Foreign Perspectives

Archive for the ‘Society’ Category

We were all revved up for a decisive meeting with the solicitor this morning, nicely spruced up look, early departure to be sure to be there on time and all that. In fact we were so early that there was time for a really nice cooked breakfast which turned out to be surprisingly cheap.

Anyway, the appointed time arrived and a signature was collected. Well, these things always need a signature at some point, don’t they? Not too long after that we were called in and figured we were all set to go.

Well, it turns out that the other party couldn’t be contacted by their representative despite a number of attempts so the whole thing is adjourned until next week to give them a final opportunity. At the moment though it looks like the whole thing could fall through which is good for us though ’tis rather annoying to have had to collect everything together and for naught.

Which left us at a loose end quite early in the morning. All worked up to go for it and nothing to go for.

Oh well. At least it gave us a chance to have a relaxed morning for a change.

Christian beliefs and the law came into conflict back in 2008 when an openly gay couple turned up to stay at a B&B in Cornwall and were turned away because they were gay and the owners did not believe in unmarried couples sharing a bed. To complicate it a little more the couple were in a registered partnership which, supposedly, is equivalent to marriage however that aside the beliefs of the owners wouldn’t have counted that as a marriage anyway.

They lost their case today but have leave to appeal essentially because there’s quite a conflict between the gay couple’s right to stay and the owners right to their religious beliefs. This is merely the first round. In one corner we have the Equality Commission and in the other, the Christian movement around the world.

The problem in this case is that both the couple and the owners are “right”.

The couple are right legally in that it’s illegal to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation and morally right as it seems wrong and intrusive to be enquiring about one’s sexual orientation. Do they ask the marital status of everyone checking in? After all, many heterosexual couples who’ve been living together for a long time would come across as being married so it wouldn’t be as simple as picking out a gay couple as opposed to two male friends who were travelling around together.

The owners are right both legally and morally too though. After all, article 9 of the human rights convention is very clear about one’s right of freedom of thought, conscience and religion:

1. Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief, in worship, teaching, practice and observance.
2. Freedom to manifest one’s religion or beliefs shall be subject only to such limitations as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society in the interests of public safety, for the protection of public order, health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.

Morally they seem to be right too in that clearly a gay couple in a bed was a major conflict with their own beliefs.

Given that they’re both right it would have obviously been better if the conflict between them hadn’t arisen. There are a great number of gay friendly establishments for the couple to have stayed with and likewise there are a large number of married couples to have stayed at the B&B. What needed to be cleared was that the establishment was a Christian owned one (there’s nothing on their website to indicate that) although I suspect that they could do little more than that: a “no unmarried couples” policy would probably be illegal.

This is one case that we’ll likely hear a lot more of in the years to come as it trundles along to the highest courts.

Supposedly our doctor operates to a maximum of 48 hours delay for appointments but in reality it’s at least a week and in the winter months it can be more like two or three weeks. The net effect of that is that a rising number of people (and it’s mainly the elderly) who make a rolling series of appointments “just in case” which, naturally, clogs up the appointment calendar. In fact, one elderly lady seems to make daily appointments as she is always there when we call in.

To get around this clogging up of the appointment system they abandon it altogether at least one day a week and two or three when it’s really bad. What happens then is that they have an “open surgery” which means you need to call them between 9am and 11am when you’re put through to a doctor who decides whether or not you need to be seen. Sounds fine, but in practice we tried to get through on every opportunity for two weeks solid and didn’t manage to get anything but an engaged tone.

But even when you do get through to a doctor they’re clearly massively overworked thanks to that 100% booking of appointments. Thus it’s very much a cursory visit. So, despite us managing to get an appointment a couple of weeks ago and exhibiting all the symptoms of swine flu were just sent home and told to keep taking liquids. That’s the instruction that has managed to kill far too many people. OK, those who aren’t so healthy at the off might well die with a cold never mind flu but you don’t expect healthy people to die of the flu these days, do you?

All being well, you’ll  be just about to start on a brilliant Christmas Day by the time this is published. We try to keep it a no-computer day so as computers need holidays too 🙂 Well, we sure need a break from them anyway.

Take more care with your food intake than I did a few weeks back. A really nice looking German hotdog in the Belfast Christmas market turned out to be something of a breeding ground for salmonella which led me low for a surprising amount of time.If it ain’t 100% cooked, leave it on the plate!

Watch all those nice new Christmas prezzies too. Some drongos trashed the house of one of the nicest old ladies you could meet the day before Christmas Eve. For what though? She certainly doesn’t have a house stuffed full of the latest electronics that they could get shot of easily. Nope, just mindless vandalism.

Pay particular attention to the roads this year too. We’ve finally managed to get a white Christmas alright but boy does that make for some seriously low temperatures and dreadful driving conditions. Worth noting is that the salt that they currently use on UK roads doesn’t work too well below -10C in terms of melting the ice/snow although obviously the grit mixed in with it does help things. Since large chunks of the country have been quite consistently below that, you might not want to be relying too heavily on the assumption that gritted roads = safe roads. Forget all about drinking and driving in conditions like this too.

Finally, why not do something nice for someone in the Christmas spirit? Just yesterday, a nice lady in Marks & Spencers handed us her £5 off voucher when she saw that we’d be able to use it whilst she couldn’t. It’s always nice to return that favour to someone else a la Good Samaritans who I’ve run into a surprising number of times over the years. But what about trying to repay the kindness twice? I’m sure that it wouldn’t take a massively long time before we were all knee deep in acts of kindness if everyone did that. Wouldn’t that be a nice thing to happen?

I was tootling along quite nicely up to last week.

The web design assignment was coming together nicely with a web site that looked reasonable and only a few hundred words shy of the target for the accompanying report. Another hour or two would complete the medicine course assignment. The reading for the archaeology course was really far ahead of schedule and it was looking like I’d be making a start on the assignment this week. Not only that but I clocked up passes in three courses on the Thursday, particularly welcome in the case of the astronomy course, the exam for which seemed to be a totally dire experience for the majority of people.

Even real life was motoring along quite nicely with all our original set of Christmas cards away getting on for two weeks before Christmas. OK, that might not seem a massive success to you, but believe me, it’s a major achievement for us. We’d managed to see the Christmas play twice and were rolling on downhill towards the kids party, Santa photos, and planned Christmas shopping. Yes, I know, we really should do the Christmas shopping earlier but at least this year we had assembled our shopping list quite early (for us, anyway).

And then I grabbed one of the German hotdogs at the Christmas market which has laid me low with food poisoning for most of the week. And there was the snow and ice which both limited our range and massive increased the time taken to get anywhere. And then there was the flu that one after the other of us managed to pick up.

That lost week has messed up the plan to do “collect at store” for a number of items which is probably no bad thing as one item is available in a thoroughly snowed in area. Supposedly the home delivery is in “two days” which sounds remarkably optimistic but there you go. I think we may need to put off Christmas for a couple of days.

Oh, and there’s the issue that the spot we’ve booked for our Christmas lunch appears to remarkably difficult to get to at the moment.