Actually the ruling says nothing whatsoever about the validity of the opinion expressed. It simply upholds the right to express one in private without being punished by an employer.

That's not what I said.

You referred to 'specific churches'. The taxpayer funds no churches at all. The churches fund themselves. The churches also fund their own diocesan or other organisational bodies, and other monies will come in through investments. For example, the Church of England is a massive land owner. At one point it was second only to the Queen I think in the amount of land it owned. That's simply historical. It makes money on that land or from it when it sells it and/or the property on it. And it's been selling a lot of church buildings and vicarages in recent years.

Religious charities are open to applying for the same external funding as are all other charities. So, for example, the Salvation Army (a religious charity) will be able to apply for stuff like lottery funding. I'd like to see you criticise their work.

Some religious schools - Jewish, Muslim, Roman Catholic and Church of England - receive funding either in part or wholly from the government (some receive no funding from the government). The church or churches do not receive that funding and nor do their diocesan or organisational bodies. It goes to the school in the same way as funding goes to any other state sector school. If a religious school receives such funding then it is subject to all the same rules, etc, that a non-religious school is which is to say not much difference really.

Clearly you haven't read the judgement then.

Read from point 62. The judge has clear opinion about what was said.

If the "salvation" army are anything like their Australian sect I'd happily critise them.

66% of they're income gets lost in "adimistration" and of course they refuse help to homosexuals.

I've no idea what the Salvation Army is like in Australia, I've only spent three months in Australia and I didn't come across any Sally Army people there, to my knowledge.

Here in the UK though they are the ones who do the real dirty work, mostly cleaning up homeless drunk people and stuff like that. I have heard nothing to say they don't clean up gay homeless drunk people but hey, you never know. They may in fact ship them off to the north pole to freeze their bits off.

Cleaning up the homeless then forcing them to join, growing their numbers and giving them justification to exist? Just like religion. Its not like senior members of the SA have called for homosexuals to be put to death. www.heraldsun.com.au/news/victor ... 6407035593 Having just checked they have taken their mission on homosexuality of their website and it's now under review. Gotta get the wording right to avoid more bad press!

Cleaning up the homeless then forcing them to join, growing their numbers and giving them justification to exist? Just like religion. Its not like senior members of the SA have called for homosexuals to be put to death. www.heraldsun.com.au/news/victor ... 6407035593 Having just checked they have taken their mission on homosexuality of their website and it's now under review. Gotta get the wording right to avoid more bad press!

I can't speak for other churches but here's how the CofE manages to fund its infrastructure asset management ...

My kids went to our local Junior School which was a CofE funded school dominated by the vicar from the church 500 yards away (his wife was the head), in the first year that my kids went there our business accountant had himself volunteered to be the Parent/Teachers Assc accountant.

This was a school that had been built in the early 1960s and had been expanded several times by the addition of several of those "temporary" wooden classrooms which are actually not very cheap to build and which often turn out to be a lot more permanent than originally planned.

Several times a year the PTA organised functions for fund raising for the school and at one of our business meetings with the accountant I asked him how healthy the PTA budget was and what did it get spent on being as the kids (in the 1990s) only had one computer per classroom to share, his reply surprised me.

The fundraising every year was purely to pay for the loans on the various temporary classrooms and with a few more years and a big push towards the end he was very hopeful that within his tenure the PTA would actually manage to pay off the last loan on behalf of the school.

Which got me curious, so I asked which bank the loan was with, it wasn't with a bank it was from the Church of England, so of course my next question was "Who will own the classrooms when the loan is paid off then, the PTA ?", no of course not, the CofE owned the classrooms, they were part of the asset sheet.

So just to tie all this up, the Church of England owns the school and owns the land that it stands on, within a few years it desperately needs to expand its premises and so the CofE lends the CofE School fund to expand and then the CofE school gets members of the public (who are indirectly also funding the school through the local council funding) to pay back the loan to the CofE and all the while the buildings remain assets of the CofE.

Thats bloody smart business practice is that - thats like taking out a mortgage on your home and then having bring and buy sales every month to get your neighbours to pay it off for you.

If the rest is true about the land and buildings being owned by the church once the loan has been repaid, then that is scandalous.

It most certainly is - if your location is correct you'll be quite familiar with the CofE school in Cookridge ?

Exactly the same thing happened during the same period when the church bell tower needed re-roofing and strengthening - who do you think paid for that, the building owners or the general public - the CofE, reputed to be one of the wealthiest landowners in the country since Henry VIII gifted them wealth almost unmeasurable always turn to public donations when their infrastructure needs maintenance, the term "Gods House" doesn't rest very well on their shoulders when it needs repairing, God doesn't do DIY apparently.


And the head who's husband was a vicar is long gone now, driven out by public demand, if you know the current vicar ask him about the bag lady headmaster ...

So you give one example. Erm, the CofE own a lot more schools than that, most of which have the best academic record in their localities and are over-subscribed.

Some are also part funded by the government, whether owned by the CofE or not.

Nah, they force them to cut the head honcho's grass with scissors first.

Actually I have. And the judge makes no ruling on the validity or otherwise of the opinion expressed by Smith.

Possibly you don't understand what validity means in this context? An opinion can be expressed legally without being valid. For example, I could express the opinion that the moon is made of green cheese without fear of prosecution.

I see you're trying to trivialize the matter.

Not unexpected.

I'm sorry, either you have missed my point or I am missing your point, but your comment doesn't really seem relevant.

Your point was to talk about one Church of England school and then extrapolate it to apply to all Church of England schools. In other words, your post was meaningless.

Not much else can be done with a post as idiotic as yours was.

Indeed. And it can be expressed legally AND be valid.

Your point is?

Oh I see what you mean, what you're saying is that you don't want to believe that church schools, and churches in general, build on their substantial assets by extracting cash from the more gullible rather than using their own investments to maintain and build on their own assets ?

Like they have all done for a thousand years or so ?

Any time you want to start paying my mortgage just let me know, it'll still be my name on the deeds when you've paid it off though...

Interesting. You've changed your tune from a couple of weeks ago when every view was valid.

Come now - I know you're not thick. My point, clearly delineated in my very first post, is that the judge made no assessment of the validity of the opinion expressed. He simply ruled on the legality. And rightly so.

I agree, the religious hate this truth lark.

Yes, and I'm aware that, contrary to your claims, at no point has the wife of the Holy Trinity Church vicar been the headteacher of the school.

A good kick in the balls against the PC brigade this. Well done.

I disagree.
This is a victory for political correctness.

Agreed, a victory for bigoted homophobes.