Rating 5 out of 5 (Extraordinarily platitudinous)

The Catholic Church in Ireland, an early adopter of faith based social services, really is most awfully embarrassed today. The systematic and endemic emotional, physical and sexual abuse of children over a period of many decades is really quite unseemly. All this done in the name of Jesus, who loved little children, even when his disciples wanted to beat them up, a tradition that seems to have continued to this day. To the thousands of victims of these sadistic, predatory, priests, monks and nuns, I'd just like to say, Jesus will be having a jolly good cry about all of this.

Let's not forget, however, that the rest of the Christian Church is nearly as bad. In fact the whole church is guilty of mentally abusing children. Our reputation is being so terribly damaged by these continuing scandals that some parents won't trust us with there children, even when we where a nice black frock.

And abuse of children doesn't stop there. Much of the failure of Social Work departments is down to stretched resources; resources that you're unwilling to fund through higher taxes. So violent sexual abuse of children is in fact your fault, you evil, uncaring bastards. While you're all idly standing by watching children being raped, the Church has been at the forefront of trying to cuddle and make up with it's victims. As the Most Reverend, and very nearly Eminent, Vincent Nichols points out, that takes real courage.

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I just want to add my voice to the ever increasing chorus of bloggers offering their support for Simon Singh.

If the British Chiropractic Association could substantiate their claims then they would do so in the medical journals. The fact that they have chosen the blunt instrument of British libel law says everything you need to know about the strength of their evidence.

Regardless of the outcome of the case, and regardless of the wider impact for the law of libel, I think the BCA have shot themselves in the foot. Their claims are now being poured over in meticulous detail by sceptics world wide. The word is getting out that Chiropracty has very little supporting scientific evidence. They've probably done their organisation and their members, a huge disservice.

Good. I hate bullies, especially those who try to bully those who tell the truth.

Rating 3 out of 5 (Fairly platitudinous)

I must say it's really nice to see everyone so outraged over MPs' expenses. The Hindu Puranas, a kind of Indian Bible, but better, is full of bull. One story tells of a nice, big, magnificent, holy bull, the kind of animal you can really adore and worship, not something grubby like an earthworm, which is not at all admirable. This fantastic, glorious, proud bull had three of its legs chopped off. The fine, worthy animal represents "Dharma", or "correct path". I say "Dharma" because this word is imbued with exotic eastern mysticism, whereas "correct path" is not. The three missing legs represent compassion, simplicity and purity, which you don't get any of in modern Britain The great, super, lovely bull hopped proudly on the one remaining leg: truth, or "sat", another word steeped in the glamour and romance of the mysterious orient, and not boring like "truth".

The clamour about MPs' behaviour shows that Britain still understand the meaning of truth, or "sat". Several little MPs have been helping themselves to public funds. When the people asked one MP, "Did you take £18,000 to buy some bookshelves for your castle in Scotland?", the MP replied, "Yes, now bugger off you tiresome little pleb, don't you know I have a perfect right to your money?" They will not return as glorious one legged bulls, but as lowly earthworms.

Now that Britain has discovered truth, or "sat", maybe it will discover compassion, simplicity and purity.

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Rating 4 out of 5 (Highly platitudinous)

Someone bought me some petrol at a petrol station in America. That was really nice of him. Many world religions emphasise that you should be really nice. I'm not going to tell you which religions don't emphasise being really nice, that would be rude. Jesus went further. He said you should be really nice and you should wash people's feet. "Do as I have done to you," He said, so that would be expulsion from the Garden of Eden, global flooding, eternal damnation, and if you're a non Jewish middle eastern tribe, possible genocide.

Secular people don't believe in being nice. They want to be horrid all the time and never do anything charitable or friendly. Its European election time. Being secular, most people vote for parties based on their own selfish self interest. They never vote for, say, socialist parties whose very existence is predicated on the redistribution of wealth. But what if people were to vote for nice, religious parties? Then we might have a nice European Union instead of the current horrid one. We'd have a whole Europe full of people giving free petrol to one another. This goes way beyond mere altruism, which by definition is "unselfish regard for or devotion to the welfare of others", and becomes unselfish regard for or devotion to the welfare of others.

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Rating 5 out of 5 (Extraordinarily platitudinous)

It has been reported that Scotland is dragging its feet on the creation of shared campus schools. There are of course many issues to be resolved in the creation of such schools which I shall come to shortly.

Shared campus schools are based on the ridiculous premise that separating Catholic children from everyone else from the age of 5 and teaching them that their religion is superior to all the other, wrong, religions, has in some ill defined way been a contributory factor in the ongoing sectarianism in Scotland. In fact nothing could be further from the truth. We are not sectarian at all. It is entirely the fault of the Protestants for being so bigoted. We are simply exercising our right to indoctrinate our own children in our own beliefs. What would you expect us to do - wait until they reach an age where they can make their own decisions? That's preposterous, it would be far too late to indoctrinate them then. We must have them as young as possible.

Now onto some of the difficulties in creating shared campus schools. As we have explained before, it is extremely important that we have separate entrances, staff facilities and toilets for all Catholic teachers. It is bad enough that they have to participate in this PC madness, without having to endure Protestant smells, Protestant ploppy sounds and, worst of all, Protestant germs. How are we expected to maintain the high moral ethos that other, Protestant, schools do not have if our teachers bottoms are contaminated by Protestant bacteria? We have received assurances from the Scottish Executive that all Protestant teacher toilets will be built downwind of their morally superior, Catholic equivalents. We will insist that these assurances continue to be adhered to lest any of our Catholic teachers need endure a sniff of Protestantism.

We do of course share the Executive's desire to eliminate the divisions that have sadly grown up between Catholics and Protestants in Scotland. We look forward to the day when sectarianism and bigotry have been abandoned by Protestants and to that end we are happy to offer our support to further shared campus schools. We ask only that 30 foot razor wire fences separate all pupils and teachers from the less holy, Protestant half of the campus.

May the peace and love of Our Lord Jesus Christ go with you, even if you are a Protestant.

Rating 4 out of 5 (Highly platitudinous)

Liberals aren't happy with President Obama's decision to withhold more holiday snaps from Abu Ghraib, but then nothing ever makes liberals happy so let's just ignore them. What's important now is that we have a proper Christian War in Afghanistan. After all, the Taliban are fighting the evil Muslim way, so we should fight in a nice Christian way, killing and maiming people according to well established Christian precedents. As Christians, we should only kill bad people. They're the ones with large hats bearing the words "I am a bad person" on them. Even then, we must make it absolutely clear to them that we're doing it for their own good. When the good people of Afghanistan see how scrupulously careful we Christians are, they'll come flocking to our support. "Please bomb our country some more," they'll say.

Prisoners, bad people that we haven't managed to kill yet, must be treated the Christian way too. This means hushing up the evidence since no good would come of it. It would only upset people. Damn pinko, commie, liberals, with their "principles" and talk of "justice". These are the principles we stand for: to cast aside our principles as soon as they make combat operations more difficult, the proper, principled, Christian way.

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Rating 4 out of 5 (Highly platitudinous)

For a change, I thought I'd include a quote from the bible. "Judge not lest ye be judged." What could this possibly mean, I hear you ask? Let me explain. With all the furore over MPs' expenses, it's easy to point fingers and call them all a collection of crooks, an assembly of dishonourable members, a band of benefit cheats, a conclave of pilfering, racketeering, robbing, devious, swindling, dishonest, greedy, knavish, shameless, two faced villains. But before we get carried away, let's remember our own expenses fiddling, because we all do it, don't we? I know I do. You should see the expense claims that the BBC swallows when I hand them in. Which of us has not claimed for the odd chandelier, or having our moat cleaned, or having one's swimming pool repaired? Who amongst us has never told the Inland Revenue one thing and the House of Commons another so that we could both claim the maximum in expenses, and make a tax free profit from a property sale? And if you're too poor to have a second home, or can't have one provided for you at other's expense, if you did, wouldn't you play the system to get as much as you possibly could out of it? Again I know I would.

This is where my finely tuned and superior moral sense comes into play, for I can see parallels between MPs' behaviour and ordinary people's crookedness, parallels that probably escape those who are not as highly ethically developed as myself. If one pays one's gardener or other servants in cash, without informing the revenue, is one not as guilty of defrauding the state as MPs? Apart from the fact that they have six figure incomes and the gardener gets paid a pittance, apart from the fact that you are paying your own money and they're squandering other people's, apart from the fact that they're paid to devise and uphold the law of the land, apart from the fact that they're a bunch of hypocrites insisting that everyone else follows strict rules while turning a blind eye to their own abuses, apart from all that the two cases are exactly the same. Never thought of that, did you?

For this reason, I have resolved to actually tell the truth for once in this year's tax return. I will tell them everything. Instead of the usual bunch of bull***t, I'll tell them about all my income, all my assets and all my investments. That way, I can hold my head up high, knowing that, for this year at least, I'm more moral than an MP.

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Rating 4 out of 5 (Highly platitudinous)

The Pope is leaving Jerusalem. Well thank Allah for that. Jerusalem, Judaism's holiest city, one of Christianity's holiest cities, and Islam's 874'th holiest city, is just a little bit less holy due to the constant battle between all the people who hold it so holy. Jerusalem, the holy city, blessed by having not one, but three of the world's best religions constantly fighting over it.

We've all been watching the Pope all week, eagerly waiting for him to make his latest gaff and give us the chance to be righteously outraged. Unfortunately he's been on very poor form. Jerusalem offers no end of opportunities to be undiplomatic but rather disappointingly, His Holiness didn't put his foot in any of the traps. Today he visits the Church of the Holy Sepulchre where he'll be welcomed as a fellow brother in Christ by representatives of the Greek Orthodox, Armenian Apostolic, Roman Catholic, Coptic Orthodox, Ethiopian Orthodox and Syriac Orthodox churches, who all run different bits of the great church, and only occasionally come to blows with one another.

The pope is of course correct in his belief in Jesus and the Virgin Mary. Unfortunately, the rest of his beliefs are just completely loopy. I mean, thinking Jesus was Allah? What sort of nutter believes crazy things like that? Phew, what a loony!

I do sympathise with him though. No, honestly I do (Bwahahahaha!!!). And there's really no need to raise that ridiculous old taunt about him being a member of the Hitler Youth. No need to mention it at all on the country's flagship news and current affairs programme. I'm not even going to allude to it in the slightest. Most unedifying to refer to it. Very unfair. Very poor taste talking about his membership of a Nazi teen fan club. Put it completely out of your mind. After all, we've all made these little slips in the past, haven't we?

Er, that's it. I'm finished now...

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Inspired by Stonyground's comment on the last thread, I went to the Wake up to Wogan website and listened to the last five Pause For Thoughts, before realising that they were available as transcripts. (I'm trying hard not to picture the thought of me waking up to Wogan.) Anyway, I wish I hadn't. They're like TFTD on a couch. Here goes...

Isn't modern medicine just fantastic? Aren't we lucky God created doctors for us? Wasn't that nice of him?

The Pope's in Jerusalem. He prayed that Christianity, Islam and Judaism, the three best religions, would just learn to get along. Amazingly, for some reason they don't. The fact that no two religions have ever gotten along shouldn't make us despondent. It's surely possible. Oh, and come along to see me and my little show at the Albert Hall in June, we've got some fantastic acts lined up for you...

The Pope reminds me of Nazi death camps. They were terrible too. But we so often forget all the good things that came from the death camps, like all the great books from the survivors. Victor Frankl couldn't have written such a great book, inspired as he was by a prayer from the Hebrew scriptures found in the rags he was forced to wear. Life goes on and life teaches us wisdom, like how to be inspired by Nazi death camps.

It's Christian Aid week. Remember, even in the recession, there are still people worse off than you. Please give generously. Watch for the envelope through your door. [Ed. They seem to have missed me, although I have had an increase in the number of Halal Pizza leaflets.]

We're all sinners, yes even you. [Ed. Wrapped up in bits of Pride and Prejudice and how not to send hasty emails.]


Stonyground, if you inspire me again like that, you'll be banned.

Rating 3 out of 5 (Fairly platitudinous)

Once a month we meet in our church and discuss world affairs. We discuss wars, politics, disasters, misfortune and injustice. Then we say how terrible it all is, shocking, awful, disgusting, depressing. We wring our hands and cross our foreheads in concern. Then we decide what we can do about it. The answer is invariably nothing, so we talk to the Invisible Magic Friend.

"Dear Invisible Magic Friend, who art so really, really big, and definitely capable of doing anything thou wantest, take pity on these, thy poor other people that we've talked about this evening. We don't know why you've chosen to make their lives so miserable, but, loving them so infinitely more than we do, if you could, please, please, please consider the possibility of making them just a tiny little bit less miserable, unless it means visiting your miserableness on us instead, we'd be ever so grateful."

Occasionally, we do manage to stir up a letter writing campaign and actually get things done. I've even heard that there are some people without an Invisible Magic Friend who do this too, although I can't think why. It's small things like this that can make a big difference to someone's life, but mostly we just hand it over to the Invisible Magic Friend who's so much better at dealing with the bigger issues. He always listens carefully to everything we ask for, before saying no. Some cynics criticise this on the rather feeble premise that it doesn't actually work, but that misses the point. The point is that it's all terribly spiritual, it makes us feel better. At least we're trying. Just because it's never worked before is no reason to give up. It might work one day, and then who's going to look silly?

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