Archive for the ‘Events’ Category

Last Saturday the EDL held a protest in Dewsbury. Although, the first I knew about it, was when a bunch of their supporters came running past my window in the centre of Leeds. Luckily, as I explained last week, Twitter soon had be clued up what was going on.

I spent a bit of time watching the Twitter updates, with both sides tweeting live, and had to giggle a bit when a guy named Ged Robinson kept asking them what was the point in doing protest events when a much better way to engage would be to talk to the moderate Muslims.

This may be a good point, but there is a certain level if irony with someone spending a large amount of their time engaging in the futile activity of trying to put a rational argument to people who will never accept such points, telling them their efforts are futile.

The police were soon hot on the trail however and within a few minutes, there were half a dozen police vans parked outside my house.

At last Thursday’s Humanist Society of West Yorkshire meeting, Brian Layfield and Mark Edon presented a talk on Creationism.

Brian is a long time member of HSoWY but also father of Steven Layfield, a well known creationist who is now head of Science at Emmanuel College. Mark is secretary of the British Centre for Science Education (BCSE for short) and has previously spoken at both Skeptics and A-Soc.

Last Sunday saw the June meeting of the Humanist Community of Leeds. This month’s meeting saw a very elaborate array of discussions with topics ranging from The moral landscape and global politics to exactly how you should cook extra thick steak. Big thanks to Gijsbert for his excellent news round up as usual.

I recently attended a workshop organised by the Community Development Foundation along with Leeds VA-L and funded by Leeds City Council (this was emphasised because of how rare that is 😀 ).

The workshops were useful and interesting though what really struck me is that very little of it was new information – and yet most of us all needed to hear it.

We all know for example that we should have up to date accounts ready, a business plan, a written fund raising strategy, we should read the guidance notes, read the entire application form before starting, the list goes on. We all know all of this. Yet, if you ask people about it, and they’re honest, a lot of us don’t always do this.

Why? Because it’s really hard, and really unproductive. We have a lot of this in place now but every time I spend any time of this kind of stuff it always annoys me. Why? Because I want to be out there doing stuff. Writing grant applications, preparing annual reports, newsletters, etc isn’t an end, it’s merely a means to do the actual good work that as charities we all want to do.

So while it is an amateur mistake to not read though all the eligibility requirements or start filling out a form before they have read through everything, I do at least understand why people do this.

Along this topic, one tip I have picked up which turns out to be a time saver as well, is to be concise. All the experts say a word limit is a limit, not a suggestion. If you can answer a question in a few sentences, keep it short! Just say “we’re going to organise cricket games for underprivileged kids for ten weeks” rather than dressing it up in several paragraphs. Get straight to the point and say concisely what you’re going to do. It’s quicker, and it improves your chances of success.

We recently headed down to Distrikt for Sunday lunch.

It is located just across the road from my apartment which is convenient though it is a bit of dive inside. It’s nicely done out, but it is underground and that comes with inherent implications as well as it being like a sauna.

The bar itself had an excellent range of drinks including several flavours of Belvedere and 42 Below which are some of my favourite vodkas. The food itself was very nice. They do their beef really rare, which I don’t mind, but put some people off a little.

The bar staff were a little surly at first but I think they had just been having a hard time as their kitchen wasn’t working for the first thirty minutes. Things lightened up however, after she heard my ring tone however and discussed whether you would peg me as a Rhianna fan or not 😀 .

For the final session of Perspective Citywide, Nicola Jackson presented a talk on Judaism.

For the March meeting of Leeds Skeptics in the Pub we welcomed Pauline Neale, who is a speaker for Oxfam, to talk about climate change. The talk was enjoyable though I think I should be made it clearer to Pauline before the event that we all accept climate change as I think she was initially expecting a far less friendly reception!

Thanks to Rob for the photos.

For the seventh session of Perspective Citywide, we were joined by Malcolm Deboo who traveled up from London to talk to us about Zoroastrianism. London boasts Europe’s only Zoroastrianism centre and Malcolm presented a fascinating look at a religion which very few people are familiar with.

For the Paganism session of Perspective Citywide, we welcomed Rhiannon Grant to the group. I had already seen the talk at the Atheist Society the previous Friday but it was never the less entertaining and the discussions were great.

On Wednesday, we welcomed Hull & East Riding Humanists secretary Tim Stephenson over to Leeds to present the Perspective Citywide session on Humanism. Tim’s talk was excellent, looking at both the philosophical side behind Humanism and also why it is important to stand up and be counted as a Humanist.