Gordon Brown shows Vatican his belly over embryos.

He’s done it. After an Easter weekend dither-athon with the Catholic leaders of England, Wales and Scotland piling pressure on (while denying to cameras they were interfering in politics) Prime Minister Gordon Brown has shown belly to the Vatican and allowed his own MPs and Cabinet Ministers to vote against a government embryology bill. Weak.

So, a slice of British science and health policy now risks being dictated by a bunch of old men (none of them scientists or doctors) under the direction of an old man in Rome who takes his orders from a sky fairy. A sky fairy who has done remarkably few Personal Appearances since cameras came along, preferring instead the safer route of manifesting in tortillas, pieces of toast and aubergines (eggplants), and therefore not being able heal the lame or to take questions on the vexatious matters of experimentation on blastocyts. Which were not known about when the gospels were written.

Whether or not people choose to mumble incantations inside grey buildings with stained glass windows is up to them.  When they try to hamstring our scientific research and our heath care because of their superstitions, they need telling to butt right out of public life. Let’s remember the aims of the people we’re dealing with here:

• No contraception
• No abortion, at all for any reason
• No IVF
• No embryo research

It’s nothing to do with science, it’s to do with dogma that seeks to deny women reproductive rights and privileges a ball of cells over an ailing human being.

As for prayers and relics: well screw those for a pious fraud. My multiply handicapped foster sister has been to Lourdes many a time, showered with prayers, choked with incense, immersed in ‘holy’ grotto water. It doesn’t work, but it takes a lot of cash off people who go in the hope of a miraculous cure.  And I’d just like to inflict her kind of daily, hourly discomfort on anyone, anyone who says it ennobles and makes excuses for the charade of Lourdes.   Gordon has just been done up like a kipper by a bunch of superstitious fraudsters.

Easter Sunday, Runswick Bay.

Gordon Brown vs. the Catholic Church, a fight I want both sides to lose.

The news tonight (Sunday: BBC and the Times) is that British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has caved in to pressure orchestrated by the Catholic hierarchy in Britain to allow Catholic Labour MPs and government cabinet ministers to abstain from voting in favour of a government bill.

Monday morn, oh no he hasn’t, says the Daily Telegraph (bet there’s been some briefing going on):

But Mr Brown is refusing to let the MPs and ministers vote against the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill, which he believes will lead to major advances in medicine and the treatment of fatal diseases.

According to the Times:

Mr Brown is privately encouraging scientists to challenge the Catholic Church’s interpretation, and Downing Street insiders say the debate has only just begun. “So far we’ve only heard from one side,” one said.

So not coming out, giving clear leadership on the issue and telling your rebellious ministers to get into line, instead pushing scientists toweards the sound of gunfire, Gordon. Brave.

And some Catholic Labour MPs and peers with a clear view of the distinction private faith and public service have been telling the Catholic hierarchy to back off.

This debacle is unfolding as I predicted in Scottish cardinal uses the F-word:

If Roman Catholic (government) ministers wish to defy the government, fine. But they should resign and do so from the back benches, where their pay would be halved. God or mammon, the crucifix or the greasy pole. I bet they’ll find a way to have all four: threaten Gordon Brown (who’s trailing badly in the polls and is in a weak position) with a damaging handful of resignations. He will dither for a while, roll and show belly and let them away with not supporting a big government bill.

He has dithered, he has rolled and showed belly (well at 8pm lastnight he had) and has rolled back, he has verged on letting them away with defying his authority and representing not their constituents, but instead trying to impose the doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church on the British people, their scientists and doctors.

Any Cabinet Ministers who vote against the Government without having the spine to resign, take the cash hit and do so from the back benches are the worst kind of hypocritical moneygrubbing - Gaia forgive me I was going to say leeches or tapeworms, but a leech has gotta do what leech has gotta do and tapeworms are marvels of evolution and anyone who says otherwise should meet me outside The Runswick Bay Hotel after the quiz next Thursday night and I’ll kick their pans in - gobshites.

Here is Cardinal Cormac Murphy O’Connor:

“Certainly, there are some aspects of this bill on which I believe there ought to be a free vote, because Catholics and others will want to vote according to their conscience,” he told Sky News in an interview broadcast on Sunday.

“I don’t think it should be subject to the party whip.”

But it should be subject to a Vatican whip? Because that is what the Cardinal is calling for - a Catholic’s conscience is strictly what Church teaching tells him or her it should be. Shame on Gordon Brown. A tapeworm has more spine.

This is a battle battle secular Britain should not lose.

Most people got easter eggs, I got a ratfish.

Found on Runswick Bay beach, North Yorkshire, where it shouldn’t really be. More here. Ain’t he pretty?  Easter Ratfish © P. McGrath.

Elephant tramples Cardinal

Metaphorically, anyway.  Go read, it’s one of the best pieces on the Catholic Church shoving its nose onto Government business I’ve read.

Glossary for  overseas readers:
Cardinal Carpark Mary-O’Conman = Cardinal Cormac Murphy O’Connor, Cardinal of England and Wales.
Mr Jesus as a third of himself
Mr God as another third of himself
Mr Frown = Gordon Brown, UK Prime Minister who does wear a grumpy expression.
Cardinal Keith O’Binman = Cardinal Keith O’Brien, Catholic Cardinal of Scotland.
Fart for the Day = Thought for the Day, a segment on Today Radio 4’s flagship news and current affairs programme in which some believer gets 3 min to make a weak link to the day’s lead story and maunder on about which ever sky fairy they believe in.

I don’t know much about art

but I know I like the Flying Trilobite’s latest, DNA candle - Vanitas II.

In which the intelligent design movement takes careful aim, and blows both feet off.

PZ Myers tells the story here and here. Greg Laden rounds up the story and has a links fest here.

There is little more to be said really, I just wanted to join in pointing and laughing at everyone responsible for Expelled. (In theatres nationwide April 18, it claims.  Right.)

An incredible sea-story: retold as I heard it.

A friend has lovely tough 40 foot steel cutter. Not pretty and mock chi-chi inside in the way modern yachts shat out of French, German and eastern European yards are, but the kind of thing you want around you in a blow, or if you t-bone a floating treetrunk at 8 knots.

Sitting in a distant port, sipping a beer in her cockpit a very drunk man staggered along the pontoon, saw his boat (which we will call Longbow) did a double take, said he knew the story of this boat and would return with the full griff, when not seeing double.

Two days later, he returned, got into the beer again and begunned. The boat was built by a gentleman very skilled in the arts of steelwork and welding, and on her he went to sea with his 8 months pregnant wife and 18 month old daughter. One day he wife was on watch, the 18 month on deck and he below: the boat was under twin poled out headsails, surfing downwind mid-ocean.

He had that feeling that all was not well and went on deck. The 18 month old had just gone over the side. Well, sailors what would you do? Our skipper picks his wife up and drops her overboard. He had two poles to unrig, two headsails to drop on a surfing 40 footer, which he does: it obviousl takes some time, the boat belting down wind all the while. He then sails back up his course, and finds his wife - a strong swimmer, even 8 months gone - supporting their child in the water. Both were rescued, obviously alarmed but ultimately well.

It doesn’t end there: such an event must have emotional and psychological fallout. He blamed her for losing the 18 month old overboard, she resented being dumped over the transom without permission (despite it, as it turned out, being the right thing to do) and they ultimately split. He then went on to survive a shark attack in which his wrists were so mangled that his hands are all but useless. He still sails and races (I hesitate to use the phrase but this is as it was told to me) singlehanded.

Scottish Cardinal uses the F word.

he said it! Cardinal Keith O’Brien haswill* fallen into the cliche-trap when he said a government bill allowing research using hybrid embryos would cause experiments of ‘Frankenstein proportion’.

BBC report here
Telegraph’s Holy Smoke says the Prime Minister is anti-catholic, citing embryos for the prosecution and persecution.
Arbichop Cranmer gives a lengthy and considered response.

(This post gets sweary as my ire increases.)

Now here’s the problem:
• Scientists (who know best) say they need to shove somatic human DNA into a cow cell membrane for the purposes of researching diseases.
• The government (of whom I am no friend) put said provisions in a bill and for that I say well done.
• Catholics are sorely dischuffed. Prime Minister Gordon Brown has a few as cabinet ministers and the government relies on Scottish Catholics as a block vote for a brave few of its Scottish MPs.
• And, lo, Cardinal Keith O’Brien has written to Gordon Brown saying Labour Party members of parliament should have a free vote on the issue, minister should resign, the research in ‘monstrous’ etc etc yuck yuck blah blah.

The Cardinal made himself look a bit of a burk, out of his own mouth (read this extended extract from his sermon, if you like):

“What I am speaking of is the process whereby scientists create an embryo containing a mixture of animal and human genetic material.”

Except they aren’t.

“This bill represents a monstrous attack on human rights, human dignity and human life.

Only if you think a 14 day old ball of cells with cow membranes is a human being. Most right thinking people don’t. And the Catholic church didn’t for a long time. The doctrine of blastocyst as human is as recent as it is baseless.

“In some European countries one could be jailed for doing what we intend to make legal.

A lot of Catholic priests should have been jailed for raping minors, rather than being moved to new parishes with slapped wrists. They kill bulls for fun in Spain and that is legal. Hanging a Catholic priest was legal in the Isle of Man until 1992. Parliament will deliberate on embryo research, and if passed it becomes legal. What’s your point?

“I can say that the government has no mandate for these changes: they were not in any election manifesto,

Nor is a lot of stuff governments do, on the principle shit happens. You can also say the moon is made of green cheese, but that doesn’t make it true. Move along, nothing to see here.

nor do they enjoy widespread public support.”

Have you done the polling Cardinal? Do show your results and methodology. Or are you just making shit up.  Surely not, for that would be a lie. ‘100% of elderly catholics asked in the confessional agreed under pain of excommunication that…’

Depends how you ask the question, too Cardinal. Let’s put it this way: your husband/wife/child/mother/best friend is incapacitated by a disease, the cure for which has come about as a result of Frankensteinian research on these hybrids. Do you, in retrospect, support the research which led to this drug and wish the bag of same to be hung and be plugged into loved one’s arm? Do you, in other words accord privileges of survival to a ball of unviable cells which you deny to a sentient suffering human being.

If Roman Catholic (government) ministers wish to defy the government, fine. But they should resign and do so from the back benches, where their pay would be halved. God or mammon. The crucifix or the greasy pole. I bet they’ll find a way to have all four: threaten Gordon Brown (who’s trailing badly in the polls and is in a weak position) with a damaging handful of resignations. He will dither for a while, roll and show belly and let them away with not supporting a big government bill.

News update, here we fucking go: Labour MPs may rebel over embryos. I wonder how many of them voted for going into Iraq. I may have to compile a twatalog after the vote.

Hopefully enough MPs will be clear-eyed enough to recognize that scientists don’t do this shit for fun. They don’t just suddenly look up from a fifth pint and say, ‘I know, we’ll put human DNA in a cow’s egg just for a giggle! I love you. You’re my best mate!’

The Cardinal can address these concerns to his flock.  He can insist that Catholic scientists and medics have nothing to do with this research, which is aimed at curing some pretty shitty human diseases for which prayer and saintly intercession is and been proved to be fuck all use.

But no, he does not end there. He also wants a permanent commission in bioethics. In other words a talking shop which can be spiked with Christians who will try and talk any further embryo research or human genome manipulation into the long grass. Voted on by the House of Lords and given the finger, Cardinal. Face it, the arguments and the science aren’t going the Catholic Church’s way.

Tonight (I know, I sat through a few easters) Jesus is in his tomb with hurty hands (except of course Easter wanders around over a lunar month, so it didn’t really happen today, so what the fuck was it all about, the 3 pm mopefest?) and the tabernacles are open because the Holy Eucharist has been removed: God is not in his Nietzche, he’s dead. So on Sunday the Cardinal, having had his headlines will mouth his nonsense along with the nonsense about the resurrection and the light of Christ to his aging, shrinking congregation. Good people many of them, I am sure. But deluded.

*Haswill is a new word: to get publicity he has announced that he will use his easter Sunday sermon to talk yards of shit about embryo research.

Whitby today, wind norwesterly 8 gusting 10