Atkinson’s speech
The full text of Rowan Atkinson’s speech to the House of Lords on Oct 20.
A snippet:
The freedom to criticise or ridicule ideas – even if they are sincerely held beliefs – is a fundamental freedom and a law which says that you can ridicule ideas as long as they are not religious ideas, is a very odd law indeed. It promotes the idea that there should be a right not to be offended, when I think that the right to offend is far more important than a right not to be offended.
UPDATE: The Times editorial today sums up the case for the amendments.
It’s astounding, really, that this is the same man who brought us the execrable “Mr. Bean” (not to mention the “thin Blue Line”. Oh, sorry, I mentioned it…). Excellent stuff, concise & direct. Not that it’ll make much difference to the our Dear Leader & his little coterie of supernaturalist chums…
Given that Tony B liar allows and encorages two used-car dealers, Vardy and Edmison to encourage he delibeate telling of lies to children in state education, anything is possible.
Very true G Tingey and the latest Education proposals will merely encourage more faith schools. One only has to look at the US to see where this is going (where a 14 year old child has recently been expelled from a school run by the Fundoids because her mother was in a long term lesbian relationship).
If anyone wants to see some more evidence of which way the US is going, I recommend perusing http://WWW.AGAPEPRESS.ORG. It’s an excellent illustration of the mainstream conservative mindset over there (1960s bad, 1950s good, prayer in school should be mandatory, etc). Far more instructive in the end than concentrating on the obvious fundamentalists like http://WWW.ANSWERSINGENESIS.ORG.
The troble with the US is not that it is a “love the 1950’s” conservative mindset – though that is probably the majority opinion, but that the reactionary obscurantist fundies are gaining.
This is what is really scary.
Believe me, having a mother-in-law in the US who works for the above-mentioned A-I-G creationists, I know! The important thing to remember, however, is that those that shout loudest don’t necessarily have the most support. Read some of the Agapepress articles…much closer to an “average” viewpoint. The most terrifying thing is how right-wing-dogmatic-supernaturalist their mainstream has become. My current favourite notion they’re floating is that all the latest “extreme weather” events (e.g. tsunami, hurricanes, earthquake), are just God’s way of trying to attract our attention (& veneration, naturally). Of course, the tens of thousands of deaths caused by this supernatural version of shouting “oi!” don’t actually get a mention. Hey, most of them were heathens, anyway… It’s all our fault for ignoring the vengeful mythical being, apparently. (It’s got previous form in this area, if we’re credulous enough to believe the book of Haggai).