Day: 17 January 2021

by Ben Hawkins There’s an excellent Mitchell and Webb sketch in which a pair of ministerial aides are reporting back to their minister on potential solutions for dealing with a recession… “raising VAT, cutting VAT, raising interest rates, raising interest rates and VAT, lowering income tax and raising VAT”. But despite their efforts, they haven’t been able to land on anything – when their proposed measures are put through their computer models, none of them seems to work. Suddenly the minister interrupts. "Have you tried 'kill all the poor'?" When the shocked aides protest the minister replies, “I’m not saying do it, I’m just saying run it through the computer ­– see if it would work.” Whilst undoubtedly a broadside aimed at the austerity policies of the time, the sketch works as it highlights a feature of our moral reflexes that is often overlooked: for most moral agents with genuinely held moral beliefs, it is not enough to avoid doing wrong; to merely consider doing that wrong action feels like a moral transgression in and of itself. A serious moral agent, believing that killing people is wrong, would never consider running “kill all the poor” through the computer, as doing so would seemingly violate the principle of the sanctity of life which the belief in not killing people upholds. As ...

Did the Virus Escape From the Wuhan Institute of Virology? In one of his last acts as President of the United States, Donald Trump has directed the US Department of State to issue a fact sheet about the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the origin of the pandemic. Suffice to say it's a marmalade-dropper. For more than a year, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has systematically prevented a transparent and thorough investigation of the COVID-19 pandemic’s origin, choosing instead to devote enormous resources to deceit and disinformation. Nearly two million people have died. Their families deserve to know the truth. Only through transparency can we learn what caused this pandemic and how to prevent the next one.The U.S. Government does not know exactly where, when, or how the COVID-19 virus, known as SARS-CoV-2, was transmitted initially to humans. We have not determined whether the outbreak began through contact with infected animals or was the result of an accident at a laboratory in Wuhan, China.The virus could have emerged naturally from human contact with infected animals, spreading in a pattern consistent with a natural epidemic. Alternatively, a laboratory accident could resemble a natural outbreak if the initial exposure included only a few individuals and was compounded by asymptomatic infection. Scientists in China have researched animal-derived coronaviruses under conditions that increased the ...

by Dr J In 1534, Parliament, under the influence of Thomas Cromwell, passed the Act of Supremacy and ‘recognised’ Henry VIII as the only supreme head of the Church in England. Later, and after many more convulsions, upheavals and a short lived return to Catholicism under his daughter Mary, there was recognised in England, an established Church. The Church in England, now with our good Queen as its head and perhaps only remaining adherent who remembers and believes what is in the Book of Common Prayer and 39 Articles, resulted from something no one thought would ever happen – a sudden and seeming overnight change and adherence to the new religion and its new rules. The CofE became the cultural and religious foundation for many years to follow, eschewing all things ‘papistical’ and embedding itself into society as its beacon and moral compass. Eventually, with the dawn of the 60s and the arrival of hip and cool vicars, it became an afterthought for many but not all. Occasionally some remember it is there. Vicars seem to have ceased to bother with the sort of preaching that helped those in the past to know how to live a good life and, just as importantly, how to have a good death.  Then, in 1948, arising out of perceived need, the National Health Service was born, ostensibly to be comprehensive, universal and free at the point of delivery, based ...