OK, two things I want to write about today, one political, and one nudity related. Lets get the political one out of the way first. David Cameron has dropped a gigantic bollock by suggesting last week that the people of Britain should be "more confident about our status as a Christian country". On the surface it seems like a fairly meaningless remark, but did he ever start a row.
Britain is technically a non secular country. That is to say, the church is constitutionally entwined with the state. Indeed the head of state is also head of the Church of England and believes she has some divine right to the throne, but lets not go there. All this is kind of beside the point. The fact is, whatever we are constitutionally, we're a country of heathens. Regular Sunday Church of England attendance is now down to around 800,000. That is well under 1.5% of the population if we put the population at 60 million. And there is absolutely no doubt that Christianity is in decline. In the 2001 census, 72% of people in England and Wales described themselves as Christians. Just 10 years later that percentage went down to 59%. And that doesn't take into account the huge number of immigrant Christians that arrived in that period.
Incidentally, on the 2001 census I described myself as a "Jedi", and on the 2011 census I think I became an "Atheist". It's also worth noting that the 2011 census reported that 25% of the population had no religion. That's up from 15% in 2001.
I'm basically disgusted by the PM's remarks, mostly because he's no more Christian than me, and it's nothing more than a shameless attempt to secure the Christian nutter vote. In a way it's a good thing that it started a debate however. So far two senior Conservative MPs have come out in support of Mr. Cameron, Iain Duncan Smith, and Dominic Grieve. Mr. Duncan Smith actually makes some valid points about history and constitution. Mr. Grieve just spouts utter bullshit. No change there then. I won't break it down line by line. The BBC report is here.
OK, that's got that out of the way, lets talk about nudity. It seems that Munich has set aside urban zones for people who want to walk about naked. This has happened as a result of old laws which banned nude sunbathing, expiring. I like the idea of legislation "expiring". That would stop all those outdated laws being dredged up all the time. But I digress. The point is, there are now six zones in urban Munich where you can now walk about with your bits out without fear of arrest.
The Commercial Manager of British Naturism (they have a Commercial Manager?!) Andrew Welch, has written a little piece in the Independent today about the Munich nudist zones. It's worth a read. Welch claims that an Ipsos MORI poll has put the number of naturists in UK at about 4 million. That's interesting isn't it, because if it's true, that means there are five times as many naturists as regular Anglican church goers in the UK.
Loading comments...