For stranger danger, think local

I was mildly amused and intrigued by the front page story in this week’s Examiner about a ‘religious sect’ planning to set up a Manx base , now on the website at http://www.iomtoday.co.im/news/Religious-sect-wants-to-set.6521807.jp .
I don’t doubt the basic story (though judging from the ‘ex–team’ website at http://exteammembers.blogspot.com/ the former cultists seem a few apostles short of an apotheosis themselves), but I’m amused and intrigued for several reasons.
For one thing, I don’t see why yet another oddball cult here makes such a difference. The place is such a haven for them already. For example, one equally odd one has been fleecing rich new agers for years from a rural venue not 5 miles away from the Crossags. It has large adverts in Johnston Press’s various publications every week, and an input into various flakey ‘alternative health’ and ‘spiritual’ groups with whom it trades punters, ‘life coaches’, leads on access to government advisory committees, public funds and facilities….and so on.
For another, what’s this about 'the Team' only beginning to set up an island base? At least two associates have been peddling their talents around evangelical churches and Christian youth and ‘outreach’ groups for over a decade. I warned Christians Together in Mann’s youth subcommittee about them in 1998, and far more recently (judging from their schools work) a heritage group was not only using other bampots from other dodgy evangelical sects but had taken on board a suggestion first made back then by the Team’s ‘undercover squad’ for tourist development at one of the island’s best known historical venues. Then again, as that venue in turn has a long and ignoble connection with an evangelical chancer/ property developer who counted Billy Graham and Richard Nixon amongst his friends what‘s a few more freaks at the historical freak show anyway?
I’m intrigued because (as I frankly don’t believe either the Bishop’s advisors or any major church group are genuinely concerned) it would be nice to know what the real motive was for feeding IOM Newspapers the story, and indeed who fed it to them.
When the area around the Crossags has so many bampots, conspiracy theorists and hidden agendas why pick on this one?
For example, there have been previous behind the scenes campaigns to stop development around the Crossags. These include a plan to build holiday accomodation in the late 1980’s blocked by local Rotarians, who had a prominent member and schoolteacher point out the ‘danger’ to schoolkids from increased traffic on the road to the Crossags.
Except schoolkids don’t use that road. In fact the only danger on it is from flying golfballs on the adjoining golf course – whose membership revolves around such Rotarians and where it’s a source of huge frustration that the selling off of public land and cutting off of public rights of way cannot extend to the road because it is the main footpath to Albert Tower.
Also amusingly, one silent party behind the proposed development was closely connected to the Anglican management, and the elaborate plan involved a trust which would run the Crossags as a faith-based charity as part of a growing ‘empire’ also involving other Christian children’s charities close to government.
Because again, Nigel Chaplin has been trying for years to set up some sort of lifetime possession trust arrangement for the Crossags which would have allowed him to retain a home for his aged mum and live out his days, with the facility then preferably passing to the sort of church-based groups who use it most. Problem is, the ‘interest’ church groups have in kids is not their healthy development and preparation for a socially useful adulthood, but in grooming them as tithe-payers when they start earning.
They would love to gain control of a nice little facility where kids can run riot in the fresh air and camp safely for weekends (and where Nigel has helped them arrange such things –with the groups concerned often never paying back the full costs of amenities they run up). They just, somehow, seem to view it as Nigel’s ‘Christian duty’ to hand over his heritage so that they can run it – tax free – at a nice little profit.
The backroom intrigues and battles between such imbeciles would make amusing reading should they ever be revealed. I suspect they never will be. Shame, as even Teutonic twerps allegedly running cults might then prove less bizarre or amusing than the homegrown variety.

Flapjacks for Jesus

If you’re rational but a bit of a health food fan or, from choice or necessity, on a special diet, you might want to know that a health food company called Goodness Direct is owned by the Jesus Army.
Folk of my vintage or with similar leisure interests will know this bunch of bampots. They became well known in the 1980’s for tailending free festivals and other ‘alternative’ events. In fact, they’d turn up anywhere rootless folk convened in order to try and round up the weakest as slave labour.
Still do too. It's my suspicion that they're more of a menace to teenage runaways and the homeless than crack dealers, serial killers and Russian mafia sex racketeers combined.
I don’t say that lightly either, as they’re one of those despicable cults which, under the pretence of ‘equality’ and 'community', typically require that members confess their ‘sins’ (thus making them vulnerable to blackmail) hand over all personal possessions (thus making it impossible to leave) and then, if they’re really unlucky, spend the rest of their lives as wage, domestic and sex slaves to the leadership.
As their reputation grows, or police forces and the Charity Commission catch up with their latest scams, they tend to run more of their fund-earning activity through subsidiaries but this ( http://www.jesus.org.uk/ja/ ) is the current public identity they go under.
Amusingly, there used to be organisations, such as the Cult Information Centre, which kept tabs on such creeps. But if you go to the current Cult Information Centre website (see http://www.cultinformation.org.uk/home.html ) you’ll find something hilarious.
The original upfront sponsors used to include the C of E, the Baptist Union and the Evangelical Alliance, which was ironic enough.
Now, check back against the Jesus Army website and look to the bottom right. Yup – Jesus Army is now a signed up partner of the Evangelical Alliance, which is no longer openly associated with the Cult Information Centre, which is no longer naming and shaming the cults, just giving vague and woolly ‘warning signs’ as to what constitutes a cult.
Pretty pathetic, no? But if you think that’s sad (if hilarious) consider this. A couple of years ago it was revealed that the US website and organisation which was the model for the Cult Information Centre in the UK, and even gave them all their current guidelines as to what is, or isn’t, a cult, had been run by the Scientologists!
You can read all about ‘healthy’ flapjacks flogged by decidedly unhealthy cults at http://community.livejournal.com/dark_christian/1165948.html .
(Hat-tip to Feorag at Pagan Prattle for spotting it)

Freak alert

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

Watch out, watch out, there's a cult about

I had to smile at the idea that a local school is tackling phone pests who pick on kids. Or rather, given that the Education Department has had complaints about an evangelical halfwit pestering kids with text messages there, I am amused that they’re ignoring that but paying someone from a pseudo-charity to help kids deal with a threat which, by their own admission, does not even exist in the school. Look at http://www.iomtoday.co.im/south-news/Turning-tables-on-cyber-bullies.5263487.jp and you might see what I mean.
Remember, this is the school which not only let a ‘youth pastor’ troll for victims, but where one of the staff must have passed confidential details about a girl who refused his advances. How, otherwise, did he get her confidential cell phone number and text her at home?
Amazingly, though at least one complaint (possibly several) was made by parents and guardians of pupils affected I hear he is not only still pestering but has opened a branch in a Douglas high school too. Thankfully, talk is rife amongst parents of that school’s first year intake, and even those due to start in September, about ‘some Moonie cult’ running a bible club there.
One quite decent, religiously inclined, parent summed up his dilemma to me the other day. He hasn’t forced his views on his children, but thinks it OK that adolescents ‘explore their spirituality’ at school as they explore everything else – with a bit of responsible adult guidance. Only they cannot get that.
Teachers don’t get involved in lunchtime or after-school clubs any more unless there’s a career advantage. And kids can’t even leave school premises or go home before working parents get there, because of police clampdowns led by panic stories about teenagers wandering the streets at lunch, or misguided safety nazis who think they’ll smoke crack or burn the house down. Then, smelling fresh victims and public money, in come the evangelicals to run extra-curricular ‘activities’.
Having seen these freaks in action when he collects his kids, my fellow parent, like others I’ve spoken to recently, says he is not about to lose them to a deranged cult which operates with Education Department approval, and possibly even public funding. If it means breaking the law or tangling with interfering ‘child protection agencies’ so be it. We at least expect our kids to be safe in school, and we don’t see some Education Department staff protecting them while they attend the same churches as those our kids are most in danger from.

Out in the sticks no-one can hear kids scream

There was more in this week’s local paper about the plans for a new redneck brainwashing centre (sorry, ‘Christian youth facility’) at a former country pub out in the sticks where no-one can hear the victims scream. You can read it at
http://www.iomtoday.co.im/south-news/Lancashire-Hotel-gets-new-lease.5216133.jp if you have a strong stomach.
I howled with laughter at comments like….

‘You can see their excitement and the relationship between them and the volunteers growing. The one that sticks in my mind is it's boys who do not have fathers, they have no male role models ... the volunteers are successful guys that can operate as role models’.

Since when is a bumpkin with a bible a ‘role model’, unless you’re planning on becoming a professional bigot when you’ve failed school?
And how about….

'There is a generation of fatherless boys. Single mums do a fantastic job but they can not be fathers. Well over 50 per cent of our volunteers are males, it's often women who do this kind of work, so it's good to see guys stepping up to the plate and putting in an effort there. It takes time to listen to their stories and want to share their stories and feed into their lives. I was able to share about God being the heavenly father who never rejects us, it's a lovely parallel.’

Oh, pass the sick bag! And if you are responsible for a young person, then do NOT let these voodoo-merchants into the same room as your loved one.
EVER!!!!!
Look, I happen to know that this ‘role model’, while involved in a ridiculous ‘mentoring’ scheme in a local high school, sent text messages to a girl in her early teens who had previously, and emphatically, rejected his ‘offers’ of ‘help’. He is an unwelcome religious parasite, and the subject of at least one complaint sent directly to the Director of Education for this and similar incidents. I saw one of the letters, and there was even talk of a petition to get him banned from any school premises.
You have to ask yourself; how does a ‘youth pastor’ (not a member of school staff so there as a guest and with no access to confidential pupil records) get hold of a mobile number not given to any except the girl’s closest friends and otherwise known only to key staff for emergencies?
The answer should have led the Director of Education to investigate staff collusion with evangelical cults, and in particular staff openly connected with the Southern Daft Cult. It didn’t, and as far as I know ‘youth pastors’ are still trolling around certain school corridors looking for fresh victims.
Another worrying thing is the way that kids from non-conventional families are targeted by such klingons as needing ‘pastoral help’, and that the Department of Education turns a blind eye to illegal activity which, to be blunt, most of us would regard as ‘grooming’. Ironically, while this is an offence under the very same Sexual Offences Act which a couple of years ago equalised the age of gay consent with the UK, it was only included in the first place to keep prominent local Christian homophobes happy.
I also happen to know that local evangelicals see it as ‘legitimate tactics’ to try and split such kids from their families because non-Christians (and even Catholics) are seen as a ‘bad influence’. I have that from an evangelical in a key government position who openly admitted it as ‘background information’ for a story when I worked for the local press.
People with a serious interest in child welfare need to ask themselves if, the way things are going, we need better protection for our kids. Not just from superstitious halfwits like Porter and his lawbreaking teacher buddies, but the Education Department’s plans for‘Multi Agency Teams’ where similar flat-earthers will be over-represented.
That you can take as a depressing certainty, so better start idiot-proofing your offspring now.