On Friday and Saturday this week I met with 'old' medical colleagues whom I had not met for 40 years. It was the 40th anniversary of the 1978 Gamma Year Club, the Medical class who graduated with me from Glasgow University in 1978. Time had worked on most physiognomies and some were unrecognisable, which was …
Can we believe Theresa May?
Theresa May told the Conservative Party conference today that "austerity is over" and that if her form of Brexit was not implemented there might be no Brexit at all. Is this wishful thinking or reality? Is it even truthful? Is the wish the father of the thought? Why should we believe mere assertions? Can one …
Creeping internet control
In spite of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, most corporations are still at it – surreptitiously gathering more information about you to no purpose other than their psychological profiling of their customers. Reputable websites, such as mainstream newspapers, invite you to register online with them to view their articles. It begins with your name and email. …
The shifting goalposts of secularism
Christianity has always suffered from the readiness of its critics to judge its past by the standards of the present. Secularism is now experiencing the same, the latest phase being the Me-Too movement catching up on the sexual immorality of the 1960s and judging 1960s behaviour by 2010s opinion. The well-known sexual licentiousness of the …
Keir Starmer’s short memory
The Labour Party is in danger of repeating the mistake of the Lib Dems. When the Lib Dem Party in alliance with the Tories after the 2010 General Election broke its pledge not to raise tuition fees, it led to electoral decimation, collapsing from 57 to 8 MPs in the House of Commons in the …
Those who think that religion and politics do not mix
There are those who think that religion and politics don't mix. The truth is that their religion and their politics don't mix. However, Christianity and politics mix quite easily together, and it is Christianity which gave us western democracy as we understand it and delivered us from the irreligious dogmatism of the 16th-century by recovering …
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What is the Establishment Principle?
The Establishment Principle is that biblical principle which states that God is sovereign over secular and ecclesiastical affairs, and that He has established a relationship between these two sovereign spheres in which the state and the church are to acknowledge each other as divinely-appointed institutions, to mutually support and encourage each other, but not to …
My two Inverness landladies
One of my Inverness chapters came to an end this afternoon. I stood by the open grave of Isabel Margaret Grant (1927-2018), the first of my two landladies when I was a student for the Christian ministry during two years 1980-1982 in Inverness. On the gravestone were the names of her parents, above her brother …
The illiberal Liberal Democrat leader
Vince Cable wants to force the UK to remain in the European Union. "Brexit is not inevitable. It can and it must be stopped." He makes it clear what he wants, and why he wants a final people's vote on Brexit. It is not a desire to give a new choice to the people but …
The ark of the covenant and the third temple
There is a movement afoot among orthodox Jews to rebuild the temple in Jerusalem and to this end they have been looking for a red heifer without blemish to dedicate the temple. Although there have been discredited claims in recent decades, yet there are rumours that a suitable red heifer has been found and that …
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