Britain's First Jedi Member of Parliament

earthlingpink writes "In his maiden speech to the House of Commons, the Hon. Member for Copeland, Jamie Reed MP, announced that he is a Jedi: "as the first Jedi Member of this place, I look forward to the protection under the law that will be provided to me by the Bill" (the quotation is a fair way down the page; search for 'Jedi,' not surprisingly). How long before we have a Congressional equivalent?" Update: 06/29 23:15 GMT by T : Reader JE_Hoover adds a correction: "Although the previous MP for Copeland was the Hon. Member for Copeland, the current MP for Copeland is not a member of the privy council. Debretts make it all clear."

The Force is *retarded* with this one...

This whole Jedi religion [scaryplace.com] dreck has now officially gone too far. To those misguided simpletons out there who insist on calling themselves 'Jedi knights', I offer you this chance to prove yourselves:

• Just build a lightsaber. A real one. That's all.

What's that...you can't? Don't have suitable raw materials, you say?
OK...that's fair...how about this, then:

• Force choke me. From where you are right now. Go ahead...it's OK.

Are you doing it? I'm not feeling anything...

Re:The Force is *retarded* with this one...

The jedi religion is just as real as any other, IMO, except perhaps better written.

Re:The Force is *retarded* with this one...

I find your lack of Faith disturbing!!!

Re:The Force is *retarded* with this one...

Did a jedi hit you as a kid?

I think you mean "Youngling". :)

Re:The Force is *retarded* with this one...

Most Christians, if not all, do not believe they are Christ. On the other hand most Jedi think they are Luke Skywalker.

Wrong Claim

Not really.

It's entirely different to claim to believe in Jedi and to claim to BE a Jedi. According to the books I've read and the movies, a Jedi is capable of performing these actions. They all have their "talents" but to be a Jedi you have to be able to manipulate the force in some tangible and demonstrable way.

The water to wine thing doesn't hold. It's not a commonly held dogma (leaving backwoods ministers from crazyville out) that Christians are given controllable powers. If they were claiming to be Jesus, on the other hand, by all means, ask for proof. Thomas did, and got to stick his fingers through the nail wounds.

That wasn't a Christian

Fish-out-of-thin-air guy wasn't a Christian. He was a Jew.

Scared

Am I the only person who doesn't see the Jedi belief system flawed? I could only imagine the devestation to the republic if this became popular.

There is nothing to see here.

This is not the article you are looking for.

Re:There is nothing to see here.

This isn't offtopic; it's an obscure reference to Star Wars ep. IV

It's hardly obscure...it's probably the most heavily quoted/referenced line from episode IV.

Don't blame the mods...they're on crack...they really can't help themselves.

Answer

How long before we have a Congressional equivalent?

Oh, but we have. Problem is... they're all Siths. And the greedy kind.

They get Jedi

"How long before we have a Congressional equivalent?"

They get Jedi, we get Sith...

Re:They get Jedi

Please use a spell checker next time. I think what you meant to post was:

They get Jedi, we get Shit...

Oy vey

As if there wasn't enough lunacy in Parliament.

Re:Oy vey

A strange green man lying in a swamp handing out Lightsabers is no basis for a system of Government.
Help!!Help!!! I'm being opressed..

Good for him

I'm glad that he's paying attention to this ridiculous bill by showing how daft the implications of it would be. Hopefully, along with Rowan Atkinson's [bbc.co.uk] recent attack, the bill will be defeated

Re:Good for him

Spot on. For those posters who don't understand, this MP isn't making a mockery of Parliament or taking the mick. He's pointing out stupidity in currently proposed legislation that would make a crime of "incitement to religious hatred". A lot of people here in the UK are quite rightly worried that this will put religions (which, let us not forget are lifestyle choices and private members' clubs) beyond questionability, and allow New Labour to cry "yoink" on yet another freedom.

Does Darth Hillary count?

Or maybe Count Obama?

Somehow "Master Kennedy" just doesn't have the same ring to it. And "Darth Delay" is only slightly better than "General Grievous"

Re:Does Darth Hillary count?

I think Darth Frist and Lord Cheney sound good. Grand Moff Rumsfeld has a nice ring to it, too.

-B

A far more readable link...

...is available at the TheyWorkForYou.com page [theyworkforyou.com].

If you read some of the rest of the debate --- surprisingly good stuff, provided you skim it and don't get bogged down in the interminable speeches --- you'll realise that the statement was in the context of a debate on the Racial And Religious Hatred Bill, now undergoing reading for the second time. I'm not entirely sure why the hon. Gentleman saw fit to follow it up with a rather long lecture on Cumbrian history, that was only brought short by his running out of time and the Speaker cutting him off...

May the Force be with nobody

We'll have a Jedi Senator years before we'll have an atheist one.

A little context

Ok, this one isn't quite as simple or as amusing as the summary makes out, I'm afraid.

One of the live issues here in the UK at the moment is the "Incitement to Religious Hatred" bill that Blair is currently pushing through Parliament. This is broadly similar to the existing laws on "Incitement to Racial Hatred". The difference is that, under current laws, only Jews and Sikhs are protected, according to some interpretations. Christianity is protected separately, under some rarely (read "not in my lifetime") enforced blasphemy laws. Muslims, on the other hand, are not technically recognised as a racial group, so you can argue that they're not protected. This, the Blairites say, means that people can hurl racial abuse at Muslims with impunity. This is obviously bollocks, of course, since this would count as racial hatred anyway, so all the situation really needs is for existing laws to be enforced...

Now, the reason why this is being pushed through is that the Labour party has taken a lot of flak over Iraq from the UK's Islamic community, which is normally a staunch supporter of Labour. Indeed, a deeply unpleasant specimen by the name of George Galloway (he of "Sir I Salute Your Indefatigability" fame) managed to beat a sitting Labour MP in a normally safe seat at the last general election, standing on an extremist anti-war, anti-establishment platform (which is a little ironic considering his own lifestyle). Therefore, Labour introduces this bill in an effort to get the UK Islamic community behind them again.

Now, this leads to two problems. First of all, a lot of people, particularly commedians, notice that this has serious implications for freedom of speech. One can no longer ridicule a religion or its texts and be sure of being on safe legal ground. Now, Blair's response to this was to say that the letter of the law would not be enforced. This is obviously a pretty pathetic argument and kind of missing the whole point of "the law" (that it lets people know whether they are behaving legally or not). It also leaves the door open to all kinds of future abuses.

The other problem is that if Blair honestly doesn't intend to see the law enforced, then he's creating a lot of false expectations among the UK Islamic community and other particularly devout religious groups. A lot of these people are expecting that, come the enactment of this, it will be illegal to say anything critical of their religion or to call any aspect of it into question. If this doesn't happen, there could be a lot of disappointment, some of it violent.

So all in all, this story is a little more serious than it first seems.

Re:Nothing for you to see here. Please move along.

At first I thought it was ridiculous to openly espouse a hokey religion invented by a science fiction hack. But then I realized, it sure helped this guy [imdb.com] ...

Re:Insult!

+1 Funny, use of word "Muslimism"

Also: there's been a religion based on sci-fi books [scientology.org] for decades.

Re:They Voted Him In

Sounds to me as if he went straight over your head. He is opposing a bill that would outlaw the the stirring up of hatred against members of a religion. That includes jedi, sith, scientologist, whatever. The bill is very loosely worded as to what could be considered stirring up hatred. "Yoda was an arsehole, it all Jedi should be done away with" might qualify.

So this is a smart guy using satire to ridicule the bill in a fairly subtle way. So yes, I suppose you could say that it does give insight into the type of people who get voted in.

And in case anyone is wondering about the obsequious thanks to Jack Cunningham in the speech, it is traditional to thank your predecessor in your first speech to the commons.