Saturday 12 September 2009

Of Genesis and Academies

Not in the ordinary sense, you will be pleased to learn, although that sense does raise the question of why Alan Johnson, in particular, saw creationist schools at public expense as acceptable, but Catholic schools at public expense as intolerable.

I have always supported the sponsorship of the new Academy in Consett by the dear old University of Durham. Universities strike me as exactly who should be sponsoring academies, if we are to have them at all.

But the obvious site for it is at Project Genesis, where the steelworks used to be. It should be there. The Belle Vue decision is a disaster. And a scandal.

28 comments:

  1. why Alan Johnson, in particular, saw creationist schools at public expense as acceptable, but Catholic schools at public expense as intolerable

    Protestantism is not a threat to Socialism in the same way as the Catholic Church could be. The Catholic Church is the Revolution's greatest enemy, but Protestants oppose the Catholic Church. The more extreme they are the more likely they are to be anti-Catholic.

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  2. You are very very late to this one. As a prospective candidate for North West Durham I would have thought you would have been all over this but you didn't even attend the (very well attended) public meeting on this issue. I fear you may have lots of votes already.

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  3. I've been saying it on her for months. And I've tried to get letters in local papers, but they have rightly given priority to Consett people. But I was in hospital three times last year and I'll be in for the third (and last) time this year next month. I know all about the public meetings, though...

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  4. Oh, no, Glorfindel. Banishing the Catholics is the pretext to banishing the Protestants for the schools of England, just as banishing the Protestants is the pretext to banishing the Catholics from the schools of Ireland.

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  5. other consettonian13 September 2009 at 17:35

    This is all academic to David's irreducible core voters up here.

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  6. You'll still look good next to NuLab's what did you call her? Some girl out of the typing pool if I remember right. There is nothing wrong with MPs being national and international politicians not glorified social workers muscling in on local council and other matters. Who wants another Kevin Jones?

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  7. Anonymous, heavens what a thought!

    It was actually a comment on here that called her that, but I do like it. I think of her as having been given this seat as a present for her coming out ball. Or that's what she thinks...

    And I am waiting for her to try and pronounce "Consett", as for some reason people from outside find it difficult to do correctly.

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  8. Against a partial-birth abortion candidate off Emily's List David's main support base in Consett won't care about a school they won't be using anyway.

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  9. Any joy yet with the Northern Cross?

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  10. Some very big people are now on the case, but that's all I can say on here for now.

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  11. That wasn't the question you were asked. Northern Cross refused to have anything to do with you. How's it going with them?

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  12. And the answer is that they are going to learn their lesson soon enough, but I can't discuss it right now. It's out of my hands, anyway.

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  13. Old Labour Old Catholic13 September 2009 at 20:56

    The blogs editor of the Daily Telegraph is editor in chief of the Catholic Herald. Its features editor and contributing editor both blog there.

    Any Catholic or even anyone who can be asked to blog for the American Conservative has Catholic connections to die for. Same goes for anyone seriously involved in the conservative wing of the Democratic Party and especially the pro-life and pro-traditional marriage wings.

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  14. He was made a governor of a large Catholic school when was still at uni and someone who ran a PGCE was removed to make room for him. He got a letter of congratulation from Cardinal Winning when he became a Catholic. His old school, the one that made him a governor, had a Mass to celebrate that event. It is in NW Durham constituency.

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  15. Looks like some freebie run out of a parish office in Hartlepool is going to rue the day it made an enemy of David Lindsay.

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  16. Old Labour Old Catholic, those are facts. There are also many other facts in the world.

    Anonymous, you are also correct, although Cardinal Winning only wrote back to me because I had written to him on behalf of something else, so I don't still have the letter.

    But somehow he did know that I had recently become a Catholic, and he congratulated me accordingly. I had met him, but not so that he would have remembered. Still, there we are.

    And the school would have had the Mass anyway. But it was nice of them.

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  17. You were the intention at the Bede's weekly Mass?

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  18. I know - and I'm not even dead.

    Unless things had changed from my then recent days, it won't exactly have been the feeding of the five thousand, or a liturgical event about which people would reminisce years later. But it was very nice of them.

    However, they never told em which day, so I never got to it. I do know that they had it, though, because I was then a governor there for years and it was confirmed to me en passant.

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  19. That Catholic Herald features editor who blogs for the Torygraph follows you on Twitter.

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  20. So the Northern Cross just ignored you completely?

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  21. Oh no, they'll wish they had...

    Anyway, nothing more off-topic will be put up here.

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  22. They denied the Emily's List point and so wouldn't print your letter requesting someone in each parish to act as a link and organize to stop that candidate by electing you instead.

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  23. Quite so.

    Not only in the North East will they soon enough have to account for why, as a Catholic publication distributed entirely on church premises, they wish to impose such an MP on the seat containing the old Irish Catholic stronghold of Consett, the remarkable Recusant village of Esh, and Ushaw College, among much else, with Minsteracres Monastery only just outside and having Consett as its postal town.

    The national media people to whom I have passed on this information are shocked to the core, and they are not going to let this matter rest any more than I am.

    Please note that they, political and ecclesiastical journalists of the utmost seriousness, take it as axiomatic that you cannot be on an all-women shortlist unless you are on Emily's List, which requires you to be in favour of abortion on demand up to and including partial birth. For such is the fact of the matter.

    But of this, and of so much more besides, in the fullness of time. I am going to bed now. Tomorrow, on-topic comments only.

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  24. Take it there's no truth in the rumour of a double blow for your plans to stand in the election? Namely, the fact that the Independent candidate from last time is standing again and sources also tell me that you are struggling to raise the deposit you need - the problem that de-railed your promise to stand in the European elections.

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  25. What, five hundred quid between now and May or June? I think we'll manage! This deposit is one tenth of the European one.

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  26. He's one of the High Tory Taliban now, the thirtysomehing traditionalist Catholic boys who straddle the Telegraph and the Herald. 500 quid is less than they spend on a lunch.

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  27. I've said it before and I'll say it again, on-topic comments only. Any journalist wishing to speak to me can email me. Serious inquirers will be sent a mobile phone number.

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