Hoping from Oregon

Hoping that people are returning their i want a referendum ballots and are planning to lobby Parliament on Wednesday the 27th. David kindly informed me that the word lobby (and lobbyist) comes from the Westminster lobbies in which MPs meet their constituents, and with that kind of historic precedent I am hoping, hoping from Oregon, that you will fill those lobbies and tell your MPs what you think of the EU's undemocratic Lisbon Treaty.

One man defies politicization of the Crown

At a historic time in the life of Britain, when MPs debate the European Union’s Lisbon constitution treaty which will bind Britain even more tightly into what Europeans call the Empire of Europe, at an hour when patriots in the House of Commons and the House of Lords assert that the treaty threatens the independence of Britain and the rights and freedoms of the British people, who have been denied the promised referendum on the question, HRH the Prince of Wales is found in Brussels addressing the European Parliament and calling for greater powers for the European Union to fight global climate warming.

This is a gross and underhanded politicization of the Crown by Gordon Brown and the Labour Party. The Prince’s speech was made at this time to give support to Labour’s aggressive, unfair, and unfree push to force the Lisbon Treaty down the throats of the British people. That the Prince did not realise this is likely.

That anyone could consider the European Union a defender of the environment is a monstrous pity. The EU has destroyed Britain’s fishing stocks and fishing grounds and fishermen in one of the greatest environmental disasters of the last century by allowing European countries to haul fish at devastating rates from British waters. EU ships are now doing the same thing to poor African fishermen off the west coast of Africa. Shrouding itself in environmental righteousness, the EU is an environmental vampire.

We can report that one man defied the crass and disgusting politicization of the Prince and the Crown. This was a man we have not always applauded in the past.

According to John Kelly, who sent us details, the Prince received a standing ovation from about 150 British MEPs and representatives from the European Parliament's climate change and environment committees. But Nigel Farage, leader of the United Kingdom Independence Party, who had joined the standing welcome for the Prince, refused to stand for the ovation. He said afterwards that the Prince's advisers had been “naive and foolish at best” to allow him to make a political speech at such a delicate time.

The Sovereign has a constitutional role to play in defending the just laws and freedoms of the British people. The Prince's entanglement in Gordon Brown’s web is not part of that role.

Mass Lobby of Parliament

"Be there or be nowhere."

Don't miss the Mass Lobby of Parliament to demand a referendum on the EU's Lisbon constitution treaty, 11 am - 6 pm, Wednesday, 27 February.

I want a referendum.com has all the details. "Anyone can lobby their MP – you do not have to be an expert. You just need to be willing to ask your MP a few questions, and to tell them why you think there should be a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty. Past experience has shown that a mass lobby is one of the most effective ways of getting a message across to MPs."

Constituents will meet at the Houses of Parliament, and join the queue at the entrance. After lobbying their MP, supporters are invited to meet at Central Hall Westminster, where there will be speeches from leading pro-referendum campaigners and MPs.

Following, you can join the Bruges Group Meeting with Bill Cash, MP, and Richard Younger-Ross, MP, at the Foreign Press Association, 6:45 pm on the same day.

All in all a good day.

Church of England needs refresher course

Making things even worse by indicating they have no understanding of Christianity and its relationship to Britain's common law, the Anglican Church stepped in to defend the Archbishop of Canterbury after he faced fresh criticism from MPs, Muslim leaders and rights activists over his comments that the adoption of parts of sharia law in Britain was "unavoidable".

Dr Williams has "sought to carefully explore the limits of a unitary and secular legal system in the presence of an increasingly plural society", said the Church in a memorandum to MPs.

Common law is indeed unitary, that is, it is one body of law for all, whether they are Christians, the adherents of another faith, or non-believers, but it is not a “secular” law. It was founded on Judaeo-Christian principles and created by Christians such as Alfred the Great; Stephen Langton, Archbishop of Canterbury, and the bishops, abbots and knights who defied John to make sure that justice would be established in Magna Carta; John Pecham, Archbishop of Canterbury, who defended Magna Carta at the end of the 13th century; John Lambert who died for the right to silence and John Lilburne who endured whipping and pillory to defend the same right; William Penn and hundreds of other Christians who defended freedom of religious conscience with their lives until it became part of British common law; William Bushell, who went to prison rather than give up the freedom of juries to decide guilt or innocence freely; and those Christian knights and bishops who in AD 1100 forced Henry I to sign the Charter of Liberties and to pledge that no one, not even the king, would be above or beyond the law, a bedrock principle that this Archbishop does not even know he is standing on, though millions of people in the world long to see it established in their unhappy countries.

Common law has its roots in Celtic, Roman, and Anglo-Saxon laws, but it rose to its grandeur as the protector of the innocent and the righter of wrongs from its source among Christians, who fought for the rights of every person under the law. It took years to establish that common law was free of the Church, but it was never merely secular though it has a genius for dealing with secular concerns. Common law existed long before the so-called Enlightenment and was shaped by an undeniable fact at the heart of Christian scriptures -

Jesus Christ was unjustly arrested, tried by a kangaroo court, and executed for a crime he did not commit.

Plus, British Christians were an intensely practical people. Common law worked. It protected everyone, and contributes to the prosperity of Britain, Canada, the United States, and Australia today.

Perhaps someday the Church of England will take a refresher course in British history.

Miracles Of Life

When he was a boy, the author of Empire of the Sun lived the fall of Shanghai in grisly and excruciating detail. Now he has described the horrors he could not write about earlier. The Spectator describes JG Ballard and his last book, Miracles of Life -

No one would be allowed to have J. G. Ballard’s career nowadays. When you consider the life of the average English novelist, what Cyril Connolly called the poverty of experience seems almost overwhelming, as the budding writer moves from school to university to a creative writing MA and on to the two-book contract. It is as thin a body of lived experience as the average Labour Cabinet minister possesses.

Reading J. G. Ballard’s autobiography, you sometimes need to pause to remind yourself just how young he was at the time of many of the atrocious events described. At the point where most English autobiographies are just beginning, as the subject leaves university, enough horror has been lived through by Ballard to supply a lifetime’s imaginative transformations.

. . . It is worth noting, too, that Ballard’s career would simply not happen in the same way now. His transformations of genre fiction were, in part, made possible by the existence of a market for genre short stories — science fiction magazines in the 1950s and 1960s published a remarkable number of stories by what now seem classic writers. Those have all disappeared today, and it’s hard not to think that the future of English literature will be poorer as a result. Many of the great masterpieces of the English short story are genre stories — by Conan Doyle, M. R. James and P. G. Wodehouse, for example — and one can’t imagine where they would be published now. Ballard is the last of this distinguished line.

This is a remarkable autobiography, treating events which most of us can barely imagine with tranquil dignity and exactness. It is, Ballard says, his last book; he is terminally ill with cancer, and it ends with a moving tribute to the doctor who has made this final work, with its highly un- Ballardian title, possible. It has been a great career, and despite the wildness and provocations of many of his books, Ballard has carried out Matthew Arnold’s imprecation to ‘see life steadily and see it whole’. This is an unforgettable farewell.

Not tolerating the intolerant

We had an email response to our post on the Archbishop's much criticized remarks on Sharia from Debbie Krongard -

"The response from the majority of the British to the Archbishop's inane statement is indeed encouraging. Unfortunately, however, much more than rhetoric is needed to stop the death by a thousand pricks that European culture and ultimately statehood is facing. While people are standing up
and saying no to the Archbishop, they are at the same time saying "yes" to recognition of polygamous marriage of Muslims via welfare benefits, to self-censorship with regard to things that offend Muslims (pigs, Muhammad cartoons, co-ed swimming in public baths, etc). Unless those same people and newspapers, etc. start standing up in every little fight against creeping Islamism, it won't matter how many times they yell "No!" - one day they and you will all look around and realize that you are powerless to fight back anymore. . .

We are facing the same thing here in the U.S., though thankfully to a much lesser degree. In Minneapolis some Muslims tried to get it accepted that they not pick up people with seeing eye dogs (because to their way of thinking the dogs are unclean) or to carrying alcohol (because that is forbidden by their religion). They were thankfully defeated in that attempt. Every single one of these attempts to IMPOSE Islamic standards on the Western world must be resisted. We welcome people of all faiths and all countries to the U.S. - but they must come accepting our rules, our laws and our traditions. We must not continue to tolerate the intolerant!"

Sun's low magnetic activity may portend an ice age - UPDATE

You read it here first on 31 January.

Subsequently the story has been picked up by Popular Mechanics
and by Investor’s Business Daily.

Their writers both found Ken Tapping, or perhaps our post, fascinating, but despite our almost unqualified admiration for Popular Mechanics, we would like to note that their statement that “Solar influence on climate is slight compared to the impact of man-made greenhouse gases, a National Academy of Sciences report concluded in 1995” is complete nonsense. The mini ice age known as the Maunder Minimum was caused by the Sun’s dimming and directly contradicts the NAS, as does Canada Space Agency project director Ken Tapping. Despite believing that mankind’s activities contribute to global warming, Ken explicitly told us that in his estimation, "The Sun’s activity contributes to at least 50% of the warming and cooling on Earth."