Showing Tolerance and Respect

This morning was our monthly meeting of our local Labour Party. The chairperson, a formidable woman who keeps us well in order, always opens proceedings with a simple statement: "We are working together to spread our shared values," she said. "We will do that with mutual respect and tolerance for the opinions of others."

Later in the meeting, the group were talking about restarting the market stall they used to run, which for some reason was closed following some fracas with another stall run by the Jehovah's Witnesses. A colleague (we don't call them brothers, sisters or even comrades nowadays) complained that three Witnesses had settled for the morning on a bench on the High Street to display their posters and distribute literature, and as a needy person, he hadn't been able to sit and draw breath. "I could only stand there and say, 'You're wasting your time; there is no God,'" he chided them.

The chairperson stopped him sharply. "I said at the beginning of this meeting, we show respect for the opinion of others," she said. "We don't all agree with that opinion!"

Later, Matthew and Rosie, his new partner, came for lunch. They brought me a welcome gift of home-made marzipan fruits, and we took them to the Flying Shuttle in Haverhill. This can be relied on to serve plates of meat worthy of the name adequate, which they always photograph and post on Facebook for posterity to admire. Returning, we watched the episode of Big Bang Theory where Amy and Sheldon marry. Matthew said it had originally included a "gift" from Stephen Hawking, but because the episode went out after his death, it had been removed. We searched for it and found a clip on Youtube, but unfortunately it froze and said, "not permitted to be watched in the UK", which seems an unreasonable bias against the country that formed him and loved him.