Freedom of conscience is not the real issue

I am of course against the creation of animal-human hybrid embroys and against making it easier for children to grow up without fathers, but I am not kidding myself that yesterday's concession by Gordon Brown allowing Labour MPs a free vote on key sections of the Frankenstein Bill will change anything in the longer-run.

Once again, the Tories have been playing gesture politics here. They have focused on the procedural issue of whether MPs would get a free vote, hoping it would simultaneously embarrass Gordon and portray them as more sympathetic to the views of the Bill's opponents.

But the truth is that David Cameron knows perfectly well that most of his MPs will ultimately back this measure, as will most of Gordon Brown's. The fact that there is now to be a free vote will make no difference whatever to the outcome.

Result: a terrible Bill which further undermines both the sanctity of human life and the role of the family will become law, and the de-Christianisation of Britain will continue apace.

White Easter

This Easter will certainly stick in the memory. I got up at 5.30am on Easter Sunday morning to drive to the Sunrise Service in the middle of a raging blizzard. At 8am my son was out in the garden building a snowman. It was the first White Easter I can remember in my lifetime and not something I really expect to see again.

But although it was memorable in its own way, there will no doubt be plenty of debate in workplaces up and down the land this morning as to whether we really want a four-day Bank Holiday weekend this early in the year. The wintry weather was not exactly conducive either to family days out, gardening or DIY (although I did manage to get a new basement window installed in between snow and rain breaks.)

Some will no doubt advocate decoupling the holiday from the Christian festivals, as the schools have already done. But for me the logical answer would be for the churches to take the initiative and fix Easter on the first Sunday in April - rather than the current formula which puts it on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox (March 20 or 21).

As well as reducing the likelihood of wintry weather, this would mean Easter would always fall within the school holidays. Furthermore because Whitsun (Pentecost) falls seven weeks after Easter, it would mean Whitsunday would always fall on the fourth Sunday in May, thus restoring the lost link between the Christian festival of Whitsun and the Spring Bank Holiday.

Five go adventuring again

Yes, they're back....but presumably without the lashings of ginger beer, farmers' wives who rustle up a whole picnic in five seconds' flat without expecting payment, scary black faces staring in at the window, and horrible smelly gipsies who haven't had a bath for weeks.

Haselhurst is our top choice too

Many aeons ago before the world's financial system went into near-meltdown we were all busy obsessing about whether Michael Martin would carry on as Speaker and who his successor might be, which puts the nature of the political news cycle in perspective somewhat.

Nevertheless, I was sufficiently engaged by this fascinating political conundrum to carry out a poll, the results of which can be viewed HERE.

Before launching this poll I noted that Sir Alan Haselhurst had topped a similar poll on Iain Dale's Diary and said it would be interesting if my own poll produced the same result, given this blog's different readership.

Although my sample is much smaller than Iain's, the results as can be seen below are indeed remarkably similar, with Sir Alan topping my poll with almost exactly the same percentage as he achieved on Iain's - surely an indication of the respect in which he is held across the political spectrum.

For the record, I voted for Ken Clarke. With no disrespect to Sir Alan, I think the reputation of Parliament is now suffiently damaged it needs a big figure in every sense to help restore it to its former standing.

Iain's poll

Sir Alan Haselhurst 22.6%
Sir George Young 18.8%
Sir Menzies Campbell 12%
Frank Field 11.3%
Vince Cable 9.5%
Kenneth Clarke 9%
Alan Beith 4.1%
Michael Ancram 3.5%
Sir Patrick Cormack 3.4%
John Bercow 2.5%
Sylvia Heal 2.2%
Sir Michael Lord 1.1%

My poll

Sir Alan Haselhurst 22%
Sir Menzies Campbell 17%
Kenneth Clarke 16%
Sir George Young 15%
Margaret Beckett 8%
Sylvia Heal 6%
Alan Beith 5%
Michael Ancram 3%
Sir Patrick Cormack 1%
None of these 6%

Belper's most famous export?

Actually this was nails, hence the name of the local football club (Belper Nailers) and the occasional use of "nailheads" as a term of abuse for the natives. But in terms of recent political history, the town where I now live is perhaps best known for being the constituency of George Brown, legendary piss artist and Labour Deputy Leader of the 1960s, who dramatically resigned from the job of Foreign Secretary (allegedly while drunk) forty years ago this week.

I always thought it was Tony Crosland who said that "George Brown drunk was a better man than Harold Wilson sober" but apparently this phrase was actually first penned by William Rees Mogg in a Times editorial. What Crosland said, a propos of the 1963 leadership contest between the two men, was that the party faced "a choice between a crook and a drunk."

For my part, I have always regarded Brown as a much-maligned chap. The oft-repeated story about him going up to the Cardinal Archbishop of Lima while under the influence and asking him for a dance is almost certainly an invention, for instance.

Possibly the most fair-minded assessment I have read on Brown's career appears on a Derbyshire wiki project with which I am currently involved called You and Yesterday. You can read it HERE.

At our best when we are boring

My initial verdict on last Wednesday's Budget - written in a hurry between finishing work and picking my wife up from a hospital appointment - was intentionally rather tongue-in-cheek. A more considered verdict appeared on Saturday's Newcastle Journal and can be read in full HERE.