Britannist

Two examples include what is becoming an annual campaign to suppress Christmas (i.e. politically correct councils calling it 'Wintervil' or cases where health and safety rules are used to stop Christmas Trees being put up in some public places) and attempts to ban the visibility of the Crucifix (such as in the cases of British Airways employee Mrs. Eweida a few months ago or, only a couple of weeks ago, the school at Croydon).

Smidgey

Of course I don't .

As I said earlier, the Scottish and English education systems are totally distinct and separate. The only time we ever really get to know anything about your education system, NHS, etc is for 30 minutes on BBC news every day or on question time. For everything else we have our own Scotish shows, such as Newsnight or Scottish news/Scotland today.

Which was why I made clear that faith schools in Scotland have been one of the big contributors to the separation, sectarianism and segregation that has occurred in the West. It currently a really big issue up here at the moment.

Smidgey

Well, I would agree that those cases are anti-Christian then. The B.A. case wouldn't have been anti-Christian if it concerned all faiths.

Personally, as an atheist, I celebrate Christmas and will always continue to call it Christmas. For me it is a Western cultural thing that has its roots in thousands of years of history. To change the name of it like those councils you have mentioned is just absurd. Governments always think they can somehow manipulate culture... Mao tried it and failed.

Edit: I have just read the wikipedia article on school vouchers. I must say it actually sounds rather appealing. This would actually satiate both viewpoints, since we could have private education systems and separation of church and state. Typical of me, stuck in 'socialist' Scotland to have never even heard of these...

I do remember reading about Milton Friedman's idea in Capitalism and Freedom, but I'm sure (if I remember correctly) he used a different word for them - which may be why the word doesn't ring a bell.

So yes, that is something I could agree on. Argument over !

rjt

Indeed I was delighted by Mrs Eweila's stand.

On the subject of Schools it should be remmebered that this still is a christian country, we should welcome other faiths and allow them freedom to worship peacefully but we dont owe them anything else.

Faith schools are not doing a bad job and removing them to me seems silly as many people who cannot afford private education will then be deprived of what they will feel the best opportunitys for their kids.

Smidgey

Well rjt, I think you need to take into account that Britain also has a long history of atheists and atheist though. We have some of the greatest defenders of liberty in our society being those who have no belief. Take John Stuart Mill, Jeremy Bentham, James Mill, Thomas Paine or David Hume for example. We even had people like Thomas Hobbes and John Locke accused of being atheists because they were anti-organised religion, even though they did believe.

I still stand by my stance that separation of church and state actually protects religion from the long arm of the executive government. I see it as one of the only ways to protect freedom of religion. We have seen the Roman Catholic church trampled upon recently. If the state was separate from the government then I would hope that property rights would trump government 'equality' laws.

If we are to have state funded schools then I think that they should all be secular, however, after reading about this voucher system (I reread the chapter in Friedman about this last night) I really would prefer that to go ahead.

Britannist

If you are a referring, Smidgey, to the business about adoption, then I would agree that Blair/Labour brushed aside the views of millions of Roman Catholic people in this country.

I am a Roman Catholic but support the status quo (i.e. the The Queen being Head of the Church of England and of the Anglican Church being the state Church).

I do not see how the position of Roman Catholics would improve if the UK were to be a secular state. Blair/Labour would still have snubeed the Roman Catholic Church over adoption (in my view).

Britannist

I agree - faith schools should be encouraged and promoted. Parents support faith schools. So parents should get what they want. This Government - stuffed full fo privately educated people - should not be allowed to stand in the way of what parents want (which, naturally, is to want the best education available for their children).