Chris Worfolk's Blog

Someone opened a taxi door as a bus was going past on Call Lane last night.

On Friday the long awaited launch at work occurred as we took our first live bet from Belgium, albeit a test one. From here on in we’re trading so if you happen to find yourself in Belgium, near a newsagents and get a sudden craving to place a sports bet, you’re in luck. You can also see our website.

In celebration, we opened the first (presumably annual) Buzz keepie uppie tournament which Jason was victorious over with 17 and after some champagne and generous gifts from Rob we headed over to The Original Oak to celebrate.

On Thursday evening I headed round to Rich’s along with George and Jonni for a Question Time pizza party. Between us we got through about five pizzas, as well as several bottles of win and half of Rich’s carton 😀 . This was of course to watch British National Party leader Nick Griffin appear on the programme.

It was at least an entertaining show if nothing else though was mostly just BNP bashing. Not that we should have expected any less of course but I’m not sure it was the most productive thing to do. As Bill points out, it was half way though the show before someone managed to fit an intelligent comment in – that perhaps the failure of the major parties had led to a rise in BNP support.

In the end though it was essentially a witch hunt which didn’t produce the desired result. If a better course of action as Rich pointed out would have been to ask the panel what their policies on health, education and the economy were so they could be compared side by side.

This would have likely done far more damage than the constant barrage of insults that were thrown at Nick and his party which no doubt made us Guardian readers feel good but actually won him a lot of sympathy and support in other social groups. Will the appearance be a good or bad thing for the BNP? I guess we’ll find out soon.

I headed over to York on Wednesday night for the monthly York Brights meetup. I ended up having a really enjoyable night (not that you should expect anything less) despite still being ill with a cold, made especially interesting by the fact that I got to have a good read over the legendary Atlas of Creation, a book published by a Turkish Muslim Adnan Oktar who explained that evolution is all lies.

His wacky viewpoint is actually one of “Old Earth” creationism in that he believes that the Earth has been here for millions of years, it’s just that species have never changed. What a gangster.

I delivered an updated version of my talk Debating the Theists to Atheist Society on Tuesday. It went rather well despite forgetting to plug my laptop in and having it try to hybernate half way through the talk but the audience seemed to enjoy it and the feedback I got was fairly positive. Maybe could have done with a bit more substance but it’s always a tricky balance.

Interestly, the BHA picked up on it and put it in their weekly e-bulletin which was great and made more amusing by the fact that with no background information, many BHA members around the country may be wondering why exactly I am a reverend and whether I’m religious 😀 .

On Sunday evening I got a phone call from Daryl informing me he had accidentally booked Atheist Bus Campaign creator Ariane Sherine to speak at the next Skeptics in the Pub meeting.

So on Monday I headed over to Batley (where Daryl resides into what is essentially a small castle) to discuss ideas of how we could re-launch the group with more exciting speakers and a better format. We began hunting for venues and next thing we knew we were driving back to Leeds to check out The Living Room on Greek Street.

By the end of the evening we had a new venue lined up, a new format in development and a plan to make Leeds Skeptics bigger and better than ever. Win.

I also have to say that Daryl has a very impressive collection of comics. I can’t say I know that much about them but he has box after box of them and all of them looking fancy and collectable. Top marks to anyone who has a replica Lightsaber in their lounge too.

Sunday afternoon we headed down to Shaky Jakes in Headingley for some sundaes to celebrate Viv’s birthday. They literally have every chocolate bar you can think of available to make into a milkshake or sundae and if there is something they don’t have you can even take your own chocolate down and have them use that!

Despite feeling rough on Sunday I endeavoured to make it down to Cuthbert Brodrick for the usual Sunday lunch. This week saw Kate extend her usual diet of chocolate cake to include a bowl of chips too – to which ended up being combined into some radical new version of the chocolate chip.

Today I delivered a talk which sounded ominously like a Channel 4 documentary to Leeds Skeptics in the Pub. It went reasonably well and discussions went on well into the afternoon so over all a good event. From now on we’re back to proper guest speakers too so things are looking quite good for Skeptics at the moment.

Friday saw us kick things off with One Life, this week’s session being about ethics. As John was running late I started the session as chair for the first half an hour or so raising a few topic discussions before the real content matter was entered when John arrived. Unfortunately we didn’t have enough plates and cutlery for the committee ended up eating out of a cup with a spoon!

Afterwards we headed up to City Church on Headingley road who were running re:fresh, a free BBQ and hot drinks session to catch drunk people Otley running it. We would have had a few drinks in the old bar first but as they were Christians they had to go to bed at 11 so we had to go there first 😀 .

Having come direct from One Life we were of course in our Atheist Society hoodies which made for a fun time – of course they were very welcoming though the hoodies did get described as inappropriate by a girl on a fancy dress Otley run dressas as a Roman which we didn’t find at all ironic. After all, what have the Romans ever done to Christians? 😉