It's a myth story

I see from the local pseudo-media (see http://www.isleofman.com/News/details/57597/heritage-centre-explores-history-of-the-north ) that the Ramsey Heritage Centre is now “officially” open.

Apart from being untrue (it has hardly ever been open to the public since the first time a local dignitary opened it, and hardly ever will be) this begs a question. Why bother taking away a perfectly good contemporary community facility in order to build a mausoleum based on some ageing Rotarian’s Prozac-addled vision of what it used to be?

The excuse is that it will be a tourist attraction and an educational facility. Totally untrue on both counts.

If there was ever a market for this (and current thinking is that it vanished in the mid 1990’s) it was the Woopy (‘well off older person’). Under current economic conditions that market is deader than the dodo.

With final salary pensions gone for most and pension values decimated the only older people well off enough to visit the Isle of Man are also able to, say, cruise down the Rhine or go on photo-safaris in South Africa. Why would they visit ‘heritage exhibitions’ of communities which, by their greed, they played a major part in destroying?

To gloat? Even geriatric Thatcherites aren’t that sick!

Most will be familiar with the saying “history is written by the victors” (which implies that such history is somewhat subjective). The heritage industry, in comparison, is market-driven history written for the losers. It would not exist unless some bean-counter had calculated that enough losers would pay to view exhibitions portraying a somewhat sepia-tinted vision of past communities which misdirect the blame for their demise onto outside elements (venal foreign manufacturers and evil multinationals, etc. etc.). This is just so much bunkum.

The irony is that the vanished Ramsey it mourns was destroyed by the plans of the very Rotarians and political interests which now proudly claim credit for the heritage centre. The terraced houses and small shops vanished to make way for the first multi-storey flats, intended not for locals but first as holiday flats for wealthy tourists (just as the price of jetting off to Greece or Spain tumbled and the traditional British seaside trade vanished), and then for retiring Brits who might like to escape from the dreary, overtaxed UK (but who quickly discovered that they could retire to sunny Spain for far less). The small shops vanished because government chose, instead of tax breaks or grants for refurbishment to local retailers, to give development grants and tax holidays to the offshore finance firms who are now ‘regrouping’ in other offshore locations when such cash incentives are gone and higher standards of financial supervision are being introduced.

It also has to be said that racism is a subtle undertone throughout the heritage industry. This is a ‘history’ favoured by dispossessed elderly white people because it turns on photographs of houses, streets and businesses in which no black faces are seen. It edits out Empire (except as a source of fortunes for enterprising white people or the cheap goods from the semi-slave conditions in the Empire country farms and factories they were enabled to run). It quietly misdirects the blame for the disappearance of such a mythical community onto the aggressive tactics of ‘foreign business interests’.

Most ironically, in modern Ramsey such elderly locals are not even cared for by their own families, but by carers from other countries. Because in reality the community and family values such exhibitions claim to celebrate and encourage do not exist now, any more than they did in the times of the sepia tinted photographs, and the conservative business and political interests which dismantle our current community while underwriting this myth factory must know that.

OK, OK, I'm back

I learnt recently that Positive Action Group have calculated that the Manx Government wastes (sorry ‘devotes’) between 60-90 minutes per year on formal prayers – and that’s not even including the bogus religious ceremony on Tynwald Day itself.
 Hmm!
It strikes me that according to your personal belief (or lack of it) this finding could lead to one of three conclusions.
Either….. Nobody’s there, so politicians should stop mucking about and get on with what we pay them to do.
 Or……… Somebody’s there, but doesn’t think it’s her/his job to sort out the mess Tynwald made, so politicians should stop mucking about and get on with what we pay them to do.
 Or….. Somebody’s there, takes pity on us poor Manx citizens and has been intervening to lessen the damage caused by government.
If that is the case, do you even dare imagine how bad things would be without divine intervention if we had to live with the full extent of political bungling?

Turned off, tuneless …paid out?

Port St Mary is hardly ‘upmarket’ even by seaside town standards, but amusingly it seems even their residents have some limits.

This http://www.manxradio.com/newsread.aspx?id=65537 was a positive story in a week that has been otherwise a bit ‘so-so’. The Manx Indy’s take on it (not yet online) tries to hint at over–reaction - and Living Hell are, obviously, trying to drum up Christian persecution for all it’s worth - but this would be nonsense.

For the record, a Port St Mary ‘beach mission’ had run amicably enough for almost a century until Living Hell got involved. Since then relations between residents, beachgoers and born-again headbangers have gone rapidly downhill.

No, the truth is a lot simpler. They are too loud, too painful to listen to (even with tongue firmly in cheek) and their message is too bigoted, even for Southern rednecks.

Imagine an over-40s night at some Wetherspoon’s hell-hole (see http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/society/wetherspoons-to-open-uks-first-human-zoo-2013060470772 for example) and you might be close. The ‘music’ generally consists of repetitive drones, up to 20 minutes in length, punctuated by startling banshee wails and while the song titles vary deliberately (and the pitch accidentally) the words are few and almost interchangeable. This, close observers suggest, is possibly because their core audience commonly suffer short term memory loss, so may just think they are at a Sunday version of whatever day-care they attend the rest of the week.

It is bad enough when the howling of so many distressed souls escapes through the asylum windows each Sunday morning. But imagine that outdoors, on a beach frequented by innocent families, and we are talking serious public health hazard, not to mention the last nail in the coffin for the tourist trade. “Never mind noise abatement, call the MSPCA”, some might cry.

Incidentally, key figures in such antics were spotted with Northern allies at a farewell concert for one of the genuine Ramsey clergy recently. The sight of evangelical panhandlers en masse (as they inevitably are when free food or public money is on offer) was enough to put everyone else off their fairy cakes. It was startling to watch them hovering round the food table, sarnies in both hands and coat pockets overflowing with cake put aside for a later lonely midnight snack while watching God TV (at least that’s what they say they are watching, and if found doing otherwise it must be for ‘research purposes’ into the nature of contemporary sin).

The only question on anyone’s mind was: “if they came 30 miles each way just for a bag of free buns, which government department got the expense claim for the petrol?”

Too lazy to even poke fun properly

Excuse my recent apathy. I wish I had a good excuse – but the truth is that (a) I decided that I cannot be bothered with ‘serious’ topics any more and (b) nothing much in the Manx news or even accounts of international religious idiocy has tickled my ribs recently.
The thing is, I once believed the local newspaper (and possibly even regional radio) could hold up a mirror to the community, chronicling its ups and downs, shining a vital light on dark doings and so on.
I now accept that this is no longer possible - at least in the Isle of Man. The local media is nothing but a nonsense box, reduced to reproducing the inanities of those who feed it most. So from now on I intend to leave ‘real’ journalism to those who live in delusions of a real world, and concentrate instead on surreally reporting the odd, the hilarious and the genuinely interesting.
However, the first details of one of the most cringeworthy weekends in the annual Manx leisure calendar have just been released (see http://www.isleofman.com/News/article.aspx?article=44436) and I cannot resist a quick smirk.
Oh dear!
Pardon my hilarity, but there is just something about the upper middle classes trying (and failing) so desperately to be hip that brings out the old Class War punk in me. I must have worked with more than my fair share of Tarquins and Gemimas in the Finance Sector over the last decade or so, and the funniest thing about them is their deluded leisure hour dabblings in everything from alternative therapy to world music.
Ahhh! Bless their cotton-wool brains. Where would the Manx New Age be without so many over privileged halfwits to keep it rolling around like an (upper) crusty full of bargain bin scrumpy?
I would poke fun – relentlessly – but by the oddest coincidence the Daily Mash has been taking aim at a similar target (see http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/society/new-festival-aimed-directly-at-twats-201203285064/ ), so I can just go and do something else instead.

As ye give, so shall ye receive

Acolytes of the Zombie Carpenter have been dropping religious pamphlets through our letterbox again.
Not Ramsey ones, which I can at least excuse as they’re from cheery eternal optimists we sort of know just trying to be neighbourly and invite us to their shindigs. These chancers operate from Douglas – by the looks of it on a similar basis to those shysters who offer to buy your gold or tarmac your drive.
One leaflet asks: “Where will your soul be 150 years from now? Indeed, where will you be in Eternity?”
If these anonymous twerps want to ask pointless and stupid questions, I wish they’d at least make an effort to ask funny ones.
How about: ‘Where was the fairy from the bottom of your garden five minutes ago?’
Or why not: ‘How many unicorns does it take to change a light bulb?’
In another leaflet, they ask: “Can we be sure of forgiveness?”
Well, that’s an easy one.
No.
I don’t care if they’re deluded, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find they have learning difficulties. But that still isn’t an excuse for dropping litter through other people’s letter boxes, and as they were dumb enough to give a contact address I think they should pay for it by receiving it in return.
So, if anyone has any paper they cannot be bothered to take to the paper bank, why not drop it off at Switzerland Road Gospel Hall, off Queens Promenade, Douglas.

Medium? No, that fat charlatan's at least an XXL

As we have a much higher than average percentage of gullible, superstitious numpties with money to burn, it is no surprise charlatans are queuing up at Liverpool’s Ayatollah Khomeini airport to fly over and fleece them. In fact, the Light of My Life reports there are so many Morons and Jehovah’s Dipsticks currently wandering Ramsey in pairs you need a stick to beat them off with.
And then there are the ‘mediums’ (by the way, do all these lardy pyschics offend against the Trades Descriptions Act by claiming to be ‘mediums’ when it’s patently obvious they’re at least XXLs) who play to full houses.
See http://www.isleofman.com/News/article.aspx?article=37910 for example.
Tell you what, the very thought of these table-tapping twonks is bringing on visions.
I see…..wait a minute, it’s coming, it’s coming…….seems to be a building…yes…yes….a large white building….and outside is….oh, it’s a sign…yes, it’s a sign….black words on a…..is that a fluorescent orange background? Can’t be, surely…..yes…yes, it is….black words on a bright orange background on the front door…..it’s coming closer…… I’m being drawn closer….and closer….and I think I can read it now….it says……it says……oh, yes…it says…….

'CANCELLED DUE TO UNFORESEEN CIRCUMSTANCES'

National Lunacy Day

We’re just back from Tynwald Day. Not the colonial clown show itself, which only the mentally defective bother with nowadays, but the fair on the Tynwald Field behind it.
In theory, this is where all Manx human life is to be found on our national day - folk dancing, selling female relatives to over-subsidised farmers, ritually thrashing each other with wet rhubarb or whatever else wildly inaccurate guides to Manx custom written by senile Edwardian vicars (and recycled by Manx National Heritage) have to say on the subject.
In practice, it is where local charities and odd social reform groups lay out their stalls amongst burger vans and a few chancers taking a day off from E-Bay, but still a handy way to take the national pulse.
Which is pretty weak, judging from this year’s atrocity exhibition.
Balloons featuring cartoon characters were more in evidence than national flags, and burgers and crisps far outsold either heavily hyped (and largely inedible) ‘organic farm produce’ or just old fashioned traditional fare like bonnag cakes. And the quality of second hand tat on rabid right church group stalls was so poor that it wasn’t even worth playing ‘reverse shoplifting’ – an anarchist sport where you get points for the most unlikely and startling tape, CD or DVD you can slip into a case originally holding devotional product.
Not that traditional religious values were much in evidence either.
As far as I could tell, Christian evangelicals were heavily outnumbered by new age nuts. This was even reflected in the live radio coverage, broadcast over a big screen and watched by almost nobody, when an item in which the Bishop explained the deep symbolic significance of an old stick he was carrying was followed by a much longer item, in which the interviewer got a live tarot reading from an over-excited gentleman who appeared to have overdone his happy pills.
Frankly though, as long as legal privilege (never mind public subsidy) for the new charlatans does not follow and they stick to fleecing the clueless rich, who cares?
I must also point out the poor state of the modern military. Judging from numerous obese, khaki-clad adolescents with severe acne who were wandering around, the UK armed forces can still happily take our least employable youth as cannon fodder, but only by skipping medical tests, PT and anything resembling a balanced diet.
There was also an RAF band playing, which brings me to more evidence of military madness.
After all the penguin suited politicos and any associated freeloaders had been herded into St. Johns Chapel by an obliging Border collie, it was safe for normal people to look round the main field. Within 30 seconds my daughter had picked up a handful of band uniform buttons, and I was amused to discover these are now shoddy plastic efforts, not proper brass. If this is the standard of components on a Number One Dress uniform, no wonder they feel outgunned by Talibanimals armed with AKs salvaged from Russian scrapyards.
I also spotted a renowned nationalist pushing a life size dalek around the field. Intrigued, I took a closer look, expecting it to be a wry piece of political street theatre, with the dalek being named after, say, an MLC or overpaid public servant. Turned out he was just letting kids play at being daleks while he pushed them about: I asked around, but even his fellow nationalists had no idea why.
It was just that kind of a day. You had to be there, but believe me, you might be glad if you were not.

FCIOM

It was time for the family to dip another tentative toe into the Manx cultural backwater today.
We’d promised to take an elderly friend to a concert at the Villa Marina. She’s German, so in Ramsey she might as well be from Mars. Her Indoors and The Prodigy seem to attract such folk, and usually they’ve had interesting lives and can broaden my daughter’s experience of the world, so it’s no hassle spending a few hours a week with them.
So, it all seemed harmless enough – a French themed afternoon with noise provided by the imposingly entitled Isle of Man Symphony Orchestra, and matching movement from local dance schools.
After jumping up and down for two national anthems (Manx and French), with most of the audience badly miming words to the Manx for fear of losing their benefits and warbling by a minor celebrity soprano impressionist to guide us through the French, the racket started in earnest.
To be honest, I wish it hadn’t, but not half as much as I wish they’d tuned up before the concert started (rather than after the third item, when it seems to have first dawned on the players) or that they’d invest in a metronome.
Curiously, playing or singing in time seems to be a common problem for Manx musical ensembles: maybe Traa Dy Liooar (Manx Gaelic for ‘Wait until tomorrow’) applies to music as well as (non-) working practices.
For the second item one of the dance groups took to the stage. I’m guessing this may have been planned to divert attention away from the bum notes of the orchestra; unfortunately a bunch of plump farm girls crashing round a stage like so many heifers in tutus doesn’t really cut it either. At least at Young Farmer shows the comedy is intentional.
By this stage our elderly friend was humming along happily enough while we three were biting the backs of the seats in front to stop laughing. And it got worse.
The final item of the first half was a Ravel violin solo where, for some reason, Ravel chose to mimic gypsy violin tunes without actually incorporating any. Don’t ask me why; maybe he was just another Gallic racist who ripped off others without a tenth of the original’s flair.
An item like this is always going to be a problem to this family. In Hungary, so many gypsies can play that Csardas thing before they can walk that they’d have to stand on their heads and juggle chainsaws at the same time before punters would pay to listen.
So, admitted, bar a little high here and I don’t care if today’s soloist did study at the Royal Northern. In Budapest, if I threw a stick, any gypsy kid I hit would have made him look just what he was; a musician who hadn’t practiced the solo and didn’t think the audience would notice.
It was the one time in the gig I got genuinely annoyed (rather than highly amused) at the breath-taking arrogance of some local musos, and I wasn’t the only one. A Polish couple in front we’d got talking to turned and raised ironic eyebrows: an orthodox Jewish guy in the row behind actually had his head almost in his lap and his hands over his ears.
Then it was the interval, and yet again my daughter and I experienced the inadequate Villa catering facilities for all except alcoholics as we queued for ice cream, only for yet another bunch of well heeled geriatric gobshites to push in after we’d been there 15 minutes.
So, another important lesson for a small Manx kid. Doesn’t matter how old or how rich they are, the Manx ‘great and good’ have far worse manners than any sink estate five year old, though if other locals weren’t willing to be used like so much human bog-roll they’d have sorted it out years ago instead of voting such pondlife into office.
There was a part two to the concert, though we slept through most of that too. A Saint-Saens symphony which finally provided a chance to utilise the Villa’s most expensive white elephant, a church organ.
You’ve probably never heard it (the symphony,though no-one’s ever heard the organ either as it has a far from adequate amplification system), but it might be described as an entire orchestra fannying about like a French waiter for 15 minutes before the organist butts in with the theme tune from Babe.
After it all stopped, they handed out flowers to every muso and clodhopper in sight and the audience ran for it before the cheeky sods could sit down and start an encore. Apparently there was a guest of honour from the French consulate, so I hope this doesn’t cause a diplomatic incident.
Luckily, Manx ice cream is also great, so with luck there won’t be tears before bedtime. And after today she won’t be half as stressed about her violin progress either.

Another year, another colonial clown show

We’re just back from the Tynwald Fair, and, as I suspected, it was another washout.
As we never bother with the colonial clown show on the hill anyway, I couldn’t even tell you which royal inbreed (if any) was guest of honour. Instead, it was straight to what I think is now officially designated the charities field.
Originally, this was a fairly open space for any community group that wanted to come along – you just lined up with everyone else at a government office, put your name down and had a spot allocated according to how early you got there.
Then, the year Madge herself was booked and there was an excuse to change the security arrangements, this changed and (mysteriously) groups with a slight political edge (e.g. Amnesty International) found their pitch uprooted overnight and moved out of sight of either royalty or roving TV cameras, then subsequent years found their application was simply ‘overlooked’.
So, the only serious community political activity at this year’s fair was Mec Vannin, the Positive Action Group and….well, sadly that was it. There really isn’t any other evidence of any Manx group who are even half-awake and taking a serious interest in Manx affairs from the presence on the Tynwald Field. The other stalls on the field – a random selection of British paramilitary organisations, right wing ‘heritage’ groups, cuddly bunny charities and braindead evangelical outfits – could safely all collapse tomorrow and there wouldn’t be the slightest damage to Manx life. If anything, it might improve considerably.
If this is the sum total of ‘community’ activity on the island, we’re dead already. And if the organisations able to set up on the fair field are the sum total of political interest, we’re a nonsensical colony stuck in the middle of the Irish Sea, run from somewhere else.
Oh, I forgot. We are anyway. It’s just our colonial Quislings run a pathetic sideshow with a lot of flag-waving, singing of an absolutely vacuous ‘national anthem’, folk-dancing and loons in homemade costumes proclaiming twaddle in a language nobody actually uses for any practical, everyday purpose to try and distract the peasants.
Which works depressingly well, by the looks of things.
One brighter note, as it is most years, was the Tynwald Day edition of Yn Pabyr Seyr ('The Free Paper) by Mec Vannin. To see this little gem, go to http://www.mecvannin.im/pabyr/yps45.pdf and download the whole paper.
It is always guaranteed to show the whole island hasn’t quite gone to sleep, and always takes a few pops at government incompetence. Some past editions are collectors items. If they aren't stored in the Manx Museum's library (and I suspect they are not) then there is no national record of the only significant political literature on the island in the last couple of decades.
This year the piece that caught my eye was Mec Vannin’s objections to the truly obnoxious 'Armed Forces Day' and the inevitable show of British military incompetence at Tynwald Day itself. In addition, there’s the matter of inviting these colonial enforcers into Manx schools – under the pretence of running ‘physical fitness’ sessions which are curiously combined with crude recruiting films. As Mec Vannin say, instead of renaming our Department of (mis)Education the Department of Education and Children they could be honest and call it the Department of Indoctrination and Recruitment.
Considering my own worries over the once insidious, now quite blatant, entry of borderline fascist Christian organisations into schools (and as someone who has actually studied the phenomena academically, I do mean fascist) it appears things are going from bad to worse at the Department of Education. Thankfully, it also appears I am not the only one remarking on it.

Another week, another deluded Archtwit

Ah well, another week, another Archbishop trying to preach unreconstructed Noah’s Arkisms to the evolved.
These outbursts are so deluded and so regular that this one is only of note because this time it’s the Archbishop of Wales, and as Wales was where our own bishop put on his clerical stabilisers it allows us another glimpse into his past and influences.
Dr Barry Morgan’s comments (see http://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=6019779) come because Wales has followed England with a law allowing pupils of 16 and over to miss collective worship without parental consent. While schools are still required to offer daily worship the Education and Inspections Act 2006 allows sixth-formers to opt out.
Dr Morgan, says the law “degraded the status of faith schools” and that group prayer offered pupils a rare opportunity for “recognition, affirmation and celebration of shared values” and should be encouraged.
In fact he thinks that:
“Collective worship has been branded as something that young people grow out of by the age of 16, at precisely the time when it might be the best way of feeding both their minds and their hearts as they start to explore the responsibilities and consequences of adult life,”
and furthermore that
“I am concerned that this is the thin end of the wedge and could be just the start of a process that devalues and ultimately marginalises the provision of collective worship in schools”.
Keith Porteous Wood, Executive Director of the National Secular Society, quickly put the man in his place yesterday when he commented:
“The Archbishop is either ignorant of or cares nothing for older pupils’ human rights. It is not legitimate for the state to force older pupils to worship. He even wants to row back on rights of withdrawal enshrined in law since 1944. It is simply ridiculous and arrogant to insist that those old enough to join the armed forces, and who will already have endured ten years of forced worship, should not be permitted to withdraw themselves. The National Secular Society fully supports assemblies at which values can be shared, but this is not the same as forced worship.
“It is little wonder that the Archbishop is so determined to force his world view on unwilling near-adults. Church attendance in Wales is less than half of what it was in 1980, and is projected by Christian Research to drop to around a quarter of what it is now by 2050. Given he cannot stop the churches from emptying, where could be more fertile ground than pupils captive in school?”
In the Isle of Man things are worse and Keith's comments are even more apt, because while there are no plans or proper facilities for any child to be withdrawn from collective brainwashing (even with parental permission) the voting age is 16. In effect this means that the imbeciles who kids are encouraged to vote for don't trust them to make an informed decision not to believe in fairies.
I'm also as unsure as Keith how long the Archbishop has been asleep on the job, but I have to say that even in my day (the early 1970's) we regarded collective worship as a bad joke in my secondary school.
The only element most of us paid attention to was the competition amongst school prefects to see who could sneak the wildest blasphemy into the daily bible reading without the headmaster noticing. Amongst the best I recall were quotations from Chairman Mao and punchlines from Monty Python sketches. That none of the miscreants were ever punished suggests that even then most staff in a well regarded traditional grammar school must have considered the whole exercise as futile as we pupils did.
The sad thing is, half the staff in my school were Oxbridge graduates, so while it was a very conservative, traditionalist school there was also a strong emphasis on civilised questioning and debate ( “Because I say so, boy” just wouldn’t do). By comparison, a quick glimpse around Manx schools reveals a culture of conformism and fear, and I include teachers scared of cutbacks in that.
In such a culture, those capable of believing six impossible things before breakfast thrive: those who think do not, or are shortlisted for redundancy (if staff) or filed under ‘awkward’ (if parents or pupils).
Inevitably, the first thing kids in such an environment learn is how to tell when Teacher doesn’t believe the guff s/he is preaching either, and how to make their own way through a system that simply does not work. My East European friends tell me this is exactly how they learnt to outwit and eventually discard their dimwit leaders, so maybe retaining Third World values and superstitions when the rest of Europe has not will ensure our own kids do the same.