Beardie bampot caught with pants on fire - again

Stephen Green, National Director (and some say only real member) of Christian Voice continues to claim that he and fellow fundie crackpots made Classic FM drop an advertising promotion for Eric Idle’s Not the Messiah film (see 'Idle vice' from last week for explanation).
This even after the station’s MD painstakingly put the record straight following Green’s boasts earlier this week.
Just last night the Birdshit (that’s a reference to a 'divine judgement’ delivered on TV by a seagull at one of his protests, by the way) sent his supporters an e-mail claiming:

”As you will already know if you emailed Darren Henley, the Managing Director of Classic FM, they quickly dropped the blasphemous 'Not the Messiah'. If you emailed or phoned or wrote, well done for standing up for righteousness.
There was apparently a storm of protest, and the result is a triumph for prayer and action, in which we give God all the glory.
The atheists, of course, are furious. After crowing over the weekend that Classic FM would take no notice of us, now they are moaning that Britain's leading classical music station gave in to us Christians.
Darren Henley is putting a brave face on it, of course, but the reality is, all and everything to do with Not the Messiah was expunged from their website within two hours of the office opening on Monday. Just to be clear, none of the false rumours which Mr Henley speaks of in his email to those who complained originated with us. And to give credit where it is due, he is right that in the run-up to Christmas, the station is a joy to listen to with Christian music dominating the output.
PRAY: Thank God for bringing this matter to the light and for this crucial victory.
The film of Not the Messiah was shown in cinemas last night. PRAY that the turnout was poor.”

Now why would these bampots need to pray? Surely, if their campaign was so devastating, there would be no audience anyway.
Certainly, Green’s boasts got a rise out of some in the secular humanist community - as it might, knowing Green’s previous success in stopping funds to a Scottish cancer charity that ‘offended’ him.
For example, the British Humanist Association put out a press release regretting Classic FM’s apparent cave-in to fundie bullying, and the station certainly took a stack of e-mails from outraged atheists who thought the same.
This caused Darren Henley, MD at Classic FM, to set the record straight in an e-mail by reply in which he said:

“Following an email campaign, a number of incorrect views about Classic FM’s involvement in this event appear to have gathered momentum in the online community and I hope that you will allow me to take this opportunity to correct them:
1. Classic FM broadcast an advertising campaign for this event which ran from last Wednesday until last weekend. The station also ran a competition to win tickets to the event on the station’s website which also ended last weekend. No further advertising activity was booked to run either on-air or online after the weekend.
2. At no point did Classic FM ever intend to broadcast this event on air, nor did it ever enter into any negotiations to broadcast the event on air, so any assertion that any programme content has been withdrawn from broadcast is simply incorrect.
3. Classic FM has never been a financial supporter of this event and nor was it ever the promoter of the live event – and that relationship has in no way changed over the past week.”

Now, who do you believe, Green or Henley?
And to end on a positive note, doesn’t this also prove that, whenever Green and his ilk try to stop us giggling at the more lame-brained aspects of ‘belief’, we can not only stop him, but enjoy doing so?

On the buses

You might want to take a look on the Guardian website at http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/feb/05/atheist-bus-christian-response , which has a story on a counter-campaign by the Christian lunatic fringe against the ‘probably no god’ bus adverts.
You might also like to join me in a running joke.
In a previous life Rev George Hargreaves used to be George Hargreaves, a record producer most famous for Sinitta’s gay anthem, ‘So Macho’. That much is fairly common knowledge.
What isn’t is that Hargreaves moved to the Isle of Man on the profits. Then his life went downhill so fast that he took up with the local Pentecostalists.
I’ve always maintained that as Hargreaves ‘finding God’ can only be blamed on the poor Manx nightlife of the time, we owe the world a debt. So, like the guy in Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy who makes it his life’s work to track down and insult everyone in the universe, I have a mission to apologise to the world for the distress the Isle of Man has caused by unleashing this evangelical fruitcake.
What I do is, every time I hear of a publication which mentions Hargreaves, I write in and apologise on behalf of the entire Manx population. As you’ll see, I’ve done it on the Guardian piece.
As a former DJ (of the cheesiest 70’s ilk), I’ve always said Tony Brown, our Chief Minister, is the perfect man to make these apologies for us, but as he’s either too busy, too drunk or too illiterate I’ve taken up the baton.
If anyone else on the Isle of Man wants to join in, I’d be glad of the support.

Comedy Hour

I've been slow to alert folk to a fun event on Manx Radio last Thursday.
My good mate Andrew Dixon, Vice-Chair of Isle of Man Freethinkers, was called into the studio for a debate nominally over the atheist bus adverts. In the faith corner to tell us all why it was a sin and we will go to hell in a handbasket was Peter Murcott.
You can hear the results at http://www.manxradio.com/audiovault/HeadsTHURS-1.wma.
For the benefit of off-island readers (and possibly on-island readers too) I should explain that Murcott is the local equivalent of Christian Voice's Stephen Green. He's a veteran of local campaigns going back to Keep Sunday Special and was even, I believe, the leader of a Manx chapter of Mary Whitehouse's old Festival of Light gang.
As you'll hear, he likes to present himself as a legal authority, though he's never practiced law. He did recently retire from teaching O & A level law at the local 'tech. Also to his credit, while his biblical arguments against Sunday trading fell on deaf political ears, his arguments on behalf of shop and other workers got them a fair deal when the Manx law was amended.
That said, it's hard to take anyone seriously when he mixes quotations from Genesis with legal judgements and has the most prolific whiskers since Biggles Flies Undone.
Debating Murcott is almost a rite of passage for Freethinkers, and by accident he always sounds off about subjects he knows nothing of when his opponent is, coincidentally, there because they take an informed interest.
Previously, for example, on assisted suicide he drew Jeff Garland, who, being a modest bloke who rarely uses his doctor title, Murcott didn't know was a retired clinical psychologist with not just extensive experience counselling the terminally ill but a couple of books out on the topic. So when Murcott fumed that the ill and elderly would feel terrorised into taking the tablets Jeff amicably flattened him.
This time was as funny. Poor old Peter was not to know that, long before a current stable of businesses, Andrew was a post-grad student on a project led by Richard Dawkins. Thus not the best person to tell 'authoritively' that evolution is poor science.
Listen, laugh and learn!