Blogging The Qur’an

I have just noticed on my travels across the internet that the Guardian website has a new section called ‘blogging the Qur’an’. And no, I’m not going to link to their website.

Apparently each week, writer, broadcaster and cultural critic (whatever that may be) Ziauddin Sardar will blog on a different verse of the Qur’an. The blurb in the about section describing the reason behind the site says:

Muslims have been wrestling with the meaning of the verses and words of the Qur’an from the early days of Islam. Non-Muslims, meanwhile, often have wildly inaccurate notions of its content … Through Blogging the Qur’an, we hope to try and untangle some of those meanings and misconceptions.

Can you imagine, for example, the Guardian affording this level of treatment to Christians and the Bible, or indeed any other religion? Of course not, they would be ridiculing Christianity as a backwards, intolerant religion as they have done for decades, and would have no interest in ‘untangling’ some of the ‘meanings and misconceptions’ surrounding the Bible.

The development of this site, along with many other things the Guardian and the likes of the BBC have said, makes you wonder why it is that they are clearly so desperate to appease Muslims rather than shower them with scorn as they do Christianity.

Could it be that hidden behind a hastily constructed façade of reverence, is the fact that those on the left actually rather fear Islam. They know that most Muslims won’t quietly or meekly surrender their beliefs in the face of adversity or opposition as some Christians might, but instead would vocally and sometimes explosively fight back.

Vagaries Of Perception

I don’t believe for one moment that at the next General Election the Conservatives would take 49% of the vote while Labour only 23%.

It just is not going to happen. People can say whatever they want when answering opinion polls but when it actually counts many would still vote Labour having previously said otherwise.

The problem is that the Conservatives are still unpopular; perhaps less unpopular than Labour are currently, but nonetheless still unpopular. The opinion polls and statistics highlighted in the newspapers rarely tell the full story – that of declining turnouts and a fall in the number of people saying they are certain or likely to vote.

While the Conservatives may supposedly be set to take a higher percentage of the vote than Labour, the actual number of votes set to be cast at the next election will probably decline meaning that each party will receive fewer votes in total. Turnout may only increase slightly if the result appears to be particularly close, similar to the increased turnout in the recent Mayoral elections.

There is of course also the fact that opinion polls are based upon uniform swings and General Elections do not produce exact uniform swings from constituency to constituency. For example, the Conservatives poll very well in the South East but very poorly in Scotland. Overall polling figures often do not reflect such regional differences.

The upcoming Crewe and Nantwich by-election will almost undoubtedly represent another wake-up call for the party hierarchy and the small number of Cameron-fanatical members who seem to increasingly frequent ConservativeHome.

If the Conservatives fail to win the seat, then not only will it have been over twenty years since the party won a parliamentary by-election from any opposition, but stark proof that the much discussed opinion polls of bubble politics are almost worthless.

Global Cooling

In his weekly column in the Telegraph on Sunday it seems that once again Christopher Booker is the only journalist within the mainstream media to be highlighting the increasing degree of evidence against Global Warming theory.

As he points out, when the snow cover on Snowdonia fell between 2003 and 2007 the mass media crowed that this was of course evidence of global warming caused by human activity. But now that Snowdonia has experienced abnormally deep snowfall this year, guess what, it has rarely if ever been mentioned by the same ‘concerned’ media.

NumberWatch, in a humorous ‘rebuke’ of Christopher Booker’s latest article points out that:

The snows of Snowden are a case in point. They were news while they were shrinking, but when that goes into reverse, the rules of modern polite society require the quiet turning of a blind eye.

Equally interesting is the way in which the eco-lobby and the green left have begun to noticeably shift their rhetoric and focus from ‘Global Warming’ to ‘Climate Change’ when it turns out that the facts don’t suit their warming theory. Amusing if it were not so serious is the recent suggestion by some more ‘scientists’ that the recent large increase in Antarctica ice is down to (yes, you guessed it) global warming. Once again it is apparently man that is causing the Arctic to warm while Antarctica to cool.

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The Buffoon Wins

After second preference votes were taken into account, Boris Johnson has been declared Mayor of London, defeating Ken Livingstone by 53% to 47% which was roughly what YouGov predicted.

The other day I heard someone say of the now newly elected Mayor of London that behind the thin veneer of a buffoon lies… a buffoon.

Yet, Simon Heffer writing in the Telegraph on Tuesday believes that behind the clever façade of a buffoon lies a calculating and ruthlessly ambitious individual. He says of Boris:

I want to dismiss a prejudice about Mr Johnson, and I do so as one who has known him for the past 20 years. It is that he is a buffoon. He isn’t. The act is calculated and it has required serious application and timing of the sort of which only a clever man is capable.

Whether or not the ambitious Mr Johnson actually makes a good go of being Mayor is something else entirely – but for the moment it doesn’t really matter. He won and that’s all that counts – that, and rather pleasingly Ken Livingstone has finally been ditched.

Elsewhere around the country the Conservatives have made substantial gains in local elections and the Labour party equally substantial loses. Whether these results show an increase in support for the Conservatives or people simply not turning out to vote Labour will be both interesting and important.

In comparison and of very little importance, the chattering metropolitan classes in the media have already begun their usual pointless speculation on whether these results, if reflected at a general election, would give the Conservatives power and a working majority. The point is of course that these results would not be reflected at a general election (though they may show general trends) as they were undertaken in completely different circumstances. However, oblivious as ever in their small bubble, the media still insist on filling column inches with such drivel because they can find nothing else meaningful to write about.

The bottom line is that despite seemingly good recent election results our man Dave still has a long way to go before he can even hope of being Prime Minister.