Listen / Read If you’re wondering where the dinky little Thought for the Day player I had up there has gone, I’ve switched to linkage to the Real stream and the transcript because it was probably just a matter of time before the BBC told me off for republishing the podcast, being as the license [...]
Monthly Archives: September 2008
Tuesday 2nd September 2008: Rt Rev James Jones
Listen / Read Did he just say “his hideout in flesh and boner?” Let’s have another listen, shall we? [Audio clip: view full post to listen] Right, well, anyway, I’m reminded of a heated debate I had many years ago with someone in a philosophy seminar. I was arguing the need for prisons to rehabilitate [...]
Wednesday 3rd September 2008: Rhidian Brook
Listen / Read I thought for a moment that we had Rhidian from the X-Factor doing today’s Thought. I don’t know if he’s a Christian, but he looks like he could be. In fact, he looks like the Second Coming. Or at least he thinks he is. So I was a bit disappointed when I [...]
Thursday 4th September 2008: Rev Angela Tilby
Listen / Read I have to say, I agree with Tilby on this one. I can’t say I’ve frequented many churches but one thing that bothers me about those I have (besides being in a place where insanity is actively encouraged before everyone is let loose on the streets) is the somewhat unnerving waving of [...]
Friday 5th September 2008: Canon David Winter
Listen / Read Wait a minute, so he wants the Chancellor to be right? Canon David Winter would “love to think this was a prophetic voice”? He wants Darling to be right in his prediction of the worst economic downturn in 60 years? In fact, he doesn’t just want it, he would “love” it.
Saturday 6th September 2008: Rev Joel Edwards
Listen / Read God doesn’t want to be defined by democracy? He wants to sit upon his throne and rule over every aspect of our lives? That’s heaven, is it? And this is what good Christians have to look forward to? Totalitarianism? In the meantime (presumably until the day that Canon Winter is eagerly awaiting [...]
Monday 8th September 2008: Clifford Longley
Listen / Read I smiled more than a little during the opening words of Longley’s Thought today, musing upon the language I might use in writing this. Two speakers had recently criticised the American political establishment for electioneering on the back of religious belief while failing to acknowledge the countless Christian leaders across America who [...]
Tuesday 9th September 2008: Rt Rev Tom Butler
Listen / Read Why couldn’t he finish the quote? Was that last word one too many? You can’t repeat such a famous quote and leave it unfinished. It doesn’t sound right. I’d even be so brave as to say it sounds wrong. He made an anti-climax of a classic quote. There’s a reason why the [...]
Wednesday 10th September 2008: Rev Dr David Wilkinson
Listen / Read American astrophysicist and science celebrity Neil deGrasse Tyson argues that folk like Rev Dr Wilkinson should be the subject of research. Surveys show that while 85% of America’s elite scientists hold no belief in a personal god, 90% of the general public do. These numbers stimulate debate in the scientific community about [...]
Thursday 11th September 2008: Anne Atkins
Listen / Read Content aside, I must say that I thought Atkins read well today. It was delivered silkily with some panache. Which is interesting considering that she’s a novelist and most other speakers are clergy, part of their job being to deliver their words out loud. Perhaps she’s taken tips from her preacher husband, [...]
Friday 12th September 2008: Rhidian Brook
Listen / Read I’m not so sure that Obama’s choice of words wasn’t intentional. I don’t think it was a ‘slip’. He was using a fairly common phrase, and he was using it perfectly legitimately, but I think he was fully aware of the timing. I think Palin’s comment about the difference between a hockey [...]
Saturday 13th September 2008: Rev Joel Edwards
Listen / Read I never have anything to say about sport, it makes my mind go blank and wander off for want of something more stimulating to think about. I listened to Rev Edwards’ reading several times and I still didn’t really absorb any of it. I was thankful that we managed to make it [...]
Monday 15th September 2008: Dr Mona Siddiqui
Listen / Read Why can’t people just die? Really, there’s too many of us, we’re all selfish cunts, why can’t we just hurry up and die? We cling to our youth, we cling to every stimulant we can afford and most of the ones we can’t, we spend our lives valuing the worthless and accumulating [...]
Tuesday 16th September 2008: Rt Rev Tom Butler
Listen / Read Would it perhaps not be more appropriate to refer to Mugabe as the weary, battle-scarred elderly tyrant fuck, who has for decades now galvanised his iron rule with terror and violence, killing at least 10,000 Ndebele civilians in the 80s for instance? What with the Catholic Commission on Justice and Peace having [...]
Wednesday 17th September 2008: Rabbi Lionel Blue
Listen / Read I found this a little bit moving. I’ve spent the last several Afterthoughts being verbosely unpleasant, hyper-critical and generally obnoxious and I wasn’t expecting to be quite so gently brought to a humbling halt by another Thought for the Day speaker. But I have been and I must concur with Peter Hearty’s [...]
Thursday 18th September 2008: Rev Angela Tilby
Listen / Read It was inevitable that this was going to be the chosen topic of today’s or perhaps tomorrow’s speaker. I spent some time yesterday following with great interest a discussion about it at Platitude of the Day. It’s fascinating to see how opinions fall in this debate, with like-minded secular types differing in [...]
Friday 19th September 2008: Rhidian Brook
Listen / Read This twat’s getting on my tits. Is he only able to write in animal metaphors? But, he’s right, we shouldn’t worship false idols. No no. False idols can’t talk back. Instead we should worship “the invisible”. That’s the moral lesson of the day, to worship invisible things. Because they can talk back.
Saturday 20th September 2008: Rev Joel Edwards
Listen / Read I really think the Corpus Clock is a magnificent creation. If you haven’t seen any footage of it yet, which I hadn’t until just now, there’s a video here. I think it’s worth a watch. I don’t watch much in the way of television news so it may have been all over [...]
Monday 22nd September 2008: Dr Mona Siddiqui
Listen / Read Let’s not commit crimes against God, eh? I mean after all he’s done for us, especially all the ambiguous and contradictory religious scriptures he’s given us which are subject to any number of interpretations ranging from it being really bad to kill just one person to it being really important to kill [...]
Tuesday 23rd September 2008: Rt Rev Tom Butler
Listen / Read The Rt Rev Tom Butler has one of those trustworthy voices doesn’t he, a reassuring tone of unassuming earnestness. You want to believe what he’s telling you, because it sounds as if you can. He sounds like an honest man with a kind heart and quietly dignified brand of straight talk.
Wednesday 24th September 2008: Rev Angela Tilby
Listen / Read Exactly! Why can’t people just die? My sentiments precisely. I’m all for befriending that great enemy. Well, you know, if I’ve no choice in the matter. I’m not interested in being death’s best friend on a voluntary basis. Not to suggest that I love life so very much or anything, I’m just [...]
Thursday 25th September 2008: Dom Antony Sutch
Listen / Read Thinking of drowning your disabled child? Well think again! Call your neighbourhood anti-disabled child drowning Dom, Tony Sutch on 0800-MIRACLEMONK, now! Don’t just get the monk on, get the monk on the phone! Today!
Friday 26th September 2008: Chief Rabbi Dr Jonathan Sacks
Listen / Read I think “unbridled capitalism”, as Rowan Williams disapprovingly referred to it the other day, is all those bad things; evil with fangs and whatnot. I think it eats babies and leaves burning paper bags of dog poop on the doorsteps of unsuspecting pensioners and all that jazz. Really, I do. I also [...]
Saturday 27th September 2008: Catherine Pepinster
Listen / Read Rothko, though a secular Jew, was inspired by the mythological and the spiritual throughout his life. He received some schooling on the Torah as a boy, which set him apart somewhat from the rest of his family who had been public schooled in Latvia, then a part of Russia. He said that [...]
Monday 29th September 2008: Dr Indarjit Singh
Listen / Read The multiculturalism debate seems to get a periodic kiss of life. Or more usually a wet fart of life. One MP after another (usually a Tory) has to give that shit a stir from time to time. Then it goes quiet for a while, after everyone has pretty much said everything there [...]
Tuesday 30th September 2008: Dr Mona Siddiqui
Listen / Read It would be inappropriate of me to suffix this one with the indelicate use of language I often indulge myself with. Although I don’t really feel as if I’m in Siddiqui’s intended target audience, on this occasion I’m okay with that because she’s not moralising at me. She can moralise at other [...]