Monthly Archives: August 2012

Louise has a tattoo that caught Jo’s attention on an Edinburgh bus, the number 55, how could I possibly not strike up a  conversation?  She was a part of a movement I had never heard of, Straight Edge.  turns out that they are fans of hard core punk who have shunned drink, drugs and (sex maybe).  I thought perhaps she was a part of XXX which she had heard of but wasn’t.  We had a great chat, so much more to talk about, my sons hadn’t heard of Straight Edge, they need to think beyond the boundaries of culture.  Keep in touch my boys, keep in touch.


James MacDonald makes a living revealing nonsense: CNO.  How lucrative it is I dare not speculate but I do know his counselling services have been sought by senior business executives, he has a regular slot on America’s National Public Radio and publishes a punishingly candid newsletter each month. He offers pithy insights in an age that seems to give little time for thinking to any depth or scope.  In the August (2012) letter he juxtaposed our inclination to drive at the same speed during the night as the day with our tendency to take more care when walking at night than in the day.  The idea he presented for our consideration:

“And so it is in many areas of life we are conditioned to stick to perceived rules even as situations change.  And then we wonder why nonsense happens to us”.

His proposal is we need multiple sources of feedback.  Getting feedback from people we like, those who tend to think as we do, is unlikely to help, it will merely reinforced our prejudices.  However, listening to those we don’t like and paying them heed will reap rewards.

The herd you run with dictates the direction you travel.  It will guide the season you change, the company you keep and your response to threats.  My question is do you have the courage to leave the protection of the herd?

As a cyclist there are occasions when I cross legal boundaries.  I deliberately cloud my judgement or seek, probably in vain, to exploit the limitations of the law, usually when a red light is in my way.  However, if there is a policeman on hand I will be obedient to the law; in fact I’ll take extra care to stay within its legal confines.  Haven’t you been there?  On the freeway when you see signs that the law present you ease back on the accelerator?  You and I are law breakers, we are stubborn and we like to operate within our own contrived legal framework, that’s until we see the law.

James MacDonald goes on to speak of decisions made in the heat of stupidity that we later regret. Promises or pledges that seemed like such a good idea but now how foolish they seem…He uses the analogy of a whole bunch of rat kings entwined in enmity with one another and unable to escape.  The law shows us the rats we are.  Immersed in a culture that promotes the lie that we can believe whatever we choose.  Is it any wonder that people are unwilling to see how they measure up under the scrutiny of unwelcome feedback?


Helen Gurley Brown’s Grateful Supporters

So Helen is no longer with us, this icon of what we are told is a sexual revolution, has left and will at last be brought face to face with the realities of death. As the founding editor of Cosmopolitan she is being lauded by the media as a champion, a leader in the cause of women’s rights, but is she really all the BBC portray her as? Each day death touches the lives of men and women with great minds who have made contribution to our understanding of life through the arts, science, business and theology, why is the passing of Helen given such prominence? The simple answer, which is probably the best, is that she was a spokesperson for popular culture. She was tuned in, she reflected culture in her work, and was a member the liberal media industry. She was on the same team as those who format and prepare our news broadcasts so why wouldn’t they be inclined to mark the passing of one of their own? In the reports I have seen she is celebrated as a positive role model for women, but what about her era’s legacy, shouldn’t we look a little closer at what we are being told?

The accompanying meta-narrative is that she heralded liberation from the constraints of society’s conventions, with sexual expression as a principle feature. The big idea is that women wanted liberation, but what were they craving liberation from? The caricature is of oppressive men keeping women at home and inhibiting their ability to have a good time, allowing men’s grip on power to be maintained. Bastions of these attitudes were sporting clubs and we have been reminded of women not being permitted to run Olympic races greater than 200 metres for fear of harming their health. However, juxtapose this idea with how women are treated today; the lack of dignity they are afforded in the street and media, the rampant spread of STDs, the site of homeless addicted women on the streets, a flourishing sex industry, where women are the primary victims of its exploitative nature and traded across borders as never before, the breakdown of the family unit exposed in the public glare by our celebrities and repeated in depressing patterns by neighbours.  I am left wondering did Helen leave a worthy legacy?

Things are different today and perhaps more women have their place among our heroes, such as Jessica Ennis and we do have a female home secretary? However, let’s not forget history’s female heroes, from Florence Nightingale to Joan of Arc not to mention our Monarch has been female for over 60 years! In fact, it’s always worth remembering that human history, as recorded in the most reliable of ancient historical texts the Bible, is rich in female heroes: Ruth, Esther, Rebecca, Mary, Joseph’s wife, Mary and her sister Martha, Tabitha and Lydia, there are more.

Am I to really believe that Cosmo’s message of self-gratification has empowered females, and eased their burdens? Have not the ideas and methods proclaimed by Helen Brown brought untold misery on many: addictions, poor health, unplanned pregnancies, abortion and women turning to lesbianism in the absence of men with the strength of character, courage and self-restraint to treat a woman how she deserves with equal value, dignity and worth?

So is Helen a victim or a villain? She was born in 1922. It makes more sense that the sexual revolution really got going in the roaring 20s not 60s. Following a horrendous war, when the bloom of Britain youth spilt its blood on Flanders Fields, moral codes were challenged as never before. These tumultuous events repeated in the Second World War, were accompanied by the arrival of the motor car, allowing young men to take women away from the protective overwatch of fathers, the first publication of Playboy encouraging the objectivising women, and then the ready availability of the contraceptive pill. All these factors gave talented writers and journalists great material for capturing our changing attitudes so by the time the mid 60s came around society was ready for her book sex and the single girl.

I propose, and please challenge me, that she captured the cultural mood in her journalism, told people what they wanted to hear, endorsing behaviour that was already established and managed a successful publication with all the business acumen you would expect from a smart, and educated woman. Did she care that she was reinforcing a cultural mandate that continues producing victims at an alarming rate? For example who knows what motivated twelve year old Tia Sharp’s killer. If 37 year old Stuart Hazell proves to be her killer I wonder if he will join the ranks of imprisoned offenders fuelled by porn and a society in which graphic sexual imagery is readily accepted. Helen jumped on a lucrative bandwagon. Cosmo is a commercial product, it turns a profit, offers jobs and serves its customer what they hunger. People’s appetites are stimulated from the deep desires their heart and human history is full of societies descending into pits of human depravity. In the Old Testament it was Sodom and Gamororah in the new the City of Corinth, where sexual boundaries were overran by sex between sons and mothers, fornication, idolatry and homosexuality.

If it wasn’t Helen Brown there were many others promoting the agenda of women giving their bodies away on the cheap. Oh, and by the way, you don’t think this is about women’s rights and equality do you? This is a revolution funded, fuelled and promoted by men. There may be greater equality but it has required women to abdicate their dignity, purity and consciences to lower themselves to the male mindset of sex without cost or responsibility.

It is though intriguing to learn that Helen Gurley Brown was married to the same man for fifty years. Now that’s an powerful testimony you won’t find in the headlines. Could she have used her journalistic talents to encourage and celebrate fidelity, the value of purity, the magic of sex within a monogamous heterosexual marriage which, by the way, she most likely enjoyed? I bet she could. Was she aware of her influence and could she have turned it to helping and serving the millions of female victims stripped of their dignity, abuses, and neglect by those supposed to care for them? I have yet to see any evidence for that. Victim or villain? You tell me.

Have you ever wondered the monetary value of human life?  Well in Bristol we have a figure.  At the Marie Stopes Clinic on Fox Den Road Bristol you can kill the human life in a womb for as little as £450.  And they say the cost of living is too high in the UK these days!:

This girl was born at 24 weeks.  If you paid somebody to murder her in her hospital bed you would face, when found guilty of first degree murder, a severe penalty, along with the person who actually executed the crime.  However, commited while still in the womb, for £1440 you could have had the child killed under legal provision of the United Kingdom government. 

18 days – heart begins to beat. – £450
21 days – pumps own blood through separate closed circulatory system with own blood type.
28 days – eye, ear and respiratory system begin to form.
42 days – brain waves recorded, skeleton complete, reflexes present.
7 weeks – photo of thumbsucking, pain sensors are evident
8 weeks – all body systems present.
9 weeks – squints, swallows, moves tongue, makes fist.
11 weeks – spontaneous breathing movements, has fingernails, all body systems working.
18 weeks – vocal cords work – can cry – £848

Once your baby’s vocal cords work (19 weeks and beyond) the price goes up to £1440, is that because the baby does protest too much at its impending death?

Here’s the actual price list from the Marie Stopes website:

Medical abortion (abortion pill) up to 9 weeks £450
Surgical abortion  
Up to 14 weeks, non anaesthetic £546
Up to 14 weeks conscious sedation £624
Up to 14 weeks general anaesthetic £686
Over 14-19 weeks conscious sedation £796
Over 14-19 weeks general anaesthetic £848
Over 19-24 weeks general anaesthetic £1846
Please note that an additional £40 fee is charged for all abortion services
carried out during weekends.
Abortion aftercare service free
Sterilisation with abortion up to 13 weeks £1440

Below is a picture of a child.  Please complete the following sentence. It is okay to kill a baby in the womb when…..

What’s the wise thing to do?

Go to


Did you see any Olympic Dressage?  What an amazing testimony to mankind’s dominion over the  animal kingdom.  It reminded me of seeing people riding the Orca Whales in the Sealife Centre Florida just a remarkable testimony to how infinitely different we are to the animals.  Scientific theory would have me believe that I am a turbo-charged ape who has evolved from the pri-mordial goo, to the zoo to you.  It really is nonsense with no evidence, where are the many transitional forms that should be in the fossil record? No information is being added during genetic mutations. The truth is during genetic mutations information is either lost or replicated, new information, which would be necessary for a species to evolve, is never added.  Something to think about.  You know, as well as I do, that we believe lies because they are beguiling, attractive and convincing.  I spent most of my adult life believing a lie.  You can get people together, take a vote, and decide something is permissible, but that still won’t turn lies into truth no matter how many people believe them.


I didn’t realise the complexity of DNA.  Had Charles Darwin known the intricate design that has gone into each and every one of our cells would he not have agreed with the well known Oxford atheist Anthony Flew who said:

“Super-intelligence is the only good explanation for the origin of life and the complexity of nature.”1

The agnostic must have, indeed does have, another motive for living in rebellion, pretending that God is not who he has revealed himself to be.  You cannot live in face of such overwhelming evidence for God through His Creation without a hidden desire to be a god yourself or worship another  god who upholds your cultural or societal prejudices.  Chris, who often contributes to this blog, explains it well in his caricature of mankind’s false religions and the vested interests they serve.

The Mars Lander represents scientific progression and it my hope that it will take each of the unsaved a step closer to revealing just who they are up against.  That the awe and majesty of the Creator of everything will strike fear in their hearts and they will come to him on bended knees confessing their crimes against Him and pleading for mercy. 

History records that Charles Darwin died an agnostic, who can say but God.  We do know that he was without excuse for he had seen the creation and heard the Gospel as a church attending Anglican so there is hope that one day we will meet.  The Bible says in Paul’s Letter to the Romans that it is appointed once for man to die and then be judged.  Darwin has faced that day we all must face, his knee bowed and his tongue confessing that Jesus Christ is Lord.

Are you determined to cling on to the rapidly changing and disputable scientific ‘theory’ that you are a turbo charged chimp?

Scholars Jewish, Christian or agnostic do in fact know quite a bit about Jesus. Virtually everybody agrees that we know at least the following:

when and where he lived;

that he started out within the orbit of John the Baptist;

that he was famous in his day as a teacher and healer;

that he proclaimed the Kingdom of God and warned of a looming catastrophe in Israel;

that he insisted on a radicalised ethic of love;

that he selected a group of twelve to symbolise a renewed Israel;

that he attracted many women into his circle and was notorious for dining with sinners;

that he caused a major, albeit symbolic, disturbance in the temple;

that he shared a final meal with his disciples during passover;

that he was handed over to Pontius Pilate by the priestly elite;

that he was crucified under the mocking charge of King of the Jews;

that numerous men and women insisted that they saw him alive shortly after his death;

and finally, that these followers established communities that looked forward to Christ’s kingdom and sought to win Jews and Gentiles to that vision.

Plenty of other details are considered probable or plausible, but these are the acknowledged facts about the historical Jesus.  Doubting them requires an arbitrary type of scepticism insensitive to historical method and consensus.

From: Jesus A Short Life by John Dickson.

And this photo is of a street preacher we met in London who was sharing the news of Jesus’ resurrection, he’s from Pakistan, lives in Glasgow, has the coolest Glaswegian/pakistani accent ever.  His courage is evident from his preaching on the streets of Whitechapel, in the heart of the Islamic community.

The best thing was seeing one of the street preachers repeatedly pleading to people to come forward and explain the evidence in support of evolution and not one person had the courage of their convictions, some offered abuse, most skulked away too ashamed of their ignorance about something into which they have so much faith.