16 June 2008
We received a petition asking:
“We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to Refuse any application submitted by the ‘Church’ of Scientology for recognition as a Religious Organisation.”
Details of Petition:
“Without compromise to freedom of thought or expression, the teachings and beliefs of Scientology, Dianetics and science-fiction writer L Ron Hubbard must never be legally be accepted as a religion - regardless of any recent EU decision to the contrary. We consider the ‘Church’ of Scientology is an exclusive business venture that by prohibiting access to scientifically-proven psychiatric therapy and medicine is effectively enslaving its believers.”
Well the petition is flawed, since Scientology is self-help business enterprise which hides behind a facade of religious symbolism. Or, if you like, a religious belief that has an extremely strong commercial function.
Gordon Brown replies thus:
In our approach to religious groups, the Government must seek to balance its responsibility to protect vulnerable individuals with the UK’s long held commitment to freedom of worship and belief.
The Government does not consider that it would be feasible or appropriate to introduce specific legislation or regulation of religious groups, their activities or their beliefs. There would be considerable difficulty in drawing up legislation in a way that did not interfere with the individual’s right to choose their beliefs and lifestyles so long as they do no harm to others. There is also no obvious way in which legislation could deal with cases where adults participate in activities of religious organisations entirely voluntarily.
`
I’ve no idea where the UK’s “long held commitment to freedom of worship and belief” comes from. Any serious study of British history would show the polar opposite. Many hundreds of thousands or millions of people have been killed or persecuted by the UK state down the centuries for their religious beliefs.
But the Prime Minister is right to refuse the petition because to accept it would be an imposition on other religious beliefs in the UK - for example, Christian Scientists abjure nearly all forms of modern medicine as part of their belief system - as do some fundamentalist Christian sects.
The reference to refusing “scientifically-proven psychiatric therapy and medicine is effectively enslaving its believers” is a similar poor argument. Are people who follow Scientology or similar belief systems being forced against their will to refuse modern medicine?
Nevertheless the problem of Scientology is really the problem of the extraordinary privileges given to religious beliefs in modern, secularized societies. Just imagine if religions were treated just like any other money-making enterprise, forced to actually prove that their beliefs were actually true or be sued for false advertising….
If the Kyoto Protocol was a débacle, the endless talks about successor treaties beyond 2012 have taken the whole process to new levels of absurdity.
Witness what is happening in the UK as green taxes, fuel price escalators, a slowing economy and the surging price of oil are causing the Labour Government electoral meltdown:
The government is coming under mounting pressure from hauliers and its own MPs to change its mind on measures that threaten to raise the cost of driving.
The Labour MPs say poorer motorists will suffer most from plans to increase road taxes on more polluting cars.
Road hauliers are also angry that fuel duty is set to rise by 2p this autumn.
But environment minister Joan Ruddock said that while she sympathised with motorists, the government “could not lose sight of the environment agenda”.
The MPs say they are concerned about the potential impact of a planned change in vehicle excise duty (road tax) which will see drivers paying more for more polluting cars registered since the end of 2001.
So far 35 Labour MPs have signed a motion calling on the Treasury to think again about the retrospective aspects of the policy.
They plan to warn the chancellor, when Parliament returns next week, that the government could lose votes over the issue.
This was after a disastrous by-election result in a previously safe constituency turned into a referendum on the performance of the Government (as frequently happens). The irony is that the winners on this occasion were the Conservative Party who campaigned on a “vote blue, go green” slogan promising more of the same rising tax escalators in order to save the planet.
The rest of Europe has gone solidly to the right, leaving just the UK government nominally with a centre-left, social democratic agenda. As Benny Peiser explains, this leaves the Brown government between a rock and a hard place, the rock being the Green agenda of carbon taxes and the hard place being the worsening world economy. In an op-ed for the Financial Post, Dr Peiser explains the problem:
In recent years, almost all of Europe’s social democratic parties have lost in national elections. The collapse of support for Gordon Brown and his policies reveals a general decline of Europe’s social democracy as a whole.
There are many good reasons for the deterioration of the centre-left’s political influence and power. But perhaps one of the most crucial is the abandonment of their traditional core value of progressive optimism. After all, the left used to derive large amounts of its popular appeal from a firm belief in social and technological advancement, a political philosophy of societal optimism and hope. During the last couple of decades, however, it has eagerly adopted a green ideology that has replaced its confidence in future progress with the ever more intimidating prediction of climate catastrophe and environmental disaster, culminating in calls for economic sacrifices and collective belt-tightening.
In short, Britain’s Labour Party has discarded its “progressive” principles for environmental fear-mongering and salvationist rhetoric in the expectation that voters would accept that only government control, central planning and higher taxes could prevent global disaster.
At the core of Labour’s environmental philosophy and polity-making stands the notion that people in Britain and other industrialized countries consume too much energy derived from the burning of fossil fuels. For many years, Labour has chanted the green mantra that in order to prevent disastrous climate change caused by excessive energy consumption, Britons must make personal sacrifices in their lifestyle and behaviour. No other government in the world has employed the spectre of climate catastrophe as forcefully as Britain; no other administration has saddled taxpayers with a heavier burden of green taxation.
Eighteen months ago, Labour’s David Miliband proposed the introduction of carbon “credit cards” that would be issued as part of a nationwide carbon rationing scheme. He suggested the allocation of an annual allowance for basic needs such as travel, energy or food. Two days after Labour’s disastrous defeat in the local elections, the whole scheme was hastily abandoned.
Of course it is being abandoned. The British public is now waking up to the realization that the Green hysteria is causing them more hardship now in order to produce…well nothing tangible. Global temperatures have not risen in more than ten years despite carbon dioxide rising by around 5% during that time.
What we have here is a scheme to send the economies of the Western world back at least half a century and maybe more. Can anyone imagine what it would be like?
Get out your gas masks and tin hats. We are under attack from a noxious army of doom-troopers demanding that we treat climate change as a rerun of the Second World War. In the latest move to militarise everyday life, the Environmental Audit Committee of MPs has seriously proposed energy rationing, aka “personal carbon credits”.
What next? Little (green) Hitlers patrolling the streets yelling “Put that high-energy light out!”? Or a campaign to bring back rickets? Everybody from the Prince of Wales to liberal newspapers and former Labour ministers now compares climate change to the war. Baroness Young of Old Scone, head of the Environment Agency, says this is “World War Three”. If it’s not breaking the Official Secrets Act, could somebody explain what on earth they are on about? The notion of a “war on carbon” makes even less sense than the glorious “wars” on terror/drugs/crime/whatever.
No, these evocations of the past appear political rather than practical. The aim is to create an ersatz Blitz Spirit that could bring people together behind a phoney war on global warming. Governments desperate for a unifying cause are naturally sympathetic. But they are also aware that hard-up Brits who see few bombs falling are unlikely to be too keen on making wartime sacrifices. Thus new Labour, which previously admitted it might “need to go back to rationing”, has retreated from the carbon credits proposal, fearful of further voter desertions.
What solution do the doom-troopers propose to the problem of public resistance? Let’s suspend democracy, like we did in the good old days! While one leading liberal writer insists that all the main parties must include identical austerity measures in their manifestos (not much change there then), another feminist veteran, Rosie Boycott, demands that they dump party politics altogether and form a national coalition based on Churchill’s wartime Government. Altogether now: “We will fight them in the recycling bins…”
Of course the answer to everything - an enlarged surveillance State, a public kept in a state of imaginary fear, and get this: rationing.
All those in favour of rationing? Not very many of you, if any.
If the Green Party cannot win a single seat in any place beyond a few backwater councils, why are the leading political parties trying to steal their clothing? Perhaps as the Green Green Machine grinds down to a halt, other shibboleths of the extreme-left consensus might get to be identified and junked.
Meanwhile, in London today, expect long traffic delays as a mutiny by road hauliers brings everything to a standstill:
Hundreds of lorry drivers angry at soaring fuel prices are travelling in convoy to protests in central London and along the M4 in Wales.
Hauliers say diesel prices topping 120p a litre, plus a planned 2p fuel tax rise, will drive firms “to the wall”.
Protesters are demanding an “essential user” duty rebate for HGV drivers.
It comes as Chancellor Alistair Darling prepares to meet Labour MPs concerned about plans to increase road tax on older, more polluting vehicles.
Forty-two MPs have signed a Commons motion asking the government to reconsider.
I would humbly suggest that Joan Ruddock may not last in her job much longer.
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