A few news links

Thanks to Streams of the River  for the link to Alice Linsley's Just Genesis blog -  fascinating research from someone with an interesting (and prophetic?) history

Alex Salmond, would-be leader of an independent Scotland, seems to be morphing into Hugo Chavez [here and here] There is always a sinister side and a huge price to pay in terms of personal liberty for the tribal thrills of political nationalism, whether of left or right.

Fr Ray Blake preaches on the Baptism of the Lord and the dangers of reducing sacraments to mere psychological rituals [here] 

'A welfare state with its moral heart ripped out' - Peter Hitchens in typically trenchant style [here]. I'm not sure about his support for the death penalty (far better to be consistent across the board in one's respect for human life) but he is surely right about the British liberal establishment's support for bloody foreign adventures in Afghanistan and Iraq (where the huge civilian death toll during and after the conflict was put down to - appalling phrase - 'collateral damage') and their  'non-judgemental' approach to social welfare which has led to the abandonment of fatherless inner city youth to violent gang culture. 
This is yet another instance where so-called 'progressive' reform just means that 'It's the rich what gets the pleasure, it's the poor what gets the blame.' What used to be known as 'bourgeois' (i.e. Christian) morality, derided for so long by fashionable opinion formers in the West, actually protects those without much economic wherewithal from the consequences of social breakdown and, by strengthening traditional family stability, helps advance educational and social mobility, something under increasing threat from the new and, seemingly, socially elitist advocates of the 'equalities' agenda. 

Closer to home, Ancient Briton on the Code of Practice consultations in the Church in Wales. Open meetings are, I suppose, fine as part of a genuine listening process; my particular fear is that they will be more of a drowning out exercise where the views of the (not insignificant) minority will be shouted down by the far from tolerant supporters of doctrinal revisionism ... 
On that subject, usually reliable sources have it that in one period of interregnum in the Province, the parish concerned has been told, 'yes, we'll keep everything going but there will have to be women celebrants at the altar' - this in a parish which has consistently supported WO: those who assert so loudly that sacramental provision for traditionalists would create 'second class bishops' should be able to look to those who are supposed to be on their side for a little consistency ...... one would have thought.