The realest of turkeys

I hadn't even bothered blogging about the Glasgow East by-election because it looked like such a shoo-in for Labour that it wasn't that interesting. Or so I thought... and then the SNP went and won the damn thing.

Make no mistake, this is a turkey as real as they come for Nu Labor. The only way Gordon Brown can survive is if no-one wants to take him on in a leadership contest because he's got the Labour party and the government into such bad shape that taking over the election would be a poisoned chalice. The putative challengers will think: don't risk it now, take our chances after the election, in opposition. The problem with that strategy, of course, is that if Labour gets wiped out at the election then the next Labour leader will be in a William Hague 1997-style situation, Hardly appealing.

At the end of the day it needs someone with enough grit to step up to the plate before Christmas. In my view, the only contender who would stand even a reasonable chance of performing well in the next election would be Alan Johnson. But I don't think he actually wants to do it. Still, if John Major did the job once then it's not exactly off-limits to anybody.

The best thing for Labour would be if Gordon could somehow resign on ill health grounds, or to spend more time with his family. Or something. That would provide a fresh start without someone having to knife him in the back. But the clean handover is unlikely, and so it looks increasingly likely that he will indeed be deposed. But... by whom?

The most interesting thing to come out of the Haltemprice & Howden by-election

I haven't bothered to post anything in particular about the David Davis by-election as the results were stultifyingly boring. About the best you can say about it is that the Greens finished in second place. The only really interesting thing that happened was when a friend of mine decided to run a sweepstake on the candidate that would end up with the least number of votes (which he went on to win. Very suspicious!)

However I did find one useful side product from the campaign - a 2 hour 53 minute lecture by David Icke, available on the website of something called Edge Media TV.

I've just watched 45 minutes of this and it's certainly an impressive public speaking performance. If you are sympathetic to Icke's conspiracy theory schtick, it's a very good (if somewhat long) outline of where his thinking's at nowadays. If you think he's talking total balls, then it's one of the greatest sustained comedy efforts you are likely to see (complete with bizarre micro-second jump cuts to an alternative camera angle - what's going on?) Either way, you can't lose.

Edge Media TV broadcasts on Sky Channel 211 and I'd love to tell you more about what the rest of their schedule is, but I can't pay money for something owned by Rupert Murdoch, so I can't.

Wanna be a bigoted reactionary? Better go hide in the church then.

Firstly people, sorry for the infrequency of posting at the moment. Having gone self employed I find that many waking moments are spent trying to do various stuff I am being paid for, and this blog gets filed under the 'remainder', if you like. Nonetheless Friday evening often presents an opportunity. For the next few weeks I'm gonna use a reasonably serious end-of-week post as an opportunity to catch up on big issues that have been bugging me lately, and intersperse that with short mid-week bursts of comedy wherever possible.

I'm gonna post on religion this week - not my usual topic of conversation, for sure, as a reasonably committed atheist (although not in the rabid 'anyone with religious sensibilities is a dribbling imbecile' Richard Dawkins camp). Nonetheless I did venture onto this fertile new territory a couple of months back to suggest that Tony Blair was a twat, and I'd now like to take the opportunity to give the good ol' C of E some advice.

For the benefit of anyone not from the UK reading this (well you never know), in Britain (well 'England' actually) the official religion (i.e. established church) is the Church of England. Started in bizarre circumstances (King Henry VIII wanted a divorce and the Pope refused so Henry said "OK, see ya"), it is a "broad church" in a very real sense - encompassing all sorts of punters including die-hard 'Anglo-Catholics' , radical quasi-Marxists and tub-thumping evangelicals plus just about every other combination.

The C of E is now facing a possible 'schism' because one group - call them the 'modernisers' - want women to be allowed to become bishops (they're already allowed to be priests) and another group - let's call them the 'reactionaries' (biased language, but then I am biased, so let's have cards on the table here) think they shouldn't be allowed. What's more, the reactionaries want to be allowed to have a special 'male-only' bishop category so that any of them who wants to opt out of worshipping under a female bishop should be allowed to do so.

What's amazing about stuff like this is that the reactionaries' stance is so obviously sexist that it's amazing it's even legal under human rights legislation. If any secular group wanted to mount a campaign in favour of women being debarred from taking a certain type of job, they'd be laughed out of court. But because this is a religious grouping, they're allowed to get away with it.

It's the same with the reactionaries' stance on homosexuality. Their anti-gay stance would be indefensible, indeed would have overtones of fascism, if it came from a non-religious source. But because they are religious, their arguments are seen as somehow defensible - even though their only justification is from The Bible, a book which no-one outside the Christian faith would accept as an authoritative source, and even within the Christian faith there is no agreement whatsoever on its correct interpretation.

The logical conclusion to draw from this is that if you want to be a right-wing fascistic misanthrope, go hide out in the C of E - because the modernisers haven't got the guts (or, more charitably, they pity you too much) to kick you out and expose you for what you are - miserable scum. Of course even if they do kick you out, you have several other options:

• start your own non-aligned church.
• Join the Roman Catholic church (which is even more hardline reactionary on this than most of the C of E traditionalists, and where the modernisers are in a far weaker position since the Pope runs the thing like the Soviet Union circa 1950).
  
• join another religion that has a proportion of homophobics and misogynists who get themselves taken seriously (radical Islam and orthodox Judaism spring to mind, although it can be difficult to get into the latter unless you have the correct ethnic background).
  
• Start your own religion. Worked very well for L Ron Hubbard for example...

So, reactionaries of the Anglican communion, don't feel too down that the Synod voted for women bishops on Tuesday. Because of society's remarkable tolerance towards irrational hatred of gays and women - as long as it is claimed to be religiously motivated - you have many alternative hiding places.

Johnson deserves to be extended: religion, as well as patriotism, is the last refuge of the scoundrel.