Children are so profligate these days! Wasting all their pocket money on securitized credit derivatives that turn out to be about as secure as Tiger Woods’ pants! Investing their classmates’ lunch money in elaborate transnational Ponzi schemes and using it to fund their privileged lives of opulence and vice! Oh, wait, that’s not children. Sorry; old habits. Read the rest »
Monday 4th January 2010: Rabbi Lionel Blue
Hello. Hope you enjoyed the brief holiday bubble. I did. I decided not to bother with Thought for the Day for the duration, and I’ve missed a few new names, I see, like another Islamic Oxford don. Are there no non-professorial Muslims capable of boring our tits off for three minutes? Read the rest »
Wednesday 23rd December 2009: Rev Joel Edwards
Do I even need to bother? Could anyone, god botherer or not, really think any of this made any sense whatsoever? It’s an old classic, really. The illogic is as follows: faith does not mean ignoring the facts and the fact is that GOD DID IT! OKAY? GOD DID IT! SHUT UP! Read the rest »
Tuesday 22nd December 2009: Anne Atkins
I was really hoping the text version would be available when I got around to writing this one, because there are few things that grate on me more than Anne Atkins’ voice. It is the very sound of bourgeois self-satisfaction. For her then to be the speaker most prone to the oratory equivalent of happy-clapping is like opening the Daily Mail and finding the illustrated Bible printed inside. I’d rather she had some mercy just and ran me over in a Jesus Army branded Range Rover. It’d be quicker and less painful. Read the rest »
Monday 21st December 2009: Rev Dr Colin Morris
I’d boast of my accurate prediction that today’s reading would be a hopelessly hopeful refrain on Copenhagen, but that’d be like claiming powers of precognition for predicting Brown bashing, troop praising and bare breasts in tomorrow’s Sun. Read the rest »
15th-19th December 2009: Catch-up
Atkins wanted us to do things for love, not just money (even eating, which many outside the West sometimes can’t do for love nor money, however much they pray to baby Jesus). Edwards spoke of Biblical justice, concluding that God is always more generous than the law (unless of course you happen to look over your shoulder, in which case the sentence is instant pillarofsaltification). Harries advised us to be prudent when it comes to the Christmas splurge (with a sprinkling of religious verse for good measure, of course). Murad urged modesty too, advising humility to curtail our consumerist habits (quoting the Holy Qur’an, because you’d never get Muslims polluting something sacred with excessive, consumerist, over-indulgence). And finally Marshall told us all to be less materialistic at Christmas too (because our esteemed speakers know that it’s not enough just to be tedious, you’ve got to be bloody repetitive too). And that concludes this week in religious thinkings. Tomorrow will likely bring another hopelessly hopeful reading about the inevitably failed Copenhagen summit. Can’t wait.