Ken, the Pope and condoms

Over in the UK at the moment, rather than report any real news like the further erosion of our civil liberties, the media are banging on about the London Mayor, Ken Livingstone. The London Evening Standard, part of the Mail group of newspapers (right wing bigots who think we still have an empire and a place in the world; you know the sort) hate Ken. They’ve been hassling him for years. They doorstep him, their journalists follow him around, trying to catch him out. They struck gold a while ago when, after a party to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Chris Smith ‘coming out’ and becoming the first openly gay MP, Ken said a Standard reporter was “like a concentration camp guard, just doing it for the money”. The journalist was Jewish so out come the predictable accusations of anti-semiticism that are rolled out whenever anyone of the Jewish faith feels aggrieved about anything. It seems that other news has to take a back seat as various commentators’ debate whether Ken should or should not apologise. He’s refusing to and rightly so if you ask me.

So isn’t it odd that this story is tucked away on the BBC News website rather than given the prominence Ken is receiving. Pope likens abortion to Holocaust. The Pope writes that both abortion and the mass murder of six million Jews came about as a result of people usurping the "law of God" beneath the guise of democracy. So democracy is a bad thing? Genocide is on the same moral level as a woman exercising her rights over her own body? Can the catholic church really make a moral call here when its stance on condoms is leading directly to the spread of AIDS and the deaths of thousands in Africa? Can I offend any more religious groups in this post?

Not tonight.