An awareness project as we approach the anniversary of a terrible disaster which has killed more people than Chernobyl. It seems that the company at fault managed to dodge liability. Please have a read and support if you can. This message from the appeal:

Wednesday 3 December is the 25th Anniversary of The Union Carbide Bhopal Gas leak disaster which has, to date, killed 25,000 in Bhopal, India.  Today the site remains contaminated, and the people of Bhopal are still dying, poisoned by a contaminated water supply:
The story is growing worldwide, with protests next week planned  in 25 countries.
We, The Bhopal Medical Appeal, are a UK charity that offers free health care and hope to the survivors of the 1984 Union Carbide gas leak disaster and those suffering from the present day water poisoning.
You could help support our work:
If you use Twitter
Follow us on Twitterhttp://twitter.com/BhopalMedAppeal and you could either tweet about us or re tweet anything of ours you like!
We will be running a re-tweet campaign on the day of the anniversary to try and get as many people re-tweeting as possible, so be great if you and your friends could use the #bhopal25 tag.

Add a Bhopal/Amnesty 25 Twibbon to your twitter profile
http:/twibbon.com/Search?searchQuery=bhopal

Join us on Facebookhttp://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Bhopal-Medical-Appeal/176365402876

Link to any of the above or the Bhopal Medical Appeal website if you mention Bhopal in your blogs etc at www.bhopal.org

Had a delightful evening in the company of atheist heavyweights R Dawkins (on great form) and AC Grayling (I hadn’t met him before but love his work: he is particularly delightful in the flesh), as well as David Baddiel, who is always such a bright, switched-on pleasure. For anyone who came along to the Foyles event, I hope you enjoyed it, and apologies for rambling on too long about magic structure when I got asked a question.

Dinner after the event yielded the fact that a new atheist bus campaign is being kicked off. Araine, an organiser of the Foyles evening, a Guardian columist and the editor/driving force behind the Atheists’s Guide to Christmas (on our reading list of course), is behind the bus campaign too. Quite a claim to fame, and the sweetest, least imposing lady you could meet. The campaign focusses one unpleasant aspect of proselytising to children: the resultant labelling of tiny kids as ‘Christian’, ‘Muslim’ etc, in a way that we would never do with, say, political affiliations (labelling a small child ‘Conservative’, for example, seems very wrong). ‘Atheist’ is of course also included as an equally regrettable label to be attached to a child: the message is, to allow children to choose for themselves when they are old enough to decide.

Her column on the campaign is here.

The BBC story on the subject is here.

DBx

Yes, I know. It doesn’t exactly fit the ‘brand’. But once a year for ten weeks or so I plug in the TV in the bedroom and follow this extraordinary show with an exhausting mixture of anger and delight. I cannot watch the auditions, as few things disturb me more about modern TV than people being humiliated and misled for our entertainment, but once the live shows are up and running I can’t wait for Saturday night. I’m still disturbed by it: something in me worries at the idea of a show offering a very narrow vision of success to a group of talented and vulnerable individuals and groups, eleven of whom we have to see dramatically lose in order for one to grasp this dubious prize. I’m niggled by the voting structure, and whether the public vote is a huge exercise in misdirection. And above all I hate watching people lose. I hate the booing and the vile press frenzy; I loathe myself for moments when I want someone kicked off the show, or for sharing in an ounce of that hostility.

Then last night, in one whirly, girly evening, I got to see the show and meet everyone.

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