The Labour Humanist

This is why David Cameron will never become prime minister

I do believe modern Britain has left old this kind of stuff behind old boy. David Cameron, student member of the toffs' club that believed it was ok to smash up anything that belonged to poor people as long as you could pay for it afterwards.

Creationist Conservative MPs coming out of the woodwork?

British science bloggers have been busy writing to MPs with their concerns over the attempts to sneak creationism into our schools by organisations such as "Truth in Science". It seems some Conservative MPs are struggling with this one which is starting to uncover what appears to be an anti-science tendency within the tories.

First we have Rob Wilson the Conservative member for Reading East who, when asked specifically about intelligent design being taught in science lessons, apparently believes "There should be a balanced approach to the various theories of origin.".

And then we have Gary Streeter MP who has been pursued by postblogger in recent months on this question. Streeter, who is prominent in the Conservative Christian Fellowship initially gave this bizarre response when asked to keep science in schools separate from religious fundamentalism:

"I would be very happy to act on this matter as soon as you can prove beyond all reasonable doubt that Creationism is not true, and I look forward to hearing from you as soon as possible."

Postbloggery persisted and Streeter gave a second reply where he "outed" himself as a believer in, ahem, "intelligent design", and on the question in hand gave these weasel words: "I do not want to promote the teaching of creationism in our schools but nor do I wish to stop it."

How many more Conservative creationists are sitting in our parliament?

The big hole in Cameron's community cohesion speech

So Cameron does a speech on the barriers dividing communities but spins skirts over one of the most pressing issues dividing our local communities - faith schools.

Cameron says faith schools are not a barrier within communities - probably to divert attention from Conservative policy which would expand the number of sectarian schools and bascially let them do what the hell they want. But, what could be more relevant to the idea of community cohesion than the dividing up of our children into ethnic and religious groups at a young age and seperating them into different schools for each group?  What's the Cameron solution? "School exchanges" between faith and community schools. Wow, hardly cracking a nut with a sledgehammer there are we David?

Once again with Cameron, good at making the headlines, terrible at policy making.

David Cameron's sneaky plan to scrap our May Day holiday?

Spinning for Britain David Cameron tells today's Sun newspaper that he wants to make the Queen's birthday a "national holiday". No mention is given of whether this is an additional bank holiday, or whether this is a sneaky plan to scrap our May Day bank holiday.

Can we also observe that this looks a lot like a policy devised to grab a newspaper headline and that Cameron has been sniping at Gordon Brown for talking up Britishness when apparently this new holiday would be a celebration of "True Britishness". Does he think we don't notice?