Courts undermine our Christian faith
WE are a Christian country. Our traditions and our way of life are based on that faith. Yet increasingly those beliefs are being challenged and undermined from within. By the courts, to be precise.
Last week, for example, two legal rulings struck damaging blows against the right to practise that faith.
In the High Court Bideford Town Council was banned from putting prayers on its agenda after a move by a former atheist member who claimed he had been disadvantaged and embarrassed by the religious act. He had been backed by the National Secular Society.
The decision has far reaching implications for other local authorities.
And the Court of Appeal upheld a decision that two Christian hotel owners who refused to let a gay couple share a room must pay them thousands of pounds compensation, thus confirming the supremacy of gay rights over Christian belief under the sexual orientation regulations.
In the former case, it seems hardly democratic that the views of one man should override those of the majority and, in the second, why should the rights of a hotel owner to decide who should stay at his premises be disregarded?
Lord Carey, former Archbishop of Canterbury, says Christians are suffering mounting intolerance as the country becomes “enslaved to multi-culturalism, political correctness and so-called equal rights” and has called on the Prime Minister to safeguard Britain’s founding Christian traditions.
David Cameron, who professes to be a Christian, must heed that call.
THE recent cold spell has inevitably brought comparisons to that experienced in the early part of 1947 when the country was brought to a virtual standstill by the conditions.
Fortunately today we are much more organised and prepared than we were then when the country was still recovering from the effects of World War Two and shortages were the order of the day.
There would probably be a revolution if today’s government ordered the restrictions imposed to deal with the situation.
Domestic electricity supplies were cut to 19 hours a day, TV services were suspended, radio broadcasts were limited, publication of magazines stopped and the already thin newspapers had their size further reduced.
Labour’s Minister of Fuel and Power, Manny Shinwell, became the scapegoat, receiving death threats and was put under police protection.
Teenagers, who were due for National Service, had their call up delayed because camps to which they were due to report were inaccessible.
Unfortunately for me the crisis had eased when it was time for me to don khaki in June of that year. It was a glorious hot summer and several recruits fainted on the passing out parade.
If memory serves me right, the football season carried on until the summer because so many matches were postponed because of the weather.
In that respect nothing much has changed over the last 60 odd years so far as the smaller league clubs are concerned.
SOME time ago, I heard my eight-year-old grandson say to a friend that “my old grandad loves brown sauce” which is true because I have always preferred it to tomato ketchup.
I am delighted to learn that I am not alone in that preference.
The dark variety has been the star performer in the market, bucking a downward trend in sales of other varieties.
If any manufacturer happens to read this I shall be glad to give my verdict on their products if they care to send me samples!
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Saturday 26 May 2012
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