Who would like to go for a night out with these two what a laugh
So now we cant sing the hokey cokey.The latest in the stupid serious of attempts to control what people sing at football matches.
After being banned for singing bad songs some Rangers fans said we should all sing the hokey cokey but NO!! its anti catholic apparently.

This is the story in the red top Daily record


http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/2008/12/22/singing-the-hokey-cokey-could-land-football-fans-in-sectarian-bother-86908-20989183/

Tonight it will be on the BBC.

So what does this say about our country.We are small minded and stupid.Nobody has been offended because nobody has even sung the song .So now people are getting ready just in case they are offended.


Peter Kearney, a spokesman for the Catholic church in Scotland, said: "This song does have quite disturbing origins. It was devised as an attack on, and a parody of, the Mass. If there are moves to restore its more malevolent meaning then consideration should perhaps be given to its wider use."


SNP MSP Michael Matheson urged police to "take the appropriate action" against those using it to taunt Catholics.


Both these men are more stupid than I care to mention one is a press officer.Maybe he should re train so that he knows what a quite news day is and he can learn the phrase "no comment".The other is a MSP well I guess there only a few jobs he could get with that on his c.v.


I hope both of them are suitably offended if they ever read this .Which they might as I have emailed both of them to tell them how dumb they are.


I had no idea the hokey cokey was an anti catholic song until these two piped up.Oh okey hokey cokey come on boys join in.Or get a life.

Consult eight-year-olds on sex law, says youth czar

Is it just me or has the world gone mad.We now want to consult children as young as eight on our lawmaking.Read the article here.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/scotland/article5114737.ece

These so called professionals have lost the plot and need to be held to account by those who employ them.Good law will not be made by asking eight year olds what they think.

Below is the link to the SCCYP web site,

http://www.sccyp.org.uk/webpages/about_sccyp.php

Maybe an explanation is needed for my previous post.I tend to rant a bit about subjects that are important to me.

The reasons for being passionate about "lay leaders"are not just because I have been one for nearly 20 years but because I believe the ordained leadership system we have now can be an obstacle in church life,not church growth but church life.

Church leaders are in a class of there own in the churchland world.They are the elite the upper class they hold the power .This is not to say that all church leaders want or desire this status although clearly a minority do.In order to be part of this elite it means having been educated to degree level in most cases which will be above that of the average church member especially in inner city areas.It also means taking spiritual responsibility for the church members ,again this is not always what is desired but it is nearly always the outcome.It means attending leadership gathering of which there are many ,these are almost always exclusively for leaders.It also means the delivering of the preach/sermon on a Sunday a time when the whole church will listen to one person give there interpretation of Jesus and scripture.None of the above activities are negative in themselves but together they lead to leaders being seen as elite.

When all of this is put together it can only result in one thing.Leaders are in a different class to the rest of us.

Now there are some advantages to having full time leaders and they include having someone available to do pastoral duties having time to spend with God being able to put 100% into new projects.But even these can end up with some negative results.

Church leadership is a very difficult job and I do not wish to criticise them as people but I do wish to challenge the system that makes the job so difficult.

I believe that there is a need for some people to be in full time positions within the church.But I think there work should be the work of church planting and encouraging new local leaders for those church's.This I believe is the NT model shown to us in the life of Paul and the some of the other apostles.The church in the west has stopped growing because it has largely been unable to see past its own door step and has adopted local church models instead of city or state models.Sectarianism has played a large part in this because it divides the church everywhere and what we have ended up with is a lot of small expressions of the body which want to look after there own needs.The church in general has lost the idea of mission to its own city or community and largely thinks of mission as a foreign affair.We have ended up being self serving and the best answer to that is to have a full time leader who can look after "our needs".

The biblical model is one of "the church" giving support to mission that leads to the planting of churches which leads to the raising up of new leaders a growth cycle that is natural and not programmed.If those in full time leadership were free to give there time and energy to this we might have a much healthier church where lay leaders did not have to leave a church to start there own.

I thought about the movie Copland where Sly Stallone plays a small town sheriff who is not to bright and deaf in one ear.His town is full of the big city cops all whom seem to be doing great but underneath the facade they are all corrupt in some way.

Sometime I feel a bit like Sly a small timer not to smart and mostly ignored by the real cops,he constantly feels like he is on the outside and has no power to challenge these city boys.In the movie he plays a great part of the guy who just takes whatever is given to him and tries not to rock the boat.He doesn't want to rock the boat because he feels what he thinks and what he believes doesnt really matter.

Churchland can be a bit like that hopefully not as cruel.But not being a "full time leader" not being "in the know"can leave you feeling like an outsider in your own town, can leave you feeling like you want to say something but it will only sound dumb.Churchland is a place where those big boys get to stay and the rest are left feeling less than useful.Churchland is a cruel town at times where even although you belong and you are part of the same community you are left feeling like an outsider.

In the end Sly takes on the big boys he decides its time to stand up for himself and show everybody who he really is.He is not slick he does not know everything but he knows what is right and what is wrong this proves to be much more valuable than anything the big boys have and there corruption is exposed.

Churchland can have the same effect on those not on the inside it can leave them feeling like they are not in the know that they are not smart or don't have what it takes.Those not in full time leadership are somehow not equal to those who are.The same value is not placed on them and they feel excluded.It may be that this is a bit of a crude comparison but watching the movie again left me thinking about these things.I bet those in the movie never thought it would be interpreted in this way

Over the last few months I have heard the term "credit crunch" more times than I care to think about.And every time I hear it it has "bad news" tagged alongside it.

Politicians,bankers ,economists and the media are trying to convince us that what is going on right now is indeed bad news.I have no reason to believe that this is bad news.The fact that all of these people are being found out as greedy incompetents is in fact good news if the rest of us can wake up and see what is going on.

Over the years many great industries have disappeared because they were not profitable or were inefficient.That seems to be the capitalist way just think about the miners or the shipbuilders those industries were allowed to go under and nobody could do anything to save them.Here we have banks and insurance companies buying and selling debt good and bad to each other packed up and sold on most of that debt has now turned bad(toxic) and they want you and me the taxpayer to take it over.In the UK this has happened with Northen rock the taxpayer has taken over .The bank of England continues along with others to pump cheap money into the system to keep it moving .All of this money belongs to those of us who earn it and we will never see it back.

So why is this good news?

If we can take hold of this opportunity to change the way in which we relate to money and to put the pressure on those in power who are supposed to represent us we could see lasting changes that will help us to have a better relationship with money.

1 Try something new,write to your MP and tell him you don't want your money used to bail out a failed system that you don't want your money to reward greed.Ask him to vote against any of these measures ask him to be accountable to you.

2 Get involved in a different system.Look for new opportunities to use your money to build a new system .A system that involves relationships and trust one that is small and can be trusted one that has a face and a name .Try your local Credit union for starters have a look online and begin to discover the other ways you can use your money instead of having it sit in a bank.

Try these sites for starters.

http://www.opportunity.org.uk/Page.php?id=1

http://www.worldvision.org.uk/

http://www.microfinanceclubuk.org/index.htm

http://www.careinternational.org.uk/6877/home/welcome-to-care-international-uk--defending-dignity-fighting-poverty.html

http://www.fivetalents.org.uk/page-mission-and-method.html

Now I may seem slightly Evangelical on this but its about bloody time we fought back against a system that is killing us all slowly but surely.