A British doctor has been accused of “harassing a vulnerable patient” by the General Medical Council because he invited the person to church and to an Alpha presentation. Yes, that sounds pretty intimidating.
From here:
A teacher has been reprimanded for communicating a racist and sexual rhyme while teaching a pupil at a Sussex school.
James Hersey, 68, was found guilty of unacceptable professional conduct by the General Teaching Council.
The hearing heard he was teaching electronics to a Year 11 pupil at Oriel High School in Crawley when the incident happened in March last year.
Mr Hersey said he was a caring teacher who had made a mistake.
The disciplinary hearing was told Mr Hersey was teaching a student a rhyme to help remember the sequence for the colour coding of resistors.
Yet more barmy political correctness. I remember learning a number of these rhymes when I was young; I’m sure everyone is dying to know what they are:
Boys better remember our young girls become very good wives
Bad boys rape our young girls behind victory garden walls.
Bad boys run our young girls behind victory garden walls.
Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly.
Black boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly.
Black Boys Ravish Only Young Girls But Violet Gives Willingly
Bright Boys Rave Over Young Girls But Veto Getting Wed.
Bad Beer Rots Our Young Guts But Vodka Goes Well
Bad Boys Rape Our Young Girls But Virgins Go Without
Big boys race our young girls but Violet generally wins.
Bye Bye Rosie Off You Go Birmingham Via Great Western
Bye Bye Rosie Off You Go Bristol Via Great Western
Bye Bye Rosie Off You Go But Via Great Western
Bye Bye Rosie Off You Go do Become a Very Good Wife
Bill Brown Realized Only Yesterday Good Boys Value Good Work
As I wrote here, the cross in the Oakville Senior Citizen Residence chapel was removed so as not to offend non-Christians.
It has been replaced with an arrow pointing to Mecca.
Last month, remove the cross; this month add an arrow to Mecca; next month build a minaret on the roof? Did I mention that Bishop Michael Bird’s wife, Susan works there?
No, sorry, “crosshairs”. Oops, now I’ve said “crosshairs”; drat, I’ve said it again. Come to think of it, “who-cares”.
From here:
After eliminating denominational education from schools, the Quebec government announced plans Friday to extend its ban on religious instruction to toddlers.
The new policy will make it illegal for workers in the province’s network of subsidized daycares to teach their charges, aged five and under, about a specific religion. Teaching religious songs, including many Christmas carols, will be off limits, as will crafts with a religious connotation. Government inspectors will enforce the rules beginning next June.
“I want the young Quebecers who attend our daycare services to do so in a spirit of openness to others and diversity,” Family Minister Yolande James said as she unveiled the changes in Montreal.
Not all religions are being expunged, however: promoting a spirit of openness to others and diversity is itself an expression of religion, exhorting, as it does, submission to the contemporary pop-morality dogma that openness and diversity are, a priori, superior to their opposites.
From here:
A magistrate who branded two boys ‘absolute scum’ after they desecrated a cathedral faces disciplinary action.
The 16-year-old boys wrote racist and sexually-abusive graffiti in prayer books, and bent a priceless John The Baptist cross out of shape at Blackburn Cathedral, causing £3,000 damage.
Pages were also torn out of the prayer books and insults written in the prayer and visitor books included: ‘I will kill all Jews. Don’t underestimate me’, and lurid sexual comments about ‘the vicar’.
They were caught after they wrote their names in the visitors’ book.
Chairman of the bench at Blackburn Magistrates’ Court Austin Molloy labelled the boys ‘absolute scum’ during the sentencing yesterday at the Youth Court.
But he was immediately criticised by the court clerk who stood up and objected to the use of the ‘inappropriate language’.
The mother of one of the boys said she would be making an official complaint.
I would agree that the scumminess of the miscreants has not yet had the time mature to the degree of perfection or completeness to warrant the use of “absolute”; perhaps the magistrate should have said “lesser scum”, although this seems overly generous.
Here is a brief history of “scum”:
scum
1326 (implied in scummer “shallow ladle for removing scum”), from M.Du. schume “foam, froth,” from P.Gmc. *skuma- (cf. O.N. skum, O.H.G. scum, Ger. Schaum “foam, froth”), perhaps from PIE base *(s)keu- “to cover, conceal” (see hide (n.1)). Sense deteriorated from “thin layer atop liquid” to “film of dirt,” then just “dirt.” Meaning “lowest class of humanity” is 1586; scum of the Earth is from 1712. Adopted in Romanic, cf. O.Fr. escume, Mod.Fr. écume, Sp. escuma, It. schiuma. Adj. scummy first attested 1577; transf. sense of “filthy, disreputable” is recorded from 1932. Slang scumbag “condom” is from 1967; meaning “despicable person” is from 1971.
It is a shame that, on a rare occasion when the law was not an ass, a court clerk felt impelled to analyse the “appropriateness” (an overused and meaningless epithet) of a magistrate’s description of 16 year-olds who, for recreation, enjoy writing “I will kill all Jews” in the Prayer Book.
Britain has become a strange place.
From here:
Preston Blackwelder proudly showed off a painting of his grandmother that had hung next to the front door of his Port Wentworth home.
She was the woman who led him to God, Blackwelder said Friday.
And with that firm religious footing, Blackwelder said it would be preposterous to stop praying before meals at Port Wentworth’s Ed Young Senior Citizens Center near Savannah because of a federal guideline.
“She would say pray anyway,” Blackwelder said of his grandmother. “She’d say don’t listen.”
But Senior Citizens Inc. officials said Friday the meals they are contracted by the city to provide to Ed Young visitors are mostly covered with federal money, which ushers in the burden of separating church and state.
On Thursday, the usual open prayer before meals at the center was traded in for a moment of silence.
I trust the instinct of the seniors will be that of Daniel on hearing that King Darius – the ancient equivalent of Western governments, it appears – had forbidden prayer to all but himself:
When Daniel knew that the document had been signed, he went to his house where he had windows in his upper chamber open toward Jerusalem. He got down on his knees three times a day and prayed and gave thanks before his God, as he had done previously. Dan 6:10
Update: it appears that the ridiculous anti-prayer policy has been changed.
From the BBC:
Some West Midlands Ambulance Service staff contacted their union after being asked if they thought Adolf Hitler was a “cool” leader in an NHS survey.
Unison said it had received complaints from a few members who found the question inappropriate.
The service defended the survey, which asked staff to rate leaders like Gordon Brown and Richard Branson.
I can’t see the problem: is there a more egregious insult than being viewed as cool?
Once again the Force has bent the will of its detractors – insufficiently inclusive government employees in this case – into submission:
As any Star Wars fan knows, the Force is a powerful tool that can be harnessed to control the minds of weak-willed individuals.
So when Jedi believer Chris Jarvis was told to remove his hooded top at a Jobcentre, its staff must have been made of stern stuff.
Despite explaining he wears a cowl as part of his faith, the 31-year-old was marched off the premises by security guards after refusing to comply.
Infuriated by his treatment, he wrote a letter of complaint to the branch in Southend, Essex, and was surprised to receive an apology which said the service ’embraces diversity and respects customers’ religions’.
Despite the olive branch, the disabled father of three is planning to sue Jobcentre Plus for discrimination.
One wonders what organisation could possibly want to employ him. Hmmm.
My grandparents used to say to my parents, “I’m glad I’m not bringing up children in this day and age”; to gain perspective, “this day and age” was when I was young and we had no TV, no car, no telephone, the milk was delivered by horses pulling a cart and we learned to write with a scratchy pen that had to be dipped in an inkwell.
In their turn, my parents said the same thing to me; in the early days, we still had no car or telephone.
Now I look at my grandchildren and say to their parents, “I’m glad I’m not bringing up children in this day and age”.
There are many reasons; here is one:
TORONTO, Ontario, January 7, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The Ontario Ministry of Education has mandated that every school board in Ontario, Catholic and public, implement a new equity and inclusiveness policy by September 2010.
While the new initiative was devised with participation from the curriculum arm of the Ontario Bishops’ Assembly, it nevertheless would force Ontario’s Catholic school boards to recognize “sexual orientation” as a ground protected from discrimination. The Vatican has warned, however, that such a recognition is usually part and parcel with the outright promotion of homosexuality. One prominent Catholic commentator and priest has said that this is indeed the Ministry’s aim.
The Ministry’s new initiative, called the Equity and Inclusive Education Strategy, requires school boards to address areas such as religious accommodation and the prevention of discrimination, which includes combating “homophobia.”
