Enough old rope to hang oneself

In the first paragraph of Gerry Rafferty’s obituary by The Guardian, it mentions that his royalties for Baker Street were still bagging him £80k a year. How come more people don’t seem to realise how ridiculous this is?

Dear candidate: I won’t be voting for you

Our current MP Beverley Hughes did not vote last night on the Digital Economy Bill. Nor has she bothered to reply to my correspondence on the issue. As she is standing down, I have written the following letter to the person who wishes to be her successor:

Who Would Jesus Employ?

The BBC News website is carrying an article entitled “Churches fear Equality Bill will conflict with faith“. I don’t know the degree of accuracy, but it alleges that bishops (it doesn’t say which bishops) are concerned that they might be forced to employ gay people, and are preparing for a fight in the House of Lords.

Not everything wrong should be banned

I unfriended somebody on Facebook the other day. It’s something I’ve only ever done once before, as “friends” lists are just a representation of a network graph, not a way to describe the relative strength of each relationship. But in this case, I have never even met the person and had no mutual friends, and although he did nothing directly against me, I decided I couldn’t see a good reason to retain a connection to him.

What prompted this decision? It was something you could see as a very small thing. I saw in his news feed that he had joined a group calling for Islam4UK to be banned from marching through Wootton Bassett. I fully agree he has the right to not want it to happen. The entire idea of a terrorist front staging a media stunt in what has become a shrine to the fallen must surely be highly offensive to any decent human being, whatever their views on the conflicts.