Every morning, BBC Radio 4 broadcasts a “prayer for the day” at 5:45 a.m.; you can see the list at this site, and listen to today’s prayer here. Most of these segments begin by setting up a situation and then ending with a formal petition to the Lord. Reverend Richard Littledale of Teddington Baptist Church gives today’s invocation, which begins at the opening of the linked segment with the formal prayer starting at 1:16 and ending eleven seconds later. You’ll be vastly amused to hear Littledale supplicating God to take care of “the independent shops”!
These prayers are always religious, and I’m appalled that a state-controlled radio station promulgates religion in this way. And, as far as my host Latha Menon remembers, there has never been a secular prayer. Yet it’s as unconscionable to do this in a secular society as it is to have “faith schools,” but Britain seems to harbor a lot of what Dan Dennett calls “belief in belief.”
Now there is an opportunity for secular invocations: in the BBC Radio 4’s “Thought for the Day“, broadcast about two hours later (collection here). But these, too, are nearly always religious; the latest one archived is about Ash Wednesday, presented by Canon Angela Tilby of Christchurch Cathedral in Oxford. Like the others, it’s about three minutes long. The religion involved need not be Christianity: they’ve also had Sikhs, Jews, and Muslims. But, as the BBC notes, the purpose is to give “reflections from a faith perspective on issues and people in the news.”
One group largely missing on Thought for the Day has been nonbelievers. Radio 4 tried to accommodate them once, choosing Richard Dawkins in 2002 to give what they called “Richard Dawkins’ Alternative Thought for the Day.” [Note the weasel word “alternative.”]
Here’s what Wikipedia says about Dawkins’s one-off (there was actually another “secular thought for the day” in 2013, but that, too, was shifted to a different time).
In 2002, 102 people put their names to a letter to the BBC Governors, drawn up by the British Humanist Association, the National Secular Society, and the Rationalist Press Association. This protested that the slot was available only to religious views. As a consequence, Professor Richard Dawkins from Oxford University was given a two-and-a-half minute slot to deliver a reflection from an atheist viewpoint, although this was not broadcast in the Thought for the Day slot itself.
The BBC was too scared to even put it in the regular slot. Here’s what Dawkins said; remember that was four years before The God Delusion was published:
When a terrible disaster happens – an air crash, a flood, or an earthquake – people thank God that it wasn’t worse. (But then why did he let the earthquake happen at all?)
Or, even more childish and self-indulgent: “Thank you God for the traffic jam that made me miss that plane.” (But what about all the unfortunate people who didn’t miss the plane?)
The same kind of infantile regression tempts us when we try to understand the natural world.
“Poems are made by fools like me . . . But only God can make a tree.”
A pretty song, but an infantile explanation. It’s too easy. Lazy. The moment we put a little effort into thinking about it, we realise that God the creator is no explanation at all. He constitutes a bigger question than he answers.
Once, we couldn’t do any better. Humanity was still an infant. But now we understand what makes earthquakes; we understand what made trees. Not just trees like oaks and redwoods, with their underground root system like a huge, upside-down tree.
The arteries that leave the heart branch and branch again like a tree. There are about 50 miles of blood vessels in a human body.
Nerve cells, too, branch like trees. They are so numerous in the teeming forest of your brain that, if you stretched them end to end they would reach right round the world 25 times.
In the face of such wonders, do you fall back, like a child, on God? “It’s so wonderful, so complicated, only God could have done it.”
It’s tempting, isn’t it. But it’s not a real explanation. Not the kind of explanation that actually explains anything. And it’s nowhere near as poetic as the true explanation.
Because the beauty is that humanity has grown up. We now know the true explanation. It’s gloriously simple once you get it, and more wonderful than our forefathers could ever have imagined. It makes use of yet another tree. The family tree of life. It began with something smaller than a bacterium, and it branched and branched to give all the species that have ever lived, whether extinct like the dinosaurs, or still hanging on like our own. Evolution really explains all of life, and it needs no supernatural intervention of any kind.
The adult response is to rejoice in the amazing privilege we enjoy. We have been born, and we are going to die. But before we die we have time to understand why we were ever born in the first place. Time to understand the universe into which we have been born. And with that understanding, we finally grow up and realise that there is no help for us outside our own efforts.
Humanity can leave the crybaby phase, and finally come of age.
Now there’s a thought for more than just a day!
This caused a furor, centered on Dawkin’s characterization of religion as “childish”, “infantile”, and as a locus of humanity’s “crybaby” phase. And since then, there’s been only a single secular “thought for the day,” at least as far as I can discover.
Responding to a 2009 BBC proposal to present more secular thoughts for the day, Dawkins said, “This has been a long running issue. I did a spoof a few years ago as a kind of stunt but I hope that this does happen because religious people do not have the monopoly on morality and ethics.” He’s right about religion’s non-monopoly on morality, but I don’t think his piece was a spoof!
Regardless, I think Dawkins, in his desire to promulgate nonbelief, missed a good opportunity to show the positive side of secularism. Why not tout the wonders of the natural world without dissing religion at the same time? After all, this is supposed to be a “thought for the day” that inspires people—perhaps not the best place to go after faith. Who’s ready for that before 6 a.m.! Certainly Dawkins is really good at showing the magic of reality: presenting a naturalistic “spirituality,” if you will.
It may be that the tone of Dawkins’s Thought for the Day kept the BBC from having further secular “Thoughts”. We’ll never know. But the secularists should persist, for there’s no good reason why a Thought for the Day has to be religious.
The perfect secular thought for today, and yet another demonstration of how far ahead science is of religion, is on Sean Carroll’s blog:
Gravitational Waves at Last!!
Ah right, next WEIT post …
Couple of thoughts.
First, Britain (unlike the US) is formally a Christian country (it’s not secular, the head of state is head of the church). There is certainly no formal need for balance or accommodation of other faiths. It’s almost surprising that they let a baptist in!
Second, if broadcasting a formal prayer on NPR at 5.45am would result in the levels of religiosity seen in the UK being achieved in the US that would seem to be a bargain.
Third, there is probably nothing worth listening to on radio 4 between the end of the shipping forecast and the beginning of “today” at 6am
We are formally a Christian country (although many Anglicans seem vaguely deistic)… but why, then, let leaders from non-Christian religions have their say. If that’s the basis for having only a religious TFTD, it should be only CoE.
But the reality is that we are formerly a Christian country. The “nones” easily outnumber the Christians, of all stripes.
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Make the shipping forecast longer. That item is not there for entertainment.
Had to evacuate 40 or 50 guys from one of the Brents over the weekend due to (I am “informed” by “little birds”) a gas export line being ruptured by wave impact. It’s going to be another wild weekend out there. The Shipping Forecast is not there for entertainment.
Personally, I find the agricultural programme which is aired between the shippimg forecast and ‘Today’. very interesting
Hear! Hear!
But apparently (if we believe the government about the continued presence of bishops in the House of Lords), only religious leaders can provide a “spiritual insight”. Presumably the BBC thinks the same. So, yes, I think the establishment certainly has a belief in belief.
And too many of our “nones” are “apathetic atheists” with no motivation to change the status quo.
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Yep, it’s a simple calculation:
* Significant numbers of religious people might change their vote or not vote if a party doesn’t pander to them.
* Not that many secular people will care enough to let it affect their vote.
And let’s not forget the Morning Service.
Sigh.
Does anyone listen to long wave other than seamen? (for the shipping forecast)
I don’t know how many do now; most listeners prefer FM for the better sound/stereo. Seamen I think will listen to shortwave, not longwave.
When I was growing up in New Zealand (1950s/60s), my grandfather – born in England in the mid-1880s but raised in New Zealand – used to listen to the BBC news on shortwave each day: “This is London calling”.
Oy! I am being marginalised! What about Test Match Special? More seriously, I am annoyed, living in an area with often poor FM reception, that modern car radios do not include a LW band.
The problem is that things like ‘Thought for the day’ and the bishops in the house of lords (and the house of lords itself) are hangovers from a previous time. There is no real incentive for anyone to change them. All that attempts at reform do is distract people from what seen (rightly or wrongly) as bigger issues.
The BBC should not be referred to as a state broadcaster. The BBC is meant to be independent of the government, something that politicians forget all the time. That is why it is funded from a licence fee rather than general taxation.
You do not require a licence to listen to BBC Radio. The licence is only required for television broadcasts.
Unfortunately the BBC has a remit to cover religion, & you have missed the earthly ‘delight’ that is the Sunday morning religious news at 7.15 for 30 mins [infuriating, but with the occasional humanist], followed by the 8am service. Thought for the Day is a Religious Affairs department programme, shoved into the secular radio 4 Today news programme. Sometimes it has me choking on my cornflakes (well, meusli actually). Especially when it is Anne Atkins…
my thought for the day would be about this amazing news: the sound of gravity waves, the validation of Einstein.
What a perfect way to demonstrate the joys and fascinations of science which relied in NO WAY on religion
The U.S. is technically secular:
in practice:
how many heads of state has it had who were not religious, and furthermore not Christian?
What chance does a candidate for president have if he is not theist and also Christian.
The U.K. is an Anglican state, but you should try living in Northern Ireland to see the joys of this. The majority are protestant but not Anglican with Catholic coming second, the Anglicans for the most part having made a discrete withdrawal after Irish Indipendence. In the rest of the UK, the people are pretty indifferent to religion. If the Anglicans were more vociferous, the population would probably have disestablished the Church by now (and possibly also the Monarchy).
The English Civil War (English???) started off due to differences over allegiance to a Monarch as head of the Church. I suppose the British haven’t wished to tackle the issue again, or possibly due to inertia.
“The U.K. is an Anglican state, but you should try living in Northern Ireland to see the joys of this. ”
Not quite true. The UK has no state religion. The Anglican Church is the state church of England only (which, for this purpose, includes Wales). Scotland and Northern Ireland have their own religious histories and in neither of them does the CoE have any formal authority. The protestant population of Northern Ireland are largely descended from Scottish, not English, settlers,and their religion derives from Scottish presbyterianism, not Anglicanism.
“The English Civil War (English???) started off due to differences over allegiance to a Monarch as head of the Church.”
Not really. The dispute was about whether the King had the right to rule without the consent of Parliament. Neither of the two warring factions questioned the King’s position as head of the Church.
I think he’s referring to the King’s attempt to impose a new prayerbook in Scotland which in many ways led to the ECW.
I should have said Great Britain rather than the U.K, but this is also inaccurate (since it includes Scotland and excludes Northern Ireland).
As I understood, the Scots had refused to accept Charles as head of the(ir) church: Prebyterians don’t have priests or any ‘head’ as such, and would not likely recognize an Anglican King.
The Scottish Parliament abolished episcopacy and declared itself free from Royal control.
The oath of allegiance also made a lot of references to the Pope, who actually somewhat external to Anglicanism.
There had been the Bishop’s Wars which concerned Scotland. Charles I at one point tried to impose the Anglican liturgy and Bishops on Scotland. These were a major part of the issues leading to the Civil Wars which began in England after Charles dissolved Parliament.
The point I was trying to make is that the issue of the Monarch being head of the Church has caused major contention in the past in the UK, the currently dormant but unresolved Northern Ireland troubles being directly related.
Apparently the Church of Scotland is also the legal national church with a representative appointed by and on behalf of the Monarch.
I presume that Northern Ireland has no state religion/denomination: the largest single denomination would be Catholic, but the majority of combined Protestants (Presbyterian and Church of Ireland) would hardly recognise the majority religion as the established one, given the implications.
And very specifically, the monarch’s purported right to raise a tax on the people without having it rubber-stamped by a Parliament.
… sometimes known instead as the War of the Four Kingdoms. During the same time period, Scotland had two bouts of (associated) civil war, and there was Cromwell’s infamous massacre of the Irish in retaliation for their trading support for King Charlie-1 for promises of some degree of separation from the English crown.
I’d have to read up on it, but I can’t think, off the top of my head, of any major battles in Wales in that bloodbath. I know there was fighting in the border country – near Shrewsbury – but I can’t recall any major battles in Wales.
“ending with a formal petition to the Lord. ”
This is a great opportunity for someone to tally up the requests and see how many of them actually were granted.
We’d actually have to listen to the clap trap.
Secularists have been trying for years to get the BBC to commission non-religious Thoughts for the Day. The Beeb have steadfastly refused to budge. They take the view that non-religious voices can be heard on many other parts of the network, and there is some special value in having current events considered from a spiritual standpoint.
Nobody is allowed to interrupt or question the TFTD presenter, no matter how much nonsense they come out with. The only recourse is to take the p*ss out of them: http://www.platitudes.org.uk/platblog/index.php
A simple reading of his ‘We are all going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones’ essay would have been well received.
Which is as good an excuse as any to link to this!
(You might want to listen to whole song … or even the whole album, which features more Dawkins!)
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Say hello to Latha from me!
I suspect the BBC’s position, if it had to articulate it, would be that it regards itself as part of the country’s Establishment in the formal sense — i.e. that it is the “national broadcaster” in the same way that the C of E is the “national church”; not quite an integrated arm of government, as the C of E is through the Bishops’ Bench in the Lords, but pretty close, and therefore with an obligation to reflect the institutionalized privilege enjoyed by the state religion.
How does that fit with the fact that they allow the several septs of Judaism, Islam, Sikhism, Buddhism, Hinduism … to use the slot, in some vague proportion to their body count? About the only people I haven’t heard of using it are the Pastafarians, Jedis and Satanists.
It is about the Religious Affairs department of the Beeb getting their jobs seen by (probably) their largest weekly audiences, and thereby protecting the jobs of the boys. (And girls.)
I’d put my money on the Jedis getting on there first. some of them actually seem to be serious. Or they have a much straighter face than I could manage, with my colander on my head.
You’re right, that institutionalized privilege is extended to other religions, just as the Bench of Bishops makes accommodating noises about token places for other faith leaders in the Lords. They know a strategic ally when they see one.
The National Secular Society (amongst many) have nagged the BBC about this, and have repeatedly been fobbed off.
Even the presenters hate it, but the bigwigs and fuddyduddies refuse to let it go even though religious programs are the least wanted programmes on tv and radio
There has been a satire of it ‘platitude of the day’ and many complaints, but until the census says no one is a christian the beeb will keep it
I will post this, but there’s a Roolz violation in your first sentence: dissing the host on grounds of stupidity. You will be able to post further here when you tender an apology (and not a “notapology”) for that. Do you not see that leaving off the first sentence is the polite and civil thing to do?
You fail to grasp that by presenting religious views and ignoring secular ones (where is the “daily secular word” or “daily secular invocation”?), the BBC is indeed ignoring a large section of its constituency, and failing the unify the nation. You recognize that but then don’t seem to care much that as Britain grows increasingly secular, this faith-based nonsense will be more divisive. It’s better to either include secular stuff or leave out all religion, including atheism; but pandering to faith is the worst of these solutions.
Now apologize, or ye shall post here no more.
Pandering to some faiths. I’m not surprised that the Pastafarians have never got the slot (AFAIK). I’m more surprised that the Jedis and Satanists haven’t (again, AFAIK) got the slot at least once, because some of them at least manage to keep a straight face for longer than I can.
I have a vague memory that back in the early 80s the Wiccan Earth Mother Goddess New Age Hippy Trippy Alliance manage to get the slot. They were certainly trying, in between joints (and I egged some on, passing the joint and winding them up).
We’ll keep on chipping away at them. Eventually they’ll either scrap the whole palaver, or make it more genuinely representative – in which case, I’d guess they’d use census data. And the Jedis and Satanists and Pastafarians will join up with the Hippies, and we’ll at least have a bit of a party.
Actually, I wouldn’t object to Thought for the Day much if it was honestly labelled: “And now the BBC’s religion department presents a three-minute thought from a religious commentator on a topical issue”. The dishonesty that sticks in my craw is that the current arrangement gives the impression that all the commenters who have a reflective thought on a topical issue just happen to be religious.
Do they have laws that compel separation of church and state? Perhaps not, given this and other religious fluffery in state operations, but I am not sure.
No, as noted by a few people above, the church is a part of the state – has been since Henry VIII – the Church of England is about as mild a form of christianity as you will find. However their buildings (or many of them) have been a part of the landscape for many centuries and as a result they are sort of built into the fabric, even though nobody much cares about religion.
My extended family – in Cornwall and Essex – seem to be quite involved in local church affairs. Or rather, in the actual operation and maintenance of their local ancient stone churches. Arranging flowers for a special service, for example, or arrangements for a choral concert.
But this seems to be a traditional, social-historical thing. Something I never asked (being English) and they never mentioned (being English), was whether they actually believed in God.
cr
A sort of English version of “Don’t ask, don’t tell”?
No, absolutely not!
The phrase ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell’ carries an undertone of some suspect behaviour going on.
What I was referring to was the fact that – being English – we just don’t ask personal questions, nor do we gratuitously express our personal beliefs. It would be nosy – borderline rude – on the one hand, and brash on the other.
cr
He’s not a Brit, but Sam Harris would be a good choice for a secular thought of the day. He could employ material from his “waking up” book, without overly offending the religious.
I quite agree with Dawkins that Joyce Kilmer’s “Trees” is rather silly. Best known as a poem, Dawkins reference to it as a “song” may be from the Oscar Rasbach setting of it to music.
It’s one of most widely parodied English language poems, and often criticized for its sentimentality, self-depreciating in a maudlin way.
If one wants references to God in nature-poetry, Wordsworth and Mary Oliver are preferable. However, most secularists will prefer even more the grand nature-poetry of Percy Shelley in which God is entirely absent.
Odd that the US have separation of Church and State whilst we in England don’t, yet religion here has nothing like the influence it has over US political parties. Perhaps the solution to the American predicament is to grant religion official recognition and then ignore it. It has worked over here for the last fifty years
Last April, I queried Thought for the Day’s religiositude privileging in this e-mail.
‘Dear Today programme,
Isn’t it time to retire the addled and increasingly bewildered slot for religiose liberal theologians, ‘Thought for the Day’?
50.4% of the UK has no religion, according to the British Social Attitudes Survey of 2014: around 25% are Christian, Muslims 5% and the rest of the religions are witheringly tiny. Why arbitrarily bar half the population from the ‘Thought for the Day’ lectern?
The ‘Today’ programme promotes a conversation among experts in their field: and theologians are experts in…what, exactly? Certainly not morality. If one bases one’s world-view on an ancient text, one can only act morally by accident. And there is no evidence that religious people are more moral than the non-religious.
As a listener to the programme for decades, I have never understood the privileging of a 90-second pulpit for the ravings of some banal theology – a subject without an object, as Joyce said. Every day the same editorial hand: ‘look at this shocking/wondrous thing in the news, this reminds me a bit of Jesus/the Prophet/ Guru X/Moses/the Mahabharata/the Buddhavacana.’ How enlightening.
And as for Anne Atkins’ barely suppressed St. Theresa of Ávila erotic Christianity, Jesus as the Head of the Harem of Home Counties femichrists, 7.50 a.m. is really too early for such disturbing images to be rattling around in this listener’s aghast brain.
If you really need to retain ‘Thought for the Day’ why not consider using thinkers who actually do consider the problems of morality in the light of the latest scientific evidence? That would be secular philosophers and scientists.
Perhaps then we might be spared Giles Fraser’s latest pitiful descent into his next Touretteish God-crazed depression.’
A very nice woman (name removed, but Head of BBC Radio, Religion and Ethics) responded thus, explaining the TFTD policy as she politely suggested I perform a physically impossible sexual act on myself – or perhaps she might have been misinterpreting the OT story of Onan. Apologies if the word count is too big: I don’t have one.
‘Dear Dermot C,
I’ve read your complaint, which has been passed to me, about Thought for the Day in general, and contributors such as Ann Atkins and Giles Fraser in particular. (As it happens both are popular with significant numbers of listeners). I’m sorry you find it so offensive but perhaps it would help to have more background about the slot.
First and foremost, Thought for the Day is a unique slot on the BBC in which speakers from a wide range of religious faiths reflect on an issue of the day from their faith perspective. Speakers are expected to make brief references to their faith and its scriptures, but are not permitted to proselytise on behalf of their religion or to disparage other religions.
In the midst of the three-hour Today programme devoted to overwhelmingly secular concerns – national and international news and features, searching interviews and sometimes heated debate on issues of public policy – the BBC judges it appropriate to offer a brief, uninterrupted interlude of spiritual reflection, at a point in the morning when most of the audience are embarking on their day. At its best the short talk plants a seed of thought, a spark of spiritual insight that stays with listeners during the day. At times of national event or crisis it also has the capacity to catch the mood of the nation and speak to it.
The BBC believes that all licence fee payers have the right to hear their reasonable views and beliefs reflected on its output. Within Thought for the Day a careful balance is maintained of voices from different Christian denominations and other religions with significant membership in the UK. The team often get asked why atheists and humanists are not invited to contribute to the slot but it is still currently felt that there is a place for this particular lens on topical issues and that broadening the brief would detract from the distinctiveness of the slot – a distinctiveness which is a strength..
In addition the mix of regular contributors to the slot represents a wide range of theological, social and political views to ensure further balance across a period of time.
Non-religious voices are also heard extensively across the general output. The vast swathe of general programmes makes little reference to religion, but approach the world from an overwhelmingly secular perspective, eg news, current affairs, documentaries, talks, science, history; including, of course, the other 2 hours 57 minutes of Today.
I hope this is helpful.’
What an annoying reply to your excellent letter!
I’m still laughing at, “And as for Anne Atkins’ barely suppressed St. Theresa of Ávila erotic Christianity, Jesus as the Head of the Harem of Home Counties femichrists, 7.50 a.m. is really too early for such disturbing images to be rattling around in this listener’s aghast brain.”
Well, Diane, I wasn’t going to take no reply for an answer, so I went full-on curmudgeon in my response to the BBC Radio Head of Religion and Ethics: the correspondence ceased after this episode of bourgeois foot-stamping. Natheless, it felt good.
‘Dear Ms. M (name redacted),
Thank you for your reply to my e-mail of 17th April, received today.
I should be interested to know your figures for the popularity of Giles Fraser and Ann Atkins (whom I referenced merely as exemplars of the crassness of ‘Thought for the Day’): and figures for their unpopularity, as well as comparisons with other regular contributors to the format.
I find disingenuous your claim that the speakers are not allowed to proselytize. That is precisely what they are doing. They are presented as representatives of a certain faith and quote their scriptures. On national radio. If they were keeping their thoughts to themselves in the privacy of their own home they would not be proselytizing. And by the very fact that they cite their own holy texts approvingly, they are implicitly criticizing other faiths.
Neither do you represent a wide range of views within the faith traditions: you present a broadly liberal perspective. There are no Christian fundamentalists, no exegetes of divine command theory, no Islamo-fascists like Anjem Choudary,I could list thousands of theological views which you do not broadcast.
I note that you do not address my point that over half of the British population is non-religious. You supply no explanation for why they should be less ‘spiritual’ than those from a religious tradition. In as much as the word means anything at all (unless one holds that it refers to belief in an unevidenced sky god – Buddhism would not be included in this definition) it must surely refer in part to the relationship between morality and our quotidian lives. There is no evidence that the religious are more moral or spiritual than the rest of us: and indeed a huge amount of data pointing the other way.
I should therefore be interested to know if the question of secularists speaking on ‘Thought for the Day’ is on the agenda and if so, how soon you would expect that to happen. I can see no credible argument why BBC licence-payers, half of whom are likely to be godless, should subsidize the lucubrations of the godly. An idea arises: why not present ‘Thought for the Day’ in the form of a Socratic dialogue between a believer and non-believer on a topic in the news? This is my fallback position, for there is no serious argument to be made for theologians to have any serious point to make about any topic. The Radio 4 pulpit from which they currently speak is simply medieval, and inherently, as with all the monotheisms, totalitarian.
Yours sincerely,
Dermot C’ (name redacted!)
Wish it were that simple but somehow doubt that would be the answer. I think of it more as a very infectious disease, this religion, that spread across hundreds of miles and completely enveloped a major political party. Official recognition might just be the final nail followed shortly by the second coming.
With the greatest of respect to Prof CC(E), could those last two paragraphs be taken to imply that Richard Dawkins is (shock horror) – too strident?.
(Though I do indeed agree with Prof CC in this specific instance. But my sense of irony forced me to make this comment 😉
cr
This may sound too spin-doctor-y, but to my ears when Prof CC(E) points out a missed opportunity, he’s not saying Dawkins did something wrong, just that he could have done something even more right. I’m in favor of a more upbeat approach too – and not just in this case. Reward beats punishment, most of the time. So in that spirit, let’s assume that Prof CC is perfectly consistent, and try to seek more opportunities like this one.
You are of course correct, but would you really expect me to miss a chance to point out something ironic? 😉
cr