Hello from Sri Lanka

I'm in Sri Lanka, where it's warmer than at home, and sometimes even wetter. It's not as cheap as it used to be - from a local perspective, things are getting very expensive. But I've got a local SIM for my mobile phone, and call and text charges are better than O2 roaming. Veeeeeerrry much better!

No insightful posts about the state of the country today - it's getting late. And pictures will have to wait till the right connections can get sorted out. But I'm having a good time in Kandy.

And Happy Birthday to my sister, if she's reading this. Your card is in the email, since there seems to be another postal strike back home.

Conspiracy? Or cock-up?

Maybe I'm being too cynical, but when I got round to reading the Times this weekend, I discovered that Gordon Brown is taking an axe to the Ministerial code of conduct that he had said needed to be strengthened.

The sleaze and scandal under previous administrations resulted in a strengthening of the rules in 1997. Ministers were required to obey "the letter and the spirit" of these rules - and one of them was that they were not allowed to be directors of companies while they were government ministers.

The new rule allows ministers to dispose of the interest, or take "alternative steps". So they get to keep the jobs if they can convince themselves and their senior advisers that it's OK. The prospect of conflicts of interest is all too clear.

What is not quite so clear is why Gordon Brown thinks this rule should go. Maybe it was an accidental cut in his rush to simplify the rules - but it's unfortunate that when it was proposed, one of his junior ministers was still on a number of boards of directors.

Fortunately somebody in parliament has noticed, and the Committee for Standards in Public Life is taking a look at the new code of conduct.

The saints go marching out?

The Catholic Church has asked its members to stop giving money to Amnesty International, and the Catholic auxiliary bishop of Down and Connor has advised that school links with Amnesty should be severed. It's because Amnesty International now supports abortion for rape victims in war zones.

It's fair enough to stop funding organisations that campaign for things you disagree with - indeed, it's a reasonable way to express your opposition. I've done it in the past.

But should all links be cut? In general, is it a good idea to withdraw from organisations we don't agree fully with? Is it even possible?

And what about people who want to remain in such organisations, and express their opposition on the inside? Is it reasonable to ask members of a church to leave an organisation, like AI, that also does a lot of good?

I think the Bishop is confused about the kind of organisation Amnesty International is. The catholic church is (at least in theory) a take-it-or-leave-it-all organisation that exists partly to teach its members what to believe and what to do. "You don't get to pick and choose," as a catholic friend of mine once said.

Amnesty, on the other hand, is not in the business of telling its members what to think. So far as I know, they don't excommunicate their people for differing from the party line. You are allowed to disagree.

So if people want to join in the Amnesty's work against oppression while still holding the Catholic church's absolutist position on abortion, they can. They can even try to overturn Amnesty's policy from within. Amnesty won't excommunicate them, and the Catholic Church shouldn't stigmatise them either.

As Christians, we're supposed to be in the world, but not of the world. We're supposed not just to be different, but also to make a difference.

Anyway, where would such complete withdrawal end? From politics? From employment? From education? From genetic research? From the arts? And how would we pick the supremely important issues that prompt withdrawal? Abortion? Slavery? The death penalty? Social justice? Failure to care for others as we care for ourselves? Failure to love the Lord our God with all our heart, mind, soul and strength?

Arrrr!

Arrrr! Today be talk like a pirate day! Shiver me timbers!

#*$*% Residents' Association

Bah Humbug! The residents' association has been wittering for ages about getting ramps built on the roads where I live. I thought that idiocy had gone away - but no such luck. There is now a dirty great ramp just down the road.

So now we're going to suffer the inconvenience and wear and tear of driving over ramps, with the increased traffic noise as cars slow down before and speed up afterwards, and the resulting increase in pollution.

It's not as though there were even a problem with speeding, or kids having to play in the street.

It looks like I'm going to have to keep an eye on these witless do-gooders! Who knows what they'll come up with next? Parking permits?

Greenbelt 2007

I wasn't quite prepared for the sun - in fact with the delay in arrival of my luggage I wasn't prepared for very much. But I'm surviving just fine.
More about greenbelt later - have to rush to the next event!

March for half-truth?

Seems Sinn Fein have been marching for truth last weekend for some of the victims of the troubles (BBC story here).

Hypothetically, if you were Sinn Fein, and you wanted a process that would deliver truth for all the victims of the troubles, which would you think was more likely to succeed?

• a campaign to expose the evils perpetrated by “pro-british” forces, which ignores any harm done by republicans, or
• calls for truth about what happened to all the victims, with a promise to deliver the truth about the victims your own people had created. A promise backed up with actual delivery - starting, perhaps, with truth for the McCartney sisters.

Again hypothetically, if you just wanted a stick to beat “the Brits” with, which would you pick?

11th Night

There were bonfires all over Belfast last night.
From the hills, the view over the city was quite impressive. It would have been more impressive without the drizzly haze - though the fire brigade were probably quite thankful for it!

England catching up

I was over in England at the weekend, and there were signs about the new smoking ban. It looks like England and Wales are catching up with the rest of the UK.

Now that Ireland and the UK have led the way, I wonder what the chances are of the EU adopting this as a health and safety measure? Or is the EU just for things that "Europe" wants and we don't?

Human rights: just another political tool?

Human rights matter! That's why the UN had a Human Rights Commission, and that's why the main abusers of human rights made sure they were on the commission - to prevent any inconvenient interference from the UN. Not so much "set a thief to watch a thief" as let the thieves run the police. It wasn't working.

The UN realised this was undermining their credibility, and last year they completely changed everything, while leaving it almost the same as before. The Human Rights Commission became the Human Rights Council, and the world waited with bated breath for the UN to get to grips with the problem.

It's the first anniversary of the shiny new UN Human Rights Council's first meeting, so what has happened?

• They tried to add Belarus (Europe's last dictatorship, already under investigation for human rights abuses) to the Council - fortunately this failed. Egypt and Angola were added though.
  
• Embarrassing human rights investigations into abuses in Belarus and Cuba have been cancelled.
• The Non Aligned Movement, the Organization of the Islamic Conference, the African Group, and the Asian Group called for the end of all the other investigations - except for one into Israel, which they want to make permanent.
  
• For now, the other investigations continue, but Algeria has written new rules to restrict the activities of the investigators. These have been adopted.
  
• The universal periodic review of all countries, mandated when the HRC was set up, is being whittled away. The council wants the review to be based solely on information provided by the state (a "cooperative mechanism") and the outcome to be adopted by the HRC only with the consent of the state being reviewed (they will be "fully involved in the outcome"). Not much to worry about there, if you're up to no good.
  
• Just in case the reviews throw up any inconvenient truths, China and Belarus want to make it harder to start new investigations by requiring a two-thirds majority of the Council.
• An investigation (by the special rapporteurs on extrajudicial executions, the right to health, the rights of internally displaced persons, and the right to housing) into Lebanon and Israel criticised both Israel and Hizbollah for serious human rights and humanitarian law violations during the war, and recommended that the Council "having addressed the conduct of Israel. . . should also ensure that Hizbollah's attacks are thoroughly investigated." This was rejected - instead it is proposed to place Israel alone under permanent investigation.
• The HRC responded to the genocide in Darfur with a mildly worded mission to "assess the human rights situation in Darfur and the needs of the Sudan in this regard". Nevertheless, the report is damning - and languishing without any effective action.
  

It seems the new HRC is living up to the standards of the old HRC.

In other UN news, Zimbabwe, which has transformed itself from the breadbasket of Africa to the continent's basket case, was appointed to chair the UN Commission on Sustainable Development!

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

Link: UN Watch

Organic Raspberries

It must be Summer! The Sphinx (probably the best Kebab joint in Belfast) is apparently frying new potatoes.

The sun was beating down.

And just this morning I noticed that my first raspberry of the season was nearly ripe. By this evening there were several, so for the next few weeks there will be fresh organic raspberries at casa notmyopinion.

Even if they are only organic because I'm too lazy to spray them!

Kill all non believe's

I'm in Bradford today, and that's what it said, scrawled on a door with some sort of black marker.

"Kill all non believe's"

Does not believing in spelling or punctuation count?

Limbo in Limbo

Not since the 1950s have we seen such a shift in the public teaching of the Roman Catholic Church.

Research theologians in the Catholic International Theological Commission have discovered that there are "serious... grounds for hope that unbaptised infants who die will be saved... We emphasise that these are reasons for prayerful hope, rather than grounds for sure knowledge."

For many centuries Rome has taught that infants who had not been baptised still suffered from the guilt of "original sin", inherited from Adam, and therefore could not be admitted to heaven. Augustine taught that they were in Hell, but only mildly punished. Later theologians constructed the concept of Limbo, and taught that it was a place of happiness, or mere loss - not a place of suffering.

The theological establishment (including the current and previous popes) has been back-pedalling for some time, stating that Limbo was not part of the infallible teaching, but merely an conclusion drawn from other infallible teachings. Since 1970, Catholic funerals have been permitted for unbaptised infants, where their parents had intended for them to be baptised. There are, however, other theologians who state that both St Augustine and councils of the church have defined limbo as official teaching.

Evangelical protestants, for the most part, teach that infants are admitted to heaven if they have not gained the ability to accept or reject God before they die.

The new Catholic teaching, supported by the pope, but not endorsed ex cathedra, is curiously hesitant. It seems to place the concept of Limbo for infants... in limbo.

The statement itself has been curiously delayed. The International Theological Commission completed its statement in December 2005, but it was not until January 2007 that publication was approved by the Pope. The 41-page document was published by the Catholic News Service in Origins, on 20th April. The publication costs $5, and the document is not yet freely available on the Internet.

About time too!

Today smokers in Northern Ireland are no longer allowed to inflict their carcinogenic second-hand smoke on the rest of us. It's about time.

I have only one question - why did it take so long?