Miles Kington: Human rights? Whoever said humans had rights?

Humans, Odin said, spent most of their time demanding things and moaning about things, and very little being thankful for things

It's time we returned to the United Deities. In other words, that place in heaven where the gods get together for their ongoing debate on the state of the earth, and to formulate a divine overview of human affairs. This meeting, remember, is open to all gods past and present.

Here are up-to-date minutes from the latest session.

1. The chairgod said that he would like to move on to the next item for debate, which was the question of human rights.

2. Zeus said it was a very simple question. Should humans have any rights?

3. The answer was simple too. No.

4. Odin said he tended to agree. Human beings spent most of their time demanding things, moaning about things and asking for things. They spent very little time being thankful for things.

5. The Catholic God said he was not too sure he agreed. In his experience, hymns of praise and thanksgiving were regularly wafted upwards from Earth.

6. The Anglican God said that that was because the Catholics farmed out all the other stuff to the saints, and kept their God out of the request frame.

7. They pleaded with the saints endlessly to grant their sordid wishes, and only contacted God to say thank you.

8. The Anglican God said he wished he had a large workforce like that to delegate things to.

9. The chairgod said that the debate had got off on the wrong foot. The idea was to discuss the legislation that humans kept passing to safeguard their rights, and to debate whether the gods thought that humans did have any innate rights.

10. The Anglican God said that at least they were discussing human rights, which was an advance, because in the old days humans had assumed that they derived their rights from gods.

11. He was thinking of the so-called "divine right of kings", under which many European monarchs derived their authority from divine blessing. "Deo gratia", by the grace of God, and all that stuff. He couldn't think of any king he had personally blessed, and many that he distinctly would hate to bless.

12. What right had any humans to assume that they were blessed by a god?

13. Especially Charles II of England?

14. It could be worse, said Jove. In Roman days emperors regularly had themselves declared to be gods, and were worshipped as such. It must have come as a great shock for them to die and then find they were not greeted on the other side as a god, but on the contrary were put on trial in the afterworld on charges of masquerading as a god, false pretences, etc.

15. At least Charles II had not claimed to be a god.

16. The Jewish God said that he was not much concerned by this debate, as it was a long time since the Jews had had any kings, but he would like to make one point.

17. He had been following the progress of the football World Cup on Earth, and had been amazed, not for the first time, to hear the English people encourage their team by singing a song called "God Save the Queen". How was appealing to God to save the Queen going to make their footballers play any better?

18. It was nice to hear gods being mentioned at a football match, of course, but he was surprised that the English had no better football songs than that.

19. The Anglican God said that it was an old English characteristic to stick to something once it was established. The Scots and Welsh had developed their own songs, but the English never had, so they stuck to an anthem 300 years old, and sang it so loudly that they half- believed in it.

20. It was the same with the way they played football, he added. The English never modernise their methods; they just try to make the old methods work better.

21. The chairgod said that as nobody seemed to be interested in human rights, they would move on to the next item on the agenda: how many gods wanted to put their name down for the summer outing to Purgatory?