News

I've just read the ghastly news that there has probably been another one of those horrible beheadings in the Middle East. That region has a serious problem with its beliefs. When there is an uneducated populace who are full of hatred and who are indoctrinated from birth, it is depressing but unsurprising that such events occur.
I remember in our own history too when our culture behaved very similarly. Hysteria has led to British Jews being massacred, mistreated and finally expelled in the Thirteenth Century. Then of course there was the Spanish Inquisition. There were the Crusades. There were the witch-hunts. There were the burnings at the stake for heresy. There were the recusancy laws. And before Henry VIII the church exploited the population at large. (Of course thereafter it was Henry who did the exploiting). It was the church that helped enforce the class system and workhouse discipline.
I can't help observing that while these things happened centuries ago in our culture, they continue to occur in that other culture. Haven't people learned anything?
I'm worried sick. My nephew and his partner are on holiday in that country (that is if they haven't already returned). When I see them they are going to get such a bollocking for going somewhere so dangerous.