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Britain's First Jedi Member of Parliament
Posted by
timothy
on Wed Jun 29, 2005 01:22 PM
from the sad-funny-or-just-bizarre dept.
from the sad-funny-or-just-bizarre dept.
earthlingpink writes "In his maiden speech to the House of Commons, the Hon. Member for Copeland, Jamie Reed MP, announced that he is a Jedi: "as the first Jedi Member of this place, I look forward to the protection under the law that will be provided to me by the Bill" (the quotation is a fair way down the page; search for 'Jedi,' not surprisingly). How long before we have a Congressional equivalent?" Update: 06/29 23:15 GMT by T : Reader JE_Hoover adds a correction: "Although the previous MP for Copeland was the Hon. Member for Copeland, the current MP for Copeland is not a member of the privy council. Debretts make it all clear."
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The Force is *retarded* with this one... (Score:5, Funny)
This whole Jedi religion [scaryplace.com] dreck has now officially gone too far. To those misguided simpletons out there who insist on calling themselves 'Jedi knights', I offer you this chance to prove yourselves:
What's that...you can't? Don't have suitable raw materials, you say?
OK...that's fair...how about this, then:
Are you doing it? I'm not feeling anything...
Re:The Force is *retarded* with this one... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:The Force is *retarded* with this one... (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:The Force is *retarded* with this one... (Score:5, Funny)
I think you mean "Youngling".
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Re:The Force is *retarded* with this one... (Score:5, Insightful)
And, this is different from other religions how?
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What about Scientology? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:What about Scientology? (Score:5, Funny)
What kind of parent names her child 'L'. No wonder he came up with all those whacky ideas later in life.
Actually, I always thought his name was "Elron"
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Re:What about Scientology? (Score:5, Funny)
Ah. I see. For a second, I thought his mom gave him a weird name.
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Re:The Force is *retarded* with this one... (Score:5, Insightful)
I know, it's still just BS, Mr. Smartypants.
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Re:The Force is *retarded* with this one... (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:The Force is *retarded* with this one... (Score:5, Informative)
His teachings are great example of modern masters who truely understand not only THAT martial arts work, but WHY martial arts works.
Forest C. Adcock
3rd degree Tae Kwon Do
4th degree Shinjukki-Jin Jitsu
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Re:The Force is *retarded* with this one... (Score:5, Funny)
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Wrong Claim (Score:5, Insightful)
It's entirely different to claim to believe in Jedi and to claim to BE a Jedi. According to the books I've read and the movies, a Jedi is capable of performing these actions. They all have their "talents" but to be a Jedi you have to be able to manipulate the force in some tangible and demonstrable way.
The water to wine thing doesn't hold. It's not a commonly held dogma (leaving backwoods ministers from crazyville out) that Christians are given controllable powers. If they were claiming to be Jesus, on the other hand, by all means, ask for proof. Thomas did, and got to stick his fingers through the nail wounds.
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Re:Wrong Claim (Score:5, Informative)
For what it is worth, Catholics believe that the priest turns the sacramental host and wine into the literal body and blood of Jesus Christ during mass. which is not too far removed from your example.
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Re:Wrong Claim (Score:5, Insightful)
Than as a Christian, prove you are _like_ Christ.
- Treat all people no matter what their sickness or sexual conduct as God's children.
- Suspend your criticism of other's sins unless you are without
- Put other's well-being before your own
- Live a life of spirituality, not wealth
- Openly critize the leaders of your religion and texts
- Refrain from any anger at any time except in the case when someone is profiting from your religion
- Be willing to sacrifice yourself for what you believe in
Lots of people claim to be Christians. How many really are?
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Oh and another thing (Score:5, Insightful)
Thomas did ask for proof, yes, and he got his proof. But Jesus castigated also him for it. Daring to ask for proof was seen as a much weaker for of faith than belief without seeing.
Such a philosophy goes a long way towards explaining the current climate in the US.
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That wasn't a Christian (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:That wasn't a Christian (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:The Force is *retarded* with this one... (Score:5, Funny)
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Creationism has nothing to do with the Bible (Score:5, Insightful)
Your catagorical disbelief of evolution (as opposed to specific objections, like irregularities in the evidence) is not supported by the world around us, and it is not supported by the very book you claim to follow. It is illogical, irrational, extremely arrogant, and is modded flamebait for very good reason.
As for the "it's just a theory" horseshit, well, if you haven't figured out how worthless that statement is by now, you really are beyond all reason. Things like eletricity and gravity and relativity and nuclear fission and nuclear fusion are all theories, and have all field very real, practical results. Evolution, too, has shown itself to be real as best it can, but no one can prove it to be absolutely, unquestionably true any more than they could prove that an electrons are real by picking one up and showing it to me.
But you go ahead and keep believing that electrons aren't real because you can't observe them directly. Just try not to get hit by a bolt of lightning...
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Re:Jesus Heals (Score:5, Informative)
"She turned me into a newt!" heads turn "I got better."
If you can actually prove that your hand was miracuously healed, then I'm pretty sure James Randi has a million bucks waiting for you.
But it raises a pretty big question. If Jesus did heal your wounded hand, why doesn't he heal other believers' hands? I'll wager that most burn wards in the Americas and Western Europe are populated largely by Christians, so what makes you so damn special, or is there some sort of miracle lottery?
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Re:Jesus Heals (Score:5, Insightful)
Look, I'm sorry if I offend anyone, but I'm really getting tired of the logic here: I don't understand it, so I will attribute it to God.
If you don't know how something happened, why is a common course of action to give credit to a god for something good happening, when it would be far easier and simpler to just admit you don't know.
I mean, really.... you don't hear many cancer victims blaming Satan for their illness, so why the other way around?
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Re:Jesus Heals (Score:5, Insightful)
There are further problems with claims such as you state can happen. The biggest that comes to mind is that you are very careful to use sufficiently ambiguous language so that any demand for emperical testing of a miracle can be headed off. Whatever the cause of an alleged miracle, there is going to be a physical manifestation, and that manifestation ought to be measurable, but you put so much wiggle room in, and it almost seems the reason is to stave off that sort of analysis.
The second has to do with the notion of faith itself. Christians aren't the only people who claim miracles. Many adherents of other faiths also claim that their deities (or other spirits and the like) can also produce supernatural feats. Is it your view that God gives non-Christians a helping hand to, or are the only legitimate miracles those that occur to Christians?
It isn't so much that some people discount claims, but rather that in analyzing any claim, the measure ought to be how extraordinary from every day physical interactions the claim is. If you have an extraordinary claim, then you ought to be prepared to provide extraordinary evidence. No claim, not even one made by scientists, ought to be immune from this. Now, in some cases, an extraordinary claim does have extraordinary evidence, in which case skepticism must be put aside, even if only on the basis of current evidence (with the realization that further evidence may change the situation substantially).
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Re:The Force is *retarded* with this one... (Score:5, Funny)
Nothing, says I!
And my army of the undead agree with me, too!
So don't be a bigot about something that's so clearly a matter of taste.... tasty... human... flesh... mmmmm....
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Scared (Score:5, Funny)
There is nothing to see here. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:There is nothing to see here. (Score:5, Informative)
This isn't offtopic; it's an obscure reference to Star Wars ep. IV
It's hardly obscure...it's probably the most heavily quoted/referenced line from episode IV.
Don't blame the mods...they're on crack...they really can't help themselves.
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Re:There is nothing to see here. (Score:5, Funny)
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Answer (Score:5, Funny)
Oh, but we have. Problem is... they're all Siths. And the greedy kind.
Re:Answer (Score:5, Funny)
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They get Jedi (Score:5, Funny)
They get Jedi, we get Sith...
Re:They get Jedi (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:They get Jedi (Score:5, Funny)
They get Jedi, we get Shit...
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Oy vey (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Oy vey (Score:5, Funny)
Help!!Help!!! I'm being opressed..
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Good for him (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Good for him (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Good for him (Score:5, Informative)
The thrust of John "feed my daughter BSE burgers" Selwin Gummer was that there seemed to be a lack of context. If only he'd thought of that when he was a Minister of the British Government. He, and others, also talked about how it was the actions that people often hated, not other people. The final point given was that existing laws protected Jews (because they are a culture as well as a religion) but exempted Muslims (because there is no recognized, unified concept of Muslim culture in British law).
British politicians frequently hit on some excellent points, but just as frequently pick themselves up and carry on regardless. The new law could be modified to become workable, by tightening up on the definition of incitement to only include direct and deliberate instructions to attack (eg: the fatwah against S. Rusdie) or the direct and deliberate attempt to cause irreperable harm to another group of people, for the explicit purpose of creating hostilities.
You notice that this is extremely specific and narrow. And so it should be. Laws should cover situations that cannot be resolved in a civilized manner by tolerence, acceptance and discussion. They should never be a substitute - which is what this law seems to be. But where things would otherwise get out of hand, there needs to be some mechanism for the authorities to step in and keep the sides apart.
Ideally, I would throw away this bill, all blasphemy laws and all race hate laws, and simply make a generic law that protects people's rights to protest, assemble, hold a faith, do whatever they damn well feel like, with the sole limit that they cannot deliberately seek to have others come to harm in the process.
I don't see the need to have a billion special-interest laws that cover this case or that case, when there's a single, common, underlying issue that can equally well be put in check.
I also don't see the benefit in vagary, when the purported aim is to prevent abuse. Vague laws are one reason why the US has get-rich-quick lawsuits and only minimal order. The aim of the US legal system has been to make lawyers rich and lobbyists powerful over whoever is the selected victim group of the day.
I absolutely hate the way that all laws in all countries define what is "wrong", but never define what is "ok". Well, that should be everything that's not prohibited, right? Well, the problem is that just about everything is prohibited by some law or other and those doing the interpreting are often the least-qualified to do so.
(And if laws need interpreting by experts, how are average people supposed to follow them?? Remember, ignorance isn't an excuse.)
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Does Darth Hillary count? (Score:5, Funny)
Somehow "Master Kennedy" just doesn't have the same ring to it. And "Darth Delay" is only slightly better than "General Grievous"
Re:Does Darth Hillary count? (Score:5, Funny)
I think Darth Frist and Lord Cheney sound good. Grand Moff Rumsfeld has a nice ring to it, too.
-B
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A far more readable link... (Score:5, Informative)
If you read some of the rest of the debate --- surprisingly good stuff, provided you skim it and don't get bogged down in the interminable speeches --- you'll realise that the statement was in the context of a debate on the Racial And Religious Hatred Bill, now undergoing reading for the second time. I'm not entirely sure why the hon. Gentleman saw fit to follow it up with a rather long lecture on Cumbrian history, that was only brought short by his running out of time and the Speaker cutting him off...
May the Force be with nobody (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:May the Force be with nobody (Score:5, Insightful)
They lie about everything else, why not lie about their religion, too?
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A little context (Score:5, Informative)
One of the live issues here in the UK at the moment is the "Incitement to Religious Hatred" bill that Blair is currently pushing through Parliament. This is broadly similar to the existing laws on "Incitement to Racial Hatred". The difference is that, under current laws, only Jews and Sikhs are protected, according to some interpretations. Christianity is protected separately, under some rarely (read "not in my lifetime") enforced blasphemy laws. Muslims, on the other hand, are not technically recognised as a racial group, so you can argue that they're not protected. This, the Blairites say, means that people can hurl racial abuse at Muslims with impunity. This is obviously bollocks, of course, since this would count as racial hatred anyway, so all the situation really needs is for existing laws to be enforced...
Now, the reason why this is being pushed through is that the Labour party has taken a lot of flak over Iraq from the UK's Islamic community, which is normally a staunch supporter of Labour. Indeed, a deeply unpleasant specimen by the name of George Galloway (he of "Sir I Salute Your Indefatigability" fame) managed to beat a sitting Labour MP in a normally safe seat at the last general election, standing on an extremist anti-war, anti-establishment platform (which is a little ironic considering his own lifestyle). Therefore, Labour introduces this bill in an effort to get the UK Islamic community behind them again.
Now, this leads to two problems. First of all, a lot of people, particularly commedians, notice that this has serious implications for freedom of speech. One can no longer ridicule a religion or its texts and be sure of being on safe legal ground. Now, Blair's response to this was to say that the letter of the law would not be enforced. This is obviously a pretty pathetic argument and kind of missing the whole point of "the law" (that it lets people know whether they are behaving legally or not). It also leaves the door open to all kinds of future abuses.
The other problem is that if Blair honestly doesn't intend to see the law enforced, then he's creating a lot of false expectations among the UK Islamic community and other particularly devout religious groups. A lot of these people are expecting that, come the enactment of this, it will be illegal to say anything critical of their religion or to call any aspect of it into question. If this doesn't happen, there could be a lot of disappointment, some of it violent.
So all in all, this story is a little more serious than it first seems.
Re:A little context (Score:5, Informative)
Biggest party in the UK at the moment is Labour. Until the 1990s, Labour was basically a socialist party. They believed in strong trade unions, nationalised industries, tax-and-spend economics and, with varying degrees of enthusiasm, nuclear disarmament. Labour was responsible for a serious crisis in the UK economy in the late 70s, with strike action bringing the UK to a virtual stand-still. On the basis of this, they were swept from Office and spent the better part of 2 decades in the political wilderness. In the 1990s, they got new leaders, first John Smith (who died after a couple of years) and then Tony Blair, who swept the old hard-left away and replaced them with a centrist, maybe centre-right "broad church" coalition. This won resounding election victories in 1997 and 2001 and a narrower, but still decisive, victory in 2005. Labour's majority in the Commons from 1997 until the 2005 election was so massive that other parties were effectively shut out of the picture altogether, with the real opposition to the government essentially being provided by dissidents within the party. This will probably change now that their majority is reduced.
The Conservatives (often called the Tories) are the other big party in the UK political system. They're effectively the "small government" party, although this part of the message tends to get lost. Unlike US conservatives, the UK conservative party doesn't have any real religious base; they're essentially more economic than social conservatives these days. The Conservatives are basically credited with/blamed for (depending on who you ask) reversing the UK's post-Imperial economic decline/destoying the UK's working class. Margaret Thatcher, their leader throughout the 80s, basically shattered the power of the trade unions, most notably the National Union of Miners, which had previously been vastly powerful. While this was a good thing for the country economically in broad terms, and laid the foundations for the UK's current prosperity relative to the rest of Europe, it had some pretty grim social effects, particularly on the working class in the North of the country. Opinion is still *sharply* divided over whether Thatcher was a good thing or not, largely along social lines. The wheels fell off the Conservative machine in the 90s, with a series of embarrassing economic and foreign policy blunders and a damaging split in the party over their line on the European Union. This led to a shattering defeat in 1997. It's taken the Conservatives a long time to get back on their feet from this; they went through two useless leaders (William Hague and Iain Duncan Smith), then found a relatively good one in Michael Howard. Sadly, he then went and quit after losing what was effectively an unwinnable election and the current leadership contest is proving pretty damaging to the party. The party still has a strong base of support in England (where it is more popular than Labour, whose strongholds tend to be in Scotland and Wales), but the Parliamentary party haven't been able to energise this for over a decade. They'll probably manage to do better in the next elections (probably 2009), if they can pull themselves together a bit. Their fortunes are being helped in the long run by a growing frustration with the higher taxes that have crept in under Labour. Broadly speaking, the Conservatives today are low-tax and Euro-sceptic.
The third party in the UK are the Liberal Democrats. Prior to the First World War, the Liberals were (along with the Tories) one of the two main parties. However, a series of miscalculations saw them losing this space to the newer, more aggressive Labour party. Historically, the Liberal Democrats have been "Liberal" in the classic sense of the word; low tax, small government, relaxed social policies. However, following Labour's swing to the right, the Lib Dems have essentially out-flanked them on the left. They picked up some seats on the basis of anti-war sentiment in the previous election, as they were the only major party to oppose
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Waddayathink.... (Score:5, Funny)
...you're doing waving your hand around like that?
I'm a Congressman. Mind tricks don't work on me. Only money.
Re:Nothing for you to see here. Please move along. (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Insult! (Score:5, Funny)
Also: there's been a religion based on sci-fi books [scientology.org] for decades.
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Re:Insult! (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:They Voted Him In (Score:5, Insightful)
So this is a smart guy using satire to ridicule the bill in a fairly subtle way. So yes, I suppose you could say that it does give insight into the type of people who get voted in.
And in case anyone is wondering about the obsequious thanks to Jack Cunningham in the speech, it is traditional to thank your predecessor in your first speech to the commons.
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