Spam, Blog and Chips

My good friend Keith has got a bee in his bonnet about Spam. Well, I don't blame him for that. Spam is the cancer of the email world. Chain emails encouraging you to "send this message to ten people" just inflate inboxes. You send 10, each of those send 10 - that's a hundred pointless emails due to 2 people!

I didn't realise the potential danger in eCards though, (Thanks Ming for not stopping me sending one to Anita). I have unwittingly "sold" email addresses to countless people now. Is it really that dangerous Keith? I thought I was the world's greatest cynic, but I see there is room for improvement.

So, on to Blogging, and linking. It took me a couple of days to get my head round this linking thing. My little Bangladeshi pal tried really hard to

a) Convince me it was worthwhile and not just a pointless excercise
b) Explain how to do it - she's not the planet's best teacher....

Anyway, my previously mentioned good friend and mentor, Keith, has sent me a blog tag. I guess I'd better comply, if I don't I will only look like a fuddy-duddy, and I can't have that. Naturally there are rules!

• Link to the person who tagged you.
  
• Post the rules on your blog.
  
• Share six quirks about you.
  
• Tag other people, and at the end of your post, link to their blogs.
  
• Let each of them know you have tagged them by leaving a comment on their blog.
  

The person who tagged me, as I have said, is Keith - I've linked to him, check above!

Now for my peculiar traits!

1) I can't stand skin left on cooked potatoes. Why should I have to prepare my own vegetables in a restaurant when I'm paying?

2) I hate stupid figures of speech, such as "Oh my God", "basically", "Like" and so on.

3) I detest and never (well, hardly ever) use txt spk. My texts are grammatically correct and properly spelt.

4) I like a pint of beer to be in the correct glass. I can't stand drinking Abbot Ale out of a Guinness glass - I'm not even that keen on drinking Guinness out of a Guinness glass!

5) I have to straighten pictures and ensure that everything is symmetrical.

6) I can't see the point in tagging.

My tags for now, then?

Keith, at The Secret Blog because I love reading his blogs!

and

Ming, at Ming's Busy Days, because she's such a whirling dervish, I simply have to keep an eye on her.

Okay, that's only two for now, but I'm getting bored with this already! In any case, I'm sure the general gist of it is plain to see.

Bag of chips, Keith?

For God's Sake

Extremism has flourished as Britain lost its faith in a Christian Vision, says the Sunday Telegraph. Is this more racial stirring or is there some truth in it? Michael Nazir-Ali, Bishop of Rochester thinks it has. Britain is certainly the most multi-cultural that it has ever been. I think we should welcome that. We talk of the world getting smaller and that we now live in a global village, so let's all live together and get on. However, it seems to me that we don't necessarily want to live together. Other cultures tend to stick together and seem afraid of mixing with others. In a relatively small city such as Salisbury, there is a Bangladeshi community. I can understand people from Bangladesh (or any other country, for that matter) wanting to retain strong links with their culture and family origins, but their forefathers moved to Britain, surely because they liked the idea of living in this country. I am fortunate that my circle of friends includes Australians, Americans, Bangladeshis, Indians, Sri Lankians, French, Germans as well as British people. I know Muslims, aetheists, agnostics, Christians as well. We all get on well, so where is the problem?

I find it quite interesting that the religious membership in Britain now has more Roman Catholics than Anglicans. What would Henry VIII have to say about that? The third highest faith is Islam - 1.6 million RC; 1.5m CofE; .9m Muslim. Orthodox, Hindu, Pentecostal and Jewish make up another 1.1m between them. Not that long ago, if someone was asked their religion, you would expect to here different sects of the Christian faith - C of E, Methodist, Baptist, Roman Catholic and so on. Not so today.

Muslims have submitted an application in Oxford to broadcast calls to prayer from a mosque. Residents have urged the council to refuse this request for a two minute call three times a day, warning that it would turn the area into a Muslim ghetto. Oh dear, our Christian hymn books have a hymn that runs:

In Christ there is no East or West,
in him no South or North,
but one great fellowship of love
throughout the whole wide earth.

How can anyone argue with that? I can hear bells from 3 Anglican churches from my house, would the sound of a call to prayer from a Mosque be that bad? I certainly don't consider that I live in a Christian ghetto. What rhetoric.

What is the answer? In fact, is there one? What does the future hold? I think that there are more questions than answers. All I do want to see though, is peace and harmony - irrespective of culture, creed or faith.



Amen to that.