but perhaps it’ll inspire you in composing your own. It doesn’t need to be as long, just let them know your objections. Thanks.

A friend of mine made a point on her journal that one cannot claim to know for sure about the truth of certain spiritual matters, knowing I’m a Christian and since I’d just made a comment based on Biblical truth I decided this was a fine time for me to discuss why the Bible (at least, the New Testament) is a reliable and believable set of books. I wrote this reply to her, which I’ve decided to share with anyone here who may be interested.

Well knowledge in an interesting thing. One could argue that we don’t really know anything and we just make our “best guess” based on the evidence available. Nothing is hard proof while there are alternative explanations, no matter how insane. One could argue that Shakespeare never actually wrote any plays and the books we have were actually written at a different time by a huge group of people acting under the name “Will Shakespeare”. Of course, we are pretty confident this isn’t the case so we calim to “know” that Shakespeare was real and wrote Macbeth. This is quite reasonable, we have enough historical evidence to say the most plausible explanation is the simple one, that he done it. Similarly we believe Caesar’s writings about the Gallic war and we take much of our current “knowledge” about Roman history from Livy.

The interesting thing about those last two examples is how we determine reliability of historical texts. They are rated for reliability on the amount of time between it was supposedly written and our earliest discovered copies and how many of those early copies we have (if they’re in multiple languages, all the better).

Caesar’s Gallic War was written in 58-50 BC, but we have only found (last time I looked) about 10 copies which were from AD 900. That’s a full 950 year lapse with only about 10 copies. Similarly Livy’s Roman History was written between 59 BC and AD 17, we have 20 copies going as far back as AD 900. Both these books are considered to be historically accurate and the writings are accepted as true by the general populus and historians.

The New Testament was written between AD 40 and AD 100, and some of the scripts we’ve found are from AD 130 (with complete manuscripts available from AD 350, a 310 year lapse max). From this time, we have 5000 copies in Greek, 10,000 in Latin and 9300 in other languages. So the New Testament is, in fact, the most historically reliable set of books we have from the early AD years and is far more reliable (by the normal method of rating reliability of old books) than things which we just accept as true.

Besides which, there is extra-Biblical evidence confirming Jesus’ miracles, archaelogical evidence is about as well as I understand and despite it being so widely disputed, nobody has been able to disprove the claims of the gospels. You would have thought there would be some reasonable evidence to say a man called Jesus didn’t come back from the dead but, as far as I know, there isn’t.

So, putting aside my personal spiritual experience that confirm what the Bible says (church meetings that look rather a lot like church meetings in Acts, miracles of healing etc), it is logically reasonable to believe that the New Testament scriptures are true. These, in turn, back up the Old Testament but that’s another discussion altogether. 

If anyone wants to open up a little discussion here, please feel free. Is the New Testament a reliable source of information for the events it claims occurred?

My grandpa’s poem was perhaps a slightly odd “start” to the blog, however it’s an excellent poem written by an excellent man and I thought it was a fitting tribute with which to launch the blog properly (whether or not I can write the same calibur of content remains to be seen).

So my grandpa died recently, and one thing my mum always said about him is that he most likely had Asperger’s Syndrome but at the time it went undiagnosed. This explains me somewhat, Asperger’s tends to run in the family. This is something that I’m fairly confident I have, by the way, but currently goes unstatemented, this shall hopefully be rectified on Saturday when I shall have my mum’s diagnosis of me either confirmed or denied by someone with the proper qualifications to make such a call.

Besides Asperger’s Syndrome, sometime ago I also started to wonder if I may be dyslexic. I have trouble with writing, organisation, I miss the odd spelling, etc. I had an interesting meeting with an educational psychologist today who, after a couple of hours testing, confirmed that I was too intelligent. Quite. It seems that in terms of verbal reasoning and the like my intelligence falls way above average, but in terms of practical applications (where, I understand, dyslexia is most prevalent) I become only slightly above average. Apparently this means that I am dyslexic, but have the raw brain power to bring my dyslexia-affected qualities slightly above that of the average person while the rest of the cognotive processes my brain performs are highly above average.

This is a disability, apparently.

The thing that I’ve learned from this is that most people seem to have specific giftings. Some people may be more gifted in terms of raw intelligence, some may have more common sense, some may have gifts on a more physical level, etc. This makes the term “gifted” in children somewhat of a misnomer, as a child I was considered “gifted” but the dyslexia test as well as my own experience has shown that I’m no more gifted than anyone else. I lack foresight, I lack common sense, social skills have been a learning progress, I’m disorganised and I also find motivation extremely difficult. Sure, I’m very intelligent, but what point is that if I can’t seem to do anything with it? Sometimes I hate my brain. I feel frustrated that, in raw processing power, it is pretty excellent but I don’t seem to be able to drive it.

Now it’s starting to sound more like a disability.

The idea of mental disabilities has always interested me, the idea that a certain set of symptoms in behavioural patterns combine together to form a “disorder” or “syndrome”. I’ve watched a lot of House MD recently though and it’s had me thinking about this, they determine what disease the patient has through differential diagnosis by examining the symptoms presenting and working out what illness they add up to. Similar with mental problems, you take a set of symptoms and apply the name of an illness, but whereas physical illnesses more often have clear, specific causes, mental problems do not. This makes a mental disability no more than a label for a set of symptoms.

This is not to devalue those who have specific disabilities at all, but it does make it rather difficult for those of us who present with symptoms to work out exactly what we have. I’m still not entirely sure if I’m dyslexic, I’m most likely AS but I don’t know, and maybe there are other things. Are those of us caught in the middle considered to be normal people but with heightened strengths and weaknesses (i.e. in such a way that we are entitled to specific support)? Not entirely sure, really, but since most mental problems (perhaps all, I don’t claim to be an expert) are treated by specifically treating the symptoms (unlike diseases where the treatment attacks the cause), does it seem unreasonable that I should be able to go into a disability support unit and say “I have terrible organisational skills” and obtain support without having to be labelled as something? Sure, they need to test me somehow to be sure I do have these difficulties, that’s only fair, but do they have to test a load of other stuff I feel fine with as well?
In this sense the system irritates me. Labels, as always, are simple and comfortable but quite rigid and won’t always apply everywhere. If it turns out that I don’t have dyslexia and I don’t have AS, I’m not sure where that leaves me apart from “a bit funny in the head”, which is difficult to gain support for.

While undiagnosed (unlabelled), the response from many is “pull yourself together” but as soon as I’m diagnosed it would be “poor you, how can we help?”. I don’t know which is worse.

From the Secretariat,

One day in March of ‘94 I had an invitation
To exercise the body, soul & wit.
The mantle of Church Stewardship, this generous oblation
The question though, was “Would the mantle fit?”

I thought about it.

Ability, tranquility, gentility & charm,
The beguiling, smiling Steward has the lot.
Common-sense & eloquence, the manner to disarm,
A rounded Personality - precisely what I’m not.

I recalled last year’s AGM. The church Council needed a Secretary,
- not me, I was a new arrival on transfer from Walcott.

“Right!” said Fred, “You’re in, old man.
The job is yours for free.
The vacant chair’s still waiting there
For a brand new transferee,
Or a Walcott refugee.”

Oops!

The council met just twice a year
(The minimum permitted)
And nitty-gritty issues were
To Satellites committed

The satellite Committees :-

Family & Outreach & Worship Consultation,
Property & Finance there as well.
Pastoral & Neighbourhood made up the integration.
It all worked rather smoothly & as soundly as a bell.

And fringe bodies :-

There were Clubs & Cubs who paid their subs,
Guilds and Guides & Scouts besides,
Art Groups, House Groups, sane & MAD Groups.
Old folk by the score,
Songsters, Ramblers, Toddlers, Handlers -
Who would wish for more?

There were Cooks & Bakers, Coffee-makers,
Washers, Dryers, Deep-fat fryers,
Fixers, Menders, D.I.Y…ers,
Teachers, Preachers (clever creatures!)
Musicians beating time……..

That’s not the lot
But it’s all I’ve got,
If it has to scan or rhyme.

Constitutional Practice.

Then came the Autumn meeting
(The first since my induction)
We talked of Managerial Change
And called it Re-construction.

It was Resolved :-

Henceforward & hereafter,
Church management shall be.
A single tier arrangement,
Just one, not two, not three.
The Council handles everything,
Committees cease to be.
(And everything the Council does is written up by me).

No more these meetings twice a year,
No more that easy rhythm,
It ended just when I began
In sudden cataclysm.
The routine meetings doubled up,
4 times a year, no less,
And extra-ordinary ones
Just added their excess.
The Steward’s conclave reeled me in, to supplement the score,
And Circuit Meetings nudged it up, adding even more.

Last night

I dreamed a dream of joy serene,
Of Rev. Ann and, bless her,
She gently murmered in my ear
“Your Pathway’s rough,
You’ve had enough,
I’ll find you a Successor.”

I smiled; I laid aside my pen
And shelved my Dictionary.
With wistful look, I closed my Book
On the valedictory Minutes of a clapped-out Secretary.

Eric Pestell
31/03/1921 - 04/09/2006

I was hoping the work entries that nobody can read wouldn’t be RSS syndicated but sadly they were. Please disregard for now, I will try and fix it so they don’t get bundled into the RSS. I’ve at least got them not appearing on the front page.

So a big thankyou to those bearing with me while I get this blog properly up and running.

I thought I’d give the blogging thing a try. This does not mean I’m neglecting the old LiveJournal mind you, that will still be a generic dumping grounds for arbitrary thoughts and memes and whatnot where as this will be somewhat of a pretentious shrine to my own intellectualism and creativity (one hopes at least). I have rarely tried what I will be attempting to accomplish with this blog so this is in a sense the beginning of something new with no intent of detracting from what already exists.

In a sense it will be “just another blog”, but wait and see and I may just surprise you.