Cllr. Gavin Ayling

Tony Blair, the lame duck has failed in his attempts to bully parliament into imprisoning those they answer to (Her Majesty’s subjects) for the equivalent of a six month sentence on no evidence.

As Ken says, Labour have their “consensus”, MPs have agreed with decent people and, surprisingly, Yasmin Alibhai-Brown and Shami Chakrabarti, who know that to imprison people without trial, evidence or even anything more concrete than a hunch, is not only wrong, but an imposition on a free people.

The terrorist attacks in London would not have been prevented by this law. Nor would any of the other ill-thought-out counter-terrorism laws that this government has been attempting to ’seek consensus’ over. Stopping people from heckling in a conference makes it clear that the police cannot, and should not, be trusted with draconian powers. These powers will not only be used against those who would seek to murder. It will also be used against innocent young Muslims and non-Muslims at the whim of a judge (who, if typical, will be woefully out of touch as is evidenced by the inconsistency of sentences passed down under the maximum allowed) and a police force not accustomed to such power.

I hope no such extension to the period that people can be held before being charged is ever introduced and I hope that, despite this, Blair stays on as PM. Blair may be the worst Prime Minister in my lifetime, but that doesn’t compare to the damage that Gordon Brown would do to the British economy given this much time before the next general election.

In science one tries to tell people, in such a way as to be understood by everyone, something that no one ever knew before. But in poetry, it’s the exact opposite.

Paul Dirac

The United States of America is the most scientifically advanced country in the world. With only a few top-rank universities, and no more than one in any country except England (Oxford and Cambridge), Europe is a long, long way behind.

And yet, at the same time, the state of Kansas in the US has started teaching Intelligent Design (ID) as science.

Regardless of your individual prejudice to religion; whether you believe in something unproveable or not, there is absolutely no way ID can be considered a science. Science requires the use of theory, based on observation, which is then, where possible, subjected to testing and experiment.

Evolution is being corroborated with each discovery of a new fossil. Every time a fossil is found it matches, at least approximately, what we could expect evolution to have created. I will go out on a limb here and suggest that no human remains will ever be found from the Jurassic period. The creatures of earth today are different to the creatures found here at different periods in the past. Religion, which is the home of ID, will normally tell you that man was created in God’s image. Islam, and less strictly Christeo-Judaism, requires that images of humans or heavenly beings are not created. If God created man in his image, why didn’t he bother until recently? Why were there man-like creatures for several million years?

Science should not be taught as part of a government’s agenda - it should be taught as scientists see fit. No modern government would think it acceptable to intervene in the teaching of history, but for some reason it is acceptable when talking about the truth.

This is a sad day for the US and a sad day for progress.

BBC News article on the subject