C4 School Admissions Documentary

[mailto:Tony.Dillamore@ricochet.co.uk]

My name is Tony Dillamore and I am a researcher on
a Channel 4 Documentary about school admissions. I
hope you do not mind me contacting you out the blue.
For the past 5 months we've been filming various
families around the country as they go through the process
of applying for primary and secondary school places, including
some who will be going to appeal to schools they didn't get in to.

As you are clearly aware, an increasingly common practice is that of
parents attending churches in order to secure school places at affiliated
faith schools. Our view is very much that the vast majority of these
parents are forced into considering this option, against their will,
whether they are agnostic or atheist. The simple fact is that faith
schools continue to deliver results, and in areas where the alternative
options are failing schools what other possible route is there than to
suspend one’s personal beliefs in order to secure that priests’ reference
and in turn that school place?

I am writing to you to ask if you know specifically of anybody who is
currently considering, or has in the past considered, this ‘option’ for
a decent, state funded comprehensive education. If you are not aware of
any individuals perhaps you could point me in the direction of a group or
website where I might better reach people who may be facing such a dilemma.

As both a company and a production we are thoroughly versed in the
requirements of filming topics of such contention. Any filming would of
course be fully agreed with the potential contributor and our documentary
will not be airing until October 2006 and therefore have no impact upon
current school applications. If needs be we would be happy to interview
people in anonymity if they felt more comfortable talking to us in this
way.

We really are only a small crew - 3 people including a camaraman and are, at
this stage, simply wishing to have a brief chat with people for whom this issue
is a real concern. If you are at all interested, or can assist in any way do let
me know and I can tell you more about our programme.
Many thanks.
Best wishes.
Tony Dillamore

Government wants to excuse oppression on religious grounds

Spencer Fitz-GibbonGreen Party executive
New equality laws look set to be weakened by a New Labour exemption clause allowing religious employers to sack people for non-conformity with their religious doctrine - for example because they are of the "wrong" religion, are atheists or are gay.

The Independent on Sunday reports that the government considers it acceptable that an employer should discriminate "so as to comply with the doctrines of [their] religion - or so as to avoid conflicting with the strongly held religious convictions of a significant number of the religion's followers".

The Independent writes that the government introduced changes to excuse "discrimination against atheists or others who do not share the religious beliefs of their employer... following strong lobbying from evangelical groups. One of the biggest loopholes allows an employer to dismiss or fail to hire an individual if he is 'not satisfied' that they fit his own 'ethos based on religion or belief'." The Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement has said that the move would institutionalise homophobia in a way that "makes Section 28 look like a tea party".

Here are some views from within the Green Party:
"There is no justification, religious or otherwise, for discriminating against employees because of their sexuality" Darren Johnson AM, Leader of the Greens on the London Assembly and a vice president of the Gay and Lesbian Humanist Association.

"Blair has betrayed the Lesbian, Gay & Bisexual community. This amendment has nothing to do with equality and everything to do with prejudice. Just when society had finally started to build bridges, Blair has turned the clocks back and confirmed our second-class status. This 'permission to discriminate', and the accompanying media attention, will stir up a climate of prejudice and fear, and make work a misery for many."Nigel Tart, Green Party spokesperson on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Issues. "Using 'religious-based' institutions as the starting point for an attack on individual people's well-established personal rights must be exposed for what it is - an undercover and highly dangerous attack on human rights. It is all too symptomatic of this government's lurch to the Right.

The Green Party will continue to speak out against populist sentiments which deny our deepest human freedoms."Janet Alty, Green Party spokesperson on Responsibilities and Rights

More abortion - NOW!

Now we have American-styled anti-abortion idiots over here! [Well, just one so far]. A jolly good reason for more abortion is to reduce the chance of producing phony vicars like "James Dowson, a self-styled vicar, who is a former member of the Orange Lodge in Northern Ireland who uses tactics akin to animal rights extremists."

He's been commandeered by the American fools to target schools and doctors over here by publishing their addresses and encouraging a deluge of hate letters and emails.

If you feel like sending him a letter to tell him what a twat he is, you can write to James Dowson, The Life League, First Base, Trafalgar House, Piccadilly, London W1. Or email: webmaster@uklifeleague.com

March for freedom of expression: London, yesterday.

Freedom to make your own banner, as long as it didn't show the Danish cartoons! The police had 'words' with someone who had tried to display them. That was just the freedom of speech of the police though, right?

No sign of Micky Mouse though.

<

The crowd looking very 'free'.

Oops, it's the police filming the protestors. That's them expressing their freedom to film. No problemo.

Old Aaron Barschak turned up to do a quick jig - otherwise known as the "Comedy Terrorist" [mainly because he's more terrorfying than funny]

See the blog for the march here

Someone cheated on my fun run!

I did complete my first fun run a couple of weeks ago. It was 8k [5 miles] which I completed in 52.40 mins, otherwise known as 'not terribly fast'. But look at this revealing picture from the race! I did not realise fun-levitation was allowed! I'm enlisting David Blane as my new trainer.

Here was my original email to my friends, and I'm pleased to say I raised a total of £16! {All from the same person}. I'm sure that is nearly enough bone for a little toe, which makes it all worth it.

Hello chums,
I am doing my first ever 'charidee' (kinda fun) run on Sunday March the 5th 2006. It's only 8k, that's about 5 miles (not £8,000), so why not join me (and my friend)? Or come and laugh at me (and my friend)? Don't really, that'll put me off.

I'm just letting you know to boast really and make you feel ashamed that you're not doing it too. Unless you are. If you like you can sponsor me by giving some money to the Anthony Nolan trust (Bone marrow/ Leukemia) You can simultaneously guess how long you think it will take me, and I will give the closest-guessing winner a prize of something really cool and excellent, like an unwanted xmas present. (Though not a present that you gave me of course, because that was great. [If you didn't give me a present, why not? I love presents]).

To help you guess how long it may take me, I've estimated an hour. I hope I'm wrong because I really don't want to win the prize. I've only trained (jogged round the block) three times so far, but am determined to keep up this pace right up until the race. Unless it rains, or I feel like I can't be bothered any more.

Have I inspired you? Here's a link to the race in case you want to join me. (There's also a 3k run on the same day for lazy people [shame on them]). If you are going to send me money, please give it to me after the race in case I decide to spend it on crisps instead of bone marrow. Or in case I send another email in a week saying, 'ha ha, I was only joking about the running thing, sitting down is far superior'. But if you are going to guess my time, please do that before the race, for obvious reasons.

Microbes are the new creationists...

Life on Earth may have driven the evolution of the planet itself - microbes could have provided the chemical energy to create the Earth's continents.

LIFE on Earth may have driven the evolution of the planet itself. The idea is that ancient microbes provided the chemical energy to create the Earth's continents - a nod to the Gaia hypothesis, in which life helps create the conditions it needs to survive.

The theory would solve the puzzle of why the Earth's continental crust appeared when it did, and explain the presence of granite, a substance not found anywhere else in our solar system.
The Earth formed 4.6 billion years ago, coalescing as a homogeneous mass that in time separated into the discrete layers we know today: the core, mantle and crust, plus oceans and atmosphere. However, during the first 600 to 800 million years of Earth's existence there were no stable continents. The oldest vestiges of continental crust, which date from the Archaean aeon about 4 billion years ago, are in Acasta in north-west Canada.

[Original article care of New Scientist]

Archbishop rejects creationism in schools

What have we come to when it's the Archbishop who talks more sense about creationism than our politicians?

Though his argument is of course a little dodgy:

"I think creationism is ... a kind of category mistake, as if the Bible were a theory like other theories ... if creationism is presented as a stark alternative theory alongside other theories I think there's just been a jarring of categories ... "

I editted it slightly to make him sound more rational.

Full story

Nameless

While talking to a friend last night who has read my blog, he said that for people who don't know me they may get the impression that I am a loony, but in reality I am sane. In light of this travesty, I have written a very sane poem tonight.


Dany, you've never been attacked
You've never been broken into
As an adult anyway
So stop pretending life could get any better

Dany, you should be more grateful to life
and don't be ashamed that you'd like to lick concrete
and that you live in a bony old shack

Dany, remember you are perfect
and don't take nuclear war too personally
The best thing I want for you is to not daydream so much
that you are magic
and can do plastic surgery on people you pass in the street

Creationism to be in GCSE papers

Creationist theories about how the world was made are to be debated in GCSE science lessons in mainstream secondary schools in England.
Full depressing article here.

and here.

Girl Cops?

Tonight there was a TV programme on BBC1 called 'Girl Cops'. I switched on expecting to see that crazed children had infiltrated the police force, so imagine my disappointment to discover that the title was a complete misnomer. The programme was in fact about fully grown, adult female police officers. How could this have happened? Could it be... could it be... blatant and shameful utter lowbrow archaic sexism? They would never put on a programme about male police officers called 'Boy Cops'. How fucking patronising can you fucking get?

Oh look! You can complain here in just a baby, not fully grown, moment.

Hair today

I'm looking at two people in the lecture hall from behind, and thinking how similar their hair is. I wonder, if they wake up in the morning with each others hair, will they notice? I think they will but I don't know how quickly or how they'll make sense of it. Would they tell people that they've woken up with someone else's hair? Would they think they must have made a mistake and not have noticed the quality of their hair before? Would they go to the doctor [or hairdresser] or be scared of being thought of as mad?

It's good to express anger I've heard

I'm still so angry at Exxx and Sxxxxx, mainly Exxx. [Even though it’s all Sxxxxx's fault.] I really don’t think I've ever been so angry in my life. Certainly not for such a sustained period. Or maybe I was, I was angry at Simon for many years. It felt similar actually.

I'm angry because I feel so powerless. I'm not really used to feeling powerless. There was always something I could do to get things to be in my favour or at the very least, fair. But Exxx is swivelling on her power like a big fat dildo and thoroughly enjoying needlessly making me stay in this subordinate position. There is absolutely no reason for her to do it except to lap up the power she has. She is needlessly spiteful. She has no reason whatsoever apart from that she must enjoy being mean.

Once she allows me to cut the ties with her, once she releases me [and she has to one day, however long she prolongs it], the bitch, I'm going to do her. I'm going to do her up like a kipper, or however the expression goes. I'm going to lightly and ever so politely write an article about her antics and have it printed in the most prestigious journals. The journals where she sucks her lifeblood from the meek who worship her. She has been queen of the exi-fucking-stential jungle too long! Move over Queeny...

This is not a poem

Psychopaths gesture to me.
They give me signals.
And symbols.
Psychopaths think they can pick up signals and symbols
of things with greater meaning;
they also give signals to the world.

I don’t just see the psychopaths.
I pick up on their distorted world.
I feel vulnerable to psychopaths
like they can trap me in their world
because they know that I know their world.
Or at least it feels to me as though they do.
I feel as though they pick on me
because they know I’m susceptible.

When people are ‘seeing’ another world from that of reality,
I just look at them
and somehow I can see their world.
I fear I could fall straight in.
When I see their worlds,
they recognise me
And give me the signal
Trying to lure me in.

I’ve never gone further than a few sentences with most psychopaths
since I’ve been an adult (real adult).
But I was almost always living in someone’s distorted world
where nothing fitted
When I was a child
I was living in my own distorted world.
I wonder if I was drugged.
I’m not actually sure.
It seems I was on drugs as a child.
Unless it was my mind creating dreamy altered realities as a way of coping.

I tried to give people the signal
When I was a child
But no one ever did anything

Near Death Experiences

When I was about 13 I had a near death experience and this is what happened...

I was in a pitch black tunnel slowly moving towards a bright light at the end. The light felt wonderful, and I knew that if I reached it I would die and it would feel great - like a complete release from all the tension I have from simply being alive. But as I started moving towards the light a voice said to me "Are you sure there's nothing left in your life that you wanted to do first?" It was my voice. I thought about it and realised that there were some important things, so I came back, and didn't die!

Before this experience I hadn't come across the whole 'white light at the end of a tunnel' thing before, so I wasn't influenced by other people's stories. But years later I saw a video of a born again christian saying that he rediscovered god because of a near death experience he had. When he described it, it was identical to my experience, except that for him the voice that asked him if he had anything else he wanted to do on earth was the voice of god.

For him this confirmed there was a god. But he had been brought up a christian, although had since turned against it, whereas I had been brought up an atheist, so there was no question that the voice was my own.

Ah, Jebus loves you...

Strange random overheard conversation: 2

Two women on the tube:
"What about your mum, what would she say?"
"Oh my mum's useless... All she says is 'Oh you have to live your life exactly as you like'. I mean, what use is that? She doesn't understand how complicated it is."

I thought, most people would want a mum who said they should live their life exactly how they want, but this woman still found fault with it. She'll probably purposely be the opposite for her children by imposing strict ideas. Silly cyclical psychology.

Itchy cold hairs

Wondering about the evolutionary cause for the little hairs inside my nostrils to make me want to itch them, and I think it's the lil cold and flu bugs that flew passed, and are sitting there wanting to nestle deeper inside in the moistness, so they give off itchy chemicals so I itch and in so doing push them in further where they can breed.

Single thought, single sentence.