Steven Agnew cleans Arlene Foster’s clock on gay marriage…

Posted on February 20, 2013 by Gerry Lynch

Well done to Green Party MLA Steven Agnew for setting DUP Enterprise Minister Arlene Foster straight that civil partnerships are NOT equal to marriage and that all religious symbolism or language in civil partnership ceremonies in the UK is banned – by civil law. The scary thing, Arlene is about as gay-friendly gets in the DUP.

These restrictions were introduced sepcifically to placate the Church of England, which feared a grassroots rebellion by gay affirming clergy and parishes otherwise. Ironically the Church of England which now claims to support civil partnerships as a positive option for people in same-sex relationships to covenant their lives to one another, despite doing its best to gut the legislation when it was first introduced to remove any such possibility.

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Which Angel do you prefer?

Posted on February 20, 2013 by Gerry Lynch

Walking around Sailortown today, I noticed the Flying Angel statue outside the Mission to Seafarers was just about to fall into complete shadow given the tall houses recently recently built directly opposite it on Pilot Street. This isn’t something I pay a lot of attention to, mainly because I pass it too regularly. The last of some glorious late afternoon sun was just catching parts of the statue. From one particular angle, the angel’s right hand seemed to be aflame, a nice visual metaphor of an angel burning with the power to assist.

I took out my phone camera (HTC One X) which isn’t bad but isn’t all that good and grabbed a few shots, one close in, one further back, one from a completely different angle which lost the glowing hand effect but got some of the immediate skyline including the (sadly disused) Franciscan Church of St. Joseph’s just down the street. I wonder which capture people prefer?

Up close and personal? Is the context too limited? Does the daytime moon just become distracting wthout being big enough to be interesting?

Up close and personal? Is the context too limited? Does the Mission’s cross just look like a stray piece of scaffolding or an aerial mast? Does the daytime moon just become distracting wthout being big enough to be interesting? I love the way the flaming hand stretches right out at you, though.

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Belfast On A Sunny Winter Day

Posted on February 20, 2013 by Gerry Lynch

The lunette on the south aisle door at St. Anne's Cathedral proclaims 1 Corinthians 15:55.

The lunette on the south aisle door at St. Anne’s Cathedral proclaims 1 Corinthians 15:55.

Three generations of dormer windows catch the late afternoon sun on the New Lodge Road.

Three generations of dormer windows catch the late afternoon sun on the New Lodge Road.

Glorious winter sunshine in Belfast and with the equinox fast approaching the sun has a bit of heat in it even at this relatively high latitude. One can only answer the message of St. Anne’s carving with the next verse but one – “but thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”

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3830 Write-Up for the ARRL DX CW Contest 2013 – G6PZ (GI0RTN Op) SOABHP

Posted on February 19, 2013 by Gerry Lynch

ImageAnother great weekend of high pace, high power, modern contesting at G6PZ, this particular event being very much a game of two halves.

The first 24 hours were marked by a relatively quiet ionosphere, returning to normality from a late week disturbance, and consequently relatively low energy levels in the ionosphere. That made for spectacular conditions on 80 and 160 on the first night, while 40 remained fair-to-middling, at least from England. The MUF seemed to sort of hover around the 7 MHz mark on the transatlantic path, with sudden rushes of callers from particular regions as the F layer aligned just right – here a burst of W9s, there a bunch of Texans – but even the New England stations were weak at times. N7GP called in to give me Arizona on 160 at 0316 – I’m pretty sure the first time we’ve done that from G6PZ in ARRL CW. The 80 metre four square works great as a receive antenna on 160 when we’re in single op configuration, but top band receive remains a problem on this small plot of land when we’re operating multi-single.

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Copernicus’ “Google Doodle” and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth

Posted on February 19, 2013 by Gerry Lynch

copernicus_2485492b

Crossposted at Slugger O’Toole…

Sunday past was the 413th anniversary of the execution of Giordano Bruno (burned at the stake for heresies such as proposing that the Sun is a star and that the other stars in the sky are also Suns, probably accompanied by planets very much like ours). Today, more auspiciously, is the 460th anniversary of the birth of Nicolaus Copernicus. He managed to postulate that the solar system revolved around the Sun, rather than the Earth, while remaining a Chapter Canon of Frombork Cathedral and important local civil servant during the early decades of the Reformation. Gallileo was put under house arrest for saying much the same things less than a century later and 1500km or so to the south. Times change.

It took time for the Reformation to settle into the political and military battle it later became. The Peasants’ War in 1524 encouraged both Catholic and Protestant rulers in German-speaking Central Europe to play a cautious hand and, in almost all cases, co-operate to serve their common interests. The England of Henry, Mary and Elizabeth, however, with its fanaticism of both Puritan and Ultramontane varieties, murderous dissolution of the monasteries, Secret Police and bloody executions of religious dissidents was an unusual epicentre of violent fanaticism in the Reformation’s early decades. But then England had always tended to be a little bit fanatical when it came to religion. Here, alone in the Catholic world, the laity were banned from reading the Bible in the vernacular before the Reformation, the electrifying effect of Wycliffe’s late 14th Century translation terrifying the authorities. The continent-spanning cult of martyr-pilgrimage surrounding Thomas a Becket at Canterbury Cathedral also marks England out as an unusually devout country with a history of religious intolerance and brutality by the state. English latitudinarianism and later secularism needed to have Puritanism test itself to destruction during Cromwell’s Commonwealth before it found fertile territory.

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House Prices Rise 43-fold since 1971 – Cui Bono?

Posted on February 19, 2013 by Gerry Lynch

The Daily Telegraph highlights a report by Shetler indicating that house prices have risen by 43 times since 1971. This is over six times the rate of inflation for basic weekly groceries in the same period.

The report comes with the usual train of interesting factoids:

The charity said that the typical value of a house had increased by just over 43 times since 1971, from £5,632 to £245,319.

If a family’s weekly shop had increased at the same rate, it would now stand at £453, which is six times the actual figure of around £75.

Applying the house price rate of inflation to everyday food and drink items means that a bunch of six bananas would cost £8.47, a four-pint carton of milk would cost £10.45 and a leg of lamb would be £53.18, Shelter said.

Another recent Telegraph story pointed out that home ownership in the UK has now fallen to levels last seen in 1987. The level of renting from council and other social landlords has fallen dramatically In other words, the long-term effect of the policy of right-to-buy for council tenants and deliberately stoked house price inflation has been a singificant move of people, especially younger and poorer people, out of the social rented sector and into the private rented sector. As anyone who lives on a council estate knows, that usually means younger families living in identical houses on the same estates as their parents, except at higher levels of rent, with less security of tenure and often with poorer maintenance.

Cui bono is always the first question worth asking in politics. Who has benefited from the shift in housing policy away from being principally about providing a decent home for all towards being principally about providing a high-value asset for home owners?

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Home Rule, Rome Rule and Gay Marriage

Posted on February 7, 2013 by Gerry Lynch

Crossposted at Slugger O’Toole…

Last September, Unionists paraded in their tens of thousands through Belfast to celebrate the centenary of the Ulster Covenant. From the days of Lilibullero in the 17th Century, Ulster Protestantism has always had a particular genius for summing up its political causes in easily remembered ditties and catchphrases. Perhaps the easiest slogan to remember of all from that era is “Home Rule is Rome Rule”.

That encapsulated the fears that Irish self-government would inevitably lead to a clericalised, priest-ridden state. Such fears were reasonable given that centralised Papal power, a more modern development than popular understanding remembers, was at its apogee and Ireland lacked the liberal anti-clerical element that kept the Roman Catholic Church in check in continental Catholic countries. Indeed, the reality of the post-1922 Southern state amply vindicated those fears – civil divorce was not legalised until 1996.

That makes the constellation of forces at Westminster that unsuccessfully opposed the introduction of marriage equality in England and Wales this week all the more unlikely. The Roman hierarchies in Scotland and England/Wales have opposed the introduction of marriage equality with a degree of clerical vitriol reminiscent of the days of Cardinal Bourne, while eccentric Tory MP Jacob Rees-Mogg stated on Radio 4 that “I take my whip from the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church.”

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The Silence of Lost Worlds and the Fate of the Middle East’s Christians

Posted on January 30, 2013 by Gerry Lynch

Crossposted at Slugger O’Toole…

Monasteries are very quiet places indeed. Garrulous as I am beyond the normal Irish capacity for such things, I am not someone obviously identifiable as a great lover of silence. At the Community of the Resurrection, even here in the heart of West Yorkshire’s network of densely populated post-industrial valleys, the daytime silence between the offices can be intense. The stillness is broken only by the occasional fall of well-shod feet along the corridor or the distant call of an ambulance siren carried on the breeze.

My mind fills often fills the void with sounds of its own imagining. Often these are pieces of classical music which I have loved but not listened to for a few years – the pounding drum and sinister, relentlessly advancing, cellos of the opening of Britten’s Sinfonia da Requiem or the bizarre intermingling of funeral march and chaotically joyful klezmer band that is the feierlich und gemessen movement of Mahler’s First Symphony.

Samuel Goldenberg

Viktor Hartmann’s Samuel Goldenberg

Jewish klezmer bands were a familiar feature of the Bohemia of Mahler’s youth. In the week after Holocaust Memorial Day, there is no need for explanation why they are no longer a feature of life in the 21st Century Czech Republic.

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A First Commandment Issue?

Posted on January 29, 2013 by Gerry Lynch

Crossposted at 8aNoWay.com…

During a recent social media discussion on homosexuality ensuing from Steve Chalke’s recent – and potentially game-changing – announcement of his support for marriage equality, I was confronted by one conservative member of the Presbyterian Church telling me that same-sex relationships are a “first commandment issue”.

The first commandment is the prohibition against idolatry, against worshipping strange gods. At first I was rather bemused by this – in what way are two people who love one another indulging in idolatry? People can, of course, love one another in such a narcissistic and selfish way that it amounts to worship of something other than the creator. I can’t for the life of me see how the danger is any greater for same-sex couples than it is for opposite-sex couples.

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A Return to Force Majeure as a Criterion on Parading?

Posted on January 22, 2013 by Gerry Lynch

Cross-posted at Slugger O’Toole…

The current parades-related legislation is cumbersome and deeply irritating to many in Northern Ireland. Every procession with the sole exception of the Salvation Army must go through the process of filling out an 11/1 form and seeking an adjudication from the Parades Commission. That means not only Republican and Loyalist marches, but entirely non-contentious GAA and British Legion parades, gay pride parades and, yes, even the Boy Scouts.

Doubtless, the process could do with a significant degree of streamlining. OFMdFM’s attempt to produce something acceptable to both the DUP and Sinn Féin produced something even more bureaucratic and deeply restrictive, which outraged civil society. The proposals were rapidly ‘unagreed’ by the DUP when the Loyal Orders came out against.

Nobody likes the current arrangement, but the alternative is that we return to the mid-1990s scenario of the police making decisions on whether or not a parade should proceed based solely on public order grounds. That, as we all remember, politicised the police against their will, and led to a situation where the party to any dispute who could summon the greatest degree of disruption or violence won. It must obvious to all that any return to the status quo ante is a disaster for everyone, and in particular a disaster for anyone who believes that ensuring the police are impartial and seen to be impartial is a necessary criterion for peace and order in Northern Ireland.

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