Criminal classes

If we were to take this (see http://www.isleofman.com/News/details/61318/manx-and-welsh-restorative-schemes-win-prisoner-rehabilitation-award ) at face value the local prison service has sharpened up its act with the help of some concerned and altruistic citizenry.
No, I thought that too.
So, no surprise then to find that Prison Works Isle of Man is based at The Alpha Centre, Broadway, Douglas, and according to the entry for number 1120 on the Manx charity register exists:
“to serve the spiritual, emotional, social and physical needs of offenders, ex-offenders, victims and the families of all three as well as those at risk of offending and other members of the Island Community as well as persons or groups off-island as are identified and approved on a case by case basis. Objectives include advancement of education, victim awareness, restorative justice, employment both paid and voluntary and resettlement and after-care.”

Oh joy of joys, another bogus charity run by Broadway Batwits (who, historically, tend to be rather better at hiding criminals than reforming them, by the way).

Personally, I would have thought that any contact with the type of intellectually-challenged religionistas who run this scheme could be classed as cruel and unusual punishment, and that if the future of any ex-cons might depend on them it would be nothing short of a national disgrace.

Surely the recidivism often attributed to the criminal class must be far exceeded by that of the average evangelical. And for the benefit of those who can't hold their noses long enough to look, I (who have) can also reveal that they fall into two clear subdivisions.

On the one hand, there are the 'rightists' (those who believe themselves so right about everything they never stop shouting long enough to listen to another view - and certainly not hard fact).

These are otherwise known as pastors or preachers. They tell everyone what to do and live off dumber people's money. Failing that, they invent reasons why the state should pay them to tell others what to do, on the pretence that such victims need their witless “help”.

On the other hand, we find self-pitying losers who refuse to take responsibility for themselves or anything else, who think everything in the world is somebody else's fault and that that is enough of an excuse to skive, live off family, charity and the state, and generally to sit about with a digit up the backside spouting the most banal racist, homophobic and sexist twaddle.

These make up the congregation, the preached to..... or as we smart-arse atheists have dubbed them, the sheeple.

No wonder, then, that serving convicts who have dropped out of any other education, work or rehabilitation scheme the prison can offer, ex-cons who have worn out the patience of anyone they used to call family or friends (too dumb to stack supermarket shelves and not even house-trained enough to clean toilets) or just failed criminals in general find religion so attractive. For them it is (lack of) business as usual.

Well, I am sure these misfits will be very happy together. And if they kept themselves to themselves (and more importantly funded themselves) it would be nobody else's business.
Problem is, they never will, though constantly poking their noses into ours; all the while having the bare-faced cheek to keep asking for our money to do it.

Saving for the nation - or depriving it?

This attempt by Manx Nasty Heretics (see http://www.isleofman.com/News/article.aspx?article=44826 ) to grab a £1.2M legacy left to the community by a well meaning local made me laugh.

It is not just the pathetic attempt to pretend the general public will have a say. It is not even the way a hick judge can be trusted to pass somebody else’s entire life work over to the biggest drain on national and natural resources.

What made me laugh is remembering that some years ago I saw the will of a local collector who knows and despises this racket even more than I do. And, to be fair, he had good reason.

Three times, to my knowledge, their pettiness, ignorance and incestuous protection rackets deprived him or his family of an income, and in the process deprived the island of one of its most important historical buildings and the two finest monthly records of true cultural life it has ever had. As none of the national treasures in question actually passed to either Manx National Heritage or a competent party, all three are simply gone for ever.

Knowing this, and also knowing that the heritage mafia have ways of persuading people to hand over their property, with recourse to quite thuggish legal action if necessary, he set out to make an absolutely bullet-proof will. This ensures that when he finally pops his clogs the island’s least competent guardians of antiquities cannot get their grubby mitts on a substantial hoard of Manx archive material which has been freely offered to genuine researchers, but never has, and never will be, available to heavily government subsidised vandals who would probably flog it for a few crates of Special Brew (or whatever Manx culture-sepulchral throwbacks drink).

Some of the island’s finest legal minds (and there are not many) worked on a document which ensures that valuable treasures are only ever passed down to trustworthy genuine local historians and groups, and that before receiving them they sign binding legal documentation which ensures that should they ever work or accept assistance from MNH (or any individual who, in turn, does so) then the trustees seize back the goods and pass them on to a more deserving recipient.

As well as being legally watertight, it is also quite a funny and scathing document, and even the rumours of it set other local historians and collectors to thinking about similar action. In the process valuable, totally irreplaceable items of Manx cultural heritage (including books, audio tapes and film of the last Manx language speakers, artworks, original manuscripts by Victorian and Edwardian folk archivists and many other fine things) have been preserved for the Manx people, by ensuring that they can never – ever – pass to the government’s appointed trustees. In many cases the keepers of such treasures will never even let MNH or the Manx government know that they exist – at least until such time as the island is run by saner folk who would know what to do with them.

When Jesus saves everyone gets screwed over

I have to giggle and groan sympathetically at this (see http://www.iomtoday.co.im/news/isle-of-man-news/give_up_bags_for_lent_1_4273789 ) for several reasons.
Firstly, because it nicely illustrates the difficulties faced by a non-religious person trying to do something right on the Isle of Man. All a self-congratulatory Christian chancer has to do to get branded a ‘good person’ is wave a cross about a bit and mention Jesus. Anyone else actually has to do good work, and without the obligatory nod to Jesus Freakery it never gets recognised as good anyway.
But also because it is a prime example of the dangers of government-run pseudo-charities, slave labour schemes and co-operating with evangelical bigots in order to get your message across.
Just to ‘deconstruct’ things and make it all a little clearer….
Muriel was one of the founder members of Isle of Man Freethinkers, so having to link the campaign to a smug religious orgy of ‘self-denial’ must make her grit her teeth. Though on the other hand, as ‘unfashionable’ class warriors point out, for all the worthiness and common sense behind them green campaigns and campaigners can also be fuelled by a smugness and tendency to perpetuate prejudices of class, (perhaps less consciously) race and the legacies of colonialism which have never gone away. Attitudes and prejudices whose most common exponents are evangelical Christians.
Then there is the problem of government run pseudo-charities. Having a dialogue with government is one thing, allowing your charity or community campaign to be used as a career springboard for chancers looking for a cosy government contract, or for civil servants to dictate your local policies in return for a seat at the table with them (which is way too common in a Manx ’Third Sector’ chiefly administrated by civil servants), or just allowing your charity to be used as ‘proof’ of the forward thinking of the Manx government in return for a government grant to your UK parent…?
Can any member of the public take your campaigns seriously if even you don’t?
Prison slave labour schemes – another bugbear of mine. See the Campaign Against Prison Slavery link to the right for a fuller picture, but the simple fact is this. The ‘punishment’ of a prisoner is to be deprived of liberty. End of.
Rehabilitation which involves work schemes – especially on the Isle of Man – is a sick joke. If you want to teach somebody to have some dignity by holding down a job and paying their way in society instead of robbing – fine. But the point is that employment is based on an exchange of ‘goods’, so if you ‘work’ you get paid.
Well informed prison charities (i.e. none that can operate on the Isle of Man) have suggested schemes whereby a prisoner works for a ‘proper’ company and is paid a reasonable wage. As it’s unhelpful or undesirable for them to have that much cash in prison, the money can then be banked in an account used to address practical problems when they get out – for example to set them up with accommodation. Alternatively, it could go straight to their family so the prisoner has the self-respect of knowing they are supporting them – legitimately – while inside.
Curiously, neither large companies nor the faith-based hypocritical wowsers who run ‘rehabilitation’ on the Isle of Man want to know about that. No short term profit for them, you see. Better, like Shoprite, to get a product (which only benefits you) made free (and even with public donations), then latch on to the publicity generated by a Department of Home Affairs which rather than preventing crime perpetuates it – even to the extent of nurturing the next generation of criminals.
Co-operating with evangelical bigots? St Thomas’s, by virtue of having the ‘right’ to appoint deluded loons (sorry ‘practicing Christians’) as staff which the current Diocesan representatives on the school board insist on exercising, has a head teacher who takes flat-earth superstition seriously. His predecessor was a decent middle-of-the-road Anglican, but when he retired no Anglican teacher wanted the job so rather than give it to a reputable professional the Diocese picked a Broadway Baptist punter, reputedly a creationist with equally startling views on most things. Given that some of that tribe are millenarians (a Christian subculture that thinks Armageddon is imminent and you should do nothing to stop it) he may even believe environmentalism is a distraction of the Devil.
Fair play to any non-religious person who wants a better island and world and engages with this cretinous, deep-rooted bigotry and nonsense to try and get it. Personally though, my nod to a ridiculous Christian tradition is to give up self-flagellation for Lent.
And after Easter? Well, long time until Saturnalia in December, but, with some effort, I am sure I can find ways to knock out my inner policeman and actually enjoy the process of bringing misanthropic vacuity to its knees – while simultaneously encouraging everyone else to get off them.

Government 'advice' from the thick and the dead

I had to laugh at http://www.gov.im/lib/news/cso/playapartinpubli.xml. I know by now you’ve read this in what passes for a local press, but I feel obliged to quote from the original, as presented to the press to regurgitate whole. Because, unlike certain public notices (see (Oh ‘L’) someone in the Chief Sickbag’s office WILL check closely, and if ‘independent’ reports are cut, so future government advertising may be.
This kind offer, on the surface at least, invites mere plebs to become public representatives on advisory bodies. Except, as anyone who’s ever encountered either the drawn-out, secretive and (frankly) dishonest application procedure or the kind of freaks who end up on these committees can tell you, it does not.
The thing is, the Chief Sickbag’s office draws up a list of ‘suitable’ candidates (generally over-the-hill figures from the ‘special interest’ groups who civil servants have accepted ‘free lunches’ from over the years) and the current one was agreed with the last Council of Ministers. This is only vaguely hinted at in any COMIN minutes, because the Chief Sickbag writes them.
Procedure requires that there is then a’public invitation’, unwelcome responses to which inevitably get ‘lost’ before the Chief Sickbag presents the names of those appointed to a future COMIN meeting to rubberstamp. In the case of the public bodies in theory considered later, the process is even more opaque. Frankly, if you can count to ten, haven’t subsidised a ski holiday for a senior government figure and/or aren’t gaga already, don’t waste a stamp or rack up a phone bill.
For example, I remember talking to one MNH member with enough self-respect to step down before his short term memory was completely shot (unlike, for example, an old biddy on another cultural advisory body who was marked present at meetings for around two years even as staff in her nursing home tied her into her chair to prevent her wandering off). He swore that, at one point, some members were so sedated and the need to rush new policy through so urgent that their silence was recorded as votes for the motion. I even wonder if, like Jeremy Bentham, the stuffed bodies of deceased members are wheeled in to make up a quorum, though I doubt if they’d be marked “present but not voting” as Bentham famously is at UCL meetings marking major anniversaries.
There was also the day that a senior figure in the heritage racket was rescued in Strand Street by a concerned bypasser, having not set foot there since the first mid-80’s redevelopment. Even as he was escorted onto the nearest bus back to Arcadia, he was still muttering ‘I’m sure you just turn left at the Dog’s Home…..’
(For those not old enough to remember, the Dog’s Home was a legendary 1980’s pub - one of the few where individualists of all ages could feel secure and rednecks never came to drink. It was the key building in a block of small businesses which was knocked down under a secretive planning deal involving compulsory purchase, eventually providing the site for the current Marks & Sparks. Few, if any, of the owners got enough compensation to continue elsewhere.)

Offers that can't be refused

The latest evidence of a cutback in social services and care of the elderly was announced this week. What is laughingly described as a ‘live at home scheme’ for North Douglas pensioners (see http://www.manxradio.com/newsread.aspx?id=52196 for more) is an additional insult to older people from self-seeking superstitious nitwits, in that yet again government has collaborated with churches to further screw up the lives of folk who cannot defend themselves, but must still pay to be insulted.
The loon in charge claims…“the idea is to offer support with friendly faces in the community, and anybody who would like to get involved will be made very welcome”.
“It is not, they are not, and they will not be”, would be my response to that pile of old cobblers, based on evidence from elsewhere.
For example, a couple of years ago a friend of mine in his nineties moved back to England after several happy decades here in the North of the island. Being non-religious, he had little choice when his wife’s Alzheimer's became more severe and he had no local relative to help.
Both the ‘official’ social support workers and the 'third sector' (i.e. Christian fundamentalist) charities in his area pointedly ignored his plight. No surprise there as (a) my friend was an eloquent critic of local Christocentric cranks and (b) some of those cranks were and are bigwigs in both social services and church-based charitable drains on the public purse.
Down south, the situation is even worse. So bad, in fact, that an evangelical inside source not only confirmed half-joking complaints I had heard from the relative of one victim as typical, but suggested the real situation is far worse. This is worrying as a Southern scheme controlled by some pretty obnoxious Baptist freeloaders is now being rolled out elsewhere.
The story told by the relative of one housebound geriatric was of youngish bible-bashers charming their way into the house with the story that her name was on a list of vulnerable pensioners they had been ‘asked’ to ‘help’ by ‘someone from social services’. After one visit which was some sort of ‘appraisal’ (at which they drank the old girl’s tea and ate her biscuits but gave no help) they returned to ‘invite’ her to a church event as a way to ‘get her out of the house’. It then started to be suggested that it would be ‘unfortunate’ if the old girl did not go along or let them into the house to ‘check’ and one day she was, for example, to fall on the floor and nobody could hear her cries for help.
After a relative heard this she quite bluntly warned these pondlife to stay away or face police action, pointing out to them in the process that they were worse than the Krays because (a) the Krays picked on people their own size and had more respect for the elderly and (b) solved practical problems – permanently - in return for protection money.
An inside source, who is an evangelical and candidly admits his early public sector career opening and subsequent rise through the ranks is due to church contacts, not only confirmed that the story was credible but that he knew of church meetings at which this and similar strategies to drain public funds and gain government influence were discussed. Church-goers in public sector jobs in particular have been asked to tip the church leaders off to possible future openings and told that, in return, senior government figures would ‘intervene’ when promotion prospects or regrading came up.
So Jesus saves yet again, it seems, but only because the rent and other office expenses, utility bills and pensions of his thuggish little helpers are being met from our taxes.

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?

A good read for a bad man

Reading today that MP Jim Devine is being jailed for his expenses fiddles (see http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/mar/31/jim-devine-sentenced-expenses-fruad ) made me laugh. It’s not just the idea of a real crook being put behind bars for once, but that I remembered me and Jim have some history.
Thing is, a year or two ago there was a half-baked campaign for humanists to send a copy of that Dawkins tome The God Delusion to every UK politician. This seemed to hinge on the idea that politicians actually read books or newspapers, rather than getting researchers to scan them for useable material. So, not thought up by anyone who has ever watched the political animal in action then.
The geezer behind the plot was given contact details for BHA affiliated groups, and, me being secretary of Isle of Man Freethinkers at the time, he was soon bending my ear. Bit of a dullard to be honest, who couldn’t grasp that we can’t elect politicians to Westminster (though they impose a bishop on us) and wouldn’t take a polite ‘maybe’ for an answer. So, to get him off my back and go back to….well, staring at paint drying or some far more riveting pastime than listening to him waffle on…..I agreed, and was alloted Jim Devine.
I duly sent Devine a copy of the book, suggesting that if he didn’t want to read it he could just bung it at any passing bishop with my compliments.
Well, if Devine didn’t do that, and he’s still got it lying around somewhere at least he’ll have something to read in the cell.

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.

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.

Public Health Warning for St. Johns

If there is a deity, he is celebrating his birthday with a sly joke on his thickest local disciples.
Because smack bang under a warning that a virulent new strain of MRSA may have hit the island I found http://www.manx.net/news/1037/christmas-on-the-hill-st-johns-christmas-eve on the Manxnet news page.
Well, that saves me having to warn Manx people that St. Johns is again becoming a Yuletide Disaster Area. But as the police have mentioned it, I’d recommend the rest of us just avoid the area altogether for a few days. Leave it to the fundie throwbacks, the BNP and similar Manx rednecks no decent person should be seen around or risk catching something nasty off.
One other question. If the local police are doing advertising for publically subsidised flat-earth gatherings like this, doesn’t that suggest that it is high time for a new Police Liason Committee?
The two key figures of that unelected committee (whose new members are selected by the current committee, not the police, the DHA or Tynwald) are not only fundamentalists but run the shopping centre next to St. Johns Hill which will reap any financial benefit from this event.
That, I would have to suggest, is another joke. Much sicker, if very indicative of the real way in which Tynwald goes through the motions of ‘consulting’ the public on government policy.

Who guards the guards?

I had to laugh at this report (see http://www.isleofman.com/News/article.aspx?article=31002) of a building on Homefield Road having 20 windows smashed some time “between Friday, November 19, and Tuesday, November 23”, apparently without anyone noticing.
The thing is, I can only think of one large building on that road which is set back enough from the road for anyone to smash that many windows without either the racket alerting the neighbours or the glass covering enough of the main road to bring traffic to a standstill.
That would be the Department of Home Affairs offices.
So, in addition to demonstrating what the Great Manx Public really thinks about those who misrun our police and prison services, this incident also suggests that there’s not much work going on there. Either that or the civil servants and self-selecting advisory committees who claim to be ensuring we can sleep safely at nights are deaf and blind.
I’d suggest they need a decent Neighbourhood Watch scheme, except that the last time I looked the Manx Crimestoppers project was effectively under the thumb of Group 4 Security, which many suggest obtains more money under false pretences from the court and prison services (and therefore the public) than 'official' criminal types would dare to in their wildest dreams.

Missing, inaction

In all the excitement of Tynwald Day and other Manx events during July, an important change at two of our government’s pet ‘social service providers’ has gone un-noticed. Hard to know why, as the individual at the heart of the changes spent so much time in the office of the Director of Social Services it’s rumoured he kept a mug there (who the public pays a £100K+ salary).
It was known for months beforehand that Nigel Collins was leaving the island this summer. See http://www.douglas.gov.im/Mayoralty.asp?Action=ShowFunction&ID=3418 for example.
The thing is, Nigel and Lynne ran the local branch of the Salvation Army, which has had a strict policy since the 19th century of rotating officers every few years to stop things getting too stale. They were sent here specifically because previously they’d run the SA’s largest UK homelessness shelter, and David Gray House (the island’s only bail hostel, and run by the Salvation Army) was - to be blunt - not working.
Incidentally, though both shared skills and duties equally (as is usual SA practice), because the island is in a sexist timewarp Nigel had to be the public face as the Rotary Club and other causes of social inequality still don’t know how to deal with girlies. For the same reason it was Nigel who was then ‘suggested’ by one of his employees at a regional Rotary club night where the management committee for Kemmyrk (the government run ‘independent’ homelessness charity) was decided – even before the steering committee which officially set things up had a chance to consider possible candidates.
So, DGH now lacks a Salvation Army officer to oversee things 'officially’ - thus distancing the DHA (Department of Home Affairs) staff who dictate policy decisions. And Kemmyrk lacks a chairman, with the possibility that the temporary replacement may lack even a basic grounding in either homelessness in general or the particular difficulties faced by the Manx homeless (some, it must be said, actually caused by those who control that charity). Additionally, the replacements for the Collins’s are not thought to have a social work background and by coincidence the Salvationists who aided them liasing between the worship activities and ‘Christian outreach’ activity such as DGH are also leaving the island.
Their departure leaves other difficulties too. For one thing, the real fate of DGH is now to be decided between the Salvation Army’s regional headquarters (who see the island as nothing but an offshore adjunct to their Cheshire and North Wales activity, and the hostel and other property as little more than potential capital to be realised if onshore business goes slack), the ‘independent’ trustees of Manx SA philanthropy (a group of non-Salvationist bigwigs whose past record – e.g. flogging a building earmarked as a youth centre to a brewery via a Guernsey trust – shows distinct ignorance of or respect for Salvationist values) and the DHA, who frankly never had a clue or gave a monkeys about the Manx dispossessed anyway.
Not, in short, good news for anyone local either with social difficulties or with good intentions for resolving them.

Sign up, sign up against Jeebus Freakery

Some excellent petitions on the web asking for international signatories.
Each, in their way, a chance to protest the privileges afforded by the State to religious figures and organisations who have done some downright disgusting stuff, often to innocent kids.

http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/bring-the-clergy-to-justice.html is an Irish petition which asks:

"Please sign this petition if you think that clerical child abusers and all who covered up for them should be brought to justice for the horrific crimes that these criminals have perpetrated.
Since the publication of the Ryan and Murphy reports, the government has done as little as possible under pressure from the victims and the public as they wait for this issue to blow over. The government, the religious and the media are talking about compensation but few are talking about bringing prosecutions. If as many people as possible sign this petition it will be evidence of the anger of the Irish and international public and our insistence that these criminals be brought to justice."

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=186233218119 is another Irish petition, this time to have the Papal Nuncio expelled from Ireland.

It states:

"The Report of the Commission of Inquiry into Sexual Abuse in the Dublin ArchDiocese clearly states that the Papal Nuncio, the Diplomatic representative of the Vatican, refused to reply to investigators.
This is not acceptable. The Irish Government has the power to expel diplomats.
If we are to take the report's findings seriously, we must expel the Papal Nuncio."

And finally, good old Peter Tatchell has succeeded in getting a petition on the Number 10 website protesting the visit of Benny the Boy Nazi to the UK. You can find it at http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/ProtestthePope/

The petition reads:

'We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to disassociate
the British government from the Pope's intolerant views ahead
of the Papal visit to Britain in September 2010. We urge the
Prime Minister to make it clear that his government disagrees
with the Pope's opposition to women's reproductive rights, gay
equality, embryonic stem cell research and the use of condoms
to prevent the spread of HIV. We ask the Prime Minister to
express his disagreement with the Pope’s role in the cover-up
of child sex abuse by Catholic clergy, his rehabilitation of
the Holocaust-denying bishop Richard Williamson, and his decree
paving the way for the beatification and sainthood of the
war-time Pope, Pius XII, who stands accused of failing to speak
out against the Holocaust. We also request the Prime Minister
to assure us that the Pope’s visit will not be financed by the
British taxpayer.'

Indulge in a bit of proper democracy. Be an active citizen. Wind up a faith nazi........

Look, just sign up and help put these nonces in their place!

Compulsory reading

Gary Otton, my favourite secularist muckraker, has just posted his latest piece at http://www.scottishmediamonitor.com/features2.cfm?ID=42 , and shaft me sideways he’s on form!
Scottish Media Monitor first appeared in January 1996 in Gay Scotland, sparked by sickeningly inadequate Scottish press coverage of the violent murder of 35-year-old Michael Doran in Queens Park, Glasgow in the summer of 1995. Since then Gary has held the ‘proper’ Scots media and politicians to account with passion and humour.
Sexual Fascism, his subsequent book on Scotland’s Section 28, is compulsory reading for anyone who wants to know how a combination of slack, bigoted reporting and Christian fundies held back the development of a small Celtic nation for way too long. If this island is ever to crawl out of the primeval Christian swamp it’s been in for as long as I can remember you’d better hope a few copies of it start circulating here.
This month Gary’s target is Christian business (or as churches laughingly term it, charity), which in Scotland is becoming depressingly usual. He points the finger, for example at a fundie church which has managed to avoid £10, 000 in business rates in the last three years, and the educational hijacking pulled off between Stagecoach (the bus company owned by Scotland’s best known Christian Neanderthal) and Oasis (still substantially controlled by a TV vicar so far up New Labour’s backside even Rentokil couldn’t shift him). It will surprise nobody to know this means a group of schools underwritten by public money where homophobia and other evils run rampant.
I always recommend Gary’s work to anyone who hasn’t seen it yet. But in particular it’s a million watt flashing DANGER sign for the situation developing here, courtesy of the Sally Ann, Broadway Bumpkins and (let’s never forget) Port St Mary’s very own Living Hell Church. You can see them daily, crawling into government broom cupboards, picking the public pocket and setting up one bogus ‘charity’ after another.
Recession won’t stop them either. If anything, parasites who prey on misery will use the current situation as an excuse to further their sinister agenda. Read Gary’s work and similarities between the scams of their Scottish chums and those currently being fermented here will be alarmingly obvious.

What's worse - Jesus or heroin?

There’s a story on Energy FM’s website which sums up the Manx government’s total disinterest in dealing with an underclass it created, and which is now seeking ever more desperate means to get by.
To summarise, a 28 year old smackhead carries out a string of burglaries, gets caught, and instead of help (or even a prison sentence) is fed to evangelicals so they can remove any shred of hope the poor sod had.
That’s not the way it’s reported at http://www.energyfm.net/cms/news_story_74175.html, of course, but that’s the truth of the matter.
What depresses me more is the section which reads:
'Deemster Doyle heard how Parker’s time at David Gray House had been positive.
’He ordered Parker to spend a minimum of three months at the probation and bail hostel, and placed him under a two year supervision order.'
Why?
Read Holy Innocents and work it out for yourselves. If he’s not dead in a month he will wish he was.
Let’s balance the options, shall we?
Heroin – usually kills you within a decade, during which you’ll spend your life robbing any old tat from any insecure place to pay for more heroin from other criminal lowlife, who also get caught and jailed fairly regularly.
Inconvenient for those with vulnerable property, and some drain on the NHS.
Christianity – usually involves you paying over a large portion of any income you have for many decades to lowlife whose ‘profession’ is protected by legal privilege, and with so many government friends in on the racket they are never put out of business.
Inconvenient for everybody, as the addicts can live well over half a century, the lowlife not only pay no tax but claim massive public subsidies to keep their business premises going, and the law won’t touch them.
Relative numbers of both type of addict?
About the same, but, if I had to choose, give me the ones who only live a decade and would never be stupid enough to believe the drug gives them everlasting life.

Thank God I'm just eccentric

A Barry Stevens letter questioning the local Interfaith Group’s open mindedness in this week’s Examiner (see http://www.iomtoday.co.im/your-letters/Isle-of-Man-Examiner-June.5410522.jp) raises an interesting point. Barry’s wrong about the Interfaith Group (I’ve stood in when the humanist rep was away so I know there’s a Spiritualist Church rep) but on the right track.
It was Churches Together in Mann which refused to accept Spiritualists. In fact, it was in finding that out in 1998 that I established they didn’t want to talk to other faiths locally either, because as far as the main churches were concerned they didn’t exist!
The Spiritualists made a formal application to join the interchurch body, which my sources suggest was greeted with panic. The official line was that the Spiritualists might want to somehow tap into CTIM ‘respectability’ and government influence, as well as resources such as contact lists for possible financial gain.
But there was another reason, which was that mainstream Manx churches were about to jointly remarket themselves to new age interests, for example by offering what were vaguely labelled ‘services of healing’. Rather like spiritualism or clairvoyance doesn’t ‘promise’ results in return for hard cash, advertising for the ‘laying on of hands’ was padded with small print or legalese about continuing to take the usual medicine.
The next step was that local journalists ( me included) were offered ‘background material’ and off–record briefings for stories which our sources were sure needed telling to avoid simple souls dabbling in the occult or losing their bingo money. In my case, the material dried up when I asked if the churches would provide an on-record spokesman to explain how their ‘responsible’ laying on of hands differed from (presumably irresponsible) table-spinners who bring messages via Big Chief Hokum from your dearly departed granny.
They wouldn’t, and when I then asked couldn’t all this be avoided if CTIM would just ‘upgrade’, as in the UK, to some sort of interfaith outfit to deal with each other and the government I was told that wasn’t necessary because “there are no other faiths on the island”.
Funnily enough, it was during the instantly forgettable high profile millennium madness a year or so later that the other faiths who didn't exist got tired of waiting and set the body up themselves. Something like 100 invitations to join in were also sent and continue to be extended to various Christian groups, all unanswered. Maybe they don't exist either.
Meanwhile, the Interfaith group has never turned down prospective members. However baffling the beliefs, the explanation has been met with a collective “Oh, OK then… next item”. The only dubious organisation I know of left of their own accord when it saw the group was just an amicable gathering of folk trying to find middle ground, not a source of government grants, influence and/or secretive dealings.
Us minority types leave that kind of thing to real people of faith. Like the unelected Christian politicians who can always square things with sympathisers in the Dept of Home Affairs or Social Services when possible fraud or child abuse enquiries arise.