The Labour Humanist

The sad demise of the secular Tory bloggers

As we enter Conservative conference week it's sad to see the apparent demise of the small strand of Tory bloggers who adopted a consciously secular and humanist tone to their writing.

We have lost Martine Martin's blog as she has decided to stop blogging now she has a job in Westminster. This prompted to me to look up the other secular Tory blogger on my links list, Jeff Peel, only to find his wordpress blog "the way it is" seems to have bitten the dust.

This is all very sad because we need a healthy secular voice inside the Conservative Party, who in my experience, and from their recent history, are incredibly intolerant of a multi-belief society and many Tory activists seem rather keen on using the power of the state to force a cultural and political primacy of Christianity down our necks, whether we like it or not. It was the Conservatives who implemented compulsory Christian worship in schools and cross-party Humanist groups in parliament find it hard to recruit and retain Conservative members.

Are there any secular humanist Tory bloggers out there? By this I don't mean Conservative supporting bloggers who pre-dominantly write about the interaction between religion and politics from a secular standpoint, although that would be an intriguing find. But any Tory bloggers who have "outed" themselves as atheists and who occasionally cross swords with the religious authoritarians in their own party. Is there any secular life out there in the Tory blogosphere?

Let's hear it for Martin in the Margins

Let's say a big no to tory bloggers placing themselves as the arbiters of what makes a good left wing blog shall we! Added to my list of links is Martin in the Margins - a very fine Labour supporting politics blog with decidedly secular humanist leanings. Lots of interesting and well argued material including this explanation of how multi-cultural education in primary schools can go horribly wrong:

"As a parent, and an erstwhile school governor, it's irked me the way that multi-cultural education often gets translated, especially in primary schools, into multi-faith education. Learning about 'other cultures' is reduced to finding out about the religious beliefs and customs of different groups. Non-white, non-indigenous groups are characterised as unchanging, homogenous cultures defined mainly by faith. Schools think if they've 'done' Diwali, Ramadan and Passsover, then they've fulfilled their multicultural obligations. In my experience, there's very little sense (at least at the primary level) of migrant communities as diverse, living entities, shaped by historical events, and very little sense of the secular and political forces at work within communities.

Defining non-white children primarily in terms of a nominal faith privileges that aspect of their identity above others, including loyalties based on nation, locality or cultural tastes. It also makes it more difficult for children to put any distance between themselves and their faith-of-origin, or to experience school as a neutral, secular space in which they might explore alternatives to the beliefs they were brought up in. And it has a spin-off for 'indigenous' children: they get categorised, by default, as 'Christian'. This subtle re-introduction of sectarian identities is ludicrous, in a nation where a majority are not active believers in any religion."

Campaigners who get told they don't own the rights to their own election ads

Corporate giants in the shape of Viacom kicking sand in the face of the little guy. Christopher Knight was running for the local education board in North Carolina. He made some quirky campaign ads which he uploaded to Youtube. These ads were used in a VH1 show called "web junk 2.0". Knight amused by his new fame uploaded a clip from this show onto his Youtube page and blog. Only to find that Viacom had forced Youtube to remove the clip. So, Viacom took a video Knight had made - for non-profit purposes - used it in a commercial show without his permission - but when he put up a clip  of his own material he was then charged with copy right infringement. Showing that copyright laws often have very little to do with natural justice and everyone to do with enhancing the market position of big corporations.

Anyhow, it seems from Knight's blog that Youtube have restored the clip.

(By the way, his election campaign did not secure him a place on the board.)

Sssshhhhhh!

Some of the more observant readers of this blog will have noticed that it's gone awfully quiet around here recently. All I can is my "hinterland" has squeezed out any room for blogging at the moment. We'll get August out of the way and then in the Autumn it will be time to re-design and re-launch. It will be nice to get more contributors, so stay tuned, until then...

Keeping track of bloggers in denial

Here's a potentially interesting new blog to follow. Denialism a "resouce" for countering denialists and denialism, which is defined as:

"the employment of rhetorical tactics to give the appearance of argument or legitimate debate, when in actuality there is none. These false arguments are used when one has few or no facts to support one's viewpoint against a scientific consensus or against overwhelming evidence to the contrary. They are effective in distracting from actual useful debate using emotionally appealing, but ultimately empty and illogical assertions."

Apparently six main areas of "denialism" are going to be the focus:

HIV/AIDS
Global Warming
Creationism/Intelligent Design
Holocaust
Vaccination
Animal Testing

A great blog, a great video and it's time to stare at that dot again

New video to watch and new link added. Cracking video that shows how inspirational the link between rational thinking, science and progressive politics can be - huge hat tip the Pharyngula blog which covers with high quality posting the interaction between science, politics and religion - and was added to the freethinking allowed links today. The video is based on some of Carl Sagan's writings...enjoy:

"Stare at the dot(Earth) for any length of time and try to convince yourself that God created the whole universe for one of the 10 million or so species of life that inhabits that speck of dust...imagine that everything was made just for a single shade of that species, or gender, or ethnic or religion subdivision. If doesn't strike you as unlikely, pick another dot Imagine it to be inhabited by a different form of intelligent life. They, too, cherish the notion of a God who has created everything for their benefit. How seriously do you take their claim?."

Back to Miliband's Blog

First of all let's get one thing straight, in a world of full of conflict and poverty this is hardly an issue of pressing importance. I accept the point made that as Miliband's blog is publicly funded he can't make it an entirely partisan affair. However, I still challenge the wisdom of linking to characters such as Guido - on public money - and still believe David could do a bit more to highlight many of the excellent Labour blogs out there. Hardly a controversial thing to say really.

Is Iain Dale a hypocrite...you decide

Iain Dale February 12 2007:

"Over the last few weeks a huge amount of damage has been done to the British blogosphere. Blogwars have broken out between various parties which have made us all appear like obsessive schoolschildren who have nothing better to do with our time than flame each other...It's time to call a halt to this before it all gets out of hand"

"...In the spirit of reaching out to those who seem to have developed an unhealthy obsession with me I say this. I refuse to get dragged in to a war with you. You can keep sending over the missiles but I'm not firing back."

Iain Dales blog yesterday in the comments section (remember Dale moderates and approves comments before he publishes them):

"...         The comment calling the Labour Humanist a cretin has been deleted at place. More imaginative insults required."

Is Iain Dale a hypocrite? Here's a dictionary definition:

"a person who pretends to have virtues, moral or religious beliefs, principles, etc., that he or she does not actually possess, esp. a person whose actions belie stated beliefs"

There you go, make up your own minds.

Iain, if you are not a hypocrite...why do you approve comments which urge the posting of abuse on other people's blogs?

Update: comment from bloggerheads

Sadly comments off for now...too many Tory trolls from the Iain Dale fan club to police

For anyone who follows political blogging this is all too predictable, post something critical of Dale or Guido and out come the trolls. I've had to delete personally abusive comments from Tory trolls who've come over here after their blog idol gave the sign.

Anyway as I have a life, I am off out to the pub, unlike the trolls who I guess will be tuning into 18 Dreary st. As such I can't guarantee what kind of trash will be posted while I am away, so sadly comments are off for now.

Why is Miliband showcasing Tory blogs and ignoring Labour bloggers?

Environment secretary and occasionally thought of as a potential party leader, David Miliband, has a blog. But it's hard to understand the latest updating of his blog and the almost total invisibility of the Labour leaning blogosphere in its design and links. Hey David....remember us!?

Miliband’s site links to 11 blogs:

• 3 of these are to journalist sites such as Nick Robinson (former chair of the young conservatives);
• four link to Conservative sites including tory boys Guido Fawkes and Iain Dale;
• there is 1 Liberal Democrat link;
• leaving a mere 3 links to Labour supporting sites.

Why link to Dale? He is part of a group of tories organising dodgy attack ads against Labour colleagues. Guido Fawkes is a tory tosser who has called Miliband a "humourless control freak" and co-ordinated an online campaign to sabotage a wiki project lead by Miliband - which then had to be suspended. -  Guess what Guido gets a link on the Miliband blog but none of the large number of progressive blogs out there get bigged up on the minister's web site.

David, this is a poor show. If you need some ideas of who to link to, why don’t you put this blog on your links? And if you need any other ideas, why don’t you regularly check with the list of recent posts from Labour supporting blogs on Bloggers 4 Labour??

UPDATE: Thanks to Iain Dale for linking to this post in such a typically insightful manner. I heartily recommend all readers who have stumbled upon this blog through dale to read this rather interesting open letter to the establishment's favourite blogging tory boy.