Today's Quote of the Day

From the Muppet Show:

Statler: "Wake up, you old fool, you slept through the show."
Waldorf: "Who's a fool? You watched it."

Dr Williams, Again

Dr Williams has published the text of his controversial speech on "Civil and Religious Law in England: a Religious Perspective" (you can find it here and I don't recommend that you try it.). It's very boring and I didn't manage to finish it.

Sea Power

Tidal power, which people in Bristol were seriously discussing as "the next big thing" in 1993 when I was at university, is starting to gain a little traction. Here is one story (link) of a small-scale project which should be up and running fairly soon.

Another Comment on Sharia Law

The BBC website is gathering opinions from a range of people (link) and, predictably, they are polarised into muslim and non-muslim. Here is the first quote on the page from Ibrahim Mogra of the Muslim Council of Britain:

"We're looking at a very small aspect of Sharia for Muslim families when they choose to be governed with regards to their marriage, divorce, inheritance, custody of children and so forth.

"We also have other examples... in our high streets we have compliant financial packages which have benefited our country's economy tremendously, so there is scope here for debate.

"It is very complex, it is not as straightforward as saying that we will have a system [in Britain]. We do not wish to see a parallel system or a separate system of judiciary for Muslims.

"We've seen examples of this in Ontario in Canada and in Singapore, where systems have worked very well."

Mr Mogra doesn't list all the areas he would like covered by Sharia Law but the sections pertaining to "marriage, divorce, inheritance, custody of children" are not, as he claims, a small part of the law - they are large, complicated areas of law built up over a very long period where even small changes might have large ramifications for many people. They certainly are not areas where different sections of the population can have different sets of rights and responsibilities.

Maybe Mr Mogra and Dr Williams would like to get together and decide which elements of Sharia Law they would like to introduce and produce between them a list of the changes they would make. It is clearly sensible to improve our current system - I wonder what they'll be able to suggest?

Sharia Law

I can't help thinking that the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Rt. Rev. Rowan Williams, is deliberately courting controversy when he wades into a debate on the secular legal system (link) with comments of a strictly religious nature. He holds doctorates in Philosophy and Divinity (although exactly what constitutes original research in Divinity is unclear) so he clearly isn't a stupid man, but his apparent assertion that the country needs one law for muslims and another law for everyone else is not a very smart move.

I wonder what else he would propose, if he continued this line of thinking - laws based on race, age, gender or other loose groupings? How about different marital laws for people who want to follow different laws on marriage? Or maybe the rich and the poor should be allowed different legal systems? I don't believe I should have to pay as much tax as I do - can I have my own legal system please? I wonder if Dr Williams would require people to register their beliefs with the Government so that the correct set of legal institutions could be used when they have a problem or complaint.

Ludicrous. There are very good reasons for having a single, unified set of laws that apply equally to all citizens, and he has yet to advance any evidence that his suggestions would yield the benefits he is suggesting.

Update - Doctor of Divinity is apparently an honourary degree so no research is required. Makes it pretty worthless, I suspect.

UK Physics

It is no real surprise that the UK’s physics research community is facing huge funding cuts after the recent Government review but the scale of the cuts and the breadth of the projects affected has sparked considerable anger. A new petition protesting the cuts has been created on the Downing Street website (link) and has already attracted more than 15,000 signatures.