Bishop of Southampton II

Shock horror!!! Bishop caught editing own wikipedia article!

Yes it is often seen as the ultimate in ego-surfing. Editing one's own wikipedia article is only one better than creating it.

A quick perusal of the page yesterday, together with the history page reveals an edit two days ago.

Someone added one final entry to the 'titles and styles' section of the article, which I think you'll agree, has the Bishop's fingerprints all over them.

Clearly being between jobs leaves him with time on his hands!!!!

Bishop of Southampton I

Ghah!

I finally get a letter from my Bishop asking to discuss the contents of this blog with him and it seems like I am finally getting somewhere on my quest, when what happens? The VERY....NEXT...DAY...they promote him.

I now have to wait for him to leave and then ages until his replacement arrives. It'll then take him a while to settle in, he wont want to sack clergy until he has had a chance to meet them all. If this continues at snails pace I may end up having to get a new job in the Church of England before I've been dooced from this one.

Honestly! I bet I'd get sacked quicker if I was a Roman Catholic.

It's enough to make you want to convert, really it is.

Godwins Law

The trouble with Godwin's law is that it is only ever cited by people who are trying to end debate.

And the thing about people who want to end debate, is that, basically, they're all Nazis.

Blue, Yellow, Green etc.

Another flawless day. Hardly a cloud in the sky. Just glorious blue.

And lovely sun.

Although to be honest I've gone off the sun since one fo the physicists told me the sun is actually green. Gutting. Although the same guy told me the sun is actually a black object. Honestly green AND black. And Richard Dawkins thinks that theology is inconsistent bollocks. He clearly doesn't know anything about science.

Anyway, apparently the sun is a great big ball of gas, so why isn't it blue???

Yup

"Hmmmm" I thought "Good speech from Cameron. Very little in it to disagree with. The only sensible line of attack is to focus on his line on Big government."

And it seems I was right.

Perhaps I should move into spin doctoring.

Death of a nasty party

A little lesson from history. Throughout the late 1980s Margaret Thatcher painted the opposition Labour party as economically incompetent. Yes they aspired to some nice things like social justice but you couldn't let them into power because they would destroy the economy. This with the memory of the winter of discontent of 1978 fresh in the memory of the voters kept Thatcher in power at a time of great social inequality.

When faced with a choice between social justice and national bankruptcy people took what they felt was the only option.

Then along came a nasty little recession in the early 90s and Labour re-branded itself as the party of business, enterprise and light touch regulation. At a stroke this transformed the Conservative party. The only reason to vote for them was if you wanted to screw the poor for your tax cut. They became the nasty party and were pushed to the political wilderness for over 10 years. Labour represented social justice AND economic savvy.

David Cameron's speech on Thursday is an attempt to turn the tables. In calling out Labour for their record on poverty and inequality he is attempting to consign to them to the periphery of power. He is painting his party as the one which will look after the poor as well as the businessman. There will be no reason left to vote Labour.

How well he succeeds depends on whether he delivers for those most vulnerable after the next election. If he tackles poverty expect the next Labour government in about 25 years.

He words on small government cause me to doubt.

DANGER!

Everyone around me is dropping like flies.

Chaplains, students members of staff. This seems to be the worst year for freshers flu. Honestly, people arriving from all over the country carrying the lurgy everyone should know that's not going to end well. Yet Campus is full of people who want to hang around with them.


WARNING: Do not lick the freshers....you don't know where they've been.*

*Some of them have been in Lichfield.. Nuff said.

Worship

12.11pm. Today in chaplaincy we kick the year off with religion.

Yes, contrary to popular belief we do actually do religion in chaplaincy, and Christianity in particular. So at 1pm I am going to lead the first chaplaincy Communion service of the year. And we're going to commission the chaplaincy assistant Tom.

Jesus is going to be in the house.

We then going to spend the next 4 hours talking shite and eating cake.

So that was freshers' week

So there we were Freshers week at last. The air was thick with hopes and dreams and the slight whiff of swine flu.

Up early every morning. Late to bed every evening. We nearly didn't get a table at the Bunfight but in the end we got a bumper year of signups.

There was a reassuring sense of deja vu about itm along with the excitement of new possibilities. What will this year bring.

Early indications: Mostly student nurses

Ah ha!

Cunning plan....stop work now. Start work tomorrow morning!

Finally! I've found...

...my Superhero outfit.