Once in a while I'm moved to tears by the death of someone truly significant in human history. This happened to me over the last couple of days when I heard of the death of Vaclav Havel, the dissident Czech play-writer who became former Czechoslovakia's first non-communist President in over forty years in late 1989. This remarkably courageous yet self-effacing intellectual whose origins in the Czech bourgeoisie made him an enemy of the communist authorities from the first became a symbol of passive intellectual resistance to an oppressive regime and ideology which had no legitimacy in post 1968 Czechoslovakia. Founder of the human rights organisation Charter '77 he spent 5 years in prison for protesting peacefully against the communist state. Yet even this didn't deter him. His reward was to be the post revolutionary president of his country, a role which he felt totally unsuited but which his countrymen felt was deservedly his. Even after he relinquished the presidency of what had by the become the Czech Republic he continued campaigning for various causes including human rights the world over and issues around the environment for the rest of his life. He devoted his life to the cause of human freedom was how one commentator described him and for this we all owe him a great debt of gratitude.

Planet Dinosaur

I've been watching this excellent series about these amazing long dead creatures which have fascinated me since I was a child. Certainly our knowledge of these creatures has increased substantially since then. We no longer necessarily think of huge, slow moving, long necked, long tailed creatures wading through swamps but know now that many of these creatures were not large at all and were much more similar to birds than reptiles. The episode about the 'dino-birds' was particularly fascinating in this regard.

I know some of my Christian friends and readers may have difficulties with some aspects of this interesting topic as it does raise some awkward questions particularly to those who take the Bible's story of creation very literally but I still find this topic fascinating as an expression of an eternal God at work in the world.

Finally I find it a little hard to believe in 'young earth' theories as an interpretation of Genesis given the length of time it has taken for the light from the nearest star to reach us. After all ''a thousand ages in Thy sight are but an evening gone''.

Labour one year on

The other week I had the good fortune to be in the audience at Question time where on the panel was the very excellent communicator and debater David Miliband, sadly side-lined in the new Labour order due to the victory of his younger brother Ed in last year's party leadership election. Over a year ago I was lamenting this happening and I still maintain that had Ed backed David rather than challenged him for the top post he would almost certainly been his right hand man and the shadow cabinet that much stronger as a result...

I know this is a little obsession of mine but as a long-term Labour voter I would like to see the best team in place, and not one of the party's brightest jewels being side-lined in this lamentable way. I cannot believe that I am the only Labour voter who shares this view.