Cull Means Kill

Rev. Prof. Andrew Linzey, a theologian at Oxford University, with his special interest in developing the theos-rights of animals, says the RSPCA should prosecute those involved in the mass killing of badgers.

Keeping it practical, a press release has been issued in which he says:

"The planned killings -- erroneously called "culls" -- which are planned to take place on 1 June are utterly bereft of scientific or ethical justification.

"In the history of animal protection, we have witnessed many attempts to fool the public but none more concerted or ridiculous than the proposed killing of thousands upon thousands of badgers. In less than a week's time government paid guns will shoot free running badgers which will undoubtedly cause suffering. The RSPCA and other animal welfare organisations should bring test cases to demonstrate the cruelty involved and the perfidity of the government's justifications.

“The Secretary of State for the Environment, Owen Paterson, has shown himself incapable of reflecting either the views of the Commons (which has voted overwhelming against the so-called "cull") or the majority of public opinion. He should resign to make way for someone who understands the nation's concern for the proper treatment of animals.

"The only solution to bovine TB is the vaccination of cows and/ or badgers. Everything else is dross and detail."

See the website for the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics, with its more than 60 Fellows from throughout the world among a variety of academic disciplines. The press release is via Samantha Calvert Marketing & PR.

Ah, Another

This CD list is different in so far as it comes from the burn list .axp file and contains no information on timings. The information on timings comes from the presence of the music audio files and this is what enables the CD cover to be printed to .PDF and it is from that .PDF that the list with timings in brackets is derived. That will always be the main list I use, and I made a variation based on that for any CD burning rather than one for a Sunday service.

With an .axp file available it is always possible to make a simple list even if the music files are not available. Incidentally, an .axp file is another one of these HTML lookalike files using .XML, the same that works for music composition and overlays when editing .PDF files directly. This is because XML uses custom tags.

I made a clip that worked and used a pre-set wizard that needed a simple OK. I've kept that (as it offers variations) but have incorporated external help into the body of a second .axp to .txt clip, AXP to TXT (nt shorter), and it now looks like:

^!Close ALL

^!Save AS C:\Shared Documents\Music\temp.tmp

^!SetWizardLabel Press OK for AXPs here or navigate

^!Set %Folder%=^?{(T=D)&Browse: Confirm OK or press the button=^$GetValue(DirStuff:Browse)$}

^!StatusShow Finding files...

^!SetScreenUpdate Off

^!Set %Type%=*.axp

^!Set %Sort%=Name

^!FocusDoc

^!Close DISCARD

^!DestroyDoc C:\Shared Documents\Music\temp.tmp

^!Set %FullPath%=^$GetFileFirst(^%Folder%;"^%Type%";^%Sort%)$

; Checks to see if files are found by search criteria

^!IfTrue ^$IsEmpty("^%FullPath%")$ END

:LOOP1

^!IfTrue ^$IsEmpty(^%FullPath%)$ DOARRAY

^!Append %Files%=^%FullPath%|

^!Set %FullPath%=^$GetFileNext$

^!Goto LOOP1

:DOARRAY

^!CloseFileFind

^!SetArray %EditList%=^?{(T=L;H=16)Choose=^%Files%}

^!Set %Count%=^%EditList0%

^!Set %Index%=0

:LOOP2

;When it chooses a file the index position forces it out of the loop

^!Set %FilePathFull%=^%EditList^%Index%%

^!Inc %Index%

^!If ^%Index% > ^%Count% PROCEED

^!Toolbar New Document

^!FocusDoc

^!InsertFile ^%EditList^%Index%%

^!GoTo LOOP2

:PROCEED

^!Clearvariables

^!Replace "^\x20+" >> "" WARS

^!Replace "(?s)^.+?title=(\x22\x22)\x20artist=\1>\R" >> "" WRS

^!Replace "^> "" WARS

^!Replace "\.wav.+$" >> "" WARS

^!Replace "(?s)\R

> "" WRS

; Number lines

^!SetWordWrap OFF

^!Set %Ln%=^$GetTextLineCount$

:Loop

^!Jump ^%Ln%

^!InsertText ^%Ln%^%Space%

^!Dec %Ln%

^!If ^%Ln% > 0 ^!Goto Loop

^!Clip "Sorting numbers zeros"

;Hymn books gaps

^!Replace "^.*\b(HL|SF|LS|CC|HW|HF|NB)\b.*$" >> "\r\n$0\r\n" WARS

^!Replace "\R{3}" >> "\r\n" WARS

^!Replace "^\A\R|\R{1,}\Z" >> "" WARS

^!SetWordwrap ON

 The automatic clip "Sorting numbers zeros" is used (see a previous entry) because the wizard did leading zeros and this alone doesn't. I also have a front end to all the above as follows:

^!ClearVariables

^!Clip "AXP to TXT (nt shorter)"

^!Jump DOC_START

^!Set %Preacher%=^?{(T=L;H=18)Click on the Service Taker's or CD Owner's name=Adrian Worsfold|Barry Cundill|Bernard McHugh|Chris Pilkington|David Arthur|Elizabeth Faiers|Ernest Baker|Jim Timiney|John Midgley|John Williams|June Pettitt|Keith Brown|Marion Baker|Mavis Lake|Michael Tracey|Rosemary Arthur|Stephanie Cage|Stephen Carlile}

^!Set %Date%=^$GetDateFromInt(^$Calc(CEIL((^$GetDateToInt$+6)/7)*7-6)$;yyyymmdd)$

^!SetWizardLabel Date and CDs this date Options

^!Set %CDDate%=^?{(T=L;H=8)Date of CD=_Next Sunday^=^%Date%|Today^=^$GetDate(yyyymmdd)$}; %AddNum%=^?{Number?=_Only one^=only|First this date^=01|Second this date^=02|Third this date^=03|Fourth this date^=04|Fifth this date^=05}

^!Set %Filename%="Simple List ^%CDDate% ^%AddNum%"

^!InsertText ^%Preacher%'s CD on ^%CDDate%^P^P

^!Save As "C:\Shared Documents\Music\^%Filename%.txt"

Sorting Out the Hymn Books

The final clip offered on the discussion emails is this:

;Hymn books gaps

^!Replace "^.*\b(HL|SF|LS|CC|HW|HF|NB)\b.*$" >> "\r\n$0\r\n" WARS

^!Replace "\R{3}" >> "\r\n" WARS

^!Replace "^\A\R|\R{1,}\Z" >> "" WARS

What this does is take a list of music and hymns, burnt on a CD, and, after the track numbering, where any hymn books using the identifiers of HL (Hymns for Living), SF (Sing Your Faith), LS (Let us Sing), CC (Christmas carols), HW (Hymns for Worship), HF (Hymns of Faith and Freedom), NB (No book), there is a line space before the hymn book and space after the hymn book, but not if other hymn books come first. This means that via the line space I know the higher volume is needed for hymns and then back to a lower volume for incidental music, like for meditation purposes.

In the correct coding in the previous entry here, the code above is placed just after ^!Clip "Sorting numbers zeros" which is what adds the leading zeros to numbers 1 to 9. At this stage each line of data gets its leading zero as necessary and has already its simplified timings in square brackets. Once the lines of the CD of music are ready to be selected, the new lines of code do the separation by hymn books.

The speed is impressive - the ^!SetHintInfo Working... is not seen because the clip is so fast.

I used to have to merge the PDF list into like a continuous paragraph, separate the tracks by its numbering, so each track was on one line (on three or two once the PDF is pasted to text), add in the zeros for 1 to 9, do the calculation to get tenths of seconds added to minutes and seconds timings, and put square brackets around the end timings.

All these have regular and logical repeat features. What a clip cannot do is mark the various places for meditation, listening and collection, and so I do that by very simple text clips.

Aren't They Clever!

Here is the complete clip I now use.

^!ClearVariables
^!Toolbar New Document

^!Set %Preacher%=^?[Click on the Service Taker's name=_Adrian Worsfold|Barry Cundill|Bernard McHugh|Chris Pilkington|David Arthur|Elizabeth Faiers|Ernest Baker|Jim Timiney|John Midgley|John Williams|June Pettitt|Keith Brown|Marion Baker|Mavis Lake|Michael Tracey|Rosemary Arthur|Stephanie Cage|Stephen Carlile]

^!Info [L]"Print the CD Cover to PDF and copy the tracks.^PAlso note the total time of tracks before the first hymn^P(wipe out first hymn onward - do not save!)."

^!ShellWait "C:\Program Files\CDBurnerXP\cdbxpp.exe"

^!SetScreenUpdate Off

^!InsertHTML ^P^P

^!Set %Date%=^$GetDateFromInt(^$Calc(CEIL((^$GetDateToInt$+6)/7)*7-6)$;yyyymmdd)$
^!Set %Filename%="Service ^%Date%"

^!Toolbar New Document

^!Set %Trackslist1%=^$Getclipboard$
^!InsertText ^%Trackslist1%

^!Jump Doc_Start

^!SetHintInfo Working...
^!SetScreenUpdate Off
; Remove spaces at start or end of lines
^!Replace "^\x20+|\x20+$" >> "" WARS
; Make new line break
^!Replace "\R(?![1-9])" >> "\x20" WARS
; Remove new space at EOF
^!Replace "\x20+\Z" >> "" WRS
^!Jump Doc_Start
:Seconds
^!Find "(\d\d)\.\d$" RS
^!IfError Skip_2
^!InsertText "^$Calc(^$GetReSubstrings$+1)$"
^!Goto Seconds
^!Jump Doc_Start
:Minutes_1
^!Find "([0][1-8]):60$" RS
^!IfError Skip_2
^!InsertText "0^$Calc(^$GetReSubStrings$+1)$:00"
^!Goto Minutes_1
^!Jump Doc_Start
:Minutes_2
^!Find "([0][1-9]):60$" RS
^!IfError Skip_2
^!InsertText "^$Calc(^$GetReSubStrings$+1)$:00"
^!Goto Minutes_2
^!Jump Doc_Start
:Minutes_3
^!Find "(\d\d):60$" RS
^!IfError Out
^!InsertText "^$Calc(^$GetReSubStrings$+1)$:00"
^!Goto Minutes_3
:Out
^!Replace ":\K(?=\d$)" >> "0" WARS
; Embrace time with square brackets / Remove '00' hours
^!Replace "00:(\d\d:\d\d)$" >> "[$1]" WARS
^!Jump 1

^!Clip "Sorting numbers zeros"

^!Select All
^!Set %Trackslist2%=^$GetSelection$

^!DestroyDoc

^!FocusDoc

;Removes last lines if blank
^!Replace "\R{1,}\Z" >> "" WRS

^!Jump Doc_Start

^!Set %Minutes%=^?{Minutes Long (two digits)=20}
^!Set %Seconds%=^?{Seconds Long (two digits)=00}
^!Set %Minsclock%=^$Calc(60-^%Minutes%)$

^!InsertText "^P^PService ^%Date%^P^P^%Preacher%^P^P^P^P^P"

^!InsertText ^%Trackslist2%

^!Save As "C:\Shared Documents\Music\^%Filename%.txt"

The clip for adding zeros - "Sorting numbers zeros" - functions fully and is this:

^!SetHintInfo Working...
^!SetScreenUpdate Off
^!Set %dig%=2
^!Find "^\d{^%dig%}" WRS
^!IfError Skip_2
^!Inc %dig%
^!Goto Skip_-3
^!Dec %dig%
^!Set %q%=^$Calc(^%dig%-1)$
^!Replace "^" >> "^$StrFill(\x30;^%dig%)$" WARS
^!Replace "^\x30+?(.{^%q%}\d\b)" >> "$1" WARS
^!Select All
^$StrSort("^$GetSelection$";0;1;0)$

So this is what happens. There are preset choices for preachers to select, timings for the service to begin (at the first hymn; the seconds don't count - it helps to start slightly late anyway), the document gets dated and saved using the Sunday's date, and the list is made neat, as derived from the CD cover printed to PDF from its raw 3 lines to track 9 and 2 lines to track 10 when examined as text.

 * There is one final potential clip that hardly saves on human viewing, but one may as well push it to the logical end.

After the number, the presence of HL nnn, SF nnn, LS nn, CC nn, HW nnn, HF nnn, or NB nn indicates a hymn book (or latter no book still with numbers up to 99). Before each hymn book, and after it but not before another hymn book, there is a blank line inserted. This is to tell me to use a second CD made at a higher level of volume which people sing against. Now I am sure this is within my abilities, eventually, the complication being not wanting a blank line in between two hymns indicated by either leading code after the number.

This final clip would produce (including the effect of the clips above):

Service 20130526

David Arthur

01 Prinknash Stanbrook Abbeys Monks Nuns Abbey Bells Introit [02:00]
02 RudorffErnst KerseyJohn Impromptu op. 51 [03:52]
03 FranckEduard KerseyJohn Klavierstuck op 62 no 6 [05:57]
04 SmithSydney KerseyJohn Aspiration melodie op 208 no 1 [04:14]
05 AshtonAlgernon KerseyJohn Toccata op 127 no 4 [02:17]
06 WolfHugo RegerMax KerseyJohn Begegnung [02:03]

07 HL 126 Stenka Razin choir [01:41]
08 SF 064 Wentworth choir [01:38]

09 ReussHeinrich KerseyJohn Andante in G minor [05:04]

10 SF 060 This Old Man choir piano [01:51]

11 KopylovAlexander KerseyJohn Feuille d'album in C [01:54]

12 SF 030 Middleton choir [02:28]

13 Rosenhain KerseyJohn Romance op 14 no 4 [03:01]
14 ScholtzHerrmann KerseyJohn Albumblatt op 20 no 3 [02:54]
15 RudorffErnst KerseyJohn Capriccio appassionato, op 48 [05:14]
16 Birtwistle Triumph of Time [29:32]

Hair Pulling Clip Making

Forget the previous entry. This is an improvement thanks to a little outside assistance and some of my hair pulling brain effort.

^!Toolbar New Document

^!Set %Preacher%=^?[Click on the Service Taker's name=_Adrian Worsfold|Barry Cundill|Bernard McHugh|Chris Pilkington|David Arthur|Elizabeth Faiers|Ernest Baker|Jim Timiney|John Midgley|John Williams|June Pettitt|Keith Brown|Marion Baker|Mavis Lake|Michael Tracey|Rosemary Arthur|Stephanie Cage|Stephen Carlile]

^!Info [L]"Print the CD Cover to PDF and copy the tracks.^PAlso note the total time of tracks before the first hymn^P(wipe out first hymn onward - do not save!)."

^!ShellWait "C:\Program Files\CDBurnerXP\cdbxpp.exe"

^!SetScreenUpdate Off

^!InsertHTML ^P^P


^!Set %Date%=^$GetDateFromInt(^$Calc(CEIL((^$GetDateToInt$+6)/7)*7-6)$;yyyymmdd)$
^!Set %Filename%="Service ^%Date%"

^!Toolbar New Document

^!Set %Trackslist1%=^$Getclipboard$
^!InsertText ^%Trackslist1%

^!Replace "\x20+$" >> "" ARSW
;Merge sections
^!Replace "^(\d+)\R(.+)\R(\d.*:.*)$" >> "$1 $2 $3" ARSW

^!Clip "Sorting numbers zeros"

^!Jump Doc_Start
^!Replace "00^P01" >> "^P01" S

^!Select All
^!Set %Trackslist2%=^$GetSelection$


^!DestroyDoc

^!FocusDoc

;Removes last lines if blank
^!Replace "\R{1,}\Z" >> "" WRS

^!Jump Doc_Start

^!Set %Minutes%=^?{Minutes Long (two digits)=20}
^!Set %Seconds%=^?{Seconds Long (two digits)=00}
^!Set %Minsclock%=^$Calc(60-^%Minutes%)$
^!InsertText "^P^PService ^%Date%^P^P^%Preacher%^P^P^P^P^P"

^!InsertText ^%Trackslist2%

^!Replace " 00:" >> " " WAS
^!IfError Next else Skip_-1

^!Replace ".0^P" >> "^P" WAS
^!IfError Next else Skip_-1

^!Save As "C:\Shared Documents\Music\^%Filename%.txt"

^!SetScreenUpdate On


That's a big improvement, and so is the following for putting square brackets over timings on a list of tracks. It actually calculates how many square brackets to put in and does. Blank lines removal was put into the clip above, but is important for how this clip works. This clip is separate from the one above because not all timings are 5 digits including the colon and this is easier via human intervention (or a clip would have to remove any tenth of second number and increase the second by one and present a clean 5 digit number each line!! Shall I ask?). Absence of slow ^!Keyboard commands means there isn't a tendency to fail when running at speed:

^!Continue Must place on first line of timings to bracket them.
^!ClearVariables
^!Set %Pos%=^$GetTextLineCount$
^!Set %Lines%=^$GetParaRow$
^!Set %Bracket%=^$Calc(^%Pos%-^%Lines%)$

:LOOP
^!Inc %Count%
^!Jump LINE_END
^!InsertText "]"
^!MoveCursor -006
^!InsertText "["
^!Jump LINE_START
^!Jump +001
^!IfError END
^!If ^%Count% > ^%Bracket% END
^!GoTo LOOP

:END

I've sent a request. If there are clever people that can round up tenths of seconds to seconds and minutes when necessary and produce a neat result automatically then it will be a clip inserted into the second one and may be all combined into one clip, thus taking raw data and producing a finished product in a flash. But it's beyond my kind of brain.

Clip Way to Make a Music List

Thanks to clever people, and myself, I now have a NoteTab clip that takes the running order (print to PDF of the CD or DVD case) and produces from it a neat page that shows the preacher, Sunday's date, the timing from the start of the CD to the first hymn (actually, when the service begins) and a neat list with leading zeros to single numbers of the tracks.

Then I clean up the timings and another a clip adds square brackets to the end timings.

^!Toolbar New Document

^!Set %Preacher%=^?[Click on the Service Taker's name=_Adrian Worsfold|Barry Cundill|Bernard McHugh|Chris Pilkington|David Arthur|Elizabeth Faiers|Ernest Baker|Jim Timiney|John Midgley|John Williams|June Pettitt|Keith Brown|Marion Baker|Mavis Lake|Michael Tracey|Rosemary Arthur|Stephanie Cage|Stephen Carlile]

^!Info [L]"Print the CD Cover to PDF and copy the tracks.^PAlso note the total time of tracks before the first hymn^P(wipe out first hymn onward - do not save!)."

^!ShellWait "C:\Program Files\CDBurnerXP\cdbxpp.exe"

^!SetScreenUpdate Off

^!InsertHTML ^P^P

^!Set %Date%=^$GetDateFromInt(^$Calc(CEIL((^$GetDateToInt$+6)/7)*7-6)$;yyyymmdd)$
^!Set %Filename%="Service ^%Date%"

^!Toolbar New Document

^!Set %Trackslist1%=^$Getclipboard$
^!InsertText ^%Trackslist1%

^!Replace "\x20+$" >> "" ARSW
;Merge sections
^!Replace "^(\d+)\R(.+)\R(\d.*:.*)$" >> "$1 $2 $3" ARSW

^!Clip "Sorting numbers zeros"

^!Select All
^!Set %Trackslist2%=^$GetSelection$


^!DestroyDoc

^!FocusDoc
^!Jump Doc_Start

^!Set %Minutes%=^?{Minutes Long (two digits)=20}
^!Set %Seconds%=^?{Seconds Long (two digits)=00}
^!Set %Minsclock%=^$Calc(60-^%Minutes%)$
^!InsertText "^P^PService ^%Date%^P^P^%Preacher%^P^P^P^P^P"

^!InsertText ^%Trackslist2%

^!Replace " 00:" >> " " WAS
^!IfError Next else Skip_-1

^!Replace ".0^P" >> "^P" WAS
^!IfError Next else Skip_-1

^!Save As "C:\Shared Documents\Music\^%Filename%.txt"

^!SetScreenUpdate On

The clip that this clip uses (to insert leading zeros to the extent of the largest number, thus 3 becomes 03 if there is a 10 or 003 if there is a 100) is this one (not my principal effort):

^!SetHintInfo Working...
^!SetScreenUpdate Off
^!Set %dig%=2
^!Find "^\d{^%dig%}" WRS
^!IfError Skip_2
^!Inc %dig%
^!Goto Skip_-3
^!Dec %dig%
^!Set %q%=^$Calc(^%dig%-1)$
^!Replace "^" >> "^$StrFill(\x30;^%dig%)$" WARS
^!Replace "^\x30+?(.{^%q%}\d\b)" >> "$1" WARS
^!Select All
^$StrSort("^$GetSelection$";0;1;0)$

After this I round up the timings to minutes and whole seconds and then use another clip:

^!ClearVariables

:FRED
^!Jump LINE_END
^!InsertText "]"
^!MoveCursor -006
^!InsertText "["
^!Keyboard DOWN
^!IfError Next END
^!Goto FRED

:END 

(Incidentally I know that the final :END and final ^!SetScreenUpdate Onare not needed)


An example would look like this (the example is real but the date and name are wrong):

Service 20130526

Adrian Worsfold



01 Temptations Papa was a Rollin Stone [11:46]
02 KamakawiwoOleIsrael Somewhere Over the Rainbow [04:54]
03 SheeranEd A Team [04:21]
04 PresleyElvis In The Ghetto [02:47]
05 Clannad I See Red [04:24]
06 HL 018 Kremser choir [01:26]
07 HL 070 Hanover [02:50]
08 KingCarole Youve Got a Friend [05:09]
09 HL 051 Stuttgart [01:59]
10 Debussy Claire de Lune Suite extract [01:08]
11 HL 210 Jerusalem choir [02:47]
12 CollinsPhil Homeless [04:14]
13 PineCourtney Closer to Home [03:55]
14 PineCourtney GreeneSusaye Children of the Ghetto [07:03]
15 Housemartins I'll be Your Shelter [04:51]
16 Simply Red Moneys Too Tight to Mention [04:14]

And I tend to then add blank lines before and after hymns as a reminder so that they are played at a louder volume than worship based listening tracks.

Shift Foie-Gras off Channel 4

Normally I avoid Internet campaigns but made an exception for this one and produced a simplified letter:

Dear Channel 4

I am very disappointed to see that foie-gras has once again been featured on Come Dine With Me.

You already know that foie-gras is cruel and its production banned in Britain but not its importation.

Allowing it to be cooked and served on Come Dine with Me helps popularise foie-gras and means cruelty.

I am asking that the Channel 4 take the ethical decision to dump foie-gras from its programming.

It is a nasty, disgusting way of producing food and should be banned, and is an example of duplicity to allow it to be imported when we ban its production. It should not be featured as cookery. If Channel 4 is embarrassed then it might remove it; after all it has long had an anti-smoking policy so it does make such decisions.

Looking Further Out to See Smaller Space

Here's something that not many people understand (and I didn't) that perhaps explains the paradoxes of being within something that is created from nothing, where one conceptually wants to add an outside cause to it. Now I'm one of those folks who is happy to go along with the idea that the universe came from nothing, and then debate what constitutes nothing. I don't jump to the God solution, which is a cop-out of causality, as Gods are left to create themselves and so the same problem exists, only a shift in the rules. Make the universe as God and the rules now apply throughout. If this is paradoxical (is it?), that the created creates, it's no more puzzling or greater than one paradox so very difficult to grasp until someone just suggests the answer (but with implications).

It's this. How is it that to look back in time we have to look out, further and further? And if we look back in time further out, we look over there and over there, into a vast space, in different far directions, for galaxies to get younger and younger, when presumably space was smaller.

So looking out, over there, and then over there, where is actually the smaller and smaller space where the universe began? Which is the tiny pinprick out there in this vastness?

The answer is perplexing, until you get it given by someone who knows. I watch QI on the BBC and treat a lot of what it says with a little extra scepticism. In one edition brainbox Stephen Fry referred to the start of the universe as out there or out there or wherever it is, waving his stretched arms about. Professor Brian Cox as a guest of course had the answer to the conundrum. It started here.

The smallest expanse of space, inflating rapidly, has to be where we are, and smaller than where we are (whilst within it, but before we could be). The paradoxes of space are having to look out and far in order to look in; it is sort of a reverse way around.

To me, that inside-outness of reality is an assistance to the non-God God question, in that it gives the God thing a complete internal part-of the reality of how things are, all within and sort of flipped back on itself.

The issue of space isn't solved, but basically rules were far more flexible in the very small, so there is a difference between the very small then and what is now, and we can reproduce the very small for that quantum flexibility. So space must have actually expanded. But in so doing the fact is we look out in order to look back, and it seems to be the wrong way around, but we can only do so from the inside. Sometimes things have to be 'wrong' to be right, just as we can explain consistent yet vastly intricate patterns from the simplest equations thanks to virtual numbers reiterating.

There may be parallels in the 'out there' and 'in here' metaphors regarding God, but I'm a bit resistant when these could be different language game discussions. I'm also resisting (but not very well) referring to Honest to God, 50 years old, which had behind it John Robinson's close, weak, personalist God and a rejection of theological systems, and yet went off to Tillich in large part who was a systematic theologian. Here was a creative, jumbled up, reuse of ideas via the ahistorical text-man (the 'kerygma') Bultmann, and the shift of thinking Bonhoeffer in which secular ideas had to be the mode of religious thinking, but hadn't worked out how that might go. From him (and Barth's neo-Calvinism) came the secular theology that was an antithesis from the questioning-self systematics of Tillich's Christian answers.

I think Honest to God is a shaker of things but a diversion, as Robinson wanted to preserve the uniqueness of Christ with all the logic of a football team supporter. We all have equal access to the most noble of self-sacrifices, and we don't all have the Romans to give a brutal response.

I think, rather, instead, we have to be sparing with religious metaphors and run better with the scientific paradoxes, even in order to be religious. The question of having to look outward into a vastness in order to look into smaller and smaller spaces is paradox worth examining.

And, no, it is not the same as looking back in time in the family tree, to the power of two in every generation but into a shrinking population. That's because we can count the same person twice. The space question is a far more interesting paradox with a less easy solution that raises the question of reality in a far greater fundamental sense.

Decision Making

It's not the first time that my slightly semi-detached relationship with formal institutions becomes a traffic route for people to express feelings and views that are deemed 'unofficial' and beyond a believed 'official line'. Thus it is that I receive conversations that can contrast with formal arenas and decision making.

These cannot be interpreted as forms of deception or being underhand or acting in a sideways manner. Nor can they be sidelined as trying to recognise the views of 'members' against the views of 'non-members' - which only goes to embed the informality and byways of contrary discussions.

There is an ongoing project that has been explained along the way and decisions have been made to proceed. But to my ears the volume of a different viewpoint had grown, grown indeed as practical realities of making changes dawned on people. But, in formal settings, the concerned view, the worried view, even the 'anti' view, was relatively quiet as those 'in charge' were being left to get on with it.

Those in charge thus did not realise that there was not the consensus they expected. The plans for the future have real benefits and tackle restrictive issues that have to be tackled. The down side is temporary and limited, and no more than has been so for a long time. Would that all problems could be solved, but some can be. There is a cost involved, and costs raise either/ or questions, although there can be both (in this case) and one does facilitate the other.

The person who's pushed the project via hard work and explanation first introduced that I'd passed on what I'd heard, and then I spoke and made the points being raised explicit. I don't win friends easily! The result was, having gone 'over the top' the people who'd spoken informally now also spoke into the formal democratic session.

All this perceived 'opposition' of course came as a surprise to those who thought the plans were going ahead nicely. The objections now raised and specific were answered (rather well, I thought) with information, and the matter drawn to the necessary head. The result is that the project is still alive and well; indeed, the project will be better for the airing of views and the information.

As to talk that 'We've said all this before', regarding the information, I had a simple reply. I said I used to teach and find no one knew what I was talking about. I'd told them, but then another teacher came along and asked me if I'd checked whether anyone had been actually listening (and learning - they call this feedback loop 'assessment').

It simply isn't good enough to rely on formal, democratic means of decision making. In groups you must have ways and means of picking up informal conversations that find their own routes. At one point in the meeting I said these chats were not 'underhand' or a form of deception but "genuine conversation" and you ignore it at your peril, because if you do it leads to fracture.

Now there will be no fracture because the conversation has spilt out and it is understood. And it will need checking again that it is understood: no harm in repeating matters. But eyes and ears should be more sensitive. The joke goes that in the Roman Catholic Church the Pope is the last one to know anything. Decision making must involve tapping into the informal routes as well as the formal ones.

Four Parties, Several Outcomes

We are probably into a four party politics in a first past the post system that suits two parties.

In the 1980s the emergence of the SDP split the left vote and allowed the Tories to win in many constituencies. That plus Michael Foot's 'suicide note' Labour Party campaign and the Falklands War.

Over the years the Liberal Democrats and Labour vote started sorting itself out, so that both had an anti-Conservative identity and there was enough of a critical voting alliance for people to vote for their second best to keep out the Tories. At times it seemed that the Liberal Democrats were to the left of Blair's Labour Party and they won more in the north as Blair's Labour hollowed out its own support. Once Gordon Brown moved in, Labour was like the Tories under Major (except Major did win one against Kinnock, and paid for it via the ERM failure and the fruitcake Tory right).

Brown did stage a small recovery that stunted Liberal Democrat hopes, but in 2010 the Liberal Democrats stole the anti-Tory vote for them by supporting not only a Tory led coalition but Tory policies. The worst of these is probably the Bedroom Tax, a direct attack on the poor, but there has been a consistent attack on those with the least. The Liberal Democrats had a campaign about politicians and honesty, and turned out to be the biggest liars of them all, never intending to defend the university policy that had attracted so many university constituency votes. They've joined the Tory discriminatory mantra of 'hard working families who want to get on' which begs all sorts of questions about how you get work, how you make it hard, what constitutes a family and why families, and what does it mean to get on (presumably, materialist). The Liberal Democrats used to be about communities and liberty and people, as well as particularly small scale freedom in economics. But the Orange Group captured the party and they have turned into economic liberals as narrow as Margaret Thatcher ever was.

Cameron's Conservatives have dovetailed quite well with this Liberal Democrat reversal and narrowing, which is why the Liberal Democrats will lose their northern left of centre support and will only be alternative Conservatives in specific areas. Cameron's conservatives includes an egalitarian social agenda in terms of identity politics but in economics it's red in tooth and claw. Osborne, who is a failing Chancellor if ever there was one, seems to drive this economic agenda with a wheel that doesn't turn and an accelerator that's fixed. His henchman Danny Alexander ties in the Liberal Democrats to this agenda. Only Vince Cable in the Business Department tries something different: there are echoes here of Wilson's 60s government and how the Treasury eventually squashed George Brown's mild departmental attempts at economic planning. The treasury always wins and its why so little has been done about the banks. Again.

Like so many others, I voted for the Liberal Democrats on the basis of its manifesto. It was a lie and when Michael Portillo says that the government has 60% of the votes and is more radical than Thatcher, it's only on the basis of the votes stolen by the Liberal Democrats and what they have actually done.

So what of UKIP, as the electorate thrashes around for somewhere to vote? Farage is actually offering the Tories the means to organise the right of centre vote by offering a pact if Cameron resigns (presumably Osborne as well). UKIP isn't racist but says and does enough that dampens down and removes the BNP. UKIP is really quite old fashioned. It represents a feudal Tory nationalism that also attracts a part of the working class, or what's remaining of it, and even the underclass. As it says, with the Liberal Democrats you (evidently) didn't know what you were voting for (fools like me thought they had sorted that out with a broad left libertarian stance) but there's no mistake with UKIP. UKIP is out of the EU, hefty cuts in immigration, grammar schools, a back to the 1950s and 1960s. UKIP would be nationalist about employment and industry so they would be interventionist and not just market driven.

The other parties might want to neutralise UKIP by offering a referendum on European Union membership, but none of these parties would want to risk coming out of the EU; and the price of coming out by defective intention is probably too high to risk the policy. The Tories fearing the worst of a split right vote would go closest to the wire to dry and dull UKIP's appeal, but indeed it could result in removal if only because many Tory MPs also want to leave Europe. They'd prefer a pact with UKIP and dump the Liberal Democrats, except it has no reality in the current House of Commons. It could though shorten the coalition's life.

The UKIP calculation must be to cost the Tories the next General Election and then to organise to achieve the result, with different Tory leadership, to come out of the EU. This is probably what will happen as Labour is most likely to win (as the government loses, and the Liberal Democrat vote collapses into its self-made rubble). Labour itself will have to secure its base and broaden its appeal: the Labour right wants to attack welfare too but that will just hollow out its vote again.

I hope the coalition collapses. If I was a Liberal Democrat member I'd be plotting to get rid of Clegg and try and reassert the party and its definition. Alexander and Laws have to go. Even if Clegg fights to stay he'll probably lose his Sheffield seat - there is a lot of resentment about him even in his constituency.

The Tory right will want to preserve its chance of power and can be as ruthless as the Liberal Democrats have been (regarding recent leaders). The coalition is pointless now because it represents economic failure and has nowhere to go. Cameron is its blockage, so he'd need to be told he's lost authority.

The only alternative to this is the coalition fighting the next election as a coalition - with the Liberal Democrats therefore confirmed as the alternative Tories. That would, though, split the Liberal Democrats. The coalition itself was a stretch too far for many insiders, to make it glued together is too far for most.

I only hope that the next government, Labour, is a relief from this lot, and does actually do something about employment. It can be 'employer of last resort' as a way to raise activity - I hope they can find and generate the placements and afford it all. The Tories' Work Programme, neither work nor programme, is at least cheap. I do like Ed Miliband in that he shows an ethical centre. Labour's Blairite right wing would remove him, as would the press and much media, but he might be like Kinnock could have been - doing the right thing at least. They stand for more than power for power's sake, I think.

So best wishes to UKIP. I hope it fails in its primary task but succeeds in its political effects in the short run. All parts of the current coalition should meanwhile plan for the separated future: the Tories and after Cameron, the Liberal Democrats and the long rebuild necessary after the damage inflicted by Nick Clegg and his right wing sympathisers. Getting rid of them would help.

My Argument Against Cambridge

Yes I am like a dog with a bone. I don't give it up until the point is made, as I have been at the Unitarian page in Facebook. The issue is Unitarian churches and having a collective identity, and how that identity is maintained.

I'm banging away about Cambridge Unitarian Church and its minister Andrew Brown, with his blog entries like this one before the church's AGM and an identifying statement that says: I'm a Unitarian and Free Christian minister of post-modern and post-liberal persuasion (the latter of which links to its Yale and Duke postliberal definition)

Here's my argument:

The ideal Unitarian church, I suggest, consistent with creedless individualism and non-discrimination, is one where various different beliefs exist within the congregation and the minister encourages their development. Inevitably these views cohere around existing religious packages, but not completely and necessarily, and these are liberal Christian, religious humanist, Eastern (Buddhist, Hindu reformist) and Pagan (home grown and reinvented magical earth religion). Two are, in general, close to rational dissent, and two are closer to romanticism (that has a non-rational element). Unitarianism as a tradition was divided into biblical and denominational Christian on the one hand, and romantic and critical broad Christian on the other: the Christian merged but out of the synthesis came a humanism that was narrow, militant and not very religious, and out of a humanist failure came a romanticism for religious symbols that was inevitably going to be more Pagan and more Eastern.

Inevitably there are places where a Unitarian chapel has a collective identity more one thing than many: in a town of evangelical churches the Unitarian one may provide the only liberal Christian one available. It is bound to pick up local refugees and work to that market.

But in a large city the Unitarian church can specialise because there are others that can also specialise. Where there is less choice, the church should be more open to difference.

My objection regarding Cambridge Unitarian Church and its minister Andrew Brown is not the speciality, as such, but the means of maintaining it.

There are two Western religion routes to postmodernism. One is Martineau's, where subjectivity is individualist but he tries to retain an objective liturgical approach (even unwritten). That objectivity collapses into the subjective, and the language of faith is going to be a kind of Western narrative (evolution, science, cosmology) with individualist faith elements. It is the kind of approach Don Cupitt has made over the decades. It is the sort of questioning, open, even self-gazing type of faith.

The other route is the Karl Barth virtually invisible God of revelation, about which Hans Frei said the biblical narrative is what counts for the encounter. That was actually Bultmann's position: the biblical text as dynamic. There is no objectivity in this world to back it up: you can't do it via history, not via science. It is pure drama. This way, via Bonhoeffer, lies secular theology, the unquestioning (because we are busy, urban people) activity that reveals (or doesn't) the revealing God. George Lindbeck did this for a Protestant ecumenical Church (while he was nodding at Vatican II): that again there is no objectivity in the beliefs, no proof, no relation to the world. The ecumenical creeds define the Church as a standard of role performance, and as identity. Christianity is like a 'grammar' of identity spoken by a people of a commitment to that grammar (Stankley Hauerwas).

Similarly is Radical Orthodoxy, the bubble in the space offered by postmodernity of an alternative reality, that is Platonic and offers the perfect Church, the perfect moral system, and which regards sociology as nothing but secular theology. In the postmodern world, theology rises again. Except it doesn't, of course, as it lacks access to research.

Now, Unitarianism can be fully postmodern but surely via the liberal route. If it has postliberalism, it is indeed liberal and postliberal - it shows where it has come from. It can also say religions are like languages, and that we cannot find a neutral higher point. It stops Hegel. It disagrees with a John Hick who proposes a 'real' above the dharma, the Trinity, the Brahman. There is nothing beyond the plural. But it is individuals who necessarily have the parts: the Church whole is Baudrillard in its imagary, its surfaceness and so on.

My own position is a soft-postmodern one, in that research brings back results we do not like, and anchor us to a real world. The Western narratives are powerful not just because they work, but because they deliver research findings. All that was said about paradigms and paradigm shifts still is so. So, for me, a huge amount is about language and form, and religion is the most like art, but there is research. There is no equality between Radical Orthodoxy, which is made up, and Sociology, because Sociology has techniques of research. There is no value in freezing culture, which is what Lindbeck does, and creating sectarianism, where the Church and its definition gets further and further from the main narratives of explanation.

Andrew Brown is a minister who claims to be an atheist, so his God is non-objective. But he demands a Christian identity to the Cambridge Unitarian Church and does it on the basis of Lindbeck type reasoning. In actuality he combines this Yale conserving postliberalism with Greek philosophy, but then Christianity does that anyway.

So one can imagine a congregation as creedless being a place for romantics and Pagans and Easterns and humanists, and oh all that is welcomed so long as the church retains its standard of role performance, that Christian identity. It's like everyone can sit in the passenger seat so long as the Christian - and a non-objective one at that - keeps his hands on the wheel and foot on the accelerator. And this, one can say, is not Unitarian. Here we have a city, Cambridge, in which we have had Cupitt, in which there is theology of every kind, or which there are latitudinarians of course (from ancient days!) and the one place that could be multi-faith and plural is 'captured' on a conserving Christian principle - and not even liberal, except by position ('liberal about'). One of our one-time Hull attenders went home to St Neots and her nearest Unitarian church would be Cambridge. There were bus services, etc., but she would not want to hear the Christian bellyaching that takes place there about maintaining the creed when the God is gone into oblivion. Free up a bit; move on!

For me, a Christian is someone who identifies with the community of the first Christians and its forming beliefs around Jesus Christ. You don't have to do it by history, or by miracles, or time-leap social anthropology into a world we cannot recover in terms of beliefs and outlook. In essence, it is a cult of an individual. You need reasons to hold to a doctrine that Jesus Christ is unique, and one of the worst is a 'standard of role performance'. It is the last stage of identifying before the game is up. The Emperor has no clothes. It is a conservatism for the sake of it, and it denies precisely what Unitarianism has to offer: an open forum, a space and place of change, and place where disagreement and yet discussion does not prevent worship together and mutual support in the religious quest.

Oh and we do now think that John Wesley not Francis David said "We do not need to think alike to love alike" and indeed he was quite objective in his methodical high and then evangelical Arminian-style Christianity.