In not really liking my mum singing Christian songs to my baby?

[theUrbanDryad]

I probably am being unreasonable, but i hate the way my mum sings Christian songs to my baby. he's only 4 months, so unlikely to be indoctrinated anytime soon, but i have made it clear to her on a couple of occasions that we won't be bringing up ds in a Christian faith or in any religion at all.

the problem is that by her own admission, she is on a "mission" to convert people. which includes me, dh and ds. i grew up really resenting my strict Christian upbringing and i don't want ds to do the same, especially since neither me or dh are Christian. also, when i realised how much of a swizz the whole Christianity thing was (when i was about 16) it took me a long time to trust other things my mum said, as after all if she was wrong on this major thing, she could easliy be wrong in other things too. i want ds to trust his grandmother and not have his childhood troubled like mine was.

dh and i have already agreed that if he wants to find out about religion when he's older then we will be fine with that, but i would like him to do it on his own terms, and not have it rammed down his throat from birth, however lovingly.

I think we just need a new national anthem. I and many others have petitioned Parliament to have "Gold" by Spandau Ballet.
As far as I am aware it doesn't offend anyone, may be sung both by choirs and football crowds.

Petition Here

On the off chance that we win any medals at the London Olympics, it would work better than obsolete digs at the Scots.
Of course you could take the principal discovered by Douglas Adams, and commission lyrics that enumerate every group in the world, insulting them in a manner appropriate to their culture.
Insult

Spandau Ballet offend me.

I'm no fan of the National Anthem, but do we really want 'Gold' that great tribute to the Thatcher years and to the obsession of the Self? and so crappy.

Shame Douglas Adams isn't around to write a new anthem. That i would like to hear.

LOL UrbanDryad.

ruty, Dr. Handley speaks eloquently in "you are Gold, always believe in your soul".
Hardly the self or materialistic.
I fear your ill conceived hatred of Thatcher is blinding you to contemporary poetry.

Thank you for coming home I'm sorry that the chairs are all worn

If you consult the lyrics, you will find they are spoke as a Brechtian "common man", who finds in his distressed furniture a voice for his lack of materialistic success in the Thatcher era.

I left them here I could have sworn
These are my salad days
Slowly being eaten away

The common man is best by mental illness, presumably because he is a victim of the ill conceived "care in the community" program which emptied the mental hospitals.
These are clearly paranoid delusions, his life is being eaten by giant blue caterpillars, resonating the "Blue Meanies" ,the Beatles film "Yellow Submarine".

But even in his Kervokian despair,
Theres nothing left to make me feel small
After his beatings by the polices, Proazc is making is life bearable.

You?re indestructable
To us it is revealed that he is addicted to LSD with attendant feelings of invulnerability to both him and those he cherishes.

Remember we were partners in crime
Its only two years ago
The man with the suit and the pace
You know that he was there on the case
Now hes in love with you,hes in love with you
And my love is like a prison wall

We earn that he has served time in prison, presumably after being convicted under the notorious "suss" law, presumably driven to live in a foetid squat by Tebbit's drive to eliminate the unemployed.

I leave the rest as an exercise for the student.

quite possible DC. I had a very nasty contemporary poetry tutor [also a Tony Handley fan]who must have totally obliterated all my ability to think coherently on the subject.

Still a crap song though.

Hadley even.

DC - presumably you meant 'beset', not 'best'

Pointy, obviously you can't make people stop saying it. But I think it is harping on about the past, so people need to let go. It's a bit like saying "hey did you know Catholics used to burn Protestants at the stake, so let's not have Catholicism because it's anti-Protestant". Why am I so keen that the national anthem isn't seen as anti-Scottish? Because it isn't, now, because the anti-Scottish bit is never sung.

There may be plenty of things for the Scots to reproach the English for nowadays, but I can't accept that the existing national anthem is one of them.

Also there may be plenty of reasons for changing it, but again I don't think verses which are never sung should be one of them.