Alpha Courses

I make no secret of the fact that I am an atheist, I don't believe in God
(not even a little bit), however there have been times in my own life when
things have seemed inexplicably bleak and I have wished that there was
something outside of day to day life from which I could garner some support.
I have often found myself, during these times, looking at people who have
some religious affiliation or system of faith and feeling a little jealous
of their ability to believe. For me not believing in God is not something I
choose, I think about the idea and it makes no sense, I could no more try to
be a believer then I could try to fly - there is an inherent contradiction
between the way my mind works and the dictates of blind faith and this is
okay, because if I was to turn to God or religion when life seemed a little
too difficult then it would be no better a solution then turning to alcohol
or drugs or any other crutch.

What struck me last night while watching a programme about the Alpha courses
in the UK was the people who were attending these and what they seemed to be
looking for, there was a sort of sadness in them and they, understandably,
were seeking something to create meaning. What the organisers of the courses
seemed to do was to prey on this in the most horrifically manipulative
manner. I am sometimes accused of being to harsh in the expression of my
views of religiosity, but it is things like the Alpha course that inspire
this, every individual is entitled to believe in whatever they want, and I
can even understand the impetus to attempt to convert others, but the Alpha
course crossed a line between conversion and coercion, just watching their
methods made me feel uncomfortable and worried for the attendees. Perhaps
there needs to be some sort of a regulation, or at least a system to monitor
these types of programmes?

Instead of working I wrote this poem... well it amused me!!

Instruction.

This may not be the most subtle approach
For the things I have it to say
I swear I love you with all my heart
But darling, you’re an awful lay.

To be fair I must acknowledge
That you put everything in the right place
But must you really pant so hard
And drool all over my face?

You do realise my breasts are attached
They are an actual part of me
They are not meant to be juggled and pulled about
What do you think that will achieve?

My nipples have nerve endings in great supply,
They are sensitive to a touch
So no biting or pinching or twisting required
If you don’t mind too much.

As for your kisses, (if they can be so called)
Must you really use so much spit
And force your tongue to the back of my throat
I don’t enjoy it one bit.

If you have been smoking, could you please brush your teeth
Before you latch onto my face,
It’s not a bit pleasant or sexy or nice
When your breaths a disgrace.

I won’t go into details, but when you’re thrusting about
Could you please try to improve your aim
And hit the right spot one thrust out of two
To insure our mutual gain.

For my final word on the subject
Could you please get it in to your head
That the only gentlemanly and kind thing to do
Is to give me the dry side of the bed.

Irish Civil Partnership Bill

Today the Government published it's (sorry excuse for a) Civil Partnership Bill, it's available here http://www.justice.ie/en/JELR/Pages/PR09000098

And the reaction from http://www.marriagequality.ie/ is below, or available here: http://www.marriagequality.ie/news/2009/06/26/government-short-change-lesbians-and-gay-men-with-civil-partnership-bill/


Introduction of same-sex civil marriage ignored despite public support

Following the publication of the civil partnership bill today, MarriagEquality is calling on the Government to acknowledge that the bill is forcing lesbians and gay men to accept a second rate set of rights, and ensures that lesbian and gay relationships will be regarded as inferior to married couples. MarriagEquality advocate that the Government instead move to provide lesbians and gay men with equality by providing access to civil marriage.

Research conducted by Lansdowne Market Research shows that 81% of the public agree that everyone should receive equal treatment from the state regardless of their sexuality. 61% further believe that denying lesbians and gay men civil marriage is a form of discrimination.

Grainne Healy, Co-Chair, MarriagEquality, commented, "MarriagEquality want equal marriage rights for lesbians and gay men. Civil partnership is not marriage like, and does not confer marriage like rights on lesbians and gay men who choose to legally register their relationship through it. The civil partnership legislation is deficient on so many levels and discriminates against lesbians, gay men and their children to such an extent that MarriagEquality are calling on to Government to legislate for civil marriage now."

A deeply upsetting aspect of the civil partnership legislation is that the Government has totally ignored lesbian and gay parents and their children. In reality all children should have equal access to their parents and vice-versa, and should have the same rights as all children in Ireland. 75% of the public believe that all children should be treated equally by the state. Furthermore, a same-sex couple will not be eligible to apply to be considered to adopt a child under civil partnership: not even the child of their registered civil partner.

Moninne Griffith, Director, MarriagEquality said, "Discrimination against lesbians and gay men continues through the announcement of the civil partnership bill. It simply isn't enough and reinforces that belief that we are outsiders on the margins of society. The fact that through this bill the Government has given us 'some' rights but not equal rights is fundamentally flawed. Lesbians and gay men should be entitled to the same rights and responsibilities as their straight counterparts. The time for change is now."

Ms Griffith continued, "Ireland is in the midst of uncertain times, and whether gay, lesbian or straight we must unite to overcome adversity. The same is true for the matter of equal access to civil marriage. It is not just an issue for lesbians and gay men, but for every human being on this island. Until Ireland is a society of equals, we must unite and fight for what is right."

Further information on MarriagEquality can be found on http://www.marriagequality.ie/ or by calling 01 6599 459.

But I'm being good!!!

It seems very, very unfair that, because I have actually given up smoking (5 days and counting) I get sick…

 

Since I’ve stopped I’ve developed a horrible cough (my poor lungs are trying to expel the tar built up from ten years at twenty a day) and I’ve an ear infection to boot (which is viciously painful and has rendered me slightly deaf in my left ear).

 

It’s enough to make me want to start again, just to get back to normal, but we will persevere against all the odds…

 

I’m developing a disturbingly close relationship with the Nicorette patches… they are my new best friends.

 

A moment that changed your life.

I was asked recently to pinpoint a moment that changed my life, on first consideration I said that it was taking part in a University Access Programme which late led to my going to University and getting a degree in English Studies. On reflection that’s a little to simplified.

 

I found out about the Programme from a friend in a drama group when I was sixteen, he was close to completing it and was telling me about how much he enjoyed it, making me decide to apply. So the moment that changed my life was sitting with him in a bowling alley while he told me about the course.

 

But…

 

If I had never joined the drama group in question we would never have had that conversation so the moment that changed my life was sitting on a bus with my sister (on the way to a school friend’s birthday party) and seeing an advertisement for the drama group and deciding to join.

 

But…

 

I was held back in school when I was seven, if I hadn’t been held back then I wouldn’t have been going to the same party that day and might never have seen the advertisement for the drama group, so the moment that changed my life was being held back when I was seven.

 

But…

 

The reason that I was held back in school is that I was three weeks too young to be accepted into the next year, so the moment that changed my life was actually being born on the day that I was born, rather than three weeks earlier.

 

But…

 

I was born exactly on schedule so, really, the moment that changed my life was being conceived.

 

But…

 

If my parents had never met than I wouldn’t have been conceived at all, they met when a friend of my Mother’s was too drunk to get a lift home on a motorcycle and instead my Dad gave them a lift in his car.

 

So, the moment that changed my life was some nameless girl drinking far too much at a wedding and then making a drunken show of her self.

 

Seems appropriate.

 

 

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies...

If Pride and Prejudice is one of your favorite books but, like me, you often find yourself thinking 'If only there were more Zombies' then fret no more!

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Pride-Prejudice-Zombies-Romance-now-Ultraviolent/dp/1594743347/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1245149418&sr=8-1

Petition

This post is to let you know that the petition of solidarity for Survivors of Institutional Child Abuse in Ireland can be signed online at the following website.

www.irishsolidarity.com

All support for those who were victims is appreciated,

For those of you who live in Ireland the March of Solidarity will start from the Garden of Remembrance today at 12noon.

LOCATION

Garden of Remembrance to the Dáil. Please gather at the Garden of Remembrance at noon and please proceed in total silence throughout the march past GPO to the Dáil.

WHITE RIBBONS

The survivors hope you can attend and encourage as many people and public organisations as possible to participate in the march. It is suggested that all participants wear a white ribbon for the silent march and bring a child’s shoe to represent the lives lost in the institutions. Those who cannot attend can sign and post the Petition of Solidarity to PO Box 11618, Swords, Co. Dublin, Ireland, and the people of Ireland are also encouraged to wear a white ribbon on June 10 in solidarity with the survivors. SOIAI is led by Christine Buckley, John Kelly, Noel Barry, Michael O’Brien.

Elections (don't forget to vote)

8 days to the local elections... and then the politicians will stop knocking on the door every evening,

I'll have to go back to arguing with the Jehovah's witnesses.

Poem

Make your way in silence to the edge of our cities

and hide yourself there,

behind the newest addition

of multi million showcasing we call art.

Keep your eyes downcast,

do not cry out or we will find you

and bundle you off to anonymous elsewhere

to muffle your voice, fearing the human story.

You are 22 per cent that falls

through the cracks of policy.

The other 78 do not want

to bear witness,

as you peer through the double glazing,

flattening the flowerbeds and rosebushes

and mucking suburban content

with the detritus of a broken life.

Commission to inquire into child abuse

While it doesn't make for easy reading it is important that every Irish citizen make themselves aware of what the report of the Commission to inquire into child abuse found.
(http://www.childabusecommission.ie/)

The systematic and vile abuse of the most vulnerable in Irish society, those who should have been protected, by those who were in a position of absolute power is horrifying.

I could start now on a rant about church and state but this is not about my agenda, those who were hurt should be compensated and every Irish person should be aware of what was allowed to happen, this was not abuse shrouded in secrecy but abuse deliberately ignored.

It will break your heart.

Empire Attacks

Having a fun bout of Insomnia for the past couple of weeks... but this game is great for passing time when I can't sleep... www.empireattack.com

Very addictive, you have been warned.

The Reason Project

The Reason Project is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit foundation devoted to spreading scientific knowledge and secular values in society. Drawing on the talents of the most prominent and creative thinkers across a wide range of disciplines, The Reason Project seeks to encourage critical thinking and wise public policy through a variety of interrelated projects. The foundation will convene conferences, produce films, sponsor scientific studies and opinion polls, publish original research, award grants to other charitable organizations, and offer material support to religious dissidents and public intellectuals — all with the purpose of eroding the influence of dogmatism, superstition, and bigotry in our world.

http://www.reasonproject.org/

New Blasphemy law in Ireland - what Atheist Ireland have to say

The Irish Government’s new proposed blasphemy crime combines the oppressive religious thinking of 1950s Catholic Ireland and modern Islamic fundamentalism. This proposal should be opposed for three reasons.

One, it does not protect religious belief. Instead, it encourages outrage and it criminalises free speech. Two, it treats religious beliefs as more valuable than secular beliefs and scientific thinking. Three, we should be removing 1930s religious references from the Irish Constitution, not legislating to enforce them.

The bill’s first test of blasphemy is that religious adherents express outrage. Instead of encouraging outrage, we should be educating people to respond in a more healthy manner than outrage when somebody expresses a belief that they find insulting. More worryingly, this law would encourage the type of orchestrated outrage that Islamic fundamentalists directed against Danish cartoonists.

Many atheists find it insulting that the Christian Bible suggests that women must not teach and must learn in silence, or that effeminate people are unrighteous, or that people should worship a God who threatens to make you eat your own children. But we do not believe that the Bible should be banned, and neither should discussion of the Bible in terms that cause Christians to be outraged.

Blasphemy is not the only anomaly of running a 21st century state with a 1937 Constitution. You cannot become President or be appointed as a Judge unless you take a religious oath under God asking god to direct and sustain you in your work. We should be amending our Constitution to remove these theistic references, not creating new crimes to enforce provisions that were written in the 1930s.

If you live in Ireland, please lobby your local TD, the Justice Minister, and the members of the Oireachtas Justice Committee that is considering this proposal. Contact details here: http://tr.im/k4Mq

Pop over to Atheist Ireland here: http://blog.atheist.ie/

Swine Flu

100 people get swine flu and masks sold out. Millions get HIV yet nobody buys condoms... just sayin...

And there is good in the world

I take back all of the ranting and raving of two posts back, someone in work just made me a cup of tea for no reason at all... you have to love the little things.

Why is it so bloody difficult to give up smoking!!!

We are now on the, I dunno, 7 millionth attempt to stop smoking, and this morning I went into the shop to get some juice and left with 20 cigarettes. I hadn’t even thought about buying them, I just walked up to the till, asked for 20 Marlboros and left (minus the juice). I was halfway through a smoke before I remembered that I was supposed to be giving up.

 

(At this point I should say a big thank you to my first boss in the petrol station where I worked when I was 14 for finding it amusing to teach me how to smoke… not that I was arguing, it seemed like a very grown up thing to be doing.)

 

But I’ve no excuse now, I know all of the dangers, I know how bad they are for me and how they damage my bank balance but still I smoke. The crux of it is that I am a smoker, I don’t remember a time when I didn’t smoke… 20 a day, everyday for the last 11 years and despite all of the warnings I keep smoking for one reason alone… I like them… or so my nicotine addicted system will have me believe.

 

So far willpower and patches have failed, my sister is suggesting hypnotism but the idea doesn’t appeal to me at all (oogly boogly scary stuff) … maybe some kind of clockwork orange type aversion therapy… or then again, maybe not.

 

I think I shall accept my weakness, indulge in my little addiction and hope they have found cures for anything I get by the time I am old enough to start suffering for the damage I’m doing now, definitely the sensible choice… I shall give up on giving up so.

 

 

 

 

People just ain't no good...

 

 

I’m not going to get annoyed; it’s not worth having a fight about this… mantra for today, repeat ad nauseam.

 

I had a bit, (just a little bit) of a moment this morning, actually two moments that have really got the blood boiling and now I’m in work quietly steaming…

 

On the Luas today a very strange little man decided to have a go at me, apparently I’m going to hell (which sounds fun). Thing is, he seemed like a normal enough kind of a guy.

 

I was chatting with my friend about how someone knocked on my door yesterday to give me a miraculous medal, which is a fairly common occurrence and I declined to accept it. I suppose I could have been agreeable and just taken the bloody thing but I’d already had the Jehovah’s at the door that morning and my tolerance for religious claptrap had waned.  When I said thanks but no thanks to the holy Joe they became insistent and irritating so I got a little but short with them and told them to ‘go peddle crazy somewhere else’. My friend and I were having a bit of a juvenile giggle at this fine example of my rapier wit when ‘Luas man’ decided to intervene.

 

He puffed himself up, stomped over to where I was sitting and eloquently argued the case for the religious by abusing the length of my skirt, granted this was a powerful argument. My skirt was very short; obviously I was in league with the devil and all his minions. I had no morals, clearly I was promiscuous and inherently evil… and had he mentioned I was wearing a very short skirt? (I’m paraphrasing here; his language was slightly bluer). There is very little that you can say to a person like this… but I will point out that if you are a large man and stand over a girl of 5 foot 3 and yell at her about the length of her skirt then this is probably not the best way to illustrate that your religious values are an example to us all, just saying.

 

On a slight less annoying note when I got off of the public transport and made me way to work someone bumped into me, I apologised (even though it wasn’t my fault, I’ve a tendency to do that) and they told me to ‘fucking watch where the fuck you are walking you stupid c**t’, which was nice and has helped to put me into a great mood on a Monday morning.

 

I need to see something nice happen today to restore my faith in humanity…

 

 

Ask the Minister for an assurance that no one will become homeless because of the budget

		April's mini-budget included cuts in the Rent Supplement scheme which will increase the risk of people becoming homeless. You can help prevent this. In the last week of May the Government will make an automated cut in all rent supplement payments of 8%; this will be on top of an increase of €11 since January in the contribution a tenant must make to their rent. This cut will be made with no reference to the circumstances, vulnerability or disability of the tenant. Most importantly, it will be made with no reference to whether the rent charged by the landlord has actually fallen. The Government hopes that landlords will cut the rents they charge when they hear that their tenants have less money. But if landlords refuse, it is the tenant who must pay the price - or lose their home. As someone who has supported Focus Ireland's campaigns on behalf of homeless people in the past, I hope you will be willing to lend your support to our call for Minister for Social and Family Affairs Mary Hanafin to issue an assurance that no-one will become homeless because of these measures. This seems a small assurance to ask of her. But if she makes this commitment it will be important. We will be able to enter into detailed discussion with Community Welfare Officers about how vulnerable people can be protected. The risks facing people in the private rented sector are not one of the issues which the media is interested in discussing at present. These cuts which may deprive some people of their homes seem likely to slip through with little debate. Don't let that happen. Click on http://takeaction.focusireland.ie/takeaction/mary-hanafin-must-give-assurance/%20and e-mail the Minister and your local TDs on this.

Just another day at work... when everything goes wrong

 

Chaos, panic, and disorder.

 

My work here is done. 

Irish women challenge ban on abortion in European court

THE GOVERNMENT is to launch a robust defence of the State’s ban on abortion before the European Court of Human Rights in the face of a legal challenge by three women who claim the restrictions violate their human rights.
The Strasbourg-based court is considering the admissibility of a legal challenge by the women, who claim their rights were denied by being forced to terminate their pregnancies outside the State.
The women say the restrictive nature of Irish law on abortion jeopardised their health and wellbeing.
The identities of the three – known as A, B and C – will remain confidential as the case proceeds through the court.
While it has been known for some time that the case is pending, papers lodged with the court show in detail for the first time how the Government will contest the case.
The main plank of its defence rests on its contention that domestic legal remedies have not been exhausted by the women.
It also robustly challenges suggestions by the women that there is a lack of post-abortion care or counselling in Ireland.
It also insists the European Convention on Human Rights does not confer even a limited right to abortion and it would be “inconceivable” that member states would have agreed to this.
The women at the centre of the legal challenge include a woman who ran the risk of an ectopic pregnancy, where the foetus develops outside the womb; a woman who received chemotherapy for cancer; and a woman whose children were placed in care as she was unable to cope.
The court, which is separate from the EU, adjudicates on human rights issues among all 47 member states of the Council of Europe.
Any decision of the court is binding on the member states and must be complied with, except if it consists of an advisory opinion.
The women’s complaints centre on four alleged violations of articles in the European Convention on Human Rights, including protection from “inhuman or degrading treatment” and freedom from discrimination.
The women at the centre of the case – who are represented by the Irish Family Planning Association – say the lack of any effective remedy at home means they have satisfied the requirement to exhaust domestic legal remedies.
In addition, they say that taking a case would have been costly, futile and could have forced them to relinquish their anonymity.
While the case has passed the first stage of the hearing process, a formal hearing on the admissibility and merits of the case is expected shortly.
The case will be watched closely by observers given a ruling by the same court in recent years which resulted in Poland being instructed to guarantee access to legal abortions.

From Irish Times: http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/frontpage/2009/0421/1224245071362.html