This photograph of part of the beautiful koi-carp filled miniature lake adds to the serene ambiance that is Singapore’s Airport. It is a real pleasure to spend time at both Singapore and Bangkok airports with their vast carpeted concourses and super-quiet efficiency. Contrast this with the dirty rubbish-strewn welcome I experienced at Terminal 3 Heathrow Airport when I arrive there on Tuesday evening. Scruffy, cold, and packed full of frustrated people, a few of us were given red ‘fast track’ cards. Fast track indeed! After standing for over half an hour in what was easily destined to be a three-hour queue, I’d moved forward no more than ten yards and couldn’t help but feel ashamed at the impression that first time overseas visitors are confronted with at Heathrow. What a contrast to the queue-free ultra clean splendid airports I’d left behind a day earlier.
I’d always believed that people of religion had purer minds than the rest of us, and that Bishops in particular are required in the words of the Prayer Book to ‘set forward quietness, peace and love among all men’. So I was disgusted to read that the Bishop of Willesdon, the self-styled ‘Bishop Pete’, likened Prince William and Kate Middleton to ‘shallow celebrities’. Does he know them? Has he met them? No of course not. And in his reference to the marriage of Prince Charles and Princess Diana he declared “I managed to avoid the last disaster in slow motion between Big Ears and the Porcelain Doll, and I hope to avoid this one too”. He may possess anti-Monarchy opinions spouted by Marxists, but to publicly express such spiteful, crass and unchristian views only demonstrates what a shallow and nasty little mind he has. When he was ordained into the Church of England didn’t Bishop ‘Pete’ Broadbent swear ‘true allegiance to Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II, her heirs and successors, according to law, so help me God’? So when he ordains priests how can he require them to swear allegiance to an institution he regards as ‘corrupt and sexist’?
