Vancover 2010 Highlights from the Games

Joanne Cash, Tory PPC for Westminster North resigns

Conservative Home is reporting;

Ms Cash resigned at a special meeting of the Association tonight - also attended by Eric Pickles and Lord Strathclyde - following internal tensions in the local party.

9.45pm: CCHQ mounting effort to reverse decision.

Making Women Bishops is a mistake the Synod is warned

"For those of us ordained since 1992, our understanding, in good faith, was that proper legal provision would be made for those who did not agree that women should have the overall leadership of a church."


Those are the words of the Revd Rod Thomas, of St Matthew's Church, Elburton, Plymouth.
 
Revd Thomas is the chairman of the evangelical group Reform, described on their own website as a network of individuals and churches within the Church of England committed to reforming the Church of England from within according to the Holy Scriptures.
 
I am astounded at this outrageous sexism, and do not understand the thinking of these peole from supposedly a caring profession.
 
Extract from the open letter to all Bishops and Synod Members from Reform;

"As 50 incumbents of Church of England churches we are writing to say why, in our view, the consecration of women bishops would be a mistake and would raise for us great difficulties of conscience and practice, as well as being wrong for our Church as a whole.


Our concern is derived from Scripture. It seems to us that the Apostolic teaching on male headship in church and family (as in 1 Corinthians 11-14, Ephesians 5, 1 Timothy 2 and 1 Peter 3) is clear enough in its principles: overall leadership in the church is to be exercised by men."

I don't pretend to understand God, the church or it's followers, but these views of people like Revd Thomas, who are clearly scared that a woman may be in charge of a church are scary.

I thought the church was supposed to be all embracing, and apparently yes, it is as long as you aren't gay, lesbian, bi-sexual or trans.  Now, it also appears that women are to be embraced as long as they are at home, doing the baking or arranging flowers, what utter rubbish is that?

I may have read this wrong, but that is what I took from this quote on the Reform website;

"The letter points out that their opposition is based on the pattern the Bible gives both for relationships in the home and the church. They say that they cannot see how, as Bible teachers, they can do other than put into practice what they believe the Bible to be teaching."

In other words women cannot run a church but they can run a home.

I was involved in the Church when I was at Primary School, Edwalton Parish Church (pictured) where I joined the choir and became head Choir boy over time and I recall we had a female lay Preacher, Pamela from memory, who wore the robes and was involved in all dealings of the Church.

I see from their website that the assistant priest is a woman, Revd Patricia Edwards so female priests have not done Edwalton Church any harm and in my humble opinion neither will female Bishops.

Members of the General Synod, meeting in London, are due to hear a presentation from the Bishop of Manchester, the Rt Rev Nigel McCulloch, about the "extraordinarily difficult" negotiations over the issue.

It will be told that a key debate on legislation to introduce women bishops will be delayed until July after hundreds of submissions were received on the subject.

I hope the Synod sees sense and moves with the modern times we are in and I look forward to a female bishop being recognised properly and I wish WATCH (women and the Church) who are campaigning to see women take their place alongside men in the Church of England.

Conservative Future chariman suspended for Nazi gaffe

On Saturday, I blogged about the Tories Twitter Rules for Twits and the fact that the Conservatives quite obviously do not trust their candidates but given recent gaffes by Chris Grayling MP, George Osborne MP and their leader, David Cameron MP you can possibly understand why.

However on Saturday a slightly more sour gaffe was uncovered by the Yorkshire Evening Post, the chairman of West Yorkshire Conservative Future (the Conservative youth group) David Bolt, son of the deputy leader of the Conservative group on Kirklees Council, Councillor Martyn Bolt.

David had written in a monthly email newsletter - "In effect, we will form a CF Sonderkommando which will be available to blitz any areas......"

This choice of Nazi language is deeply offensive, especially to people in the large Jewish community in West Yorkshire.

To be fair to the Conservaives, David Bolt has now been suspended.  However all references to him on their website have gone, the Conservatives must realise that just airbrushing a problem does not hide the problem.


Is this another reason why the Conservatives want to approve everything before it goes anywhere?

Celebrity MPs and Parliament but who will really represent you?

I just got a twitter message pointing me to a posting on Christopher Lovell's blog, titled A Celebrity Parliament? After reading this, it got me thinking (always dangerous, I know).

Christopher is right, we have a few celebrity names coming forward or being discussed but for now let's take Liverpool Wavertree, where Jane Kennedy the Labour MP is standing down before the election, although I suspect her decision has been partly made because of the amazing camapign run by the Liberal Democrats candidate Colin Eldridge who is in a close second place and Labour are running scared.

Now, Labour have run their selection process to replace Jane Kennedy and have selected crisis hit Luciana Berger, you can read the story about her continuing crisis hit selection here.  She didn't know who Bill Shankly was for starters!

So annoyed with this Labour saga the actor Ricky Tomlinson has said he may stand for the Socialist Labour party.  Is that really the answer?

Then down in Luton South, Esther Rantzen announced she was standing as a candidate against Margaret Moran MP because of the expenses scandal that Moran got caught up in.  Margaret Moran has since announced she is standing down at the next election but Rantzen's campaign continues for now albeit like a roller coaster, up and down or on and off as time has shown.

However, there is already a Luton South local champion Qurban Hussain who does and will continue to stand up for Luton South.

Anyway what my questions is, arising from Christopher Lovell's blog post this morning, is will these celebrity candidates keep it all up for five years?

Will they be there when the local people want their weekly advice surgeries, needing urgent help or when they have to visit the police at 5am in a morning or sleep out all night with the people helping the homeless?

Are they up for the 70-80 hours per week minimum they will have to work, sometimes doing mundane things?  They won't have a national phoneline or an ever expanding team of staff to help them, the current allowance for MPs to staff their offices is around £80,000, not a large amount.

Will they continue to be interested when the cameras and journalists have all gone home, when the novelty and media coverage wears off?

A Parliament full of former actors and celebrities would not be good for democracy, and would certainly not be the Celebrity Big Brother House.  We need hard working, honest MPs who will stand up for the local people and be a champion for their constituents.

It's easy to attack the MPs on expenses (don't get me wrong, rightly so, it made me angry too) or because the wrong candidate was selected for an area, however the day to day hard work of some MPs is not easy to replicate who ever you are.

SNP Government spend £265,000+ on flags

I am all for flags on every public building, but is spending in excess of a quarter of a million pounds on promotional flags the best use of public money?

The majority of these promotional Saltires were also bought in the SNP's first year of minority government.

The SNP in the first two years spent just £1657.83 on ceremonial flags including two car flags, compared to over £263,000 on promotional flags!

As NHS Boards are considering drastic measures like cutting the number of nurses, or hospital beds to save money as they try to cope with a funding squeeze we have a minority goverment spending excessive amounts of money on promotional flags.

Imagine what this money could have bought in the NHS?  I know on the overall budget figures this is a small amount of money, but in a time when the government should be leading the way in tightening belts we have a First Minister with a large ego waving flags.