Archive for the ‘Religion & Politics’ Category

Having said all that, I didn’t watch a lot of the Olympics mainly because it just annoyed me. We seem to have been a bit too happy, smiley, everything is fine with China. Let’s review a few of the news stories that came out during the games.

The fireworks were pre-recorded.

Nobody turned up so they rounded up groups of students to make the stadiums look full.

To construct the new venues they bulldozed people’s houses with compensation.

People’s families suffered due to the people being involved in the games being taken away to camps so they couldn’t look after their families.

The fancy trains that said “made in China” on them were actually made by a company in Canada – who were ordered to de-badge them and put “made in China” on them in an attempt to stop people associating said term with crap quality. When in fact, of course, it is, hence why they went to Canada for their trains.

They spent a third of their GDP on the games, rather than feed their people.

They decided the young girl who was singing was too ugly so they hid her behind a curtain and put a better-looking girl out there miming.

They managed to perform the closing ceremony without using any amplification on the drums.

They had people carrying “nothing to see here” boards on standby as seen when the Hungarian weightlifter bent his arm back.

Their no doubt equal and fair selection process for the hundreds of people dancing in the stadium somehow presented any overweight or even slightly imperfect people from appearing.

Finally, the coordinator for the ending ceremony of the Olympic games said the western world couldn’t do amazing ceremonies like China did because…

• We respect human rights
• We have no dicipline and stop every 15 minutes for coffee breaks
• We only work 4 and a half days a week
• We aren’t willing to suffer enough
• However he does complement North Korea on their ability to stage such performances.

Did I miss anything?

There are a few things I want to talk about here. We need rather well I thought. Russia beat us to 3rd place in end but but 4th for Britain is really good, after all if there is one thing we are good at it is losing at sports.

Anyway, syncronised diving. It’s not a real sport is it? I mean seriously, you’r just jumping into a pool at the same time. It’s not big and it’s not clever. It’s very good to do at some kind of swimming club with 7 year old kids but an olympic sport? Of course not.

Also, London 2012, how are we supposed to follow this? Well anyway it’s irrelevant as we’re not even going to try. There is already talk of how we are going to hold a more “intimate” games, which basically just means less impressive.

And what was our closing ceremony about? It did have some rather nice features but it was spoilt for me by the fact that the big red bus we had, turned up on time. I don’t really feel that sums up British culture. Oh and the commentator accidentally called Leona Lewis a “superstar.” Finally, in case we hadn’t lost all self respect we ended it with “here’s David Beckham, he’s not going to say anything we’re just showing off.”

Finally, I just want to be clear that the man we sent to represent us in front of the rest of the world – was Boris Johnson. Kept him away from Britain for a while I guess. It’s good to see I’m not the only person who actually uses my jacket pockets.

Good stuff.

A quick google around tells me that you can pick up a homeopathic remedy for anxiety for as little as £13.17 plus shipping.

But here is the thing. It’s just water.

Suddenly seems rather expensive for 15ml when Tesco are doing 2,000ml for a rather more reasonable £0.17.

It really makes you wonder however why the NHS are spending millions of pounds of our money on homeopathic remedies. And as such I’m starting a new campaign to promote greater understanding of homeopathic medicine because, much like religion, the thing that will do the most damage is if people actually learn what it’s about.

You can learn more about the bullshit the NHS is spending money on at the campaign’s website, It’s Only Water.

I recently watched the Horizon episode on research done by some of Britain’s top drug experts published last year in The Lancet, a medical journal, which offers an alternative system to the current ABC classification for drugs which is far more based on science and evidence.

The new system would rate the harm each drug causes based on a number of factors, most notably – physical harm (what it does to the user when they take it including the route of administration and long term effects), how much dependence the drug induces (and what dependent behaviour it leads to) and social harm in terms damaging family and social life as well as the social costs of medical treatement and policing a drug.

The study ranked 20 commonly abused substances and had some suprising results…

1. Heroin
2. Cocaine
3. Barbiturates
4. Street methadone
5. Alcohol
6. Ketamine
7. Benzodiazepines
8. Amphetamines
9. Tobacco
10. Buprenorphine
11. Cannabis
12. Solvents
13. 4-MTA
14. LSD
15. Methylphenidate
16. Anabolic steroids
17. GHB
18. Ecstasy
19. Alkyl Nitrates
20. Khat

So, anyone fancying dropping a few E next weekend? ;).

If you want more information the text is available online (you need to register but it’s free).

Just to pick out a few of my favourite quotes…

“They [kids] are so usable in Christianity.”

“Where should we put or focus? Our enemies are putting it in the kids.”

“I want to see [young people] radically laying down their lives for the Gospel.”

“How many of you want to be those who would give up their lives for Jesus?”

“Use your cute kid thing until your thirty, and [by] then you’ll have good content.”

“They jump round him [my dad] yelling martyr, martyr! It’s really cool.”

Before I throw the 25 January edition of Leeds Student away, which I have been keeping around for this quote, I should mention the article entitled “wash your hands od extremism” which appears on page 4. The article notes…

The University of Leeds has recently spent £50,000 on the Islamic Centre, more commonly known as the Green Room, a place where Muslims can go to pray, and which has washing facilities.

As Gijsbert has previously pointed out, given the student body is mostly composed of atheists (or at least non-theists) where is the atheist centre?

For those who read through the list of referendum motions you may notice that one of them was particularly concerned with freedom of speech on campus – not renewing the union’s “no platform” policy in allowing everyone to come and speak on campus (though not recruit for their cause) to encourage debate and prevent minorities being excluded which leads to extremism.

This motion failed to get through union council but is currently at secure petition (which means it needs 330 signatures to be forced onto the referendum). Given that freedom of speech is very important, especially on a university campus, I would encourage you all to go sign the petition. You just need to take your student card to the union reception desk and ask to sign the no platform petition – the deadline is 2pm tomorrow.

Last week saw the Christian Union’s “Why Jesus? Week” (the new name for the annual mission week). It’s been far too long since I’ve sat in a big white tent and debated theology so it was good to get back into it and who am I to turn down a free lunch anyway?

It was great to talk to everyone again – this year’s guest list included Dot, Elspeth, Levi, Mark, Paula, Roger, Pod and I’m told there were even some students there too! It does make you wonder to what level it actually was a student activity but the union is all about offering platforms these days anyway :p.

The list of proposed motions for the upcoming referendum are up. And most of them are a joke. So I have decided to go through them in term and moan about what is wrong them with them.

Activities Groups’ Access to the Refectory
I support this, the union has awful communication with things like the university for the Refec and you know, their own venues department.

Affiliation to Stop the War
This union believes “to date no evidence of WMD has been found thus the reason for the initial invasion has proven to be unfounded.” No, a reason has proven to be unfounded. Anti-war campaigning does not represent the opinion of all our members, because, well, many of them don’t care. Have we not learned by now that we’re not going to do anything anyway? Millions of people have marched, but the fact is – it’s too late. The war is over, it ended years ago. Now we’re cleaning up and leaving. So what war are you going to stop?

Should this Union support a re-evaluation of the decision to close Bodington Hall?
I agree with this, Bodington was ace and I don’t know who the university were talking to when people were complaining about it. The only person I’ve found that lived there and didn’t like it was Jewish Dan. Everyone else loved it.

End the Siege in Gaza
Hmm, this is a tricky issue. It will be interesting to see what J-Soc say about this.

Do you want greater Freedom of Speech on campus?
See my previous blog post. I fully support this motion.

Should home fees apply to refugees?
A degree hardly would seem to be a little more than the basic right to education as the motion seems to suggest. There are lots of barriers for even British citizens to go to uni so I don’t think this is an especially big problem.

I.D Cards
Well, for a start it should be I.D. not I.D but that is a minor point. The more important point is that the I.D. card has already passed through parliament, it’s over, the anti I.D. card crowd lost. See my blog post about I.D. cards for my full thoughts on the subject.

Lads’ Mags
FHM isn’t porn. It’s not. Have some common sense. The photos in there are less revealing than you can buy in The Sun. Should we classify tabloid newspapers as porn too?

Mature Students Room
Because it worked so well with Mine.

No Platform Policy
Should we deny BNP members to speak on campus? Of course not. University is somewhere where you can have unprecedented freedom of speech. While I will concede you need to be careful when implementing it in wider society, we’re all educated individuals that can see a racist idea when we see it. Seriously, are you scared you will lose a debate with these guys?

Interestingly enough the motion resolves “to condemn homophobia, racism, sexism and religious prejudice from the University Union. To permanently exclude anyone found to be promoting such prejudice from the University Union.” I’m guessing that this condemnation and exclusion will not apply to the opinions expressed within the Muslim community to which proposer Hind is a part of.

A university campus should be a bastion for freedom of expression, censorship here is a very dark route to go down.

NUS Governance Review
I can’t really comment as I haven’t read the whitepaper. According to the motion it seems something we do indeed want to reject but obviously, this will contain some bias.

Stop the Royal Bank of Scotland/Natwest funding climate change
Societies struggle enough to find sponsorship let alone if we add even more companies to the list of companies banned. And yet again I am going to bring up the point that even if this motion goes through, we will still be selling Coca Cola products in the union. It’s pick and choose which companies you can bother to make a moral stance against.

Should our university accept from military companies and carry out their research?
The University of Leeds is research led. A large proportion of research money comes from military purposes. I notice the motion fails to provide an alternative as to where we can get research money from. Which we want to increase if we want to increase the reputation of our university.

Should the Union Support the respect for the basic liberties of its members?
No. Seriously, what a stupid motion title. This in no way describes what the motion is about and is simply aiming at getting people to say “yes” before they even know what they are voting for.

The motion resolves “to give an allowance as regards to space and facilities for peaceful demonstration that would raise awareness of and stress these basic fundamental liberties.” Which you already have. Book space outside the union like everyone else does. The union is here to support student activities in their campaigns not to run them for you.

Should Landlords Be Held To Account?
This I do very much agree with. Although house hunting happening in January is a country wide problem so the NUS as a whole really needs to get involved. That is not to say we can’t make a difference here in Leeds none the less though.

Should LUU revive The Old Bar?
What a fantastic motion, this would should be passed :D.

Stopping the sale of cigarettes
If people want to kill themselves we might as well take the money for it. Smokers are addicted – they will go somewhere else for their cigarettes.

Working whilst Learning
This I do agree with. If a lecture got moved to Monday morning now I would be screwed. I just couldn’t do it.

The first referendum of last academic year resolved to give us freedom of speech on campus.

The second referendum banned it.

That amused me. Basically we had one motion protecting freedom of speech after the trouble betwen J-Soc and the PSG. Then we had another motion in the referedum after about descrimination but it also covered religion and suggested that if anyone felt offended, there was a problem.

Now in the first referendum of this year there is a proposed motion “Do you want greater Freedom of Speech on campus?” Anyone else ever feel like we’re going round in circles?