It's a pretty sad day all around for us heathens. Salam Pax, whose blog I have been following since before the first stealth bombers went in, is a disillusioned man.

As if any more proof were needed that our leaders have now totally lost their marbles, we now have them trying to introduce the concept of belief-crime into the British legal system.

I wish to state for the record, while I still have the chance, that I absolutely hate the whole concept of religion. I would urge everybody to think likewise.

There. Does that count as "incitement to religious hatred"? I wonder if the law will be retrospective...

I'm a socialist antitheist. As such I've got nobody left to vote for (New Labour are now to the right of the Tories) and it will soon be illegal to express my views. Mmmm... sounds like I have all the hallmarks of becoming disenfranchised. It's lucky for Tony and his cronies that I also believe that bombs seldom solve anything.

I was coerced into sitting through "The Green Mile" the other evening on video. Quite a watchable thriller, really, but left me very uncomfortable. I'm a white Englishman, but the words "Uncle Tom" were hovering in the air and refused to go away. OK, the plot device of the automatic assumption of guilt and wrongful arrest of the big black guy only worked if he was black. But the - apparently surprising - fact that he could be huge and black but still "nice" then seemed to be a central part of the plot.

As I pondered this one with too much caffiene in my bloodstream, another "Uncle Tom" story sprung to mind: the Parable of the Good Samaritan. Why the hell should it be such a surprise that it was the despised Samaritan who did the right thing and helped the injured traveller?

The only thing that a story about a "good" slave / itinerant black worker / Samaritan reveals is the bigotry and prejudices of the person who wrote the story.

I always put it down to my lowland-Scottish blood, but it could be a touch of Germanic. I've always thought that rules were there to be obeyed: if everybody obeys the rules, everything will run like clockwork. Somebody like me therefore finds it very confusing when modern litigiousness leads to rules that are not there to be obeyed, but are there to cover the arses of the people that make them. Let me clarify: we just got back from a weekend at Center Parcs at Longleat; we go every year. One year we arrived to find that some of the roads on the site had been designated "no cycling", presumeably as a result of a nasty accident, or maybe pre-empting one, and the litigation that would follow. This rule isn't enforced and everybody ignores it, but if I were to get knocked down by a Center Parcs transit van, you can bet your life I'd get no compensation because I ignored the sign.

Another example. If you fly with any American airline these days, the very slightest bump will result in the captain turning on the seatbelt sign. It's therefore lit for most of the flight and becomes a complete nonsense; everybody ignores it because they either need something from their bag in the overhead locker or don't want to wet their pants. So now we have a kind of "little boy who cried 'wolf'" effect: when people should be obeying the sign they don't take it seriously.

Similarly on the motorway, when you get speed limits even when the roadworks have been suspended because all the contractors have gone back to Ireland for the holiday. Why should I reduce my speed to 40mph just because nobody can be arsed to take the sign down? Then, of course, the next time I see a 40mph and roadworks sign, I'm just slightly more likely to ignore them and plough into them at 70mph.

Since seeing a TV series a few years ago about British people going on the Hajj, I have to say I've been fascinated by it. I have to admit I don't remember all the different components, but the business of chucking stones at pillars that represent the devil strikes me as being great therapy and a wonderful idea. To do it amongst so many comrades and fellows must, I imagine, generate a wonderful feeling.

I now propose a pilgrimage for antitheists, atheists, humanists, and agnostics. One aspect of this would involve a huge gully containing giant sculptures of religious figures fighting each other with huge crescent moons, crosses, and stars-of-david. We could stand at the top of the gully and shout and scream at them to stop fighting, and throw stones at them. Any suggestions of further components of the pilgrimage and a name for it gratefully received...

I've figured-out why it winds me up so much. It's esoteric. It is intended to evoke a kind of, "Didn't you know that?" sort of sneer.

Added to that, though, I think I'm particularly upset by the fact that there was a bloke called "Menzies Campbell" who spoke an awful lot of sense when Britain and the USA invaded Iraq. Menzies was a good bloke; somebody you could vote for. Now he's gone and we're left with some upper-class twit called "Mingiss".

I have decided that my surname, spelt "Hoskins", shall henceforth be pronounced, "your lordship".

Anybody know why this "Mingiss" bollocks is winding me up SO MUCH?? Answers on a postcard...

Whenever a name is pronounced differently from how it's spelt, it says to me, "Upper class pretentious twaddle."

Captain Mainwaring - Captain Mannarring
Cockburns Special Reserve - Coburns Special Reserve
Rory McGrath - Rory Magrar
Magdalene College - Maudlin College
Menzies Campbell - Mingis Campbell

The idea of the 9pm TV "watershed" is bollocks. Just checking out the Radio Times to plan my evening viewing, and there's no fewer than five programmes all starting at 9pm that I'd quite like to watch. I suspect that the reason for this is the "watershed" concept to prevent children from watching unsuitable programmes. What crap. As I start work quite early (and judging by the number of cars on the roads I'm not the only one), I've discovered that if I'm not in bed by 10:30pm then I struggle the following day. That gives me an hour and a half of "grown-up" TV. Use the VCR and watch the following evening? I don't think so: IIRC even the latest TIVO can only record two programmes while you watch another.

Robin Cook, Mo Mowlem, and now Tony Banks? Scope for some epidemiology research here, I think: is political integrity life-shortening, like smoking? Or maybe it's a conspiracy; the bastards have maybe finally found some way of topping the anti-war left wing and making it look like natural causes.

No, George Galloway is not a flaw in my argument: he's the right wing pro-war secret weapon.