Opinion pollsters are organising a post-mortem on why the opinion polls were so completely wrong in the recent General Election. There will be much huffing and puffing, money and time wasted in trying to reach a conclusion. For my part, a good part of the answer will be found in the tick box mentality of …
Category: Politics
The power behind the throne
The Lib Dem peer, Lord Oakeshott, said on Question Time 30/1/2014 that if he was put in the position of choosing between defying his party leader, Nick Clegg, by voting for the ban on smoking in cars with children present, or defying his wife who is a doctor, there was no contest. If he voted …
BT Yahoo limiting the number of domestic emails
I have spent about 1½ hours on a BT help call to determine: 1. those wanting to move away from BT will have their former BT email address supported for free for one month; this has been recently reduced from three months. After that, it will cost £1.60/month to continue to use it. 2. domestic …
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What is the leaven of Herod?
Jesus warned His disciples: 'Take heed, beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, and of the leaven of Herod' Mk 8:15. What does Jesus' mean by the leaven of Herod? The leaven of Herod is conjoined to and contrasted with the leaven of the Pharisees (which is hypocrisy Lk 12:1, a rigorous religious legalism, which …
Tesco mobile don’t know how to take payment from Tesco credit card
I've just spent over an hour trying to make a one-off payment to Tesco mobile with my new Tesco credit card. They have a secure system for testing payment; I went through it till the last stage when it said that it could not take payment. I tried three more times. Then I phoned Tesco …
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Vain worship of God and a mark of effective Christianity
Jesus teaches about worshipping God in vain: 'in vain do they worship Me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men' Mk 7:7. Vain worship is empty worship, devoid of proper content, but this is not the emphasis of the Greek word used here, which points to the 'fruitless activity' of such worship. It points to …
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Christian behaviour
Many Christians can reel off the five points of Calvinism, but what are the five points of Christian behaviour? They do not exist, because it is more likely to be 505, or 5005. There are systematic theologies galore, but there is no systematic theology on Christian behaviour. There are books on Christian behaviour, but no …
Climate change
Notice that the language is changing from global warming to climate change. The hottest year in recent times was 1995. The media furore about global warming was about the attempt to 'get rid of the mediaeval warm period' - in other words, to remove from the temperature graphs the awkward fact that temperatures in the …
Calvin’s Calvinism
Calvin scholars often tell the story how William Farel hastily visited John Calvin as he passed through Geneva on the night of 10/7/1536, and detained him in Geneva with the solemn curse of God upon his literary studies if he did not stop in Geneva to help forward the work of the Protestant Reformation in …
The cost of abandoning Christianity
For decades I have noted the cost to society of the loss of Christian principles. But only now have social scientists examined the enormous potential of voluntary groups to contribute to providing services. A study by the University of Pennsylvania has for the first time placed a cash value on the activities of voluntary societies. …
Donald's Thoughts 