I had to attend Church or Sermons of that kind, at school and sometimes in the school holidays. Perhaps what I did not realize at the time was that attending meant I was effectively a "captive audience". Given an alternative I'd decide that if I'd attended once or twice I'd attend all the times.
Sometimes you'd get a speaker with something interesting to say. Mostly, there would be various "sermons" from the bible about all sorts of things that I honestly had no clue as to their actual relevance but just seemed like oft-repeated phrases for their familiarity effect than anything very insightful. I did well in school at Religious Education, usually coming top in the class or year group, so it was not a question of not understanding it. But I found it so boring. I suppose looking back now, the essence of the practice was that "Whatever was the core idea" was there to "keep us safe" or "look after us" if we "behaved in the right way" eg prayers, good thoughts and actions and so on. This seems to be a role the present govern sermonizes to us about today, I would make the tentative comparision?
I always felt so sleepy in these sessions too. The essence of what was said, I never had a problem with. I think what made it boring was that it was beyond denial or beyond demonstration or example; it was like talking about something so very long ago and not very relevant to today. I actually really like churches and love seeing these old buildings all over the UK, and some of the materials in the Christian tradition as well as some works overall have a good balance of aiming for positive ethos and value system which I think are central to education, too. But that's when and after you strip out a helluva lot of "fluff" or "filler" or "packaging" that's complete garbage.
So this is all meandering preamble to the topic at hand in this blog: Security. I noticed in the previous blog that the Government was targeting families for the "Risk" factor that will hit hardest with them. Then we looked at the narrative shaping, "Good vs Bad (Obama vs Putin) and this leads to the other side: "Security" to go with "Risk". I just watched the complete garbage on offer on BBC Newsnight:-
Would the UK Be Safer In Or Out of the EU?
"Newsnight focuses on security and asks whether the UK would be safer in or out of the EU. Would the UK's standing in the world change if the UK votes to leave?"
If there's one thing I'm going to take away from this absurd politics today, that's bubbling away and beginning to boil over, due to the "fright" that Direct Democracy is giving the politicians, it's the complete crassness and propaganda of the politics that's taken for something serious or useful; it seems fit only for widely-read and familiar fiction or even good science-fiction:-
Quoting "General Jackson" or "Jens Stoltenberg" is absolutely absurd.
I think parading talk of security on the airwaves is a bit like being stuck in a church sermon: You have no actual choice on it but it IS for your own good! This was made very visible during the anti-war marches and protests against Iraq War during Tony Blair's Prime Ministership. Such matters as "Security" are too important for voters to get in the way of, it seems. Yet the results of these decisions don't actually in my opinion back up such an "elitist view" of this subject as Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Ukraine all appear to point out: UK or EU, both.
"Having lost the ability to legislate over huge tranches of activity that were once the exclusive provenance of Parliament – mainly because the EU has been handed the power – our Government has acquired the singularly unhealthy habit of asking Parliament to impose binding legislation on itself.
First it was the Climate Change Act, committing us to pay £1.3 trillion, so I suppose we should be relieved that, this time, Parliament is only being asked to commit us to spending 0.7 percent of national income.
The deal, of course, is overseas aid – labelled in less PC times as foreign aid. But just to make us feel a little happier about it a bunch of Conservative MPs, led by Tory MPs Philip Davies and Jacob Rees-Mogg, gathered together in a forlorn attempt to kill off the Bill.
However, it was indeed a forlorn hope, as MPs voted by 146 to six to allow the Bill to proceed, and the legislation has now completed its stages through the Commons.
As it stands, we are committed to donating £12 billion a year "voluntarily", although this may have to go up by another billion over the next two years as the new system for assessing GNI cuts in – the same that has added £1.7bn to out EU contributions. This is a far larger sum than is disbursed by any other EU state and, among the world's big nations, only the US spends more.
The Financial Times thinks it is "hugely to the credit" of David Cameron's government, and his Labour predecessors, that Britain maintains a noble aspiration to assist the world's poor. But at a time of immense pressure on public finances, is says, it is reasonable to question the rigidity of the UK's commitment to international development spending.
The figure, we are reminded, goes back to the 1960s when the World Council of Churches declared that governments of the developed world should devote 0.7 percent of their gross national income to international aid. It was then adopted as a target by Mr Cameron's coalition, helping to soften the Tories' "nasty party" image."
Afghanistan: admissions of failure
"It is all very well having these ex post facto confessionals, but the point is – as we have argued here again and again - it was obvious at the time that the campaign was failing and was doomed to failure. So obvious was it that, in July 2008, we wrote a 12-part analysis called "Winning the War", setting out why we thought things were going wrong.
Now for these highly-paid incompetents to be admitting that they got things wrong, when they were paid to get it right – and amply rewarded with rank, baubles and privileges for so doing – is simply not good enough.
But the worst of it is that nothing will change. It has only taken the Army five years as a corporate body to convince itself that it scored a stunning victory in Iraq, despite the evidence I record in Ministry of Defeat. By the time the whitewash machine has completed its work, the Army will emerge unblemished from Afghanistan as well.
And nor do I buy the Oborne line that this was a case of "Lions led by donkeys". For sure, amongst the very small fraction of troops in theatre who actually saw combat, there were some amazingly brave people. But there were crass, ill-informed decisions made at all levels, and by all arms.
In terms of the bigger picture, in every theatre in recent times, the Army has been badly led, badly generalled and has under-performed. One warms to the idea of slashing the Armed Forces to the bare minimum. At least then our politicians will no longer be tempted to deploy them. We simply cannot afford any more of these corporate "victories" that the Army insists on delivering."
This is all sounds and seems so familiar... roll on Referendum and then roll on Eurozone Treaty...
