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Does anyone know what time the results will start coming in on tuesday night. if i'm having a long night it'd be good to know what time i'll be up to.

Oliver, are you in the UK? If so you may be at an advantage actually because you can get up at a reasonable time on Wednesday morning and see results earlier than those of us in America who have to sleep.

yep. i'm in Lisburn
Luckily i'm already off on Wednesday for a wedding which doesn't start till the afternoon so maybe going to bed early and getting up early on Wednesday will be the best option.
cheers

dp

Ah dp. :-) I never know who anybody is anymore.

yes, tis i.
I tried being an out of the closet atheist but you know what Northern Irish familys are like.
so i am now writing under a pseudonym (clever readers may be able to work out the anagram)
Hopefully this'll be my only name change, unlike certain commenters i could mention.

Oliver/John

I real sorry about this, and I know it's completely off topic, but, Oliver you have me intrigued. I'm an 'out of the closet' Christian and to be 'not Christian' I would have to recant or become heretical or apostate or something. Of course here in NI there are probably some quite clear rules regarding what it means to be heretical, and maybe I've already broken some of them (or should that be adhered to them!) Anyway what this means is that going 'into the closet' as it were, is relatively easy for me, but Oliver, how does an atheist go back into the closet, I mean, do you go to an occasional service of worship, shout an infrequent hallelujah or two, or are you in some way or other pretending to be a believer?

Sometimes I do that too!

Hi Peter,
to cut a long story short, my wife took exception to me talking about atheism on my blog, and it was causing tension with her and my in laws so we came to an agreement where I wouldn't post on my blog about atheism. So i'm in a position where all my friends and colleagues know about my atheism but its something that isn't talked about in the house.
And that is cutting it very short.
If you want the full story you'll have to e-mail me.

Peter:

Have you any idea of the difficulty of declaring non-belief in NI?

Just a couple of examples of two ex-members of the Humanist Association of Northern Ireland.
One was an ex-brethren. His whole family disowned him when they discovered he was an atheist. He felt he had to leave.

A friend of mine, married to a Catholic, also had to leave because his wife threatened a break-up if he didn't.

That's dear old Northern Ireland for you. Don't dare to have an individual opinion, especially one as 'wicked' as atheism, or your family will get you if the Lord doesn't.

I have been an atheist since I was first able to reason things out for myself and a little incident sticks in my memory from my teenage days. Mary Peters had just won a gold medal at the Olympics and everybody was gearing up to give her a big welcome home when the Belfast Telegraph reported that a local worthy ( I cant remember if he was a councillor or a local pastor, or even both) complained because the woman was a "self-confessed" atheist! Now that phrase is usually the prefix before the word pedaeophile or murderer or something of that ilk, so it really gave me an insight into how religious people view people like me.

I never knew Mary P was an atheist.
Was there a big deal made of it at the time?
Anybody know any other Norn iron "celebs" who have outed themselves?
Sorry William, but this is going more off topic than your pottery post.

As I've said before, the best argument against Christianity is Christians.

Oliver/Brian

I think your comments are ones which are worth pursuing, but I haven't the heart to take this thread even further off topic.

So we could continue it on the 'bus' thread, or maybe William could make a story of it in it's own right.

One was an ex-brethren. His whole family disowned him when they discovered he was an atheist. He felt he had to leave.

Brian: The Brethren would disown you if you became a Baptist, Presbyterian or Methodist etc. let alone an Atheist. The "closed Brethren" would even shun you if you became an "open Brethren"

Also, don't forget that in NI you have Protestant Atheists as well as Catholic Atheists (likewise Humanists !)