Silly Bankers

In his diaries, the late and gloriously camp Kenneth Williams often used the euphemism 'Having a Barclays' for the act of masturbation, and it seems to me no accident that 'Barclays' or 'banker' continues as handy rhyming slang for a person who is stupid or of low character.
Barclays always was, and still is, an awful bank, and it's a pretty good bet that wherever you find sweatshops, child labour, dodgy arms deals or 21^st century slavery you will find a helpful man from that establishment if you look hard enough.

Which makes it even funnier when the PR department for the local Barclays tries to intimate it has a cuddly management who care about the dispossessed of the world and want to make things right. Now, on reading this sledgehammer-subtle piece of hackery (see http://www.iomtoday.co.im/news/isle-of-man-news/recognised-for-operation-christmas-child-efforts-1-6347796 ) I don't think even for a second Barclays actually gave money to these chancers, but it's doubly funny when the muppets who run the gaff fall for a scam which shouldn't have fooled anybody apart from home-schooled Alabama rednecks. And, of course, triple funny when reading the comments and realising that island educational standards are even lower than Alabama.

Oh, if you don't already know why I'm alternately laughing my socks off and banging my head against a wall in sheer disbelief, just go to https://sites.google.com/site/occalert/ .

And believe me, as someone who's monitored this and similar scams since Franklin Graham and his shady peers started thinking them up, the OCC Alert site is remarkably polite.  

When you start to find stories elsewhere of, for example, Franklin Graham trying to persuade George Bush to send bibles instead of aid to saturation-bombed Iraq, or Samaritan's Purse telling victims of a South American disaster that they could only shelter in tents subsidised by US Aid if they attended Baptist services and effectively renounced their Catholic upbringings, then you might see why even the Southern Baptist Convention wants nothing to do with Graham any more.

I would like to believe that in 2014 the island can finally wise up to such nonsense. But reading the inane comments I know that is still far too much to ask.

But I still wish you all the best for 2014, in the hope that at least some of us can both laugh and rise above such idiocy.

Funny......absurd even......but just not fun

Someone close to me came home giggling today, after hearing a Creationist refugee from non-sectarian 'Norn Eylan' claim that I wrecked his chance to fleece Manx tinfoil-hatters - sorry, that's 'organise a challenging weekend of seminars from an eminent geologist'...no, sorry, wrong audience again, maybe that should be 'offer a prayerful exploration of alternatives to the atheistic theory of evolution for the benefit of true believers'........

Oh, you probably guessed it!

Actually, all I did was send a letter to the papers a few months ago pointing out to any churchgoer about to pay to hear a career creationist that said tinfoil-hatter also believes his Imaginary Friend commands bigots to execute gay people.

I wouldn't presume to tell anyone capable of believing six impossible things before breakfast to abandon their 'sincere beliefs'. There is very little point arguing with anyone who lives in a hermetic thought-bubble within an alternate universe, so I never bother. But even they have a public duty to consider if their odd ideas actually excuse genocide in what the rest of us recognise as the real world.

It appears that this odd character (clearly unable to distinguish between the results of several centuries of rigorously tested hard scientific exploration and the amanita muscarita-influenced ramblings of bronze age goat-herders) also does not understand why such views might be a problem.

My spy on the spot observed that he is considered an oddball even amongst his funny friends, so did not attempt enlightenment. For myself, I do not intend to follow the tongue-in-cheek example of experimental artist Joseph Beuys, who once performed a piece entitled Explaining art to a dead hare. It isn't just that it would be pointless, because I quite like the absurd.

It just wouldn't be fun.

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?

Do E Mek E Larrff, Nelson?

As someone who during the 1980's (and even the late 1990's) got grief for constantly pointing out that our finance sector was originally built on helping apartheid era South Africa avoid economic sanctions I had to raise an ironic eyebrow at

http://www.isleofman.com/News/details/60035/island-s-south-african-community-pay-tribute-to-mandela .

So would that be the same Terry Toohey who (prior to being offered a job here by a former punter) ran publicity at Sun City, the notorious 'Seff Effrican' whites-only venue no international entertainer worth watching wanted to play?

And in the late 1980's didn't the Manx government, having just created a tourist policy based on subtly attracting ageing Brit racists to 'Look forward to going back' , then come up with a new resident policy intended to entice thick and wealthy 'white flighters' fleeing countries about to experience democracy?

What sniggering noise?

Me?

Strategy: Stop Art

Just when you think Douglas Degeneration Parsnips (having collaborated with the Department of Home Affairs to prevent free speech in communal spaces) cannot do more to screw up the quality of Manx life, this (see

http://www.iomtoday.co.im/news/isle-of-man-news/market-hall-to-become-base-for-arts-degrees-1-6282129 ) is announced.

Oh joy! A perfectly respectable refuge for low rent bohemians (not to mention a treasure chest of arcane knowledge you cannot find anywhere else locally) is being swept away, just so arty upper middle class dullards who are too arrogant to work in the real world (and too thick to know they have nothing to contribute to the arts) have yet another place to play.

How dumb. How utterly, utterly depressing!

If you cannot be bothered to root through the whole PR sick-bag, read this and try not to puke...

“Speaking on behalf of Douglas Corporation, Chris Pycroft said: ‘It is a really exciting prospect to work with the college in a partnership between the council and the college to breathe new life back into the Market Hall and make it a place really for the whole community, to start to be creative and think creatively.’

He added: ‘The project should allow the market operation to continue, not in the same format as it is at the moment, but at weekends and holiday times, but with additional uses happening in the building as well.’”

Oh............. piss off and get a proper job, Pie-Chart, I'm sick of us taxpayers subsidising anti-democratic clowns like you.

Has anyone actually talked to any of the island's art veterans? Has nobody noticed that internationally known Manx born sculptors, conceptual artists and painters cannot actually get employed to teach arts locally?

Has nobody asked why Manx fine arts students almost never go on to reputable British courses? Could that be because fine arts was phased out of local college courses two decades back in favour of 'practical' arts (graphic design, fashion...) taught by losers who couldn't get an industry job even when there was an industry, when just three decades back a lowly foundation diploma from the Manx FE college was almost a passport to Goldsmiths, St. Martins or even the RCA?

Even leaving aside 'career' arty types, I can remember in the mid-1980's spending free afternoons from split shift 'day jobs' browsing two incredible book stalls in that market, and amongst the usual airport novels and conspiracy theorists discovering a shelf-load of not only Michael Moorcock and other new sci-fi writers, but rarities ranging from Algernon Blackwood and H.P. Lovecraft through to Henry Treece (a mid-twentieth century New Apocalyptic chum of Dylan Thomas and Kenneth Rexroth, known to school-kids of my age for his Celtic twilight stuff, but also the author of adult versions through which Moorcock and others discovered something more imaginative could be written even in Cold War conformist Britain).

Certainly, the little community of truly knowledgeable Manx art and book-sellers which existed until around 2000 has been replaced by anal 'collectors' who know the investment value of everything and the intellectual value of nothing, but that is not the point.

I was back there, by chance, last weekend, and it was the same as ever. A bunch of wheelchair users having an animated meeting in one corner, an unpretentious caff and small shops, the book stalls.....

The source material is still there to be discovered by any chance explorer willing to risk 50p, but we are now to lose, forever, the only place on the island comparable to, say Liverpool Whitechapel in 1979 with Bill Drummond and Teardrop Explodes chatting to Pete Burns in Brian's Caff, Burnsy on a lunch break from Zoo Records, the legendary punk venue Eric's 50 yards away. And, yes, even the School of Language, Dreams and Pun with the statue of Jung (where the kind of pretentious rich thickos DDP want to attract hung out) got blitzed in the 'regeneration' of the area, and Eric's, having been shut on health and safety grounds, is now a Cavern museum for Japanese tourists while the much bigger and more important 'Mersey scene' of the late 1970's and early 1980's is wiped from 'official' Liverpool history.

But doesn't that just prove the point?

What you actually need in order for creativity to run riot is a low rent space full of odd source material which can become the stuff of new and better dreams, and for rich poseurs and bureaucrats with pebble-dash for brains to butt out.

By the way, returning to the matter of free speech in public places, you may want to take a look at

http://www.secularism.org.uk/news/2013/11/feel-free-to-annoy-me--new-campaign-launched-to-protect-free-expression , a defence of the concept in which even the National Secular Society and Christofascist loons like the Christian Institute are united.

Because as the NSS point out:

“The proposed new law is contained in the Anti-Social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Bill . Clause 1 of the bill introduces "Injunctions to Prevent Nuisance and Annoyance" (IPNAs), which seek to suppress anything deemed to be potentially "annoying", however vague the justification. IPNAs will replace Anti-Social Behaviour Orders (ASBOs), which had been introduced under the Labour government.

Whilst in order for an ASBO to be issued, a court has to be satisfied that someone had at least caused or threatened to cause "harassment, alarm or distress" to someone else and that the order was "necessary" to protect the victim, the proposed new law would allow a court to impose sweeping curbs on people's liberty if it thinks they are "capable of causing nuisance or annoyance to any person", and so long as it is "just and convenient" to do so.”

Anything their colonial cousins in Westminster think a wizard wheeze, our chumps in the Wedding Cake and their (Westminster trained) 'expert advisors' are bound to swallow whole, without even a tentative “Are you sure about this?”, never mind “Has anyone actually thought this twaddle through?”

I would be willing to bet that at some point in the next year the DHA (or perhaps even their house-trained monkey, Juan Watterson) announces plans for IPNAs . So follow the UK campaign now, so that when (or perhaps if) we get a public consultation over here you can make informed comment.

P.S. The title of this rant is a pun on Reg Quayle's groundbreaking Strategy:Get Art campaign in the early 1980's, which put on (in empty shops during the worst recession the island had then seen) the work of truly inspiring Manx art experimentalists like Kevin Atherton. As folk like Reg never get credit for keeping this septic isle out of the Dark Ages during the knock-on effects of Thatcherism, and nobody in the current Manx government arts administration will even have heard of the project I thought I should mention it.

Food for thought

You can tell Christmas is close when Manx religiots and their government chums, along with the business sector, kick off a bogus charity initiative.

Take http://www.iomtoday.co.im/news/isle-of-man-news/food-to-be-collected-for-the-island-s-needy-1-6280278 for example, which as usual, avoids all the important questions.

For example, what percentage of material in landfill is foodstuffs? 25%... 50%.... more?

Obviously, even with highly sophisticated 'just in time' computerised ordering, major supermarkets operating on the island cannot avoid throwing away food. Tons of it ... probably daily. They cannot even reveal how much waste there is or make some deal to give it all away without lots of awkward questions. They are, after all, businesses, not charities or the social services. The real problem is, neither are Manx charities or social services.

We also cannot make the island self-sufficient, and to my mind half the problem is that government refuse to admit they are not trying - just pretending - to. Despite the homely cover story, Manx agriculture (our only real nationalised industry) is (just like its old school communist role model) geared up to high price export, not the home market, and food fairs etc. are just a way of getting us to market test and subsidise this.

But it gets worse....

To my certain knowledge a large supermarket chain gave a Manx religious charity as much leftover food as they could carry every weekend for over 30 years on the understanding it would be discreetly redistributed to the needy. Also to my certain knowledge that charity did not distribute most of what it was given (because their workers regarded many potential beneficiaries as too feckless) but regularly gave away box-loads of tinned goods to well-heeled worshippers instead. In time, after successive Saturdays on which the charity could not even be bothered to turn up and collect it (but still blocked an attempt by a pensioners support group to use it instead) the supermarket broke off the arrangement.

So, seems to me there is a simple logistical mismatch here. People dispossessed by the government of the island where they were born lack food or the means to pay for it. Supermarket chains tied in by necessity to UK and European models of fast, massive food distribution and sale must throw away tons of the stuff and cannot be seen to give it away instead. In particular they throw away enough fresh fruit and veg to feed an army of pensioners and other paupers. A government agricultural policy is based on marketing and exporting Manx luxury foodstuffs hardly anybody local likes or can afford, but not the production of cheap staple foods for local consumption.

So, (sighs deeply), rather than untangle this mess or put things right...

Supermarkets (basing their campaign on another UK idea that is not locally appropriate) encourage shoppers to buy extra stuff they would never eat themselves which (under the supervision of a social services network which isn't social … or of service .... or a network) is handed to religious Klingons who have already proved they are too idle, incompetent or bigoted to distribute it and .... need I go on?

It's like a massive pass-the-parcel game amongst career chancers and the socially irresponsible, but with rotting fruit.

Here's an idea.. why not buy up all the old eggs and rotting tomatoes on the island and throw them at twerps and hypocrites who are also well past their sell-by date? That won't solve anything either, but it would be fun, and one less trip to the landfill at public expense.

Public health notice

Some regulars have been asking where the hell I've been lately (though they put it more politely).
Sorry about that. In addition to the usual unavoidable engagements with 'real life' I decided it was about time I updated my ancient PC, and thought I'd picked the best time, when I'd be able to deal with any teething troubles.
Ha!
Inevitably all my troubles only began towards the end of the handy slot for solving them, and have dragged on ever since. Hopefully now behind me, but as a few likely stories and topics have been and gone while I was kicking my heels I'll post a current one before things can go pear-shaped all over again.
Check http://www.gov.im/news/2013/nov/13/west-midlands-quality-review-service-presents-its-review-approach-to-tynwald-members/ , which was posted on the government website on Friday afternoon. Usual tactic when a government department wants a necessary announcement (but potentially awkward to them or useful to critics) to be missed.
Note in particular:
“As well as the announced meeting with Tynwald Members, each WMRQS review visit will include meetings with groups who can represent the views of patients and carers who use the services being reviewed and meetings with patients who have used the services recently. Questionnaires will also be available in the relevant service areas, which patients and carers can use to tell the reviewers about their experiences. These questionnaires will also be available electronically. Guidance for the public has been developed including how WMQRS will engage with patients, carers and relatives.”
In short, an external independent review is needed to silence all the local grumbles. In order that it says what the Health Department need it to say they'll do their best to make sure the only members of the public who can comment are their tame 'patient and carer representatives'.
If you are a genuine, independent member of the public who wants to at least try and get your experience or views to the independent reviewers, you are going to have to either go up to Nobles and wander around until you can find a questionnaire or keep a look-out for it on the government website, probably tucked away somewhere under either the Health Department pages or the Public Consultations page.
Good Luck with that.