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.

David Nutt talk - be there or stay misinformed

A couple of weeks back I hit a particularly rich and interesting research seam for another project. For that reason alone I cannot blog much until I find time to read through and start processing it.

Still, I can at least point anyone who hasn't yet heard towards the David Nutt lecture at the Manx Museum on Monday 28^th April. It's a co-production between Isle of Man Freethinkers and the Positive Action Group: no tickets or seat-booking and free entry/contribute what you can towards costs, so best be there at 7 PM for a safe seat. You can find more at http://positiveactiongroup.org/index.html.

And before anyone asks, no, though I have banged on about such topics regularly, I am not an organiser. If I had any influence on the decision to set up such an event, it is quite marginal, stemming from a proposal I floated to some of the older Freethinkers a few years back.

Following the death of my good friend Patrick Kneen, the Manx assisted death campaigner, and once a misguided attempt to prosecute his widow had gone away, I thought it would be a shame to lose the Manx public's new willingness to explore controversial topics in an open and civilised way. The Kneens' brave campaign opened the floodgates on an island where I had almost given up hope of seeing social change or even temporary relief from Theo-fascist twaddle. For once, local religious bigots and control freaks were caught on the back foot (despite their considerable government influence), as was also shown later by the way one homophobic legal or governmental barrier after another fell quickly in just a few years.
I tentatively put it to Mrs Kneen that it would be nice to remember Pat by setting up an annual lecture in his name. The general idea would be to bring over a knowledgeable, high profile speaker on the kind of topic locals might quietly have strong feelings about but no means to start a debate and keep their jobs. She was very keen, but as she moved away to rebuild her life and died just a year or two later, the idea got no further. I did then put it to the Freethinkers that, as possibly the only local grouping interested in social change but unlikely to ever beg public money, we really ought to give it a go.
I can hardly wait for the rare experience of entering a Manx public sector building to hear someone with expert and highly specialised knowledge willing to engage with the general public. Someone who is neither looking for nor seeking to perpetuate a public handout (and even if he was, not willing to lie or suppress vital research or evidence in order to do so). This may explain why it took two groups of enthusiastic, public-minded folk rather than a QUANGO or civil service body to set the night up. It also explains why nobody with a serious interest in the topic should miss it, and why I doubt anyone involved in the Chief Minister's Task Farce on Drugs and Alcohol or their ludicrous policies will be there.

We are not serious

Thanks to clicking, out of idle curiosity, on a chance link to a vaguely familiar name that came up in a computer search this week I had a vision of what might have been.
As I've mentioned once or twice, in a former life – over 30 years ago – I was involved in the world's unlikeliest clown troupe. In Belfast, at the height of “the troubles”. But in 1983, due to several devastating incidents which happened within weeks of each other, I just had to escape. It was meant to be temporary, but on the very morning I was supposed to take a plane back there to discuss a new project I had a severe panic attack of a kind I have never experienced before or since, and could not board the plane.
I later recovered the confidence to fly to visit a friend in the UK, during the year of the Miners Strike and Battle of the Beanfield, and saw a country I no longer recognised and no longer wanted to be a citizen of. To cut the story short, it was 1988 before I ventured off-island again, and then only to travel to Israel at the start of the Intifada, a two month adventure which (for reasons totally unconnected to the political situation in Israel) finally gave me the impetus to break back into a satisfying profession and life.
From the odd thing I saw on TV, I knew the Belfast projects were doing marvellous things, but never managed to get back into contact with old colleagues, even when in Belfast for a weekend of atheist subversion in 2005 and my hosts tried to help. So all these years I have wondered what happened, especially to my co-founder of the world's unlikeliest clown troupe.
Then, this week, that chance click on a vaguely familiar name revealed an astonishing story. My co-founder (then a startlingly individualistic 18 year old who, like me, left school unqualified at 16 having been told by teachers she would never amount to anything) carried on clowning, and other remarkable things. This should have been no surprise because, as I may have also mentioned, the whole point behind the clown troupe was that if you are in a hell-hole where conventional wisdom says you cannot do anything, you may as well go all out doing what you love, because even if you fail you will have had far more fun than conforming.
Then, in the late 1990's, she decided to take a B.A. in Archaeology, graduated with a first, went on to gain her Ph.D. in 2005 and to contribute to academic journals on a topic on which she is now almost Ireland's only authority. Remember again – written off as a no-hoper at school, living in a city where most of her generation were condemned to unemployment anyway according to the conventional wisdom. She's now, as far as I can gather, living happily in Galway, surrounded by other interesting and unique people and in every way defying the false logic of those who run these septic isles and think we should shut up and accept our place in their scheme of things.
It's odd enough running away to join a circus. Being one of only two people so individual they ran away from a circus is even rarer. Knowing the other one then, and knowing now that she went on to defy the odds (the norms?) for over 30 years, is an absolutely unique pleasure.

So many possibilities, so little creative thinking

Someone pointed me towards http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/08/wont-go-back-to-creationist-zoo-bristol , posing the question “How long before we see something like this on the Isle of Man?”

Strictly speaking, of course, we already do. For a start there's every Manx schoolchild’s nightmare “field trip” to the God World theme park (or as Manx Heritage insists on calling it, Rushen Abbey). There impressionable children are chased round a muddy field by the strange folk from Scripture Union, who want them to consider how much fun it would be to be a mediaeval monk. As any kid who watches Horrible Histories knows already, the answer to that is 'Absolutely none'.

Apparently SUMT get paid for this, which I've always found odd. It seems to me if little children are keeping care-in-the-community candidates off the streets it's the kids who should get paid for performing a public service, not SUMT. An over-literal interpretation of the Bible might well be an early sign of psychotic illness, but it doesn't excuse a failure to look for a proper job.

Then there are some of the Tourist Department's odd niche holiday breaks.

A couple of years back, I'm told, they were offering discreet discounts to off-island churches to organise Celtic Christian tours of the island. I suspect they got the idea from a wily cleric who used to strike deals with local travel agents for tours to various Christian pilgrimage sites, both UK and much further abroad. In return for rounding up a bus-load of punters, said cleric and Mrs Cleric got more annual free holidays than he already racked up as fact-finding missions to sunny climes for various government bodies on which he......well, not so much served as turned up and collected benefits.

But as there aren't actually any functioning island churches which date back more than three centuries, and towns have changed so much since even the 19th century that these are in semi-abandoned villages, the Celtic Christian trail is a bit thin. The presumed sites of any worship prior to that are windswept places in the middle of nowhere, so in practice the tours consisted of dragging pious elderly types up moors, through bogs and down slippy cliffs on wet days during Force 9 gales. I'd have thought the insurance alone would have made the price too high for all but the most determined masochist.

And talking of masochism....maybe we could clean up on another Manx fetish - birching. I'm sure the UK S&M scene is over-run by wealthy ex-public schoolies who would pay through the nose (possibly even other orifices) for a spot of corporal punishment. At last, a useful and valid economic role for all those sensibly shod ladies, built like battleships, who marry diminutive Old Barrovian heirs to Manx businesses then spend decades angrily polishing churches to within an inch of their lives.

Or again, for those who remember the chimp's tea parties that used to be a feature at UK zoos, how about putting up public seating behind a splatter-proof screen at the side of the dining area in large Manx hotels which specialise in corporate affairs and political receptions? Surely foreign visitors would pay to watch what happens when one of our more excitable Rotarians or MHKs hears a polysyllable uttered by a fellow free-loader?

So many possibilities, so little creative thinking from the so-called experts.

Is it any wonder Manx tourism is dying?

Armageddon outta here

A story no doubt supplied to the local press by a well-wisher (but not yet online) is at least news indicating the further failure of Manx evangelicals to solicit public funds for services which, to be honest, they never supplied anyway.

The Well, fleapit café in the basement of the Broadway Batwit HQ, is closing. The story suggests that this will mean a loss of vital services to several dispossessed communities.

For year the Batwits, so the insider joke goes, calculated clientele for any funding bid by plucking a prospective number of punters to one activity from thin air, adding a 0, next applying that figure to every other ‘workshop’ and suggesting the total represents different individuals. So, we can safely ignore that concern.

All you really need to know is that developers are sniffing around the area and have made discreet enquiries at the Land Registry (where the Batwits have a mole) and the Evangelical Alliance get the final proceeds of any sale of the church site.

To be fair, they would not be the only ‘local’ evangelical organisation owned and controlled lock, stock and barrel off-island and where all important  decisions over income and assets are taken by off-island individuals without consulting the apparent worshippers.

Also this week I had confirmation that at least one flat-earth sect trying to gain access to kids in island schools as guest speakers have been refused and are now, effectively, blacklisted. 

Considering which other dodgy outfits not only do so (with blatant disregard for the Education Act guidelines on religious education) but get public money I must confess I am at a loss to know what they did to overstep the mark. Shame that, as if anyone knew we could encourage the other klingons to emulate them.

Pay back time

Sometimes (but not often) that nonsense machine that some call the Manx media throws up some genuine good news. And so it was when I read on the Energy FM website that: “This year's Firestarter Festival has been cancelled due to poor ticket sales.”

Yes, I also had problems believing that hardcore evangelical tub-thumpers can ever admit a plain truth, but go to http://www.energyfm.net/cms/news_story_228203.html if you want to see for yourselves.

Even better is the final sentence of a short and unhappy press release in which the organisers promise that:  “Those people who have bought tickets will receive a full refund.”

So, it seems to be official then. Manx fundamentalists are admitting that - even with many wealthy and unscrupulous friends - they cannot round up enough kids to voluntarily attend their annual weekend prayerfest. Even worse, it seems they no longer have enough friends in the social and probation services to drag some along involuntarily, then send the government the bill.

I wonder which realisation hurt most. The one that no amount of pleading from the pulpit or promises of free sweets in ‘educational support groups’ was going to harvest enough victims (sorry ‘visitors’), or the really frightening one to any evangelical - that they actually have to pay back money received for services they were never going to deliver.

Despite the brave talk, I also doubt they will ‘Do a Terminator’ and come back next year twice as big and twice as ugly.

Gone for good, I think……. and forget about ‘The Rapture’.

Totally.

Educational cream - rich, thick and a mental health risk

I have long suspected that private education - for all the massive fees and tiny class sizes - cannot deliver the goods. Seeing some of the ‘products’, you might also be forgiven for thinking they are increasingly havens for thickos too posh to be branded ‘special needs’. 

Like their forebears, once graduated such numbskulls get packed off to some far flung place where they can crash about and wreck lives without news ever leaking back here and ruining the family name. Certainly, there is always a risk they might retire here later and enter Manx politics – and some have – but as they will have civil servants to tie them into their chairs and spoon-feed them until they go totally gaga this need not worry us unduly.

After spotting this bunkum (seehttp://www.iomtoday.co.im/news/isle-of-man-news/sisters-fundraising-bed-bid-1-4733901) about an exercise to further line the pockets of a dodgy overseas mission I am surer than ever that my suspicions are correct. With even basic research they would have discovered that this orphanage - like other fronts for evangelical Christianity in India - is technically a criminal organization.

It will do no useful work, and like similar organizations in other ‘poor’ countries, actually prevent genuine local projects and government agencies from getting international funding. Such scams are only tolerated by the Indian government because previous attempts to crack down on faith-based fraud (most notoriously Mother Teresa’s misogynist, homophobic fundraisers posing as ‘homelessness shelters’ and ‘hospitals’) got them into trouble with the powerful political allies of the hatemonger.

Any worries I had that my child could lose out against privileged kids are over. If any parent is dumb enough to shell out several grand a year for ‘teaching’ of this quality, they also deserve to pay for the lifetime of care in a secure mental institution they have condemned little Tarquin or Tabitha to when they grow up.

A horrible history project

My wife and I have spent the last week or so trying to decide how we could prevent our child spending an entire school day with dangerous and deluded people. In the end, we took the most direct route, telling the head teacher we flat out refuse her permission to go – regardless of the consequences. After a few attempts at guilt-tripping us, or trying to persuade our daughter that she would be lonely without her mates, the school has reluctantly accepted they must, for once, do what they are legally required to do instead of including my girl in what my wife bluntly pointed out to them is an illegal exercise in brainwashing small children.

The problems began when my daughter brought home a note explaining the class was going on an outing to Rushen Abbey called Lifepaths. The thin excuse is that it is one of those ‘living history’ things where the kids would find out how the monks lived. Even if this is the time of year when Manx teachers traditionally stick the kids in front of a DVD then slip off to catch up on the paperwork, and even if it had been run by Manx Heritage - whose actual historical knowledge (as opposed to romantic suppositions) about Rushen Abbey could be scribbled on an A4 sheet with room to spare - it would still be a nice day out.

But the reality is far worse. The day is run by Scripture Union Ministries Trust, and while a decade or more ago SUMT were a harmless bunch of godbotherers trying to interest school kids in a good natured enough way, in recent years the local branch is run by evangelical hardliners whose track record is less than inspiring.

In 1999 SUMT volunteers were amongst those helping ‘persuade’ victims of a notorious pastor who could not keep away from underage girls that they really should not appear in court. A few years later, they were amongst suspects when the phone number of a service offering advice to teenage Manx gays was passed to a US evangelical TV network, who on their website suggested people bombard the local numbers for such advice lines around the UK with prank calls to put them out of action.

These events were a while ago, and while those involved then could well have moved on or grown up, the powers of SUMT over the young have increased since the latest Anglican bishop, far from distancing himself from the local evangelical lunatic fringe, seems to have embraced them while shunning those of his own flock with a middle of the road and responsible attitude to religious education. From his own postings to the faithful it seems that key ‘youth pastoring’ jobs have passed to evangelicals from other churches rather than Anglicans, and in his mandatory role as Chair of the Education Department’s Religious Education Advisory Committee he is openly using SUMT to spearhead campaigns to evangelize children wherever possible - and on the thinnest of excuses - during the school day.

More recently another SUMT associate was reported after the parents of a teenage schoolgirl found unsolicited texts on her cell phone. To the best of my knowledge, despite this and other complaints about inappropriate behaviour, he is still judged fit to ‘mentor’ teenagers at an island high school. Earlier this year, another SUMT project – where in theory volunteers go into schools to read Bible stories to kids who may never have heard them – acted as something of a Trojan horse for the distribution of creationist tracts. And so this worrying saga continues.

The funny thing is, we actually have less problem than most parents with responsible religious believers being around our child. For example both she and we got on well with the former local vicar round the corner, a witty, and multi-talented - if camp as a row of tents - character who suddenly went to minister to folk in South America instead. From rainswept Ramsey and a glum congregation of small town conservatives (where, incidentally, we recently discovered both the Chief Education Advisor and his wife, a local head teacher, sat on his parish church council) to one of the sunnier, more progressive, countries of South America, and shortly after a ‘rationalization’ of the diocese which. quite coincidentally we can be sure, lays off full time career clergy in favour of rabid right ‘hobby vicars’ who play no role in the community other than to discourage progress, liberal thinking or democracy…. 

Why on earth would he leave such a dream post?

Meanwhile, the Light Of Our Life and her classmates might be better off watching back-to-back Horrible Histories on CBBC instead of trudging around a muddy field being ‘supervised’ by adults who cannot even attain her reading age. Rather than be fed false history by rabid rednecks, it looks like she, at least, will spend the day with a younger class instead.  I feel sorry for her, but there seems to be no alternative. Yet again, the Manx education system dismally fails a child actually interested in learning, and actually supported by parents who take an interest in her education.

I cannot pretend to be surprised. These days the only time the Manx education system surprises me is if it gets remotely close to fulfilling its basic function and my daughter learns something. Most days all she learns is that it seems possible to be as thick as two short planks yet earn well and be unsackable in the Manx public sector. You just need to prominently wear a cross around your neck.

Release your Inner Llama

By now I’ve got used to the Isle of Man College running ‘spiritual’adult education nightclasses with titles on the lines of ‘Release your Inner Llama’. It’s not as if Manx college tutors are actually capable of teaching adults anything these days anyway. In fact their current range of ‘vocational’ courses illustrates exactly how low government expectations of the current and future workforce are.

But as the college brochure was chucked through the door today I had a quick glimpse to see and giggle at what wacko delights were on offer. And as ever, tucked amongst flower arranging and ‘how to turn-a-computer-on’ type offerings was the now usual quasi-Buddhist emptyheadedness for bored rich thickos, plus a sprinkling of other new age psychobabble such as Reiki. A new departure was giving over to numerous, equally ill advised (not to say imbecilic), explorations of ‘Celtic Christianity’ the chapel that came with the premises for the now disgraced ‘business school’.Um… yes…. quite!

So far, so stupid. Far more serious is the involvement of Care for the Family, puppet of infamous christocentric UK hate group CARE, in a course on ‘Alcohol Awareness’ run by a governmental advisor on that very topic. I have little doubt they will also poke their homophobic noses into another course, theoretically on drug awareness. I also doubt if either course, even without CftF’s ‘help’, would stand up to critical analysis. After all, nothing else produced by the Chief Minister’s Task Farce on Alcohol and Drugs has.
That might be because the Christian fundamentalist careerists who first proposed the project to a previous Chief Minister would never allow anyone who might have an academic or professional background in such topics to get involved in the first place. Apart from anything else, an informed person with even a modicum of social responsibility would be obliged to tell politicians what a dumb idea it is to give public money intended to prevent drug and alcohol dependency to those who deal in nastier alternatives.  Alternatives which screw up families and make weak people socially and financially dependent on free-loaders for far more years than bargain basement vodka or heroin.

Ill health and ill-gotten wealth

This (see http://www.gov.im/lib/news/education/isleofmancollege4.xml ) is one of the funniest bits of nonsense to be put out by a government department this week.
It really is an insight into the shallow, fluff-filled minds of Manx government ‘policy makers'.
Did the great Manx public really pay for some feather-brained fool to dream this up?
When someone says ‘health’ to me (and especially when a government department says it) I naturally think of - oh, doctors, nurses, dentists, psychiatrists and others who have spent some years acquiring the kind of knowledge one expects before letting them loose putting your body parts to rights. So how, exactly, do a sad collection of burnt-out hippies, failed alcohol ‘counsellors’, parasites on ‘Big Pharma’ and other losers pass themselves off as ‘health experts’, when they don’t have so much as a science O level between them?
For those not following me …. Gamcare is the last ditch revenue hope for the Alcohol Advisory Service, which has proved almost as incapable as DASH of advising anyone and also faces a cut in government funding. And look closely at the accounts of any anti-smoking ‘charity’ or pressure group and you will find two income sources. One is government, the other is that part of the pharmaceutical industry which produces nicotine patches – which explains why such ‘neutral’ sources of ‘expert’ advice are so keen to ban ‘e-cigarettes’ and other minimally harmful alternatives to the common fag produced by the ‘evil’ tobacco industry.
Moving on to the burnt out hippies – it might be of interest to know that some college staff have steady secondary incomes providing ‘alternative therapies’ to the terminally ill. One in particular I remember from a failed attempt to set up an Isle of Man LETS scheme years ago.
For those who lack the mental fortitude to spend much time around weekend hippies and the ‘alternative society’, a LETS scheme is a sensible enough attempt to get people on limited incomes to barter services instead of working for cash none of them have. The basic idea is that a mechanic, say, would fix your car for a couple of hours and in return you could help them with some accounts or type a few letters.
It was all going well until the Manx alternative therapy industry got involved. They argued that their dubious ‘services’ were worth more per hour than common or garden professionals such as, oh, qualified accountants or time-served manual craftsmen such as carpenters, electricians and plumbers.
At this point any sane person would have told them where to shove their essential oils, but hippies being so ‘non-confrontational’ (or scared of taking a vote for fear someone would accuse them of selling out to The Man) the whole thing descended into farce as ever more complicated systems of determining ‘relative labour values’ were suggested until everyone lost interest.
Shame really, but the biggest tragedy is that folk with real and necessary skills but no opportunity to practice them professionally lost an opportunity to get by in a way which helped everyone else at the bottom of the heap.
Meanwhile, in a community beginning to be overrun by economic refugees in white flight from emergent democracies, the alternative therapists found enough mugs with enough disposable income to get by. And when that market began to run out, they could always flog their smells and bells to people sitting around the Hospice bored out of their skulls while they wait for the Grim Reaper to turn up.
It’s enough to make you sick.

Nursery crimes

For the last week or so (see http://www.iomtoday.co.im/news/isle-of-man-news/mums_present_petition_against_nursery_closures_1_4269434 and http://www.isleofman.com/News/article.aspx?article=43682 for example) the pseudo-local press has been full of ‘stories’ about Manx government cutbacks in pre-school services.
Being a cynic, I am not surprised that all this ‘people’s press’ guff kicks off just at the point when the Manx government cut all the public notices which used to subsidise Johnston Press’s advertising rates to the offshore finance sector, which in turn was the only reason they set up shop here in the first place. And as I once worked for the last newspapers not owned by Johnston Press before they finally put us out of business, they could, in turn, fairly comment that I would say that, wouldn’t I?
But another thing; let us admit at once that ‘pre-school education facilities’ are not education facilities. They are government child-minding facilities, offered on the discreet understanding that as long as both parents need to work full time in order to pay taxes and buy private housing they cannot spend the day at home with small kids. No child actually gets educated at them.
And let us admit another thing. In practice they are not even that.
For one thing because of the unofficial racist screening of parents which ensures that such facilities are always ‘full’ whenever an obviously not local mum enquires about them, yet remarkably can always squeeze another one in when a relative or churchmate of the school secretary asks the next day.
For another, because there is a longer running class prejudice against people from council estates who have been failed by the Manx education system for generations.
The small town (and to be frank pig-ignorant) elite who perpetuate such bigotry ensured that a previous generation left school unemployable just as local work outside the finance sector was drying up. For a decade or more now, they have been branding the generation that followed as ‘unfit parents’ and building up a nice little racket in ‘social care’ and ‘parenting skills’. It always cracks me up that upper middle class halfwits get to run local childrens charities and organise highly pointless seminars and conferences to address the supposed problems of this ‘lost generation’. Meanwhile their own kids, deprived of any parental attention, are the key customers of the local drug dealers.
The end result of this is the farce we see played out every day outside my daughter’s primary school, and probably every other one on the island. My wife waves goodbye at the school gate, tries to avoid every other working mum speeding off to work, and waves to two women who run small private nurseries as they drop off some older kids before heading back to the nursery to take over from a part-time assistant who is minding the tinies. Meanwhile a clump of professional welfare mums drop their kids at the ‘pre-school’ class at the infant school, light up another fag and go home to watch Jeremy Kyle.
Not that I am blaming the welfare mums. Because this is what a lot of government policy and money has reduced them to. Educated out of the work force, now even judged unfit to be parents because of the very process which, first, saw them targetted for compulsory parenting classes run by semi-retired churchwives, and which in turn saw secretive files being drawn up on their unfitness to parent which, paradoxically, put their kids to the head of the list for pre-school education (because, being illiterate and innumerate, the testing revealed they would be unable to help their kids begin reading or counting).
Against all this, do I really care a jot if goods which were never as described or fit for purpose are no longer on offer?
Well, No, and Yes.
No because the future non-existence of something which was never there for me or any other working parent not born here is not a genuine problem. The day I arrived here I saw this place was, though of great natural beauty and with some residents of incredible charm and warmth, also a racist toilet with no social superstructure, so I never relied on anyone outside my family and close friends for anything and never will.
Yes, because of that odd little admission at the end of the first report, that: “Education and Children Minister Peter Karran MHK has previously said the government hopes to lease out the 11 sites for private and voluntary agencies to run.”
Who might those ‘private and voluntary agencies’ be?
Knowing that both Health and Social Care are now overseen by superstitious pro-life throwbacks with a track record for handing government contracts to their equally disreputable and bigoted friends, and knowing how many full time religious bigots are sniffing around for extra income to compensate for the total lack of public interest in their Sunday shenanigans, and knowing how ordinary members of evangelical churches who work in the public sector have been offered career advancement in return for spotting business opportunities for those churches…..
Well, frankly, knowing all that it is not hard to guess. What any decent parent or caring, reasonably educated Manx citizen really needs to work out is what to do to prevent the island becoming a place run by, and only fit for, parasitic village idiots.
Probably exactly the same as we did yesterday, but with even more determination and wit.

Poverty of Theory, Neglect by Government

According to this (see http://www.manx.net/isle-of-man-news/3649/poverty-and-neglect-conference-aims-to-start-debate-on-social-issues) (which will now have reached the ‘proper’ local press) the Children’s Centre are putting on a conference, chaired by the Pretzel of Tynwald and a government ‘consultant’ on children, to determine if there is poverty and neglect in the Isle of Man.
If these overpaid parasites have to ask they are more useless than we already knew, and we really need to ask in return why they have claimed so much public money for decades.
They really should know how much poverty and neglect there is. Most of the Children’s Centre committee are married into the business and political dynasties which caused the island to become two distinct nations in the first place, and from talking to some of their kids I also know how dysfunctional some upper middle class Manx families are compared to, say, the average sink estate family doomed to a second generation of lifetime unemployment.
Then there is the odd selection of speakers.
We are told, for example that: “Mr McCann is a motivational speaker who encourages people to look at life differently, helping them to take a leap that will change their lives for good and make a real difference in the world.”
So he will be talking to ......who exactly at this pseudo-conference, and encouraging them to...... do what? The permanently excluded perhaps, suggesting that as local business interests have no use for them, and also have no intention of taking (even as individuals) their fair share of the local tax burden, they might as well get used to it?
But of course not. He’s just another stooge brought in, like the canting priests who harangue us from another direction, to parrot the lie that we are equally and individually responsible for our plight, and that social or economic forces have absolutely no bearing on the matter.
I hope they’re paying this pathetic, two-faced twerp good money to push that lie: I also hope it isn’t public money.
And if you really must legitimate political inability to tackle poverty and social problems with an ‘academic’ overview, why would you pick a lecturer from an establishment about which the Daily Telegraph once asked: "Is this the worst university in Britain?"
That question was asked in 2004, when Luton had an unusually high course drop-out rate, and was additionally proposing to relax consequences of students failing second year exams. Luton answered back that as it existed specifically to give chances to the kind of folk who cannot normally consider higher education the drop-out rate was be expected and extra attempts to keep students studying needed, which is fair enough in my book. But then I read elsewhere that: “The QAA conducted a thorough institutional audit of the University as a whole in 2005 (prior to the merger of the University), which resulted in the audit team’s questioning of the academic standards of its awards and its lack of confidence in the university's quality standards.”
It seems that after the audit was taken the QAA got further information showing some appropriate action in response, but it was only in July 2007 that the audit was finally signed off. Again, to be fair, University of Bedfordshire constantly polls somewhere around 70th in most ‘league tables’ of British academic excellence, which puts it just above the lowest third, but potential employers wouldn’t dismiss a 'Beds' degree nearly as quickly as, say, an MBA from the Isle of Man Business School.
Then there is the strange link with an outfit called the Institute for Optimum Nutrition. The ION is regarded by more scientifically-based nutritionists as a “controversial” organisation, and that would be putting it mildly. For example, founder Patrick Holford's apparent advocacy of vitamin C as better than conventional drugs to treat AIDS was once described as “very scary” by the British Dietetic Association.
This has not stopped the ION offering a Home Study Course and a three-year Diploma in Nutritional Therapy (DipION). Another perturbing thing is that the University of Bedfordshire previously validated the DipION as a foundation degree, and only withdrew this validation in 2010.
So, with a wealth of British academic knowledge in the social sciences to choose from – much of it cutting edge – those responsible in Manx government chose a minor academic with no peer reviewed work from a university with no teaching pedigree in the field (and who just happens to have a book to flog) to kick off a major important social debate?
Yeah, that would be about par for the course.

Things have only got better -again

This morning local creationists are gathering to hear some Oxford butthead posing as a scientist excuse their folly, and paying through the nose for this dubious privilege. At least in theory.
In fact they had problems selling any tickets, doubly inconvenienced by the necessity of having a show of force from local faith leaders and political deadbeats to make it look like an ‘important national event’, and the reluctance of such folk to get up for even a three course breakfast in a posh hotel unless it is (a) free and (b) they can still put in a claim for travelling expenses to some public body.
Still, at least this means that when the local press run a fact-free, unedited ‘report’ on the event next week we will have a handy list of (mostly unelected) politicians and government advisors who favour fairy tales over science. Not only that, but they do their worst to inflict such nonsense on the general public and also charge us for not just the nonsense but their ‘professional services’ in inflicting it.
Read, note the names, and remember when they spout off cluelessly about other topics (and get an easy ride from a local media built on the income from government advertising).
Here, by contrast (see http://www.isleofman.com/News/article.aspx?article=37371 ), is a great little achievement by a Manx rationalist, and for everyone else a chance to see one of our heroes, Professor Brian Cox, in action on the Isle of Man.
One of Matty’s other achievements is to be the first Manxman to talk to someone in outer space, which wouldn’t surprise anyone who knows him, as I have since he left school, and since we both marked time working at the Castletown Golflinks Hotel.
We’d both been blacklisted from useful local employment for crimes of free speech via the local press. In my case, amongst many other sins, for modestly suggesting the Isle of Man joined the late 20th century and decriminalised homosexuality. In Matty’s, for offering a short history lesson on the true significance of the bhollan bane ( a flower traditionally worn by Manx dignitaries on Tynwald Day) to the godbothering throwback then posing as Chief Constable who refused to put a ‘pagan’ emblem in his buttonhole.
By the way, and further to that topic, am I the only local person who finds it ironic that a notoriously homophobic cop was recently awarded the Queens Police Medal?
Tune in on Wednesday, and enjoy the rare sight of an intelligent adult being allowed to talk to young Manx people.

Cheap shots or sheep shops?

“Laughing at religious people and doctrines for being mad, bad and dangerous gives us the comfort of thinking that, unlike them, we are sane, good and peaceful. Good stand-up makes us question ourselves: but the contemporary ridicule of religion fails to do that. Instead, it just narcissistically affirms that we were right all along. It is not edgy, original or insightful. One might even be tempted to call it preaching to the converted.”
Says who?
Says a bloke called Patrick McKearney.
Who is he?
Well, apparently…..
“Patrick McKearney is studying for an MPhil in theology and religious studies at Cambridge University. A scholar of the Cambridge Interfaith Programme and Queens' College, he is researching the implications of the contemporary ridicule of religion.”
I am half-tempted to add “…or is he just taking the piss?”
No, but seriously folks, go to http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2011/jun/21/stand-up-comedy-religion and see if, like those he takes aim at, your jesting about the faithful amounts to more than
“tedious repetition of generic, flat-pack criticisms”.
I don’t for a second accept that of, say, Stewart Lee or a very few other comic talents. But I would admit acute boredom these days reading the kneejerk comments in reaction to stories on some of my old favourite secular sites, and wondering what closed minds came up with them.
On the other hand, I wonder how Mr McKearney got public subsidy to be at one of the world’s most elite colleges just wondering if the sky will fall in because the general public are less than reverent about a gaggle of gents in frocks who take themselves far more seriously than the rest of the world does?
Maybe his Imaginary Invisible Friend really does move in mysterious ways. Or maybe we live in an unequal society, still over-respectful of superstition, where purveyors of bible bunkum just have more sway with those who hand out grants and allot university places than they should. And it is also worth noting the close links between, say, the Cambridge Interfaith Foundation and the Tony Blair Faith Foundation, which no sensible person has any faith in.
Funnily enough though, I read elsewhere of David F. Ford, one of the founders of the Cambridge Interfaith Foundation, that “He is highly regarded for his scholarship, wit and humour.’’
Shame his students and staff are not similarly blessed then.
No, but seriously, that is a cheap quip, and Mr M offers a valid challenge. The best humour does not enshrine prejudice and encourage lazy thinking, but strips away the pretensions and shortcomings of the powerful and, if really good, pulls out the rug from below our feet too. Where McKearney’s polemical argument collapses, as I hinted earlier, is that it fails to recognise the institutional power and privilege of religion, and settles instead for the whiney tone of other religious spoilt brats asked to share their toys.
But do we just mock comfortably from the distance, training our sights only on the less educated religious, or could we make better jokes that batter away at the privilege, reveal the links to power?
Interesting challenge. I may well take it up, and I hope others will too.

Things Can Only Get Better (sing along now...)

The lunatic fringe of the local Zombie Carpenter movement have another annual exercise in pointlessness on July 2nd.
It need not trouble the sane or rational amongst us, and as it involves getting up early probably won’t attract many Christians either - apart from a few die-hard masochists who are prepared to not only get up but stump up an admission fee.
Each year, as close to Tynwald Day as they can manage to pass it off as a tied event and roping in as many superstitious politicos as possible to pad out the delusion, these hopeless zealots hold a 'Prayer Breakfast' during which a Famous Faith-Head tells fairy stories.
Last year it was Richard Dannatt, who emphatically demonstrated why (with superstitious numpties like him running the show) so many British lives are being wasted and foreign civilians dying in the crossfire of pointless oil wars. This year it is John Lennox (see http://www.isleofman.com/News/article.aspx?article=36864), a notorious Oxford philosopher of science cum creationist with a book to market (two actually), as did Richard Dannatt last year.
The funniest thing is that, actually, there are excellent philosophical reasons why scientists need to acknowledge that ‘science’ is as much of a social construct or a ‘myth’ (in the sense of a self-perpetuating story whose ‘truth’ or ‘falsity’ are similarly irrelevant) as ‘religion’. Dawkins and his chums have great difficulty with this, so much so that they prefer to ignore it. But Lennox, as far as I know, has never explored this either, probably because he cannot without also acknowledging the mythical basis of religion, or religion’s primary purpose as a method of social control which discourages democracy or dissent.
Also, interestingly, much of the groundwork for this was set by Willard Van Orman Quine, an American philosopher of science and mathematician who was of Manx origin. As it happens, it may also be of interest to atheists that Quine supervised Daniel Dennett’s Ph.D.
In theory, this early morning pantomime is underwritten by 200 paying punters. In practice, most of the tickets are given away because faith leaders and politicians have to be there to foster the fantasy that it is an ‘important’ shindig involving the great and the good, and they never pay to impose their fatuousness on anyone.
After the event I am sure the press will be primed with reports of how important and popular it all was, especially amongst young people. As none of the press will actually be there, they will be unable to substantiate this.
But there is a fair comparison, because Brian Cox, physicist superstar and former pop musician (oh, you all know the guy, no need to outline his career to anyone) is also coming to talk to schoolkids around Tynwald Day (see http://www.isleofman.com/News/article.aspx?article=36822 for more). The difference is that Cox not only sold out within hours of his lecture being announced, but had substantial numbers of the local adult population clamouring for either a seat anywhere in the house or a repeat performance at a bigger venue we could all get to. Cox, I suggest, could fill Nobles Park at midnight on a wet winter day.
Now, funnily enough, us ‘militant atheists’ know that Cox blows Dawkins off stage at the annual New Humanist ‘Nine Carols for the Godless’ bash. He makes no big deal of his lack of religion, though he does politely dismiss creationist nonsense as the naive foolishness it is if asked.
His enthusiastic explanations of the mysteries of the universe work, on whatever level you care to consider them, without once dwelling on religion. They are simply more colourful, more complex, more satisfying and more truthful than any bible story.
Science (given half a chance) trumps Superstition every time, even on the Isle of Man. More colourful than Manx fairy lore, more logical, more interesting and more useful than Manx religion.

An island nation of unemployed telemarketers

According to http://www.gov.im/lib/news/education/publicviewssough1.xml our Minister for Child Abuse and his cohorts have announced another public pseudo-consultation, this time on dumbing down kids for the workplace.
What an awful idea.
While, admittedly, the very idea of the Welfare State reached us almost by osmosis when the adjacent isle developed it, there used to be the idea that even a state education should invite children to be all they could be, not what vile, venal employers who cannot even compete in the UK market want them to be.
My parents were never so proud as the day, when I was about ten, Mr Fretwell, my Oxbridge educated form teacher, urged them in his cut glass accent to make me aim high, maybe Oxford or Cambridge, maybe the Classics. This was, to use Blair’s phraseology, a “bog standard junior school”, and ironically enough it was Cherie Blair’s maternal grandfather who, only a year later, encouraged my Dad to similarly aim high, stop throwing away the musical talent his parents had invested in so heavily, and get himself a university degree so that he could nurture that talent in other council house kids.
This was 40 years ago and Mr Fretwell may be long gone, but are there no teachers today who still think like that? Are they all too terrified by an educational industry which seems to chew up young talent and defecate prematurely aged mediocrity to …. well, do their job?
The thought that Manx children should have standards of education (already almost non-existent for too many) further lowered to raise new generations of call centre dullards is, frankly, horrific. The irony is, the call centres and other techno-sweatshops in countries which undercut our costs and laugh at our pitiful service standards are staffed by graduates who already have all-round educations our children can only dream of. As I saw only last week, we struggle to achieve basic standards of English, while graduate employees of our clients for whom English is a third or fourth language send back our sloppily written professional documents for rewriting with spelling and grammatical errors highlighted.
It would be funny if it were not so tragic. Can the nation which once, within a period of five years, produced both Randolph Quirk and Frank Kermode really be reduced to this?
The main reason those young Manx people who haven’t had all self-worth kicked out of them at school in the first place must “engage in lifelong learning” is that they learnt so little at school either. And the main reason most of them won’t even be able to benefit from lifetime learning (at least through on-island sources) is that the Education Department has dropped all the adult evening classes where we used to be able to do that. All that remains are a few second-rate flower-arrangers and new-agey nonsense, with the ‘serious’ emphasis on Micky Mouse vocational retraining courses to meet the requirements of employers who can thus pretend to be offering ‘professional development’ while retaining dumb, compliant employees who cannot afford to leave.
Were an eleven year old Randolph Quirk or Frank Kermode to be going through our current school system, what would be the highlight of their curriculum? Probably Business Studies, IT, and Marketing, I suspect, especially if, like Quirk and Kermode, they were children from modestly off families with no social connections.
If we throw away all hope for our children like this we sentence ourselves to become an island nation of unemployed telemarketers within a generation.

Stamping out crime around schools

According to this story (see http://www.isleofman.com/News/article.aspx?article=34804 ) the Department of Miseducation and Child Abuse want to stamp out anti-social behaviour on school property outside of normal school hours.
Well, that’s good news, so being a socially minded person perhaps I can tip them off to a few of the worst culprits.
They could start with Ramsey’s infant school, where judging from screams which can be heard on the adjoining estate each Sunday morning, some awful form of mental abuse is going on. I know no-one brave enough to look in and identify the torturers or their methodology. All I can say is that a random collection of individuals with glazed eyes are seen to emerge soon after. Thankfully, I hear from another source that, having emptied the purses of most gullible victims to the extent that weekly takings are smaller than the petrol costs, the torturers may be calling it a day and concentrating on victims closer to their home base in Douglas.
I hear similar stories from workmates living close to two Douglas primary schools, and have also heard of teachers being approached by what they suspected were devotees of a sinister cult which is known to prey on substance abusers, the elderly, and the housebound in the Port St. Mary area.
Jurby is another deprived community reporting a cult making dummy runs at gaining Sunday access to the school. There it was even suggested a keyholder helped them, and that one culprit has been seen regularly entering the prison a few hundred metres away from the school. It wasn’t clear whether he smuggles illicit materials in or out of that particular institution, but the most worrying factor ought to be his well established links with the Department of Home Affairs, a shady organisation responsible for most (if not all) of the island’s worst crime.
Having been offered this information, maybe the police can now get some of the island’s most despicable characters off the streets, so respectable folk can go safely about their business.
Or is that too much to ask?

Foul-mouthed pervs strike in Manx schools

Just when you think the number of Christophiles crashing into Manx schools and wrecking young lives has peaked, you find more evidence of our public servants colluding in such attempts to drag kids back to the Middle Ages.
For according to the March edition of Together, the IOM Diocesan newsletter:
“Open the Book is an assembly scheme designed to enable every child to hear the story of the Bible at school in their primary years. Ordinary people like you and me from local churches come together as a team of storytellers and deliver 10 min assemblies where Biblical accounts and stories are retold. Open the Book is providing a vehicle to help churches build a bridge to 99% of the primary age population. That’s potentially 99% of the primary population moving on to secondary school having heard at least 33 Biblical accounts or stories…”
Now, to me, that’s clear evidence of institutional child abuse, so as a concerned parent I just want to know when someone at the Department of Miseducation will be sacked, or even prosecuted, for allowing it to happen. Either that or an equal opportunity for, say, fans of the Brothers Grimm or Terry Pratchett to introduce kids to some far better tales of fantasy and myth.
Scripture Union Ministries Trust, an organisation which really should be proscribed for the sake of all our children, do not see it quite like that. They do admit they’re doing “serious damage”, but only to “a 20 yr decline in Biblical literacy”.
So there’s our child protection services, on the one hand, indulging in tabloid fantasies about 8 year olds checking out online donkey porn or something. Meanwhile, as the headteacher looks on benignly, some semi-professional perv is reading aloud to the whole school from the world’s best known one-hand mag.
So far only two teams of SUMT yawn-troopers are being let loose in three schools. But apparently, later this year, our clueless government will allow four gangs to practice their potty-mouthed antics in between four and eight more primary schools. As they boasted openly of this in a publication that is, theoretically, available to up to 5,700 locals it is only reasonable to expect the police should act before more young lives are destroyed.

Plane stupidity

Sometimes the combination of lies, deception and pig-ignorance that passes for Manx government activity is so blatant you wonder why people fall for it.
Take an article which you will be reading in the Manx press next week, though if you can’t wait you can read most of what it will say now at http://www.gov.im/lib/news/cso/initiativeishelp.xml .
It will begin by trying to tell you that:

“The Small Countries Financial Management Centre is set to welcome representatives from 29 different nations on Sunday (July 11, 2010) for the start of its second annual international capacity-building programme.
The Centre, located at the Isle of Man International Business School, aims to build on the success of the inaugural event in 2009 which helped small countries from around the world to respond to the global economic downturn. The Small Countries Financial Management Programme is a major initiative developed through a partnership between the Isle of Man Government, the World Bank, the Commonwealth Secretariat, the Small States Network for Economic Development, and the University of Oxford.”

…and so it potters on, and on, and on… with ‘comments’ from one muppet at the World Bank, another halfwit from the misleadingly entitled Isle of Man International Business School, and so on ad sodding nauseum.
Oh, I can’t even be bothered to rip this tosh apart bit by bit!
So I’ll just cut to the chase.
The Oxford University Said Business School is so named because the main benefactor is Wafic Said. Just Google ‘Al Yamamah’, remember a time not long ago when the UK’s Labour Government blocked all attempts to investigate just how British Aerospace gained so many lucrative Saudi arms contracts, and then wonder if, say, a dead slug with a history of hebephrenic schizophrenia could do a worse job of ‘advising’ the Manx government on improving our international image than any of the overpaid consultants currently failing to do so.

Horrible history

The sheer cretinism of Isle of Man Department of Education staff beggars belief sometimes. In particular, their willingness to hand vulnerable kids over to fundamentalist pondlife really is a national disgrace.
Take last week, when according to the Isle of Man Courier, nine and ten year olds from local schools attended Lifepaths, a week of evangelical brainwashing at Rushen Abbey co-organised ( in theory) by the Education Department, Manx Heritage and…Scripture Union Ministries Trust.
Supposedly, the Education Department used Manx Heritage to give the kids a historical experience. Fair enough, even though Manx Heritage’s idea of history is (at best) fact-lite plastic patriotism and (more often) little more than tourist-orientated shite.
So why were SUMT there?
Well, again according to the Courier, to give “perspective on being a younger Christian in the 21st century”. In short, to brainwash kids too small and scared to fight back.
This (see http://www.connect2charity.im/charities/charity_92271.html) is the official line on SUMT. And if you check under ‘events’ you’ll be interested to find that:

“Lifepath is an education day for Year 5 pupils, they will have the opportunity to come and explore the concept of faith, prayer and the lifestyle of a Christ follower, through the life of a Cistercian Monk from the 11th Century.
300 children are coming to join SUMT across the week. With a team of 60 volunteers throughout the week each day will be packed with energy, craft activities, songs, drama, laughter, wigs and a whole lot more!”

So, pure Christofascist brainwashing and nothing to do with objective education then. And so again you have to ask, why were the Education Department letting a dangerous bunch of fundie flat-earthers with form for child-molesting loose with hundreds of local kids?
Because, make no mistake, SUMT are not just harmless sad-acts with an imaginary invisible friend.
Amongst last week's volunteers, to my certain knowledge, were people who in 1998 helped ‘persuade’ the victims of a notorious faith-biased kiddy-fiddler not to give evidence in court. Thankfully, though most caved in to the threats and so the full extent of this perv's actions were never revealed in court, one family stood their ground and he was convicted. His friends (including a protege of James Anderton) 'stood by him' as he went to jail. The brave family who stood up to the evangelical scum left the island soon after to avoid retaliations.
Also amongst last week's SUMT staff was a character who has, several times, been reported to the Dept of Education for harassing under age girls with text messages while, in theory, ‘mentoring’ teenagers at a local school.
Needless to say (at a time when the Education Minister was himself of notoriously fundamentalist views) the Department of Education took no action. Even worse, two Education Ministers later and this sad, middle aged loser is still ‘mentoring’ (i.e. pestering teenage girls whose personal contact details he obtains with the help of schoolteachers who share his sad delusions about imaginary friends).
At least SUMT’s tactics aren’t working at my daughter’s primary school, where she tells me their sad efforts to run a lunchtime Bible club are being outwitted.
In an effort to draw at least a few kids in, SUMT volunteers are reduced to offering handfuls of sweets to anyone who’ll enter the room. So, in response the kids have created a new game called ‘Take the Smarties and run’.