Thursday I had a very mixed day, amazing, humbling, some of it exciting and then some nauseating!But that is the thing with life isn’t it? we are up we are down,We spend uplifting inspiring time with great people and then we are forced to be in the company of arse-holes! (I will explain!)
I thought I would share it with you!
The day started by driving down to London to be at the launch of Sharia Watch UK held in the wonderful building of the House of Lords, courtesy of Baroness Cox (no relation!) Brilliant morning, great speakers brave hard work done by Anne Marie Waters and all. So good to be part of this movement, and to be able to support other causes, (sometimes it is easy to think we have the monopoly on suffering and oppression!!!) and great to be in that wonderful historic building.
What a privilege it was to be there! even my drive down was beautiful, as I drove around Hyde Park corner the household cavalry were moving about sixty horses to Buckingham Palace mews. They were awe inspiring, no saddles, sleek and shiny and beautiful.
Then I drove up to Cambridge where David Greenwood and I were going to the Student Union debate. he was debating,( I was his “plus one”) and we were with great company, Chris Street from Atheist UK and Sara Passmore from British Humanists Association
What an honour to be in those hallowed grounds and in true Cambridge Union fashion we were treated like very honoured guests.
Amazing debating chamber and an added bonus for me was my friend from Oxford Ben Krishna, now at Cambridge was there to support us!
Reception and supper set the scene for the debate, and I got my first look at the “opposition” in the form of “fr.” Andrew Pinsent an arrogant catholic priest who’s ego took up most of the dining room. Then there was Petter Williams,”pro life campaigner and speaker for catholic voices” who is just about one of the most self satisfied, pompous assess I have ever had the misfortune to encounter! The other speaker came in after supper, she was Melanie McDonagh, a writer for the evening standard.
The proposal for the debate was “This house believes that the catholic church is a force for good”needless to say we were very much opposing this motion!
Andrew Pinsent spent most of his allotted ten minutes listing all the great inventors of the past, claiming them for the catholic church, despite the fact that most of them lived in a time when pretty much everybody was a papist. He didn’t say anything pertinent, but clearly he is someone who is used to public speaking, so he can listen to his own voice with which he is so clearly madly in love.
The lady speaker Melanie was quite a pleasant if scatty lady, didn’t make too much sense , and even conceded a few of “our” points, although speaking against us.
The two “blokes” throughout our sides submissions rolled their eyes, huffed and puffed and interrupted and if they were not so sinister, would have been reminiscent of the silly little boys in my second year infants school class.
Every time we made mention of child abuse and catholic indoctrination they nearly had a seizure and our mention of the UN commission for the rights of the child and it’s damning report of the vatican seemed to cause a raise in their blood pressure enough to cause a cerebral explosion!
Peter Williams from “catholic voices” was arrogant, pompous, vicious and the enormous amount of complimentary booze he had thrown down his neck was showing his true anger driven colours.
He was armed with “data” and meaningless figures of how few priests were abusers, churned up all the usual crap about “francis” and all of the apologies that ungrateful survivors seemed to be spurning. and suggested the UN commission had not been shown any real evidence.
That was I am afraid the cue for me to give him a few home truths which resulted in great applause form the audience and caused him to throw a look at me that suggested I should drop dead imminently.
He mumbled that our evidence is anecdotal and not “data” and continued to defend his indefensible church with vitriolic nonsense.
David and Chris and Sara were measured and magnificent, which had our “friend” on the other side almost having steam coming out of his ears.
We all retreated to the bar to await the result of the votes and when the bell rang and the votes were cast we were overjoyed that we had WON!!!!!
The house had thrown out the proposal, and our catholic “friends” were furious.
The more free booze Peter Williams consumed, the more angry he became until at last he managed to stagger over to our party looking for a fight!
I have to say he ONLY attacked me verbally, but there was a point when I thought he would hit David!
We decided to leave before he got even uglier.
And here is the thing! they behaved in exactly the way we would expect, and the way the UN has accused them of, putting the face of their church above any concerns of their victims and using every dirty trick in the process.
We didn’t actually need to try and win against them, they did that all by themselves! Amazing that the church is so afraid of us that they have the “media” face which is “catholic voices” who they “train” to defend the church!
We were there to tell the truth , they were there to defend the indefensible.
AND THE TRUTH WON!!!!
