The right to offend

I've been having some interesting conversations and thoughts about where the line is these days in terms of offending people by pointing out what I think are fallacies, flaws and inconsistencies in their beliefs. Religious people especially like to blur the distinction between themselves and their beliefs; it seems to be a commonly held position that faith based opinions should be respected regardless of their obvious flaws. This is strange to a rationalist like me, in no other field of human conversation are ideas respected simply because someone believes them to be true. Look at politics for example, sport, entertainment, there are as many opinions as there are people but somehow religion demands special treatment.

Other people say things like "aw leave them alone, think of all the good things that religions do", well yes that may be true but so what, many totally objectionable political parties do good things to, for example Hezbollah provides excellent health care and yet that is not a valid reason to give them a free ride when it comes to debate on the middle east. Another frequent claim is "you can't criticise religious stupidity because they aren't the only ones who can be stupid", absolutely, politicians can be incredibly stupid, as can financiers and sports people but just because MUFC donates money to UNICEF it doesn't mean I have to respect Christiano Ronaldo's views on abortion.

There are also people who have a misconception that I criticise religion because I have contempt for religious people or their beliefs, or that I "hate god", as I point out it is difficult to hate something you don't believe in. No, I attack religion because it represents a particularly nasty form of elitism or tribalism; it's like discriminating against people that don't walk under ladders but a thousand times more consequential. If religion truly were "just another opinion" like which coffee to buy, then no one would care, but no one says cappuccino drinkers should be killed or denied representation; alas no religion is that benign.

Atheist is a somewhat negative and meaningless term; I don't believe in fairies either but don't feel the need to be labelled as such, rationalist would describe me in a more positive way but unfortunately the ranks of the religious and the apologetic think it clever to label people like me "militant atheists", I have even heard the term "rabid atheists" used in this context. So what is it I do that is militant, well, I speak out, I express a well researched opinion, I don't accept things on faith, if someone asks I tell them what I think with honesty; ok I accept that some people find these things objectionable but are they really "militant"?

Here is a video on this subject made by FFreeThinker and although the sound is a bit hit and miss the ideas are nicely presented.

Government officials crushed to death

Today at the government central information office dozens of civil servants and party officials were crushed to death in a catastrophic rush to bury bad news. In a statement read by Jack Mickelson the government expressed deep sorrow at the loss of life and sent condolences to the families, but assured fellow politicians that despite the disaster stories about updates on MPs expenses, cancelled multi-million pound projects and horrendous debt figures were successfully released to the press.

David Tredinnick

I'm sure everyone is thoroughly fed up with the MP expenses saga, but this story today tweaked my interest, not only does it illustrate dishonesty but is also has a great "bad science" angle too; two bangs for my buck!

The story concerns MP David Tredinnick (member for Bosworth) who spent £200 on astrology software and £300 pound on consulting services to learn how to use it, so not only is Mr Tredinnick dishonest he is ignorant, stupid and gullible to boot!

This is not the first time Mr Tredinnick has fallen foul of his obvious character flaws, he was once a parliamentary private secretary but was forced to resign and was suspended for 20 days for accepting a £1000 bribe to ask questions in the house, this was popularly known as the cash for questions affair.

Unbelievably (to me at least) he has been an MP for 20 years, so perhaps he should think about calling it a day, his star is clearly no longer rising.

Tim Minchin for Prime Minister

Actually Tim Minchin is Australian so probably couldn't be our prime minister, but hey, a boy can dream. Here is Tim "going off on one" about pseudo-science and religion (the usual); but as ever he puts it to music and the result is funny and poignant at the same time.



If you think this is good have a poke around his other YouTube stuff, I particularly recommend a beat poem called "storm" it sums up wishy washy relativist thinking nicely.

You can’t beat a bit of bully

Just when you think you have seen every example of delusional bull-shit going something comes along that simply trumps everything else. Take this story from Kansas and the Wichita Eagle it concerns a young man called Chase Kear who apparently had a bad accident whilst pole vaulting, unfortunate certainly, but take a look at what happened next and then think about "to what" would you attribute the recovery of this person.

1. Chase suffers a serious brain trauma
   
2. Bystanders call for medical help on their cell phones
   
3. Doctors arrive minutes later in a helicopter
   
4. Doctors administer emergency care
   
5. Helicopter arrives in hospital
   
6. Surgeons remove part of his skill to reduce brain swelling
   
7. Kear is treated with anti-biotic drugs to prevent infection
   
8. Swelling reduces, doctors restore Kear's skull
   
9. Kear survives and undergoes rehabilitation treatment
   

Now I would expect any commentary about these events from family or friends to pay tribute to the skill and training of the doctors, surgeons and nurses involved, perhaps a nod in the direction of the helicopter pilot or maybe a thank you to the people who alerted them to the accident in the first place. Oh no my friends, we are dealing with Catholics here, this young man clearly survived because a "miracle" occurred, whilst all this 21^st century science was going on a bunch of people sat around doing nothing, with their hands clasped, mumbling things to an invisible man in the sky so that he would intervene and do undetectable things; clearly this played the pivotal part in a successful outcome, in fact this is such a no brainer apparently that the Vatican itself has sent a "man" to investigate this "miracle".

For myself, earlier I turned cold water into hot tea and in a few seconds I shall be pressing a button and affecting electrons thousands of miles away; I await the men in red with eager anticipation.

L’Ortolan take II

I made it to the l'Ortolan restaurant last night for a meal with a fellow wine geek from the USA, it was a good evening although we talked about work far to much and not enough about wine!

I had a set menu which was part of a mid-week offer that the restaurant is running currently at a fixed price of £38 per head although the final bill came to over £100 in the end as we got through a couple of bottles of wine, one good and one awful (more on that later).

So the food, overall very good, proceedings got underway with an amuse bouche of cold (fishy) vichyssoise, ok but not memorable, then the starter consisted of pressed confit of pork belly with parsley, shallots and grain mustard, I'd give it 8/10 the pork was well prepared and had a nice savoury-sweet thing going on which tweaked the appetite nicely. For the main course I had roasted rump of veal, sweetbreads, morel mushroom ravioli and truffle oil, I really liked this dish easily 9/10, beautiful presentation the flavours complemented each other well and although the portion was quite small it was a satisfying dish. Next up was a little sorbet (apricot or something like that) and I chose to take the cheese course rather than a pudding, I ended my meal with some Pont-l'Évêque, roquefort and brie.

Wine-wise we tried a bottle of Mas de Daumas Gassac red 2006, not a wine I have had before but have always wanted to try. It comes from the south of France (near Montpellier) not quite a proper cotes du Rhone perhaps more Languedoc. The wine is primarily cabernet sauvignon 80% and then 20% blend of all kinds of other grapes including syrah and petit verdot. They must do a pretty harsh selection because the concentration is great, a serious wine that would probably age very well. Upfront nose of dark fruits and wood, silky smooth on the palette, dense, minerals, slightly funky in a good way (must have some mourvedre in it?), fairly long finish, I must buy some of this!

The second wine we had was a little more down market (expense accounts bulging slightly at this point!) we went for the Stump Jump red a GSM blend from the d'Arenberg stable, this was awful, not faulty but just poor, it tasted weedy and acidic with way too much alcohol and frankly worth avoiding, stupid name, pointless wine.

The only thing that really lets this restaurant down is the wine list, for a 1 star establishment the choice is really poor and the prices are simply ludicrous, the Mas weighed in at £60 (£20 retail) and the Stump £25 (£8 retail) so a roughly 3X mark up on both wines, this kind of thing really sticks in my throat.

I was so disappointed by the second wine we had that we retired after the meal to my house where I raided the cellar for a lovely bottle of Yarra Yering Dry Red No. 1 Cabernet (2005), a sumptuous and rich wine full of black currents, blackberries, meaty, vanilla and toast flavours with a typical minty and long finish, in fact I can still taste it now!

Be careful what you wish for…

People who feel pressure to look attractive are more fearful of being rejected because of their appearance than are their peers, according to a new study by researchers at the University at Buffalo and the University of Kent, of course beauty is in the eye of the beholder, see below.

Read all about it here

I smell a rat, or at least I used to.

Consumers in the USA have been warned to stop using a homoeopathic cold remedy product called Zircam. Apparently this product does nothing to help you recover from a cold but does destroy your sense of smell, permanently. The effect on people like me who enjoy collecting wine as a hobby or professional critics, or chefs etc. would be simply catastrophic; and if you think about it, loosing your sense of smell is a potentially life threatening disability. Not recognising burning smells when you should or the smell of a gas leak etc. could limit ones longevity in a pretty serious way.

When tackled regarding this serious oversight the FDA (the Food & Drug Administration) said that "Zircam was never formally approved because it is part of a small group of remedies that are not required to undergo federal review before launching. Known as homeopathic products, the formulations often contain herbs, minerals and flowers."

Minerals like Zinc, which is known to cause nerve damage if used in excessive quantities, all it needed was some BS marketing that claimed efficacy for swine flu and we could have had a whole lot of anosmic people wandering around wishing they just had flu.

Doh!

Just a quick post, here is a round up of some dumb things done because of religion that I've come across lately.

First up we have the couple in Dorset who cannot leave their Bournemouth flat because the automatic motion sensors turn the lights on, they are Jewish you see and apparently the creator of the universe, aka. Yahweh gets real picky about these things; "let there be no light" on the Sabbath he says. I pity the poor residents who now have an unwanted legal bill to sort this BS out.

Some more people who think its better to treat sick children with prayer or quackery instead of proper medicine; yep you guessed it, all the kids died.

Then we have the Christian fundamentalist couple in Singapore who got 8 weeks in jail for distributing a totally wacko cartoon strip featuring Muslims claiming to be plotting to put a "Muslim flag" over the white-house and an Islamic revolution that is (apparently) bringing England to her knees. Looking at the cartoon I reckon it should have been 8 weeks psychiatric treatment.

And we have the irate Muslim parents of children at a Blackburn school who hounded one of the teachers so much that she was forced to quit, the reason for this behaviour?, because she "looked like a man". Apparently the poor woman had short hair and had posted some photographs of herself on FaceBook wearing trousers. The school in question is private and has a majority of female pupils, apparently music is viewed as un-Islamic and students are taught Islamic studies instead of RE, Arabic and Urdu are also taught instead of modern European languages. Sounds like a swell place to get a balanced education.

Finally we have the Catholic priest who having been caught for the fifth time sexually abusing children refused to apologise for an assault that happened in 1968 because he claimed he was giving the 11 year old boy "anatomy lessons". With any luck in his prison cell after lights out some very large and very sexually frustrated inmates will give Father Gannon an anatomy lesson of his own.

A hiss take, surely?

Just surfing the WEB during my lunch break as I munch on an apple, and I came across this story about wind farms in Africa, nothing out of the ordinary about that I hear you say, but look more closely, here is a picture of the aforementioned wind farm just north of Cape Town in South Africa, I draw your attention to the sign warning people not to enter the site.

Now, I know that genetic engineering has come on leaps and bounds in recent years, but trained attack snakes, holy serpentes Batman!

Islamic Enlightenment

An interesting article in the New York Times from a couple of weeks ago, the subject is that eternal mammalian preoccupation SEX, the thing that makes it interesting is that here we have the story of a brave woman who has the temerity to acknowledge that sex between human beings actually exists and (shock horror!) some people have a few problems with it from time to time.

Ms Wedad Lootah published a book earlier this year entitled "Top Secret: Sexual Guidance for Married Couples", why "secret" you may be thinking, well, Ms Lootah is a marriage counsellor in Dubai. The book has drawn praise from some liberals there as well as the predictable death threats from the lunatic conservatives who say she is guilty of blasphemy or worse.

According to Ms Lootah sex education in Islamic theocracies seems to be a little hit and miss, in particular she finds herself advising men that anal sex is not the "only" option with women, she said.

Many men who had anal sex with men before marriage want the same thing with their wives, because they don't know anything else. This is one reason we need sex education in our schools.

In Muslim countries where the genders are rigorously separated, many men have their first sexual experiences with other men; this understandably affects their attitudes toward sex in marriage.

She also finds herself advising women on the existence of the female orgasm. One of the cases that impelled her to write the book, she said, was a 52-year-old client who had grandchildren but had never known sexual pleasure with her husband.

Finally, she discovered orgasm! Imagine, all that time she did not know.

This is a good news story as far as I am concerned, I believe that our world would be a far safer place if Islam underwent the same kind of enlightenment era that Christianity did a few hundred years ago, if it is to happen at all, I believe it will be Muslim women who will lead the much needed rational revolution in these societies.

Half full or half empty?

There are two ways of looking at this story; a charitable viewing would see the author allowing ignorant creationists to hang themselves on their own words. However, a cynical perspective would see the ever politically correct BBC giving un-opposed air time to ignorant creationists in a disingenuous and naïve article about a preposterous affront to honest people the world over.

The creationist museum in Kentucky and the associated organisation that funds it is a huge, expensive vehicle for telling lies, I wonder if the BBC would allow such biased publicity about other similarly dishonest organisations and topics, holocaust denial for example. How would the public react if an article by David Irving was published in the mainstream media without a single refutation from any expert, photographs, or Nazi document highlighting the overwhelming evidence in the affirmative?

I think the BBC was wrong to provide coverage like this, without counter argument, no mention of the evidence for evolution, no mention of the thousands of museums around the world that stand in opposition to this and no objectivity, it simply allows the creationists and their adherents to present their misguided views without challenge. Do we even know if the profits from this disgusting museum are subject to tax or is AIG considered a church and therefore exempt in the US?

Then there are the quotes from people going to the museum, admittedly they do make them sound like ignorant hicks.

In particular, we have some bloke who said "Why is Darwin buried with kings at Westminster Abbey? He's not a king." You would think that someone would do a tiny bit of research before coming up with a comment like that, clearly this twit doesn't realise that Newton, Herschel, Shakespeare, Milton, Stephenson and Lyell are also buried there (among many others), he clearly has a view of England that is based on a medieval Disney fantasy (I wonder if he even owns a passport?). Then there is the lady who says "she's not sure Darwin believed his own theory" I can confirm to her that no educated person is sure they believe that she actually said that! And then we have the retired "professor" who says "if you don't believe in Genesis, you don't believe in anything else", talk about insulting just about everyone on the face of the planet in one go, I'm sure anyone who studied under him are now reviewing their degree certificates for legal anomalies as we speak.

Seriously, aren't Americans embarrassed by such views? why aren't the American press and American comedians hounding and ridiculing these people day in and day out, is it because they are hiding behind the veil of "faith"?

One thing is for sure, from the perspective of the scientific community they are making a laughing stock of a (once?) great scientific nation.

Fossils

One of my favourite excursions with the kids is to visit the "Jurassic coast" in Dorset, this is a designated world heritage area of the southern coast of the UK, it's called the Jurassic coast because of the rich Jurassic fossils that you find there.

Here are a couple of examples of fossils that we found on our last outing.


First up we have a classic Ammonite, lovely spiral shape and to get an idea of scale I made the photograph on lined paper where the larger squares are 1cm, these little critters were around between 400 and 65 million years ago, going extinct around the same time as the dinosaurs did.

Next is our star find, this insignificant looking disc is a vertebrae from a large marine reptile called an Ichthyosaur, roughly 200 million years old. It is pleasing because it is quite rare to find one that isn't squashed.


Ichthyosaurs looked a lot like modern dolphins but were not fish nor mammals, they were reptiles that had become adapted to a life in the sea much like animals like whales and dolphins are today. A complete Ichthyosaur would look like this:

So the little bone that we found would have come from the backbone, probably near the end of it's spine or from a small animal.

Aporkalypse now!

Well it's official, swine flu is a pandemic, load up the shot gun, fill the cellar with beans and start hoarding! Waitrose here I come...

Islamic “education”

I am beginning to suspect that there is a "stupid gene" that correlates with religiosity, seriously, someone needs to do that research. My idiocy antenna was drawn to this little story in London today about a chap called Iftickhar Ahmad of the London School of Islamics who accused the British educational system of "cultural fascism", I know what you are thinking, surely this must be a joke, unfortunately it seems not.

Mr Ahmad sent out an email entitled "Muslim Children and Sex education" in response to claims that certain "religious" parents had removed their children from a school in London because they disapproved of certain "themes" being taught; let's take a look at what he thinks.

Simply to secure a decent moral upbringing for their children … Rather than filling the heads of impressionable boys and girls with fatuous drivel about gay penguins, schools should be ashamed of the fact that they are sending children out into the world barely able to read, write and add up properly. Muslim children are leaving schools without learning their cultural roots and linguistic skills.

Ok, first mistake, there is no such thing as a "Muslim child", only a child of Muslim parents, not a great start, anyway moving on.

Are UK parents really faced with a choice between literacy and gay penguins?

Let's look at the facts, the literacy rate in the UK is >99%, i.e. at least 99 out of 100 children leave school knowing how to read and write, not too shabby. For comparison the literacy rate of Pakistan an Islamic country (and presumably a "moral" one in Mr Ahmad's eyes?) is only 49%, Somalia, another Islamic country only 37%, Afghanistan 28%, not so good, perhaps Islam is what is truly opposite literacy?

As for gay penguins, I would dearly love to see the text book on that, but as for homosexuality in nature well that is just something biologists like to call REALITY, a technical term that Mr Ahmad is clearly unfamiliar with.

He goes on to say,

This latest episode should be a wakeup call for Muslim parents. Muslim parents MUST explain our moral standards to schools and be prepared to take steps to protect our children's morals and values from a growing agenda to impose liberal values upon them. This is an eye-opening for those Muslim parents who keep on sending their children to state schools to be mis-educated and de-educated by non-Muslim monolingual teachers.

What moral standard is Mr Ahmad referring to here? perhaps he is referring to ones in Muslim theocracies that allow women to be treated as property, homosexuals to be hung, dishonoured girls to be stoned to death, people to be killed for leaving Islam, death threats to be imposed on foreign authors for writing books, burning people to death for publishing cartoons etc. It can't be those because they are all against the law in this country, can anyone see the obvious problem here?

Mr Ahmad clearly fell asleep one day and woke up in the wrong society, the wrong country and in the wrong century, how inconvenient.

So what is Mr Ahmad's solution to his woes? Oh yes that bastion of the religious intolerant; educational apartheid. He says,

State schools where Muslim children are in majority must be designated as Muslim community schools employing bilingual Muslim teachers to act as role models for pupils during their developmental periods.

Unfortunately our own Conservative party appears to support Mr Ahmad, always keen to blur the distinctions between their brains and their backsides the shadow schools secretary and conservative MP Michael Grove recently said to the Yorkshire post that his party would welcome the creation of new religious schools and accepted that the policy could lead to an increase in Islamic state schools being funded in areas of West Yorkshire. Apparently he also said that this blatant support for the segregation of children "wouldn't lead to further segregation", WTF?

I wonder if he's thinking about adopting the Somali or the Pakistani model?

Simon Singh is innocent!

I am tracking this story with interest lately, the respected science writer Simon Singh is being prosecuted for libel by the BAC (British Chiropractic Association) because he had the temerity to say in a Guardian article that chiropractic treatment for ear infection was "bogus". Simon has already been found guilty of libel and is now appealing against this ridiculous accusation, the ranks of the scientific good and great are only just waking up to what this case means in the wider context of freedom of speech, the forces of the rational are assembling to support him (here).

In 2008, the British Chiropractic Association (BCA) announced that its members could help treat children with colic, sleeping and feeding problems, frequent ear infections, asthma and prolonged crying. The case for chiropractic practitioners treating anything other than sore backs is BOGUS, there is no evidence, what Singh is saying is not libel it is FACT, if that upsets the hucksters represented by this shabby organisation then tough shit!

Libel laws have no place in science; science works by looking at evidence and criticising ideas, if it is not free to do that then we will all lose something very important, our right to reality!

It is high time that our libel laws were overhauled, Britain is a laughing stock of the civilised world, our antiquated policies regarding libel mean that any bloated Arab oil sheik, dodgy Russian oligarch or friend of Saddam can take a "libel holiday" chez nous simply by stuffing fistfuls of pound notes into the hands of libel lawyers in order to silence their critics. Even in the Commons, MPs have railed against the absurdity of a legal system which forced a Danish newspaper to pay £100,000 for criticising the shady financial practices of the Icelandic bank Kaupthing, which duly collapsed six months later along with the rest of the Icelandic economy.

I would urge anyone who feels as strongly as I do on this to boycott their Chiropractor, let them know about this, and write to the BCA as I have done making the position clear. In an interesting turn of events the McTimoney Association (a British chiropractic group) has sent out an email to its members urging them to immediately shut down all of their websites, why?, because of the Simon Singh fracas people are becoming aware that chiropractors are making claims for treatment that CANNOT be substantiated with research.

So these people are trying to cover their tracks, desperately trying to make the quackery "go away" as fast as they can, sounds like an admission of guilt to me.

Knocking at my door

After hearing so much about swine flu and watching the inevitable spread of the virus around the world it is finally knocking at my door, this story in the telegraph reports that the Emmbrook junior school will be shut for 7 days as the disease was detected in a child returning from America, although my own kids don't go to this school (thankfully) it is only a mile from my house and therefore probably only a matter of time.

Fortunately this strain of flu has turned out to be not quite as serious as people initially thought it might be and with antivirals seems to be less of a problem than the normal seasonal variety. Even so, such a close call is a sobering thought and a reflection of the power of natural selection in honing nasty bugs!

Is that a knife in your pocket or are you just pleased to see me?

A nice example of a practical application of AI (artificial intelligence) software here, a portable microwave scanner can be pointed at a suspect at distance, and a rapid analysis of the signals bouncing back can be used to determine if the person is carrying a concealed gun or a knife.

The computing power required to do this is significant, and this kind of thing is only just now becoming feasible (cost and size wise) with recent advances in the commercialisation of multi-processor hardware and suitable software written specifically to take advantage of it.

AI and computing to do this kind of thing is what my company is focused on at the moment. For those who haven't come across it before a neural network in software typically works by modelling the way the human brain functions, in that lots of "neurons" or separate processing nodes act in unison to take a set of inputs and "convert" them into an answer. The cool thing about neural nets is that they are capable of learning in the sense that the same network of "virtual" neurons can be "trained" to solve many different problems. I use this kind of technology to help develop software to match a set of interests that a person or company might have (i.e. news about my competitors) with freely available information on the internet, the idea being that the system can provide "surveillance", its kind of like having your own private detective sniffing around and picking up useful and interesting information for you 24X7 with no effort on your part (that's the theory anyway!)

Should we deport Gary McKinnon?

Here is an interesting story that has been bubbling along for a while now; Gary McKinnon is a computer whiz who was prosecuted back in 2002 for hacking into US defence systems. The kinds of systems that he hacked into included US Navy, NASA, US Government etc. apparently some 97 separate systems were breached, the US government claims that Gary caused half a million pounds worth of damage, and want him extradited to the USA to face trial and up to 70 years in jail. He recently appealed against a decision by a UK court to send him to the USA and the BBC covered the story again today here.

Of course, this kind of behaviour cannot be condoned and some form of punishment is certainly due, even Gary himself admits his guilt and has apologised, he claims that his activities were not malicious, he is not a spy and was involved in a somewhat childish "game" intended to sniff out UFO stories. Gary also suffers from Asperger's syndrome; this is a form of autism that affects the sufferer's ability to have normal social interactions, understandably sufferers often gravitate to activities like computing and hacking in particular because of the intensity of thought required and the lack of any need to communicate with other people in order to become good at it.

The question that this case raises for me is not one of guilt, I have no doubt that he did it, the issue for me is should he be extradited? Interesting even Human rights campaigner Terry Waite (the chap who was held hostage in the Lebanon for years) is in favour of dropping the case, citing "harmless" motives and an "irrational obsession" driven by his medical condition, the argument seems persuasive.

In the grand scheme of things this amount of money is not that significant, especially now when we compare it with the goings on in the financial services arena, health is a factor, should we be sending sick people abroad to face jail sentences? All these things are mitigating factors in this but the main point of principal for me is where this crime occurred, surely this is a crime that was committed on UK soil by a UK citizen, why then can the punishment not be determined by a UK court and actioned here in the UK? Compare this with the Bernard Madoff case, where a US citizen conned people out of $65 Billion around the world, plenty of people in the UK lost money and I suspect the sums involved far exceed that claimed in the McKinnon case and yet there is no talk of extraditing him from the US to the city of London, perhaps there is some underlying legal principal that I am not aware of in play here but it all seems a little one sided to me.

Faith in faith schools

Just before we get onto faith schools, I have to make a little comment about recent political events. Predictably a bunch of labour politicians last night demonstrated that "spinectamies" are still compulsory in order to enter government in this country, believe it or not Gordon Brown is still in charge this morning, "oy vey" sums it up for me.

Anyway, I feel the need to get back onto more solid ground, fortunately the Catholics have provided such an opportunity (as they do); this time the new Archbishop of Westminster is sounding off about faith schools with some predictably paranoid, inaccurate and narrow minded comments. A report of the comments he made at the University of London can be seen here in the telegraph and since stupid ideas seem to be the vogue recently lets look at some of Vince's ideas in a little more detail.

"Schools of a religious character are upfront, overt and very reasoned about the values that shape the education. Whereas I think often those that would claim to be neutral are covert in the values that they present to the children."

The schools themselves are clearly upfront about it once the children are behind closed doors; please be honest Mr Nichols, the main purpose of a religious school is to promote the interests of that religion and to ensure the continuance and growth of it by indoctrinating the next generation in the dogma. Why else would they exist and why else focus on children? It is disingenuous of the Archbishop to claim, as he does, that there is some grander purpose when such a purpose would by definition be free of the narrow interests of one single version superstitious belief. Then he steps onto firmer ground for the Catholic clergy, fear, he is trying to imply that there are mysterious secular figures lurking in the background covertly corrupting the values of kids, what a crock, the secular view is that comparative religion should be taught consistently, transparently and in EVERY school, I really wish people like this would address reality and explain why they object to this approach instead of inventing straw men to argue against.

"Schools are the places where such virtue is generated or where it is neglected."

What virtues are we talking about here, honesty, transparency and ethical behaviour or the Catholic virtues as demonstrated in schools around the world over the last 35 years i.e. secrecy, immorality, violence, perversion and dishonesty, I would love to ask this man why he thinks his organisation is in any way qualified to teach virtues to children, evidence? track record?

"In effect what is happening is that the patterns of the market are flooding over all aspects of life and we are finding ourselves considered as nothing more than consumers and suppliers."

Children should be consumers of dogma, supplied by one of the market leaders, would be the way I read this.

"Catholic schools have a crucial role to play in creating a society founded on values such as honesty, justice, compassion and courage."

• Honesty – like admitting people in your organisation are perverted criminals
  
• Justice – like coughing up decent compensation for victims of systemic torture
  
• Compassion – like treating victims of abuse with dignity and humanity
  
• Courage – like having the courage to admit the truth
  

I would love to see some evidence that these schools are actually providing such values, from the outside it looks a lot like they are failing to do so.

The Archbishop has led the Catholic Church's battle to maintain the freedom of faith schools. In 2006, as chairman of the Catholic Education Service, he provoked anger among ministers when he won his campaign against quotas for faith schools, forcing Alan Johnson, then Education Secretary, to back down over proposals to require them to accept more pupils from non-faith backgrounds.

One mans freedom is another mans tyranny; this is the politics of walled communities and razor wire, a philosophy of segregation, us and them, regardless of whether we believe the mythology of any particular section of society what are we saying about our confidence and security that we feel the need to put our children into little labelled boxes. Must we think of children as Catholic children or Muslim children, isn't this kind of indoctrination tantamount to child abuse?

How would history look back on us if we implemented such segregation along any other social fault line, for example, politics, Labour schools and Conservative schools anyone? how about sport, MUFC university or the Chelsea FC academy of science, even more relevant to the events at the weekend perhaps we should consider segregation along ethnic lines, black schools and white schools, the possibilities are endless.

In my opinion schools should be representative of society and our society is diverse, why prepare children for anything else, lets hope it stays that way.