Now Hear This

I have had to delete several comments, one because it was viciously defamatory (and will be pursued further), and several because someone had managed to gain access to my Blogger account (heaven knows how). So I have now enabled comment moderation; I don't really have the time for it, but it can't be helped.

And I have changed my password. The fact that anyone capable of finding it out went to the trouble of doing so, like the fact that anyone bothered to write the viciously defamatory comment, speaks volumes. Of course, those would no doubt be the same people who claim that I am an irrelevance and that no one reads this blog.

Anyway, I would like to answer one comment that I've had to delete for other reasons. I have never said that Catholics should vote for me because I am a Catholic. Catholic Social Teaching and Distributism played a key role in making me a Catholic in the first place, and I adhere to them. (Indeed, what I now know to be Catholic Social Teaching and Distributism played a key role in making me a member of the Labour Party, but I only plead that I was a simple schoolboy at the time.)

I also submit, and am prepared to argue if anyone seriously disagrees (although I can't see that, I have to say), that none of the three parties now has either a programme or, insofar as they have any underlyling ideology, an underlying ideology in accordance with those principles. This is not to say that there are not still people in them whose views so accord, but you'd have to take that up with them, as I find their position utterly baffling, however well I might get on with a lot of them personally.

But in several parts of Europe, that tradition is re-asserting itself, with pro-life, pro-family, pro-worker, anti-war movements and candidates beginning to emerge. You don't have to be a Catholic to join or to support such a movement, and you certainly don't have to be a Catholic to be or to vote for such a candidate. (A Catholic political movement as such, although such things are quite common internationally, would not get anywhere electorally anyway.)

But, as it happens, I do want to be (indeed, I am going to be) such a candidate. You don't have to like me personally; you just have to agree with me politically. And I neither could, nor would I want to be able to, stop anyone else from putting up. But those who share my pro-life, pro-family, pro-worker, anti-war views should be aware that they would be splitting that vote by standing against me, because I am certainly going to stand.

They need to ask themselves whether the continued non-representation of our people would be a price worth paying merely to keep out someone with whom they agree politically, but with whom they would prefer not to have dinner.