The 2005 story of Joe and Helen Roberts – an elderly Christian couple from Lancashire who were interrogated by police because they criticised a ‘gay rights’ project being run by their local council.
In this new video, Helen speaks about how intimidating it was to be questioned by police officers for over an hour. The officers told them they were near to committing a hate crime which carries a seven year prison sentence.
Joe says Wyre Borough Council kept talking about ‘diversity’ but the council’s brand of diversity didn’t seem to allow him and his wife to express their religious beliefs on sexual ethics.
He says he never thought he would see the day when British police officers would be interrogating citizens because they had expressed a point of view in a telephone call.
A year after the events, following a legal action supported by The Christian Institute, the police and the council admitted they had acted wrongly towards the Roberts and changed their policies to avoid it happening again.
Last year Parliament passed a free speech protection making it clear that criticising homosexual conduct is not, in itself, a crime. But the Government is trying to repeal it. We expect a vote in Parliament sometime in July.
After about 15 years away from playing cricket I am now playing for Dundrum Cricket Club. You can see more about the club, see scores and results and more on our web site.
I’m a bit rusty after all this time but with some practice I may yet get some runs and wickets. Mind you, I need to actually finish a game. In my debut against Templepatrick a couple of weeks ago I got hit in the head very hard with a cricket ball and had to go to hospital to get 3 stitches. What a memorable debut!!
I’ve finally managed to finish a piece of music. I have so many unfinished pieces and so I’m really pleased to have finally completed something. This is a short instrumental piece of a solo Harp. I don’t play harp myself but composed it on the computer using Garritan Personal Orchestra, recording via MIDI keyboard to Cubase Studio 4.5 and mastering in Adobe Audition 1.5. I am in the process of writing a lot of songs and instrumentals for use on a forthcoming video I am filming and editing. This is one piece I intend to use as a short bridge between video clips. Hence I have called it ‘Selah‘. Selah is a biblical Hebrew word found a lot in the Psalms. According to Wikipedia:
“Selah (Hebrew: סלה) may be the most difficult word in the Hebrew Bible to translate. Selah is probably either a liturgico-musical mark or an instruction on the reading of the text, something like “stop and listen”. The Psalms were sung accompanied by musical instruments and there are references to this in many chapters. Thirty-one of the thirty-nine psalms with the caption “To the choir-master” include “Selah” so the musical context of selah is obvious. Selah notes a break in the song and as such is similar in purpose to Amen in that it stresses the importance of the preceding passage. Alternatively, Selah may mean “forever”, as it does in some places in the liturgy (notably the second to last blessing of the Amidah). Another interpretation claims that Selah comes from the primary Hebrew root word [calah] which means “to hang”, and by implication to measure (weigh)……It is translated into today’s general language with the meaning: ‘think about it’ or ‘praise [the Lord]‘”
Please have a listen and leave your comments. I’d appreciate any constructive feedback about the actual music, recording and mixing quality etc.
Listen:
Buy It: File size = 1.16 mb.Format = ZIP file. Audio quality = 144kbs. Format = MP3.
I came across this song by accident while searching the Internet. I’ve never heard of Apryl Lynn before now but if all her other stuff is like this I think I’ll check out some of her other stuff.
Good songs can last for generations. In the case of the old Irish hymn Be Thou My Vision it has been around for over 1200 years and still new versions keep coming!
It’s a traditional Irish Christian hymn, but is now sung in English-speaking churches around the world. In fact it is the world’s most popular Irish hymn.
According to Wikipedia it was written by Dallan Forgaill in the 8th century; although the text had been a part of Irish monastic tradition for centuries before the hymn itself was written. It was translated from Old Irish Gaelic into English by Mary E. Byrne in “Eriú”, Journal of the School of Irish Learning, in 1905.
I came across a unique version by Andy Rogers from the Causeway Coast of Ireland recently. He did a contemporary guitar driven recording and is giving it away free.
He talks about the amazing responses he has had to the song in such diverse venues as churches, orphanages and even night clubs and bars.
Back in March of this year I wrote a blog post about the 3 Mobile Broadband service. About 9 months on I thought I would let you hear my thoughts about it.
I live in a rural area of Northern Ireland and took on the PAYG 3 Broadband because the house I was renting at the time didn’t have a landline phone in it, and so no chance of getting a normal wired broadband service. So initially I thought this was broadband heaven – go and sit in a cow field or up the top of a mountain and watch stuff on YouTube. No, no. Sorry. Wrong! You might as well forget it. At peak times as I got LESS THAN dial up 56K speeds.
On the positive side though I would say that:
it IS better than having to go and book an hour on a computer at the local library;
if you’re a night time person like me you can get good enough speeds at 1am (that’s the time I’m writing this now!);
if you do manage to get a good signal you can get out and use it without having to be stuck at home.
I think that like all new ideas it will improve as the technology improves and more competition in the Mobile Broadband market forces companies to improve their service or lose customers rapidly. This whole area is rapidly expanding and can only get better.
All I can say is thanks to Three for at least allowing me to get online in a situation where it was not possible at all at all and without a long contract.
