[anglicans & episcopalians] dear oh dear

Fine man, noble purpose, enormous gravitas but still - is all the paraphernalia necessary?

From U.S.A Today:

The worldwide Anglican Communion and its liberal U.S. branch, the Episcopal Church, continued [their endless dispute] Tuesday after bishops released a draft "covenant" and a "communique" intended as a roadmap to mending divisions over views of the Bible, homosexuality and other questions. But the covenant, which could take years to be refined and ratified, could be used to declare that a church is so far afield that it is no longer Anglican.

Another question, of course, is that of female clergy and in particular, bishops.

It comes down to what Christianity is:

1] Narrowly, which is how I view it, one can only use the Gospels, then the Old Testament insofar as Jesus referred to it. This gives a very humanitarian or altruistic view of the faith, with all its healing, charity and so on and doesn't actually mention homosexuals and women per se although the spirit of what was said makes comment on these;

2] Together with the Acts of the Apostles, the Paulian letters are a whole new ball game, bringing in strictures against homosexuals, women in their place and so on. This version has given Christianity its bad name, certainly in the modern era and yet the question remains of whether Paul directly spoke from G-d or whether he added a few little touches of his own, as some cursed infidels [peace not be upon them] suggest Mohammed also did.

3] Then we have the whole panoply of gobbledegook, as represented in the photograph, with its consubstantiation/transubstantiation and so on.

And what Anglicanism is:

1] Born in iniquity and conceived in sin, as nationalism, banking and the United States have also been accused of, the Church of England put a man at its head who had no claims to deification but many to expediency;

2] It became the Conservative Party at prayer. I have no problem with this in itself. I'm technically an Anglican.

Having said all this, the current dispute in the Church comes from deviating from the Word little by little, under the justification of 'modernization' and 'being relevant to our times'. There is ample scriptural evidence that the faith allows of no such thing and time has zero effect on what He asked people to do. In fact, it was stated quite clearly that mankind should 'build on the rock'.

The only problem with this is that rocks eventually erode but to take the analogy too far might be mischievous.

[new blogger] between a rock and a hard place

HELP!!!
Please?

First request: Does anyone either know of or could anyone send, to jameshigham[at]mail[dot]com, a three column New Blogger template which:

1] does not require css sheet fiddling or any sort of html construction at higher than moronic level;
2] is not Beta - this one has now superseded Beta [2006] and Beta templates aren't accepted any more;
3] is not an old Classic, widened to over 900px with an extra column tacked on but is the standard 790px width?

Second request: As if that isn't enough, does anyone have any idea how to put in:

1] "Blogging" blogrolls, such as my page and Blogpower uses;
2] codes in sidebars, such as for the quizzes people have been doing, [not in the post itself,] plus various other bits and pieces?

The issue:

1] Blogger tricked me into converting, by routing me to my site through New Blogger set-up, then informed me that ALL attached sites were also converted - no way back;
2] It's supporting my current template here under sufferance but the moment I change it [which I do frequently], I've lost my blog. I know this because I've copied my template and put it in an experimental New Blog [Mr. Badger] and it simply won't take it, with either widgets expanded or not;
3] There is only one site on the web, "Templatepanic", which supplies a usable three column in New Blogger. Gecko no longer do, Thurs, Freetemplates Inaini - they provide them but none of them work anymore in New Blogger. The one I found is the cursed Rounders with an extra column which is 995 wide [way off the screen] and though I've modified it, it's still not good.

Finally: It's a big ask, I know but I have to do something soon so please, please, kind people, if you have definitive knowledge to resolve this problem and can communicate it at technical nincompoop level, I'd appreciate it so, so much. Thank you.

[blogfocus tuesday] part two of the boy bloggers

Moustaches maketh the man, as Poirot might say.

Maintaining my image of being one brick short of a load, my dozen bloggers today are one man short of a dozen. This is part two of the boy bloggers and the girls will reappear next Sunday, merged with the boys once more. Let's get down to it:

1 Colin Campbell's perspective is always fresh and not just because of the strange place he blogs from - not so far from the City of Churches. Hanging upside down like that downunder, is it any wonder he's occasionally apoplectic, this time illustrating that sheer mindlessness is a global phenomenon:

Shopping is bad enough as it is. The thought of having employees critiquing your selection would be unbearable. Will they get self defence training as angry consumers bash them over the head with a baked bean can. You couldn't make this up if you tried.

Just don't even think about it, Coles and Woolworths.

2 Mr. Eugenides is in the master-blogging category, rarely making either an incorrect or unsupported statement. His vocabulary embellishments may be a little rich for some tastes but the substance is unerring. This is the man to shoot the breeze with on a winter's evening, whilst getting maudlin pi--ed.

If Music Trading Online can undercut the big music companies, why the hell shouldn't they? The price of recorded music remains high - though it's probably declined in real terms over the past 20 years - but if someone can buy a Coldplay CD from Hong Kong [legally], import it, and sell it on for £7, why the f--k can't EMI?

Anyone who's ever walked into a big commercial record store to browse for music will be familiar with "rare" imported CDs - the ones with the stickers on which retail for up to twice the price of a band's regular albums. They're designed to make money out of fans and "completists" who need to have every recording their favoured artist has ever released - as with my collection of rare deleted Judy Garland albums*.

*This is a joke**.

** Higham wonders.

3 Tom Paine, as anyone who has any sense knows, is a top libertarian blogger with connections you'd never fit into a book. Quiet and yet deadly, he observes and then cuts right to the heart of the matter and does it with a neat turn of phrase what's more:

The City of London is a legacy centre of excellence in an otherwise mediocre nation. It competes on a global scale, attracting talent from all over the world. It is handicapped by the poor infrastructure of London, its high costs of living and the perception (not helped by London's mayor being a fan of Castro and a supporter of terrrorists) that it is a hostile political environment. It is a filthy, unpleasant and dangerous place to work.

Operating costs are high, not because of salaries and bonuses, but because of taxes, property costs and costs of compliance with (mostly unnecessary) laws. To run a big business in the City (as anywhere in Britain) you must employ many costly drones to interface with Government and regulators and to collect taxes for the Treasury.

I wholeheartedly agree.

Eight more boy bloggers here.

[french presidency] segolene fighting rearguard action

One photo says it all. A beautiful woman appeals to the ordinary citizen for a fair chance. Trouble is, politics is cruel.

"I will be the president who will battle against youth unemployment," she told an audience of ordinary citizens on French television … She is widely seen as now seeking to revive her campaign after a series of gaffes and policy disputes. Overall, French papers agreed it was a solid but lacklustre performance, which failed to ignite enough sparks to re-start Ms Royal's campaign. Her standing in the polls has continued to slip despite a 100-point platform she unveiled on 11 February.

Opinion polls published just hours before the appearance showed less than a quarter of people intended to vote for her in the first round of ballot on 22 April. This was her worst showing since she won her party's nomination in November. Two new polls also indicate that the candidate who came third in voting intentions for the first round, Francois Bayrou of the centrist UDF party, would beat either Mr Sarkozy or Ms Royal if he made it to the run-off.

Count me in as one who admires her demeanour, her presence but sadly, that alone is not going to make her president, for these reasons:

1] She's a political lightweight with no real agenda although she's tried to rectify that. Can you see her in negotiations with North Korea and China, getting the better of them? With Cheney or the Taliban?

2] She has loopy ideas based on some sort of vague, PC, love-everyone niceness, which brings us to the next point:

3] She's too nice, too naïve. Of course she's a clever woman who knows how to get what she wants but her comment about the UMP's dirty tactics is the comment of a schoolgirl, which is really how many view her. Too pretty for power.

4] There's Sarkozy. Disliked and distrusted by many, he's still a hardened campaigner who knows where it's at. Everyone in France, deep down, knows that.

[iran] russia's bane

The Bushehr nuclear plant in southern Iran is an embarrassment for Russia. They're claiming that the project might be delayed because of non-payment for work done but as the UN Security Council deadline is due to expire on Wednesday for Iran to stop the enrichment of uranium, this may be the real reason.

Looked at strategically, would it suit Russia's book to have a nuclear power, with madmen at the button, right on her doorstep? It's bad enough having the Americans encroaching into Europe. Russia has some serious thinking and hard talking to do before half this year is out.

[warning] notice to dearieme and dsquared

Gentlemen, you are firmly in my sights and I'm collecting material. Blogfriends and readers - please help out with any juicy dearieme or dsquared snippet you've come across. Please, please send it to me - e-mail is near the top of my left sidebar. Here is a trailer from Stumbling and Mumbling, one of their regular haunts:

Surely the answer is, by raising the benefits replacement ratio (this is my big point of disagreement with your Citizen's Basic Income proposal - it means that there is, for practical purposes, a cap on the replacement ratio at quite a low level, which institutionalises this sort of power relationship).
Posted by: dsquared February 19, 2007 at 03:19 PM

"The firm pays above-average wages": the bastards - is there no trick to which these capitalist swine will not stoop? So if you take this generous offer, you might worry a bit that you might find it hard to keep this job or replace it. But experience probably suggests that a CV bearing just such a job on it is probably the best passport to another such job. 'Nothing succeeds like success' as they used to say.
Posted by: dearieme February 19, 2007 at 06:34 PM

I wonder if they ever look at this blog.