CoffeeHousers' Wall, 1 September - 7 September

JCN

No Sunday Essay again this week?

Archbishop Cranmer

Mr JCN,

His Grace just posted one, but, despite it not being libellous, or crammed with swearing, or offensive to common decency, it was not passed by the censors.

It was on the small matter of tonights C4 Undercover Mosque - The Return. But one is evidently not permitted to talk about it on this wall.

Forlornehope

My question, on pensions, got a pretty meagre answer from Chris Grayling (of the "oh dear, we'll think about it" type). More to the point, where's my 180th anniversary edition? I was looking forward to it!

Verity

THE MILITARY OPTION In July, a conceited windbag with the air of a circus barker about him went to Germany. Apparently this was supposed to resonate in people's minds, and remind them of the Cold War, 40 years previously. This was when Barrack Hussein Obama was positioning himself as a kind of hybrid JFK and RR.. He needed to get a lift on the coattails of people who changed the geopolitical map, because he has no achievements of his own he can point to.

At the end of the festival to himself, he was set to make a well-publicised visit to the hospital at Landstuhl US Military Base in Germany to visit wounded servicemen and women.

As we know, when he found, to his dismay, that he wouldn't be able to take his entourage in with him - no TV cameras, light men, sound men and mikes, no squad of jostling print reporters (it's a hospital, for God's sake!)- he suddenly lost interest in the injuries of the valiant wounded troops and left in a snit. And can you blame him? They were going to assign him a friggin’ military photographer, for God’s sake!

One year before, in July 2007, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin had made a quiet trip to Landstuhl US military hospital. To visit wounded Alaskan Reserves.

She went alone.

She didn't try to take anyone in with her. She was perfectly content with the US military photographer assigned to shoot photos for her. She visited the bedsides of the bed-bound and chatted with them, and she mixed around with the ambulatory. She sat down to breakfast with those well enough to get to the breakfast table.

Then she went back to Alaska.

Hysteria

did anyone spot this

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/netherlands/2656680/Dutch-withdraw-spy-from-Iran-because-of-impending-US-attack.html

not sure what was more interesting - the idea of the Dutch spying on Iran (why..?), or the reported withdrawal due to imminent attack!

Frank Pulley

Archbishop Cranmer

I hereby publicly offer support for your supplication and your right to be heard on matters inimical to Mother Church, even though historially such support for you has led to dastardly deeds being perpetrated against your supporters.

I assume that your tract on creeping Ismalism is already promulgated on your earthly blog manifestation and will therefore hurriedly depart this medium and covertly visit your URL to assimilate that which I have been denied by those who seek to suppress the true faith. I shall, after reading it, commune with you on your own patch. Stand by Vicar! [genuflects] "I play dominoes, you doo, too - oo!

Anglica

Your Grace - Although I refuse to watch television, I have visited your blog on the Mosquish situation. To me, you seem to suggest that nowadays: i) some religions are more equal than others, and ii) that the more equal ones can preach hatred to their hearts' content; [they can easily present 'Others', who preach love, as haters].

Of hate... After a lifetime of applying it to rice pudding, I recently began to realize what it really means. Largely, I think, because both mosquish and marxist brethren enjoy applying hate - especially to those who are alone or female. I developed a long list of examples, in retrospect, but I bet all Coffee Housers have as many.

However, I wonder what makes haters hate - and, like a different article about Nazi youth, your blog explains the part played by indoctrination. I especially appreciate the snippets from the Koran that appear on your site: because I view them in contrast to Judaeo-Christian text. I had not realized...

As Christianity requires, I try -and must restrain the beginning of hatred. Further, it seems that the logical conclusion of hatred is murder - physical or spiritual - and I believe that would make me hate myself. So then: does hatred contain the seed of its own destruction? I wonder what Coffee Housers think.

Al Faturd

What this Coffee Houser thinks is that the Archbishop should be given his own space on the Spectator site.
We need more of his uncowed observation and less of the dismal twaddle which occupies so many.

Anglica

Verity - everything I read about Palin makes me like her better; your post is no exception.

As for Obama: his falseness informs my reaction against him; that and the fact that he's somehow not really American. However, I saw somewhere that he's holding fire on the pregnancy issue - so he has some sense of right reaction, even if it's purely political! All more points for Palin, though, in my book!

Anglica

Al Fa ...:

Yes, Cranmer's one of our own, isn't he? And we are of his kind. No matter what the newcomers and neo-pagans think they're doing, every word they utter displays their ignorance about the nature of ghosts like him. Deep down, I think, they know they're incompatible with an indestructible spirit of this place.

In all fairness, I know the same when I'm in their lands. I can never wait to get out of there.

TBF

Anglica, Al Faturd - I agree with you about Archbishop Cranmer, and he should be given a Coffee House platform. His blog is outstanding and he is very much one of our own.

I've asked for Archbishop Cranmer to be added to the Coffee House blog roll, but the powers that be don't seem to approve. Can I ask them why not?

Hereford

Verity: Brilliant! I really like that woman.

Archbishop Cranmer

Mr Al Faturd, Ms Anglica, Mr/Mrs/Miss/Ms TBF,

His Grace is touched by your kind comments. He had no idea he had a fan base amongst the Speccie's discerning readership. He may be inclined to visit more frequently, for the fellowship is warm and wise...

It is simply manifestly the case that one may not always be free to voice one's thoughts on certain matters, even if they do conform to the editors' stipulations on libel, swearing, or causing offence.

Archbishop Cranmer

Mr Pulley,

His Grace appears to have inadvertently ommitted you from the above post, and he humbly apologises. He is delighted that so many Coffee Housers find him congenial.

You are welcome to visit him any time you wish, though there is no need to genuflect in cyberspace.

On the matter of the topic to which you refer, he has indeed expressed himself in another place. It is perhaps the chamber in which the Lords Spiritual are most at liberty to express themselves.

Pete Hoskin

JCN: The Sunday Essay's still going. A bizarre set of unavoidable circumstances meant that one didn't go up a couple of days ago. But they'll be back this forthcoming Sunday.

Archbishop Cramner: Your Grace, we've been having a few technical problems over the past few days - so I suspect that your comment didn't make it through to us, rather than it being censored. You can always send it to me on phoskin @ spectator.co.uk and I'll put it up manually for you.

All: I've just added a photo of Sarah Palin visiting a wounded American soldier in Germany to the top of the page. Many thanks to Verity for sending it in.

Verity

Thanks for flagging that up, Pete! Coffee Housers, please note that this quiet visit was made was one year before Oabama left Germany in a huff, abandoning his own plans to visit wounded Service personnel because the hospital wouldn't allow him an entourage.

Archbishop Cranmer

Mr Hoskin,

His Grace apologises, but his subsequent post was up within seconds of the previous rather more contentious one having apparently been filtered out. You might understand how this perhaps appeared.

But since there is no censorship, His Grace would like to inform all Coffee Housers of an absolutely appalling occurrence in Oxford.

A Christian group has apologised to the city’s Muslims for having the audacity to organise a day of prayer during Ramadan. Oxfords Muslims found it ‘ill-conceived and insensitive’, not to mention ‘grossly insulting and inflammatory’.

He has covered it on his august blog, and is content to discuss this either in another place or here.

Tiberius

Hysteria:

since Holland is likely to be the first European state to go full burqa, perhaps they've formed an espionage unit out of a combined sense of desperation and gallows humour.

But no doubt the Dutch guy was relieved to spot The Strike is on the way.

Archbishop:

I'm glad to see you're for real. Now, are you gonna sort these suckers out, or will it take popular fisticuffs?

Archbishop Cranmer

Mr Tiberius,

His Grace is most certainly for real, but an 'X' marks the spot in Oxford where he met an end trying to sort out some other suckers.

He has never resorted to fisticuffs, but neither is he inclined to cower in the face of the pretence of offence which carries the implicit demand that any questioning of Islam be prohobited, during Ramadan and whenever.

Hysteria

I read somewhere that Polly has "seen the light" - I checked out the Guardian but can't find the article - has anyone got a link??

Commondog

What about this here Pollard/Davis pincer movement on things golliwogarian?

Speechless?

I should bloody cocoa.

Archbishop Cranmer

Does anyone have the remotest idea why the Prime Minister has sent Ramadan greetings to the Muslims of Kuwait?

His Grace can find no record of him having done so to Britain's Muslims, or indeed to the Muslims of any Commonwealth nation.

Surely it is not about oil?

TBF

Kuwait - very strange. You'd understand if it was Saudi, but Kuwait is an odd one to single out.

Loving your blog, Your Grace. It's a revelation. I agree with Al Faturd that you should have your own space on Coffee House.

Tiberius

Can't see His Grace getting his own blog on Coffee House. Too many posters would see it as a front for Sarah Palin's Creationist agenda.

Kenneth Hesketh

Despite the ethusiastic coverage of Mrs.Palin on American news web sites, it is now 1830 hours Thursday and BBC news does not appear interested.Have all the BBC staff been shut in the cellar without their phones & pencils?

EUSSR GO HOME

Maybe the UK media are hoist on their own petard? All they understand is eu propaganda - the psychological campaign to undermine the British mind and spirit. Maybe they don't know how to react to people who care about their country and what it stands for, and who are prepared to work for that public good in the tradition of their forebears. This strength of heart feeds the spirit and imagination - McCain and Palin are doing all kinds of things never dreamed of in the euro box - or telly.

Which marxists and moslems are running the BBC, anyway? Oh yeah-Big Brother.

Anglica

"Does anyone have the remotest idea why the Prime Minister has sent Ramadan greetings to the Muslems of Kuwait?"

I don't know, Your Grace. Perhaps oil + didn't we have military bases there some time ago?

Whatever - I'm just sick of hearing about Ramadan. Nobody in the West ever seemed to mention it before this year; but now it's all over all the US/UK media. Are we supposed to be impressed that they can pronounce it, or something? I don't think it's a patch on our tradition, either: if we don't eat meat on Fridays, then we don't eat it for the whole day. And if we make sacrifices at Lent, we choose our own, don't tell everybody what they are - and we make them day and night. What's so great about just daytime and having them forced on you?

Anyway - if Gordo has to be nice to one exotic religion, he ought to be choosing pagan pictures to send to Hindus, Buddhists, Shintos, Totem Pole Worshippers, Ancestor Worshippers, whatever all the different African tribes are, Al Q'da, Secularists, Marxists, all admirers of the One-eyed Yellow Idol...etc.

I just hope he does it as a private person and not purporting to represent me - one of the downtrodden Anglicans of this country who is also a loyal subject of our Head of State.

London Calling

"The Worlds A better place when its upside down"....

The Democrats (Americans)call the working class, Middle class, whatever that means to the American working class, maybe they are not worthy of falling into any class compared to our view of the class system here in the UK and as Obama stated in his speech any wage below $150000 is a low wage earner, who he says will pay less tax if he becomes president, therefore that must mean our low pay earners in the UK must be slaves and our middle earners are the deck hands.

The American people meanwhile want to get rid of the Bush clan as much as we want to get rid of the Brown clan, except one is Labour and the other Conservative and both took our countries to War based on a lie, raped Liberty and squandered pot loads of money for their wind of change???

Archbishop Cranmer

Ms Anglica,

Since it now appears to be No10 protocol to issue greetings to Muslims at both the beginning of Ramadan and to mark the end (Eid al-Fitr), His Grace has requested that formal greetings be sent to Christians at the beginning of their holy week, leading up to Easter.

Unless, of course, the Prime Minister wishes to be guilty of a gross act of discrimination.

Tiberius

Don't mention Ramadan to a certain acquaintance of mine.

He's a chef in a well-known British prison. He's emigrating soon because he's fed up of everything that's wrong with this country, some of which is mirrored in his job.

When I last spoke to him, he was not looking forward to returning to work after the summer holidays because he's now expected to cater for certain of the inmates during Ramadan.

They could never make a plane big enough, could they?

Anglica

Thank you, Your Grace @ 2:49 p.m.

Brilliant move!

JCN

So much for that Sunday Essay, eh Pete?