Author Archives: Elizaphanian

About Elizaphanian

Rector of West Mersea

busy busy busy

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No TBTM today – but I love this quote from +Alan: “And the Atheism? It sounds as though God views atheism as a harmless eccentricity, which probably doesn’t really exist as much as people think, infinitely better than pretending to believe, which is a ruddy menace…”

Some places that predicted the financial crisis

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Just for the record, there were several places that predicted the present economic crisis, starting from a point many years ago. Some just in general terms, but some in very specific terms. These are some of the ones that I read, but I’m sure there are others.

Nouriel Roubini
Financial Armageddon
The Automatic Earth
Clusterf**k Nation
Global Guerrillas
Club Orlov
Ann Pettifor
And, in general terms (eg here) yours truly.

So when someone in the mainstream media (or Gordon Brown) says ‘nobody predicted this’ you’ll be able to say that actually, people did predict it, it was foreseeable, it’s just that you’re incompetent…

TBTM20090122

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Can you imagine Elijah being prosecuted for mocking the prophets of Baal? Does not the assertion of the supremacy of one God over the pantheon of others necessitate the humiliation of these false gods and idols? Is not the very choice to follow one particular faith over another an act of ‘discrimination’? Islam is not a race, but a religio-political ideology. And now it appears that a Dutch MP – a citizen of the EU – may be prosecuted for daring to criticise an ideology. This decision will have every member of the BNP wringing their hands with glee, and leave every libertarian of moderate political persuasion profoundly perplexed. Doubtless no British MP will dare to comment on this story at all (not even those who profess to be immensely concerned about the erosion of liberties) for fear of inciting the BNP to excessive gloating or of offending the UK’s Muslim population and thereby losing their votes with two elections imminent.

Are newspaper articles ‘telephoned in’?

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I ask after reading this mildly interesting article about U2 in the Daily Telegraph.

There are two glaring errors in it for a reader: ‘pedalling’ when it should be ‘peddling’, and ‘reign’ when it should be ‘rein’. Two things: a) spell-checkers wouldn’t have picked this up, and b) was the article dictated? I can’t believe the Telegraph would employ someone whose grasp of the English language was that poor (or maybe I’m naive on that one) but I can imagine that they employ typists who wouldn’t necessarily pick up exactly what the writer was trying to say. (Of course, the ‘typists’ may simply be electronic ones.)

Perhaps I’m just having another Victor Meldrew moment.