Beware prats in tinfoil hats

If you happen to be in the vicinity of Grill in the Park, Nobles Park on the evening of 25^th October or The Studio, Upper Car Park, Central Prom the following evening look out for people in tinfoil hats. Even if you spot people in more conventional dress entering these establishments you might want to make a note not to trust them with any important matter regarding you or those you care about.

The thing is, information passed to me indicates that the Manx Tinfoil Hat Tendency is fast gathering momentum. If you can bear to follow some of the recent odd exchanges on the local newspaper letters pages and IOM Newspapers website you know the sort of person, and their flaky views.

You would think that these freaks meet in the corners of dingy pubs at night (which quickly clear when they start talking) or perhaps the cheaper caffs during the day after they’ve signed on.  Surprisingly not, in fact it seems they are about to go into the after-dinner speaking lark.

In fact one John Mackay of Creation Research UK is due to make all but the wackiest upchuck their food on 25^th and 26^th October. As stuff I’ve seen suggests those arranging this visit are barely literate I’m not sure this is wise, but hey ho, any entrepreneur has to be encouraged during a recession.

 Mackay, if you’ll excuse the pun, is a real dinosaur of the Evolution Denial industry. He started in the 1970’s (so must now be over 60) and is now seemingly moving into Global Warming as his traditional market shuts down.

Creation Research UK is the European arm of an Aussie outfit, Creation Research, and Mackay pretty much runs both as a means to push DVDs and speaking tours of views he variously claims to be presenting as a scientific or theological academic (depending on the punters and venues). However, credible evidence of his expertise in either field seems as light as creationist evidence that the Bible should be taken literally.

The British Centre for Science Education (which IS run by scientists, and regards the likes of Mackay as menaces to the young and impressionable everywhere) says that:

“Mackay has a doctrinaire (dogmatic) belief in his religion; he has absolute belief in the absolute certainty of the revealed truth of the bible, as literally interpreted.

He was originally a school teacher and holds a degree in geology from a reputable Australian university (Queensland). What Mackay has never been is a professional, practising geologist. Despite the name of his ministry, he has never had a peer-reviewed article in any scientific or geological journal. Nor is the author of this report aware that he has ever submitted such a paper.

Mackay has also been described as a geneticist, presumably because he undertook a course in this subject as part of his BSc. However, one thing Mackay is not is a geneticist. What he would have learned in a 1st degree in geology is both years out of date and well below the breadth and depth of education which most consider necessary to be a practising geneticist. Mackay certainly has never practised as a geneticist.

Nor does Mackay appear to have any theological qualifications whatsoever.”

Actually, the BCSE study the professional creationist racket rather closely (for obvious reasons), but remain objective enough to ask the main players precisely what they mean to say, and how they mean to say it. In the course of this they uncovered something else about John Mackay.

Do not read http://www.bcseweb.org.uk/index.php/Main/MargaretBuchanan until you first place a pillow below your chin. You will need it to prevent your jaw breaking when it hits the floor.

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.

Cinematic horror special

I generally insist that people have a right to do what they want, providing they leave others to go about their own business too, but there are limits. And I have to report a case which exceeds them.
Because Living Hell (or 'Living Hope Community Church', to give them their official title) have a planning application in (number 11/00621/B) to set up another permanent base in the former gym by Douglas’s Palace Cinema.
Apparently they currently run their Sunday freak show in the Shearwater Suite. Now they want to start holding it in the Palace Cinema instead, setting the gym aside for a separate child abuse session.
I have to protest.
It is not just that parents in the cinema, eyes swivelling and mouths frothing as the lunatic at the front gets into his stride, will not hear their offspring screaming to get out from the gym. It is also a public health issue.
Years ago I worked in several large Victorian psychiatric hospitals, so I know what happens when largish groups of mentally disturbed people get over-excited. Apart from the obvious danger of physical harm to each other as they thrash about (though as the Living Hell acolytes are, in law at least, consenting adults that is their business) they lose control of their bodily functions too.
There is no way to put this politely. Places where this happens regularly develop stains and odours which no amount of bleach and hard scrubbing ever remove.
Adults may decide to put up with this if the film is good enough and the prices are low (neither, admittedly, seem likely at a Manx cinema). But the Palace Cinema is also a place where kids are taken to be entertained.
Any parent will have difficulties explaining to puzzled tinies why the place stinks like a blocked toilet and the floor appears to be stained with faecal matter. And sane or responsible ones would never allow the lights of their lives in such a cess pit in the first place.

Drop the Living Dead on a Donkey

Tomorrow the Manx public heavily subsidises yet another grubby attempt to pack new punters into churches. Either that or an afternoon out for the unscrupulous few who already doss about these undertaxed faith barns of a Sunday.
The same pack of freeloaders on the public purse who foist the Christmas on the Hill nausea-fest on us are behind it, and posters have been in all the usual ghettos for the last few weeks. Curiously though, not a word in the media until yesterday when this (see http://www.iomtoday.co.im/news/isle-of-man-news/story_of_easter_1_3308791 ) was the front page of the Manx Indifferent. Could it be even idle Manx hacks got so bored by this twaddle that they couldn’t be bothered to cut and paste it?
Anyway, avoid Peel later on Saturday afternoon unless you want to get caught up in a twonk parade, because:
“Saturday’s free event starts at the Creg Malin car park at 4pm – from where Jesus (played by Alex Brown, head of the Scripture Union Ministries Trust) will ride a donkey along the promenade to Peel Castle, which will have been transformed into Jerusalem.
From 4.30pm, the family-friendly reenactment, involving a cast of about 80, will continue inside the castle.”
So, it seems, yet again Manx Heritage, an organisation which has almost single-handedly blocked or destroyed any serious chance to record genuine Manx history, is also involved.
And no, you did not misread that. Because Manx Heritage, within a generation, has destroyed the Manx history project. It is no longer possible for a serious academic to collate primary source material or get either grant aid or Manx government assistance for an objective historical project.
What we got instead for the last decade was laughable Celtic mythologising in a desperate attempt to jump-start a tourist trade which died when cheap air travel was born. And now, having even bored off the kind of middle aged office workers who like Clannad and buy any old New Age ‘alternative therapy’ they’re going really downmarket, in the hope a few low rent evangelical thickos will buy some tourist product while ‘exploring their Celtic Christian roots’….. or some such guff.
It is tempting to just point and laugh, but there are serious questions here.
For one thing, will the god-botherers pay to enter Peel Castle, or be excused the usual £10 or so charge? If so, how do the entrance staff know which are honest families on a day out and which are faith-based freeloaders? Glazed expressions and tasteless 100% polyester clothing might be a rough guide, but is that enough?
And who meets the costs of the extra policing, the parking and traffic problems? Peel ratepayers, or the island as a whole?
Come to think of it, how much did we pay in policing & other costs for Christmas on the Hill? While those responsible will have made sure that this never reached the minutes of any political or civil service committee on public record, it was probably excused on the premise that acolytes of the Zombie Carpenter went on to shop at Stepford Central (owned by Christian zealots who, coincidentally, also run the Police Liaison Committee).
And even if this line is being taken again, what commercial spin-off is there for Peel, given that (a) the event is scheduled from 4 PM to 5.30 PM and (b) Manx Heritage destroyed Peel retail over a decade ago when they blocked all public transport and traffic schemes except one which forced tourist cars and coaches to skirt around Peel itself, straight on to their House of Mannanan tourist trap and then back out of town to do their shopping and refreshing, if any, at Stepford Central?
But there is a bright side. For one thing the press unwittingly did local parents a favour when it published a prominent picture of one of the island’s worst dangers to kids.
For another because:
“It is a one off event – and organisers say Christmas on the Hill won’t take place this year either, after three successful events.”
That’s because it was crap. Hardly anybody went except the organisers, so in all likelihood the cost of extra policing alone didn’t even balance the additional takings at Stepford Central. And, on past performance, I doubt if VAT or other taxes paid by Stepford are anywhere near the grant aid ploughed into developing a ‘shopping experience’ not seen elsewhere since the hilarious ‘zombies on escalators’ scene in George Romero’s Dawn of the Living Dead.

Public health warning for Douglas on 17th April

While we were in Douglas yesterday for a spot of retail therapy a Care in the Community case shuffled up and gave me a leaflet.
Fair enough, I thought, they need a hobby and some pin money, so they might as well get it handing out flyers for sunbed shops and closing down sales. Then I looked at it and laughed out loud.
Yes, the product was dodgy, and yes, the trader is fast going out of business, but it wasn’t quite what I expected.
Ladies and Gentlemen, time for another of the Deluded Herd’s annual get-togethers. Our chums at Living Hell, Port St. Mary’s most infamous madhouse, are having an Easter event at the Villa Marina.
UNITE@easter not only features the deranged ramblings of one of Ulster’s many redundant preachers (AKA ‘Jonathan Stansfield, Lead Pastor’), but also (cue drum roll)…..the UNITE Worship Band!!!!
Actually, I was unavoidably detained in locked rooms and forced to hear these prize herberts once or twice, and they are unforgettable (unfortunately). Imagine that freak show of failed contestants they feature on the final of the X Factor, led in tuneless song by a demented harpie who accidentally took a shedload of magic mushrooms and thinks she’s being rogered senseless by her Magic Invisible Friend and you won’t be far off.
Priceless.
The flyer is a bit vague, and some of the copy is even accidentally regurgitated from their New Year bash, so not sure what else to warn you to avoid on April 17th between noon and midnight. Witches may well be accused and burnt for all we know, small kids and folks in wheelchairs could be trampled underfoot when pitchforks are wielded and torches lit by a howling mob.
I doubt if there’ll be any chocolate bunnies though, not even Fairtrade ones, because rednecks don’t like that kind of pagan idolatry, and being End-Timers who eagerly await the Rapture they’re not about to help anyone in the developing world unless the kickback is 100 times bigger than the investment of other gullible people’s money.
Of course, this is also happening just across the road from their Broadway rivals, so an all out turf war for the day between our local evangelical Crips and Bloods could be on the cards. Punishment bible beatings, spray-and-pray random leafleting, drive by sermons…. who knows what else.
Just stay out of the area between around noon and midnight next Sunday would be my advice.

11,510 self-pitying losers, and still rising

Christian self-pity has plumbed new depths in the UK with the launch of Not Ashamed, a campaign run by CCFON (Christian Concern For Our Nation) and CLC (Christian Legal Centre) the UK’s two leading merchants of theo-fascist codswallop, underwritten by even battier Yanks. If I tell you, for example, that one of CCFON’s ‘partners’ is Oral Roberts University, a private US college run by fundies where graduates accept endtimer and creationist twaddle that shouldn’t even fool a UK 10 year old, you have some idea what manner of foolishness we’re dealing with.
It was the Reverend Doctor Peter Hearty, who runs Platitude of The Day (see Fave Sites & Fellow Travellers list) who spotted the link at http://www.notashamed.org.uk/about.php.Take a peek, and try not to die laughing.
11,510 whining bigots as of the time of writing this, and the campaign doesn’t even launch officially until December 1st. It makes a belief in transubstantiation look almost rational by comparison.
All the usual suspects are lined up. If you ever wanted to know “where do clapped out professional bible-bashers go, when even the nitwits who employ them decide they’re totally senile and/or crackers”, you now have an answer.
I only know of one open Manx link to the CCFON, though knowing the depths to which Manx fundie asinity can plunge I don’t doubt other twonks will be quietly affiliated. Friends and Heroes, the biblically bolloxed cartoon made (or at least reproduced) here in Ramsey got the one and only ‘award’ it will ever see from a CCFON front group, which acts as a sort of marketing agency for Christian/family values media morons.
Frankly, the fairy tale view of Christian 'persecution' fabricated by Not Ashamed , and the bonkers characters involved, would probably be too far fetched for even kiddie cartoons. Though I probably shouldn't propose it in case some numpty fundie tries anyway.

Freak alert

I think the island might have an infestation of Scientologists.
I’ve seen some guys dressed like comic book FBI agents stopping folk in the street over the last couple of weeks but just assumed they were Morons (sorry ...Mormons!), now I'm not so sure.
Today we had a copy of a leaflet entitled The Way To Happiness through the letterbox. It looked cheesy enough to be religious, despite the ‘non-religious’ claim on the cover, so ignoring all the bumpf inside I cut straight to the inside page credits.
Even worse than I thought, as the author is given as L. Ron Hubbard. So it’s a Scientology scam then.
I’ve just had a horrible thought.
Does this mean the island is going to be invaded by Tom Cruise, John Travolta and the rest of the Hollywood prat pack? Let’s hope not, though that would be just the grade of celebrity dingbat we do attract on past records.
Why is it all our half-decent celebs pop their clogs, get driven mad by parochialism or just get senile? (By the way, that’s George Macdonald Fraser, Andy Kershaw and Norman Wisdom, who I assure off-island readers was a sweet little geezer who’d make time for anyone before his demise). Meanwhile we give the Bee Gees the freedom of Douglas and it can only be a matter of time before the one that lives here is made an MLC.
And why not? He’s already an egocentric waste of space with no link to the real world, so he’d fit right in.