Chris Worfolk's Blog

The first weekend of September will play host to our new national event, Sunrise Conference. Hosted by LUU Debating Society in association with ourselves, Sunrise will bring together leaders of free thinking groups from across the UK to share ideas, knowledge and experience.

The conference will feature multiple streams aimed at local groups, student groups and also provide training for those wishing to volunteer as humanist chaplains. A full timetable along with a list of speakers already signed up to speak at the conference can be found on the website.

This September we’ll be launching the Humanist Chaplaincy Network, a support network for those who are volunteering or working as non-religious chaplains. The network will provide training, resources, advice and a community. To find out more information, visit the website.

At CWF we want to make sure that as many people as possible can get access to our events and resources. Because of this, we are today launching the CWF inclusively programme. This will enable those suffering from financial hardship to apply for relief on costs such as event tickets and registration fees so that those would could not normally afford to attend our events are still able to come. This will begin with our Sunrise Conference for which applications are now open.

We got in this morning to find that one of the server’s external connections was down. Upon further investigation I found that the internet was in fact working fine, we just had a different IP address which is why the network monitoring was reporting that the server wasn’t responding.

I phoned up Opal, a part of TalkTalk, who have apparently taken over from Pipex – they didn’t tell us or anything, I just headed over to the Pipex Business website and found it was now an Opal website. I tried logging in to see our customer details but it didn’t accept my username or password and I couldn’t reset my password because I didn’t have an Opal customer number.

I phoned them up and sat in a queue for 10 minutes before getting through to someone who told me I was through to the wrong department. She informed me our line had a block on it and then put me through to the “other” technical department at which point I sat in another phone queue for 10 minutes before finally getting through to the right person.

I asked about the block and he informed me that they had cut us off because we hadn’t paid. This is because none of the credit or debit card payments transferred over when Pipex customers were moved over to Opal – only direct debit customers were safe and we’re not a direct debit customer because they messed that up recently and so we had to pay via credit card instead.

As a result they had cut our internet off – except in a moment of sheer incompetence they haven’t actually cut us off, they just think they have – I can actually access the internet fine. If it wasn’t for the fact that I needed our IP address back I would have just ignored them as the fools they are.

He informed me that if I made a payment they could re-activate my account. But he couldn’t take that payment or put me through – I had to phone back on a different number. I then asked about the fact I couldn’t log in and he said I would need to speak to Pipex, providing a third separate number I would need to phone to get that sorted out.

Fun times.

I’m pleased to announce that the Charity Commission for England and Wales has accepted our application for registered charity status.

This won’t mean a great deal for the day to day operations at CWF. Already having charitable status with HMR&C and Leeds City Council, this latest development is more a confirmation than a new development in the great work we’re doing but we’re more than happy that the Charity Commission are yet another body giving us the thumbs up.

As a consequence we are now registered charity 1137220 and you can find us listed on the Charity Commission’s website here.

Last weekend saw Leeds Pride 2010, stealing many of our members of Humanist Community away for the day – but we’re not bitter or anything 😉 . The event itself was good, there were stalls and some live entertainment though I have to say I was somewhat disappointed by the parade.

Having spent time at Disneyland maybe I expect too much out of parades but Gijsbert noted the same thing – even compared to St. Lois our parade was rather low effort. Most of it was just people walking around, which is rubbish, you want to see floats and coordinated dancing, and costumes. Even the floats that were there were simply people riding around on buses.

Ultimately though it probably comes down to the apathy generated by a lack of marginalisation. Gays are simply not discriminated against in the UK, it’s perfectly normal and acceptable to be gay (as it should be too!) so we simply don’t feel the need to make as much noise as they would in the US for example.

A few things did really amuse me though.

First of all, LGBT Conservatives. Lol.

Also, the fact that there were two different Christian groups – “Christians Together at Pride” and “Some Christians are Gay – Get over it!” Even if something as niche as gay Christians (or Christians suffering from “same sex attraction” as the True Freedom Trust puts it) they still manage to splinter themselves.

You can see loads more photos from Leeds Pride on my Facebook album.

Less than 24 hours after I was in the BBC Radio Leeds studio talking about UFOs I was asked to make a return the airwaves this time to talk about psychics.

I was actually surprised as I didn’t feel my previous interview went that well though this one went much better, I think because I was actually invited on to properly rubbish the claims rather than just add a one line counter voice to the Exopolitics conference.

The item was surrounding the recent news that Joe Power – the man who sees dead people – has had his show pulled from the Edinburgh Fringe because it’s rubbish. Watch him totally miss on Derren Brown Investigates in this clip.

I’m very dubious about this phrase. I mean, surely there is only one sky? On Planet Earth at least, but then that is the only sky we’re supposed to be watching – surely we’re not supposed to be watching over planet’s skies?

In any case, I was invited onto BBC Radio Leeds on Wednesday morning for a debate with the organiser of the Exopolitics conference taking place in Leeds this weekend. It was only a 15-minute slot, including going over to the US to speak to Riley Martin – a man who has spoken to aliens (they tell him, “friend Martin…”) but was never the less interesting.

Anthony seemed a very well educated and smart guy (kind of like the good kid that falls in with the bad crowd 😉 ), he seemed very rational about the whole thing. Unfortunately the same cannot be said for the Exopolitics movement as a whole. A quick look at their website is very revealing.

The era of looped debating whether ETI [extra-terrestrial intelligence] exists and are engaging our species has pragmatically shifted to assuming this to be the case – until we can gather and validate further information.

Basically, they’ve given up trying to work out whether aliens are visiting Earth and just decided they will assume they are until someone proves them wrong. Because that’s how science works 😉 .

EDIT: Since the blog post was written, http://www.exopolitics.org.uk/ has closed.

While what’s really important in any community group is really interesting and well thought through content (which I will be blogging about over on the Leeds Humanists blog), what I was most excited about this month was us rolling out our new happy humanist roller banner! Look at it sitting there behind Gijsbert, how nice 😀 .

With Mr Foley’s looking like our home for the moment, we had a great Skeptics in the Pub meeting in July with a really strong turn out despite it being in the middle of summer. Perhaps due to the excellent quality of talk delivered by Jonni on “The Mind, Illusion and the Need for Science.”