The mythical second Order

[Ian G Batten]

On Tue, 11 Mar 2003, Watkin Simon wrote:
> As we say on the website, and I shall say again here, the draft Schedule in
> no way reflects our present thinking.

I'm sure you're right, but I find this formulation requires rather a
specialised belief system.  If someone tells me, with complete
confidence, that the earth is six thousand years old, Darwinian
evolution satanic and dinosaurs contemporaries of man, but then six
months later tells me that that no longer reflects their thinking and
they are regularly posting to talk.origins about the inanities of the
Institute for Creation Research, I am entitled to think there is
something rather odd going on.  Yes, they may have undergone a complete
damascine conversion, but then after they've repudiated their
deeply-held beliefs once, who's to say they won't again?

And when the speaker is not an individual, but a large, complex
corporate body, with precisely the same people in the senior roles as at
the time of their previous pronouncements, it's very hard to believe as
a wholesale switch.  The Tory Party may say on the front bench that
Section 28 is wrong, but the backbenchers don't agree.  

One explanation is that the HO launched with outrageous demands, hoping
that a softer position would be seen as a blessed relief rather than
anything else.  Another is that they launched without thinking, caring
or understanding what the general public might think.  A third is that
they genuinely have listened to the protest and changed their mind.  It
would be interesting to know which it is.

ian