Sighhhh…

This blogging malarkey. What’s the point, eh? The internet is super-saturated with the ‘sound’ of nutters ‘talking’ to themselves in public, under the delusion that they have something to ‘say.’ And then there are those who use Twitter or (cough) Facebook to direct non-‘listeners’ towards their virtual soapbox. What is it? Vanity? Self-promotion? Attention-seeking? Or genuine effort to communicate and raise awareness of societal concerns (interleaved amongst those posts espousing interests/preferences/likes/dislikes because our diminished real social circle precludes opportunity to do so for real – No one’s interested – get over it!)? Whatever, most don’t earn a living from it, so why not regardless? But are those that do any better?

What’s the next worst thing to getting up in the morning to one of Anne Atkins’s non sequitur-ising Tft(b)D convolutions? Well, Cristina Odone’s opining comes pretty close. So meritorious did she deem her turn on Monday’s Woman’s Hour that she tweeted the fact. NHS funding of IVF is a particular beef of hers – and she wants us to know it. I didn’t catch the full radio discussion, so I’m not sure whether she was asked to clarify whether or not she endorses or opposes IVF per se; or whether it should be an option available only to those who can afford to pay for it – whether or not they’re over forty.

But then I, for one, find Odone confused/confusing. She’s, err, progressive: ‘… a Catholic but no, that does not mean I believe in Creationism’, a defensive statement that needs fleshing out somewhat (because most of us don’t assume most Catholics are so stupid). She’s, err, traditionalist: ‘I do believe in eternal life and that the wicked get their comeuppance and virtue is rewarded in the other world.’ Certainly, she is one of those Warsi-esque anti-secularists who considers that we should all just accept the pronouncements and privilege pleas of the faithful, and shut up and let them get on with their lives unchallenged and offence-free. So she established free faith, a curious project ‘… to take on those who threaten religious freedom.’ Because it’s the secularists and atheists who effect all this disharmony, you see; not intra- and inter-faith discord and disagreement. The BBC, and indeed the whole of Europe would do well to purge themselves of the malign influence of these Soviet-style intolerants. So, does she consider secularists wicked and damned to ‘be punished in the eternal sphere’? Confusing, see.

Being one of the pick’n’mix Catholics, she also confuses the more conservative of her denomination. But to live a life flouting doctrine is apparently ‘… part of the evolution of theology’. This (ir)rationalisation was aimed at putting right one Richard Dawkins, for whom it seems Odone’s kick trigger is permanently cocked. Or, for that matter, anybody with any Dawkins-overlapping opinion, such as David Attenborough, whom Odone has taken a swipe at today. Which she has tweeted also, in case you missed it.