i've seen him visiting emergency staff and at the dispatch box and in the downing street garden. but he gone missing. Has anyone see him? why is he and his cabinet in hiding? what have they got to hide for? i've seen and herd Sir Iqbal Sacranie more times then my prime minister as he Sacranie takes the burden of a whole community and becomes the sacrificial lamb for the london bombings. as the media keep spinning the downing street orders to collectively blame and place the entire guilt on the muslim community of Britain for the london bombs. my government seems to be hiding from its foreign policy, while this smear campaign goes on for their benefit.

my governments agencies claim the muslim community is in denial about the extremist in its midst. but it was the fisbury park mosque committee and patrons who told and baraged the police and security services for help when their mosque was takeover by abu hamza. it was they who kept lobbying the local MP and other local council officials to remove this dangerous man, long before we saw it in the daily mail. the police, council and MP didnt want to know, they kept saying sort it out between yourselves how quickly we forget, other radical groups like Hizb ut Tahir and Al-Muhajiroun lead by the Tottenham Ayatollah Omar Bakri have not been allowed to preach in mosques, distribute political material or hold events. the community always informers the right authorities and has been begging and pleading for them to take action on these agent provocateurs.

university islamic societies with the NUS also banned them from UK campus and conduct campaigns to inform new student about the dangers of these groups. it has been acknowledged in the wider press and media that a stream of individuals have taken part in terrorism overseas for many years now and have a support network in this country. our intelligence agency have profiles on these kind of people and what signs to look for, why have they not shared this information with the muslim community organisations and throught bodies like the MCB, and why have our intelligence agencies not infiltrated these groups. as the ethnic in take for the intelligence community is very good ratio to the ethnic population of the UK. what's with the only excuse that muslim community needs to wake up and put its house in order. they have been giving all the help they can and will do so in the future. but this collective guilt that has been placed on it is a dangerous route right up the BNP street.

it seems the Muslim youth are not the only ones that are brutally honest and have the british characteristic of Fairness, Justic and Accuracy as they point out double standards of their government. another crime, why have other political pressures groups abandon this grass roots support? what happened with working with each other? the killing and murder in london is wrong and the killing and murder overseas is wrong. no matter who does it. none of this "For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction rubbish. that's why the tony blair press office is point the finger

well then its all part of the goverment thinking "if you repeat a lie often enough and for long enough people will believe it.

I dont think anyone who was prime minister of whatever party would have done a lot different to what tony blair has done, on the whole i think the blokes been doing a good job under difficult circumstances, what would you have done????.

As for the muslim issue, they have got to sort out there own house and there is a realisation now amongst that community they have got to be seen to do more. Whatever you say there must be people within the community who know whats going on and have untill now remained silent. Coming from Leeds i can tell you feelings are running high at the moment, forget what the media try to present, in beeston and holbeck tensions are high and there has already been battles amongst locals. There is a number of muslim youths who have openly said on local media that they understand why this has been carried out, such statements have done more to wind the allready volatile situation up.


Quite frankly and this was also said by a muslim peer on radio 5, if you hate this country so much then maybe you should go back to your motherland. This country allows people of all believes unpresidented freedoms, where else would openly hostile people be allowed to preach death to the very system that offers them such freedom.

The worlds gone mad, i aint racist im speaking out what the vast majority of decent folk think from all sides of the fence.

This has been one big wake up call.

i'd put my hands up and say i was warned that my unholy support for the Iraq war may bring the slaughter to the streets of london and the UK. but i continued with this policy i wish history and the people of the United Kingdom and Iraq will forgive me.



what more than inform the police, security and intelligence agency and council and government officials of known radicals and groups. as for the MCB (muslim council of Britain) a new labour creation they have completely failed the community that their supposed to represent. the many factors to this blatant ignorance of young muslim kids in areas like leeds, bradford and blackburn. which has lot of young feeling that they are from marganilised communities, often spoken about but never herd from, they are neglected and ignored, they are ghettoised in some of the poorest regions of the country in education, economically and most important leadership. the british born are stuck in a time warp of both ideological and cultural era of their parents, which results in the children having an identity crisis and still cling to the cultural taboos of their parents. the notions of losing face and bring shame on the family and which ironicly alway contradict everything even religion edicts. all this mixed along with the geopolitical problems on our planet, they to feel part of the oppressed and they become easy prey for any predators pedling extremism. The MCB does nothing to challenge this further more they are complicit, they do not want to rock the boat. that why we have not seen any counter information from them to challenge the radical propaganda.




i've seen them too and i first get angry and what they are saying, then the anger subsides. then it's disbelief and then i pity them. they are just repeating what they have heard, it a mix of bravado and foolishness. this is a major failing of education, education, education. i know leeds very well and my experience of the muslim community is that they are confined and restricted in the culture and politics of their home villages in pakistan. they are very tribal. and this has been used and exploited by old and new labour as a block vote in many campaigns. the community has been given the ultimate PC hands off. one silver lining will be if we can smash this grip which is suffercating the development of all the people.



So, So ture have a read of thisif you hate the west, emigrate to a muslim country

It has been one big wake up call. but all these issue have been around for a long time. why did it take a bomb for people to act.

I think we may have a SWP agitatior in our mist.

If your rant was extreme right wing,instead of extreme Left-wing,you would have be berated as a Troll or a Spammer by now.

I think our moderator should keep a close eye on this fella.I'm always wary of new posters who immediately start their own threads,rather than joining in with debates on existing threats.To me it show bad forum manners.

i apologise for my poor forum etiquette. what was i thinking

Welcome, Lee Harvey Oswald. Personally, I think you acted alone but that's me.

thank you, if only we knew who was on the grassy knoll, that day in dallas

O conspiracy,
Sham'st thou to show thy dang'rous brow by night,
When evils are most free? - Brutus

William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar

its nearly a year since i started this topic and My prime minister is still "if you repeat a lie often enough and for long enough people will believe it.


http://www.channel4.com/player/playerwindo...=5830&vert=news

after the 10in report theres a debate so keep watching

Oh dear.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/5329792.stm

I don't see how Blair can say "I will leave within 12 months" and still expect the government to focus on policy. I resigned from the Labour Party when he took over as leader because I thought then that he was more interested in Tony Blair than the Labour Party or social justice. Nothing in the last decade has changed my mind. The man is a megalomaniac.

I joined the Labour Party at about the time when the Gang of Four sneaked away to form the SDP and, under Michael Foot we campaigned on a manifesto of magnificent socialist integrity and were laughed at on the doorstep by the electorate. I stayed through the traumas of the miners' strike, the Militant Tendency's battles with the leadership, Kinnock's reforms and the the departure of the Trotskyist entryists. I stayed on through the Clause 4 debate, the reversal of policies I believed in and the acceptance of Tory spending plans.
And I will not walk away now - firstly, out of loyalty to all those who built the Party over a Century of struggle and secondly, because the Labour Party has always been much bigger than any individual or faction within it.
But thirdly and most importantly, because for Socialists in the UK it is the only option that offers any hope of making a difference.
And Tony Blair is far from being the worst Labour PM if you look at the history...

I don't know enough about British political history to really comment on that. But, I will say he would be making a big mistake if caves in to the Catholic Church and allows them to discrimate against gays.

What possibly gives the Catholic Church the ability to comment upon morality anyways?

All I would ask Leftie, is: is it an open and shut case - not even worth discussing, as two members have (I think) made clear?

We'll see if anyone has on opinion on it, and if there are any views that vary even slightly from what I'm guessing might be yours. (Just because of what you said in those few lines).

I have no time for discrimination of any kind. I vistied a San francisco (gay) bath house in 1986, and walked around in my towel with a gay friend of mine. It was interesting place to visit. Not really my thing. But I don't have a problem with that culture. Gay clubs where they show porn on tv's above the bar - I've been in those too. It's no big deal to me, or even my surprisingly liberal, catholic mum.
But her mother (long dead) would have found it impossible to understand such behavoir.
Imagine explaining what a glory hole is to your granny.

I'm not suggesting homosexuality is just about sex - but I see why some people yould have a problem with it.

People don't have a problem w/ homosexuality, Damon. People have a problem w/ thinking about homosexuality. No one can control what another person thinks. I try to be tolerant of homophobes, even when they become fixated on cock.

There are a couple of points here.
First, I have a lot of sympathy for Blair over this: it is ironic (not to say hypocritical) that he is being criticised over his handling of this issue by those who have in the past accused him of being autocratic and too "presidential" in his style of leadership and thus undermining cabinet government. There is a clear split within the cabinet and I suspect that he is trying to avoid the consequences of open and damaging conflict within the Labour leadership. If he was wrong to force a policy through on Iraq, he'd be wrong to do so on this. I think that he's looking for a consensus ("fudge" if you like) as he did over foxhunting; the Right Wing press have been after Ruth Kelly for some time and I imagine that Blair would rather keep her in government. As such, he is behaving much more like a British Prime Minister and less like a US President, which is not a bad thing in my view.

As for the right of the Catholic church to moralise, one might equally ask what gives the Labour Party the right to do so on a range of matters: Labour governments developed the British Nuclear Bomb and backed the US over Vietnam. The Labour movement has at times adopted anti-immigration policies with racist undertones. And elements of the non-Labour Left in the UK were apologists for Stalinism in the 30s (as, I believe, were elements of the Left in the US); many of us also backed Mugabe in the 80s. Ultimately, there are very few if any historical institutions that can claim a record of consistently unimpeachable moral standards, so if that is a necessary qualification for commenting on morality, there is going to be something close to complete silence on moral issues (which might not be such a bad thing....).

And what the Catholic church would argue is that they are not actually imposing their morality on anyone, they are simply providing a service within the parameters of their own moral code. I suspect that ultimately their adoption agencies will close with the work (hopefully) being taken on by others. That doesn't worry me particularly, but if for some, as I suspect, this is another part of a wider campaign to secularise British society, then I think that the Left needs to start thinking through the implications of that a lot more carefully.

Your knowledge of British politics as I suggested above is far better than mine, so I would defer to all of your comments on Blair's method for processing this decision. That being said, I was more concerned about the result that the process which leads to it. If ending discrimination is an admirable goal (which I believe it is) allowing religious institutions to continue to discrimate is wrong.


My point about the Catholic Church was not the attrocities they have committed in the distint past, and there have been so many, but the attrocities they are committing today from covering up their sexual scandals, fighting "death with dignity" initiatives and yes, discriminating against homosexuals. I don't see how this would be different from allowing institutions such as say, Woolworths, from having "whites-only" lunch counters because they are providing a service within the parameters of their own moral code. I'd no sooner excuse Woolworths from gross discrimination than I would the Catholic Church.

Most religions have some pretty illeberal practices, and the catholic church is down there with the worst of of them. But does this mean that it's right to go after religion? To whip them in to line? What next, force them to have wonen priests? Prosecute mosques for not alowing women to pray in them? Demand that the church allow gay marriages in church, with a priest?

At a time when homophobia is at an all time low, to go looking for things to be outraged about, now it seems comes down to this. Some people are always going to find homosexuality unacceptable. For example, macho men are always going to have a problem with camp behavoir and way of speaking.
Some aspects of gay culture, some of the scenes, are giong to be difficult to accept. I went into this leather club 18 months ago, just for a quick look about, (In Montreal). It was a sight to see. Hundreds of guys standing about in the dark, looking very ........... well, like silent leather blokes. Of course some people are going to go


As Clare Fox said on The Moral Maze, it has been newly fashonable to legislate on everything. And that there is now much more competitive identity politics. Everyone uses the victim card, and no doubt that's a defense the catholic church will use.
I don't really go along with the woolworths lunch counter view. At least I think I don't.
My opinion is that it isn't such a cut and dried an issue of equal rights, as some might suggest.

I think that the process is important, because cabinet government (which implies occasional disputes like this) is a crucial check to the PM's power in the UK, so in this case I think Blair is undeserving of criticism and in many ways it is quite a healthy sign.

The Catholic Church's cover-ups of sexual abuse are inexcusable and appalling. However, I don't think that it is reasonable to damn the whole institution on that basis. If by "death with dignity initiatives" you mean attempts to legalise euthanasia, then I'm afraid I think that the Catholics are right, though for slightly different reasons (you probably know that a lot of [secular] disabled rights campaigners on both sides of the Atlantic take the same position) and even if you take a different view, it is hardly comparable.

The RC church would also argue that the issue is not analogous to racial discrimination, because they are not denying the services of their adoption agencies on the grounds of sexual orientation, but sexual behaviour, which is fundamentally different, though they have (apparently) undermined their position by allowing unmarried heterosexual couples to adopt. Whether or not one agrees with that view, I think that it does put the debate into a slightly different domain to one of straightforward discrimination.

Just to be clear, I wasn't intending to criticize Blair for considering the Catholic Chucrch's request to consider allowing them to continue their discrimination. I would, however, criticize him if he allows it to continue


The cover-ups are an institutional position. And, it definately erodes their moral standing.

http://www.boston.com/globe/spotlight/abus...ups_archive.htm

http://www.beliefnet.com/story/106/story_10615_1.html


Fair enough, we can agree to disagree on this issue.


I don't believe it does put the debate into another domain. Discrimination in whatever form is wrong. As you rightly point out, they have undermined their position by allowing unmarried heterosexual couples to adopt. So, they are clearly discriminating against just gays. The claim that they are discrimating on the basis of behavior rather orientation is fundamentally ridiculous for two reasons:

1. It is not true. Do you believe they would allow an openly gay couple who have pledged not engage in sex to adopt?

2. It is still discrimination and it is still morally wrong. To me the question of whether homosexuality is biological or not is utterly irrelavent. If it is indeed something that gays are born with (there seems to be quite a bit of evidence of this), then it is analgous to race and discriminating against homosexuals is akin to discriminating against Asians. If instead, homosexuals choose to be gay, then it is analagous to religion and discriminating against homosexuals is akin to discriminating against, oh I don't know... maybe Catholics. To take it a step further and say the Catholic Church is okay with homosexuality as long as they don't engage in fundamental aspect of human behavior is like someone saying it is okay to be Catholic but it's okay to discriminate against a Catholic if they worship or pray.

I agree that whether homosexuality is biologically or socially determined is irrelevant; however, from a theological point of view, the church would argue that it is what people do rather than what they are that matters. So if it allowed gay people who were married to adopt, whilst turning down unmarried heterosexuals, I think that the church could claim that it was acting consistently and without discriminating on the grounds of sexual orientation, but purely applying its teaching on behaviour. Of course, the fact is that the Catholic adoption agencies overwhelmingly receive applications from straight, married couples so this is largely hypothetical.
Either way, the decision has now been taken, and I think Blair has found a way through that is at least consistent and reasonable, though unfortunately it looks as if the adoption agencies will eventually close.

That would, as I suggested above still put them in the logical position of accepting religious discrimination as those who are religious "do" rather than "are".


That is true.

I think he has more than "found a way through". He has certainly done the right thing, and I applaud him for it!

Well done to LeftintheUS and JBoyd for having a serious go at debating the issue. I'd say you both about counterd each others arguments pretty much.

I support gay adoption, but can't be bothered to go after the backward religions, and rub their noses in it. Leave them a little slack is my opinion.

So therefore I declare ( ) that this forum has no clear position on this issue.

The Wilson Labour government may not have blocked the US over Vietnam, but they didn't send any troops unlike Mr Blair in Iran

It's not so much about their morality but more about how they get funding. If they take government funding for their operation, which they do, then they should, in my name and yours, insist on certain values being carried out. That's a moral issue. It's about democracy. Their moral code must adapt, just like mine has to, when it meets with such contingencies.

As for secularising British society - good. God does not exist. The church and religion cause way too many problems. I don't want to live in a society based on absolutes, where some unelected man's interpretation of one particular, distorted view of history decides how we must all behave. I think it would be fantastic to get rid of the established church and all the trappings that go with it, like the Saxe-Coburg-Gotha-Hitlers.

If you look at the stuff that's come out this week about the funding of charities, it's clear that most are not paid the full cost of the work they do by government at national or local level. So the truth is almost certainly that the Catholic adoption agencies have actually been subsidising the state.



I consider myself to be a Christian Socialist, so I have to disagree. However, I would suggest that neither the established Church nor the Monarchy are particularly relevant to British politics now, nor have they been for many years. They were neither a barrier to the achievements of the Atlee government, nor to the damage done by Thatcherism.
The problems our society faces are primarily social and economic and their causes are also rooted in socio-economics.