Manx Kippers

Well, as promised, I and a few pillars of the community were outside the Gaiety on November 11^th distributing anti-racist leaflets to blue rinse bigot groupies.
It was an eye opener. A real losers convention of cheapskates, petty tax avoiders and vinegar-titted, niggling nobodies in general desperately looking for approval from someone only slightly less inconsequential then their sorry selves. It was as if the entire Manx daytime TV and UK Gold audience had simultaneously taken out a pay-day loan to watch the kind of shyster who sold it to them.
These were people too unimaginative to even crave decent heroes. What a shower!
More seriously, about two thirds were pensioners, who took our leaflets politely enough as we wished them a good evening but invited them to read another side to the fairy stories they were about to hear. Others were classic white flighters of the kind a Manx government policy document of 1990 (with major contributions by a former PR officer for the apartheid era Sun City resort in South Africa) indicates our then leaders decided to attract to this island.
The dead wood of the current House of Keys were also there, though significantly no female, Jewish or other politicians with non white or European partners. The Chief Minister had apparently been invited to meet and introduce Farage, but passed that dubious honour to an MLC whose prejudices are so well known that hanging out in public with a Euro-fascist could not lower his reputation further. Presumably, as the public can neither elect nor dismiss this Klingon he and his chums could enjoy yet another night of free drinks without worry.
Odder still was the presence of Manx Labour politicians and various characters who like to pass themselves off as trade unionists. The official line is that they were there to observe the enemy, but why pay him to do so?
It might also be pertinent to know that they were asked to join us leafleting. One professional trade unionist gave the kind of rambling response which explains why he loses every battle with government over public service pay and conditions. The other, like the MLP's elected members, never even replied.
Another myth peddled is that the proceeds of the event do not go back to Farage or his party, and that they went to charity. Not credible.
Firstly, the only known charitable donation on the night was passing buckets round the audience for the British Legion, an empty flag-waving gesture which cost the organisers nothing.
Secondly, a Manx registered family trust can ( if professionally constructed) also be a registered charity - though not necessarily registered on the Isle of Man. The whole concept was actually dreamt up by a well known figure in the dark 1980's days of the Manx offshore industry.
A common wheeze is to register the charity in another jurisdiction where nobody would look ( e.g. Monaco or Gibraltar) but bind the trust itself by Manx law. Also, under current law only the trustees would know the name of any underlying company or where it is registered, and would only be obliged to reveal anything in the chain of structures if a police force or government agency had credible evidence of criminal activity. Given that such agencies rarely even know of the existence of such entities unless a criminal offers them up in a plea bargain this simply does not happen.
Thirdly, the lunchtime before the show, Farage supporters gave a reception for a carefully selected few at The Claremont which nobody seems to want to mention. To get some idea why this might be, take a look at http://awaitingawesternrenaissance.blogspot.com/2008/10/foreign-owners-channel-cash-to-tories.html and remember who owns the Claremont, and also http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/citydiary/10106554/Dashwood-Bangers-and-cash-for-Nigel-Farages-Brussels-blow-out.html .
You may also find http://www.directorstalk.com/nigel-farage-jim-mellon-paul-kavanagh-and-merryn-somerset-webb-at-master-investor-2013/ , http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/oct/02/ukip-donor-belize-mining-southern-africa and http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/oct/04/ukip-donor-arron-banks-shows-tax-cheque-sent-hmrc helps to give some idea how these things work and why middle ranking businessmen with massively leveraged businesses might want to bother.

Toilet training

This story (see http://www.iomtoday.co.im/news/isle-of-man-news/campaigners-urge-us-to-twin-our-toilets-1-6912826 ) breaks my heart.

I have known the One World Centre, its staff and committee since its inception (which I was actually involved in) and they are well meaning, honest and open people. When the OWC held a tenth anniversary concert celebrating the island's hidden cultural diversity a couple of weeks back I went out of my way to get family and friends to go. At that concert the toilet-twinning idea was launched, and we left seriously intending to sign up and join in.

Then we found out who the money actually goes to, so we cannot. For the record, Cord is the trading name of Christian Outreach (England & Wales registered charity number 1070684), so actually both partnership charities here are faith -based.

Tearfund demands that both volunteers and paid workers sign a mission statement binding them to a somewhat fundamentalist interpretation of Christianity as a condition of employment. A highly respected gay Christian who runs one of the UK's most prestigious faith-based campaign groups sent me a copy some years ago. He and other liberal Christians say that, in practice, the statement weeds out dissenters as it would not be possible for any honest person practising the ideals of the UN Convention on Human Rights to sign.

Cord, while on paper run by Christians who think their faith requires them to first help the dispossessed (rather than judge or convert them) is linked by a common trustee to SaltMalawi Trust (E&W charity number 1139160) which.......well, frankly, is not. If you are at all concerned at the way Western evangelicals have stoked up folk myths about witchcraft and homosexuality in order to profit from the homegrown African money church movement you might want to give that direct debit a miss.

Returning to the OWC itself - I even briefly joined the committee at one point, in a bid to meet predominantly faith-based people halfway in efforts to move past the awful “I'm all right Jack” little islander mentality which prevails here. Too many crises of conscience caused me to resign within a month or two, and at the time I felt like a minority of one within another minority which was not much larger.

I know that, in practice, the decent Christians within the OWC fight an uphill battle against the apathy and racism of many local worshippers. From conversations with others in recent months alone I also now know the real irony: this is that is there is actually a much larger group who think like me outside the tiny OWC circle of church influence.

We share the human, rather than faith-based, aspects of the OWC vision. We think it would be counter-productive to start another version (especially when the basic idea and links with government are in place) but there is no way any of us, in good conscience, can support initiatives which do not differentiate between, say, the principled stance of Christian Aid (who sign up to UNHRC standards of employment and aid distribution) and Samaritan's Purse/Operation Christmas Child (who can fly someone in Franklin Graham's Lear jet to a disaster for a photo, then back again as soon as the world press leave, and have been known to demand Catholic or Muslim refugees convert before handing over facilities SP were actually distributing as part of a US AID program).

What is the answer?

Sadly, I cannot see long term change or an increase in public support until it is made clear that the OWC are NOT primarily there to channel overseas aid from the Manx government to international aid agencies, but an attempt to engage with Manx people and affect change from the grass roots up. Given the wide public mistrust of both the Manx government and quite justifiable mistrust of aid agencies with £100K executives I cannot see how they can succeed while the public links them to attempts to increase overseas aid, and as long as they are  wrongly associated with major aid agency tubthumpers I fear the OWC are fast losing even the limited goodwill of the young and liberal.

For example, at my daughter's school she reports pupils cannot tell the difference between OWC visitors and compulsory sermons from the Scripture Union. The kids seem to regard both as “god-bothering nutters” to be slept through until the teacher can be bothered to turn up and proper lessons start.

They are, I hasten to say, wrong, because OWC staff scrupulously avoid professing any personal faith they may have in schools. The problem is, as the very few promoters of “good causes” either sanctioned or choosing to go into schools tend to be preachy, the audience no longer waits until they start talking to switch off. And if, say, they are there as part of some option intended to get kids thinking about the wider world only churchy kids tick that option box, so they never discover the difference. Self-fulfilling prophecies and all that.

Perhaps a short term compromise, and acceptable start, would be to require both partners of OWC projects and Manx government overseas aid recipients to commit to working practices that respect UNHRC standards and UK/Manx law on human rights. At present far too many can slip through the net by pleading religious belief, or are simply not scrutinised or challenged.

Churches may reasonably expect worshippers to voluntarily believe the apparently irrational or supernatural as a membership condition. They cannot expect public funds to theoretically provide goods and services to the dispossessed if a condition of that “aid” is the “right” to promote or endorse hatred. When they do that, all Manx people become a party to the ignorance, the house-burnings, the violence, the second class treatment of women, torture of children and other such crimes against humanity. That is not what foreign aid is meant to do.

Kill this Bill, not gays

Real world problems have kept me away from the blog for a while but, as the Manx press don’t seem interested, I have to post something here about a nasty bit of legislation in Uganda, and the sheer hypocrisy of Manx evangelicals about such stuff.

This all started as the latest misleading salvo in the particularly mean-minded letters page debate about overseas aid. As I’ve said before, I’ve felt hamstrung because the major local defenders of the principle are mainstream churchgoers and a major beneficiary mainstream religious aid agencies (e.g. Christian Aid, Tearfund), while the most virulent attacks come from individuals who spout fundamentalist variants of free market views on charity - or indeed any form of compassion.

From my day job in our finance sector I am painfully aware of huge irony, in that the viciously deceptive American magazines from which such misanthropes quote freely are heavily underwritten by ‘educational foundations’ formed to channel money towards the ‘Tea Party’ tendency of Republicanism, and the biggest donors to those foundations are wealthy evangelicals eager to avoid tax. 

But when Manx supporters of a dubious religious aid agency wrongly claimed that the international community was cutting Ugandan aid because of Ugandan political corruption I saw red. So in response, I sent a letter to the Indie outlining the history of the horrendous ‘Kill the Gays’ Bill which has actually caused aid to be frozen since 2009.

In particular I linked the Bill’s sponsor, David Bahati, to the Fellowship Foundation (a US-based Christian and political organisation - better known as ‘the Family’-  which arranges an annual National Prayer Breakfast in Washington), and also explained how the Bill originated in the March 2009 Ugandan tour of Abiding Truth Ministries (another US evangelical group) to promote The Pink Swastika, a very silly book co-authored by Abiding Truth’s president, Scott Lively, which presented Nazism as a ‘gay conspiracy’.

The Indie never printed it. Not sure why. Maybe they’re as bored as I am by the sad procession of knuckle-dragging throwbacks who think we should cut all aid, or the almost as pathetic attempts by some of the key recipients to retain it, but on the present terms (i.e. the public get no say in the matter, we just hand our tax money to a self-elected bunch of numpties with vested interests, who decide which of their mates get it all this year).

Or maybe the Indie just won’t risk upsetting those key advertisers who insist evangelical twaddle gets printed ad nauseum, and pull their ads when anyone points out what twaddle it is or the damage religiots actually do in the world.

Whatever.

The point is the Bill is back on.

In fact Ugandan politicians seem to have promised it as some sort of sick ‘Christmas present’ to their rich but retarded Yank bible-bashing friends.

 In fact Rebecca Kadaga, Speaker of the Ugandan parliament, actually used those words ‘(Christmas present’, that is, not ‘rich but retarded Yank bible-bashing friends’.

As I said in the unprinted letter, we in the West need to stop blaming easy targets for African poverty. Instead, it is high time we acknowledged that myths and prejudices we created, and hateful parasites whose activities we failed to prevent, are a major factor in the problem.

So you could help by signing two emergency protests to the Ugandan government. You can find them at www.allout.org/uganda  and http://www.avaaz.org/en/uganda_stop_gay_death_law/?tyOERab. But you have to sign NOW. Even the end of this week could be too late to save lives.
27/11/12 Update - if you want to send a message to five US senators who are members of the 'family' mentioned above, there's a petition at http://org2.democracyinaction.org/o/6535/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=12199 .

Three months later, and an answer arrives

Back in May (see http://clingingtoarock.blogspot.com/2012/05/who-is-helping-who.html ) I wondered why a professional religious bigot – a pariah, so I understand, even within Westminster Tory circles – would be visiting the Manx government’s Overseas Aid Committee. Perhaps, I idly mused, she was doing nothing more than paying a UK taxpayer funded visit to local pro-life chums. But I also wondered why, even though a government press release was issued, the usually compliant Manx media ‘forgot’ to run it at the time.

Today, at http://www.gov.im/lib/news/cso/isleofmangovernm18.xml, I found the answer. 

Just to explain a little more. While in theory the Humanitarian Aid Relief Trust (England & Wales registered charity number 1107341) has seven trustees, in practice Caroline Cox founded it, very much runs the show and is indeed the sole official contact.

I’d like to believe Manx money will go to a needy cause and be used wisely. Because there are certainly people in the Sudan who desperately need our help. 

Unfortunately, given that the charity’s founder hangs out with career Islamophobes and homophobes, and seems to favour the sort of ‘overseas aid’ where rich countries give poorer ones a choice between starving or letting the donor countries choose the government and control their import/export trade, I am not too confident that we will help the victims, rather than a new set of opportunists. 

Shame really, because I also have little doubt that Phil Gawne has nothing but good intentions, and bravely continues a massive uphill struggle to maintain any sort of overseas aid funding.

Even atheism has a tinfoil-hat tendency

I am bored by so called ‘rationalist’ and ‘secular’ groups at the moment. In fact the poorly disguised racism and flat-earth thinking prevalent on even usually sane and witty websites and forums bores me so much I’ve withdrawn permanently from some and may stop looking in on others until the nonsense abates.

Inevitably, the sad case of Shafila Ahmed brought out the bigots in force but then, as a veteran anti-racist, I’ve always known how the fash and their kissing cousins like to infiltrate and poison the unlikeliest forums. Sadly, if any well meaning secularist points out, say, a problem caused by Muslim fundamentalism or orthodox Catholic thinking then it quickly becomes an invitation for the pub bore to jump in – and when you mention Judaism all kinds of freaks crawl out of the graveyard of ideas we all thought they’d been confined to since 1945.  

Some years back I was perturbed to see a flat-out UKIP lie circulated as ‘fact’ in a BHA forum, and more recently names I recognise as dreary BNP klingons were trying to start ‘skeptic’ and ‘atheist’ groups which – rather curiously - seemed far more intent on spreading common folk myths about Islam than exploring their origins and then debunking them along with the religious mythology they claim to be worried about. When even one of the atheist world’s best known women academics says she is avoiding some secular conferences after getting death threats from misogynistic male skeptics you know things are out of hand.

It rather proves the point I try to make to such fundamentalists. They assume 'All Muslims are....' (as if every Muslim lives in a tiny closed  community with no access to others, and has no interaction within other communities) and also assume 'All atheists are...' (as if every atheist was also a non-racist, non-sexist, non-homophobic progressive liberal, when every second comment on every secular website shows that all they have in common is a professed disbelief in the supernatural, while the vast majority are all too willing to swallow whole the most common folk myths about every sector of society).

Still, I hadn’t realised just how bad things were until I sent a jokey response in to a NSS Newsline item concerning a Revelation Channel report on Mitt Romney's visit to Israel, in which it was claimed that he mentions Israel a lot because "Israel is mentioned in the Bible more than any other country".

Things, I should explain, have been a bit dull on Newsline recently. The stories from the two producers are as sharp and relevant as ever, but they invite reader letters in response, and I suspected they have been ready to slash their wrists at the drivel from non-religious ‘Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells’ types which have featured in recent months. So, tongue-in-cheek, I pointed out that “Reliable sources insist that the State of Israel came into being on 14th May 1948”, and that if he “is correct, (and as a deeply religious man and avid Bible-reader running for the most powerful job on earth surely he must be)” I wondered “would Mr. Romney accept that the Gutenberg Bible, all such historical Bibles held in museums around the world, and all those Bibles passed down for centuries and so solemnly read on Sundays in our nation's best known churches must be forgeries?”

I readily admit I do this every few months on NSS and other forums to draw out and wind up the flat-earthers. Anyone who knows me well can testify that when asked in interviews for my hobbies I always reply “Winding up fundamentalists until they explode”, so my refusal to take ‘serious’ topics, well….seriously is hardly a state secret. I picked up the idea from the late Robert Anton Wilson, who worried about ‘the New Inquisition’ – those who create a scientific orthodoxy that can no more be questioned than a mediaeval pope – and thought that the best way to draw attention to a ludicrous failure to approach things with an open mind was to poke fun with a very straight face. Usually it works, and I get a few e-mails from friends who had a giggle, but this time not just one but two herberts who probably think they are models of sane and sober rationality replied to Newsline trying to ‘correct’ my ‘mistake’ about the birth of Israel.

DUH!!! (Bangs head on desk in stunned disbelief before falling off the chair shrieking with laughter). It’s tempting to reply in turn asking if there’s an e-mail equivalent of the ‘SATIRE’ sign that used to flash on and off during Monty Python sketches, but is there much point?

So, all a bit sad, and by comparison I heartily recommend you read the reply sent to a BNP pamphleteer by one Dick Wolff, who describes himself as a United Reformed Church minister and Green Party  councillor for Oxford City. You can read it at http://dickwolffblog.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/got-sent-bnp-pamphlet-today.html and I think the sane and humane attitude expressed will make your day, as it did mine. Mr. Wolff may be a believer in things I cannot rationally accept as true, but is certainly someone I would be glad to count as a friend - unlike the tinfoil-hatters currently crowding to sites I used to think of as refuges for the purely rational.

When Jesus saves everyone gets screwed over

I have to giggle and groan sympathetically at this (see http://www.iomtoday.co.im/news/isle-of-man-news/give_up_bags_for_lent_1_4273789 ) for several reasons.
Firstly, because it nicely illustrates the difficulties faced by a non-religious person trying to do something right on the Isle of Man. All a self-congratulatory Christian chancer has to do to get branded a ‘good person’ is wave a cross about a bit and mention Jesus. Anyone else actually has to do good work, and without the obligatory nod to Jesus Freakery it never gets recognised as good anyway.
But also because it is a prime example of the dangers of government-run pseudo-charities, slave labour schemes and co-operating with evangelical bigots in order to get your message across.
Just to ‘deconstruct’ things and make it all a little clearer….
Muriel was one of the founder members of Isle of Man Freethinkers, so having to link the campaign to a smug religious orgy of ‘self-denial’ must make her grit her teeth. Though on the other hand, as ‘unfashionable’ class warriors point out, for all the worthiness and common sense behind them green campaigns and campaigners can also be fuelled by a smugness and tendency to perpetuate prejudices of class, (perhaps less consciously) race and the legacies of colonialism which have never gone away. Attitudes and prejudices whose most common exponents are evangelical Christians.
Then there is the problem of government run pseudo-charities. Having a dialogue with government is one thing, allowing your charity or community campaign to be used as a career springboard for chancers looking for a cosy government contract, or for civil servants to dictate your local policies in return for a seat at the table with them (which is way too common in a Manx ’Third Sector’ chiefly administrated by civil servants), or just allowing your charity to be used as ‘proof’ of the forward thinking of the Manx government in return for a government grant to your UK parent…?
Can any member of the public take your campaigns seriously if even you don’t?
Prison slave labour schemes – another bugbear of mine. See the Campaign Against Prison Slavery link to the right for a fuller picture, but the simple fact is this. The ‘punishment’ of a prisoner is to be deprived of liberty. End of.
Rehabilitation which involves work schemes – especially on the Isle of Man – is a sick joke. If you want to teach somebody to have some dignity by holding down a job and paying their way in society instead of robbing – fine. But the point is that employment is based on an exchange of ‘goods’, so if you ‘work’ you get paid.
Well informed prison charities (i.e. none that can operate on the Isle of Man) have suggested schemes whereby a prisoner works for a ‘proper’ company and is paid a reasonable wage. As it’s unhelpful or undesirable for them to have that much cash in prison, the money can then be banked in an account used to address practical problems when they get out – for example to set them up with accommodation. Alternatively, it could go straight to their family so the prisoner has the self-respect of knowing they are supporting them – legitimately – while inside.
Curiously, neither large companies nor the faith-based hypocritical wowsers who run ‘rehabilitation’ on the Isle of Man want to know about that. No short term profit for them, you see. Better, like Shoprite, to get a product (which only benefits you) made free (and even with public donations), then latch on to the publicity generated by a Department of Home Affairs which rather than preventing crime perpetuates it – even to the extent of nurturing the next generation of criminals.
Co-operating with evangelical bigots? St Thomas’s, by virtue of having the ‘right’ to appoint deluded loons (sorry ‘practicing Christians’) as staff which the current Diocesan representatives on the school board insist on exercising, has a head teacher who takes flat-earth superstition seriously. His predecessor was a decent middle-of-the-road Anglican, but when he retired no Anglican teacher wanted the job so rather than give it to a reputable professional the Diocese picked a Broadway Baptist punter, reputedly a creationist with equally startling views on most things. Given that some of that tribe are millenarians (a Christian subculture that thinks Armageddon is imminent and you should do nothing to stop it) he may even believe environmentalism is a distraction of the Devil.
Fair play to any non-religious person who wants a better island and world and engages with this cretinous, deep-rooted bigotry and nonsense to try and get it. Personally though, my nod to a ridiculous Christian tradition is to give up self-flagellation for Lent.
And after Easter? Well, long time until Saturnalia in December, but, with some effort, I am sure I can find ways to knock out my inner policeman and actually enjoy the process of bringing misanthropic vacuity to its knees – while simultaneously encouraging everyone else to get off them.

Ignorance is not a traditional value

Yesterday I saw yet more evidence that while, on the one hand, it is churches who claim to be the champions of community and local identity it is their members who, in practice, are fast destroying both. This example would be simply hilarious if it were not so startling and very, very dumb.
We were looking for a child’s birthday present, so thought we’d do the right thing by getting something that would encourage the child to learn something and also looking for it in a proper local bookshop, rather than Waterstones.
While there a bloke I’d take to be a fairly new resident came in and asked the staff for assistance. He had friends coming from across, and as they’d be here at the end of October, wanted to give them a suitable book on Manx folklore which might explain Hop Tu Naa.
For non-Manx readers, Hop Tu Naa is the Manx variant of those Halloween customs whereby kids dress up and go door to door asking for treats. The fun bit is they get to dress in witch costumes, but to get the treats they must also (a) carry a carved turnip lamp and (b) successfully sing the Hop Tu Naa song. So, most would agree, harmless fun stuff that gets kids away from the Playstation and keeps local tradition going.
Apparently not the shop assistant, who froze as if asked if they had anything on practical Satanism and child sacrifice, after a few seconds said, rather stiffly, they didn’t stock “that sort of thing” and then, when asked who did, uttered the phrase which is enough to get you slung out of the Independent Book Retailers Association, “Try W.H. Smiths”.
Seeing all this, and in particular the bloke’s dazed expression as he headed for the door, the Light of My Life steered him towards me and ordered me to list suitable Manx shops and book-titles. This I did, and duly put his business the way of a nice little guy who stocks old Manx books, posters, postcards and other memorabilia, just across the street from the bookshop as it happens.
The irony is, a few metres away from the shop assistant was an entire bookcase of local titles, mostly nonsensical whimsy but including several copies of Sophia Morrison’s Manx Fairy Tales, an Edwardian local classic reprinted in a ridiculously over-priced edition a few years back by Manx National Heritage to take advantage of the need to cover Manx culture in the school curriculum.
It’s a great book, something like a Celtic version of Grimms Fairy Tales, but also with several chapters on Manx customs and all very accessible to kids. The Manx elders who introduced me to it and other out-of-print local classics years back were, without exception, stalwart churchgoers and also, for example, involved in keeping things like mhelliahs (harvest produce sales), Sankey Evenings, carvals (Manx carols) and suchlike going in village churches.
By comparison, the annual Manx outcry about the ‘dangers’ of Halloween comes from a nastier, more recent Christian tradition (if something recently concocted in the half-mind of a deranged fundamentalist can yet be deemed ‘tradition’). This was predominantly introduced by exiled Ulster Unionists who, before fleeing a fairer, more humane Northern Ireland, discovered the advantages of US correspondence course theological qualifications and superchurch pyramid schemes. Like our worst politicians, they know nothing of morality (and never even study the big moral questions) but do know (in their case by filling in the blanks on those helpful sermon templates that come with the franchise) how to create moral panic out of tabloid non-stories.
It is they, and not ‘militant atheists’ or ‘aggressive secularism’, who are the greatest threat to Manx community life and common decency. But for now, as their entire lives revolve around material wealth and their pretensions towards ‘spiritual values’ are just ridiculous, I’m happy to laugh, or put them out of business by pointing punters towards proper, community-orientated, competitors who do deserve neighbourly support.

Beware of freaks bearing collecting tins

You might have acolytes of a religious pseudo-charity banging your door and demanding money in the next few days according to http://www.isleofman.com/News/article.aspx?article=34573 . Please feel as free as I will to tell them where to shove their collecting tins.
The Adventist Development Relief Agency UK (England and Wales registered charity number 1074937) is a front organisation for the Seventh Day Adventists. If you haven’t come across these bozos, they’re a conservative Christian sect.
Amongst their beliefs they condone Creationism and Millenarianism (also known as ‘End Timers’ – freaks who believe the end of the world is coming so you shouldn’t do anything to stop that, such as stopping wars, or even recycling or adopting environmental policies). They’re also homophobes and don’t believe in birth control outside of marriage (that’s heterosexual marriage, as they believe any other kind is an abomination).
Quite how flat-earthers like that get to run a ‘development agency’ or expect to be of any use to humanity beats me. Even by the usual standards of the biblebashing throwbacks preying on Manx unfortunates this lot are wired to the moon.
By the way, that stuff about them collecting ‘legally’ can also be treated with a large pinch of salt. It’s an offence for any charity not registered on the Isle of Man to solicit funds here.
Thanks to some flat-earth friends in Tynwald some of the bigger parasites are able to ignore that law with no danger of getting their collars felt. We might watch with interest to see what happens when this particular bunch of chancers not only break the law but have announced their intent to do so on the ‘national’ radio station.

All Frilly Surplice And No Knickers

One of the dimmer Tynwald layabouts had some objections to the Marriage and Civil Registration (Amendment) Bill which went through in April. Apparently the chump was worried it might lead to a spate of ‘wacky weddings’ which would make the outside world laugh at the island.
Oh Eddie, really! The world laugh at a place populated by folk who not only let you take executive political decisions while skulking in a government broom cupboard but even pay you, even though you can’t get elected? As if!!
The sadder thing was that the main hold-up to a fairly modest bill was the Bishop needing an assurance (which he got) from fellow unelected political rejects and chancers that if a clergyman was to be illegally passed information from a confidential register of transgendered people, and refused to conduct a marriage of that person, then neither the clergyman nor the faith-biased and homophobic civil servant would be prosecuted.
Some people wonder why I laugh when Manx church leaders or government departments try to tell us they want to stamp out racism, sexism or homophobia.
But a few weeks ago I noted another blatant example of the kind of tasteless tat that passes elsewhere for a ‘dignified’ church ceremony. Take a look at http://www.metro.co.uk/weird/847874-dog-gets-elaborate-church-blessing, where some herbert spent £1,000 having his dog blessed in a village church. And there was me thinking those ‘bring your pet to church’ Sundays local bunny-huggers love so much were a bit over the top.
It does make you wonder about all those Manx church pretensions to high mindedness and solemn dignity. As one of the more personable senior clergy once grumbled to me over a decade ago, he’d never known a place like the Isle of Man for rich, thick and sentimental punters, and church advisors who’d sign him up to fulfil their oddest whims at the right price. “Anything that can’t run away, they want me to pray over. If it’s got legs, wings or fins I’ve been asked to christen, marry or bury it. If it doesn’t move they want me to bless it.”
By comparison, I’ve yet to hear of any Manx gay couple with such poor taste that they wanted to get married in a church. Some people just have to much taste, and self-respect.
Which makes Manx Christian objections to gay marriage ( and even the long overdue, yet to be implemented, arrangement for civil partnership ceremonies) all the more risible.

Manx Christian tolerance... and flying pigs

Apparently: “The contribution Tynwald continues to make in its work to advance the cause of inclusivity in the Isle of Man has been recognised by the Island’s churches.”
We know this because Radio Cowshed said so today (see http://www.manxradio.com/newsread.aspx?id=48290 , though if you’d rather read what they were told to say and by which press officer from which church organisation you could have read it yesterday at http://www.manx.net/news/615/island-s-churches-acknowledge-tynwald-s-commitment-to-an-inclusive-society ).
I was intrigued to know that: “ In making the presentation, Canon Alger, who was joined by representatives from other churches in the Island and who is soon to retire from his ministry at The Church of St Mary of the Isle, said the Covenant for Mission, in the spirit of Freedom to Flourish, reflected a desire of the Island’s churches to move forward, recognise differences and work collaboratively in mission. He added that the churches’ recognition of diversity was mirrored by that of Tynwald which similarly acknowledged the importance of shared awareness and mutual respect.”
Oh yes, and pigs just flew over the Tynwald building in a perfect V formation.
The thing is, even the reason both Brendan Alger and Robert Paterson have to appear in the presentation picture might be food for thought. One reason is that Mr Paterson is an unelected politician with our upper house of legislative layabouts, and was effectively chosen by his own management and Downing Street, not the Manx public or even church. Mr Alger may be nominally head of Churches Together In Mann at present, but the executive of that body is just four men (and it always is men) from the four largest church denominations, who can overrule any decision made by the working committees who advise them, and who in turn have continually voted to exclude certain denominations from membership.
The most embarrassing example of this was when local Quakers ran the only Manx charity to gain off-island recognition (rather than discreet investigations from Interpol) and in order to trade in on it, a Quaker had to be granted special observer status to a CTIM sub-committee set up in order that CTIM could present 'evidence' to Tynwald, which in turn claimed the charity as an example of local Christian endeavour when reporting back to some international bunfight (sorry, 'conference') which a couple of elected layabouts were using as an excuse for a foreign holiday at public expense.
And the other funny thing there is that for years there’s been a tradition where the Catholic and the ‘free churches’ representatives at either committee or executive level ring the chairman ahead of such meetings. If the other party is going to be present, they don’t turn up.
In fact, in previous years, some ‘free church’ representatives have been so sectarian they wouldn’t even attend the Tynwald ceremony if there was a guest from a Catholic country. And in general, the evangelicals prefer to do their government negotiations separately and in private (often via Noel Cringle as it happens), rather than risk the Bishop at the time relaying a CTIM message to government which reflects the broad church view, not evangelical economic interests.
And even leaving aside the continual in-fighting, sectarian hatred and editing out of all but the most powerful religious cult interests, it’s who and what the churches are deciding to collaborate against that should really worry us.
Because, in general, they are collaborating against the rest of us, against decency and honesty, against progress. In fact against anything that brings to an end their centuries of privilege, and their ability to hold us all back with their hate, their ignorance, and in particular their fear of democracy.

Another Sunday, more pointless rituals to perpetuate lies

It seems that as fast as one generation is spared cretinous military rituals of state and the dubious delights of ‘serving one’s country’, the klingons who perpetuate such big fibs conscript younger victims.
Today around 100 Manx kids will march about pointlessly as part of a sham ‘war memorial’ (see http://www.energyfm.net/cms/news_story_107671.html for more).
Like the UK government, the Manx one likes to pretend this fatuous, publically-subsidised pray-in has a point. It doesn’t, unless you count distracting us from wondering how they managed to screw up public services in years when obscene amounts of money could have rolled in to build them.
I’d also have to ask such ‘vets’, quite bluntly, how crap was the rest of your life that you need to commemorate a wasted adolescence several times a year – on the rates? I’ve seen the Sex Pistols and seen off the National Front, but I don’t need to dress up in bondage trousers with a bunch of balding sad-acts and march down Kings Road every pigging summer.
In fact, the funniest thing is I’ve probably seen more war zones and intervened positively in more conflicts than a whole platoon of today’s marchers. I did it by the simple method of taking an interest in world and social affairs and building up a network of like-minded friends in other countries. This is almost the bi-polar opposite of the ‘advice’ given to me at school by the kind of xenophobic tossers who perpetuate this twaddle so that they can queen about in a beret.
On the other hand it is exactly the advice given to me by my grandfather, who was crippled in the First World War and only survived it because he was rescued by a German soldier. He threw away his war medals after that war faster than the UK government threw him on the scrap heap, never went to an Armistice Day parade, and never had a bad word for a foreigner of any description that I heard.
Like my wife’s grandfather, he would have probably been delighted that I married the grand-daughter of someone who not only served against him but was also conscripted in the Second World War, and by all the evidence in letters home from the Russian Front we recently discovered found the whole situation as pointless, sick and stupid as my own grandfather. The even sicker thing – he hated the Nazis even more than the Allies did, and had only been conscripted for certain death at an advanced age as revenge for being a pre-war Communist Party member.
I sincerely hope that all this pseudo-patriotic nonsense finally dies out before I get a sad letter from a head teacher informing me that my daughter is expected to perpetuate this lie. The thing is, unlike the professional liars and muddle-headed loons who do, I have far too much respect for war victims to let her.
To those who think we should still commemorate the war I have a simple suggestion. Let your chintzy soldier statues fall down and replace them, if you must, with a simple image of a dead baby impaled on a bayonet.
If you can’t handle that, you’re not serious about why we need to remember the horrors of war and ‘inform’ the young.
So stop wasting our time and public money.

ICAHK shows us the way, even when in poor English

I haven’t been looking at the excellent International Campaign Against Honour Killings site as regularly as I should, so almost missed a revealing report there this week.
A Delhi court came down hard on the police for launching a massive hunt for the Police Commissioner’s dog yet failing dismally to protect local women – often from their own families.
The criticism came up as the court heard a case concerning a man sent to jail for eloping with a girl after her parents alleged she was raped. It seems police are often acting on such complaints, which tend to stem from families unhappy that a girl freely chooses her partner, yet are failing dismally to investigate honour killings carried out by families.
You can read more at http://www.stophonourkillings.com/?q=node/4708 . Try not to be put off by the sometimes clumsy English translations on this site, by the way, because that never lessens the importance or impact. In fact, it should probably put us to shame because folk are trying to report this stuff on their own communities, while we fail to even look in ours.
For example, as I quickly discovered a couple of years back when trying to contribute to the Manx government's pseudo-attempt to create a better homelessness database, the real extent of homophobia, racism or violence against women on the Isle of Man will never be known as long as those compiling the figures have an interest in protecting some of the worst offenders. That is, bigots in key places within certain government departments or the religious right organisations who otherwise employ them and control other agencies which might help - from homelessness to fostering to bail to prisoner rehabilitation and prisoner family support to the local women's refuge. All, in my experience, hiding the real nature and extent of the problem, and all with skeletons in the closet.

Of bigotry and fairy tales on the rates

Apparently the street preacher arrested for telling a gay copper that homosexuality is a sin is now suing both the officer and his chief constable for “unlawful arrest, false imprisonment and unlawful interference with his right to freedom of expression and freedom of religion.”
To briefly summarise for those who didn’t read of the case (possibly they don’t regard the Daily Mail as a newspaper either), Dale Mcalpine was ‘witnessing’ in a Cumbrian street, and, to be fair, whatever else he railed about in his sermon it wasn’t homosexuality.
That came up when a couple of Police Community Support Officers tried to move him on. One happened to mention he was gay (perhaps as an example of the kind of folk who might take offence) and Mcalpine seems to have told him that was a sin. At which point he got his collar felt.
But the funniest thing about the original case is that the charge against Mcalpine wasn’t dropped because of outpourings of bile from Mail readers, or splenetic columnists like Malignant Phillips, or even homophobic professional godbotherers (though they, of course, still pretend they were influential). They were dropped when Peter Tatchell said that, on principle, if Mcalpine went to court he’d turn up and be a witness for the defence. Terry Sanderson, president of the National Secular Society, also weighed in, tongue-in-cheek, saying: "This was a ridiculously over-the-top reaction to someone exercising their right to freedom of speech. Mr Mcalpine has as much right to criticise homosexuals as I should have to call him a crank."
It won’t surprise anybody that the hypocrites underwriting this under the pretence of defending freedom of speech (see http://www.christian.org.uk/news/street-preacher-suing-police-over-controversial-arrest/ ) are the same godbothering, over-sensitive whingebags who get art exhibitions closed for having piccies that question their muppetry, or mount campaigns to stop Anne Summers shops nationwide wishing us a horny Christmas.
It wouldn’t, either, surprise Manx people who’ve noticed how many superstitiously challenged bigots hang out at the Department of Home Affairs that when some of our nastiest Christians then started skulking around the local Anne Summers shop, giving staff and customers ugly looks while muttering under their breath, the police did not act. Funny that, because if all else fails a section of the Mental Health Act allows a police officer to remove lunatics to a temporary place of safety if they judge either the lunatic or the public are in danger.
But there’s a more positive way to look at this too. Once upon a time this Cumbrian imbecile would have had no problem rounding up enough loons to fill a small building, and get them to pay enough for the dubious privilege of hearing his twaddle to earn a living. Now he has to practice in the street, and like others of his ‘profession’ increasingly relies on public funds to get by.
Is this court challenge, in effect, anything but another Christian trying to con a public payout because he’s offering a product no-one needs or wants? A bit like, say, cartwrights after the motor car was invented.
Which might also explain why local Anglicans are trying to reinvent their biggest, least useful or popular barns as ‘heritage sites’ and ‘community facilities’ in order to keep them open – if, as ever, empty – with us mugs paying for buildings we wouldn’t be seen dead in (or married in either, in the case of straight heathens), and where our kids will never learn anything except hate or hypocrisy.

Anglican Mainstream or Anglican Millwall?

If you need evidence that ordinary Christians aren’t as dim or bigoted as that faith’s most belligerent ‘spokesmen’, try this. Advance ticket sales for Greenbelt have gone up 15%, and the surge came after Anglican Mainstream urged people to boycott it for being too gay-friendly.
For those unfamiliar with the factions within Anglicanism, Greenbelt is a sort of Christian Glastonbury – or maybe think WOMAD with prayers thrown in. Anglican Mainstream is, frankly, a ragbag collection of swivel-eyed Christofascist throwbacks who’d like to lead that church, led by failed candidates for senior church positions (with dodgy far right friends) and former senior clerics who had to be chosen by politicians, as even their own peers don’t take them seriously. Far from being the ‘mainstream’ of the Anglican family they’re more like the mad relatives no-one talks about who you’d find locked in an attic in some Victorian melodrama.
Last year ‘AM’ kicked off because Greenbelt invited Gene Robinson, the openly gay Bishop of New Hampshire, as a speaker in a workshop event. This year Peter Tatchell is speaking, which has made them even more annoyed.
You can find a report from Ekklesia, the ever reasonable voice of Christianity, at http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/node/12138 .
But if you want a cheap laugh at the expense of some sad-acts with delusions of sanity (and, some days, we need one), just have a giggle at http://www.anglican-mainstream.net/2010/05/06/call-to-boycott-greenbelt-over-tatchell-invitation/ .

Frankly, we're not grateful

According to Manx Radio, there’s a ‘Thanksgiving Service’ today at St. German’s Cathedral for the island’s contributions to past and contemporary bigotry.
That isn’t how the organisers see it, of course. And as Manx Radio’s own link doesn’t work (nothing new there then), you need to look at another site’s mirroring of the item (see http://www.isleofman.com/News/article.aspx?article=26098&area=2 ) to read about it.
But as the Anne Frank exhibition they’re ‘celebrating’ was organised by the island’s most bigoted and overprivileged minority, as a sly way of excusing public subsidy of their biggest, least useful faith ghetto, it is exactly how I see it.
In the last fortnight my family has again been the target of racism, and every week without fail I get reports of friends affected by local racism, sexism or homophobia – generally faith-based. Every week without fail I also get reports of a community somewhere else in the world directly or indirectly damaged as a result of some braindead Manx evangelical sponging off our clueless ‘overseas aid’ policies.
So let us be frank (if you’ll excuse the pun).
We have nothing to be thankful for. We are still the victims of bigotry perpetuated by those who organised this self-congratulatory, morally questionable sham of a call for tolerance. We will not feel in the least grateful to them, or their intolerant friends and fellow freeloaders, unless they voluntarily go out of business.

Give and ye shall receive

The continuing attempts of anti-democratic, freeloading Manx bigots to mount an exhibition where they intend to preach tolerance and democratic values have me in stitches. The latest instalment is at http://www.iomtoday.co.im/news/Anne-Frank-exhibition-receives-funding.5958942.jp.
First thing to note, by the way, earlier versions of this press release bear signs of drafting by a notorious Freedom to Fester’ hack, who in turn lifted a considerable chunk from a handout issued by CCF as a condition of their funding. Some ‘charitable act’!
My initial reaction to the news was ‘At least racists, parasites on the public purse and opponents of democracy are paying for their own nonsense. Now, if only they leave us alone for a while, visit the exhibition and start learning for themselves the island might start getting better.’
They won’t, of course.
But I couldn’t resist testing the CCF statements against the charity register and other reputable sources to see if that stands up any better than previous twaddle on this exhibition.
Firstly, I discover that they’re not even on the charity register. Then, at http://www.churchandcommunityfund.org.uk/about_us.html , I find that is because:
“The CCF is a charity, excepted from registration under the Charities (Exception from Registration) Regulations 1996 and 2002”, and that “All CCF grants seek to take the church out into the community, bring the community into the church and strengthen the relationship between the two.”
In other words, firstly you cannot check if this ‘charity’ is a reputable one because the ongoing cosy relationship between C of E and the UK government means they can call themselves one without any of that onerous filing of public details which can be verified by cautious potential donors before throwing their money away. Secondly, it exists solely to delay the decline of Anglicanism as a force which can dictate public policy in the community, and, in passing, avoid tax and mop up public money.
CCF get round the charity problem by being under the trusteeship of the Archbishops' Council (registered charity number 1074857 – look it up at http://www.charity-commission.gov.uk/Showcharity/RegisterOfCharities/RegisterHomePage.aspx to check this yourselves). This, I quickly discover, has around £73 million to throw around, and, to avoid accusations of taking stuff out of context I quote in full their excuses for existence, which are:

"ENABLING, SUPPORTING, SUSTAINING & ADVANCING OF THE CHURCH'S:
-WORSHIP, SPIRITUAL & NUMERICAL GROWTH
-ENGAGEMENT WITH SOCIAL JUSTICE & ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES
-WORK IN EDUCATION, LIFELONG LEARNING & DISCIPLESHIP
-SELECTION, TRAINING AND RESOURCING OF PEOPLE FOR PUBLIC MINISTRY & LAY VOCATIONS
-INHERITED FABRIC OF BUILDINGS, TO MAINTAIN & DEVELOP THESE FOR WORSHIP & COMMUNITY SERVICE."

Add the pathetic attempts of Manx Anglicans to get round dwindling punters by turning the cathedral into a ‘public resource’ to be kept open by government cash and I think we know where we are.
The sooner these bigots are put out of business the better. Why should the Manx public continue to underwrite the type of theo-fascist twaddle which caused the 1940’s holocaust and continues to cause newer ones?

Bigots to host bigotry exhibition

According to this week’s Indie (see http://www.iomtoday.co.im/news/Major-Anne-Frank-exhibition-to.5504897.jp ) there are plans to bring an exhibition to encourage tolerance and mutual respect to St German's Cathedral for a month in March 2010. The report tells us that: ”It is hoped the project, led by the Anne Frank (+You) Isle of Man Committee, will encourage Manx students to consider issues of tolerance, mutual respect and human dignity.”
Any serious analysis of the rise of fascism and similar phenomena sees the Anne Frank mythology as unhelpful. It fits in nicely with the touchy-feely fashion for personalising world change and offers no analysis of the structures which have to be put in place, the way large social and political groups take sides to build or protect their power over others, the way emotion replaces reason, hysteria replaces social dialogue and so on.
It pretends that the Holocaust was a specific, unrepeatable atrocity which only affected a specific group (which it so obviously wasn't) caused by a few 'evil' individuals (when again, it so obviously had broad social support ) and says little about how we recognise the signs that it is happening to another quite different group in a quite different place and time.
That aside, and assuming for argument's sake the organisers mean well and want to prevent future horrors on the scale of the Holocaust, why are they putting it on in a place which is a beacon to Manx bigotry?
That’s easy. The local churches are trying to delay their eventual demise and simultaneously get more state subsidy by reinventing themselves as ‘community resources’. I blogged on the cathedral plans before (see Lies, more lies and moral cowardice), so put that with this week’s news and you quickly see what is going on.
In a recent report of a talk to a Ramsey women's group in a local paper (sadly not on line) Sentamu’s Apprentice really lets the cat out of the bag. He admits that the diocese is not only replacing the professional clergy with hobby vicars as they retire but setting up church-sharing arrangements with the other denominations too.
Legal preparations for this were actually put in place a few years back when something called the Church Sharing Act was quietly slipped through Tynwald. As in the UK, Manx Anglicans have powers to have their equivalent of the Attorney General (the Vicar General) draw up their own legislation, providing it only affects Anglican internal affairs and not the rest of us. This must either go through Tynwald unchanged and without comment or be rejected outright.
The only politicos who saw or discussed this Bill with the Vicar General would have been the Ecclesiastical Committee, a small group of pliable godbotherers who only meet in private. If you ever need a handy list of political botty kissers who you can absolutely depend on to push through any superstitious codswallop just look up the personal profiles of every MHK and MLC on the Tynwald website. If they’ve ever been on the Ecclesiastical Committee they're superstitious rednecks.
The previous venues for this exhibition don’t convince me it’s exactly a rigorous affair which queries the roots of anti-semitism and other prejudices either. Blackburn Cathedral (see I'm not eating that! for a snapshot of that particular madhouse) and Liverpool, whose Bishop is not exactly noted for a tolerance of gay churchgoers and clergy though, like Sentamu, he carefully keeps a foot in both camps.
I’ll tell you what. The day an exhibition which traces the history of anti-semitism back to medieval outrages like the York pogroms and also includes the vital collaborations between early fascism and the German and Italian churches comes here, and the day Manx Christians talk openly about the vital role of religion in producing discourses which turn particular groups of people at particular times and places in history (always times and places when Christianity is itself in a crisis) into the totally illogical ‘causes’ of ‘evil’ which must be eliminated by wiping out that entire culture….
Well, if they ever do (which I doubt) I might consider their monuments to inhumanity and ignorance fit places to allow my child on a school trip without a responsible adult.

Cat herding for dummies

I was amused by a recent conversation with another Isle of Man Freethinker. Nothing new in that, as we often amuse each other. Unlike other local groups, we also robustly criticise each other’s ideas and nobody takes umbrage, especially if debunked by a good joke or quip. As it happens, I personally have done the same thing with local clergy for decades. Where the belief and person is honest, no offence is taken at a joke.
My amusement was on hearing that apparently this blog has been taken as some sort of Freethinker ‘party line’ – I can only presume by folk who like an organisation to have one in order that they can toe it and never, ever, have to think about morality again.
Oh yawn, here we go again!
Back in the 1980’s and again in the late 1990’s, when I worked for local papers, petty fiddlers and people who took themselves more seriously than I did used to threaten my relatives and friends to stop me pointing out their antics. I was never approached directly, and even my relatives or friends only got the threats via third parties who had, in their turn, been told half a story with the pertinent facts left out by someone else. I honestly thought that even on the Isle of Man that era was over. Maybe not.
But I will assume, for the sake of argument, that there is genuine misunderstanding. I honestly cannot see how, but will now do everything short of double spacing the following clarification to indicate you should read it as if I speak so slowly and clearly that even an MLC in the latter stages of Alzheimers could understand.
So…..
My blog cannot be taken as an Isle of Man Freethinkers party line because…..
(1) if it was, some simple indication of that fact, such as actually mentioning the group, would appear in the blog title. As you will see, it does not, and furthermore you will see no link to the Isle of Man Freethinkers website here either. I decided never to put one on, in order that malicious parties could never use my personal views to attack a group I happen to be a member of so that I can talk to the type of people who read newspapers which still have news in them.
(2) a party line would be anathema to a group like the Freethinkers anyway. As one of our number says regularly, trying to organise the Freethinkers is like herding cats, because the simplest instruction to any of us causes the rest to ask why…..or even why not.
In our early days we once tried very hard to thrash out ‘ground rules’, and for a few months got no further than something on the lines of “everyone has the right to disagree with everybody else about absolutely everything at any time without any party to the conversation taking the hump.” To be serious for a minute, we did agree some basic aims and objectives but never committed that one to print because it would be self-evident to anyone who ever attended one of our meetings.
(3) if you look at the blog topics and links on the sidebar, it is immediately obvious that much of the material here has little to do with humanism per se and much more to do with pointing out ludicrous goings on here on this island, that the world is not flat and does not end at Liverpool (for the benefit of Manx people), or that a speck in the middle of the Irish Sea between Liverpool and Belfast has (relatively) intelligent life on it (for the benefit of off-island readers).
By now, the jaws of off-island readers will be bruised after hitting the floor and their ribs will hurt from laughing. If it helps, I know faith healers who will offer to ease the pain by emptying your wallet. I don’t know how that works either, I’m just stating what they do without attempting an objective analysis because apparently that interferes with the chi…or something.
For those locals who know me – you also know that I, like my fellow Freethinkers, work on practical projects with Manx people of all faiths and none to increase interfaith understanding and reduce bigotry of all kinds. If only that were true of the self-styled ‘church leaders’ whose refusal to acknowledge or talk to other faiths caused the bigotry and social breakdown in the first place.
And for anyone who has read this far and STILL isn’t convinced – if you must dabble in evangelical cults don’t hand over your house deeds. They will probably sell your home and place the proceeds in an anonymous account based in the Turks & Caicos islands.

Potting the potty pontiffs

The editor of Gay & Lesbian Humanist today weighed into church leaders who recently urged people not to vote for bigots.
The Archbishops of both Canterbury and York, Rowan Williams and John Sentamu, say voters should not let the current scandal over MPs’ expenses drive them to vote BNP.
In a joint statement, both warned: “This is not a moment for voting in favour of any political party whose core ideology is about sowing division in our communities and hostility on grounds of race, creed or colour.”
But Mike Foxwell wasn’t about to let spokesmen for a religious organisation which sows a bit of division itself come over all preachy and innocent.
Mike says:
“I deplore the hypocrisy of the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, warning the public of the socially divisive doctrines of the BNP on the grounds of ‘race, creed or colour’, and imploring the public not to vote for this political party.
“But what the archbishops forget to mention is that the church has a great deal in common with the BNP, as both the BNP and the Christian church are vehemently homophobic and cast gay people as sinners, second-class citizens and perverts who should keep their distasteful predilections in closeted privacy.
“Indeed, people should be aware of the socially divisive evil of BNP doctrine, but equally they should be aware that the Christian church shares some of the most repugnant beliefs of the BNP.
“Decent people who care about equality and fairness in our diverse and complex modern British society should shun the BNP and the church – for the same reasons.”
Spot on Mike.
Incidentally, I recently saw evidence of similar hypocrisy on the Isle of Man. I know of a letter sent to the local papers which tackles bigotry eminating from the same churches which, in public, decry it. It is only fair to see if IOM Newspapers print the letter first, but if not, I am prepared to put it up here, along with some background, later this week.

Bye Andy, and thanks for making history

Andy Arnold - Lay Reader at Ballaugh Church, and the kingpin for Manx Radio's version of Thought For The Day - died suddenly on September 30th.
It may suprise folk to know I'm gutted, but few know that Andy and his predecessor, Judith Ley, helped the non-religious to make history and show the BBC up as a weak, pathetic institution.
Unlike the BBC, the Manx Radio version of TFTD has non-religious contributors, and listeners. It was only when e-mailing him to set up spots for Amnesty International around Human Rights Day in December that I found out from his widow that Andy had died.
Judith Ley agreed at once when approached by Isle of Man Freethinkers about doing some 'thoughts' a couple of years back. As a Catholic, she knew all about Manx 'Christianity' and its sick sectarianism and anti-semitism, and was only too ready to have less bigoted voices on air. When Judith had to step down for family reasons Andy, similarly, helped me get Amnesty and other secular groups on there too. He was one of that fast vanishing species - Anglican but liberal , witty and worldly wise from an RAF career, and not about to take crap from any toytown priest or politico.
You knew where you were with them both. If you made a positive point - something to get people thinking in the morning, great. If you made them laugh, better. But slag others off and your tape mysteriously 'got lost'. It was the same rules for all, so fair enough.
Now Andy's gone I can reveal how little he thought of some evangelical snoremongers who tried to monopolise the spot. It was also Andy who quietly took godbothering retired senior army officers aside after the last 'Veterans Day' fiasco. He 'advised' them that if next year's also includes five hymns, prayers and responses and a sermon from the Bishop then interviews with angry vets would be the only radio coverage they'd get.
Great guy, who will be missed. Every time someone like Andy dies this island gets greyer.