More Religous Rabble Rousing

In light of recent campaigns by Christian or Islamic school children to be allowed to breach their chosen school’s uniform code so that they can wear their own weird religious symbols (isn’t it verging on idolatry for the monotheists?), it seems Sikhism has felt left out. Not any more.

Today, the BBC reports:

A legal challenge has been filed in the High Court on behalf of a 14-year-old girl excluded from a Cynon Valley school for wearing a Sikh bangle.

Oh please. Is this really what the education budget should be spent on? No wonder schools up and down the country are struggling to fund real lessons (allowing creationism to sneak in), when all their budgets are spent defending against petulant teenagers wanting to rebel against the school dress codes. Gone are the days of wearing your blazer round your waist, or a funny knot in your tie, now we have court cases over esoteric religious jewellery. Wonderful.

Sadly, the much maligned liberty gets in on the act here and (IMHO) damages is standing in future causes:

Campaign group, Liberty, has made the challenge, saying the school had breached race relations laws.

Well done Liberty, you just couldn’t pass up this chance to get in the news, could you? This is not a race relations issue, it is not even a religious freedom issue. The school is not discriminating against this school girl because of her religion, race, gender, shoe size or anything else. It is attempting to uphold a uniform standard. If the school had demanded she take off the bracelet and wear a crucifix instead, then yes, I would be up in arms about it. The BBC continues:

The school bans all jewellery and has said their policy ensures equality.

After filling the challenge, Liberty said the school has also breached human rights laws.

It really is enough to make you want to cry.

I have to wear a tie to work, will Liberty defend my human right to not do so? I doubt it. Will they pay my wages when my employer sacks me? I doubt it. This girl’s parents will have been aware of the school dress codes before she started there. Why did they send her to a school which prohibits jewellery if wearing a bloody bracelet is so important?

Sadly, the BBC article continues to show humanity at its worst. It provides paragraphs of ammunition for right-wingers and neo-Nazis to continue to argue that “these people” (i.e. intelligent people who dont follow their particular brand of hatred) shouldn’t be allowed in the country. It panders to the right-wingers who bemoan how “PC” we have become and that this is a bad thing. It weakens every other “human rights” argument because this is nothing to do with fundamental human rights. I feel sorry for the Welsh Assembly (unusual for me…) being dragged into this, but at least they say it is down to the school not them.

This is not political correctness, it is stupidity. Win or lose, every one pays the price for this.


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Posted in Philosophy, Society

Climate Change – Atheists Can Be Stupid Too… [long]

Well, on this blog we have often tried to point out that a conglomeration of atheists is no likely to be more intelligent, more sane, more rational than any other grouping (*), but recently we have had a fair bit of evidence that being an “atheist” says very little about a person. Atheism is an open club, there are no vows you have to take (**), there is no entry test and it is pretty much all self-certified – if you say you are an atheist, you are an atheist. There is no doctrine atheists must follow, no common political ideology and, sadly, no reasons that any particular atheist should be even remotely scientifically literate (for example Al Kafir Akbar, discussed previously). Everyone is born an atheist, some are converted to a religion then escape, others just remain atheists.

It seems we have a new entry to the ranks of literate but scientifically challenged atheist. Brendan O’Neill is the person who claims to be an “avowed atheist” and is “as atheistic as it gets.” I have no idea how Brendan sees there being a sliding scale of atheism, it has always struck me as being reasonably black and white(***).

Not content with repeating himself ad nauseam (see heather’s previous posts), writing in CommentIsFree today, Brendan has now joined in on the side of Climate Change Deniers. In a breathtaking display of scientific illiteracy (as well as some apparent linguistic illiteracy), Brendan launches an attack on anthropogenic climate change that would make the discovery institute proud. He seems convinced that his limited reading on the subject has imparted upon him a greater understanding than the majority of the worlds scientists. Like all kooks, he feels that the few newspaper articles he has read, has allowed him to have a unique insight that no amount of scientifically trained people (students and professors) have managed to spot. He is amazing, and I am sure he will be on his way to Stockholm in the very near future. Or not. Add into this weird approach to science, the fact he is attacking things no on their science but on their presentation (or more importantly his interpretation of it), and you can see he must spend a lot of time at UncommonDescent. Even his arguments seem similar to the crackpot ones they use. As soon as he uses the “less than half of scientists support global warming” we will know the truth… Continue reading


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Posted in Philosophy, Science, Society

Pipex is Still Terrible

Well, any long time readers of this blog will know I detest Pipex (my ISP – I refuse to link to them). It is terrible. It has abysmal customer service and for most of the summer I was without a connection at all. When they finally got round to fixing it what speed the ADSL used to have was truly gone.

Sadly, thanks to the terms and conditions the ISP is allowed to impose, I am obliged to remain with them for another four months at least. This is gutting when the net connection is barely faster than dial up.

I have spent the first three days of this month trying to connect to Thinkbroadband.com to see what my actual transfer speeds were. However, the connection was too slow for the speedtest to run. How bad is that? Fortunately, today things have picked up a little so here is this months graph:

Graph of transfer speeds using the UK ISP Pipex

What is really shocking about this graph, is not just the massive downwards trend it shows, but the fact that the really slow connections aren’t even on it. This graph only shows when the connection speeds were fast enough for me to get the speedtester to run! Very soon the early “fast” days will drop off the graph and it will just be flatlined crap speeds.

It is infuriating that, in this day and age, it seems impossible to get a consistently fast data connection. I am paying for a service which advertises itself as an “8mb connection” yet I barely scrape over 2mb. As soon as I can get out of this contract I am going with Virgin Media Cable broadband.

I have been with Pipex for about five years now – until very recently they were wonderful. I would have recommended them to anyone. However, in the summer they were taken over by Tiscali (who I have hated in the past) and things have plummeted like a lead weight.

Why in the name of Toutatis would Tiscali (who already had a reputation for being crap) buy a good ISP and then turn it to rubbish? What on earth is the point of that? Are these people mad? (Note: Virgin did the same with Blueyonder/Telewest…)

Anyway, before I get ranting about the stupidity of corporate takeovers, I will end here with the exhortation that you never, ever recommend Pipex (or Tiscali) to anyone you have even a passing regard for. Terrible ISP is an understatement.


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Posted in Bad Shops, Rants, Technology