Skipton...

Licenced today: the Black Horse pub in Skipton…

Bellway homes...

"We have invented God. If God did exist and if he created us, he must be a pretty poor God. We have created him; the image that exists all over the world is the result of thought. Thought is not sacred; it is born of experience, knowledge and memory. There is nothing sacred in that; it is a material proces" (J Krishnamurti).

Licenced today: Imperial Gardens, a new housing estate from Bellway homes, in Howden…

Home delivery...

Licenced today: an Ocado van doing the rounds...

Another mass shooting...

Another week, another mass shooting: this time at a Walmart store in Virginia. Senators and governors trot out the usual platitudes about “thoughts and prayers”, but it’s the Onion headline which really hits the spot. “No Way To Prevent This”, Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens.

Licenced today: a snowy lane near Storiths in Wharfedale…

Windermere...

Licenced today: a train at Windermere railway station…

Islam unreformed...

We - Britain, Europe or ‘the west’ - have made many mistakes over recent centuries; our own record on human rights is, at best, chequered. Two hundred years ago we were still profiting from the slave trade. But times change, and we no longer buy and sell people like farm equipment. In Britain, until 1861, homosexuality was a crime which could be punishable by the death penalty. It was still a crime - though no longer a capital crime - a century later. Now it's a source of rainbow-hued "pride".

Qatar, as a Muslim country, does not have the same opportunities to instigate societal change. Because there is no tradition, in Islam, of subjecting the tenets of their faith to a critical review, the morals and mores of 7th century Arabia have been imported, unreformed, into the 21st. Muslim attitudes towards women and homosexuals are embedded as securely and non-negotiably into their holy book as the ten commandments in the Bible. These attitudes aren’t going to change any time soon. Why? Because under a theocracy, God’s law is paramount, not man’s. And, by dictating every single word in the Quran, God has already spoken. This is what it means to embrace the “last” religion and to own the “perfect” book… 

"Feeling gay"...

In a rambling and tone-deaf speech this morning, Fifa president, Gianni Infantino, tried to stifle criticism of his Qatari pay-masters. “Today I feel Qatari. Today I feel Arabic. Today I feel African. Today I feel gay. Today I feel disabled. Today I feel [like] a migrant worker. Of course I am not Qatari, I am not an Arab, I am not African, I am not gay, I am not disabled. But I feel like it, because I know what it means to be discriminated [against], to be bullied, as a foreigner in a foreign country. As a child I was bullied, because I had red hair and freckles, plus I was Italian, so imagine. What do you do then? You try to engage, make friends. Don’t start accusing, fighting, insulting, you start engaging. And this is what we should be doing.”

Well, Infantino is obviously not one of the 6,500 migrant workers, because he’s still alive. Truly identifying with migrant workers might require him to work a gruelling 12-hour shift, in torrid heat, for about £1 an hour… and then do the same again tomorrow. He had to be reminded to include women - that’s half the world, right there - in the list of people with whom he found it so easy to identify. Someone will have to tell him that the consequences of having “red hair and freckles” are in no sense comparable to being gay in a country like Qatar. This World Cup is fascinating, rivetting… for all the wrong reasons.

Licenced today… for a fee that wouldn’t buy a set of L-plates…