ESC latest, Jamie's School Dinners, the Budget, and abortion

In that order.

ESC is provingf to be a rather curious mixture of styles this year - but overall, I don't rate the songs very highly. Latvia. Malta, Netherlands, Bulgaria and Slovenia are probablythe best selected so far. The UK's entry hasn't grown on me since selection - its well performed but too pseudo-ethnic for my tastes.

Not long to go now....

Jamie's School Dinners. I'm a keen cook, and I like to cook proper food from scratch. This programme has shown what can be done with a bit of will and determination. This evenings programme featured a commitment to change from Charles Clarke. Guess what? One week later, he moves job - to be replaced by the Spawn of Satan and Daughter of opus Dei, the dreaded Ruth Kelly, who offers a weak compromise befitting her level of morality, socialist principle and foresight. Evil cow. Not too long now and Bolton West voters MUST ditch her - even if it means a Tory MP in her place.

The Budget was OK: Sensible stuff in the main. I'm content with Labour on the economy. Its civil liberties, illegal wars, Tory Blur and Claire Curtis-Thomas which are the problems!

And one bit of good news - defeat for that interfering, snactimonious busybody , the 'Reverend' Joanna Jepson, you know, the one who tries to criminalise doctors because she hasn't come to terms with her own childhood facial disfigurement and thinks that she can then impose her own anti-abortion views on everyone else. The court case which she tried to bring against the doctors who authorised a late abortion in a case of cleft palate failed today - and quite right too. What the hell does this simpering, patronising fundamentalist pre-modern know about this case? Precisely nothing - thats what. She hasn't a clue as to the decision which was made and why - because the decision is quite rightly CONFIDENTIAL. You know, Jepson, the sort of thing people in your position are supposed to respect - not that she'd have a clue. A typical stooge of the anti-abortion movement, attempting to enforce her views on others. My message to her ;' believe what you want - and if you want to say it in your church, you're welcome. But thats where it should stay - because we are not a theocracy, and we have no intention of being dictated to by evangelical clergy attempting to work through their own personal hangups on the rest of us.

Get back to your parish, Jepson, and do us all a favour and keep your gob shut. And with any luick, now we have all seen what you are really like, anyone with an ounce of common sense will give you and your church an extremely wide berth. You are exactly the reason why more and more people want nothing more to do with the Church - and I can't blame them. Three more years and we may have a decent liberal church led by ECUSA and ACC...