Big story, curious silence

Now here’s an odd thing.
Since December 1st I’ve been fielding queries from two ‘specialist’ areas of the press who know me of old. Both, from differing perspectives, are researching stories on an important development in their ‘specialisms’ in which a leading Manx resident will play a major part. Mainly, it must be said, because they’ve never heard of him. Yet the island media appear to know nothing about it.
Many current Manx journalists wouldn’t know a story if it crept up and hit them with a baseball bat, so nothing new or odd there.
What is odder is that powerful friends of the leading Manx resident haven’t spoonfed the story to a grateful hack either. Usually every vapid word he utters while going about his pointless and privileged job is not only relayed to the media, but followed by angry phonecalls and threats about the withdrawal of advertising if not immediately, and prominently, used.
So why not now?
Perhaps you can judge for yourselves.
The queries began when, on 1st December, the Church of England Media Centre issued a press release (see http://www.churchofengland.org/media-centre/news/2011/11/group-to-advise-house-of-bishops-on-2005-pastoral-statement-announced.aspx) in which it was announced that:
“The House of Bishops has announced the membership of a Group established to advise it on reviewing its Pastoral Statement issued prior to the introduction of civil partnerships in December 2005. The Group will be chaired by the Bishop of Sodor and Man, the Rt Rev Robert Paterson. The other two members of the Group are the Bishop of Portsmouth, the Rt Rev Christopher Foster, and the Bishop of Dorchester, the Rt Rev Colin Fletcher. The Group will start work in December and report to the House in time for the House to reach conclusions during 2012.”
The statement goes on to explain that:
“The preparation of the pastoral statement was the last occasion when the House of Bishops devoted substantial time to the issue of same sex relationships. The House undertook to keep that Pastoral Statement under review and announced in July, this year, http://www.churchofengland.org/media/1289380/gsmisc997.pdf , that the time had come for a review to take place.
The House of Bishops also announced in July further work on the Church of England's approach to human sexuality more generally. The expectation is that the membership of that Group, whose work will be considered by the House during 2013, will be announced in the next few weeks.”
Wow!
The C of E is looking to make their most important policy statement since Civil Partnerships became a reality, and Sentamu’s Apprentice is in charge of the process?
How big a Manx story is that?
What’s fast emerging is that even their fellow Anglicans hardly know these guys either, never mind the world at large. Which may be deliberate, or just because there are too many church factions with an interest (and form for sulking and taking their ball home) for any of the ‘regulars’ to get picked.
It’s known that Colin Fletcher is a former tutor at Wycliffe Hall and former chaplain to Archbishop George Carey. So he would have been picked by Anglican Mainstream. Don’t let the name fool you. They’re the ultra-orthodox freaks who keep threatening to break away and take some of the oldest, most valuable, church property with them. In reality, a tiny but powerful bunch of cranks, the C of E’s equivalent to a mad relative in the attic.
Less is known about Foster, other than that he studied economics at Durham, then lectured in it before being ordained, since when he’s worked his way up through the ranks in various roles, apparently with a particular interest in church mission, which I thought was just every vicar’s basic job.
But if Sentamu’s Apprentice was chosen because he was a dark horse and therefore gay and liberal Anglicans couldn’t object, it isn’t going to work.
True, the AM nutters don’t know or claim him, but they’ve approved him anyway because they see him as a fellow evangelical; if a bit of a wimp because any apparent antipathy for humanity doesn’t extend to lady vicars or women and everyone else in general except sad old white blokes in frocks.
But on websites such as the influential liberal Thinking Anglican (see http://www.thinkinganglicans.org.uk/ ) comments like this are starting to appear:
“Robert Patterson (sic) was vicar of a parish adjoining mine and is wholly unsympathetic. He sacked a celibate gay curate, and most recently [...] he was one of only two C of E bishops in General Synod to vote AGAINST extending the pension rights of civilly partnered clerics.
I contacted some gay couples I know who live in Robert's former parishes - Robert would not be their choice for this post! I wonder if there is a single civilly partnered person in the whole of England who would support his appointment.”
Well, we’ve seen his grumpy, charmless comments after the Civil Partnership Bill passed, toeing an old Christian Institute line which portrays gays trying to put their relationships on an official basis and ensure pension and other basic rights as little more than economic opportunism, rather than ‘proper’ marriages like Christians pretend to have.
And I’ve noted here his successful attempt to make sure criminal civil servants won’t do time for leaking highly personal and confidential information about transgendered people to vicars, who also won’t do time for receiving it, or have to explain how they got it or why they won’t conduct a marriage ceremony.
So, we already know he has a bit of a problem with gays. In fact, his reported comments are alarmingly close to those swivel-eyed Manx political lunatics whose rabid views on the (then only proposed) partial decriminalisation of homosexuality in 1991 caused all decent people in Britain to write us off as a third world backwater. A view of us which meant most trade union and business groups took their conference business elsewhere for the next 20 years for fear of being branded homophobic knuckledraggers.
When Patterson and his chums eventually reveal their ‘new, improved’ Anglican policy towards gays we can have little doubt that, however sincerely meant, many will laugh and some will even feel sick. No point putting lipstick on a pitbull.
The problem is, if that view seems influenced by someone who is also an unelected politician in the Manx upper house, and could be portrayed as some sort of moral leader on the island, then we are right back to 1991 in the eyes of the rest of the world. And with a world recession on those are basics none of us want to go back to.

Yulelogy in the sad absence of morality

I briefly looked today at a website where local bigwigs like to first post their diktats to the rest of us. Well, it is Christmas Day, so traditionally a time when the great and the good like to tell us plebs where we’re going wrong and why we’re going to Hell in a handbasket, or how we might do better.
But instead of beatitudes, or even platitudes, all I found was, well.......... tweatitudes.
This (http://www.isleofman.com/News/article.aspx?article=31926 ), for example, from an unelected political parasite, imposed on us by foreign dictators.
This (http://www.isleofman.com/News/article.aspx?article=31947 ) from a Minister for No Fun, who asks that we live our entire lives as lies.
And this (http://www.isleofman.com/News/article.aspx?article=31855 )from an enforcer for unscrupulous gangsters, whose fellow thugs at this time of the year like to stop ordinary car drivers at random, mainly in order to keep the road clear for drunken civil servants and legislators on the way to or from one of a myriad of publically funded events.
I think you see the problem at once.
There is just no voice of moral authority any more. Nobody on the island who I can offer to my small daughter as a reference for anything good, or decent, or human.
But I suspect, from her dealings with various po-faced liars who turn up at her school, she may be gathering that already. She’s going to have to work it all out for herself, as are we all.
Oh well. At least life is never dull if you spend it making up the rules as you go along.
Have a Cool Yule, and try to spot the jokes, rather than electing or otherwise subsidising them.

Manx Christian tolerance... and flying pigs

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

Assisted dying - the debate comes back to Mann

I saw a familar figure talking nonsense in the press recently.
I’ve known Peter Murcott for years – ever since the years when he set up a Manx branch of Mary Whitehouse’s mob, then when he ran a Keep Sunday Special campaign, and so on ever since. He’s one of those dependable godbotherers who can be guaranteed to put up an argument on any moral issue, and I almost admire him.
He must realise he’s unfashionable, he must know people snigger at some of his views but he doesn’t seem to care. He gets flattened time and time again in debates – at least in the view of those who listen long enough to hear the arguments and evidence. Even Manx government ministers and civil servants cringe when he kicks off in public - and very few of them display intellect, honesty or open-mindedness.
This time he seems to be the only one willing to put the contrary view in a local debate on assisted dying with Jo Cartwright from Dignity in Dying. He sets out his stall at http://www.iomtoday.co.im/news/Should-we-be-allowed-to.6537771.jp .
Poor man doesn’t seem to have new arguments since the retired Oxford psychologist Jeff Garland flattened him amicably enough in a Manx Radio debate a few years back, when a Tynwald Select Committee was gathering evidence for a possible Bill. But Peter’s a tryer, we should give him that.
The debate is being put on by Positive Action Group, at 7.30pm on September 27 at the Manx Legion Club in Douglas. More details on their website at http://positiveactiongroup.org/index.html .

Pruning flowers, appeasing deadheads

Keeping this blog is a bit like gardening. No, really.
When I started the thing my attitude was, leave it all untouched. If, a year later, something I wrote proves to be stupid, or a prediction way off, it shouldn’t matter. It’s supposed, after all, to be a record of what I observed on a particular day, so in the fullness of time it might turn out not to be the full picture.
Sadly, though I’m prepared to be that open and honest, let my mistakes stand along with the best stuff, allow anyone the freedom to comment or correct me and I will leave their comments intact, the world won’t let me. Not the Manx one anyway.
The thing is, this is an island where some folk have what William Burroughs used to call ‘The Right Virus’. It doesn’t matter about the evidence, it doesn’t matter about the civilised process whereby all ideas and things are constantly questioned in order that that which is faulty or no longer useful is stripped away and replaced by better ideas and things (at least until they, in turn, reveal faults and are revised, rebuilt or replaced).
No, you see, people with the Right Virus have faith. And furthermore, they have always run things, and have always been right, while you or I are wrong and are impertinent to ask questions. And that is that.
And people with the Right Virus also do not debate, or invite comment, or in any way engage with democracy, or science, and especially not things of the mind. Because, being Right Minded, they can never be wrong and subsequently do not need to.
The difficulty with all this is that if you are involved in a civic minded group, and invite someone with the Right Virus to come and speak to it on a topic of public concern, they won’t. Or more exactly, they expect to come along and give the same set talk they give to a few senile churchgoers who never read newspapers, then ask for contributions to their ‘good cause’, and finally leave, cash in hand, having said their piece but explained nothing.
They will not explain apparent anomalies in the things they do. In fact some will not answer questions at all, and none will entertain debate or helpful suggestions about possibly better ways to do things, even from those with decades of practical experience.
The point is, discussion of moral and social issues on the Isle of Man is based on a one way communication process, the sermon. Not even the lecture, following which the lecturer expects to take questions, or the seminar, at which the leader tries to get everyone talking, or just plain and open discussion based on the sensible notion that, individually, none of us can solve a social problem but, collectively, we might all contribute a little and get something good done.
And those with the Right Virus take something else from religious culture too. They brook no dissent, to the extent of informing the organisers of civic groups that, in order to have the dubious privilege of their presence, those organisers should first announce the Righteous’s appearance in terms which clearly indicate Divine Wisdom will be passed down, not social issues discussed, also refrain from all possible criticism of the Righteous, even to the extent of withdrawing past criticism, and finally ensure that all who might now, then or in future be possibly associated with the host civic group do the same. If you think I am joking you have obviously never met a Manx politician, civil servant or charity worker.
So, from time to time, I quietly prune a couple of the older items on the website. Not because my opinion has changed, not because the information proved inaccurate, not because of a legal threat, but to ensure that those prepared to at least try and hold together Manx civic society here have a slim chance of doing so.
It’s sad. It’s silly. But on an island run by superstitious village idiots, it’s just the way things are.

Keep Sunday Special - not Christian

There’s a fascinating rumour to the effect that the backlog of TT races is down to Christians who think the island stops and starts when they feel like it.
The first races should have begun last Saturday, but were postponed due to slightly damp weather in the morning. Plan B was to run a couple on Mad Sunday – so named because it’s traditionally when visitors have their own flat-out spin around the course with key sections kept one way by helpful coppers.
This is where the rumour starts. It’s known one favourite is in a team which won’t race on Sundays ‘on religious grounds’. So did they, along with local biblebashers who have form for complaining that punters at churches on the course are inconvenienced by speeding bikers, strike a deal with organisers who, frankly, seem to have lost all interest in our only internationally known attraction?
Whatever the truth, the effect is that the backlog is so bad that racing has been going on all day today to catch up on the schedule. In turn that’s caused a traffic logjam since mid-afternoon which isn’t expected to clear until maybe 10 PM. The island workforce (yes, we exist) were asked to either go home early or travel by public transport.
What public transport? On the Isle of Man we have an inadequate bus service and antique trams and trains run (very slowly and unsteadily) for tourists only at prices that average over £1 a mile at peak times.
If we get through today it will be due to the generally good nature of thousands of visiting bikers, plus local commuting drivers. Without widespread good will, you could be stuck at any one of the island’s junctions if no-one lets you in. The colour of traffic lights is irrelelevant too. You just follow the vehicle in front in a 5 MPH crawl, stopping every 10 metres as folk ahead wait for a space at road ends or turn-offs.
That we do cope, and folk do help each other through this, has nothing to do with religious morality. If anything, it demonstrates what a lie that is, and one we should bury fast.
So, while biblebashing professional racers see not racing on the very day when most semi-pro bike-racing happens as some new sort of ‘Christian witness’, can we trust them to behave responsibly the rest of the week?
I suspect not. I am reliably informed that one, having had a minor prang late last week, decided to take his bike out on an open public road to test it out after minor repairs. This godbotherer was clocked at 120 by one of those flashing speed warning thingies placed close to a built up area to warn you to slow down.
That’s 120, less than 100 metres from a 30 MPH sign, probably close to a school. Not on the closed TT circuit but on an ordinary road where any car pulling out of a side-road, any pedestrian wandering across to a house or the pub on the other side of the road, would stand no chance.
That deluded spookchaser may well believe the Lord is with him, but even his imaginary friend couldn’t stop a race bike that quickly.

Lies, more lies and moral cowardice

Since the row broke out a few weeks back because local Muslims want to meet in a ‘proper’ building instead of someone’s garage I've followed developments in the local press with interest.
It didn’t surprise me when the only Manx BNP member willing to identify himself joined in, or that my good mate Jim Hawkins made an honest and articulate case in opposition to a mosque – though I don’t share his opinion or fears.
It doesn’t surprise me that another letter was written by someone to timid to give his proper name or any of his address, yet claimed to speak for ‘others’. And I found it absolutely hilarious when, in a desperate attempt to boost numbers, there was even a letter (presumably dictated at a seance) from an objector who has been dead for years!
On a more serious note I was intrigued that no-one took up the gauntlet thrown down by veteran journalist Val Cottle, who asked, ‘Where is the moral leadership from the Lord Bishop, or other church or humanist groups, where is the rejection of such racist views from other politicians?’
Good question, Val. Wonder why nobody has answered it yet?
I knew some minority faiths had got together and penned a letter to the papers, then let the moment pass without agreeing the final wording. That’s a shame.
Churches Together in Mann? Forget it! What can you expect from a body where two ‘faith leaders’ both ring to check the other won’t be there before turning up to meetings where a maximum of four elderly blokes decide major statements on public morality representing ‘thousands’…. without daring to consult them?
And you can’t expect moral leadership anyway from a political squatter foisted on us by another country’s spook merchants, though this is usually the cue for a senior Anglican to try potting us secular types for small minded bigots, so the silence of Sentamu’s Apprentice was also curious.
Well, read http://www.iomtoday.co.im/news/Unholy-row-erupts-over-St.5321571.jp, and in particular the two additional pages, and all becomes clear. The Anglicans were about to sting the public for cash, so couldn’t have that spoiled by a public debate over religious buildings, privilege and the role religion plays, if any, in 21st century life.
On the strength of page 1, where it’s explained they’re ripping some pews out of the local cathedral to make a more flexible space, it seems fair enough. Yeah…. whatever. Do what you want with your playhouse, just don’t ask me to pay for it.
But then Canon Godfrey says, 'These maintenance costs can only be justified if the building is made to work for its living.'That means making it available to more than just the Anglican worshipping community’.
Hmm!
It’s when you get to page 2 and they refer to concerts, exhibitions and school visits before going down the rosy heritage and public facility path you realise this means a drain on the public purse, not just begging from local companies with a crap public image. When you think it through you realise there will be bids for cash from the heritage, conservation and education public pots, and that's just for starters.
In fact, given that at the last budget we were told no government departments are being allowed new projects, it looks like the future ‘public consultation’ referred to on the Cathedral changes is a sham exercise to rubber stamp plans already privately made between the churches, education and heritage bodies. No wonder the government is closing down public scrutiny of or participation in Manx heritage and public education (see http://www.gov.im/lib/news/registries/educationcouncil.xml and http://www.gov.im/lib/news/cso/reviewoftheconst.xml).
Ah well, bent business as usual with the Manx government and churches then. No wonder they dare not comment on real religious affairs for fear of us laughing.

From Third World to Romania, with ignorance

Watching the third and final part of the excellent BBC 2 series The Lost World of Communism last night, something occurred to me which really puts some Manx ‘Overseas Aid’ into perspective.
One of the topics in a reasonably (but not well) researched programme about Romania was Ceacescu’s appalling attitude to abortion, which was not only illegal but carried severe prison sentences for women who obtained them. Even fervent Romanian nationalists interviewed agreed this was wrong. Thus one of the earliest reforms was to liberalise the laws, and make legal the actions of doctors who had discreetly carried them out for years at great personal risk as a matter of conscience.
Compare this to the Isle of Man, where there has still never been a legal abortion even though the law now allows them. Only last year a Nobles consultant legally sanctioned to offer them said he has never had to perform one, which is frankly unbelievable in a community of 80,000.
From the experience of friends I also know that when routine tests are carried out for higher risk pregnant women close to the end of first trimester it is common that the results are ‘lost’ somewhere between here and Liverpool, and specialists are ‘unavailable’ for advice. Thus access to abortion is denied by bureaucratic sleight of hand.
Meanwhile evangelical charities run by people who have tried to keep this island in the dark ages have the gall to ask for funds to ‘help’ Romanians.
No wonder Romanians I speak to, quite rightly, regard us as a pathetic third world exporter of superstitious village idiots, creepily similar to the pair they shot in December 1989.

Partners in crime

An interesting amendment has been made to the Gender Recognition Bill curently going through Tynwald.
Interesting in that firstly it confirms the prejudices of the local clergy and their lack of interest in the institution of marriage or helping adults maintain stable relationships, secondly it confirms that politicians are helping them to perpetuate these prejudices under the pretence of respecting religious belief, and thirdly it suggests clergy have access to information about individuals which is, by law, confidential.
The Bill, as it suggests, is to give some legal protection to folk who’ve changed gender. Mostly mundane stuff like housing, pensions, employment and so on.
It begins with the following clauses:-

“1. (1) The Chief Registrar shall maintain in the General Registry a register to be called the Gender Recognition Register.
(2) The form in which the Gender Recognition Register is to be maintained shall be determined by the Chief Registrar.
(3) The Gender Recognition Register shall not be open to public inspection or search.”

So, basically, anyone who has changed gender need not tell the world about it in order to prevent the kneejerk prejudices, but the info is tucked away on a confidential register just to ensure no problems getting a passport, benefits or whatever.
Then, back in October, the parson’s pal, Anne Craine, agreed in the monthly Council of Ministers meeting to introduce an amendment. As recently moved in the House, this reads:

“No clergyman is obliged to solemnise the marriage of a person whose gender has become the acquired gender in accordance with the Gender Recognition Act 2008.”

What’s interesting is that wording has changed slightly from the COMIN minutes last October, when:

“Council further agreed that paragraph 2 of Schedule 2, be amended to exempt a clergyman from the obligation to solemnise the marriage of a person if the clergyman reasonably believes that the person has changed gender.”

Well, no suprises that the voodoo pimps still want to inflict their flat-earth prejudices on the rest of us.
No suprises that they can meet government in private to get their way, and get fellow zombie-worshippers amongst the political dregs to help them with legal opt-outs from their obligations as decent human beings.
One question though.
How can a voodoo pimp ‘reasonably believe’ that someone has changed gender unless someone else provides him, illegally, with the information from a confidential register?

A New Year Resolution - of sorts

There’s an interesting debate about morality kicking off on the PTT Blog at http://ptt-blog.blogspot.com/2008/12/irresponsible-people.html. Maybe it’s a kneejerk thing (end of the year, New Year Resolutions and all that) but I was thinking about the same topic last night, albeit in a lighter-hearted way guided by re-reading an old favourite, Quentin Crisp.
I was going to announce as my big New Year Resolution that I refuse ever to take religionists or politicians seriously again.’Get a grip’, I was thinking – concerned at the way in which my posts are getting grumpier. ‘Time to lighten up, mock mercilessly, point and laugh by all means, but don’t get so wound up over the immorality and hypocrisy of people we know are just rotten through and through.’
This time last year I’d decided that in 2008 I was going to meet the religionists and politicos halfway. Join with them on earnest committees to tackle homelessness, prison conditions, poverty or whatever and maybe, just maybe, there’d be a point in the middle where we could make common cause and talk.
I now admit that was a waste of time. They were, and will always be, nothing more than two-faced, triple-crossing neanderthals out to manipulate misery for their own ends. They cannot even spell ‘humanity’, never mind celebrate or embrace it.
Sadly, middle of the road humanists are little better. Either too scared to upset the neighbours or unable to stop looking at the world unconsciously in ‘religious’ terms.
Far better to play on religionist hypocrisy and hoist them by their own petards wherever possible. Chip away relentlessly at their pretensions to the moral high ground. Poke, point, laugh, run.
Do not get involved. Do not debate in arenas which they control. Pick a time and place when the odds are stacked in your favour, let them have it full blast and vanish before the smoke clears.
'Semiotic guerilla warfare' was the phrase we idealistic young media types used to bandy around. We understand how the media works, where stories come from and how they appear in the press. We know how to use images and words, and how to dismantle myths, spread doubt where belief is testified but insecurity lurks beneath the surface.
When posting the link to my old story about Pat Kneen and the Manx Death With Dignity campaign I realised something else too. All this concern about morality and seriousness, trying to engage with pathological liars on their own terms, and I’ve lost something.
That assisted suicide campaign, despite the (literally) life or death subject matter, the brushes with corrupt local government and law and so on, was a joy from start to finish. We lost all fear and hardly ever stopped laughing, and THAT is what I want to get back to.
In 2009 I'm no longer getting serious. I'm getting happy.
I just want to laugh ignorance off the planet.