Naturalcynic

Very few countries still allow voting without showing photo ID.

Most 16 year olds don’t have the faintest interest in politics and have next to no knowledge of it. Many who go to University latch on left-wing idealism, but the vast majority grow out of it once they start working and have to face the realities and responsibilities of real life. Rather than reducing the voting age to 16, I’d suggest raising it to 21 would be more appropriate.

You can join the Army, yes, but you won’t be sent on ops at that age.

When there aren’t engineering works there are strikes so, like many, I’ve given up on the trains. Thanks to Mick Lynch et al, there’ll be no rail industry left by the time they stop their politically-motivated strike action.

Can’t disagree with that. Politically-motivated, UK-hating, far-left extremist.

West Ham away in September 1972. We lost 4:0 which was good preparation for the subsequent 51 years of following NCFC.

Utter cobblers.

Far too many questions to address in one go, but why has pretty much every society that’s ever existed had religion at its centre? 1. A way of explaining why the sun rises in the morning, why it rains, why there are famines, why there are droughts etc. 2. Being aware of their own mortality, people don’t like the idea of their existences coming to an end. Religion generally gives them comfort in that respect with the promise of some sort of afterlife. 3. Explaining and understanding how and why the Universe exists has always been way beyond people’s abilities. Far easier to invent some sort of supernatural deity instead. 4. Social control. Religions provide a rigid rulebook which has been used the world over to keep populations in their place and to make sure they behave in accordance with the tribal/national/religious elders. The threat of eternal damnation awaits those who don’t. 5. Motivating large numbers of individuals to go into battle and face likely death, knowing that their particular god is on their side and thereby assuring them of a place in paradise. 6. Power and/or financial gain for the charismatic individuals, founders of new religions, and some religious leaders who exploit and manipulate the gullible. I’m sure there are plenty of other reasons but that’s enough to be going on with. Suffice it to say, in my opinion all religions are little more than mediaeval superstition and the world would be a better place without them. But having largely neutered this country’s own historic religion we should be very wary indeed of the increasing impact of imported faiths and their associated intolerances.

I suspect 500 years ago if you’d burned a bible, or claimed that the Earth wasn’t the centre of the Universe, or been openly gay, or stood up and denounced Christianity, or transgressed the ways of the Lord in whatever way, you’d have come to an unpleasant and premature end. Fortunately Christianity has moved on from those unenlightened times. Sadly Islam hasn’t.

For those of us that remember enjoying his programmes on the BBC back in the 1970’s, his passing is a sobering reminder of how many years have elapsed and how time can just slip away while we’ve been busy striving to do the things that seemed so very important at the time, but probably weren’t.

A bible was deliberately burned. The act was publicised in at least one newspaper. No riots ensued, no public protests occurred, no buildings were attacked, no-one was murdered, no-one has been hounded out of their home and job, and there were no howls of Christianophobia.

If only we did treat them all the same, but we don’t do we? We (usually the Left) are happy to castigate Christianity, Judaism, even Hinduism, yet pussyfoot around Islam and make pathetic excuses for the intolerance and horrendous, often violent, over-reaction of many of its followers when there’s any perceived slight to their religion of peace. This thread has been a good illustration of that.

Very true. Islamic extremism has nothing to do with poverty and everything to do with the requirement of Muslims to undertake jihad.

Can’t speak for Blair or anyone else, just me.

Although to be fair, Clause IV was a bit of an idealistic mantra. That said, despite being of the centre-right, I do genuinely believe that important utilities (power, water, railways etc) should perhaps be in public ownership.