Christian Car Wars

I’ve blogged once or twice on the anti-social driving habits of Manx Christians, and in particular their habit of blocking narrow pavements or obstructing more considerate motorists with their gas guzzlers.
Yesterday I heard of some new outrages, and also of parking wars going on between tightfisted members of rival Douglas congregations. Considering there is adequate parking for anyone in Douglas on an average Sunday, this is taking ’Jesus Saves’ to ridiculous extremes.
St. Matthews, which used to be a lowly quayside parish church catering to seafarers and the local poor, is the latest centre for ugly goings on. The Gilbert Scott designed church got gentrified in the heritage boom of the 1980’s, and things got much worse when Forward in Faith - Anglican nutters who hate women and gays and favour hooking up with Catholics and Eastern European Orthodox churches – turned it into their island base.
The punters turn up in £50K motors and the pews are a chav-free zone. There’s also metered parking less than 100 metres away; but the skinflints won’t use it.
They prefer to block the sidestreets with their Mercs and Jags, and this has led to a run-in with another church. Two streets away is the Salvation Army hall, which has come up on here before for car crimes – quite ironic as the main culprits are employed to stop crime.
Then it was a Department of Home Afffairs executive level staff member parking his Chelsea Tractor on the pavement on a narrow, busy road, causing pensioners and mums with buggies to take their lives in their hands to get to their flats round the corner. These days it’s lighter stuff. The DHA staff continue to be immune to parking tickets or police warnings (not going to write warning letters to themselves, are they?), but elsewhere things are turning nasty as other Sally Army types and Anglo-Catholic reactionaries turn up earlier and earlier to get the few spots within metres of their respective places of worship.
But where would we be without Broadway Baptists and their ever more bizarre crowd-pullers? It’s all out war these days between Broadway and their redneck Southern cousins at Port St. Mary for ‘lowest common denomination’ status.
They’ve had ‘Weightlifting Ex-Cons for Jesus’, ‘Ex-Hells Angels for Jesus’ and every variant you can imagine on that to get ‘down wiv da kids’, and last week it was some ‘Cross and the Switchblade’ type imitator or other.
Now, Broadway punters could park in various well-protected spots over the road or round the corner. But that would mean walking up a hill or hurrying across a road.
Most of the burger-munching mouth-breathers who make up the congregation can’t or won't do that. So, they park their fatmobiles with two wheels on the pavement instead, blocking access up or down the hill to any pensioner out for a Sunday stroll along the prom.
And there’s no argument the hideous collection of vehicles blocking the street belong to them. Who else but a Baptist could own a turd-coloured people carrier with a holy haddock sign on the bumper. Who else would want the number plate MAN 4 60D?