This delightful (and genuine) piece of irony via Guido.

My family!!! Reuben is sleeping well now, but wakes the moment you put him down.

Apparently, some newborns in their second or third night simply will not get to sleep. Welcome Peter and Gayle to "Baby’s Second Night…"

Who’s the patron saint of Baby’s Second Night parents? I need to know and need the collect right now!!!!

Update at half past stupid o’clock in the morning - If Papa takes Reuben in his arms to read some blogs, then Reuben will stay asleep and Mama can get some sleep.

This video will hopefully be shown at tomorrow morning’s services at Christ Church Ware. Enjoy!!!

Might do some photos tomorrow but then blogging will be light…..

Reuben Johannes Hugh Ould was just born! More info later!

Nadine Dorries MP will on Tuesday launch the official parliamentary campaign to reduce the upper limit for abortion from 24 weeks to 20 weeks when the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill is debated in the Commons later this month.

Nadine will be supported by consultant obstetrician and gynaecologist Dr Vincent Argent, former medical Director of BPAS, and Dr Peter Saunders, General Secretary of the Christian Medical Fellowship at a launch press conference at the Commons. Ultrasound pioneer Professor Stuart Campbell will also be backing her campaign.

Nadine will publish a briefing paper, ‘20 Reasons for 20 Weeks’ outlining the case for cutting the present 24-week limit to 20 weeks.

Nadine will also unveil a new website www.the20weekscampaign.org dedicated to maximising public and parliamentary support for a sensible updating of the law, bringing it into line with advances wrought by modern medical science.

Nadine, who plans to table an amendment to the HFE Bill reducing the limit to 20 weeks, will say:

"Britain has 200,000 abortions a year or 600 a day. That is just too many. We must slow down on abortion.

"I respect a woman’s right to choose. But we are close to being the abortion capital of the world and it is now time to adopt a more moderate, commonsense approach to abortion.

"No one envisaged such a tally when abortion was legalised 40 years ago. There were 86,000 abortions a year in 1970 and 200,000 now. Abortion is now being used as a form of contraception. It is time to send a new signal about abortion, a less casual message, bringing Britain into line with the rest of Europe.

"With an increasing number of babies surviving at 24 weeks or below, we now have the absurd situation where doctors are battling to save premature babies in one part of the hospital and ending life in another part at exactly the same point of gestation."

Dr Argent, a former medical director of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, who carries out abortions, will say:

"I fully support and I am right behind Nadine’s 20 week campaign. I support a woman’s right to choose but I consider that this should be balanced by the majority public view about the unborn child."

Nadine will highlight some of the 20 reasons for 20 weeks:

• Public, parliamentary and medical opinion is changing on late abortion. 63 per cent of MPs, two thirds of GPs, nearly two thirds of the public and more than three-quarters of women support a reduction in the 24-week upper age limit.

• High profile cases of babies surviving well below 24 weeks like Manchester’s Millie McDonagh, born at 22 weeks, and the world’s most premature baby, Amillia Taylor , who was born a week younger, both in October 2006.

• High resolution 3D ultrasound images, pioneered by Professor Stuart Campbell, have shown babies in amazing detail ‘walking’, yawning, stretching and sucking their thumbs in the womb.

• In the best neonatal units, such as in Minneapolis, Minnesota, 80 per cent of babies born at 24 weeks and 66 per cent of babies born at 23 weeks will survive. A recent study from University College London has confirmed these data in a UK context and showed that the level of disability in premature babies is much less than is commonly believed.

• Recent research, such as that by Professor Sunny Anand from the University of Arkansas, has shown that foetuses are well enough developed to feel pain down to 18 weeks gestation.

• Stories of babies born alive after botched abortions, as young as 16 weeks, are increasingly common and have understandably shocked the public.

• The number of abortions carried out between 20 and 24 weeks has been rising in recent years. Lowering the limit to 20 weeks will save over 3,000 young lives per year.

• Britain has the most liberal abortion laws in Europe. A termination can be obtained up to 24 weeks of pregnancy - double the limits in France and Germany and six weeks later than in Sweden or Norway.

Works for me.

Read my t-shirt. It works on so many levels…

Here in the UK (and I guess elsewhere if my friends in the US are anything to go by) the price of petrol ("gas" for you colonists) has shot up in the last few weeks. Only yesterday the price per litre for diesel was 120p at my local Tesco Garage. A search on petrolprices.com shows that I’d be lucky to find a price of 110p a litre for unleaded.

That’s an awful lot for a litreof petrol, so how is that price calculated? Well, here’s a rough guide to the cost of a 110p litre of unleaded.

• The raw petrol (as it were) costs about 34.75p
• On top of that the retailer has to make a living, so he takes a cut of aroud 8.5p, giving a total so far of 43.25p
• Fuel Duty is a huge whopping 50.35p, taking the price to 93.6p
• The Chancellor then takes a further bite through VAT (16.38p), taking the final price to 109.98p.

Now, you read that right - the Chancellor first puts a fuel duty on your petrol and then charges VAT on top. So if the fuel duty goes up by 2p, in fact the tax paid goes up by 2.35p. Bet you didn’t know that eh?

Just to be clear, and to help us in our calculations, the Chancellor takes 66.73p of your 110p litre of petrol. That’s a lot of money.

Now, the fuel duty went up in October, and at the time the cost of a litre of unleaded was around 95p. Let’s break that down shall we?

• The raw price per litre was about 22p
• Retailers took around 8.5p
• Duty was 50.35p, taking the price to 80.85p
• VAT added a further 14.15p, taking the total price to 95p a litre.

The key point ot note here is that the total taken by Alistair Darling was 64.5p.

Now, a little mathematics. 66.73p (what the Chancellor is now taking) minus 64.5p (what he took in September) is 2.23p. That means, that because of the increase in fuel prices in the past few months, Alistair Darling already has all the extra money he was hoping to gain by increasing the fuel duty again in the autumn. So is there any other argument for raising fuel duty?

• Perhaps Mr Darling wants to raise fuel duty to promote a switch to public transport. The problem with this line of reasoning is that the price goes up to make it more expensive to travel by private car, but we’ve recently had a 15p rise, not just a 2p rise. Adding another 2p onto the price of a litre of petrol is going to have a miniscule effect in addition to the petrol inflation of the past eight months. The environmental argument for a price rise is good, but it has already been more than achieved through the increase in raw crude.
• Could it be that the Chancellor just wants more money from us simply to help balance the Labour books? This can be the only reason, because if he was interested simply in bringing in a fixed amount of money through fuel duty he could actually cut fuel duty by 0.5p right now, today, and still be bringing in what he was forecasting to take from us when he proposed this autumn’s further rise.

In fact, look at it this way - Since the amount of tax per litre has gone up almost 2.5p since September, by cutting fuel duties by 1.5p right now Mr Darling would still be taking in 1p more in tax per litre than just a few months ago. Why doesn’t he do that? Because he needs to cover Gordon Brown’s back, the former Chancellor and now lame-duck Prime Minister who in a time of economic boom racked up a massive PSBR that now needs paying off.

One final thought - Those who are really affected by this high level of fuel duty are the same folks who have been squeezed by the abolition of the 10p tax rate. I can afford to put another £10 into my car every week on the income that I’m on (and the expenses I can charge for my parish mileage). For someone earning £15,000 a year, needing their car to get to work and to buy the groceries, an extra £10 a week is crippling. A cut in fuel duty would help out some of the least able in society, those who want to work for a living but find everyday costs escalating out of control. I wonder though, whether Mr Darling and Mr Brown don’t really care how they affect the low income earners in this country, and are about to sacrifice another tranche of their support on the altar of environmentalism?

Here’s Pete Burns’ opinion:

When he flashed his engagement ring on the sofa with Richard and Judy, pop star Pete Burns told of his happiness at the prospect of becoming the latest celebrity to marry his male partner.

But now, just ten months after the big day, the singer has split from Michael Simpson, saying civil partnerships do not work and that he was happier being married to a woman.

Burns, 49, who was wed to stylist Lynne Corlett for 28 years, said gay relationships were a "commercial break" compared with the "full movie" of marriage.

He also claimed there were too much "promiscuity" in the gay community for civil partnerships to thrive.

Burns followed in the footsteps of Sir Elton John and Little Britain star Matt Lucas in using the new civil partnership laws to announce his public devotion to his lover.

He dressed as a geisha girl in a kimono for the ceremony in London on July 7 last year.

He told The Mail on Sunday he had been "optimistic" about his civil partnership, but now he says: "I learned the hard way. It’s a total joke."

Burns accused Simpson, 40, of being unfaithful and admitted he felt disillusioned. Burns added that some gay couples had "open marriages" where the partners could be unfaithful.

He said: "There’s a lot of promiscuity in the gay community. I don’t understand why they take that union. How low is their self-esteem?

"One’s on Hampstead Heath meeting men, the other one’s hiring rent boys. "Surely marriage is throwing anchor and saying, ‘This is where I’m staying, I’ve made my choice and this is all I want because I’ve been on the up and down escalator, through the revolving door and I want to stand still.’ That’s what I expected."

He added: "I don’t know what goes on in many heterosexual marriages but I know mine was 28 years.

As far as I was concerned that was for ever, and it would have been, but she needed to find her own life.

"She was the best ‘husband’ I ever had. You sometimes meet a person who you completely love. We’re still really, really close. It’s not about sexuality, it’s about the person."

Since the Civil Partnership Act came into force in December 2005, there have been 18,000 gay marriages in Britain.

Burns said: "I view marriage as a sacred institution. I think two men naturally are predators. Gay relationships are a commercial break, not a whole movie.

"The relationships I’m aware of, apart from one … it’s as though there’s some kind of emotional inadequacy or narcissism, where they feel emotionally inadequate and need more validation, from either a father figure or a mirror image of themselves. "I’m not condemning it, I think it needs researching and help."

Burns and his band Dead Or Alive had a No1 hit with You Spin Me Round in 1985, but his career went into decline until he went on Celebrity Big Brother in 2006.

He met Simpson at Joe Allen restaurant in Soho in 2003. They announced their engagement on Channel 4’s Richard & Judy Show in 2006.

Last week, police launched an investigation after Burns alleged that Simpson had assaulted him at home, breaking his collarbone.

Burns said he wanted to file for divorce. He added: "Would I get married again? If somebody knocked me on the head with a nine-inch nail-studded plank or drugged me with benzodiazepine … No, no, no."

Derek Munn, of the gay rights organisation Stonewall, said: "Civil partnerships have brought joy and fulfilment to thousands of lesbian and gay couples.

"Just as with marriage, some relationships may fail."

April 2008 was the best month ever for An Exercise in the Fundamentals of Orthodoxy with 9,316 visits from a staggering 5,438 unique visitors.

Must be something in the water….