In June, Chris Chambers and I started the Welsh Geek Manifesto Pledge, a declaration to send a copy of Mark Henderson‘s The Geek Manifesto to all 60 Assembly Members of the National Assembly of Wales.
Success! Yesterday, we received the final pledge and are collecting the donations. We are currently planning an event to maximise the impact of the delivery of the 60 copies of The Geek Manifesto to the National Assembly in Cardiff Bay (more details to follow shortly).
N.B. The Welsh Geek Manifesto Pledge followed the original Geek Manifesto Pledge for the 650 MPs in Westminster; there are open pledges in Northern Ireland (“Geekmanifulster”), Scotland (GeekScotland) and Australia (Geek the Vote).
And here they are…
Tom,
Congratulations – a great effort.
You are probably aware that the Evangelical Alliance has a lobbyist in the Senedd. This man, Jim Stewart, acts as secretary for the Cross-Party Group on Faith. I met him and the Group last March and explained how £1.3 million per year could be saved from the Wales NHS budget if hospital chaplaincy was funded by a charitable trust set up by the religion industry. But the religion industry has, it seems, lost interest in Christian Charity. The Charitable Chaplaincy Campaign goes on and is making steady progress.
The EA website includes an opinion piece by their “Director for Wales” Mr. Godding (I kid you not!) arguing for “Intelligent Design” to be taught in the schools of Wales as science. I wrote to Leyton Andrews AM about this and got some re-assuring words back. You may know that the self-styled Shadow Minister for Wales Mr. Darren Millar AM is a member of the North Coast Church which is a branch of the “Assemblies of God” an American based religio-business with HQ in Springfield MS (I kid you not!) . These folk are Pentecostal Fundamentalist Christians who practice “speaking in tounges” and “faith healing”. So the Welsh Conservative spokesperson on health believes in “faith healing” !
We have a long road to walk together.
EMAIL me if you would like a chat.
Regards,
Alan