mockney piers

My wife lost friends to suicide because of the abuse they received at the hands of priests. This didn't even make the news and this was a quiet corner of south east ireland. Multiply this a great deal. This isn't about my agnostic agenda, this is about authority being answerable to its actions. I cannot abide by impunity, I don't care whether it's a priest or a politician. I may be wrong but weren't you lacking sympathy for a beheaded crucified paedophile in Saudi Arabia, but the church covering for paedophiles, let's not pick on the church; and 80-500,000 dead Iraqis isn't worth wondering why in an enquiry? not sure what your priorities are but they don't feel right to me. Did I mention the church declaring Franco's illegal coup a just crusade? Another high point that killed dozens of my family and resulted in my grandfather being imprisoned for being a newspaper man. Another act we can gloss over and say, yeah but father smith was a nice chap so it's all alright.

It's an organisation that encompasses literally billions, well maybe one. No, the flower arrangers are fine. But for the institutional spine to do that, that's rotten to the core, the skin and much of the flesh may be healthy, the core is utterly corrupt, at the core it is still about power. Wow our politicians go to war to make a the worst executive administration in US history happy and that good. Let's turn a blind eye to kid fiddler central. You've a serious thing about respecting authority regardless of whether it merits respect haven't you ;)

It's ok huncamunca I know who you are, say your piece (that's me not an official position) silverfox, yes people are often bad and bad people often manage to continue in bad institutions but the catholic church has a long history of moving people away from the focus of their trouble to other places where's they have continued their abuse, some for up to 40 years after raping their first child. Some of this knowledge has gone to the top, it is a rotten rotten institution. It has been in the old past, it has been in the recent past, it's a horror. Interestingly when the first bubbling up of scandals in this country came out, care homes/social services came out my spanish father said that something is wrong with the Anglo Saxon, spaniards would never abuse children. Well, suffice to say there are as many stories coming out in spainas there ar in Ireland and unsurprisingly most of these were in the church. And again the individuals could indeed have been in any institutuion entrusting care of vulnerable children to adults. But once again the church covered up, moved on and allowed these people to continue thileir abuse in their full knowledge. Sick sick sick sick sick.

Plus ?182 million is cheap at the price. ?182 million peace in Ireland? ?50 billion propping up banks who fucked everything and then freezing public sector pay for five years to pay for it? I have a feeling which is money better spent. Iraq? Don't make me laugh.

Santerme, i have a huge amount of respect for your opinion like I would few others, but in this I will have to disagree. To conflate the cost of assuring a scrupulous investigation of those who lead and drag you and those under your command I to risking lives, with the money they should have promised you for that which you needed is frankly odd. It seems to be missing the point. Iraq was not military it was political, and bad politics at that. To compare trying to find out why, to unravel the steps taken to sending the country into war as a milksop is, well, odd.

Totally with you Matthew, a little honesty goes a long way. It was so mendacious and frankly patronising the way they went about it. Just say we want a client state to maintain power in an area full of resources we're doing nothing to wean ourself off a dependence upon. Fine, admit to being a neoconial power and that the lives of darker skinned people don't matter. Just say those things and I'll have at least some respect for your honesty. I don't think our stock went up by standing shoulder to shoulder, yo Blair being the first proof of how low our status really was, out current standing with Obama being the rewards we justly reaped.

As good as ever wolfi....err jack. Nice one :)

The Rise of Political Lying by Peter Oborne. It really is staggering the sheer weight of mendacity of new labour from day one when laid out matter of factly in black and white. Staggering. And they're still in power. Sadly though they've marginally improved under Brown the next government will he by the self confessed heir to blairism, and they're good, gain power by basically saying nohing then maintain power by never allowing anyone to pin you down and if they do try distraction, then denial and if all fails, lie. Utterly depressing.

Actually they are pretty good articles, though rather annoyed by the massive fat spoiler for Battlestar Gallactica in the eve one. Go ongive it ago, beats the Gideon bible on that cheap motel a while back eh ;)

Mmmmthey have finished the jb and come home in case you hadn't noticed. The entire enquiry will come to about the cost of a few days deployment there. Luckily some people demand that when we go to war it's for the right reasons and never by misleading he house and the public. It's for this we live in a relatively healthy democracy and this is one of the reasons we have anquiries. It's what makes us different from the old soviet union or even saddams Iraq.

Mmmmthey have finished the jb and come home in case you hadn't noticed. The entire enquiry will come to about the cost of a few days deployment there. Luckily some people demand that when we go to war it's for the right reasons and never by misleading he house and the public. It's for this we live in a relatively healthy democracy and this is one of the reasons we have enquiries. It's what makes us different from the old soviet union or even saddams Iraq.

Crack girl was kind of cute? A selfloathing sociopathic streak is probably ideal for a career in spying. Talking of which I think radio four is serialising the smiley novels soon. Best damn spy books ever written.

So you're fine with the invasion of Iraq but think an enquiry into what is universally accepted as our worst foreign policy decision, based entirely on lying to the public, since 1956 is a waste of money? Erm....nope, you've lost me.

Curly, while i do of course defer to your understanding of the bible thanks to your strong grasp of aramaic and ancient Greek, and despite europe's best minds for a thousand years having dedicated their lives to theology and yet still came up with many many differences in interpretation, I'm glad you've sorted all that out. But I can't help but suspect your surety comes from begging the question a fair bit but that's another matter. You say the bible isn't incomplete and any interpetation is only there for those who want to twist it's meaning for their own ends, but in the following sentence you go on to interpret why there is an implicit acceptance of incest until Leviticus outlaws it. If it wasn't incomplete wouldn't the bible have had a few more begats to fill in the gaps and said 'yes they were related but I bestowed them with genetic diversity, and once there were enough of you I stopped interfering and made incest rather unhealthy to your genetic disposition'? I can't find those bits in the complete bible, clearly I don't understand it ;)

On that one HAL is quite right, but they are just names given to Genetc markers present in all human beings. Try Stephen Oppenheimer for starters as he has written very clearly and accessibly on this. Basically mitochondrial DNA passes unchanged from mother to daughter in an unbroken line with occasional mutations which will follow down as markers until a further subset is identifiable by a new mutation. Likewise father to son unbroken lines are identifiable by DNA markers on the y chromosome. Using this technique we've discovered 7(ish off the top of my head) women that most Europeans are descended from, given names like ursula and so on by working out where they are likely to have lived n thousand years ago (number of submutations times 2000 or something) by seeig where the greatest concentrations o their descendents now lived. Across the world about 43 of these identified common ancestors. These people definitely existed but wouldn't actually have had these names and it's guess work as to roughly when and where they lived. They went on to find genetc markers common to all ancestors common to all humans. This means that we are all descended from them, though that doesn't in any way suggest that they knew each other of course or even lived within hundreds (though definitely within thousands of years of each other) or that we are descended from a literal Adam and eve. But they went for those names for rather obvious reasons.

I think literal interpretations of the bible got ditched by all sides of the argument quite a while back, and a bit like the language thing, it's bad science to conclude that there is no God because an ancient text written and edited over hundreds of years by people with different agendas is both inconsistent and incomplete. But yes, that was one of the questions I asked when I was about 6 that noone would answer satisfactorily, and metaphors aren't very satisfying to the childs mind I suppose.

Not to subvert the thread (though likewise give not a shit abou the top 3 arsenal, man u and chelsea, not that anyone talks about Chelsea, but when are you going to help me with those two player spec ops missions. And saw you've been dipping toes into multiplayer at last!!

And his magic 8 ball Wednesday is an inspired idea, I'm so doing that. http://www.27bslash6.com/magic8ball.html

Ooh, been a while since I went on that site. That was very very funny, haven't genuinely laughed out loud for ages. loved his last pie chart!!

Ha ha, I think I may know to what your refer there FnB and can only concur. *shudders*

Yes, had some great beers in Plaistow, but it is undeniably a characterless not worth visiting. Cutting to the chase would east dulwich be worth anyone going out of their way for if they haven't got friends down their for food and drink? plenty of places have cheese and nicknacks surely. Is their a USP? an unusually high concentration of cookwank perchance?

Are we talking visitation here? The lizards are already here. That said, Dalstn hasn't got much going for it apart from traffic.

Or the watney cup?

Totally with you on that one atila. I might even bother to watch the odd game if it was actually exciting.

And for gods sake make sure it doesn't have a bloody group stage. Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaawn