The triple glazing

Cherie asks why and I reply – I’ll tell you when they turn up at 8 a.m. to finish the job.  They left gaping holes to the outside last night and it was an interesting thing sleeping in the next room with little heating.  It looks good though and should both cut out the cold and soundproof the two rooms.  They were never subject to noise anyway as I’m far enough away from any traffic but the heat loss of the ancient NT design was  substantial.

Interesting theories

Tom Paine wrote about yesterday’s confab: “hear his theories as to what is going on in British politics.”  Hardly theories, Tom and and hardly mine.  The contention made, as has been shown in various long posts here and on many other blogs, give or take some of the MSM and in books and journals across the land and indeed, other lands, was that we urgently need this referendum on constitutional grounds, let alone as an exercise in our right to self-determination.

1.  Tom, not a constitutional lawyer but a mighty good one in his own sphere, took the usual erroneous position the educated do in Britain that it just takes one strong leader and we’re out of the EU under the Communities Act.  Not so and this is the single greatest hurdle to overcome with those generally au fait with politics but not on this particular matter.

For a start, he is presupposing that we are still the UK.  It’s incomprehensible to the comfortable Brit tat we might not be.  One tends to smile at the suggestion that we might not be.

Now, even as we write and read [linked to from previous posts] the treaty is changing yet again, according to its own self-amendment clauses which allow delegated authority to make recommendations and to implement “under certain circumstances” policy, e.g. on a European police force.

This assumption that we still have a UK is the greatest con-trick being foisted on us.

Lisbon has already broken the UK into the home countries and nine regions.  Now, though Westminster still exists and they’ll go through with this hung parliament show election to lull the people into thinking they still have power, you’ll see from looking at the charts that power in critical areas is flowing across to Brussels and what is left is technical sovereignty on paper but not in practical politics, as the head of LPUK is wont to lecture me on.

The law – yes, if there was a Churchill committed to an independent UK or England, as Tom says, then he’d take us out and to hell with the rules.  But we don’t have that – we have spineless leaders who kowtow to Brussels federalism and in Clegg’s case, there’s a nice pension attached to our staying in.

Then comes the legal battle.  Brussels is not a fool and knows perfectly well the ECA provisions and how far they can be invoked in practice.  In practical terms, the UK is tied up in loans from the IMF and other bodies, the future of the City is tied to that and if we were to withdraw without a watertight case, these would be called in.

Then we come to the days in court over this.  Which court?  Have you looked lately at the transfer of power to the European Court and which legal opinion prevails there?  Yes, a leader can technically invoke the ECA but there are many other acts hedging it about and they militate against the ECA.  The thing is, Blair/Brown have given away our powers and that’s what’s impossible to get people to see.  We’ve already conceded them of our own volition and these militate against 1688.

At the very least, it would be messy and damaging.  However, with a vote of people of the UK yea or nay, it would be a powerful weapon.  Cameron and the LPUK leader say we’d lose a referendum now. Try QM’s post today.

This is such BS they’re foisting on you.

Who would phrase the question and educate the people?  Why, the Tories of course if their nose was in front in our stupid FPtheP voting system which kills off small parties.  So there’d be no Brown legerdemain here – the question would be framed along Hannan lines and all polls to date have shown that a majority would vote against us remaining in.

There is no legitimate reason for the next semi-government NOT to put a referendum to the people and in fact, there are most cogent and urgent reasons for it to do so, namely the transmogrification of the Treaty provisions even as we speak and write to the point where the UK effectively ceases to be the UK and therefore we are constitutionally unable to invoke 1688 and the ECA.

Hardly a theory – more like a dystopic reality, like a train crash you see happening and can do nothing to prevent.  Father, forgive them for they know not …

2.  This took up about 3-5% of yesterday’s conversation.

Christianity

Xxxl says: “I have no objection to your holding certain “beliefs””, as distinct from his “facts” [:)], I presume.  He draws on sources and I draw on sources, including those of Gnosis.  The question of the artificiers by no means negates the divinity and most gnostic sources conflate a number of realities but that’s a whole field in itself.  The long and the short is whether there is efficacious redemption and many Christians who don’t go round talking about it as I do have felt that power inside – it’s a 100% return on investment but as in all things metaphysical, it is not interested in being tied to debate parameters set by deniers of the metaphysical in the first place.

Now, Xxxl, you and I are not two of those by any means – we’re already debating from the other side, as you well know.

This 100% return on investment is what leads Yewtree [and any religious scholar or philosopher would know what that name signifies] to say:

The reason people don’t like Christianity is because of its exclusivism (the view that only Christians will get to heaven), vicarious atonement theology and its judgmental attitudes. When these are removed (as they are by many liberal Christians), the antipathy is retained only by extreme fundamentalist atheists, who can’t tell the difference between different types of religion, and assume that it’s all equally irrational.

Let’s take the exclusivism [and that is not a misspelling here].  It means not that they exclude because they don’t – they actually welcome new people at any time – but their air of “I’m so pious and saved”.  Or as Douglas Adams said “the serene load of bastards” and one has to chuckle.  Well yes, there is a lot of that.

As you know, JC came to save the lower rungs, the poor and needy, those who are at risk and the vulnerable, e.g. the children forced by peer pressure today, egged on by the media and teachers to prostitute themselves and take drugs in lower teenage, for which those perpetrators will surely burn in hell.  Whoever touches one hair of one of these … etc.  He consorted with sinners/publicans et al, in order to turn them from destructive routes.

Now these people are not exactly from the scholarly field, are they, except for, say, Luke?  They’re not philosophers and thinkers by and large.  They’re ordinary people, subject to the power of the message.  When you make a commitment, a pledge to this way of life, [and everyone is asking for pledges these days, even the Albion Alliance], what in fact happens in a Christian’s case [and so many never make it to this stage but still retain the label]  is that you are possessed.

What do you think the Holy Spirit is all about?  Why do you think the euphoria happens and in rough and ready, freely emoting people, you’re going to get an awful lot of “happy clapping” and “speaking in tongues”, which is not personally to my taste, I’m afraid.  Group things never were.  I prefer the dry[ish] Eucharist at 8 a.m. and even that’s too “groupy” for me, not that I’ve been for years.  Hmmm, might start thinking about that.

It’s essentially one spirit coming in and booting out any others which may have made their camp in there.  Now, Xxxl can argue about the spirit but we do it from a different angle to the average bear – we at least accept the existence of “things out there”.  Xxxl knows full well that though we are at one with the political necessities, when we get to the underlying metaphysical causes, we are part of a very ancient debate, one he and I are probably going to need to have one day.

I’d argue that the next analogy is valid [of course I don't insist on it] but it’s not unlike a happily married couple or a young couple in love.  Naked Gun satirized this when Nielsen and Presley, holding hands, “coathangared” another couple running  the other way on the shoreline or when they squirted ketchup all over each other and the hotdog vendor and because it was love, he forgave all and joined in.

So yes, the “serene lot of bastards” can be highly annoying.  Not only that, it is so easy to stray from what is actually written and then we get into the Mad Max sort of “Christianity” which gets off on violence or that oxymoron, the “liberal Christian” or “Christian lite” who reserves for himself all the pleasures of the sinner but because he makes religious noises on Sunday, thinks he’ll be redeemed or the sparrow “Christian who picks out the bits he wants and leaves the rest.

I’d ask these people to think for one sec.

If you were JC and you’d laid down a set of guidelines to go with all the other guidelines which had come before and which people were ignoring, how would you feel, having done all that work and hung on a cross half a day, if someone wee to come along and do all the old wrong things again, as if you’d never put in that effort at all but that liberal pretends that he’s actually following your precepts and will be redeemed?

Or is he saying there’s no redemption?

Because if he is, he’s not a Christian.  You can argue against redemption – fine, no problem.  But that particular faith revolves round two precepts:  John 3:16 and “love thy neighbour as thyself”.  That’s it.  Not one or the other but both – they’re a job lot.

I don’t know about JC but I’d reserve a particular spot in hell for those who knowingly and deliberately [and in that is the whole criterion - knowingly and deliberately] claim the label Christian when they’re nothing of the sort, one layer above the traitors like Brown, Cameron and Obama. I include here the Crusaders in the higher orders, the Inquisition, the fire and brimstone preachers [who are breaking the second precept], the Illuminati Masons, the tele-evangelists like Swaggart, the paedophile priests, P2 Lodge and in fact anyone else who gives Christianity a bad name.

I mean, at least Mandelson makes no secret of the fact that he is pure, unadulterated evil – he is the Dark Lord, the Ubersith himself and loving it, poor sod.

When these are removed (as they are by many liberal Christians)

That’s a good one.  Analogy – when you remove the MacOS, Safari and Quicktime from the Mac so that it bears no resemblance to the original and use windows and IE6 instead, what do you have left?  Certainly not a Mac, excuse me for being so blunt.

Finally

Er … that probably covers it for now.

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