Virtual Methodist

Approximately once a month I toddle down to Newtownards at an unearthly hour on a Sunday morning to do a stint on their Sunday morning Christian magazine programme, Dawn Reflections, with Vanessa Jones. My role is to comment on the Sunday papers, from a faith perspective, and to do a pre-prepared 3 minute review of the key story or stories in the previous week's news. What follows is, broadly what I said in that review this morning. There are various rules, regulations and guidelines regarding what you can and cannot say that anyone broadcasting on radio has to observe, and all of us at Downtown have had to have training in them. There are also personal rules that I operate by for these reviews of the week’s news (rules that I generally carry over onto my blog)… I try not to focus on salacious stories no matter how dominant they are in media… and I tend not to comment on negative stories affecting other denominations… hence I left it to my Presbyterian colleague to comment on the ...

This week Stormont has hosted 2 acts playing what is likely to be their last gig in Ireland this week… And I was proud to be there for one of them. The second one… the Police Concert on Friday night… spending an outrageous amount of money to stand in the open air trying hopelessly to recapture my youth, when I could have saved my cash and listened to the whole thing from a hundred yards away where my house is! Ah well, the foolishness of middle age! But I was not there for the first one, on Monday, when George W. Bush and his gas-guzzling, gun-toting entourage brought the whole of East Belfast to a grinding halt as he popped in to meet the Folks on the Hill… I couldn't be bothered walking the 5 minutes it would have taken me to get to the gates of Stormont, be it to cheer nor jeer. And, by the looks of the TV coverage, very few people, were there at all. There was a widespread feeling of “What’s he doing here?” And none of the euphoria which surrounded Bill Clinton’s visits, nor th...

At the end of this month I am heading off to the US on 5 week exchange programme with Rev. Dr. Geoffrey Hayes from Grand Rapids in Michigan, and one of the things I have been at pains to explain to him is the colossal price of fuel here… Americans are worried about it being just under $4 a gallon there, whereas it is thought that is may top the equivalent of $13 per gallon here by the end of the summer. So I hope his heart doesn’t give out when he finds that it might cost him as much as $140-150 to fill up my car… Now for the sake of the planet we could probably do with burning less oil… But the world as we currently know and enjoy it is entirely dependent upon petro-chemicals… And its increasing price is creating huge waves right across society. Airlines are going out of business or putting enormous fuel supplements on pre-booked flights… Lorry drivers are protesting because the rising costs may cripple their industry too… causing knock-on effects at the supermarkets, who have essenti...

Apparently, for members of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, last Friday was St. Boris's Day. So I suppose it is appropriate that Friday was the day that Boris Johnson took over as Mayor of London for the next 4 years… Just the person you want representing your city when the Olympics come to town! But that is the democratic choice of the people of London… Mind you, with a choice between "Red Ken" and "Bumbling Boris" who would you choose? Certainly, one of the things that worked in Boris’s favour is the groundswell of opinion against Gordon Brown’s Labour Government… A combination of the 10p tax-band botch-up, the credit crunch and the colossal hike in petrol prices has conspired to make Gordon Brown the most unpopular Prime Minister since Neville Chamberlain… Some of that unpopularity may well be the product of media hype, but at least the British population have the opportunity to express their feelings at the ballot box. Think of the people of Zimbabwe… A full m...