Chris Worfolk's Blog

Last night saw the first of the end of year planning meetings for Atheist Society. It has been a while since we have had a real hardcore planning meeting but last night we bashed out ideas for next year for a solid three hours and will no doubt be doing something similar next week too.

We got plenty of good ideas down and the vision for next year is starting to take shape so it should be another great year for the society (as if we have anything else :p ).

Afterwards we headed down to The Old Bar for the usual Tuesday night social which was well attended given so many people have gone home. Plus George was there so it was basically win win.

On Monday myself and Michelle headed out to the Deer Park to celebrate a number of different things including someone having received her teaching application (this is a landmark achievement for the Royal Mail).

It occured to me though that are days at the Deer Park maybe be looking limited. If you include the fact that I am spending the weekend after next in Warwick for the AHS national conference I only have 9 days left in Roundhay!

I will certainly miss it, there aren’t any overly nice pubs on my door step next year though there are plenty of cheap ones such as the Library and town just a few minutes walk away. In any case though I think a few trips out to the Deer Park at some point may be in order.

I’ve seen a lot of posts, comments, tweets etc, about the results from Sunday night.

I’m sure you’re aware of what has happened but in case some of you aren’t, the results for the European parliament were announced with Labour getting trashed and losing Wales for the first time since 1918 and more importantly the British National Party won two seats.

UKIP managed to come second, beating Labour and nobody really seems to be concerned about this. I can’t imagine why, UKIP are a ridicious one policy party and that is putting it nicely. Why we would want these people in power I cannot imagine. UKIP leader Nigel Farage also worries me, I didn’t think it was possible for anyone to be more smug than Mr. O’Shea but apparently it is possible 😉 .

The real backlash though has been against the BNP getting elected – in no less than two regions.

Personally I am sick and tired of people saying “oh this is awful, we shouldn’t have a system which allows people like that to get elected.” Of course you expect these stupid comments from Islamic extremists but they are coming from people I considered smart, educated people.

Of course the BNP should be allowed to run, we live in a free expression democracy and if we’re going to tolerate the Muslims we are going to tolerate the fascists, that’s just being fair. It isn’t a problem because if you’re saying really wacky far out there things nobody is going to vote for you.

What people are actually worried about therefore is that people are actually voting for the BNP and in large numbers – almost a million people voted for them in the recent elections. A million people!

No wonder given that nobody is even really discussing the issue. Everyone says “oh, how terrible, it’s the BNP” but most people don’t even know what the BNP policies are. Most people think they know BNP policy on immigration (you probably don’t though, it’s a bit different to what you think) but do you know their policy on the environment for example?

Probably not because it never comes up for discussion. The BNP are banned from campus at Leeds and if anyone else was watching the unbiased BBC coverage on Sunday night you will note that despite speaking to most of the party heads they never spoke to Nick Griffin or anyone from the BNP. How are we supposed to make informed choices if we can’t even discuss these issues?

The discussions that are going on are about how people could vote for the BNP. A protest vote? They just really hate Labour? What nobody seems to have suggested is that people actually like the BNP policies.

Maybe some people want safer streets. A stronger NHS. Less bureaucracy in the civil service. A cleaner environment. Maybe people like the fact the BNP are campaigning on local issues that actually mean something to people. Maybe people want a party that isn’t using our money to pay for duck islands or moat cleaning.

So rather than going off on one about how awful it is that the BNP got in and criticising everyone else for being such a weak opposition, I would like to congratulate the BNP on a hard earned success. If you don’t like it, go out and campaign for someone else.

I voted Labour, by the way.

I think we have perfected Sunday nights.

It now starts at the pub, then we go for some food, then we go back to the pub.

It’s a winner 😀 . Actually it then involves even more food as afterwards you have to the KFC to pick up some ice cream as well but that just adds to the whole experience. You really can’t beat a final evening of food and drink before returning to work on Monday morning.

Unfortunately though our landlord turned up as I was walking out the door asking if we could clean the whole house by tomorrow as he had a potential tenant coming round to look at it which resulted in me having to do some cleaning when I got back. Luckily Michelle and Norm took care of most of it while I was out though so there wasn’t that much to do.

Thursday saw HAG head out with some new volunteers in the form of Sophie and Jon. Turns out, we’ve solved the problem again though.

What we need to work on now is exporting HAG to various other cities around the UK, after all as it stands we have a higher success rate than Narconon ;).

I headed over to Nicola’s for what was loosely to be described as Sarah’s leaving party. I say loosely because I don’t really know Sarah and I only just saw her at the party – she arrived just as I was heading out the door.

Never the less it was an interesting evening. Basically Nicola just spend the whole time getting berrated for not knowing anything about her degree subject. Good times 😉 .

Tuesday saw the End of Year Ball which this year saw several of the freethinking societies in and around Leeds unite. While it was mostly an A-Soc affair we got people from Skeptics, York Brights, the Humanist Society of West Yorkshire and HAG there, even if this is mostly the same crowd lol.

We kicked things off at Spice Quarter where I managed to get through a reasonably respectable five plates though I believe I was significantly trailing Zoltan who was on a mission to eat everything they owned.

The made in front of you stir fry had to be the winning dish as you literally can just pile everything on your plate and get them to stir fry it. Interesting, despite what sause I asked for it all seemed to come out of the same pot but it actually tasted like what I asked for so I’m not going to complain.

Afterwards we headed to Bourbon for their Mix Tape Project night which was really good if people did start disappearing – the last people to leave the place where myself and Paul! That’ll show those kids who can really party… :D.

In the end we had 34 people turn up which I think is quite respectable.

Having had to cut down on the time I’ve spent at the Deer Park recently it was a welcome return to make it there twice in two days, once on Sunday for Sunday lunch and again on Monday night.

After all, you have such a good excuse to go home via the Chinese once you have spent an evening there 😀 .

As part of an effort to actually make it to the park more now that the weather has improved, I actually made it down on Sunday and went for a short walk around the lake.

Problem is with it being so hot and a weekend lots of other people had done the same thing – just another reason why we need border control checkpoints to assess people’s income before letting them in to Roundhay 😉 .

Yesterday there were no less than seven of us on the close.

I mean, what do you even do with that many staff? This only actually had an effect from 10pm or so onwards as we had a reduced night shift because of it but it did mean we walked out a little over half an hour after closing – the fastest close I’ve ever done.

With all the post-close drinking and talking I didn’t actually get home until gone 3:30 though where I found John, Tom and Michelle still up drinking after a rather eventful evening containing such wacky events as Liz punching B in the face. Crazy times.