An upcoming BBC documentary, Choosing to Die, featuring Sir Terry Pratchett is due out later this year. Pratchett will discuss attitudes and the legal position across Europe and talk to terminally ill patients who want to end their lives at a time of their choosing, possibly with assistance from others.

There is huge support for legalising assisted dying in the UK (ComRes) (also see Times poll and YouGov and Angus Reid for figures in Scotland, where Margo MacDonald’s pro-reform bill was recently defeated anyway). If nothing else surely this level of support for reform mandates the license-payer funded BBC to do a bit of coverage on it. But Care Not Killing said: “The BBC is acting like a cheerleader for legalising assisted suicide.”

However, Sarah Wootton, chief executive of campaign group Dignity in Dying, warned: “I believe it is irresponsible not to be discussing this issue. People are taking desperate decisions at the end of their lives; travelling abroad to die or attempting to end their lives at home, often alone for fear of their loved ones facing prosecution.”

Link: http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/uk/Row-over-39righttodie39-film.6752687.jp

The BBC‘s commissioning editor for documentaries, Charlotte Moore, said: “Assisted death is an important topic of debate in the UK, and this is a chance for the BBC2 audience to follow Sir Terry as he wrestles with the difficult issues that many across Britain are also faced with. I hope this sparks a constructive debate that people across the spectrum of opinion can engage in.”

Link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/apr/15/terry-pratchett-documentary-assisted-suicide

Meanwhile, the Daily Mail is alarmed (for a change) that “Britons are travelling in record numbers to kill themselves at the Dignitas suicide clinic in Switzerland”. These “record figures” are based on a tiny sample – rates at which it only takes a few people to add a significant percentage – and compares the last three years’ average with the previous six years’ average, indicating that right or wrong the change probably isn’t so fast.

The number of British suicides at the Zurich clinic has risen from an average of 14 a year between 2002 and 2007 to a total of 76 – about 25 a year – from 2008-2010.

Link: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1377924/Britons-die-Dignitas-suicide-clinic-record-numbers.html

Sir Patrick Stewart is the latest celebrity to back reform, becoming a patron of Dignity in Dying, alongside humanist Ian McEwan. Stewart said that choosing to die should be a human right:

Speaking publicly for the first time about his membership of Dignity in Dying, Stewart referred to a recent tragedy involving a friend, as well as his own diagnosis of having coronary heart disease five years ago. “I am reluctant to go into details. Enough to say this person was driven to an extreme situation of ending their own life in the most ghastly way,” he said of the friend. “There’s got to be an alternative when someone is suffering so badly and is ready to go.”

Asked if he believed that the choice of ending one’s life should be a human right, he replied: “yes”, adding: “Everything that medicine can do to keep somebody alive doesn’t automatically follow as the best option.”

Link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/apr/17/star-trek-actor-backs-euthanasia

Sometimes what it takes to get a message out is someone else trying to prevent it!

BBC Census Campaign story

Today was the day the media woke up to the Census Campaign. They were prompted by news that train companies (as franchise partners of a media agency) had declined to host ads featuring the Census Campaign slogan ‘If you’re not religious for God’s sake say so’. This followed advice from the Committee of Advertising Practice that the ads could cause offence of a religious nature. But the ensuing coverage isn’t all about the “banned” ads – it’s got people talking about the issues as well. Witness the BBC:

The campaign slogan was changed to drop the words “for God’s sake” after advice from advertising regulators.

The secular groups want people who are not religious to tick the box saying “No religion” on the census.

The British Humanist Association (BHA) has unveiled a series of posters on buses and billboards across the country.

Using the slogan “Not religious? In this year’s census, say so”, they hope to persuade people to think carefully about which option to tick on the census form, which is being delivered to every household in the country this month.

The question about religious belief allows respondents to choose from several possible answers, including “No religion”, “Christian”, or “Hindu”

But BHA chief executive Andrew Copson believes the wording of the question in the last census resulted in 72% of people being classed as Christians – a figure which is much higher than other surveys.

“Instead of asking, ‘Do you have a religion and if so, what is it?’, the question asks ‘What is your religion?’, a closed question that funnels people into giving a religious response, even if they don’t go to a church or a mosque, even if they don’t believe in God.”

Link: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-12637201

The Guardian similarly quote Andrew Copson, this time on the ban itself, before going on to explain the campaign in the banned posters’ own terms:

The posters ask those who are not religious to tick the “no religion” box when they fill in forms for the 2011 census.

“We used to tick ‘Christian’ but we’re not really religious. We’ll tick ‘No Religion’ this time. We’re sick of hearing politicians say this is a religious country and giving millions to religious organisations and the pope’s state visit. Money like that should go where it is needed,” says one of the banned posters.

…

The Humanist Association says that those who profess to have no religion rose from 31% in 1983 to 51% in 2009 and believes that many who ticked “Christian” in the 2001 census did so for cultural rather than religious reasons.

The organisation argues that unless this year’s census gives a more accurate picture of the non-religious population, the data will be used to justify increased state-funding for faith schools and other religious organisations.

Link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/mar/04/humanist-census-posters

Some more friendly articles at New Statesman (“the association is trying to persuade non-believers to declare themselves as such on the census form, so it will be a more accurate representation of the religious/non-religious make-up of the country. It’s an important point”), at New Humanist (“The definition of “offensive” appears to have widened significantly”!); and a rare appearance from the official Atheist Bus blog (“Now, if a commercial company put out an ad saying “For God’s sake buy our brand of detergent you idiots” maybe there’d be a point that the advertisement was being rude and aggressive toward everyone reading it. But the ironic use of a common phrase [for God's sake] simply to highlight the importance of the message is hardly “offensive”.”) There’s also a less friendly response from Christian thinktank Theos who claim obscurely that the ads are “patronising” because “the British people are quite capable of judging for themselves what box they should tick” — as if Theos didn’t know a thing or two about how easy it is to distort reality with badly constructed and deceptively interpreted surveys.

(Meow.)

Meanwhile, the Census Campaign blog features some supporters’ letters in local press and has a bunch of links and mentions of today’s media appearances and a few more upcoming in the next few days.

In an article for gay magazine Attitude, Johann Hari lays bare the rhetoric of Christian Voice’s Stephen Green and delineates the “right to speak”, including “the right to say despicable things” –which even homophobes should have – from “choosing to give him a platform”.

Do you deserve to be killed for being gay? Should you be hanged, or shot, or electrocuted? In Britain today, a man who believes you should be – and who actively supports the on-going campaign to hunt down and kill gay people in Africa – is being given prime-time TV slots by the BBC and Channel Four. When Elton John had a baby, he was given the main response on the flagship Six O’Clock News. He is in the rolodex of all the “moral discussion” programs, wheeled on whenever we inch closer to equality for gay people. He is Taken Seriously, and treated as a neutral commentator by shows like Question Time and newspapers like the Daily Mail. His name is Stephen Green, and if he had his way, you’d be reading this from death row.

… Imagine if the BBC, Channel Four and Daily Mail were giving prominent platforms to a man who believed all Jews should be killed, or all black people, or all Muslims. It would – thankfully – be unthinkable. Yet Green is doing precisely that with gay people. On his website earlier this year, he noted the moves in Uganda to execute people for “aggravated sodomy” – and complained they didn’t go far enough. He wrote: “The Bible prescribes precisely the penalty [MP David] Bahati is proposing for sodomy in any situation, whether or not ‘aggravated.’” Kill all the “sodomites.” Not in theory. Now. That’s his response to hearing that innocent gay people are about to be put to death.

Full article: http://johannhari.com/2011/02/09/why-do-our-broadcasters-keep-giving-a-platform-to-a-murderous-homophobe

The BBC News magazine website is running a story comparing the upcoming census with its 1911 counterpart. Most of the discussion in the comments is about the question on religion, with several links and supportive mentions for the British Humanist Association’s Census Campaign.

The 1911 census also offers an insight into one of the great political movements of 20th Century Britain, the efforts by suffragettes to get the vote for women.

The activists tried to get women to refuse to fill out the census, organising a mass avoidance session near London’s Trafalgar Square, prompting a heartfelt plea from the registrar in the Times.

…

[A]fterwards, the Times was delighted to report that the suffragettes had failed to avoid being counted. It puts the recent international Jedi census stunt – where people listed their religion as Jedi in tribute to Star Wars – into perspective.

Looking at the 2011 census, [a family filling in the 1911 census] might have been surprised to see questions on type of heating, ethnicity and religion. Or the baffling question 17: “This question is intentionally left blank go to 18.”

Full story: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-12324970

New president of the Royal Society, Nobel Prize winner Sir Paul Nurse, presents a BBC Horizon programme addressing the erosion of trust in science,  asking whether science is under concerted attack, and whether scientists themselves are partly to blame.

Obviously science itself should be deeply sceptical, critical, and self-examining. But Nurse’s focus is on those outright attempts to diminish the whole process of scientific method, and the growth industry in pseudoscientific “denialist” attacks on well-corroborated theories even once the alternatives have been thoroughly discredited, “from the theory that man-made climate change is warming our planet, to the safety of GM food, or that HIV causes AIDS.”

[Paul Nurse] interviews scientists and campaigners from both sides of the climate change debate, and travels to New York to meet Tony, who has HIV but doesn’t believe that that the virus is responsible for AIDS.

This is a passionate defence of the importance of scientific evidence and the power of experiment, and a look at what scientists themselves need to do to earn trust in controversial areas of science in the 21st century.

Watch on iPlayer until 22 Feb 2011: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00y4yql/Horizon_20102011_Science_Under_Attack

BHA Distinguished Supporter Professor Brian Cox and comedian Dara O’Briain are in the ascendant! The world of sky magic practitioners has been shaken to its foundations after Cox and O’Briain said bad words about astrology on BBC2′s Stargazing Live. Astrology is “rubbish”, said O’Briain, and “nonsense” Cox agreed. The Astrological Association of Great Britain, which is a real thing, have started a petition which, astrologers predict, the BBC will later spend license-payers’ money having to reply to.

Martin Robbins of the Lay Scientist blog moves into alignment:

The section of the program that caused the fuss has been described in truly harrowing terms by ‘respected astrologer’ Angela Cornish, in an e-mail that was published by the SkyScript blog:

“If you didn’t happen to see it, there were two presenters, Professor Brian Cox and Dara O’Briain. All was going well until they got to a part where they had models of the planets in our solar system on a table and Dara was explaining that all of the planets orbit at different speeds and distances away from the Sun. He said only the earth orbits the Sun in 365 days and returns to its own place, showing that horoscopes are nonsense. He then went on to add “Let’s get this straight once and for all, Astrology is rubbish”The other presenter, Brian Cox, then agreed and said “in the interests of balance on the BBC, yes astrology is nonsense.”

Shocking stuff, I think you’ll agree.

This is not the first time that Brian Cox has waded into the astrology controversy that has raged in science for literally almost none of the last couple of centuries. The hackles of Britain’s astrologers were raised last year, when Cox took a moment during his Wonders of the Solar System series to explain to the public that “astrology is a load of rubbish,” a statement which pretty much echoes the scientific consensus on the matter, which says that, “astrology is a load of rubbish.” It’s a position that was first reached by Islamic scholars at least 650 years ago, and has been studiously ignored by such great minds as Jonathan Cainer ever since.

Ephemeris: http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/the-lay-scientist/2011/jan/24/1

See Brian Cox deliver the BHA’s Voltaire Lecture 2010 on “The Value of Big Science”.

Baroness Sayeeda Warsi’s speech yesterday to the University of Leicester (prepared text available on her website) has provoked rather a lot of comment. It’s subject is anti-religious sentiment, in particular anti-Muslim rhetoric.

Near the top she conversationally mentions the bi-monthly publication from the Rationalist Association

The New Humanist Magazine ran a poll of their readers which ranked me the fifth most dangerous enemy of reason last year.

She neglects to mention that this is probably because she branded secularism “intolerant and illiberal”, tried to remove protections for non-religious views in equalities legislation, and despite many extensions of religious privilege by the previous government said that the Coalition would “do God” even more. She also takes a pot-shot at BHA President Polly Toynbee for having stated “I am an Islamophobe.” That is all that’s quoted and it’s quite clear why. When read in context Toynbee’s supposed admission is pretty bad evidence for a recent downward trend in Muslim/non-Muslim relations: it was written fourteen years ago, and the article is about defending the right to be critical of religion – Toynbee calls herself “Christophobe” in this context too – and about judging religion as a whole including the actions of its adherents, rather than just the words in religious books.

Warsi set the scene saying:

In my last speech I made the evidential case for faith in our country. I showed that contrary to popular belief, faith in this country is certainly not fading away; I explained that faith inspires many people to do good things which help build a bigger society; And I announced that the aim of this government is to help not hinder faith communities in the good things that they do.

Today, I want to make a related argument. I want to make the case against the rising tide of anti-religious bigotry.

Though the press has responded mainly to her already infamous central claim that “Islamophobia has now passed the dinner-table-test”, much of the speech is on anti-religious views in general, and when it comes to that “now” which makes everything seem so pressing, her examples quickly dry up.

Warsi claims that she’s not censuring fair criticism, only highlighting that there is too much irrational bigotedness against religious people and especially Muslims. There are few really current examples, which might be seen as a flaw in a speech made so soon after a very obvious example of bigotedness flowing in the other direction, from religion, outward. Warsi digs back to 2004 and the appointment of Ruth Kelly as Education secretary, in which Kelly’s firm Catholic conviction was widely discussed (but then, Kelly was proudly connected with Opus Dei, so it wasn’t exactly a passing reference to private belief that provoked the commentators). Warsi’s limited examples quickly retreat into history…

Sikhism suddenly seems to be all about a play in Birmingham.

“Suddenly”… Behzti was shut down following protests in 2004.

And Evangelical Christianity is seen as anti-Abortion activists rather than campaigners like William Wilberforce.

William Wilberforce died in 1833.

Her recommendations in the end boil down to a plea to talk more about “British Muslims” than “moderate Muslims” because the latter leads too quickly to thoughts about extremists, and finally:

What we need now is for more faith leaders, and more faith communities, to stand up and speak out in defence of faith.

The prepared text of the lecture: http://www.sayeedawarsi.com/2011/01/university-of-leicester-sir-sigmund-sternberg-lecture/

So, concerns about possibly damaging free speech aside, is the background level of genuine prejudice against Muslims increasing? HumanistLife has reported on Islamophobia and hatreds “real and imagined” quite recently.

Peter Oborne for the Telegraph is in no doubt, praising Warsi’s speech as a potentially career-damaging but necessary intervention against a background of real growing prejudice:

What she said yesterday has desperately needed saying by a mainstream politician for a very long time. I know this because, over the past few years, I have visited many Muslim communities and spoken to scores of Muslim leaders. With very few exceptions (such as Anjem Choudary, the fanatic who tried to organise a protest march by British Muslims through Wootton Bassett) they are decent people. Many have come from countries which persecute their citizens and trash human rights. So they are even more keenly aware of what it means to be a British citizen.

But – and this is why what Baroness Warsi has to say is so important – British Muslims get spat at, abused, insulted and physically attacked. Vandalism and mosque burnings are common, and often unrecorded. The far?Right in Britain has changed its nature. In the 1980s, organisations such as the National Front and the BNP concentrated their hatred and odium on blacks and Jews. Today, racist organisations such as the English Defence League focus on Muslim immigrants.

The Spittoon blog (anti-blasphemy, pro-free speech) also sympathises against real prejudice, but questions the political motivations.

Warsi is right to speak out against the kind of casual anti-Muslim bigotry which has become increasingly noticeable in the day to day language of Britain. There is now a climate here where the kind of language in which phraseology invoking ”fucking Muslims” is commonplace. And this is to say nothing of the heightened levels of Muslim baiting which passes for journalism on the pages of the Daily Express and the Daily Mail. Both of these organs has acted as barometer and weather vane for gauging society’s prejudice du jour. We know from them that English exceptionalism is fickle when it comes to fear and loathing of minorities and has passed over the seasons from Jews to blacks to Asians and now, currently, to Muslims.

But Warsi’s points suffer from ambiguity and a failure to discern between overt prejudice and the necessity of isolating extremist and racist elements within the fold of Islam. This suggests a barely disguised political agenda of her own, and most worryingly, a tendency to lean in favour of the goals of organised political Islamists. The kind which organise the GPU – an event she was banned from attending by Cameron himself. Is Warsi’s speech motivated by a need to extract payback from Tory Head Office for reigning her in on the question of political Islam?

Link: http://www.spittoon.org/archives/8744

Likewise Ed West for the Telegraph is keen to recognise very real prejudice, but is similarly concerned about lumping all criticism together as “Islamophobia”.

In a sense she is right, and it is noticeable how people are far more open in their hostility; I suspect many people who hate immigration of all shapes and sizes now focus largely on Muslims because it’s the one sort of criticism that’s even mildly acceptable… I would certainly challenge anyone to put themselves in the shoes of a British Muslim and look at the tabloid newspaper stands everyday, and not feel a bit hated.

But, sadly, a level of bigotry has become socially acceptable in many parts of society. Why? Well, there are two strands to the issue, and both of them are called “Islamophobia”. … It is a weasel word, because it lumps together two entirely different things. On the one hand, there is an unacceptable hatred of Muslims, which is largely racial (where Muslim is basically a new way of saying “P***”). And, on the other, there is fear of and hostility to the religion.

“Islamophobia” stigmatises a perfectly legitimate feeling of hostility to a religion which, let’s be honest, doesn’t always sit well with liberalism.

Link: http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/edwest/100072712/baroness-warsi-the-best-way-to-counter-islamophobia-is-to-stop-talking-about-it/

For Andrew Brown in the Guardian, It’s not just “Islamophobia” that might blur two kinds of feeling, but “extreme”, as well.

The real problem is that “extreme” is a term that denotes two separate kinds of distance from the rest of us. In its political sense it is entirely straightforward: “extremism” is a measure of your readiness to use violence, or of your lack of commitment to the peaceful resolution of conflicts. But in the religious or social sense, “extremism” means something much more like “weirdness”; just not being like us. This can also involve harmless eccentricity, as in “Richard Dawkins is an extreme atheist” but in a religious concept it can go very far indeed from what the rest of the world regards as sanity without involving violence.

A contemplative nun, who spends almost her entire life in silent and solitary prayer, might be regarded as an extreme Christian.

Link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2011/jan/20/lady-warsi-extremism

The Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain is less sympathetic, calling Warsi’s speech “an attempt to stigmatise critical scrutiny of Islam and stifle genuine debate”:

All religions should be scrutinised and do not deserve special treatment over any other beliefs, ideas or philosophies. Of course the Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain strongly condemns all forms of racism, bigotry and violence, however we utterly reject any attempt to conflate these issues with valid criticism and debate about Islam and Islamism.

Link: http://ex-muslim.org.uk/indexPressreleases.html

Ghaffar Hussain from Quillam meanwhile says there is real cause for concern and the press is partly to blame:

[I]n the press, most media stories that involve Muslims and Islam tend to be negative – although the same could probably also be said of Christianity and Christians. The difference however is that most Brits are much more comfortable with Christianity than they are with Islam. For instance, while ordinary British people can understand that radical Christians (such as the pastor Terry Jones who was yesterday banned from the UK) are a fringe minority, Islam remains a largely unknown quantity, the exotic “other”. This means that ordinary British people reading overblown press reports, for instance about the antics of Anjem Choudary, may not know that such individuals are fringe self-publicists who are barred from every mosque in Britain.

Once again though the consensus is that not all criticism is wrong.

However, that is not to say that Warsi is entirely right. The stirring-up of hatred and prejudice against all Muslims needs to be clearly distinguished from criticism of aspects of contemporary Muslim practice. Her reluctance to divide Muslims into “moderates” and “extremists” also seems counter-productive. Extremists exist in every religion and we shouldn’t be afraid to say so.

The Daily Express flatters Warsi’s general abilities but says that when it comes to Islam she has “lost her bearings” and the speech will do more harm than good:

If Muslims prove receptive to her message they will ease back on attempts to confront abhorrent practices within their own communities and instead become even more entrenched in a grievance culture that blames every difficulty on alleged oppression by “Islamophobes”.

In fact there are many serious problems within Muslim communities in Britain, as sensible groups such as the Quilliam Foundation have recognised. From its support for terrorism to its attempts to deny female emancipation and free speech, militant Islam is making life difficult both for moderate Muslims and for wider society.

Link: http://www.express.co.uk/ourcomments/view/224353/Lady-Warsi-s-speech-will-do-more-harm-than-good

The ever-diplomatic Richard Littlejohn lurches from point to point, claiming that no one is in fact speaking about Muslims at all, nor saying anything wrong. Then going on to say that maybe they should allo go home to Saudi Arabia. So, when Warsi claims that the common response to a woman in a burka is “That woman is either oppressed or is making a political statement”, Littlejohn’s reply is:

Are you sure?

Fair point. Maybe Warsi is just projecting. Maybe that’s not what people are thinking at all.

So Littlejohn in the very next sentence speaks on behalf of the country to tell her exactly what most of us are thinking, which Richard Littlejohn definitely knows.

Most of us just think anyone who wears a burka in Britain is barking mad and wonder why someone who so utterly rejects our society and our liberal values would want to live here. Surely they would be much happier in Saudi Arabia or Afghanistan.

Surely!

Maybe Richard Littlejohn would be much happier in a zoo.

I’m fortunate to live in a part of the world where people of all races and religious persuasions rub along well.

Well isn’t that reasonable! Richard Littlejohn likes the idea that everyone can get along together. Until his next sentence.

The same can’t be said of some neighbourhoods in towns and ­cities, especially in the North of England, where the indigenous population has been supplanted by a hostile Muslim monoculture.

It is an incontrovertible fact that a sizeable number of Muslims ­pursue a separatist agenda and simply refuse to integrate into ­British society. Or that many mosques and madrassas in this country play host to extremist preachers of hate who aim to brainwash impressionable youngsters into joining the global jihad.

Link: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1349114/Islamophobia-What-kind-dinner-parties-Baroness-Warsi.html

And finally… in a shocking twist the BBC News magazine beats even Richard Littlejohn to the comedy “And finally…” slot at the end of the round-up, with a deft avoidance of controversy as it asks the all-important question, What is a dinner-table test?

Hostility to Muslims has “passed the dinner table test”, a peer claims. So how did this item of furniture become the benchmark for what is and isn’t acceptable to say?

You start with the cutlery on the outside and work your way in. The port is passed from right to left and you never, ever, blow your nose on the napkin.

To the socially gauche, meal-time manners are already baffling enough. And now it appears that, all along, an unwritten code has governed the opinions we express while sitting down to eat…

This is a real article. It rambles on and on at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-12240315

The BBC has a tradition of big budget nature documentaries including the relatively recent Blue Planet, Planet Earth, and Life. The latest – minus David Attenborough, but with John Hurt narrating – is Human Planet.

Human Planet is an awe-inspiring, jaw-dropping, heart-stopping landmark series that marvels at mankind’s incredible relationship with nature in the world today.

Uniquely in the animal kingdom, humans have managed to adapt and thrive in every environment on Earth. Each episode takes you to the extremes of our planet: the arctic, mountains, oceans, jungles, grasslands, deserts, rivers and even the urban jungle. Here you will meet people who survive by building complex, exciting and often mutually beneficial relationships with their animal neighbours and the hostile elements of the natural world.

Human Planet crews have filmed in around 80 locations, bringing you many stories that have never been told on television before. The team has trekked with HD cameras and state of the art gear to film from the air, from the ground and underwater. The result: a “cinematic experience” created by world-class natural history and documentary camera crews and programme makers.

Link: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00llpvp (via Kottke)

Human Planet continues tomorrow at 8pm on BBC 1.

Astronomers have released the largest ever colour image of the whole sky, stitched together from seven million images each made of 125 million pixels.

Data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey has already helped identify and describe nearly half a billion stars and galaxies.

Link: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12170904

Also see: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12167011

It’s “British Humanist Association“, John!

The Pope did a Thought for the Day today. Don’t get too excited, it’s fairly anodyne and Christmassy and this-is-who-I’m-praying-for, as opposed to his atheists-are-Nazis riff. No reflection on a terrible few years for the Church though, either.

In a response segment afterwards, Polly Toynbee points out that Today programme listeners on Twitter haven’t been particularly moved by the level of excitement the Beeb encouraged re the Pope’s slot. Bishops in the Lords, ‘faith’ schools, and dodgy religiosity stats all come in for criticism, with reference to the BHA Census Campaign. –  Cristina Odone responds by accusing Polly of wanting to take religious people “out of public life”… apropos of nothing.

You can listen again at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_9319000/9319167.stm

Note: The British Humanist Association campaigns for non-religious inclusion in Thought for the Day given that it’s remit is to reflect ethically on current affairs and people other than priests, rabbis and the Pope can do that actually.

Edward Stourton wants only very serious limericks

A Radio 4 competition asks for limericks on religion. But contrary to the tradition of the limerick, your blasphemy, criticism or lewdness are not required.

Edward Stourton on BBC Radio 4′s Sunday programme yesterday invited listeners to compose limericks on the subject of religion, to welcome in the New Year… for some reason. (You can listen again for the rest of the week, about 32 minutes in.)

“Now sometimes limericks can be coarse and offensive,” Stourton warned. But, “we’re asking for clean limericks in these responses”.

You can submit your own limericks on a religious theme to sunday@bbc.co.uk. Winning poems will be broadcast on the Sunday programme on Sunday 2nd January.

If you submit a limerick do copy it into the comments below! And remember, the BBC wants “clean” limericks. None of your blasphemous humanist values or secularist criticisms please; just good, clean, po-faced limericks…

Utterly fawning coverage from the BBC of the pagan festival of Halloween or “Samhain”, including an interview with a chief pagan in a sheepskin. “We’ll be continuing with our coverage throughout the day, watching the celebration of the most important festival of the pagan year,” we’re promised.

Robert Piggott, the BBC’s bien pensant religious affairs correspondent, seems enchanted by paganism.

“Indeed modern Paganism is a reinvented religion, whose members seek the divine in nature,” he gushes.

“It originated among ancient Celts for whom the natural world was a wilderness that brought them death and danger as well as sustaining life. In contemporary Britain its members are more worried about the destruction of the natural world.”

There’s an interview with members of a coven “composed entirely of women” – not a problem for the BBC in the way that the all-male priesthood of the Catholic Church seems to be. And one witch works for the NHS!

There’s even a page on the BBC website devoted to paganism – or, rather, devoted to its propaganda.

Continues: http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/damianthompson/100061559/the-bbc-sucks-up-to-pagans/

Figures disclosed by the BBC show that its coverage of the Pope’s visit attracted more attention than most broadcasts.

In total, 384 viewers complained that coverage had been excessive while 169 said it had been too positive towards the Pope, suggesting it had ignored the controversy surrounding church and the well-attended protest events.

Another 197 claimed the coverage had been too critical, by including the views of secular groups and focusing on the experiences of clergy child abuse victims, while 122 people contacted the corporation just to express their appreciation for the programming.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/religion/the-pope/8016329/Pope-visit-BBC-receives-750-complaints.html

Participants include Father Christopher Jamison for the Catholic Church, Canon Paul Avis for the Church of England, Andrew Copson from the British Humanist Association,  Terry Sanderson for the National Secular Society, and abuse survivor Sue Cox.

Andrew Copson’s contribution:

For non-religious people, the state visit of the Pope was immediately inflammatory. His first comments in our country linked not believing in God with Nazism and accused secularists of being intolerant.

Combined with the failure of our politicians to defend the values of secularism, equality and democracy in response to his comments, but instead to reassure him that faith was at the heart of Britain, I think that at least one of the legacies of the state visit will be a disaffection and frustration among non-religious people not just with the Pope but with our own politicians.

When it came to the march and rally – our main protest event – we were amazed at the turnout.

By the time we reached Westminster for the speeches we were just under 20,000 strong and we think that means we were the largest protest in modern times against the international policies of the Holy See.

Certainly there has never been anything like it at any Papal state visit in living memory.

The protesters had diverse motives, as the various placards testified: opposition to the undermining of the human rights of women, of gay and lesbian people, of children; the refusal of the Pope to ordain women; the concealment of child abuse and frustration of justice.

All contributions: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11372428

NHS Highland is to consider withdrawing funding for homeopathy after a row surrounding a local practitioner.

Katie Jarvis, from Inverness, told a TV documentary this week that she gave patients a homeopathic medicine designed to replace the MMR vaccine.

NHS Highland said they did not support the use of homeopathic preparations in this way, and bosses will decide whether to drop homeopathy funding at the board’s meeting in next month.

Director of public health for NHS Highland, Margaret Somerville, said funds spent on homeopathy would be better going towards conventional treatments.

She said: “We want to offer people safe and effective healthcare, and homeopathy is not that.

“The evidence that we have about homeopathic treatments is that they are no better than a placebo.”

Continues: http://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/Article.aspx/1917558

Commenting on the results, Andrew Hawkins, ComRes chairman, said: “Overall there is a sense of strong support for the Pope’s visit but disquiet both about some aspects of Papal teaching and the perception of the Catholic Church in wider society having been harmed.”

In response to the question, “Do you feel your Catholic faith is generally valued by British society today, or not?” 57% answered that it was “not valued” compared with 30% who said it was, and 13% who said they did not know.

The poll results also suggest that a large number of Catholics think that the Pope should drop his insistence on clerical celibacy. Just under a half of those polled, 49%, said the celibacy rule should be relaxed, compared to 35%. A further 17% were uncommitted.

And 62% of those questioned say women should have more authority and status in the Catholic Church.

“Interestingly, the scores for men and women are exactly identical although older generations are least inclined to agree,” Mr Hawkins said.

The BBC’s religious affairs correspondent Robert Pigott said the findings seemed to reveal some of the tensions between a Church anxious to preserve ancient traditions, and a secular society that finds them increasingly hard to understand.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11274308

A similar poll by rival ITV and YouGov with more participants found even greater disagreement between papal teachings and the views of believers.

In the YouGov poll only 6 per cent of the sample agreed abortion is not permissible under any circumstance and 11 per cent believed it should only be permitted as an indirect consequence of life-saving treatment. This is compares to 44 per cent agreeing that abortion should be permissible in cases of rape, incest and severe disability to the child. A further 30 per cent agreed that abortion should always be allowed.

On artificial contraception, just 4 per cent of respondents agreed with the Church’s official view that artificial forms of contraception should not be used, with 71 per cent of those questioned answering that condoms should be used more often.

On homosexuality, only 11 per cent agreed with the Church’s perspective that ‘homosexual acts’ were morally wrong.

Commenting on the poll, BHA Head of Public Affairs Naomi Phillips said: ‘It is no surprise that just a tiny minority of British Catholics agree with the hard-line and inflexible doctrines of the Vatican on issues such as contraception or gay rights. In fact, surveys often show a large amount of agreement in the population towards social and ethical issues such as these or others such as assisted dying, regardless of respondents’ religious or non-religious beliefs, with majorities supporting more progressive, liberal perspectives.[']

http://www.humanism.org.uk/news/view/642

A BBC documentary on homeopathy in the NHS in Scotland. Interviewees claim that “magic water” cures cancer, and the BBC reveals how, with no clinical evidence, NHS funding is being spent on homeopathic remedies in Scotland at ten times the level of England.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00tvfw1/Magic_or_Medicine_Homeopathy_and_the_NHS/

Homeopaths in Scotland are offering alternatives to vaccinations that doctors say could leave patients vulnerable to potentially fatal diseases, according to a BBC investigation.

Three alternative practitioners told a BBC investigation they gave patients a homeopathic medicine designed to replace the MMR vaccine.

The documentary also discovered the Scottish NHS is spending more money per person on homeopathy than in England.

The investigation examined claims that members of the Homeopathic Medical Association, which has around 300 members across the UK, were offering replacement vaccines. It approached the association’s six members in Scotland.

Doctors said the replacement of vaccines such as MMR with homeopathic alternatives and remedies was “extremely worrying”.

Dr Vivienne Nathanson, the British Medical Association’s director of science and ethics, told the programme: “Replacing proven vaccines, tested vaccines, vaccines that are used globally and we know are effective with homeopathic alternatives where there is no evidence of efficacy, no evidence of effectiveness, is extremely worrying because it could persuade families that their children are safe and protected when they’re not.

“And some of those children will go on to get the illness.”

http://www.nursingtimes.net/specialist-news/primary-care-news/homeopathic-vaccinations-could-leave-patients-vulnerable/5019224.article

Despite religious programming quotas, programmes dedicated to the propagation of religious thought, lots of planned coverage of the Pope’s state visit next week, and no explicitly humanist counter-balancing programming, Cardinal Keith O’Brien still thinks the BBC doesn’t do enough for religion.

Cardinal Keith O’Brien said the BBC’s news coverage is contaminated by “a radically secular and socially liberal mindset”.

The Archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh said the corporation’s intolerance of religion is equivalent to its “massive” political bias against the Conservatives in the 1980s.

He also accused the corporation of plotting a “hatchet job” on the Vatican in a documentary aboutclerical sex abuse on the eve of Pope Benedict XVI’s visit to Britain.

Cardinal O’Brien believes that atheists like Professor Richard Dawkins are given a disproportionate amount of airtime while mainstream Christian views are marginalised.

Continues: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/bbc/7982601/Catholic-church-accuses-BBC-of-anti-Christian-bias.html

The British Humanist Association campaigns for fair representation from the BBC. The BHA wants an end to the privileged status and position of religions and religious broadcasting by the BBC.

The BBC and British Museum are running a series on A History of the World in 100 Objects. But the public can upload their own objects, too, and the British Humanist Association has uploaded a bust of Harold Blackham, the first Executive Director of the BHA.

This bust celebrates the achievements of Harold Blackham (1903-2009). He has been called the “architect of the international humanist movement”.

Blackham studied literature and worked in farming and teaching before turning to philosophy and adult education. Though never a professional philosopher, he tutored adult education courses on philosophy and the history of ideas, and made substantial contributions to 20th century humanist thinking in his many articles and books.

In the early 30s, Blackham became prominent in the British Ethical Union, and with leaders of the main churches set up a moral education programme in Great Britain. Later he played an important part in the development of the Ethical Union into the British Humanist Association, becoming the BHA’s first Executive Director in 1963. He was a founder of the Journal of Moral Education and in the 1970s he was chair of the Social Morality Council of Great Britain.

See the image at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/ahistoryoftheworld/objects/ZgBY1MVTT2mwIbUCtoClqQ

Mark Thompson, the BBC director-general, may be a devout Catholic, but the corporation is doing little to make Pope Benedict XVI feel welcome ahead of his first state visit to England and Scotland in September.

Mandrake can disclose that the BBC is planning a 90-minute drama which will take as its premise what would happen if the Pope were to go on trial for covering up sex abuse perpetrated by priests.

A BBC spokesman denied any knowledge of the project, but Paul Gilbert, who works in the corporation’s drama department, admitted to me that he had for the past two weeks been involved with the “development” of a project with the working title ofThe Pope on Trial. He said it was “too early” to talk about casting or on what channel it was envisaged the drama would be broadcast. The Pope, who has pledged to rid his church of “filth”, has already been subjected to an investigation by the Radio 4 programme The Report into allegations that he covered up abuse. The Most Rev Vincent Nichols, the leader of the Catholic Church in England and Wales, believes sections of the BBC are pursuing an anti-Catholic agenda. He had earlier been irked when the BBC had attempted to broadcast Popetown, a cartoon which mocked Pope John Paul II.

Continues: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/mandrake/7866684/Pope-Benedict-XVI-about-to-be-put-on-trial-by-the-BBC.html