Naked police dancing around bonfires

...and other such cliches. Check this out:

http://www.metro.co.uk/news/article.html?Pagan_police_to_get_witchcraft_holidays&in_article_id=704711&in_page_id=34&expand=true#StartComments

It's nice to know that the police now officially recognise the oldest religion in the world as a religion. Having just said that, and aware of the irony between previous and next sentences:

The responses are as predictable as they are ill-informed (including, I am embarrassed to say, that of Carolinedevi of London). Most notably, an anonymous text message (presumably from an ignorant, knee-jerking bible-basher) published in today's edition suggested that pagans should be happy to work on Christian-inspired bank holdiays without any overtime premium, currently set at double-time in the Force (clearly oblivious to the fact that overtime premiums have nothing to do with religion and everything to do with the waiving of statutory rights - such as statutory leave on a bank holiday) while making no such suggestion regarding the Abrahamic religions on the pagan-inspired bank holiday at the beginning of May. But hey. No less consistency that one might expect from the Metro letter page.

There is of course one key word in the article which has sparked the predictable responses:

Members of the new Pagan Police Association will have guaranteed holiday on the faith's eight festival days.

Okay, let's be realistic.

There is no such thing as guaranteed holiday in the police force. If there were, it would fall apart during Holy Week, given that over 70% of the population is (at least nominally) Christian. The most any public servant can reasonably expect is a certain degree of priority regarding leave requests for religious festivals, and only then subject to operational need.

As a public servant, I agree with this. As a professional who believes in a good work/life balance, I would hope that a reasonable leave request made with enough notice would be met. As a Pagan, I might make such a request pretty soon (though for now, we are in the middle of a run of sabbats happening at weekends anyway). As a secularist, I think the regulations of the Equality Act already do enough to prevent undue religious clout as regards leave entitlements without the likes of the National Secular Society whining about it.

"Join us and defend freedom of expression", the banner at the top of their website so proudly boasts. Yet their comment on this article (and similar articles concerning other minority groups within the police) seems to suggest the very opposite ideal. I skimmed their website and got a very strong impression of an organisation which, I grant, had done great things to ensure freedom from religion, but seemed blissfully unaware of how they may be encroaching on freedom of religion at times. Hence they fail categorically to represent such people as me who are both secularists and theists.

Sure, secularists have battles to fight. All minority groups have battles to fight. But lashing out at other minority groups is not the way to win those battles. Far better is to promote diversity and equality in all spheres, especially public ones. And that includes giving people a bit of room to practice their religion - or indeed to opt out of doing so. And that's what such groups as the Pagan Police Association (and their Muslim and Jewish equivalents) are looking out for. Not preferential treatment, as their detractors seem to believe.

Secularism surely has bigger fish to fry.

Can't we all just get along?
Vote Duncan (X)

*****ADDENDUM*****

Further to my criticism of the National Secular Society here's their website which promotes human rights over religious rights. Fine so far, but compare their presentation of certain news articles with article 18 and also, arguably, article 26 paragraph 2 of this. Call me old fashioned, but I think the UN trumps them. Just about. But then faith schools are a' whole 'nother blog.

As if I could stay silent...

Okay. Okay, I'll admit it from the get-go: I have railed against the perfunctory outpouring of grief a few times already, but the fact is that some people are worth it. The best tributes have probably all been made already, so I'll let him say it in his own words:

link

And then again, from the sleeve notes of Dangerous:

Consciousness expresses itself through creation. The world we live in is the dance of the creator. Dancers come and go in the twinkling of an eye, but the dance lives on. On many an occasion when I am dancing, I have felt touched by something sacred. In these moments, I felt my spirit soar and become one with everything that exists.

I become the stars and the moon. I become the lover and the beloved. I become the victor and the vanquished. I become the master and the slave. I become the singer and the song. I become the knower and the known. I keep on dancing. Then it is the eternal dance of creation. The creator and creation merge into one wholeness of joy. I keep on dancing, and dancing, and dancing. Until there is only the dance.

Bad was the first album I ever owned. I'm now on my third copy. From the age of five onwards I actually cared about music, and it all started with good ol' Mick.

You all did love him once, not without cause;
What cause witholds you then to mourn for him?
O Judgement! thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason. Bear with me;
My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar,
And I must pause till it come back to me.
(Julius Caesar, III,ii,103-8)

The legend remains. Domine, salvum fac Regem.

Duncanesque Reloaded

This could be a bit of a meandering chain of thought, and may well get deleted before you even read it, thus rendering this disclaimer completely redundant, but hey-ho. It might actually be good.

So anyway, it's sci-fi time again. Today I took the opportunity of a quiet morning to allow the first Matrix sequel a second viewing. And yes, I've been thinking about it all day. It is most definitely a victim of second-in-a-trilogy-itis. You know what I'm talking about. That film without which part three of three would be completely meaningless yet, perhaps because it leaves everything unresolved in preparation for a grandstand finish in the next installment, is somehow less exciting than the two on either side of it.

At least for the hoi polloi. Personally, I often find myself the champion of the mid-section storytelling. I still consider The Empire Strikes Back to be George Lucas' finest work. Libation Bearers is still the daddy of Greek tragedy. See, we don't always need the ending - in fact, skipping to the ending of an ultimately predictable story arc does us a huge dis-service by denying us that big contemplative period in the middle that made the whole journey worthwhile in the first place. Or maybe I'm just a nerd. But I'm the people's nerd (Vote Duncan, X).

Anyway, that big contemplative period. And the Matrix. That's where I was going.

It concerned the daddy of all contemplations: Destiny. Free Will. Cause. Effect. Oh, and love. Yeah. That too.

Remember the Oracle from the first film? Forgotten all about the second film? Let me remind you: The reason she always knew what was going to happen was that it she had already seen it happen five times; this was the world's sixth time round the same loop that repeated itself with a 0.014% variation, said variation being roughly the sum of free will.

Wowzer.

Okay, here's the thing. Being a tarot type, I have not for a long time considered notions of free will and notions of predeterminism to be wholly incompatible. Like the Oracle, I realise that sometimes one agonizes over a choice that one has in fact already made. Like the info-trafficker dude, I realise that chains of cause and effect are far bigger than the people caught up in them, and that the question of what happens is probably far less powerful than that of why it happened. But like Neo and the Architect, I recognise an anomaly that we call "choice".

More often than not, people experience this once and conclude that they can change anything by choice, even that which has been set in motion years before and is chugging inexhorably forward to its dis-preferred conclusion. So they try. And they fail. They waste their choices. They lacked the serenity to accept that which they could not change. As it says in my "bible"*, we have free will, we just don't know how to use it.

Anyway, none of this is ground-breaking, and what I wanted to get to was that number: 0.014%.

It's pretty small. It could have been much bigger and still had the same impact; I cannot think of any other story which quantified free will. If you know of another, please mention it in the comment box. But anyway, the one story I know which quantifies free will makes it pretty damned small. Thinking back over the big choices in your lives, how many of them were ever going to go any way other than the way they did go? I'm guessing not many.

Serenity never seemed so important.

Vote, X. If you feel like it.

*Rachel Pollack - Seventy Eight Degrees Of Wisdom: A Book Of Tarot

Party Time!

Sorry, folks, I meant "Party" in the political sense. Yes, I don't do this very often but...:

Duncan gets political!!!

So, seriously, what's the deal with Party lists? Is proportional representation actually representation at all?

Speaking as an ex-Londoner, I remember only a year ago the best and worst political day of my life. Best because still-everyone's-favourite-Tory had just been voted Mayor,worst because a member of the BNP had just been voted onto the Greater London Authority as a "list member".

For people accustomed to actual democracy, I should perhaps explain this concept:

In certain elections in these parts of the world, you don't actually get to vote for an individual. What happens instead is that each political party puts forward a list of candidates for each mega-constituency, and return a number of those candidates proportionate to the share of the overall vote.

Put another way: Let's imagine a party. For the sake of argument we'll call them the Yellow Party. Now let's suppose you are in a mega-constituency returning six or seven members. Now, suppose the Yellow Party put a nice, palatable centreist type at the top of their list to attract your vote, knowing that they'll probably get around 30-40% of the vote.

See the problem? You're not actually voting for the nice, palatable centreist type. No, you're voting for the stinking far-left neo-commy below her on the list. Your mate voted for the Blue Party on the same grounds and inadvertently cast a vote for some sensationalist cynical-vote-grabber-Daily-Mail-type. You don't know anyone who voted for the Red Party, and let's just keep it that way. Meanwhile, the constituency is so large that some dirty fascist has mopped up enough protest votes to sneak a seat by the back door in spite of not having any kind of popular mandate at all.

Then again...

Maybe you spoilt a ballot. Deliberately.

Welcome to my world.

Did YOU vote Duncan ? (X)

By the horns of Boris...

The last weekend saw a series of big-time fun Pagan parties in London of which I was extremely glad to be a part - the highlight most definitely being a Druidic birthday ritual themed around the bull god Taranis as reflected in still-everyone's-favourite-Conservative, Mr Boris Johnson.

I should probably explain that even the most committed solitaires get in on the collective act a few times a year, namely the fire festivals (Imbolc/Candlemas, Beltane eve/May Day, Lugnasadh/first harvest and of course Samhain/Hallowe'en) and this was all a belated May Day shindig (the Beltane Bash, as they call it), so the more attentive of you needn't consider this inconsistent with what you have already read here. Nevertheless it did make me realise how much I missed the scene. Pagans rock.

I mean, seriously, it beats sitting around in silence. And I don't think the Pope gives everyone personalised blessings at his Mass, does he?

Speaking of birthdays...

I turned 27 a few days after I last posted. I'm worried. People (especially rock legends) die when they're 27. I can't wait for my next birthday.

While you still can,
Vote Duncan X

Response blog: the kids are (almost) alright

A facebook note from a friend in the Pagan Federation got my interest today. I'm not in the habit of "outing" anyone so he'll remain anonymous as long as he wants to be so:

Dear Miss Bloaty McChuckletits (and her anorexic girlfriend),

I would like to make an open response to you on here concerning your rude behaviour on the district line after 11pm last night, when I boarded at Mile End station after changing from the central line. As I boarded this train, and stood near you with considerable desdain for yourself, your shell-suit wearing stick-insect of a friend, and whatever STD's you were probably carrying, you both decided to go into hysterical giggling about the white caftan I happened to be wearing as a druid robe. I must honestly say, from the incessant way you continued to laugh at something so benign, you both obviously had been out for an evening about as unexciting as any other that you even remember having, and about as dull as yourselves.

I mean for starters, never mind laughing at me, it was frankly what you were both wearing that I found truly offensive, if not indeed vomit inducing. Frankly I would be very surprised if either of you can get laid at all while wearing such gaudy colours, in such awful combinations, while wearing enough slap to still unfortunately not change the fact that you each have a face like..... well, like a slapped arse.
Or perhaps to make it easier for you i should simply put it in the words of Marjorie Dawes;"I may have a slightly avant-garde sense of fashion, but YOUUUUUUU are SUMMIN' ELSE!!!!"

But what really fascinated me about your behaviour, as this always seems to fascinate me about your kind as an inferior species, is that one of you even had to point out the clearly obvious fact that I was taking the robe off eventually - as if the other one could not see this! And once you had persistently laughed at this also, and I had moved away to take a free seat, I then deigned to speak when obviously I was under no obligation to do so, and point out to you in no uncertain terms, with a courtesy that I was also under no obligation to give, that my robe is indeed optional religious wear. At which point you, Miss Bloaty McChuckletits, decided to respond with perhaps the only two words in the English language you seem to even vaguely understand, "Shut up". Believe me, after I then pointed to both of you that if I were a muslim woman wearing her religious clothing you would not be laughing, and then sat down, I was laughing a lot more on the inside than the hysterics that you or your anorexic girlfriend had descended into. You see, with just those two words, you had made quite clear which of us on that train at that time has the university degree, and which of us probably had to sleep with our teacher just to pass any of her GCSE exams. Then again, I do wonder exactly what it was that made you say "Shut up" for? Was it that your feeble mind felt so threatened by somebody using so many actual english words instead of the aggression that your species exclusively understands? Or were you actually afraid that I might end up saying something to truly hurt you? Believe me, I could've just as well threatened you with my middle finger - it would have been enough to make you feel challenged by the sheer amount of intelligence in it compared to your own. Or indeed, I could've been really nasty, but you were certainly not worth wasting my breath on.

However, I'm not really wasting any breath typing about this on here, so I would like to express why I feel it is that the pair of you feel you must maniacally laugh at anything you happen to see on your public transport journeys that happens to be different, and why indeed I also feel so very glad that I was able to provide such entertainment in that part of your evening.
You see, if I were not there to distract you both, then you probably would've ended up having nothing to stare at apart from your own reflections in the window. And wouldn't that be a terrible thing? Just think, if you happened to take enough of a moment to really look at yourselves without throwing up in your own mouth as I almost did, you would've actually realised what you've really got to be so insecure about - girls like you (if you can actually call yourselves girls) started putting out since you were about 12 years old, giving hand-jobs behind the bike sheds and such, and by now you've just become a dried up piece of shit, that not even your own step-dad would sleep with. And unfortunately, all the make-up in the world couldn't cover that up.

I'd like to just point out again how it is that I've got enough brains to actually make these kind of sound judgements on you and your kind, but still have enough respect to talk about it on a forum like this which you're seldom ever likely to even have the necessary skills to read - I have a university degree. I also own an investment in a business, and i dedicate many of my hours to helping the pagan community, and changing the way that it's thought of by other communities in London. Perhaps you'd have liked to tell me what you have, besides a pair of big hoopy earrings, an unimpressive rack, enough make-up to mend a brick wall, a grotesque sense of what to wear on a night out, two or less GCSE's, and a dried-up cunt?Nothing? No? Oh well, at least there's one thing that makes your existence worthwhile - I know that that the gods send idiots like you my way occasionally, to remind me of the single glaringly obvious fact - I am better than you, and I am better than all of the pond scum that is your inferior species. I could also frankly look at any female that has even remotely more class than you, and call her a 'woman' where i could not do the same for yourselves. And that makes me glad, because knowing that fact actually gives me some degree of faith in humanity, where your behaviour tries to deprive me of it.

I do hope that you're proud of yourselves. Please continue to prove to the rest of the world why a decent education, the decorum of a lady, and not growing up in Newham are all truly virtuous things.

Sincerely,

Sure, we all get our knickers in a twist sometimes, and yes, he has already been shouted down on his own page for going off on one like this, thus leaving this response somewhat redundant, but I'm bored and so he (and you) are getting it anyway. And you'll be shocked to learn (sorry, LZ) that I'm about to side with chav-kind. To a certain degree, at least.

Okay, so they dress funny. And no, most of them cannot string together two intelligent sentences. But the rant above is not without its own grammatical errors, and my friend was also (by his own admission) dressed in a manner that would be just as funny to them. And yes, a hell of a lot of people do seem to exist for the sole purpose of confirming whatever stereotypes one may have about their respective tribes. People, in the glorious words of Slipknot, generally speaking equals shit.

What gives me some degree of faith in humanity while all around me people's behaviour tries to deprive me of it is the remarkable tendency of my fellow human beings to rubbish their stereotypes. This, however, is not always a good thing.

For instance, we have the positive stereotype of the student/graduate/person-of-graduate-calibre as someone well-read, intelligent, capable of a well-rounded debate, open to hearing a point of view contrary to their own, and in short the very opposite of the negative stereotype of chav upon which the rant plays. I seem to recall a time a year or so ago when LZ relied on this stereotype in a blog ranting against the very idea of the No-Platform policy and it fell to me to provide the reality check I must repeat here:

No. No, no, no, no and no. Face it. We don't all live up to that one. I like to think I do my utmost, but I have my moments too (I'm sure long term subscribers could point out a couple from my blog history, but this isn't about me). From the concrete splattery of your local ex-poly to the glistening spires of Ox-Bridge, a quick ear-wig of any given student bar will show the average student to be every bit as irresponsible, shallow and narrow-minded as the next person, with the added ammo of that most dangerous of things (a little knowledge). Proud though I am of mine, I don't think a couple of letters after my name make me a better person - rather, it is what I had to do to get them that is important. Although I am still a little pissed off at the inconsiderate HR types that folded my degree certificate into an A5 envelope before returning it to me.

And there's more. It didn't work out for me, but I recently spent a short while doing the street fundraising thing (RSPCA and Action for Children, since you ask) - y'know, the kind where you try to make people open a direct debit to your charity. It's a cold sell, basically. I can't do cold selling, and that's why it didn't work out. But I had a lot of fun, and the point I'm meandering towards is this: There was no time to discriminate, I just had to try to talk to whomever I could. And guess which tribe was the most receptive? The business types? The well-spoken studentey ones? Apparently nice elderly types? Or the chavs?

You got it. So I didn't get many signatures at all, but Average Joe "Rudeboy" Public, the kind I would traditionally avoid, was usually the most empathic person around and the one that kept me believing in what I was doing.

Empathy, people. Empathy. No amount of schooling can teach it. It's a lesson one learns from life or not at all, apparently one that passed by the District Line tormentors and indeed many others of their tribe. But it's far more important than petty tribalism.

Vote for peace.
Vote Duncan X

Filler X5

Sorry to fob you off with the same crap I give the facebook audience, but I feel the need for some filler, and here it is:

Okay, as you should all know by now I don't do facebook apps, but I'm feeling a little left out from all this top five stuff as a result of this, so here are a few top fives that I've enjoyed seeing other people do:

Cartoons from my youth:
MASK
Thundercats
Looney Tunes
Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles
The Real Ghostbusters

Dog Breeds:
Jack Russell
Tibetan Terrier
Corgi
Sheep dogs, of any kind
Any given cross-breed of anything

People I'd want to have my back in a fight:
Captain Kirk (he solved 99% of the Federation's problems for five years by winning fist fights)
BA Baracus (Face it, we might lose the fight and need to get out of there. His van is fast, fool)
Emperor Palpatine (But early on in his career, before everyone knew he was a Sith Lord. That lightning bolt trick is COOOOL!)
HM The Queen (Commander-in-chief, it just makes sense)
The Crow (If the worst happened, I could come back a year later and avenge myself. Awesome)

Live Bands(you get ten because this is as far down as I could narrow it):
Billy Idol (this be the top, the rest in no real order)
Bon Jovi (okay, this is a close second, but the rest really are in no order)
David Bowie
Aerosmith
Motorhead
The Who
Alice Cooper
Quireboys
Queen+
Eric Clapton

Sweets:
FRUIT ROCK!!! (What happened to it?)
Chocolate truffles
Twix (and indeed Aldi's own brand imitation, the Jive bar!)
Solid chocolate
Jelly babies