Rosie on the Road

Yet another eight 3s-and-1s this morning.

It was cool, and mostly I ran in light drizzle. The air was surprisingly clear, however. Count the sheep on Black Combe clear. I started off trying to do it slowly and ended up doing the fastest yet, gauged by where I finished.

Tomorrow I should be up to nine reps. I'm not exactly looking forward to it. It will, however, mean varying my route so that may help.

The Rise of Zealotry

Generally, I'm all for defending the BBC against the frootloops who declare that it is institutionally biased because it doesn't, unlike the Daily Mail, openly subscribe to their own brand of bigotry.

I'm saddened, however, by this story, which suggests that the BBC have vetoed an episode of Casualty because it depicts the aftermath of a suicide attack on a bus station.

I maintain that I am of the libertarian left, but often find myself charged with being a right-winger on recent years, because I deplore the rise of religious zealotry of all flavours. Nevertheless, what all these zealots have in common, whether they are fundamentalist Muslims intent on imposing Sharia by force, Orthodox Jews intent on the ethnic cleansing on the eastern Mediterranean, Bible-thumping rednecks intent on forcing the American Way on the rest of the world, or even the clean-cut evangelical Anglicans of Greyfriars church who hounded Jeffrey John from the suffragan bishopric of Reading for loving the wrong person, is that they are mysogynist, homophobic, control freaks. It's a funny kind of left-winger who isn't opposed to that.

I have no axe to grind with the proprietors of the local curry house, kebab shop, or late-night grocery (I'm glad they are there.) Nor with my Jewish friends sitting down together to chicken soup and knishes on a Friday night, nor the old ladies going to Mass on a Sunday morning. Everybody is entitled to their private superstitions; they are not entitled to insist on imposing them on everybody else.

On this occasion, given the story as I've seen it, the BBC is wrong. Of course, there may be more to this than appears in teh Observer story. If there is, and it might help to change my mind, I'd like to hear it.