Candidate questions

Some interesting questions for elected Mayor of Bristol candidates have been posted in online comments on this Post story. Here's a selection of the best, sorted out from the silly, sarcastic, and more loaded ones...with the name of the contributors first:

·        Fishandchips  - “How will mayor candidates help to guide people to become confident, improve psychological access and strive to be successful in business or in their chosen subjects?”

·         Fishandchips  - “We need a leader who can work with people at every level. My question is how can they demonstrate this quality

·         green_man - “Will you resign, resulting in an election, if a sufficient proportion or number of Bristol's voters petition you to do so?”

·         BCFCfinker - “Will you do what's best for Bristol and not what's best for you?”

·         Kromax - “What will you do to bring employment to Bristol?
How will you open up south Bristol to employment opportunities?

Will you bring trams to Bristol? Will you bring an Arena to Bristol?

Will you bring secure parking for motorcycles/cycles to Bristol i.e. at Temple Meads/ in the centre?

Will you turn off traffic lights out of peak times or alter timing where appropriate?

·         Marshwalker99 - “What experience do you have of managing a complex operation which spends around £1.3 billion pounds a year

Cameron's Christianity Codswallop

David Cameron's pronouncements yesterday on Christianity are confused and send out mixed messages. He trumpets that we are a Christian country, when for many practical purposes we are not (see here) - Cameron himself said he was only a vaguely practicing Christian and over half the country said they were non-religious in the latest social attitudes survey! He calls for the revival of traditional Christian values but says he is full of doubts on major theological issues (see here). He's hardly setting a Christian standard is he, so what is he playing at?

His stated idea is that the return of Christian values would help us fight our 'moral collapse'. He's wrong to think that Christianity and the Bible or any other religion and its texts are the basis of our morality. Human beings developed a sense of what is right and wrong long before any formal relgions existed and very likely for evolutionary reasons.

Instead of pronouncing on Christianity his focus should be on effective, practical action to tackle the poor moral standards so evident in politics, policing, banking and financial services, in the media, and in the Christian Church itself. I'm fed up with expenses scandals, police corruption, greedy bankers and business-people, 'mafia-like' newspaper organisations, sexism, homophobia, child abuse scandals...and the advocacy of materialism we've long had from all political colours.

He should be looking at the privileged, influential position of Christianity in the UK and planning to make us a better secular society. He should think through whether the Bible is actually a consistent guide to anything at all. Richard Dawkins says in his book The God Delusion that '...the Bible is not systematically evil but just plain weird, as you would expect of a chaotically cobbled-together anthology of disjointed documents, composed, revised, translated, distorted and 'improved' by hundreds of anonymous authors, editors and copyists, unknown to us and mostly unkown to each other, spanning nine centuries...unfortunately it is this same weird volume that religious zealots hold up to us as the inerrant source of our morals and rules for living.'

David Cameron should recognise that actually his doubt is a good thing. Doubt means you are thinking. It means you are asking questions, not accepting the status quo - seeking change for the better. Doubt helps us break away from unjustifiable traditions. With no evidence for the existence of God - quite the contrary in fact - and no convincing arguments either, why believe? If there is a God why is there so much undeserved suffering in the world eg those homeless, cold, hungry, thirsty, lonely, subject to war, terrorism and crime, in hospital...? As Woody Allen said God 'is an underachiever' !

The 400th anniversary of the King James Bible that prompted David Cameron's comments has its significance of course. This book is a major, if not the major work of English literature. Atheist Richard Dawkins sums this up nicely in The God Delusion, '...the main reason the English Bible needs to be part of our education is that it is a major source book for literary culture. The same applies to the legends of the Greek and Roman gods and we learn about them without being asked to believe in them.'.

*http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-16231223

*http://www.humanism.org.uk/news/view/952

*http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-16224394

*http://www.bristol247.com/2011/12/12/your-say-on-what-grounds-can-we-claim-to-be-a-christian-country-68525/