Who needs a Manx 'Sarah's Law'?

I was amused to read that there has been yet another call to introduce ‘Sarah’s Law’ here (see http://www.iomtoday.co.im/news/isle-of-man-news/campaign_starts_to_bring_in_sarah_s_law_here_1_3425237 ).
Apparently there are parents who would like to know about any dubious character who “poses a potential danger to their children”.
What on earth are these herberts on about? Those details have been on public record for some time, courtesy of the Manx government.
Just go to http://www.gov.im/education/support/ and http://www.gov.im/education/department/board.xml for names , addresses and pictures of the guilty.

Too old to party, too young for a bus pass

As a retired boho, I had to shake my head sadly at a piece on the Guardian music pages entitled Why don't rock stars trash hotel rooms any more?
Honestly, musicians today – total disgrace. Don’t know why they don’t just give it up and join some pointless local government department or other.
Caroline Sullivan (see http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2010/jun/03/rock-stars-hotels-caroline-sullivan ) sounds a little nostalgic for the golden days of Led Zep & Co, and has some fun at the expense of modern artists who behave like theology students and limit their demands to things like pillows with no feathers (because a band member has an allergy).
I know what she means, but then I was lucky enough to be schooled by the best at the end of that golden era. On the other hand, if I’m honest, not only do I not remember some of what they taught me, to this day I don’t know where I was when receiving instruction.
The days immediately following a 1982 after-gig party involving the early Motorhead line-up are a particular black-hole. I’m not sure I even wrote the article I was (in theory) supposed to provide to the Dublin mag Hot Press. Not that Lemmy, Philthy Animal or Fast Eddie ever worried about bad publicity – or in this case the lack of it.
But I started earlier than that. Around my 18th birthday, in fact, when a friendly college tutor invited me along to a party given by his landlord at a former village rectory in Norfolk and, for reasons he wouldn’t explain, suggested I brought my tuba. It was supposed to be a gathering of local arty types, and the host was a trad jazz trumpeter who’d started out at London art schools, so I thought no more of it.
The party started normally enough. Then, about 10 PM, there was a huge crash outside, and we emerged to find a large US car had hit the rectory gates before skidding into the duckpond. Out of the passenger door emerged a very drunk Viv Stanshall, the Bonzo Dog Dooh Dah Band singer, who I soon learned was one of the host’s old art school mates. Then Viv’s best mate Keith Moon got out of the driver’s door, and the party livened up….somewhat!
For example, at about 1 AM the village cop watched me accompanying Viv Stanshall in a 1920’s ditty, Tubas in the Moonlight as we both sat on the rectory roof, then walked off, totally flabbergasted, saying, ‘Forget it, no magistrate would ever believe me!’
If your rock education starts by partying with Keith Moon you’re never going to be normal again, or bother going to office parties when commissions from corporate publishing bores dry up (as they will) and you have to grow up and get a proper job.
But the golden age of rock excess was also, funnily enough, an age in which people may have partied hard, but also looked after each other, and even famous rockers cared more about their fans.
For example, reading in Sullivan’s piece about the sad security worries of the whiney stude faves Keane, I remember the night when The Clash’s White Riot tour hit Plymouth. After a stonking gig where the audience rioted, chasing a notorious venue’s scumbag security into the toilets and jamming the door shut with an iron bar, the hardcore fans followed the band back to the Holiday Inn, where Mick Jones and Paul Simenon opened windows and fire exits to slip them all in for the night.
No, they couldn’t afford the bill for the damage, and no, the band’s label didn’t stump up either. That’s just the way musicians earning no more than the dole behaved back then, and probably never will again.
My hedonistic days are long gone now, though every time work colleagues try to impress with small town tales of excess I’m not smiling at their antics, just passing the time until they stop talking by recalling my own.
I'm also wondering how Keith Moon or Viv Stanshall would cope in a retirement home. Or more precisely, how the management would cope with them.

Disaster alert

Can I just give notice that the deluded herd’s attempts to hijack Christmas are under way.
While I’m at it, also take note that St. John’s, a public health hazard at the best of times, will be an absolute disaster area on Christmas Eve. But then, they should have put ropes and red flags around the place years ago.
You can find the first warning at http://www.manx.net/default.asp?id=18&articleid=9459.
Frankly, these godbothering throwbacks have a bit of a cheek.
For instance, what’s this about “our re-enactment of the Christmas story, which we have started with the support of local businesses and churches to bring the community together at Christmas.”
Since when was the church a force for good in the Manx community – especially at St. John’s?
But perhaps if a postcode with little more than a handful of houses and a shopping/conference centre run by fundamentalists (and heavily underwritten with government grants) has more known BNP members in those houses than the rest of the West of the island combined, and seems to be pocketing more business development dosh than Peel, the West’s only urban conurbation, then it’s reasonable to assume it’s Christian business as usual. That is to say racist, sexist, homophobic and parasitic.
St John’s gets away with a lot because it’s where the annual Tynwald Day Ceremony is held. For the benefit of off-island readers, I should explain that this is little more than a freak show for American tourists, and until the day the Chief Minister bangs nails up his nose and ritually disembowels the Governor as part of the Tynwald Ceremony even that’s not going to be a crowd-puller. The rest of the year the national place of historical and cultural interest it most closely resembles is Culloden, i.e cold, wet and utterly desolate.
To be honest, if the Christians are so keen to claim this damp, miserable field as their own, they’re welcome to go there and get pneumonia. If the Manx had any real national pride they could have marked the Christian millennium by concreting it over and building something more inspiring there.
Like a crematorium.

How do Manx politicians stand on drugs and alcohol?

So, a scientist gives impartial expert advice to the UK’s Prime Minister, just as his job requires, and what does the Prime Minister do?
The opposite, to suit the prejudices of the uninformed herd most likely to vote for him.
Well there’s a surprise.
Actually, reading some typical summaries of Professor David Nutt’s sacking for giving inconveniently sensible advice on relative dangers of illegal drugs and other risky substances and activities (see http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/oct/31/david-nutt-drugs-adviser-sacked and http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8335189.stm for example) I did wonder idly.
What would happen if the island’s Chief Minister – also a Mr Brown – were to get expert advice he didn’t like from his own Drug & Alcohol team? Would he also ignore it for cheap political gain, or would he have the courage to do the right thing?
Then I remembered. That situation cannot happen over here, because the D&A strategy team doesn’t include experts.
No scientists, no medical professionals, nobody with a qualification in psychiatry or psychology…. No bodies, no expertise, just a random bunch of evangelicals and temperance nazis looking for a public handout and a police department trying to avoid cuts.
There is one other funny coincidence though – that quote about the Prime Minister’s ‘absurd stance’ on drugs.
From what I hear, our Mr Brown's absurd stance after a few drinks at the President of Tynwald’s Christmas Lunch is bad enough, while politicians and staff from the Department of Home Affairs often can’t stand at all after some of their departmental outings.
Then there’s the time, a couple of years ago, when senior politicians and church figures were invited to a Fair Trade wine tasting. Well, it was a good cause, so we shouldn’t blame them for tasting as conscientiously and thoroughly as they did.
And they certainly did.
Police gossip says they were taken home in the van from the cop shop a few doors down from the venue, thus leaving the entire south of the island without police cover until 1 AM.

Never a copper when you need one

Well, I'm back, and spookchasing parasites take note: my tolerance of you has now hit zero.
Today, as I hurried down Ramsey’s Parliament Street on domestic duties, a Moron missionary tried to block my path. Our conversation was brief and, for him, unproductive.
“Good morning sir, I have good news for you.”
“No thanks, I’m not interested.”
“But sir, I don’t think you know what I’m offering.”
“I do. Racism, sexism, homophobia, outright lies and an empty wallet. Did I miss anything? No, thought not. Now fuck off and get a job.”
By the way, this happened bang outside the police station, so here’s a word of advice for our new, community conscious police while I’m at it (as you claim to be so interested in public feedback).
Stop fannying about with fundie throwbacks in broom cupboards and get these beggars off the street. It’s what I pay you for, and after all, unlike you, I won’t be retiring in middle age on a fat pension.

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?