Bel is thinking

The Telegraph is reporting that Jerry Falwell, the controversial American preacher, has died.

I didn’t agree with much of what he preached. As Christians, we agreed on the basics; the Lordship of Jesus, the inerrancy of scripture, and the doctrine of salvation.

On other issues, he took what some would regard as an extreme view, and his harsher comments caused a lot of pain to many. Some of the things he said gave  a negative impression of Christianity, but in that respect, he is not alone. It is in human nature to fall short of the requirements of religion. That is, after all, the whole point of grace.

The idea behind Christianity is that we are not perfect, and we all need the grace and forgiveness of God. We are therefore not in a position to judge others, seeing as we are equally in need of mercy. Many times Falwell forgot this basic truth, and the name of Christianity suffered as a result.

That aside, he was a man of principle and of conviction. May his soul rest in peace.

Jackie Ashley in brutal form in the Guardian today. She is unhappy that Alan Johnson, a candidate for the deputy leadership of the Labour party, is boasting of the support of John Prescott:

So it seems obvious that the last thing the Labour party needs is a blokeish deputy leader who is proud to claim endorsement from the party’s original male chauvinist pig. John Prescott, remember, is the man who just a short while ago was all over the newspapers with his secretary’s legs round his neck. His view of women is that they are most useful when on their knees under a desk, “servicing” an important man who can barely be bothered to look up from his papers. John Prescott is worse than a joke, he’s a disgrace, and why Alan Johnson wants to boast that he is the natural successor to Prescott mystifies me.

Jackie, you may be mystified, but it is clear as crystal to me. Alan Johnson is happy to boast of Prescott’s support, because he (Johnson) is not really talking to us, the general public. Amongst the people whose votes he wants (eg the unions), Prescott’s support counts for something. What then does he care if the general public regard Prescott with loathing? It’s not our votes he wants. We have no value to him right now.

Jackie Ashley obviously has not realised that the forthcoming Labour leadership and deputy leadership elections are not about the general public. Our views don’t matter. If they did, someone credible within the Labour party would have challenged Gordon Brown before now. And as for the deputy leadership, all that the candidates are concerned about is getting into office. Short of the devil himself, they will boast of the backing of anyone, so long as it proves useful.

The move to my new server has taken place, and I seem to have lost one post, entitled ‘Watching Gordon Brown’. That was only to be expected, as it was a post I wrote after I had executed the move. I will republish the missing post, and paste in the comments that were made under it. As I had expected to lose the post, I saved the comments in Notepad.

Thank you to everyone who helped in moving my blog to the new host, in particular my regular readers, Tony and dolbyn, as well as Daniel from the excellent Daily Blog Tips blog.

UPDATE. The comments are not loading properly, and I am working on it right now.

UPDATE 2. Comments and permalinks fixed now. I had to update my permalink structure, so it’s all working well now.

If you subscribe using Live Bookmarks, they may not work. Perhaps better to re-subscribe? Thank you. Actually, scratch that. I am told that this is a feed problem. Because the dns has not updated, it is trying to load the site from the old server. Live Bookmarks subscribers need not do anything. The problem should fix itself when the dns resolves to the new server.

Also, if you notice anything that’s not working right with the blog, kindly leave a comment or email me.

When I hover my cursor over a link, I should get some information at the bottom of the screen about where that link is going to, such as the name of the target website etc. As of today, it has stopped happening in Firefox. I hover the cursor over a link, and nothing! No information at the bottom of the screen. I don’t like this, because I like to know what a link is pointing to before I go there. Does anyone have any ideas as to how I can fix this?

It’s working fine in Internet Explorer, but that is no way near enough incentive for me to switch to IE.

UPDATE. Kindly disregard, I seem to have fixed it somehow.

Peter Hain on Sky News this morning arguing in favour of a Gordon Brown coronation. Apparently, Brown towers over everyone in the party and is the only choice for leader.

Interesting. I still remember a Question Time appearance by Hain in 2003, shortly after Michael Howard assumed leadership of the Conservative Party without a contest. On that occasion, Hain sneeringly ridiculed the lack of a leadership election, referring to it as a ‘Saddam Hussein-style’ election. No such words from him on this occasion.

My hosting provider has decided to go out of business, so I am in the process of moving this blog to a new host. The domain name remains unchanged, so you won’t need to update links or any such thing. I am praying for all to go well, so there should be uninterrupted service. I have backed up everything to be on the safe side.

I’m rolling up my sleeves and getting to work now, transferring the blog. If anyone has any tips on MySQL or phpMyAdmin, I’d be grateful if you could email them to me. Here’s praying for success.

UPDATE. Warning, technical post alert.

(9 May 2007; 3.42am.) Move to new server hasn’t yet taken place. I ftp’d my files to the new server, created a new database, imported the old database to the new server, etc. I had a preview on the temporary url thingy and while all the styles etc have fed through, I am getting a 404 and the blog content (ie posts and comments) is not showing up. My feeling is that it is something to do with the database. I have edited the wp-config file so that it contains my new MySQL database name and password, etc. I can’t think of what else I have left out. Bedtime now. I shall take another look tomorrow. If anyone has any ideas, please email me.

(Normal discussion about politics etc to resume shortly. I have to first make sure that this blog has a roof over its head.)

Sorry it’s been a bit quiet here. I’ve been working hard elsewhere, but things are returning to normal now. Expect blogging to resume in earnest shortly.

Something very wrong with this proposal:

Travel restrictions could be imposed by America on 800,000 British citizens of Pakistani origin because of concerns about terrorism, it emerged yesterday.

The move has been prompted by fears that British Muslim men were behind several major bomb plots. 

I sincerely hope the Government do the right thing and reject this move, even if it means abandoning the visa waiver scheme altogether.

Once a person has acquired British citizenship, whether by birth, marriage, or any other way, that is all that matters. As far as the visa waiver scheme is concerned, the US Government is not entitled to look behind the passport and impose restrictions based on who is carrying it. That is tantamount to creating different categories of British citizens, and we should not allow that.

Under our law, every British citizen is entitled to the same rights that attend upon citizenship. We should never accept a situation that creates a dividing line between our people, that deems some holders of the passport to be somehow less worthy than others.

The Telegraph reports that the Foreign Office is uneasy about the proposal, with a spokesman stating that:

“The Muslim community, including those of Pakistani origin, are an important part of our society and we would oppose strongly any proposal to single them out in response to the actions of terrorists”.

All well and good, but that is not the point. We should resist this proposal, not because the muslim community “are an important part of our society”, but because if they are British, they are entitled to the same rights and privileges as anyone else. In other words, even if they were an unimportant and insignificant part of our society, so long as they meet the citizenship test, that should be enough.

I would advise the Foreign Office to consider carefully what is at stake here; the deliberate devaluing of our citizenship by another country. I put it as high as that.    

Over at Unity’s place, a well-argued piece in response to Tessa Jowell’s article in the Guardian on a code of conduct for blogs.

Right now, I am so fed up with this Government and its attempts to interfere in every aspect of our lives. As such, I lack the requisite energy even to comment on this crazy idea. Unity’s article gives Jowell a basic education in the nature of the internet, tackles her erroneous assumptions and (I hope) gives her plenty to think about. Highly recommended reading.