In Sunday’s Observer, Mary Riddell wrote about Blair’s bias when it comes to the issues of diversity and integration. He has had plenty to say about what immigrants ought to do…

‘Conform to [tolerant attitudes] or don’t come here. We don’t want the hate-makers, whatever their race, religion or creed.’

… but never a word of criticism for our home-grown hate-mongers, the Christian clerics. They assume they have every right to preach against anyone who fails to share their antediluvian attitudes while Blair ignores their intolerance and maintains a double standard. Mary Riddell wrote,

… the bishops are on the prowl. The Bishop of Rochester criticises diversity legislation, while lamenting the lack of Christmas celebrations in that hotbed of Saturnalia, the nation’s SureStart schemes. The Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu, announces that ‘illiberal atheists’ and ‘aggressive secularists’ have stolen Christmas. On a point of semantics, secularists do not wish to harm religion or deny its great cultural influence. They simply want it to know its place.

How will these troublesome priests know their place, as long as they sit in the House of Lords, enjoy special privileges (many at public expense), and hang around like the proverbial millstone, carping on about ‘moral values’ as though they’re the only ones who have any?

What we want is secularism, now, for everyone. Integration is impossible without it. Social cohesion is impossible without it. No more privileges for the church; let them do what they like (within reason), but not at public expense.

As for Christmas – quite apart from the oft-repeated point that we did not ‘steal’ Christmas (on the contrary, the church ‘stole’ it about 1600 years ago), we don’t want to ban carol services, midnight masses, nativity scenes, or any of that stuff – we just want the Christians to keep them to themselves.

Tags: Mary+Riddell, Secularism, Tony+Blair, Integration, Diversity