This is a photo of Maxima at the Cambridge Folk Festival, where there was an unofficial hat competition. She's showing off her new henna tattoo and her hat. As well as the ACROSS badge, I'd like to draw your attention to the little silver feet just to the right of her ear, wedged between the "£1" badge and the part-cut-off Glen Michael's Cartoon Cavalcade badge. These are the famous SPUC Precious Feet, depicting the actual size of an unborn baby's feet at ten weeks. Some things get everywhere, don't they?
Risa from Isramom has been kind enough to tip me in an internet meme that was started on Adventures in Mamaland. I enjoy Risa's blog because she presents life in Israel as a series of everyday occurences in a religious Jewish family in the Holy Land, free from the accretions of gentiles like me who can write a blogpost then go to work in a Merry England wherein one can still perform the basic tasks of living without risk to life and limb. Thanks for the kind words, Risa; much appreciated.
These are the rules of the meme:
Thank the person who gave you this award.
Share one thing about yourself readers might not know otherwise.
List six (6) bloggers you think are fantastic, and say why.
Contact the bloggers you've picked, and let them know about the award.
One thing about me that regulars to the Draughty Old Fen might not know is that I'm addicted to cheese. So much so that last night, I NEEDED cheese so much that I stole some of Maxima's white stilton with bits of fruit in it, which she buys because nobody else in the house likes it. She confronted me and asked me why I took it. I replied that I took it because it was the only cheese in the house. I'm still on probation.
My second choice is Linda, an American home-schooling Mom and photographer who writes passionately and frankly about the joys and miseries of life, love and standing her ground as a staunchly pro-life Roman Catholic. Her blog, Don't Poke the Baby, is as unmissable for her lyrical wisdom as it is for her photography.
Ellee Seymour is a Press Consultant and journalist who blogs about both national affairs and the minutiae of her beloved East of England. The reason she's my third choice is that I admire the inner security that allows her to praise people with whose views she disagrees when she feels praise is due. Another reason I admire her is that she's a supporter of Headway, a charity that helps people get over head injuries.
John Smeaton, SPUC Director is the blog of the head of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children. He writes for people from all political and religious backgrounds and none who are concerned for members of groups vulnerable to Establishment anti-life prejudices - the unborn, pregnant women, people suffering from after-effects of abortion that aren't recognised as existing, the terminally ill, people with chronic physical/mental illnesses,older people - to name just a few. I chose him because I have uneding admiration for the tightrope he walks by praising members of the Establishment who are brave enough to defend members of these groups, while critiquing enemies of the vulnerable, who are often members of the same Establishment groups.
Lorena lives on a ranch in Texas, and on Lorena's Blog you can find photos of the most exquisite quality. Her blogs, centred on family and animals with the occasional review, are well worth the read.
Lastly, but by no means leastly, I first heard of Naomi Litvin's blog through David Appletree's world-famous blog, The Jewish Internet Defense Force, which provides a voice for Jews in the US and worldwide at a time when many vested interests would have this voice extinguished. More than this, though, if you're not Jewish and/or haven't heard of David, keep an ear open: as Facebook falls, I think you'll hear his name as one of the brave who spoke out against the exploitative network when it could do no wrong in the eyes of the Mainstream Media.
Again, a big thank-you to Risa. It's one thing to get a badge for political blogging, but to be tipped by somebody who likes to read what you have to say is on an entirely different level. And, as the time when I can only blog occasionally as other things demand my time fast approaches, it's something I'll never forget.
I've just seen Marie Stopes' advert on John Smeaton's site and, although I should be doing an application form right now, had to get blogging. First, have a look at the advert.
It starts pretty unremarkably with "Jenny Evans" standing at a bus-stop, and the graphics telling us that she is late, ie has not had her period when expected.
Then the interesting stuff starts. We go to "Katie Simmons", who is also late. She is propelling a baby in a pram with one hane and trying to control a toddler with the other. Marie Stopes' message, you might think is that two is enough; three would be too many. However, when you see the difficulty she's having with two children, the subliminal message becomes clear: one child is enough, two are too many. Fittingly, Father Tim Finnegan of The Hermeneutic of Continuity reports the visit last week of Ms Li Bin, called "Madame Sterilisation" (she heads China's forced sterilisation policy) to Marie Stopes' London headquarters. He links to Tibet-Truth, which says of Marie Stopes International that it is "an organization which by its silence, and open support of the Chinese population program, surely merits criticism and challenge".
The last lady we see is "Shareen Butler", a black lady who is in a pottery class. Here we come to the rotten core of the population control movement, as is witnessed to by Arnold Culbreath, Urban Outreach Director of US organisation Protecting Black Life. In asking why abortion providers are particularly interested in building sites in poor black areas of the US, we get a glimpse of their ugly agenda.
In today's Telegraph, trainee consultant Max Pemberton cries for less heat, more light on abortion, protesting that he sat in on a Marie Stopes counselling session with a patient who had been abandoned by the father of her unborn child. The session ended with the patient, contrary to what Pemberton would have wanted, deciding to keep the child. Personally, if I was a Marie Stopes counsellor and a columnist for the Daily Telegraph - known to be friendly to Judaeo-Christian traditions and the pro-life cause - was sitting in, I would have made sure that the pregnancy was continued as well. Tellingly, Pemberton reveals that the woman had a mental illness, in another confirmation of the pro-choice/anti-life eugenics agenda of the abortion industry.
If abortion services are going to advertise their wares on TV, why are pro-life organisations still barred from using this medium to raise awareness of the possible and proven side-effects of abortion? I can only hope that the Coalition Government will do what it can to level the playing-field which has been skewed in favour of the eugenics lobby for the best part of a century. All I can say to strengthen their resolve in this project is: your voters are watching you.
We may have a new government but, behind the scenes, the same unelected sinister forces are pushing their agendas at our children.
HYPNet - the HIV in Young People Network - describes itself as "a multidisciplinary group of health professionals and voluntary sector representatives" working for people between the ages of 14-24 who are unfortunate enough to be living with HIV.
The first thing that worried me on the guidance came as early as Section 3, Definitions. In this draft document, which dealt with "possibility of having pleasurable and safe sexual experiences" for adolescents, the term "adolescence" itself is defined worryingly:
The term adolescent will be used throughout these guidelines to denote young people aged 10-24 years old, which covers the age from the onset of menarche in the UK to the upper limit of the definition of young adult...
PHCP [paediatric healthcare professionals] need to take responsibility for seeing that Sexual Health needs, if not brought up by the adolescent, are raised in consultations, starting well before sexual maturity is reached.
Yet, although the paper states twice that in England and Wales sexual activity involving under-13's is illegal and indeed rape (under common law consent is meaningless under this age), the waters are muddied by a statement in point 6.3, which concerns the Sexual Offences Act 2003, that "this document does not advocate mandatory reporting to police or social services of every sexually active under 18 if there is no cause for concern"; the cut-off point of 13 has been dropped.
A pattern starts to emerge at point 8.3, where we read under the heading of Sexual Health Education that "Psychosexual issues may arise from cultural and religious beliefs around...female circumcision". Again, there is no comment, even to the effect that "female circumcision", more properly known as female genital mutilation, is a vicious assault on a young girl which, even if it is carried out abroad, is still an offence as if it had been done in the UK under the terms of the Female Genital Mutilation Act 2003. But the foul practice is listed as if it had no more significance than being one cultural phenomenon among many.
The news has travelled slowly: point 9.2 in this document about sexual and reproductive health is a "checklist for sexual history discussion", and the ninth crib-note states: "Managing an unplanned pregnancy. Options of continuing with pregnancy, adoption or termination of pregnancy; methods of termination." The thought of an adolescent girl, already emotionally fragile through the stigma many people living with HIV are still exposed to, being put at risk of post-abortion trauma is as heartbreaking as is the omission of the risk of PAT from the crib-notes. Similarly, the advice under 16.4, emergency contraception, advises not only the morning-after pill Levonelle, which is basically a form of chemical abortion, but that double the dose (3000 micrograms instead of 1500) be given, and that the dose be documented because Levonelle is not licensed to be given in this quantity. There's no mention in the paper of the patient being informed of this in the event of the drug being given in a sexual health clinic as opposed to a pharmacy.
Ironically, the one area (16.5) where the paper hits the nail right on the head is the one that workers whose fields intersect that of sexual health are asked to keep quiet about:
Condoms are estimated to prevent HIV transmission in only 13% (4-40) of cases (Davis and Weller 1999) and should not therefore be relied on alone for contraception.
Draft Guidance on the Management of Sexual and Reproductive Health for Adolescents Living with HIV 2010 is a case-in-point of how wilfully incomplete advice drawn up along ideological lines can put real, vulnerable, people right in the firing line of the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. The nhsnetworks listing for HYPNet shows that membership is open to all, and current membership is 2 (one of whom is paediatric HIV expert Dr Simon Portsmouth, right) - who have managed to get this paper distributed throughout the world by the otherwise well-regarded aidsmap e-bulletin.
If you are concerned or disturbed about any of the issues in this post, please respectfully and with sensitivity towards the difficulties faced by young people with HIV email Dr Simon Portsmouth.
When I first heard of Eyjafjallajökull, I was of the same opinion as Richard Normington, in that it seemed more like a keyboard malfunction than anything else. But things started to look sinister when continent-sized areas in the course of the volcanic cloud, containing putative glass fragments that could cause high-flying jet engines to close down, were declared no-fly areas on the basis of computer models that are as diconnected from reality as the politicians who made decisions solely on their predictions, without reference to reality.
Thankfully, we can fly again. As it happens, I don't fly that often, but even in the circumference of the world I inhabit the no-fly orders had consequences, from a colleague who couldn't make it to work, through a fellow worshipper whose presence had been required to validate church accounts, to a friend who had been badly injured abroad and whose family was deprived even longer of her presence.
I thought that I'd like to dedicate this month's Top Ten to the theme of flying, because the cooling of Eyjafjallajökull's ire coincides with a crucial time in our country's history, when we decide which political parties will suppress the innate instinct to fly as high as we can, and which will not only nurture it but ensure that we lift up our peers in so doing.
10 - Would you like to fly?
The 5th Dimension, who were inducted into the Vocal Group Hall of Fame in 2002, are famous for taking the song Age of Aquarius from Hair to the top spot. My favourite song of theirs is Jimmy Webb's Up, Up and Away which, whenever I hear it, brings memories of childhood awakenings to the song being played on the ever-present radio.
9 - Wild Swan
In my opinion, Tony Clarkin - the bearded guitarist in the video - deserves to be hailed alongside Pete Townshend as arranger par excellence of his own lyrics with insight and sensitivity worthy of Berlioz. The video, telling the story of a son who simultaneously hero-worships his crusading father and feels the overarching need for his presence beside him, comes to mind because of a wild swan that's been making the news in Cambridge. Called Mr Asbo, he's been accused of harassing and even overturning boats on Cambridge's river Cam. A recent film aired on BBC 1's The One Show displayed the swan at his most aggressive - but the BBC has been accused - in a video that I recommend you watch - of goading the swan's mate into leaving her nest in order to see off a canoe that was ordered to go dangerously close to it for the sake of "car-crach TV". Given that Asbo, according to vet and Telegraph blogger Pete Wedderburn, has actually had his cygnets killed by "passers by", I'm not surprised he's mardy. The state hasn't killed my children, but arrogates to itself ever greater powers to brainwash them according to abusive agendas that seem to have no other purpose than to "rub the Right's nose in diversity". I feel as angry as Mr Asbo.
8 - Volare
In February 1991, I had an interview in London and arranged to stay with a friend in Brixton. The interview went well but later in the day came the news that 10 Downing Street had been attacked by an IRA mortar. Mobile phones being as rare as they were huge in those days, I found myself having to wait in one of the lines that trailed from every phone box. My friend explained, "I think everybody's phoning home to say they're ok". That evening, he. I and another friend went to his flat in the middle of Brixton High Street, kicking up the snow that had emptied the thoroughfare of cars. Since all of us had lived for some time in Italy, this is the song we sung:
7 - Flying machines in pieces
This is such a video of James Taylor's Fire and Rain, which is about, in part, the suicide of his fried Suzanne Schnerr, whom he'd met while both of them were hospitalised for addiction to heroin. "Flying Machine" was the name of his first band; but the line "flying machines in pieces on the ground" is about more than the breakup of a musical unit, but I wonder if. when Taylor sings "Susanne the plans they made put an end to you" (my italics) he's running from the couple's co-dependency. But. counterintuitively, I can see a better case for the use of prescribed pharmaceutical diamorphine (heroin) under strictly controlled than for legalisation of cannabis, because we cannot halt supply of heroin within our own borders. The thing is, cannabis-legalisation site UKCIA (offline at the moment) has made a case for legalisation of weed as a gateway to legalisation of just about every illegal drug. Having been a drugs-worker, I hope this never happens; I'd hate the misery I saw in the needle-exchange to become commonplace.
In 2002, Nick Clegg, now leader of the Liberal Democrats, wrote an article about a school trip to Germany:
A boy called Adrian started it. He shouted from the back of the coach, "we own your country, we won the war". Other boys tittered. One put a finger to his upper lip - the traditional British schoolyard designation for Hitler's moustache - threw his arm out in a Nazi salute, and goose-stepped down the bus aisle. Soon there was a cascade of sneering jokes, most delivered in 'Allo 'Allo German accents.
I was shocked by his ignorance. Britain was indeed on the winning side of WWII and was a major and heroic player, but to baldly assert that "Britain won the war" is as disingenuous as is baldly asserting that Germany lost it. We must never forget the key role that Britain played in defeating the Nazis (who were by no means synonymous with Germany), but it is salutary to remember that, on the eve of the Pearl Harbour attacks on December 7, 1941, Britain was losing, and Winston Churchill had authorised the distribution of bayonets with a poster campaign saying "at least you can take one with you".
As it happens, historian Colin Heaton concluded in Night Fighters that had Britain been conquered, America would have eventually had confront Hitler's contagious monomania - but Britain would have been a much changed place. Thank God that never happened.
Rector Pellegrina wasn't quite convinced when I confessed a guilty pleasure in heavy metal. I hope this video about the Battle of Britain - by an RAF composed of 10% Polish pilotry - will give her cause to reconsider.
5 - Flying Sorcery
Al Stewart merged his twin loves of flying and history for this song from his classic Year of the Cat album. An article on his website explains the context of the lyrics, from Amy Johnson, to the biplanes called Faith, Hope and Charity which defended the George Cross island of Malta and the double meaning of the Flying Circus. Enjoy this footage of him singing in Cambridge's namesake town in Massachussetts.
4 - Flying for me
John Denver was a founder of the "citizen in space" project and was even considered for the honour, but was pipped at the post by Christa McAuliffe, a secondary/high school teacher who had worked in Washington DC before moving to Concord in New Hampshire. Denver recollected that on the morning of January 28 1986 his adopted son Zac phoned him and told him to put the TV on, any station: there was the Challenger disaster, inspiring him to write:
She was flying for me She was flying for every one She was flying to see a brighter day for each and every one She gave us her light She gave us her spirit and all she can be She was flying for me
3 - Abide in His shadow for life
We had a discussion on hymns at our annual church meeting recently - you know the sort, that can quickly degenerate into an "old=Good" vs "New=Better" argument all too quickly. It was left to our venerable and classically-trained organist to point out that while traditions need maintaining, some new hymns are beautiful. One of these, I think, is Fr Michael Joncas' On Eagles' Wings, based on Psalm 91 and Isaiah 40:31. Given that John Smeaton, director of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children, has been correcting misleading Government advice on sexual education and abortion, I think it's appropriate that this video of the song performed by Angela Birkhead-Flight is dedicated to "all babies who have died prematurely due to abortion, miscarriage or other means".
2 - Icarus
Although Kansas sung a song specifically about Icarus, another one - Carry On my Wayward son - seems to be a more meditative take on the sublime fall of the son of Daedalus, the craftsman who gave a ball of yarn to Ariadne so she could guide herself and Theseus out of the Minotaur's labyrinth, although there appear to be elements of Plato's allegory of the cave threaded through. Father and son, of course, strapped on wings of wax and feathers in order to escape the wrath of King Minos of Crete, but Icarus ignored a warning from Daedalus not to fly too high, and plunged into the sea when the heat melted the wax. It's often taken as a cautionary tale warning those who are over-ambitious of the danger of flying too high on constructions that should have been kept closer to earth. Just so, blogger Benedict White tells us that Gordon Brown was warned when Labour took power in 1997 that his proposed financial reforms would lead to a systemic banking failure. But he flew too high...
1 - The final attack
In the film The Dambusters we see a disconsolate crew looking back at the Möhne Dam on the Ruhr, feeling they have failed: then, suddenly, under the attacks that have been visited upon it, the dam's wall collapses and water floods out.
In reality, the crew pulling away was the fourth wave: a fifth Lancaster dropped its bouncing bomb upon the already-disintegrating wall to consolidate the damage.
This election has been a long, unpredictable slog. The Conservative party's first wave of attacks upon Gordon Brown, who is damming up the British people in a politically-correct prison where the silent majority of law-abiding people are punished the most, might be said to have happened shortly after his unelected accession to the Labour throne in June 2007, when he bottled out of an election he might have won when the David Cameron and George Osborne announced that only millionaires would pay inheritance tax. The second wave was a tsunami of activism, fuelled by both shoe-leather and blogs, cat-herding organised by the long-suffering Eric Pickles, the third a series of defeats inflicted upon the Prime Minister,Chancellor of the Exchequer and miscellaneous Ministers by David Cameron, George Osbourne and the Shadow front-bench team. The fourth is happening now, as candidates, activists and supporters work like Trojans to bring about change necessary for national survival.
The fifth wave is coming shortly, even as the dam walls crumble - illustrated by Gordon Brown's disastrous labelling of his own supporter, Gillian Duffy, as a "bigot" because she challenged the prevailing orthodoxy on immigration, imposed on people like her by rich ideologues who do not have to live in areas like hers. The fifth wave of attacks upon Labour's walls of infamy will come on May 6 and be inflicted by the voters, and I pray that the power-houses of willful negligence are swept away by the resulting inundation.
Only time for one tip this week, as I'm experimenting with the seat-of-the-pants style of editing the church mag: but what a tip it is.
Last Friday John Smeaton, director of SPUC (the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children) drews a line in the sand in response to the Government's abusive proposals for sex education in schools, which bode ill for the Christian, Jewish, Hindu and Muslim voluntary grant-aided
St Thomas More delivers SRE [sex and relationships education] through the pastoral programme in conjunction with the RE syllabus...the school explicitly recognises the reality that some young people may choose to be sexually active and, if that is the case, they need the knowledge and confidence to make an informed choice to protect themselves from pregnancy and STIs. The school nurse provides students with clear accurate information about the full range of contraception and STIs and details of local services...Pregnancy options, including abortion, are also discussed in a non-judgemental way with the RE syllabus requiring students to understand the spectrum of pro- and anti-choice views on abortion.
Smeaton provides a long list of tenets of the Roman Catholic faith that these grounds violate, after announcing that "I will be writing to St Thomas More school, asking them to confirm or deny the government's claims about what is happening in its school."
Later that day, the Telegraph's Blogs Editor, Damian Thomson forecast Bad Things for Oona Stannard, chief executive of the Catholic Education Service, which, as Smeaton identified, had helped the Government draw up its guidelines. Fr Tim Finnegan, a frequent flier on this feature, refers to both posts as he runs with the theme on his blog The Hermeneutic of Continuity. He asks how far the moral relativism will be taken:
I doubt whether you would get Healthy Schools Status if you taught that there was a range of views on the advantages of smoking tobacco; and I don't suppose there is meant to be a valid range of views on the pros and cons of nazism as a system of government. The relativism of Ed Balls and his friends who are setting the agenda for secular Britain is actually only applied to the "views" they disagree with, such as Catholic moral teaching on the sanctity of life, marriage, and the procreation of children.
The Government is mounting an attack both on one Faith and on faith. I remember minor Scottish politicians muttering about "Rome on the rates" and, as they have risen, they have dripped their poison slowly through the years in the hope that the erosion would create a cavity large enough to insert their specious moral outrage about "religion on the rates".
As John Smeaton notes, today - Tuesday 23 - is the day when Parliament is due to vote on what is effectively the nationalisation of the bodies, minds and spirits of our children.
Smeaton remarks that St Thomas More "preferred to sacrifice himself rather than put the state's demands above the church's teachings", as can be seen in the 1966 film A man for All Seasons starring, among others, Paul Scofield and Susannah York. I wonder if the Government was careful to use a school bearing his name as a Trojan horse to try to use the state's demands to extinguish the church's teaching?
David Appletree from the Jewish Internet Defence Force (@JIDF) is presently at #2 in the Shorty Awards for Politics and, in being behind a Hamas sympathiser close to the Whitehouse, finds his shoulders bearing the hopes of many whose voices are being suppressed. Visit his site to find out what to do or, if you know, cast your vote!
In an explosive post, John Smeaton, SPUC Director relates in interview with the former director of an abortion clinic in Texas who has become pro-life after assisting in an abortion procedure and discovering that pro-choice and pro-abortion are synonymous.
Pope Benedict XII has made a stinging attack on the absolutism of equality (could one say diversity-ridden?) contained in Harriet Harman's Equality Bill, but Telegraph journalist Damien Thomson says in his blog that the situation is far more complex than the Holy See against the British Government.
Virtual prelate Cranmer, in response to a letter published by Richard Dawkins in the Times, gives the waspish theophobe a long and well-thought-out reply. One wonders if Dawkins' response, should he deign to give one, will be equally coherent.
They're back...do you remember settling down in front of a Hammer film in delighted anticipation of the shivers and the cheese? The Horror Squad announces the director of Hammer redux's production of Susan Hill's short story The Woman in Black.
Life in Gaza is often presented as a struggle of Palestinians against Israelis somehow occupying their own country's territory, but Media Backspin presents a disturbing exposé of the realities for Christians in Hamastan.
Meteorologist Anthony Watts presents yet another reference on an International Panel for Climate Change paper that is somewhat less than peer-reviewed: in this case, an article from the New York Times.
The shouting's already starting for the British General Election; even so, Tim Montgomery, editor of ConervativeHome, still managed to use the camera he got for Christmas to capture some stunning images of London a it recovers from the festive period.
Fr Tim Finigan, as well as being a theologian, is a headmaster's son; here on The hermeneutic of continuity he shows where US President Barack Obama gave hostages to fortune while delivering a Christmas address to a group of children.
This one's just in: David Appletree runs JIDF, the Jewish Internet Force, which monitors and fights hatred of Jews on the Web - including on established sites like Facebook and YouTube which, if you're not aware of the extent of antisemitism on cyberspace, evince malevolence on a stunning level. He's just released a Bulletin of Jew Hatred for December 2009.
Interested in puzzles of all sorts? Here's the best puzzles of 2009 from puzzles.com!
Great Britain isn't the only country facing elections this year. John Smeaton, SPUC Director outlines the main points of a pro-life catechism produced by the Filipino Bishops' Conference for the country's forthcoming poll that provides pertinent points for people concerned about attacks on the value of human life everywhere.
It's easy to recognise an internet scam when you're looking at an email offering you $5m if you send your bank details to Nigeria, but it can be salutory to remind oneself of how subtle these tricks are coming. allfacebook.com sets out 5 tricks currently popular with scammers on Facebook.
Finally, the limits of "justified personal attack" in cyberspace are tested, reveals Will Heaven, as the Twitter #Kerryout campaign to oust Labour's "Twitter Tzar" Kerry McCarthy continues unabated. It will be interesting if, less than a year after the party commissioned Derek Draper and Damien McBride to smear, among others, Tory Party leader David Cameron and his wife Samantha in the shadow of the death of their infant son, the people's party appeals to morality.
The ebullition having subsided I have drank off the potion, and my transformation into a popular-culture blogger carries on apace, although I'm working tomorrow therefore the potion's nothing stronger than a rather weak cup of tea. So I'm kicking off a new series of posts, due to run most Tuesdays, looking at different blogs. I'm starting with stuff (mostly) from blogs on my blogroll, so there's a lot of emphasis on the seasonal events that have just happened. (So I've got the top tips, but having been too hooked on the Christmastime TV schedule, specifically Sister Act 2 and Day of the Triffids, I've just waved goodbye to Tuesday!)
The first link however, has only a tenuous connection with Christmas, in that its subject penned a best-selling Christmas song. I'm not a big fan of the man who wrote Working Class Hero while a millionaire living in a Home Counties mansion, so my jaw hit the floor when I read a post by John Smeaton, director of SPUC (Society for the Protection of Unborn Children), who's found footage where Lennon and Yoko Ono reveal their belief that overpopulation is "a myth". This was 1972, when Ehrlich's The Population Bomb had whole governments shaking in their boots, so I must (reluctantly) give a hat-tip to Dr Winston O' Boogie. And how well-done of John to find the clip.
The inspiration for this feature is Iain Dale's Daley Dozen. The patron saint of political bloggers is also a contributor to Conservative History Journal, whoser Christmas blog is about Dickens; not the ubiquitous Christmas Carol, but the Christmas scene from The Pickwick Papers.
Linda of Don't Poke the Baby is a photographer and Roman Catholic home-schooling Mom living in the US, and a strong pro-lifer; her blog is a valuable and fascinating record of life in the southern States - brilliant family pics in this one! (The pic to the right is from her blog header and is of a pro-life gathering in Washington DC.)
Risa from Isramom returned to the US from Israel to celebrate Chanukah, and posts some super pics of a white Christmas in New Jersey and New York, including the "world's largest menorah".
The Rt Revd David Thompson of the Anglican Diocese of Ely (which includes Cambridge) meditates on the martyrdom of St Thomas Becket, 12th-century Archbishop of Canterbury, assassinated by four knights who arguably misinterpreted Henry II's cri-de-cœur to be rid of the turbulent priest. WARNING: Edward Grim's contemporary account, which is part of the post, is the stuff of nightmares.
Fr Tim Finigan of The Hermeneutic of Continuity is a Parish Priest and lecturer in Sacramental Theology who practices Mass in the Tridentine Rite (said in Latin with the priest and congregation facing the same way). Here he discusses a section of the Pope's Christmas sermon about the precedence of the liturgy in Christian life. There's some sad news in the comments: the death of David Taylor MP of the Labour Party, on of the staunchest pro-lifers in Parliament.
This is PR consultant and writer Ellee Seymour on memories of a very special Nativity service in Wicken, a nearby Old Fen.
Straying from my blogroll, I've just viewed a tweet from Revd Bosco Peters, who posted a link to buzzmarketing daily's post on the most important tweets of the year - including a tweet from space, one from Barack Obama and, of course the famous pic of Flight 1549 lying in the Hudson after being successfully ditched by pilot Chesley Sullenberger; Twitter had arrived with a bang, and the internet was changed forever.
Penultimately, Yasin Akgun writes on The Conservative Blog (which is, confusingly, about conservatism with a small "c") about the possibility of David Cameron, leader of the Conservative Party, considering the "nuclear option" should a hung Parliament - in which no party has a majority - occur in next year's British general election, and another possibility: that Labour, running on ideology in the absence of ideas, may be tempted to rig with the vote.
And lastly, here's Cameron himself with his New Year message, on the blog of the virtual prelate Cranmer.
The Draughty Old Fen, Cambridgeshire, United Kingdom
An incurable old cyber-grumpy, I like good music, cats, bacon sarnies and anything to do with Terry Wogan. Raining on ideological parades is the cream in the coffee.
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This is a photo of Maxima at the Cambridge Folk Festival, where there was an unofficial hat competition. She's showing off her new henna tattoo and her hat. As well as the ACROSS badge, I'd like to draw your attention to the little silver feet just to the right of her ear, wedged between the "£1" badge and the part-cut-off Glen Michael's Cartoon Cavalcade badge. These are the famous SPUC Precious Feet, depicting the actual size of an unborn baby's feet at ten weeks. Some things get everywhere, don't they?
