This charming man

August 30, 2010 at 6:54 pm (Atheism, Catholicism, Uncategorized)
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Here’s an absolutely lovely quote from Titus Oates of the National ‘Secular’ Society:

For too long the Jewish community behaved like an arrogant, unaccountable arm of the government and of the law aided at every turn by a fifth column of Jews whose primary, indeed seemingly only, loyalty is to their own kind. Having so comprehensively abused their place in the corridors of power, they now need to be banished from them.

Oh, I’m sorry. Mr Oates was in fact talking about Catholics. So that’s all right then.

As Mr Oates is weighing in on the Chesney affair, there are one or two other points in his barking mad editorial that are worth remarking on. Let’s just note in passing that, as far as we can tell from the Hutchinson report, the cover-up was instigated by the government and police, while the Church authorities were brought in to get Chesney out of the way. Mr Oates of course cannot admit this, as in the NSS view of the world the State is a God-term. It’s the same way that, while he references the Ryan Report, one will find no acknowledgement that not a single child would have gone into the industrial schools without the approval of the Department of Education, the Garda Síochána and the courts. Which is not to deny Church responsibility, just to point out that the responsibility wasn’t the Church’s alone.

What’s also remarkable about this is that Mr Oates ventilates rather a lot on the Irish state. Maybe my memory is faulty, but I thought Willie Whitelaw was a minister in the British government. And that the RUC had its headquarters in Belfast, not in Dublin. Of course, this is rather inconvenient for the flow of Mr Oates’ argument, given that his view of the Irish nation is roughly equivalent to that of a nineteenth-century Punch cartoonist. So the Brits get quietly brushed under the carpet.

Finally, note the reference to the government being riddled with fifth columnists who need to be sent packing. Nice to see that our 21st-century rationalists can still channel the spirit of the 1840s when it suits them. Of course, this all very reminiscent of the episode a couple of years back when NSS honorary associate Mary Honeyball MEP called on the Labour Party to keep papists off the front bench, and followed it up with paranoid ravings about the Vatican’s alleged stranglehold on the British parliament and mass media. Or their other honorary associate, the sane and rational Johann Hari, who is living proof that you can take the boy out of Govan but you can’t take the Rangers Supporters Club out of the boy.

Indeed, Mr Oates has quite the track record at this sort of witch-hunting, having argued, for instance, that Mark Thompson is unfit to head the BBC because he’s a Catholic. Not that it’s ever stopped the BBC running fawning interviews with Mr Oates, where he can be confident that his many terminological inexactitudes will never be challenged.

If Mr Oates is really that worried about popish fifth columnists, and fancies campaigning for the reinstatement of the Test Acts, perhaps he could have a word with new equality minister Lynne Featherstone, who is on record as opining that religious believers shouldn’t be employed in the public sector. Ms Featherstone is not yet, I see, one of the NSS’s small army of honorary associates, but I think she’d fit right in.

And since Mr Oates will be on our screens and in our papers a good deal more over the coming weeks in his capacity as co-leader with Peter Tatchell of the No Popery Coalition, it will be worth keeping a close eye on him.

41 Comments

Funny handshakes all round, as the League of Militant Godless head for Brussels

July 22, 2010 at 12:22 am (Atheism, Europe)
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Here’s an interesting vignette from EUobserver:

Brussels is to hold an EU summit with atheists and freemasons in the autumn, inviting them to a political dialogue parallel to the annual summit the bloc holds with Europe’s religious leaders.

While the EU is a secular body, the three European presidents, of the commission, parliament and EU Council, alongside two commissioners, on Monday met with 24 bishops, chief rabbis, and muftis as well as leaders from the Hindu and Sikh communities. The annual dialogue, which has taken place since 2005, is for the first time this year made legally obligatory under Article 17 of the Lisbon Treaty.

Hey, I remember Article 17. I remember the perpetually angry Terry Sanderson waxing wroth about this requirement for a dialogue, and characterised it as proof that the EU was being overwhelmed by the forces of theocracy. I worry about Terry’s blood pressure, if Eurocrats having an annual cup of tea with bishops and rabbis has this sort of effect on him.

Under pressure from Belgium, which constitutionally protects and financially supports humanist organisations as well as churches, the EU has been forced to hold a mirror-image summit, but of atheists, scheduled for 15 October.

Those wacky Belgians, eh? Not just them, either – we may mention Britain’s own DCLG granting a £25,000 subsidy to the British Humanist Association to give lectures on religious tolerance under the “Faith Communities Capacity Building Fund”. Would it be facetious to wonder about separating atheism from the state? Perhaps it would. Anyway, I have a bit of a soft spot (only a bit of one, mind) for the good old BHA – they don’t have the foam-flecked, swivel-eyed aspect of their deadly rivals the NSS – so we’ll let that pass. So let’s get to what is annoying the atheists:

However, in a move that perplexed and annoyed humanist groups, the EU atheist summit will also welcome under the rubric of ‘non-religious groups’, the Freemasons, the secretive fraternal organisation, according to commission spokeswoman Katharina von Schnurbein.

Why is this perplexing? If the Belgians could stiff-arm the Eurocrats into having a summit with atheists, one presumes the Masons were invited to placate the Masonic-controlled government of Italy. And let’s face it, it can’t be any sillier than having Berlusconi at a European Council. Always assuming that Berlusconi himself isn’t one of the Masonic delegates, which he may well be.

According to the commission’s Ms von Schnurbein, Brussels views the Freemasons as a “community of conscience interconnected throughout Europe,” and “a form of humanist organisation.”

She dismissed concerns that while churches and atheist groups are free for anyone to join, membership in the Freemasons, a private organisation of men, with some separate Grand Lodges for women, is by invitation only and requires initiation fees and an annual subscription.

I think Ms von Schnurbein has a point. I’ve rarely been in a church that didn’t have a collection, and if you want to be in the National Secular Society you have to send nineteen quid to Terry Sanderson. Moreover, many religious denominations – the orthodox Jewish community comes to mind – have very strict procedures for allowing people to join.

So the question is whether Terry and Keith, those valiant opponents of public money funding anything vaguely religious, will sign up for a jolly in Brussels at the EU’s expense. Well, of course they will – they do plenty in Europe as it is. And it does mean their campaign to stop hospital chaplains bringing comfort to the sick can be rolled out on an international scale. I suppose one has to salute their chutzpah.

19 Comments

The stench of alcohol

April 13, 2010 at 11:00 pm (Atheism)

An audience member at the University of Florida announces that, after years as a hardened atheist, he is converting to Christianity as a result of having seen Satan himself (Christopher Hitchens) live on stage. One suspects he’s having a bit of a laugh, but pay attention to the reactions of the people around him. Some of these ‘sceptics’ really don’t like anyone questioning the Dude’s infallibility.

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The Hitch talks about his book

March 26, 2010 at 11:42 pm (Anglicanism, Atheism, Books, Journalism, Proper Conservatives)

It’s the good Hitchens brother, as my old mucker Peter talks about his spanking new book, The Rage Against God. I’m halfway through it at the moment, very enjoyable it is too, and there will be a review to follow. Anyway, give this a watch. Peter’s engaging as ever here, and gives a few fascinating insights into his background and thinking. Very nice pictures of the author as a young boy, alongside the future drink-soaked popinjay.

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More gems from the wacky world of militant secularism

August 16, 2009 at 12:01 am (Atheism, Cruise Missile Left)

kim_kardashian

Regular readers will have noticed that this blog hasn’t covered the Decent Left much of late. Truth be told, apart from the new book by coincidence theorist David Aaronovitch, and Nick Cohen’s increasingly desperate attempts to commit suicide by cop at the Observer, there isn’t all that much to report. The end of the Bush-Cheney administration took the wind out of their sails, and they’ve never really recovered. I hear that Alan (Not The Minister) Johnson is planning a big new reinvention in September – or at least another one of his thousands of online vanity projects – but even NTM will be hard pushed to inject some life into it.

No, I expect it will be more of the same old crap. Norman Geras boring on about universal values, how the values that he, Norm, stands for are truly universal, and how (insert fancy footwork here) these universal values are consistent with special pleading for Israel. David “Mr” T running more exposés about Gilad Atzmon, in between lunches at Nando’s. Marko D Ripper holding forth on how the Serbs are trying to sap and impurify all of his precious bodily fluids. HP’s resident guest lunatic Morality Blog popping up in the comments boxes to dishonestly accuse people of being dishonest. This will all be bound together by a portentous manifesto that will sink without trace after two weeks of frantic puffery.

The trouble is, I get bored easily, and while one can always get some enjoyment from shooting fish in a barrel, you don’t want to always be shooting the same fish in the same barrel. A bit of variation is nice. So, while I may come back to the Decents if they say or do anything interesting, in the meantime let’s keep with a theme from recent weeks and pop over to the “National Secular Society”, a body that is to secularism what Mel Gibson is to Catholicism. The NSS’s weekly upload of articles normally has something to pique the interest. And indeed, Titus Oates decides to eschew Papist plots this week in favour of bashing the Presbyterians. But more of that later.

I was first struck by this article on the withering away of Judaism in the United States. The article hails the growing number of “secular Jews”, by which it apparently means atheists with Jewish surnames. Actually, the spin is that increasing numbers of US “Jews” are choosing to identify themselves by ethnicity rather than religion. Well, it depends what you mean by Jews, I suppose. Orthodox congregations aren’t doing too badly, and of course haredi communities are growing rapidly. There is, on the other hand, a noticeable decrease in religious observance, and increase in marrying out, amongst those liberal Jews who weren’t very observant in the first place.

I saw this and wondered how it fit in with the article run by the NSS the other week on the court ruling in the JFS admissions case, attacking the idea that the organised Jewish community (in this instance, the United Synagogue with which the JFS is affiliated) could decide who was Jewish for the purposes of admission to Jewish schools. The two don’t mesh together very well – and the JFS article was deeply confused – but the “secular Jews” line is probably a safe one to take, lest the NSS annoy their mates at Harry’s Place. The Saucers, particularly the Jewish ones, are very big on Jewishness as a racial category but don’t particularly like Judaism.

Just so the Catholics don’t escape for a week, there’s also a piece on how the Sarkozy administration in France is destroying the constitutional separation of church and state. This seems rather unlikely, given Sarko’s frequent appeals to laïcité whenever he wants to bash the Muslims. And indeed, all this amounts to is foreign minister Bernard Kouchner creating a panel of religious experts to provide guidance to French diplomats in being culturally sensitive in whatever countries they’re stationed in. This doesn’t seem problematic to me, unless you belong to the missionary school that says that cultural sensitivity is an expression of weakness, and western diplomats’ role is to elevate the natives to our level of civilisation.

But now to the main event, and NSS head honcho Titus Oates bursts into prose to lambast Gordon Brown. The occasion for this is an interview Brown gave to Premier Christian Radio. Now, Brown doesn’t talk very much about his Presbyterian background, but when he agreed to go on Premier it was only to be expected that he would be asked about this background, and about his thoughts on issues of Christian concern. Which is what he spoke on, although in rather general terms:

In Britain we are not a secular state as France is, or some other countries. It’s true that the role of official institutions changes from time to time, but I would submit that the values that all of us think important – if you held a survey around the country of what people thought was important, what it is they really believed in, these would come back to Judeo-Christian values, and the values that underpin all the faiths that diverse groups in our society feel part of.

It’s not really exceptional, if you’re talking about the values of the culture and where they come from. If we say that the cultural values of Spain or Poland are informed by Catholicism, or that Moroccan or Iranian culture is shaped by the Islamic tradition, that’s no more than a statement of fact. Indeed, as Friedrich Nietzsche liked to point out, the morality of secular humanists is basically New Testament Christian morality minus its theological underpinnings. For some reason, secular humanists get very irate when you say this.

Brown continues:

I think it’s impossible because when we talk about faith, we are talking about what people believe in, we are talking about the values that underpin what they do, we are talking about the convictions that they have about how you can make for a better society. So I don’t accept this idea of privatisation – I think what people want to do is to make their views current. There is a moral sense that people have, perhaps 50 years ago the rules were more detailed and intrusive, perhaps now what we’re talking about is boundaries, beyond which people should not go. And I think that’s where it’s important that we have the views of all religions and all faiths, and it’s important particularly that we’re clear about what kind of society we want to be. So I think the idea that you can say: ‘What I do in my own life is privatised and I’m not going to try to suggest that these are values that can bind your society together’, would be wrong.

Again, this is not outrageous, unless you believe that political leaders have no place talking about values – and again, I hold that you have to be a pretty extreme utilitarian to believe that values and morality shouldn’t have any place in political discourse. What Brown says is more or less in tune with the mainstream of British liberal Protestant thought. It isn’t consonant with the common British view that morality should be totally privatised, but that isn’t something that many politicians could state openly.

Anyway, Titus waxes wroth here, taking as a jumping-off point some remarks Brown makes about diversity, cohesion and integrating immigrant populations:

What are we to make of this in relation to Mr Brown’s claims that this is a “Christian country” run on “Judaeo-Christian principles”? What must the Muslims think of that? The Government seems to be plying the “Muslim community” (i.e. the “faith leaders”) with bribes on the one hand and then telling them their religion is secondary to Christianity on the other.

Leaving aside the faux concern for Muslim sensitivities, which is belied by the “appeasement of Islam” stuff Titus puts out on a regular basis, the trouble is that I don’t think Brown said what Titus said he said. Did Brown say that Britain was a Christian country run on Christian principles? No, he did not. He talked in a somewhat woolly way about the Christian derivation of British values. But to Titus, that’s as near as damn it Brown advocating a theocratic government.

Not for the first time, the NSS’s output reminds me a little of the Workers Revolutionary Party of blessed memory. Gerry Healy would always take one of two tacks: either the revolution was around the corner, or the fascist coup was around the corner. Titus has a rather similar shtick, based on alternating triumphalism about the decline of religion (which often includes suggesting that lots of people who identify as religious are lying, and should really be counted as atheists) with his “OMG! The theocrats are taking over! If we don’t watch out, Britain will be just like Iran!”

Gerry understood very well that this sort of thing helped to galvanise the troops. But it can be a bit enervating, and it leads me to think that maybe Titus would do well to cut down on the caffeine.

96 Comments

Publicity junkie calls for privacy law

August 9, 2009 at 3:17 pm (Atheism, Catholicism, Labour Party, Lib Dems)

lembit-katie

Lembit Öpik really is the gift that keeps giving, isn’t he? It’s only a matter of days ago that the swinging Lib Dem MP was making the news for canoodling with a lingerie model half his age. Indeed, they were even posing for photos together. Yet now, the bold Lembit has ventured once more into the public domain, and this time he’s angry.

What has provoked Lembit’s ire is Some Guy With A Website, who has decided to have some fun during Westminster’s summer recess by asking the general public to send him photos of MPs sunning themselves on holiday. Lembit is concerned that this promotes an image of MPs as a bunch of lazy freeloaders, as opposed to Stakhanovite shock workers who spend 18 hours a day attending showbiz parties serving their constituents. And in fact, Lembit is so far mounted on his high horse – or maybe that should be his vintage motorcycle – that he’s calling for a privacy law to protect MPs from being photographed without their permission, as opposed to for photoshoots they have arranged themselves. No harm to Lembit, but isn’t he the very last MP who should be calling for a privacy law?

In other Westminster news, Labour MP Andrew Mackinlay has been talking about his decision to stand down at the general election. I do have my misgivings about Mackinlay, not least concerning his chummy relationship with the DUP. But on the whole, when you think about the identikit candidates filling up Parliament these days, someone like Mackinlay – an awkward cuss, dogged in pursuing his causes, defensive of the legislature against the executive, unwilling to be bought off by the New Labour machine – is exactly the sort of MP you really need more of.

Not, however, according to the misnamed National Secular Society (Titus Oates prop.), who are in full No Popery mode. The occasion for the NSS’s ire is an interview Mackinlay has given to the Tablet, where he talks a little about his Catholicism. Mackinlay, in a rather inoffensive interview, mentions that Catholic Labour politicians face less sectarianism than they did twenty or thirty years ago, and that, although he’s retiring, he expects the incoming House of Commons to have a fair number of Catholics. He also remarks on the way that the Catholic hierarchy dealt rather effectively with Alan Johnson’s crackpot scheme to force faith schools to take 25% of their intake from non-believing families.

There could scarcely be an issue more guaranteed to wind up the NSS, who gratuitously refer to “Andrew MacKinley, Catholic…er Labour MP for Thurrock” in a transparent attempt to raise the old “dual loyalty” canard. And, as if to prove that the NSS’s bigotry is ecumenical, this appears below an attack on incoming European Parliament president Jerzy Buzek, a Polish Lutheran. The article is headlined “New President of European Parliament wants a ‘Christian Europe’”, but unsurprisingly Buzek didn’t say that. He made some general remarks about how his faith informed his politics, how people of faith have a contribution to make to debates about the future of Europe, and how he wants a dialogue with Europe’s Christian churches and other religions.

Buzek is also quoted as saying, “Respect for others who think differently is also a special value for Christians. Such is my understanding of the presence of these values in social and political life. I have never manifested my faith in a persistent manner. The best way of showing what we believe in is through our own actions and behaviour in daily life, and by acting publicly in a way which reflects our deep Christian faith.” For a Polish politician, it’s remarkably middle-of-the-road stuff – it’s hardly what you’d hear on Radio Maryja, and it doesn’t strike me as problematical at all.

Not so Titus’ sidekick Keith Porteous Wood, who comments, “It is depressing that such unrepresentative people keep getting elected into key positions in politics.” It is depressing that Keith fails to understand basic democratic concepts such as “election” or “representation”, or that Buzek holds a key position because lots of people voted for him. Unless we’re talking about some esoteric NSS-speak where only a political sphere composed entirely of militant atheists would be truly “representative”. You know, like they used to have in the Soviet Union.

[Hat tip: Gonzo]

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Polly Pot does Soylent Green

August 2, 2009 at 12:22 am (Atheism, Euthanasia)

soylent-green-robinson

As a general rule, Phyllis Bowman is not one of my favourite people. But I think she had a good point in respect of the House of Lords’ ruling on the Debbie Purdy case, in that the Law Lords have driven a coach and horses through primary legislation by requiring the DPP to specify under what circumstances one could breach the Suicide Act while avoiding prosecution. Had this been on another issue, the press would have been going apeshit.

It’s a genuinely difficult issue, and one that doesn’t really lend itself to simplistic solutions. I was taken with this CiF piece by Rabbi Jonathan Romain – it’s not as good as Jonathan is capable of, and does seem to be advocating a muddle in place of clarification, but I’m not unsympathetic to where Jonathan is coming from. You really can’t have a one-size-fits-all approach. On the one hand, one feels for those with chronic illnesses who are in a desperate situation and want to exercise some control over the end of their lives. Ms Purdy’s courage is remarkable, whatever one thinks of the issue. And yet, this upsurge in the pro-euthanasia movement leaves me feeling a little, well, worried.

Actually, I’m not sure where this pressure for legalising assisted suicide is coming from. It used to be that dear old Ludovic Kennedy would go on the telly once a year or so to make his pitch for the Voluntary Euthanasia Society, and it was understood that this was the hobbyhorse of Ludo and a smallish number of his co-thinkers. But nowadays there’s a very widespread advocacy of euthanasia, to the point where it’s almost common sense amongst the bien pensants. Legalisation in Switzerland has spurred things on, of course, and there’s the human interest aspect, often sentimental and sometimes mawkish, even if one does feel sympathy for the individuals, that explains why the media coverage takes the form it does. But there’s also the taking up of euthanasia as an issue by what we might loosely call the PC brigade, who may be looking around for something to occupy their time since New Labour has already enacted so much of their agenda. I’ll come to that in a moment.

To be honest, I think a lot of the problems around people with terminal illnesses are problems of the Health Service, and specifically of the lack of proper resources for palliative care. But campaigning for better palliative care doesn’t really promise an easy solution, so it isn’t attractive for those who want one. The thing is, as I say, I don’t think an easy solution exists.

Generally speaking, while the Suicide Act 1961 doesn’t succeed in the impossible task of pleasing everyone, it’s not so obviously broke that it needs fixing. What needs to be done is to square off the needs of the desperate on the one hand, with the assertion that society values human life on the other. A case-by-case approach is probably still the best option. Compassion demands that prosecutions for assisted suicide be rare – I don’t believe that the current DPP has recommended any – but the continuing illegality of assisted suicide, and the requirement for an investigation, are not something I have a problem with. In fact, it’s probably for the best, given the possibilities of abuse.

Euthanasia advocates in our commentariat laugh off those possibilities, but we know how this works. We might recall that when the Abortion Act was brought in in 1967 – and I write this as someone who supports legal abortion – it was argued that this was a necessary act to help desperate women in extreme cases, and there was no way that we would have on-demand abortion being used as an alternative means of contraception. Well, that didn’t work out the way we were told. The thin end of the wedge is a reality, and helps to explain why doctors are much more cautious than the general public. It’s a fair bet that doctors do quietly help the terminally ill end their lives – the same as the way doctors quietly carried out abortions pre-1967, and a few still do in the north of Ireland – and Do Not Resuscitate is common enough, but the legal establishment of the “right to die” changes the playing field, and puts the entire medical profession in a much more awkward position.

None of this, of course, matters much to Polly Pot. If you’re a Guardian reader, you will have come across some pretty bad Toynbee columns down the years, but her latest is a real stinker. You know how I was talking about degenerate utilitarianism? This is a good example. The main theme, of course, is Polly’s relentless anti-life zealotry – she appears to take Brave New World and Soylent Green as manifestos – but she manages to get plenty of her other tropes in there too.

We begin with the headline:

The 1961 Suicide Act is an instrument of state torture

which is bad enough on its own. Polly hasn’t exactly busted a gut about extraordinary rendition or New Labour’s implication in actual state torture. But, as per our great liberal thinker, by not euthanising ill people we are, er, torturing them. This is obviously an ethical point too subtle for me to grasp.

One might hope that Polly would go off on a tangent about the need to put New Labour out of its misery, but sadly not. Instead, she bangs on about the pain associated with terminal illness and how death is a rather more effective means of pain relief than morphine. Indeed, she hypes it up into a scenario of doctors deliberately deciding to inflict unbearable pain on the chronically ill. Then, for reasons best known to herself, she decides to take a swipe at palliative care:

Palliative-care doctors and nurses can be wonderful: I have seen them at their best, caring for my mother and for others close to death. But collectively they strongly oppose giving their patients the right to die – and their voice carries extra weight inside and outside the medical profession because they are the experts in death. They tend to claim that with the best care, anyone can live out their last days with enough comfort and dignity not to want a mercy killing.

And what’s wrong with that, Polly? As a great believer in technocratic solutions, why should we not pay attention to the experts?

But following in the footsteps of Mother Theresa and Dame Cicely Saunders, this is a branch of medicine exceptionally heavily dominated by the deeply religious who believe only God disposes. Either they deceive themselves or else they deny the evidence of their own eyes and ears about many patients’ experience. Their influence in this debate has been immense – and baleful.

You see? They aren’t just torturers, some of them are religious! Some are even inspired by their faith to try and care for the sick! This is anathema to Polly, who surely demonstrates that there is a fine line between being a militant secularist and just being an atheist bigot. And, having written off the palliative care sector as infested with ignorant sky-pilots, this enables Polly to simply disregard anything they might say on the matter.

It was a cabal of bishops, rabbis and assorted religious enthusiasts who wrecked the Joffe bill in the Lords through a devious putsch that broke Lords’ procedural practice, denying the bill a Commons debate.

Rabbis plural? I’m not even sure there was a rabbi singular in the Lords when the Joffe bill was being debated – Lord Jakobovits was dead by then and Lord Sacks has only just now been ennobled. Besides, even subtracting the opposition of the Lords Spiritual, the bill would still not have had a majority. Unless you’re willing to go down a path Polly has hinted at in the past, that people who hold a religious faith should be disqualified from having an opinion on moral issues. Maybe those who fail to meet her standard of secularism should only have what in the communist movement we used to term a “consultative vote” – that is, a vote that doesn’t count. It’s also the case that many disability advocates are strongly anti-euthanasia, but Polly sensibly doesn’t mention that.

Safeguards are not hard to devise: someone in sound enough mind to write their will can be judged fit enough to choose when it’s time to die, without undue duress from greedy relatives. Besides, the loss of independence and becoming a burden to others may be a valid part of the reason why someone feels life has become undignified and past bearing.

Polly gives with one hand and takes back with the other. Of course older people with chronic illnesses often feel guilty about being a burden on others. The danger is that the “right to die” doesn’t become an expectation to die.

In any case, while I’m not convinced by Polly’s bland assurances about safeguards, her idea that the state can make things better pretty easily is par for the course from the Guardian‘s most convinced statist (and that’s really saying something). There are few things Polly likes better than big government, and I suspect what she has in mind is a Euthanasia Agency stuffed full of form-filling jobsworths. Maybe, on the principle of literary critic Lisa Jardine being made head of the Embryology Authority, a certain Guardian columnist could be drafted in as its chief executive.

And so it goes on. Polly worries that, with the effective legalisation of suicide tourism, only the rich will be able to make it to Switzerland (around £100 Heathrow to Zurich if you shop around for flights), so we must have euthanasia clinics in Britain, just so the poor don’t miss out. What’s more, she worries that the next parliament will be full of social conservatives who may not buy the entire humanist bill of goods. (For some reason, possibly to do with the Tories’ marriage of convenience with some boisterous Polish Catholics in the European Parliament, she seems convinced that Cameron’s Tories are just gagging to ban abortion and reinstate Section 28. I think not.) Therefore, New Labour must rush through a bill to legalise euthanasia before the election, while we still have a chance. Because rushed legislation in response to media campaigns has a great history, doesn’t it? Do I hear Dangerous Dogs Act, anyone? What about the handgun ban?

Welcome to Polly’s utilitarian dystopia, where her entire agenda has been accepted by the political class and Dr Death Evan Harris is the model political leader. Has mass-scale abortion helped to give us an ageing population, with not enough taxpaying workers to keep health services running? Then we’ll just euthanise the old, the halt and the lame. And we can psychopathologise anyone who objects as a religious obscurantist. It’s a pity the Nazis so thoroughly discredited eugenics, because whenever Polly goes off on one of these topics I half expect her to start channelling the late Marie Stopes’ call for compulsory sterilisation of the underclass, something Polly’s Fabian predecessors found a rather fascinating idea.

I also see that Polly’s mate Titus Oates is hailing the Lords’ judgement in the Purdy case, which is a pretty good indication that it’s a bad thing. In other secularism news, one of Titus’ satraps is questioning the right of Jews to decide who is Jewish in accordance with Jewish custom. So much for tolerance of minorities, then.

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