Thought For The Day

Blogging is not a safe pursuit for men with young families.

My Email Address Was Hacked Yesterday

This would have been an enormous annoyance even if one were entirely sure that the hacker or hackers, whoever they are, could not possibly know where my family and I live, or my wife's name, or her mobile number, or any of our other phone numbers, or who I work for, or the name of the nursery my wee boy goes to, or anything else on all of the eight years' worth of sent and received emails that I have dumped this evening.

This is the second time in six months that our space has been invaded, and the peace of our home disturbed, on account of me having a presence on the Internet; which means it's time to stop. If I have offended anyone, I'm sorry; go on your way in peace.

The Boston Marathon Bombings

Yet another example of human beings parading their wretchedness, killing an eight year old as the climax of the show. My condolences to the bereaved and sympathies to the injured.

'George Square Thatcher Death Party'

Never having heard of Mogwai, the Glasgow 'band' whose song 'George Square Thatcher Death Party' inspired the disgusting scenes that occurred in, er, George Square the day she died, it was with some shock that I realised that John Cummings, sometime of Mogwai, might just be the very same John Cummings who played the clarinet in the St. Aloysius College wind band while I was tootling away on my French horn at the back. 

Well, public schoolboys do always make the best revolutionaries.

On Margaret Thatcher's Frequent Hosting Of Jimmy Savile At Chequers

For all we know, she might have spent every moment that she was in his company trying to dissuade him away from his wicked way of life. 

She might have been acutely aware of the potential for scandal surrounding Savile, a scurrilous nonentity who had somehow become close to the Royal Family, and wanted to keep an eye on him herself; if only to remind him that his presence was not celebrated but suffered, and that people far more important than he was knew what he was up to, and that the only reason he wasn't sitting in Parkhurst was because the constitutional fallout from putting him there could potentially be catastrophic.

We just don't know what they talked about, so shouldn't really speculate on why she hosted him there so frequently.

What Baroness Thatcher Has In Common With The Philpott Children

In my opinion, in recent weeks David Cameron has used all of their deaths for his own political purposes.

On Capital Punishment

Being opposed to all capital punishment at all times in all places and under all circumstances, it seems to me that one of the clearest arguments against it is that as the state cannot create life it has no business trying to take it away.

'Mao's Great Famine'

An important book, but nonetheless a very depressing read. 

But if being depressed is the price one has to pay for reading a book as important as this, one will at least be allowing oneself to be depressed in a good cause.

The Real Reason Why The BBC Won't Ban 'Ding Dong The Wicked Witch Is Dead' Outright

I think it's because unlike other banned songs, like, say 'Relax', 'Ding Dong The Wicked Witch Is Dead' from 'The Wizard Of Oz' is at all times and under all circumstances 'Ding Dong The Wicked Witch Is Dead' from 'The Wizard Of Oz'. It is not the 'Internationale'. It is not the 'Horst Wessel'. It's 'Ding Dong The Wicked Witch Is Dead' from 'The Wizard Of Oz'.  Its words have not proved objectionable to anyone at any other time during the previous 74 years it's been around. Those words themselves are not objectionable now. What is objectionable is the song's adoption by people with an unpleasant agenda - but the words themselves remain as innocent now as they have always been, and the BBC has no actual reason to ban the song on the basis of content. It's not the BBC's fault that some people have given the song a status which would usually mean it would get airtime.

What the right-wing thugs who are complaining about the BBC, an institution they could never create but could smash in moments, is the thought behind its current popularity; and their actions in this matter show them to be just as unsavoury as those who have brought it back into the charts.

On Thatcher And The Coalminers

"It looks like one of the best birthdays I have ever had. There's no sympathy from me for what she did to our community. She destroyed our community, our villages and our people."  -

David Hopper, general secretary of the Durham Miners Association.

It has been disappointing that a lack of charity as black as the creepy Hopper's does not seem to have drawn any kind of rebuke from any Catholic prelate anywhere in the country, perhaps providing some insight into their own attitude to the practice of that most sacred virtue.

There's a lot of crap being spoken about miners and mining right now, so I suppose it's OK for me to add my own shovelful to the pile. If one were to adopt Hopper's communitarian approach, I could say that I don't really give a toss about what happened to mining communities, except in the most abstract of all possible senses; I don't come from one, and when push comes to shove it's no skin off my nose whether they survived or not. The lights still came on regardless of whether or not the miners were actually digging coal. Your day comes and your day goes; that's not politics, it's just an immutable fact of life.

And does this vaunted sense of 'community' extend to those who found life on strike unendurable and went back to work? Are they still described by that horrible word 'scabs', as if they were diseased? Hopper's spraying of the word 'community' might be grandiose, but history suggests it might be as selective in its own way as Thatcher's. 

In cities, who really cares about miners' galas anyway? They look like something that should have been described as traditional even when they were relevant; a sort of more macho kind of Morris dancing. Johan Huizinga described societies that thrive on the holding of parades as being primitive, and to outsiders this constant harking back to Golden Ages that never were can seem  ingrown to the point of being culturally retarded.

And that would be entirely the wrong approach to take, for it would be as lacking in charity to miners as David Hopper has been to the bereaved family of a very old and very vulnerable woman, people who've never done him any harm yet who have heard him celebrate their relative's death; a disgusting, despicable, dastardly thing for Hopper to have done. 

I don't agree with Tim Worstall about many things these days, but in this case it is my pleasure, my joy, to come over all Worstallian, and suggest a few reasons why Thatcher's confrontation with the mining unions, and the subsequent decimation of the British coal mining industry, was a good thing for miners. 

Tomorrow, no woman will be widowed in a pit collapse.

Tomorrow, no mother will lose all her sons in a pit collapse. 

Tomorrow, nobody will drown underground when the water pumps in the mine fail. 

Tomorrow, nobody will suffocate underground when the air pumps in the mine fail. 

Tomorrow, nobody will be crushed to death under machinery underground. 

Tomorrow, nobody will be blown up underground when they hit a gas pocket. 

And tomorrow, nobody will breathe coal dust underground, meaning that in years to come nobody will die of any of the legion respiratory terrors which coalmining so horribly bred. 

None of these things will happen tomorrow, thanks to Margaret Thatcher. She might have disrupted some places' sense of 'community', albeit a sense of community that always seems to have been self-policed in a censorious, authoritarian, and, judging by David Hopper's use of the word 'our', extremely controlling manner. But from the point of view of someone who aspires to liberal humanism and a genuine love of one's fellow man for his own sake, she was the best thing that ever happened to the miners of the United Kingdom. 

By destroying that industry she took away its terrible dangers. Would the David Hoppers of this world ever have agreed to automation? They'd have fought it tooth and nail. Anyone who thinks mining was in any way a romantic way of making a living doesn't need to read a history book to be aware of its dangers. In the past three years there have been pit disasters in China, Russia, New Zealand and Chile. Does anyone in their right mind actually pine for this industry? They took on the British government in Britain, the one place in the world where the British government never loses a fight of its own choosing  - did they actually think they were going to win? 

She might have done the right thing for the wrong reasons, but by God she did right by this country's miners. She was the best shop steward they ever had.

Thatcher

As an almost wholly lifelong resident of Glasgow the only sentiment I feel for those who gathered in George Square to celebrate the death of an old woman is disgust. The people who did this are disgusting people, disgusting young people and disgusting old people alike, all of them forgetting the fact that they too will die one day, and all of them forgetting how upsetting it might be for their families to see people who didn't know their loved ones celebrating the fact of their deaths. This was an indecent display by indecent people.

Sir Mark Thatcher and The Hon. Carol Thatcher have never done the slightest personal harm to any of those people who have so hurtfully and narcissistically intruded on their grief. They have done nothing to merit seeing their mother's death being treated in such a disrespectful manner. Sir Mark's children, Baroness Thatcher's only grandchildren, are in their twenties. What must they now think of this place, and of the type of people who live here? One has no means of speaking to them, but would hope they understand that some of us have been as revolted by that display every bit as much as they might be, or perhaps even have been. Today, Glaswegians who wish to disassociate themselves from those disgusting behaviours should say 'We are all Thatchers'.

PS - 

George Galloway, a former MP for Glasgow Hillhead (although having been a constituent of his you'd never have known it), has written that he hopes Baroness Thatcher burns 'in the hellfires'. There are many of us who have always thought Galloway to be nothing but a shifty wee Dundonian blow-in on the make, but he is as entitled to his views as anyone else. Galloway is a libel lawyer manque of consummate skill, so one would never dream of suggesting that his damning of the dead is the effusion of a second-rate mind - he clearly doesn't have one of those, so I'll settle for describing it as the effusion of a second-rate spirit instead. What goes around always, always comes around; and one day, the off the cuff obituaries being tweeted will be his.

The Death Of Fisking

A prediction regarding the future of British media. 

Celebrities will quickly learn that attempting to restrict the freedom of the press will make them unpopular in other parts of the world, so they will be very sparing in their complaints to the regulator. The advent of the regulator might even cause a decline in the number of libel cases brought against newspapers and journalists.

However, British journalists will be very happy to refer bloggers who fisk their pieces to the regulator.

Di Canio

"Fascism is not for export" - 

Mussolini. 

Regardless of what one might think of The Dogman's abilities either as a footballer or as a political philosopher, one would have thought that such a dedicated tribune of the working classes as David Miliband would be as tolerant of the political views of some working-class Romans as he is of those of some working-class Wearsiders. 

But apparently not. He will, however, be able to tell the massed ranks of the New York globopanjandrumate he is shortly to join that he has taken a stand against a fascist - even if that fascist is probably quite unlikely to be of the proselytising variety. 

Wallies, the pair of them.

'Henry: Virtuous Prince'

The accessibility of Dr. David Starkey's history of the early life of Henry VIII is one of its cardinal virtues.

'Memoirs Of A Radical Lawyer'

The memoirs of Michael Mansfield QC should be required reading for every law student in the country. They're a work of often very great merit, quite befitting a career as meritorious as their author's.

It seems very sad to reflect that even although the United Kingdom now seems to have more human rights lawyers than ever before it might be actually be lacking bona fide radical lawyers of Mr. Mansfield's stamp. When even the human rights lawyers start to adopt a conservative approach, we might be in more trouble than we thought.

Amidst All The Ranting About Michael Philpott's Welfare Dependency...

Has there ever been the slightest suggestion that he received a penny in welfare benefits to which he was not entitled? 

And if he was not a benefit cheat, what possible connection can there be between his status as a benefit claimant and the crimes he committed? Logically, there can be none, so relating his crimes to his welfare status is as illogical as, well, relating his welfare status to his crimes.

Unless, of course, you believe that every benefit claimant is a potential mass killer. Then, it's perfectly logical.

Neobarbarism

If what might be called neopaganism is the consequence of a general retreat from Christianity (although the question of how one can be in retreat from a place one has never fully reached is another matter altogether), the term 'neobarbarism' can probably be used to describe a particular mindset of neopaganism; that mindset that in all things prefers mediocrity to excellence, and demands that things be done without any knowledge of how to do them while also denigrating and devaluing those who do have the relevant knowledge; the mindset that doesn't have a clue about how to build a city, but can plunder and burn one in hours.

Look hard enough, and you will encounter one hundred examples of it every day in every walk and aspect of life.

You Can't Let A Good Mass Killing Of Children Go To Waste

The sentencing of the philoprogenitive Michael Philpott and his wife for the manslaughter of all six of their children merely provides proof, if any more were required, of the depths to which some human beings can stoop. That's all. Hold the front page - sinners sin!

That Philpott and his accomplices killed the children so that he could be portrayed in a positive light in proceedings concerning other children of his by another woman  - and one already hear the faint strumming of banjos in the quiet of the night - perhaps provides as much insight into what goes on in family proceedings in England and Wales as it does on the workings of the welfare state. As ghastly as Philpott's case has been, it is virtually unprecedented. It is so unusual that it cannot provide a safe foundation for the making of any policy of general application; yet George Osborne, who before his entry into Parliament might have been a better class of layabout than Michael Philpott but was a layabout nonetheless, has already used the fact that Philpott was supported by benefits as a stick with which to beat the welfare state. 

This point might have been made already, and I am glad if it has; anyone who uses the fact that Michael Philpott killed his children as a weapon with which to attack the means by which he was supported is using those dead children for their own purposes just as surely as he used them for his.

It would be interesting to see whether any right-wing think tanks (usually a misnomer, the majority being factories for the production of tanked thoughtlessness) have had anything to say about the matter. Just a few weeks ago, I had cause to note that Richard D. North, erstwhile 'writer and broadcaster', seems to have been taken on board by the Institute of Economic Affairs. Mr. North is on record as saying that some severely premature and disabled babies should be eugenically killed, an act that I believe would not be manslaughter but murder. Although Michael Philpott did not mean to kill his children (and although his behaviour was shockingly immoral his economics certainly stand up to scrutiny, if only because he was operating to an incentive), Richard D. North would quite deliberately kill children. I'm sorry, but I don't see a hair's breadth of moral difference between them.

Perhaps Heseltine Does Not Think We Are Poor Enough

This seems to be the only rational conclusion that can be drawn from his apparent observation that we lack the 'national will' to improve our economy. 

His use of a phrase like 'national will' suggests he might have been re-reading Correlli Barnett, God help him; yet nobody ever seems to have picked up on my suggestion that one of the ways in which we could improve our economic standing would be to cease paying luxuriantly generous ministerial pensions to multimillionaires. That would be a perfectly rational place to start improving our finances. If Heseltine's incapable of earning £35,000 a year under his own steam he should be queuing up at the counter in Northampton Job Centre in order to claim his pension along with every other national mendicant. If he's capable of earning over £35,000 a year under his own steam he doesn't need any more money from the rest of us.

One day, historians might consider his observations to be a call for greater European integration, a cause to which Heseltine seems to have dedicated considerable energies; as we clearly lack the will to improve our own lot, will should be imposed on us, and the only likely local contender to do that is the European Union. The self-image of men like Lord Heseltine always seems to be based on them being those who ask the tough questions to which they expect straight answers; a tough question which should be asked of him, and one to which a very straight answer should be expected, is whether approves of international financial authorities seizing for themselves the right to directly pillage private funds under the mantle of claiming to be providing 'assistance', which is precisely what they are doing to the Cypriots. If it is the case that he does approve, it would make a mockery of everything he has ever said in support of the ownership of private property.

No matter how much one might like to, it would of course be impolite to write something like 'Bugger off, Tarzan' in response to Lord Heseltine, for he is old now; meaning that perhaps he possibly isn't taken very seriously by David Cameron, someone who, unlike Lord Heseltine, has actually managed to become the leader of the Conservative Party - and that's not exactly been the highest of bars to cross at the best of times.

A Couple Of Random Thoughts About Pope Francis

Now that the predictable muck about him having collaborated with the generals has been comprehensively debunked by, er, the Argentinians (the British press seem able to access manure so readily one wonders whether they all hold shares in Fisons), it's going to be very interesting to hear what he has to say at his first meeting with President Obama; and it might not be unconnected to his experience of having lived under a junta.

Having shepherded a flock through fields in which wolves could snatch and kill any of the sheep at any time without warning, one wonders just what he might have to say about those who would destroy the flock from the sky. Jorge Mario Bergoglio on drone killings - that's going to be good. 

By the same token, it will be very interesting to see whether he elects to reanimate the renewing spirit of Vatican II. By this, I mean reining in the wild cards on the periphery by emphasising the healing power of obedience to the magisterium.

Words beyond count have been written about the decline in Mass attendance, increased lapsation, yadda yadda yadda. I have a theory about all this, which I'm going to share with you - the decline in the practice of Catholicism in the so-called 'First World' is down to Catholics. There, I said it. It's not because society became more liberal, or because we became more prosperous, or because Aberdeen won the European Cup Winners Cup, or because Darth Vader turned out to be Luke Skywalker's father, or any other non-reason we can think up to justify our own failures; it's because for some reason best known to themselves, some Catholics decided that the more open atmosphere of dialogue introduced by Vatican II somehow gave them licence to think that their opinions mattered more than they really did, leading many of them set up individual magisteria, vividly real personal papacies, inside their own heads. The lapsation of Catholic children could be just as much the fault of them having been shown bad example in the home by parents with too high a view of their own importance in the grand scheme as things as by them having been seduced by consumerism (an intellectually flaccid argument at the best of times, and also one grossly disrespectful to the lapsed; if they were not taught Catholicism in the home, where else were they to learn it - the Catholic schools? If they were not shown good example in all aspects of their faith in the home, how else were they supposed to learn Catholicism? Osmosis?)

Yes, I'm afraid this might yet be another of those cases in which we really can blame those bloody Boomers. Obedience to the magisterium is obedience to the magisterium and not clericalism, regardless of whatever some gobby old Boomer who wouldn't know clericalism if it came up to him and stared him in the face has to say about it. His type have spent their lives talking, talking, talking, always talking, always too arrogant to be silent and listen, always thinking of the killer question never asked, the smart comeback never delivered, to the possible detriment of their descendants' salvation. When their Pope very gently tells them to be quiet and listen, they will be lost for words - and not before time.

The Death Of Boris Berezovsky

Having written a very great deal about Boris Berezovsky, and been very greatly concerned about his influence over British public life, it was nonetheless saddening to hear that he had passed away.

Once a dangerous man to be around, I hope he's now at last at peace. He seems to have had little here.

My condolences to his family.

Random Thoughts On Nothing Much Of Consequence

With his trademark unappealing smirk on his face, his pendulous chins aquiver, The Tartanissimo has announced that a referendum on whether Scotland should divide from the Union will be held on 18 September 2014.

Being petty and provincial - indeed having no rationale other than being petty and provincial - the SNP has, I'm sure, more than its own fair share of mythologies and tabus. Nationalist parties in small countries must possess something of the atmosphere of convents or high security prisons, environments in which ordinarily footling matters assume enormous consequence because you just can't escape them. In light of that, it seems likely to me that a date selected so apparently randomly must instead have been chosen with very great care - the anniversary of the signing of the Articles of Bogwhockle, perhaps, or of Pat Kane's first album deal, or the birthday of Blind Willie, or Deaf Hamish, or Mute Tam, or some crap like that, some crap that plays well in Bothyneuk or Yetts o' Pitmuckle but which nobody else has ever heard of. I don't wish El Corpulento any degree of success in what he has set out to do - indeed I hope he fails miserably and publicly, if only because I think he's a bog-standard Scotch authoritarian intent on stamping the country into his image and likeness who by a combination of accident and design (and, above all else, burning, burning ambition) has risen far above his natural position in life, perhaps as a car-clamper or particularly vociferous park warden - but you have to give it to him; he's always, always good for a laugh.

If he wins, we will no doubt be subjected to 'Independence' 'celebrations'. The North Koreans do this sort of stuff well. They have ICBMs, and lissom young women artistically cavorting about with streamers; we would have Buckfast bottles and middle-aged women doing the Highland Fling, joylessly whooping with joyless joy. They have million-strong armies goose-stepping through Pyongyang; we have the Tartan Army, weaving down the road. 

Bring it on.

We had a budget this week. No, me neither. Couldn't give a monkey's. Economics is avarice couched in quadratic drivel. It's guff, and the sooner the scales fall from the eyes of the public the better off we will all be. It is greed given the status of science. It is all nonsense, every last bit of it.

To my knowledge, nobody has ever done the maths on the ratio of the amount of national income lost to benefit fraud against the amount lost to what's described as legitimate tax avoidance. Without in any way condoning benefit fraud - because it's, you know, fraudulent, and therefore another form of lying - it seems to me that the reason that benefit fraud has historically been treated far more harshly than tax avoidance is that it's a fraud perpetrated on people whose only crime has been to fail to avail themselves of a good tax accountant. Why should a tax avoider be concerned about benefit fraud? They're not paying taxes to provide for benefits, so it should be no skin off their noses. 

Mind you, one is entitled to be deeply suspicious of anyone who says they're in favour of 'hard workers', if only because that statement implies you're not then in favour of those who don't work hard; or maybe can't, such as the poor, the sick and the weak. So it's a hearty ex officio Bronx cheer to George Osborne, who I'm sure is a nice guy in private but whose constant public image is one of insufferable arrogance. Keep going on that mousewheel, dude, because you never know when you'll fall off. 

On The Holy Father's Opinion Of The Status Of The Falkland Islands

I don't ever recall any views the late Pope John Paul II might have had regarding the status of the borders of Poland being debated in public, but maybe I missed something.

On Hugh's Law

"Actors are cattle" - 

Alfred Hitchcock.

The Establishment stitch-up on press regulation - the stitching of the mouths of the public lest they offend their betters, that is - should, as I have previously suggested, be known as 'Hugh's Law', in tribute to Hugh Grant, that most vocal and energetic public face of the Hacked Off campaign (today's 'Daily Mail' reports that the old quangocrat is in the mix somewhere, once again proving the truth of the saying that there's no show without Punch). 

Yet during the long silence that awaits us, we can console ourselves by reflecting upon eternal truths; such as that 'The Lair Of The White Worm' will always be crap, no matter what can or can't be said about its star's peformance.

Pace Hazlitt's downer on nicknames, the title of that godawfully stinking movie sounds like a rather good one for the new body's headquarters - don't you?

For The Greater Glory of God

East Kilbride Bus Station isn't really the sort of place where one would usually expect to undergo a life-changing experience, but I suppose it was good a location in which to learn that one's Pope is now an Argentinian Jesuit as any other.

My first reactions were, sadly, not merely Eurocentric but Britocentric, pretty much along the lines of 'Ah, a Pope to push the hot buttons of not one but two different British cultural bigotries! Within twenty-four hours, the articles concerning his views on the Falklands will have appeared, within forty-eight he'll have been accused of collaborating in the Dirty War, and within seventy-two we'll be waging the Counter-Reformation all over again!' In Scotland, the news that the new Pope's an Argie might give those of our neighbours who have been awaiting the Roman Whore's imminent demise for the past, oh, half-millenium something of a spring in their step (given its pitifully small membership of 1.2 billion and counting, it is bound to collapse any day soon; wait and see). While such views must be tolerated with a compassion far closer to charity than condescension, that one will have to suffer them is tiresome; if only because experience dicates that suffer them one must, a state of affairs that says far more about some people in Scotland than it does about the Catholic Church. 

This desperately crappy reaction was stopped, immediately stopped, in its tracks by one thing; the sight of the smile of His Holiness Pope Francis I. You can fake sincerity but you can't fake serenity, and Papa Francesco is serene; the possessor of a prayerful conscience utterly at peace with himself and our God. 

Prayer, prayer, prayer; the reign of Papa Francesco, born under southern stars, will be one of prayer. He will have to travel to Argentina, if only for Auld Lang Syne; he will probably have to travel to the United States, if only for the sake of good form; it wouldn't surprise me if he travels to at least one Muslim nation (it would be wonderful if he were able to travel to Russia, God willing); but otherwise it wouldn't surprise me if he otherwise hunkers down to the high and severe work of cleaning the Church from the inside out. His work will first and foremost be in Rome. Enter the Jesuit; and it is telling that the Holy Spirt has sent us a Jesuit to do classic Jesuit work, putting an heir of the Counter-Reformation to work at the heart of Our Church, his clean hands unbound in pursuit of the Curial reform which sadly seems to be needed; and a non-European one at that, perhaps a welcome and necessary reminder to us Europeans that we are not the only players in the game by any manner of  means, and that The Pope is there for all souls; a leader for all corners of the world.

Wasn't the way he introduced himself to us just wonderful? Just saying 'Hi', and then inviting prayers for himself before leading thousands of people in the three simple prayers that all Catholics know? Wasn't that just fantastic, just so reassuring? Before wishing everyone goodnight? Prayer, prayer, prayer, prayer and simplicity and humility; wonderful. 

May Papa Francesco continue to do what he has done for over fifty years; give and not count the cost, toil and not seek for rest, fight and not heed the wounds, labour and not seek any reward -  and if that peaceful soul from the southern Atlantic ever remembers his flock at that great ocean's northern extremes, may he pray for us here in Scotland, that we might receive every grace and blessing.

Ad Maiorem Dei Gloriam, 'For The Greater Glory of God'; tonight, the motto of the Society of Jesus is more relevant than ever. Deo Gratias!

The Roman Spring Of The Broken Bread

"Do not be like those people who think they are inaugurating a new era: as if before they came along there had been nothing but emptiness or chaos" - 

Blessed Pope John XXIII. 

The events which have been visited upon the Catholic Church, both in Scotland and around the world, in recent weeks have certainly thrown up some interesting developments. 

Via Twitter, the celebrity road traffic lawyer Nick Freeman has told the world that the report he made to Lothian and Borders Police alleging criminal behaviour by Cardinal O'Brien is not being pursued any further; an outcome against which you might not have got odds at William Hill's, but one he nevertheless describes as 'disgusting'. It is interesting to see that Mr. Freeman's Twitter address (that might be the wrong lingo, but not being a Twitter user, thank God, that service's terminology is utterly meaningless to me) is '@TheMrLoophole'; in the wake of this exercise, loopholes might not be the only type of holes with which his name could be associated.

Potholes! That was the word I was looking for! Potholes - yes, that was it. 

What can only be described as the absolutely bloody ghastly news that the Scottish Bishops' Conference didn't do enough about priests suspected of abuse is not going to be the nail in the coffin of Our Church here that a perhaps not insignificant number of our neighbours might like it to be. It is beyond words that such things have ever happened anywhere, never mind have been alleged to have happened here. Was drink, the Celtic curse, a factor in these cases? It certainly seems to have been a factor in the case of Cardinal O'Brien. Do some of our priests drink too much? While alcoholism among the clergy is certainly not unknown, is there a drinking culture among our clergy? I don't know, but when a member of the College of Cardinals feels that he must absent himself from conclave on account of serial sub-standard behaviours in which having been in drink seems to have been a consistent thread the new Pope might consider adding a vow of sobriety to those already required for ordination to the priesthood.  

And take the bars out of the seminaries, for such adornments don't belong in such places. 

Such a universally crappy response to abuse allegations as that which has been revealed as having been made by the Scottish Bishops' Conference, with no apparent thought being given at all - none at all, the callously  legalistic posture of 'taking a position' apparently being preferable to driving perverts out of parish houses with whips and scorpions, all motivated by the low and mean mindset of 'protecting the Church's reputation', a mindset derived from educated men still seeming to possess the EQ's of those of their uneducated ancestors whose most natural form of communication was the lie, a mindset which in Scotland is now ingrained and is becoming as ingrown as a fungal toenail - to the needs of children, blessed, innocent children, who have been hurt by priests  - nobody else - priests! - is the sort of macabre horror story of clericalistic neglect that one could only hope happened somewhere else, if it ever had to happen anywhere at all (which it didn't). But it happened here, and that which should have been exposed many years ago has finally come out  - as if it ever wouldn't have, once again showing that no matter how well-acquainted some bishops might be with the Apocrypha of Egbert of Worksop, nor how pure their Greek, a number of them are bloody naive. Sometimes it seems that the seminaries can churn out dolts as effectively as the business schools. May anyone, anywhere who suffered at the hands of a priest as a child forgive that priest; if they feel they cannot, may they at least not hate God. God is good, and God is love - and He will deal with the abuser in His way, and in His own time. You have His word for it.

Yet as horrible as all this has been, it does not in anyway undermine Our Church's moral authority. It fatally undermines the individual authority of those men who were members of the Scottish Bishop's Conference and who did not do enough to protect the children who were in their care as surely as the priests who abused those children were in their care. That is it. Blanket references to 'The Catholic Church' in the context of such reports as these are meaningless. The Church is all Catholics, not merely the creature and plaything of its bishops, thank God. Renewing the message that Our Church's moral authority remains intact might be a vital task for our next Pope. 

The quotation from Blessed Pope John XIII which I reproduced at the top of this essay is an interesting one, if only because it provides an obvious insight into his aims for the Second Vatican Council. 

He was certainly no revolutionary; he was really quite down on those who think they are inaugurating new eras.

He did not intend to reinvent the Church, nor remake it his own image and likeness in the way in which Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws and her opera buffa claque 'Catholic Scholars Declaration On Authority' -  a group of people who sound as if they could do with reading what the man who initiated Vatican II had to say about his ideas for it before forming their own ideas for it - might wish to remake it in theirs. 

He did not intend to liberate it, for he had no need to do so; it was not imprisoned.

What he did intend was that it be renewed in the same way that the Earth is renewed each spring, when that which is already there is given a new lease of life, its essence unchanged but its spirit renewed; not a new Passion, but a new Pentecost. In recent years, there has been much talk of 'Springs', of the 'Prague Spring', the 'Arab Spring', and so on. Blessed Pope John XIII intended to have a Roman Spring, not a Spring of guns and discord but a natural one of sunshine and gentle renewing rain causing the fertile ground of Holy Church to burst forth with life anew. For that, some dare declare that he never was a Pope. 

Of course, that sublime and most humane of men did not survive to see the great work he initiated come to completion. Had he lived, and with no disrespect to his saintly successor Pope Paul VI, events might have taken a different turn. Last night, it was startling to read the views expressed by the late Father Divo Barsotti on Vatican II - 

"I am perplexed with regard to the Council: the plethora of documents, their length, often their language, these frightened me. They are documents that bear witness to a purely human assurance more than to a simple firmness of faith. But above all I am outraged by the behavior of the theologians.”

"The Council is the supreme exercise of the magisterium, and is justified only by a supreme necessity. Could not the fearful gravity of the present situation of the Church stem precisely from the foolishness of having wanted to provoke and tempt the Lord? Was there the desire, perhaps, to constrain God to speak when there was not this supreme necessity? Is that the way it is? In order to justify a Council that presumed to renew all things, it had to be affirmed that everything was going poorly, something that is done constantly, if not by the episcopate then by the theologians.”

"Nothing seems to me more grave, contrary to the holiness of God, than the presumption of clerics who believe, with a pride that is purely diabolical, that they can manipulate the truth, who presume to renew the Church and to save the world without renewing themselves. In all the history of the Church nothing is comparable to the latest Council, at which the Catholic episcopate believed that it could renew all things by obeying nothing other than its own pride, without the effort of holiness, in such open opposition to the law of the gospel that it requires us to believe how the humanity of Christ was the instrument of the omnipotence of the love that saves, in his death.”

Strong stuff. If Father Barsotti was correct (and he probably was, if only because the upstarts of 'Catholic Scholars Declaration On Authority' seem to provide the proof), history would seem to provide a direct analogy for the behaviour of those theologians who might thus have twisted Blessed Pope John XIII's intentions for the Council for their own purposes; the notorious Jacobins of the French Revolution, starting out in their grotty little club and staying at the heart of things until they had twisted the noble spirit of 1789 into the horrific madness and slaughter of The Great Terror. That which started out as one thing turned within a very few years into another thing altogether, with the minority ruthlessly imposing its view on the majority and all of it done from the top, all predicated by their mistaken assumption that an air of greater openness had given them absolute licence to behave in any way they saw fit.

Such states of affairs cannot go on forever, which always means they don't; no actual heads have rolled down the steps of St. Peter's Basilica, of course, and perhaps far fewer metaphorical ones than might have been in order, but the same spirit of internal perversion of authority, of persons at the centre of events making themselves the focus of events, that was abroad in the National Assembly might just have been roaming Our Church. This is one of those many times in life when one can only Thank God for God, for having directed Joseph Ratzinger into the course of action that He has, and for giving that most humble servant of His the words to tell his successor the nature of his task, and the courage to do it in front of the world's media. February 28 was not and was never going to be 9 Thermidor; it's far more important than that.

I hope, I hope, that our new Pope, whichever mother's son he might be, will commence his work in the spirit of Good Pope John (and he was such a good Pope!), working to renew us, and give us new life of the spirit. In the middle of this most lenten Lent, a new Roman Spring might soon be upon us, one in which the gentle rain not merely renews and gives new life but cleanses; for The Broken Bread hung upon the Cross for the world, not only for his priests, and His house must be clean.

Secret Courts

Earlier today, I realised that the aformentioned interventions, unwelcome or otherwise, made by the eminent lawyers Nick Freeman and Baroness Kennedy Of The Shaws (I'm sorry to be so uncharitable, but it's really hard to type that without giggling) in the case of Cardinal O'Brien follow hard on the heels of Lord Neuberger's public criticism of plans to introduce secret courts. 

Although such courts might perhaps be termed 'Inquisitions', they obviously present no danger to British civil liberties; if only because lawyers as competent and well-known as Freeman and Kennedy feel able to devote the time that they have done to the case of Keith O'Brien while the President of the Supreme Court has been airing his concerns. 

On Baroness Kennedy Of The Shaws

The erstwhile Helena Kennedy from Pollokshaws (there are no other 'Shaws' in that part of the South Side of Glasgow from which she hails, other, of course, than those which might be conjured in the mind through strained allusions to 'Kidnapped', a book which, regardless of the fact that its author is the greatest writer Scotland has ever produced, should always be considered a juvenile work for juveniles) has remarked of Cardinal O'Brien that,

"I feel very sad for him and for his victims."

It is surprising to see such a notable lawyer, never mind one so publicly committed to the advance of human rights, not only form a view on matters in respect of which they must be presumed to have no sure knowledge of the facts but also fail to refrain from expressing it. From my own experience of having been a lawyer (if only a humble country solicitor, as far below One Of Her Majesty's Counsel as the mud is below the stars), if this is not actually a vulgar habit among the brethren it is most certainly a common one.

Baroness Kennedy's Wikipedia page makes no reference to her being a university graduate; West of Scotland doily gossip is that she isn't one, and that she was talent-spotted by some panjandrum who found themself washed ashore at the University of Glasgow one day, who then whisked her down the road to Bigger And Better Things (given that she was female, provincial, radical, ethnic and Catholic, one might imagine there were few boxes she did not manage to tick: she isn't gay, but then again nobody's perfect). 

If that is the case, then, with obvious contextual adjustments, and with no disrespect to either lady, the parallels between her career and that of Susan Boyle are startling.

A Brief View On Nick Freeman's Reporting Of Cardinal O'Brien To The Police

As a founder member of The Nick Freeman Appreciation Society, it was with some surprise that I learned that he has made a formal complaint about Cardinal O'Brien to Lothian and Borders Police. 

Allegations of sexual offences committed in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of St. Andrews and Edinburgh are some way off Mr. Freeman's usual beat of contraventions of the Road Traffic Acts committed in the Greater Manchester Police area, and although having run a red light in Oldham does not thus far seem to have been included in the corpus of the cardinal's misdeeds one supposes that given what's been revealed already we should prepare ourselves for anything. As his name usually appears in the papers when he's defending celebrities, in reporting a celebrity to the police Mr. Freeman might, in this instance, in some sense be acting as poacher turned gamekeeper, an example of even-handedness which every solicitor ever unfairly accused of partisanship should pray in aid. 

While this is the first time that mention of police action against the cardinal has been made, one is perfectly sure that Mr. Freeman has not undertaken this action for the sole purpose of getting either his name or that of his firm into the newspapers; nor that although his brave step in instigating a criminal complaint, in a part of the country in which he doesn't usually feature situated within a jurisdiction in which his firm doesn't usually practice (indeed, for all I know one in which he himself might not be qualified to practice), would of necessity expose him to the risk of being sued for malicious prosecution should his complaint prove to be unfounded, he has not factored in that the object of his complaint is, like everyone else, compelled to turn the other cheek when subjected to an injustice - and would therefore be unlikely to sue.

Let us hope, therefore, that the law is allowed to take its course; and that all parties receive both the justice and the mercy they deserve.

A Few Short Thoughts On Cardinal O'Brien's Admissions

I can't agree with Professor Tom Devine that the recent scandal which has enveloped Cardinal Keith O'Brien is the worst thing to affect the Catholic Church in Scotland since the Reformation; that might be pushing it, although I certainly think it's the most damaging scandal to have affected us since the restoration of the Scottish hierarchy in 1879.

The cardinal has admitted misconduct, in my view honourably and humbly; I may be wrong, but I think that his decision to select a life of seclusion, rather than have seclusion imposed upon him (by no means the foregone conclusion of any Vatican enquiry), is a first for any prelate of the modern era, anywhere, who has admitted allegations of this type. That in itself speaks volumes for the quality of a character which has been savaged in the media for over a week, 'The Scottish Sun's' recent publication of a photograph of him standing beside a pre-mortem Jimmy Savile marking a low point. 

Following his admission, it was announced that his accusers have forgiven him. Although one can wonder why some or all of them felt it necessary to go the press, if only because it is perfectly legitimate for consenting adults to engage in acts of reconciliation behind closed doors if they so wish, their public forgiveness of a public admission of guilt is the mark of truly Christian consciences. Although a reconciliation in which the seal of the confessional is replaced by the confidentiality of sources might be considered by some to be irregular, the blackness of one's own sins means one should never presume to judge the sincerity of others' forgiveness; to do so would be to deny the  terms of The Lord's Prayer, and I ain't doing that.

The Love Of Money Is The Root Of All Evil

Watching 'The Big Questions' on BBC 1 yesterday morning, it was a delight to see an old acquaintance of this blog yet again seeming to want to stick the boot into the weak and disempowered, a pastime at which he is apparently so accomplished that he could list it as a recreation in 'Who's Who' (if he ever becomes important enough to merit inclusion); none other than Richard D. North, erstwhile 'writer and broadcaster', now appearing on behalf of something called 'The Institute of Economic Affairs' (I know, I know, it could just be a man, a boy and a toaster outfit run from above a kebab shop in Lambeth but when you're his age it must sound better than having to describe yourself as merely being a 'writer and broadcaster').

Mr. North first came to my attention when he appeared on the same show on the 6th of March 2011, calling for 'a very tough discussion on what is frankly eugenics", with the objects of his affections being extremely premature children; a topic rather too close to home for comfort. This time, he was the ultra right-wing beard sent out to justify why an energy company was justified in launching a civil action for millions of pounds against two protesters, both of them young women, who had pled guilty to aggravated trespass on its property. At least he didn't say that they were asking for it.

The general impression I have gained from watching Mr. North in action, if such it can be called, on these two occasions has been that while he might believe economics is not a zero-sum game he might also believe that the indulgence of perfectly normal human emotions, such as compassion for the weak and for those who oppose you, is a zero-sum game; perhaps a perfect illustration of the moral teaching that the love of money is the root of all evil.

He isn't really very nice to watch.

On Chris Grayling's Suggestion That The Human Rights Act Might Be Repealed

The Human Rights Act 1998 became settled law so quickly that the only way it will ever be removed from the statute book is by fracking.

All The Pope's Men

As a tired but nevertheless prayerful old Bavarian bowed out, he allowed himself a parting shot heard not merely around the world but in Heaven itself, one that will echo down the arches of the years to the end of time - the new man must clean house at the centre, and he and his successors must keep it clean thereafter.

To describe Benedict's address to his last audience as revolutionary is to overstate the impact of the majority of revolutions. In these days in which no public activity seems to be undertaken without prior consideration of its legacy, if a legacy must be sought from the Ratzinger papacy then this was it, with bells on - a pope has declared the papal bureaucracy to be part of the problem, not the solution, the clerical equivalent of Eisenhower's railings against the military-industrial complex, and life on Vatican Hill will never be the same again.

It would not surprise me in the slightest if the next pope's first orders, given perhaps only days after assuming office, will be to redraw the orders for the holding of conclaves in such a way as to debar cardinals who either are or have been the subjects of civil or criminal process from participating, thus assuring Roger Cardinal Mahony of his rightful place in ecclesiastical history. It will say much for the work of reforming the mechanisms of church government that may soon be underway that one day that particular change may be viewed as being a minor one.

A Short Thought On The Resignation Of Cardinal O' Brien

"The only thing he thought he might be condemned for was for abiding by the terms of the confessional, and if by that action he had offended the king or state, he asked for forgiveness." -

Henry Garnet. 

"Looking back over my years of ministry: For any good I have been able to do, I thank God. For any failures, I apologise to all whom I have offended." - 

Keith Patrick O' Brien.

It will be for history to determine whether Keith Patrick Cardinal O'Brien has just given the people of Scotland a lesson in humility, a godly quality often notable by its absence in this society, that they might do well to heed.

Things You Can't Believe You Really Wrote

"I now believe that, if the right to seek asylum is still to exist under British law, every person seeking that status in the United Kingdom should be compelled to wear an electronic tag."

Belive it or not, that was actually me. 

What a plonker.