faith

Not The Protest I Expected

I just got back from another trip to Westminster, and I think it’s fair to say that I’m absolutely furious. I went up there again today, this time to check out the protests about the assisted dying bill. To be honest I don’t have that strong an opinion on the issue as I can see both sides of the argument, but by and large I share the fear that it could lead to vulnerable and disabled people being pressured into ending their lives.

I got to Parliament Square to find it slightly quieter than I had been expecting: this event obviously wasn’t as big as the last one I had been to up there. It took me a while to find the protest, slightly along the road from the Houses of Parliament. When I did, though, I was almost instantly appalled. I had been expecting to find plenty of my fellow disabled people, but instead the action was peopled by able-bodied religious nutcases! There were speeches being made about how this act would go against the will of god, the commandments and everything. While disabled people and our rights were mentioned once or twice, the emphasis seemed to be on religion, particularly Christianity. To begin with I could just about tolerate it, but when the lady speaking invited everyone to pray I had had enough.

Political protests are, by their very definition, political; and religion has no place whatsoever in politics. These people were close imposing their religious views on quite a critical issue, and essentially using it to promote their anachronistic belief system. You don’t need to believe in any gods to be concerned about what might arise from this change in the law, and that, sooner or later vulnerable people may start feeling pressured into opting to end their lives when they otherwise might not. That would strike anyone with a grain of human decency as problematic. Yet the people there were trying to make it seem like an entirely religious issue, and that they were acting on behalf of their god.

I have written many entries on here about what I think about religion: it is a harmful, dangerous anachronism which humanity needs to outgrow. Thus to find these people there, usurping the issue at hand for their idiotic belief system, really pissed me off. Fortunately the event was drawing to a clear by the time I got there, but it really pissed me off to see it being hijacked like that. This is quite a sensitive political issue: it needs to be dealt with rationally and thoughtfully, not by people who derive their entire worldview from a set of bronze age fairytales.

The Greatest relief I Have Ever Felt

Yesterday was so crazily farcical that I barely know where to begin, but I think I’ll blog about it anyway just for the record, not to mention the enormous sense of relief I ended up experiencing. It all started the evening before, when John noticed we had somehow lost the power cable for my iPad. By the morning my charge was getting really low, so we decided to go buy a new cable. I use my iPad a lot, not least as my communication aid. The fact that it wouldn’t turn on at all put me in serious trouble. John asked the staff at the hotel where we could find one, and they suggested a shop not too far away.

We got to the shop perfectly fine.   There was a step up into it, so John went in and got the cable we needed. He then came back out to get my credit card from my bumbag.  The problem was, he couldn’t find it anywhere in my wallet.

We both began to panic, me especially: I was sure I had brought my card. I rarely use it these days, but we assumed I would need it here. We couldn’t find it anywhere in my wallet or bumbag though! I quickly began to loose my patience. Fool that I am, I must have left it back in London. We were screwed.

I was on the verge of suggesting forgetting the whole trip and going straight back to the UK, when John suggested I lean forward in my wheelchair. In a moment of jaw-dropping relief, he found my credit card down the back of my trousers. I have genuinely no idea how it got there, or how John guessed it was there. It was, though: safe and sound, and I had nothing to do worry about. The relief I felt in that moment was like nothing I had experienced before. Our trip could continue, and I hadn’t made the screw up of my life.

We spent the rest of the day enjoying more of Cyprus. We bought the charger with cash in the end, and my iPad is now fully charged. Today we are going to explore more, but I certainly plan to keep an eye on my credit card, and make sure it doesn’t disappear down my kecks again.

An Unpleasant Bus Ride Home

Something happened on the bus home this afternoon which I had never encountered before, but which I think I really need to vent on here about. I had had quite a pleasant afternoon, and was coming back from a trundle around the Olympic Park via Woolwich. I had just got on the bus and was looking forward to some lunch when a woman sat just behind me started shouting about ‘Jesus’. Now, I have written quite a bit on here before about how offensive I find street preaching: I find the notion that someone would try to force their belief system onto others while they are passing in the street the height of arrogance. What happened on the bus this afternoon, however, was far worse. That this woman thought she had a right, in the closed, confined space of a London bus, to try to force her belief system onto her fellow passengers was utterly infuriating.

Of course, when she started, I automatically felt the need to shout back and get the woman to shut the fuck up. No doubt my fellow passengers just wanted a quiet ride home; they didn’t want this arrogant cow shouting nonsense at them. The arrogance of this woman was sickening. Every time she started preaching I shouted back, hoping to make it clear that I found what she was doing utterly distasteful and abhorrent. Surely religion should be kept to yourself. To try to force it onto others in such a public space is, to me, unacceptable.

This exchange continued throughout my journey home. Every time she started shouting about Jesus, I shouted back to tell her to shut up. I’m not sure what the rules are regarding preaching on public transport, but TFL definitely should have a law against it. People can believe whatever nonsense they want of course, but to try to force it onto others as they are trying to get home is just perverse. Obviously, as I was wheeling off the bus at my stop, I heard the lady start to shout again. I really hope I’ve not just seen the first instance of something I’ll now encounter more often.