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Is it just me, or has the world gone a bit election mad? I’m getting fed up of the election to be honest. Part of the issue is that I genuinely can’t decide who to vote for. Not that my vote would make much difference: I live in a fairly safe lib dem constituency, so whichever way I vote it’s not likely to make much difference. That said, even if my vote did make a difference, I just don’t think I could decide.

The primary consideration I have when voting at the moment is “it can’t be labour”: one illegal, immoral war which well over 50% of the country were against would have been enough, and then there’s the small matter of the financial crisis (have we really done away with boom and bust Mr. Brown? Have we?). And then there’s ID cards, and so on. But apart from that, I’m pretty open.

That said, two things are annoying me about the way people are talking about the election. Firstly: what the heck is wrong with the Conservatives? Everyone I know seems to hold them up as being the joke party, i.e. “I’d never vote for them in a million years” kind of thing. Why? I just can’t see the reasons myself. Sure, OK, there was Margaret Thatcher. So what? It just seems that to look back at the past and say “I’m not voting for this party because of what happened in the 80s” is disingenious to say the least.

Especially given that someone who knew a lot more about politics than I did once explained to me how a lot of the issues of that era, i.e. the recession, were caused by factors either outside the government’s control, or would have happened even with a labour government. But I’ll come back to this in a minute.

The second thing that annoys me is people trumpeting the lib dems as the saviours of democracy. Now, I do agree with some of the Lib Dems’ policies… but they’re far from perfect. As far as I can tell, a lot of people are voting for them simply because “they’re not labour or the conservatives”. Which is probably a bit cynical on my part, but still.

The real issue here is this: politics is complicated. really complicated. Can you imagine what it takes to run a country? There are thousands of different things going on, and a government is responsible for all of them. To be honest, I don’t think labour have done a bad job over the past thirteen years. Yes, they did do some terrible things (Iraq War, finance crisis, ID Cards, police state etc), but as a country we’re still here, and I honestly think it’s debatable whether we would genuinely have been better off under another administration.

I don’t think this country needs another government. I feel this country needs accountability. If the people had a way of actually forcing the government to be accountable – while the government were still in power – that would actually make this country truly democratic. The current system is basically only a democracy once every four or five years – and the first past the post system means that even that is mockery!

Which is why I feel like saying “the tories are evil”, or “the lib dems are our saviours” is … well, ridiculous. It’s simply not true. Without a crystal ball you can’t see who would be best. I don’t know, you don’t know, no-one does. The factors are too complicated for even the most brilliant mind to understand it all. These quizzes that ask you to answer questions to be able to choose your political party – for the same reason, I find them bizarre. “What do you think is the best thing for the financial crisis? Increase spending now, etc.”… I don’t know! I’m a programmer for goodness’ sake, not an economist. This is why we have a government, so they can consult people who understand this stuff and make the best decisions. I’m not qualified to do it.

So, to bring this rambling mess to some sort of point, this is what I’m trying to say:

I don’t think any one political party is the “best” option. Because I don’t think it’s possible for anyone to really know that information. The days of people believing in a political party such as labour or conservative because they represent their outlook on life are gone.

So I honestly believe the best option for this country is:

1. A hung parliament. A coalition government will be forced to work together for the good of the country. At the moment I feel too much that politicians work for the good of the party. Would ID cards have survived with a coalition government? Perhaps, but I think it would have had a much tougher ride. Would the Iraq war have happened under a coalition government? Again, I think that’s even more doubtful.
2. Electoral reform. We need to be able, as a democracy, to ensure that our government is accountable. This can’t be done at present to any meaningful degree. This needs to change.

Just a few thoughts, it’s getting late so they may not make very much sense ;)

UCCF have not exactly been in my good books recently. It all started out with the whole shenanigans about Word Alive splitting from Spring Harvest (Dave Walker of the Cartoon Church blogged about it at the time. If you look at the relevant posts that should give you an idea of what went on. Start with the blog post “Word Alive is no more”). Anyway, it seemed that the split was seen rather differently by UCCF and Spring Harvest: UCCF claimed that the whole issue was about Steve Chalke / penal substitutionary atonement, whereas Spring Harvest claimed that it was about a whole lot more than that. I’m over-simplifying it a bit, but that’s the gist. Read the linked blog posts for some relevant quotes and what have you.

Then, a few years ago I heard via some friends of what was going on at Essex Christian Union. It seemed that what happened there was that the leadership had been away on a UCCF weekend, come back with the idea that “evangelism is the most important thing for a CU” and then proceeded to ignore pretty much everything else (everything except evangelism, that is. So socialising etc. weren’t really done very much). Again, simplification, but that’s how it seemed. Now, the CU leadership circumstances at the time might have caused this problem, but I don’t think UCCF really helped matters. But I won’t make too much of that because I wasn’t involved.

Anyway, the other day I was reading something about the inerrancy of the Bible in a doctrinal basis. This reminded me of the UCCF doctrinal basis, which is something I had to sign when I joined the CU committee. This is the relevant point (taken directly from the website): “c. The Bible, as originally given, is the inspired and infallible Word of God. It is the supreme authority in all matters of belief and behaviour.”

Back in the day, I signed up to the doctrinal basis without really thinking about it. I didn’t have a problem with any of the statements. But now I do. Why’s that?

Well, for comparison check out the 39 articles (which is the closest thing the Anglican church has to a Doctrinal Basis):

Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation: so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man, that it should be believed as an article of the Faith, or be thought requisite or necessary to salvation. In the name of the Holy Scripture we do understand those canonical Books of the Old and New Testament, of whose authority was never any doubt in the Church. (source)

(I’ve been reading a book on the Anglican Church and I think I’m pretty much ‘converted’… but I digress). Also, check out the Evangelical Alliance basis of faith: “The divine inspiration and supreme authority of the Old and New Testament Scriptures, which are the written Word of God—fully trustworthy for faith and conduct.”

The Baptist Union of Great Britain has a similar statement to the 39 articles and the Evangelical Alliance. Do you see the difference? The UCCF doctrinal basis is the only one to mention (1) the Bible as originally given, and (2) that the Bible is infallible. I disagree on both points.

The first one makes it sound like the Bible basically fell out of the sky, complete. The Bible wasn’t written as a complete unit, dictated by God! It was written by man, recording God’s actions in history. Which leads on to the second point – infallibility: this seems to be tantamount to saying that it’s inerrant, that it doesn’t have any errors in it. To my mind that is patently false – we know there are a few of various magnitude. Not really important ones, but nonetheless claiming that the Bible is ‘infallible’ is unhelpful and actually a misuse of the English language. I also think that this is actually far more than the Bible claims for itself (despite what some people will tell you, the well known passage in 2 Timothy does not claim that every single word is literally true).

I can wholeheartedly agree with the 39 Articles, the Evangelical Alliance and so on, but I just can’t agree 100% with UCCF. (This might prove to be an issue if I ever get asked to speak at a CU meeting, but let’s save that for the moment). In fact, it seems to me that this doctrinal basis was written to be exclusive rather than inclusive.

And this goes to the heart of why I disagree with UCCF: they seem to base what they believe and do around quite a narrow definition of what it is to be a Christian. That is to say, they define a Christian – and what it means to be a Christian, as well as a CU – that people and organisations that are legimately Christian would not be able to be affiliated with them.

This is particularly galling to me having been studying Ephesians for the past few months. What is the major theme of Ephesians? The unity of the body of Christ. Why introduce things like this into the doctrinal basis which are badly worded which some people won’t be able to sign for legitimate reasons?

Well, here ends the rant. I should note that I’m not the first person to blog about this. I may revisit this topic at some point when I’ve had a chance to re-read and possibly re-think ;)

Edit: Well, after having read through this, I realised that in my rush to write this I’d left out something important. I don’t want to come down too hard on UCCF because they do do good work. The UCCF worker we had at uni was very good, and he helped us a lot in various ways and helped to unite the CU. A good friend has also just told us tonight that she is going to be working for UCCF in London, and obviously that’s a good thing – I’m sure she’ll do a great job and be really helpful to all the CUs she’s involved with.

I think my issues with the organisation do in no way prevent them from doing good work, or God’s will. I wanted to make that clear because otherwise I was pretty harsh… also, I’m probably wrong. I expect there’s probably a good reason to have what they have in their doctrinal basis. Although I don’t know what that is… but there you go.

But I never let the truth get in the way of a good rant, so I’ll leave it as it is for now :p

I don’t know if you’ve heard about it, but over the past week or so there’s been a bit of an outcry about a website called “Marital Affairs”. Well, it wasn’t actually the website itself, it was an advert for the website which as far as I can tell has been posted up nationwide.

Anyway, someone wrote a complaint to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) about it, the ASA rejected the complaint, someone set up a Facebook group, etc etc. If you’ve not heard it already, you can read the background here.

Anyway, apparently the ASA have now upheld the complaint and taken the adverts down (see the Church Times article). One thing I wanted to pick up on is the ASA’s response after giving in and ordering the adverts to be taken down. They said: “people have the right to choose their own lifestyle” – which presumably is why they didn’t take the adverts down in the first place.

Now, I wouldn’t consider myself ultra-conservative or anything. But that statement strikes me as being a bit odd: Yes, people can choose their own lifestyles. But would you allow advertising that positively encouraged bad traits – such as breaking promises, letting other people down, acting selfishly? Because that’s effectively what they’re doing with the Marital Affairs advert – by allowing it they are tacitly saying, “It’s OK. Go on, have an affair. It’s your lifestyle, after all.”

My view is, when two people get married, they make a commitment to each other. If you get married in a church (specifically CofE, I think the wording is very similar in other churches) you agree to be faithful to each other for as long as you both shall live. I think those are beautiful words, but they are not just words: it’s a promise you make. If you go into marriage thinking that you’re not going to be able to keep that promise, you might as well not bother.

Adultery, or marital infidelity, whatever you want to call it, wrecks marriages. Even if the couple manage to stay together things can rarely be the same. It’s not just a broken promise, it’s actually potentially wrecking people’s lives.

And, given how the tabloids react when a famous person gets caught having an affair (for a recent example see Tiger Woods), I think most people would go one further and say that having an affair is actually an immoral action.

So, come on ASA, for goodness’ sake, what the heck are you playing at? Yes, people can choose their own lifestyles, and having an affair isn’t (and shouldn’t be) illegal, but it’s hardly advisable to promote a website which allows people to indulge in such a thing is it?

Here endeth the rant…

Not new mattress troubles (although, for what it’s worth, the new mattress is very comfortable now).

The problem is with the old mattress. We don’t have a big enough car to take it to the rubbish tip – we’ve just had it in the spare room for the past few months. Anyway, we eventually got round to contacting the council, who provide a service where you pay for large items to be taken away. The agreement is that you pay the money, leave it out on the designated day, and then they will collect it. All fair enough and simple.

So, we left it out on Tuesday – by 7AM – and expected them to come and collect it. Except… they didn’t. We called up on Wednesday, and apparently it was “an oversight”. In other words, they forgot. In a normal week that would be inconvenient – they have promised to pick it up next Tuesday: we could have just brought it back in again and left it out next Tuesday. Unfortunately, the snow came down on Wednesday. If the mattress had been collected on Tuesday – when there was no snow – it would have been fine. But by Wednesday afternoon, it was covered in snow. Not much we can do about it.

So we’ve had to leave it out all week. I feel rather bad about leaving it out for the whole week – I think it’s been getting a few funny looks from our neighbours. But not much we can do about it :-(

Hopefully they will be able to come and collect it on Tuesday. OK, so that blog post had very little point, other than to make me feel better. But it worked in that respect, so it’s not all bad news ;)

This is a quote of mine from an earlier post:

The whole experience has made me realise, though — I never want to have someone come round the house again on a sales-oriented call

Guess what we did on Tuesday night? That’s right, have a salesperson round!

Let me explain a little bit. The people who previously owned our house bought new windows and doors from Zenith Staybrite. Although this all occured way before we moved in, we were aware of it. A couple of weeks ago, someone from Zenith rang up to say that someone had seen our windows and doors, and decided they were going to make a purchase from Zenith. Apparently this made us eligible for a discount on any more work that we wanted done, which I believe is fairly standard industry practice (typical referral scheme, nothing dodgy there).

Anyway, he asked if we wanted any work done, and all I could think of was the front door: we are the only house (bar one) in our road which hasn’t had the door moved out to be level with the front of the house. Doing this would give us more hallway space and would generally be more convenient. I said as much, and the guy said they would send someone round to look at it on Tuesday evening.

It turns out that the person who arrived was actually a salesman. I was expecting someone more technical! He was a little bemused really – we didn’t actually need to be sold anything exactly. All we wanted is for the door to be moved, and just wanted a quote to that effect. The door is a good one – only a few years old – and so there really is no need to replace us.

And to be fair to him, he did call up his manager and ask whether this would be possible. (I should be quite clear that this guy was great all the way through – we didn’t get any pressure from him. The main problem came from the company itself, but more on that later). Apparently it wasn’t, and we were told we would have to buy a new door!

So, we went through the procedure, we chose the door that we wanted and had it priced up. The actual price came to over £5,000! Strangely enough, we weren’t too keen on that price ;-) But, surprise surprise, Zenith Staybrite could do it cheaper than that. Because our house is close to town, we check pretty much all the boxes (the salesman’s manager said that we had pretty much everything except for an airport near us).

He asked to talk to me, and then offered me a best price of about £2,500. In fact, he as good as told me that they were pretty desperate to get our house because we were in such a “convenient” location for them (even if no-one actually walks past our house because we’re in a cul-de-sac off of an estate with only one entrance and exit. But still).

Having learned from our mistake with Solar Home (see the linked post above), I basically said that there was no price he could offer us that would make us take it up that night. (a) we couldn’t really justify spending that much money on a door when we already had a perfectly good one, (b) I just resent being blackmailed like that!

So, that was the end of that. So we thought. We’d been getting missed calls from a number we didn’t recognise. Eventually they rang at a time we were actually in, and it turned out to be Zenith. They said that they were “doing some work in our area”, and were willing to reduce the price a bit more. Although they weren’t completely sure what the price would be, it would be “under £2,000″. This smacks of a sales tactic to me – they’re only based in Chelmsford for goodness’ sake, it’s not like they need to stay in a hotel in Colchester to do the work! Needless to say, we’ve declined their offer again. Something about it smacks of desperation, which actually is inclined to put me off rather than make me say “oh, what a deal! This is unmissable!” It’s reverse psychology, except that it’s working against them.

It did remind me of why we decided never to have salespeople round though. I think the problem was, we weren’t really expecting a salesperson! Hopefully this is a pretty rare situation and so won’t happen again. But if it does happen I know what to say – “No thanks, I already have a penguin”. (Well, perhaps I won’t mention the penguin part. But something similar).

What we might do with the door is get a local builders to come and see if they can do something about moving the door. It seems bizarre to actually buy a whole new door when the existing one is perfectly good, and still pretty new. Even if it’s a similar price, it will at least be more environmentally sound and support local business (if we manage to find a decent local builder).

*phew* apologies for the length of this rant, it’s been a while since my last one!

Well, just when you wait for ages for a rant to come along, two come along at once! Although actually, with me you never have to wait that long for a rant to come along.

The first was was inspired by a business card I found left on our doormat this afternoon. It was from William H Brown – the estate agents. It’s just a normal business card, with the exception of “please call me” being written in pen on the card. But wait! – it’s not written in pen, it’s actually printed on the card, and made to look like pen!

And this is what annoys me. It’s designed to look like it’s written in pen (it does look very much like it), making it seem more personal, thus making people more likely to call. I don’t know, it just struck me as being… well, a bit fraudulent. Trying to get people to call you by pretending that you’re writing them a personal message. I know I’m making a bit of a mountain out of a molehill, but still, if they really do want me to call them perhaps a brief message with what they want would be better.

The second thing that annoyed me is the proms – specifically, the piece I’ve just heard: “Traces” by Rebecca Saunders. It was a classical piece, as in – it used the orchestra. But it didn’t have a discernable tune. It was reminiscent of the random mid-20th century classical music – just random bits and pieces, nothing discernible.

It was undoubtedly very clever, but the problem is I think these kind of pieces are purely for music critics who like to pat themselves on the back and say how clever it is. It’s not for people who actually, you know, just like music and don’t want to analyse something. I just can’t be doing with this kind of “artsy” rubbish… currently they’re playing Chopin’s 2nd Piano Concerto, which is much better! Much more beautiful.

Ah well, not so much of a rant tonight, but still!

This is a rant which has been coming for a while now. The catalyst was this story on The Register. It’s all to do with feminism and glamour modelling.

Personally I feel that suffragettes who chained themselves to railings to secure a vote for women would be appalled if they found out that you can buy a newspaper today and find images of topless girls plastered all over them. I just can’t reconcile equality with girls willingly putting themselves forward to do topless modelling.

The article I mentioned picks up on that. The basic idea is that a group of women got naked for a “Calendar Girls” style calendar, in order to benefit charity. They tried to donate some money to Scottish Women’s Aid, but were refused because they didn’t condone women taking their clothes off to raise money.

Although I can’t comment about the calendar itself (I haven’t seen it), I do somewhat agree with this quote from a spokeswoman for the charity Zero Tolerance:

“…We should be showcasing women for their talents and aspirations. Anything that focuses on women’s bodies is not helpful.

“We live in a culture where female nudity is everywhere and there is too much female nudity… and not enough celebration of women’s brains. It undermines our work to achieve gender equality.”

And this is what bemuses me. I completely agree with equality: women and men should have the same opportunities, and generally be treated equally. I cannot square this with posing topless in newspapers and magazines – surely an enemy of equality is objectifying women, i.e. men viewing women as sexual ‘objects’?

The attitude that “it’s our right to do as we want and pose in these magazines” seems to be highly detrimental to the right of equality. As long as a few women are willingly exposing their bodies to be, for want of a better word, ogled, then some men are going to continue viewing women as objects. I understand that I sound like I’m coming straight out of the 1950s here but … am I just going mad? Or is this actually an issue other people feel strongly about?

I was meaning to blog about this a few weeks ago but I happened across this article on the BBC news website today and it reminded me.

The BNP are using Jesus’ words in a poster campaign to try and garner support from the Christian community. The exact quote they are using is, “If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also.” (John 15:20). Let’s leave behind the fact that this rather ignores the context (Jesus immediately follows this by saying “If they obeyed my teaching, they will obey yours also.”, and the whole thing is set within the context of people being rejected because they follow Christ).

The BNP just seem to be using the same tactic they use with all their other campaigns: fear and paranoia (or, as geeks like to put it, FUD: Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt – what Microsoft like to spread about their competitors. But that’s another story). They bandy about the cry that we are “losing our national identity”. In this case, they claim that we are losing our Christian identity.

Now (to borrow a phrase from Gavin & Stacey) I won’t lie to you – I am a bit concerned about the spread of Islam in this country. But not because it’s somehow eroding our Christian identity and values or what have you.

In my opinion, Christianity should not spread by legislation or force. God’s kingdom is a heavenly kingdom, not made by human hands. Take these words, for example:

Jesus called them together and said, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be your slave— just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” (Matthew 20:25-28)

Which, to me, seems to highlight the problems with the BNP’s approach. On their poster, the BNP conclude with the words “What Would Jesus Do?” (their emphasis). I think we know the answer to that question. And it’s definitely not what the BNP would do.

I just hope that the BNP’s usage of this poster campaign won’t make people think that the Christians in this country actually endorse their message!

They should have just tried being me for five minutes :(

Ok, so that’s a huge exaggeration. But I’ve not had a good time of it recently with the car, i.e. getting it repaired. The story so far: in late February, someone reversed into the side of my car while it was parked. This buckled and dented the door. I rang up and made an insurance claim.

On Monday, the car (finally, after more than five weeks) went to Colchester Accident Repairs. They initially said that it would take three days to repair the car, I rang them up today and they said they were working on it and it would likely be Monday or Tuesday. Ok, well, that’s inconvenient but I guess I can live with the hire car for another few days.

The hire car, by the way, was delivered to me at the garage on Monday morning. They rang me up this morning and said that they were going to be needing it back. WHAT?!!! Apparently someone made an administrative error and he had down that I was due to finish with the car on 30th March, not that I was due to pick it up then! Why they ring me up three days afterwards with this I don’t know, but still. I (politely) told them to shove it where the sun don’t shine, and they’re not going to pick the car up today – but I might be driving round a car which is uninsured.

Grrrrrrr.

The hire car itself is nice though – it’s a 2007 VW Passat. It’s got a pretty good engine on it so is more nippy than my Saab. And because it’s diesel, you get a fairly decent MPG (although I must say the petrol guage has been a bit more mobile than I thought it would be). It also feels lighter – I think the Saab is built a bit like a tank!

So in general I like it. Still would like to get my car back though, the VW is nice but it’s just nice to be in your own car. Hopefully not too long now (I’ve been saying this for ages, but I really don’t think it will be now…)

I read an article today about a woman who was texting whilst driving, and ended up smashing into a stationary car at 70mph. It seems absurd to me that in this day and age, where the dangers of using mobile phones while driving are constantly stressed, that people persist in doing it.

When I was at my old job out in Suffolk, there was a girl who I think must have worked somewhere around there and had similar hours to me. I would sometimes see her driving back from work – we’d share the same route for about 25 minutes (about 15 miles from Hadleigh to Colchester). She would invariably be talking on the phone all the way. This, incidentally, was after it was made illegal to use a mobile phone whilst driving. One time we drove past a police car and the mobile phone disappeared then – so she obviously knew it was illegal! A few times when she was driving behind me I did contemplate slamming on the brakes, but I thought it probably wasn’t worth it.

Aaanyway. Someone left a comment on the article I mentioned and suggested a tiered license system – similar to the one motorbikes already have. If you want to drive a bigger car, you have to get an upgraded license. I don’t think this is the real issue. You can drive any kind of car sensibly and safely, and you can drive any kind of car recklessly. Any modern car is capable of going at motorway kind of speeds – and is thus capable of killing someone if hit at that speed. If you’re driving without due care and attention, any car – whether a Metro or a Mitsubishi Evo 1 – will be dangerous.

One thing which might help is to stress when learning to drive how important it is NEVER to drive with a mobile phone. Some people still seem to believe that it’s acceptable to use mobiles while driving – even texting, which I would have thought is actually worse than making a call – and what is needed is more education, not harsher penalties or tougher licenses.

I can think of two deaths now which have been caused by texting whilst driving. Maybe if people start to realise that, they will stop texting and calling in the car.