afterthoughts.reads.crowth.net

Listen / Read I thought I’d leave writing this until the end of the day, I didn’t really fancy it this morning. The relationship between religion and American politics is the sort of thing that puts me off my breakfast. I’ve discussed it before, if you’re interested. I don’t know if I had anything interesting [...]

Listen / Read I really have no response to Tom Butler’s piffle injection today so I’m going to keep typing until something formulates in my mind, something, anything that might not expose this endeavour for the terrible idea it always was… okay. Right.

Listen / Read Anne Atkins exists purely to enrage reasonable people everywhere. She wraps her bigotry in ostensible harmlessness and Middle English decorum and decants it in her best china. I think she’s probably the worst person in the world ever. Well, the worst woman at least.

Listen / Read What the fuck is going on? Apparently, teachers are there reading The Very Hungry Caterpillar at the front of the classroom and at the back 3-year-olds are snorting coke and groping each other, being all like ‘fuck that very hungry caterpillar, mine’s very hungrier’.

Listen / Read Tom Butler has the ability to turn any subject, no matter how interesting or moving its potential, into the aural equivalent of a stale biscuit, dipped in weak tea so carelessly that it breaks off and floats around on the surface for a second or two before sinking into a congealed stodge [...]

Listen / Read It’s not going to be very long at all before I run out of expletives to splice into Atkins’ name. I’ll just have to start cycling them round, much like the Today programme does with Thought for the Day speakers. Today Anne Atkins went for the whole thank-God-for-science shitnugget. You’re intelligent enough [...]

Listen / Read I must confess, I recently wrote an Afterthought after midnight on the day of broadcast and edited the time to 23:59. I only did this once. The other occasion the time was set to 23:59 was a valid occurrence. Still, though it may just have been the once, there was indeed an [...]

Listen / Read What can be the outcome when individuals give their lives into the hands of a charismatic religious leader who offers certainty and demands mindless obedience? How is it that people can find themselves in such a situation? You really need to listen to today’s reading to believe it, but here’s what he [...]

Listen / Read There’s something a bit incongruous about Storkey’s soft, chirpy voice discussing prostitution and sex trafficking. Her voice would be fine for reading Beatrix Potter to a bunch of 4-year-olds, but for discussing prostitutes, pimps, punters and sex slaves, I’m not so sure.

Listen / Read I was agreeing with Draper right up until the point he started talking bollocks. It was around the 1 minute 45 second mark… “sitting as we do on stocks of spiritual crapital… liquidity of life… generating peace perhaps… and offering self-giving love—” Oh, actually I think a wank is just what I [...]

Listen / Read Sorry, really busy day, so just a brief one. Today’s Thought for the Day was as ridiculous as ever, so let me just focus on one aspect: “…Nicodemus tries to reason how he can get back into his mother’s womb…” Dude, that’s just sick. That’s way worse than anything Brand or Ross [...]

Listen / Read What’s that Elaine? Some Christianity gets a bad rap? But you’re not one of those loopy Christians? You’re one of the good, sensible, miserable, dreary, boring Christians, who tells it like it is, who says that Christianity is the depressing truth we’ve all got to face up to?

Listen / Read I’m going to risk the impression I’ve probably already given that I’m a bit soft on Buddhist folk. My point of view is a bit more complicated than that, but there’s no denying that I have much less of a problem with Buddhist thinking than, say, Jewish thinking, which I’m slightly more [...]