Of honours and bombers

An old habit from my full time journo days has just paid off again. Before recycling I routinely check through old local papers and magazines for stories and tip-offs I might have missed. Today I found another to make me laugh, and to offer much more insight into the honours system.
Now, this piece of sycophantic claptrap (see http://www.iomtoday.co.im/news/isle-of-man-news/long-goodbye-for-governor-1-1740566 ) really should have been the last time the nastiest RAF flyboy since Bomber Harris got a mention in a Manx newspaper.
Sadly, not so. Because on 12th August we learnt in the Manx press that he was “surprised” to receive a knighthood.
Not half as surprised as me.
For the benefit of those who take no interest in war crimes against civilians, Macfadyen was the RAF chief of staff during the first Gulf War, i.e. the one that stopped when the survivors amongst Hussein's untrained conscripts from the foreign labour force left a wealthy neighbouring country we do loads of business with and his full time army emerged from their British built nuclear bunkers to gas the Kurds.
The latter, apparently, was none of our business. It was also none of our business that the much famed and filmed carpet bombing of Iraq hit almost no military targets but did kill around 350,000 civilians. By contrast, I would hazard a guess that some reconstruction contracts also fell the way of UK businesses via a long chain of offshore middle parties - in the UAE for example.
So another thing that does not surprise me is that, when Macfadyen's part in both this and the early Al -Yamamah arms deals became too awkward for the RAF and he was offered the governorship of the Isle of Man instead, he notoriously admitted to having to look the place up on a map. Frankly, given his poor map-reading skills I'm more surprised he found it.
By the way, if you know little about Al-Yamamah this (see http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=9008 ) may help put things in context.
By chance, years ago, I was putting on an event in a Manx venue when Mrs M showed up with some American ladies. With a little sly probing I was able to find that El Guv was deep in hospitality with old US war chums, so the memsahibs had been sent out to see quaint local sights while the boys got down to business.
And it was nasty business too. Because with a little more sly probing I found that old US warhorses were regular guests at Dunbombin and interestingly, like him, their retirement interests revolved rather a lot around arms companies consultancies.
This was a period in UK business history when the OECD and FATF were causing a clean-up of the offshore finance industry, and organisations like Campaign Against the Arms Trade were taking so much interest in a civil service unit attached to the UK Department of International Development that it had to close down. The unit, in a nutshell, had for years employed around 100 civil servants to advise and assist the UK arms trade in efficient use of offshore entities in order to avoid public scrutiny, not to mention hassle with end user certificates (which by international treaty are required to prevent arms sales by “respectable” countries to the uglier type of dictatorship, such as the ones Lockheed and BAE might find very profitable).
This use of the governor's quarters (politically a bit of a grey area because not strictly under control of either Tynwald or Whitehall) for quiet chats about arms deals via cosy third country offshoots of major arms companies was, I feel sure, continued by Mcfadyen's successor and may not have tailed off until we got a civilian governor (though again one with extensive business experience of Africa).
Also note that (1) at least one former employee at the shadowy DID outfit went on to work in the Isle of Man public sector and that (2) a scheme which on paper helps Manx finance sector “experts” to help small nations develop more honest international trading practices and stamp out corruption (and was sold as such to FATF to help us clean up our own reputation) is substantially a creation of the Said Business School in Oxford and was originally based at the Isle of Man Business School.
That's the Said Business School started with a £23 Million donation from Saudi-Syrian businessman Wafic Said at around the time Blair & Co were shutting down a government enquiry into Al-Yamamah and the Isle of Man Business School which went belly-up because....... well, many wonder if the faculty and management knew much about basic business or accounting practices.
My wife sometime wonders why I laugh so much when I read Manx newspapers.

Slaveheart

“Management” found a new game at her workplace on Friday – taunting exiled Scots who, if they had a chance, would have voted No anyway.
As she so aptly put it, “I hear Mel Gibson's making a modern sequel to Braveheart . It's going to be called Slaveheart.”
Ouch! But couldn't you just predict that, once finally given a chance, all those Presbyterian dullards would opt for an English Nanny over free choice and responsibility?
A fear of freedom perhaps? I blame John Knox myself. Once you've internalised the doctrine of Predetermination, maybe you can never think and act for yourself.
If you do have enough self-respect to get involved in a major contemporary political issue, get down to the Manx Legion Club in Douglas tomorrow night (Monday 22^nd) for this (see http://positiveactiongroup.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=518:pag-public-meeting-disability-and-equality&catid=34:pag-meet ).
Gareth and Paul are two of my favourite Manx human rights activists. Since coming here just a year or two ago, Gareth has galvanised the whole local debate over disability and moved it on decades. As in the UK until the 1990's, it used to be dominated locally by patronising faith-led “charities” who would do anything to help the disabled except get off their backs and stop using them as an excuse for lifetime subsidised employment. Gareth, by comparison, has a practical grounding in the Disability Rights Movement, the kind of militant crips who, if you lay in a bath of baked beans to buy them a wheelchair, would quite rightly smack you in the mouth instead of thanking you.
Paul has been slogging away for as long as I can remember on equality issues. He was key to the abolition of the vacuous Section 38 (the Isle of Man's equivalent of UK section 28, which prevented schoolteachers assuring kids that there is nothing abnormal about homosexuality or gay relationships) and to various moves to abolish institutionalised Manx homophobia in the 21^st century. More quietly, he was the sole advocate prepared to help two Muslim guys refused bail because they could and would not attend daily prayer meetings at the island's bail hostel, run by a Christian charity. The case was also important because the Manx government's answer to the first local request for asylum was going to be to quietly ship them back to the UK and pretend the applicants had never been here, thus ensuring a legal judgement would not be made and a legal precedent could not be set.
But while Paul and Gareth will raise valuable issues, this Equality Bill is a much bigger deal and we all need to be thinking about how it might affect us.
For example, luckily I was married in a civilised country, and if my daughter ever gets round to being married or entering a civil partnership I will want the same for her. As long as a superstitious cross-dresser, calling on his imaginary invisible friend as witness, is deemed to be a fit person to pronounce her legally married but a responsible and rational adult is not that ceremony is unlikely to take place on the Isle of Man. I will advise her to go to Scotland or the Irish Republic instead.
Similarly, we all have to pop our clogs sometime, and I would rather my friends do not suffer the indignity of seeing me off in a room dominated by the amanita muscarita-inspired ramblings of ancient Middle Eastern goat herders, thank you very much. Some will say that as I will be dead at the time it does not matter, but, honestly..... Yuk! I would not EVEN be seen dead in a drab dump where the furnishings are that tacky, P-U-L-L-E-E-A-S-E!!!!
Maybe we should all get serious...or maybe not. When even some of my loved ones' jokes bear more serious analysis than what passes for the serious contemplations of the average Manx politician it may only be necessary to be awake, laughing and active to make a difference.

Closure by cake

You might have seen my obituary for an old friend in the Examiner a couple of weeks back (see http://www.iomtoday.co.im/news/isle-of-man-news/bernard-caine-a-man-of-principle-1-6664211 ). No, I have no gig there, I just sent it in because it was starting to look like Bernard's life would not be celebrated the way it should be.
But last Monday I was squeezed on a pew at the very back of a Peel Cathedral packed with both his friends and the island's self-selecting elite for his funeral. Maybe the latter really wanted to pay respect to a genuine Manx giant, or maybe I shamed them into taking a couple of hours out of their pointless lives. Either way, they were there - which mattered to his family and many genuine friends and might have tickled Bernard if only he could have seen it.
I rarely go to funerals. Mostly of necessity, as I have to work, but also because I find the religious variant in particular unsatisfying. When the religious are so keen to stress that death is not the end, just the terminus where the faithful get their tickets stamped for Heaven, you might think they would make more effort with the send off.
For all the pomp and loving use of the Manx language and culture to whose revival Bernard devoted his life, this one just made me glad I am neither a Christian nor a pillar of the community. I am sure it was a moving experience and satisfactory farewell for others there. But to use that awful pseudo-therapeutic vernacular, I did not get closure and could not move on.
It took yesterday and a family day out in Peel to do that. This allowed me to retrace a routine Bernard and I had throughout our shared time on the local papers and magazines – walking out of the office and 100 yards or so up the street to a modest home bakery for cakes, fresh air and mischief.
At 12 noon daily you could have set your clocks by the pair of us ambling amicably up Market Street, trading banter with the bakery staff, then back down to 14 Douglas Street, stopping to look in every window or swapping skeet with everyone Bernard knew, which was pretty much the entire town.
So I did that one last time; some buns from the bakery, then a detour into a charity shop where, any Saturday after we stopped working together and Bernard retired, I could inevitably find him around noon on a chair in the basement perusing the books. Finally, popping my head into a few of the emporiums which officially sell antiquities, Manx historical tomes, local trivia …...or just junk, but unofficially are little more than an excuse for ageing Govags to gossip. In over 25 years I doubt if either Bernard or I spent more than £5 in total in such retail disasters, though I have to admit they did provide a steady stream of leads on obscure local historical topics.
So that was my day. Sunshine, home made food, charity shop finds and sore feet. Less than £10 spent in total but memories recalled of time with Bernard which are beyond price.
A happy era reminisced on, summed up, and finally laid to rest.
Now I really am  ready to move on.

Dying without dignity or choice

On Friday, (at about the time the island workforce was going home so nobody would be paying attention) the Manx government's Department of (ill) Health announced that their dodgy survey on ‘End of Life Care’ is done and dusted.

The title of the press release (‘Dignity and choice at the heart of Island’s first ever End of Life Care Framework’) is an outright lie. The plan offers neither to any dying person with more than a few functioning brain cells and the desire to actually choose, rather than be told, how to die. The opening sentence, in which it is claimed that the framework comes “after 18 months of a detailed research and analysis into end of life care elsewhere, as well as a review of the care available in the Isle of Man”, is also untrue. Even the briefest glance at the 38 page document reveals that SO did not happen..

Looking at some of the shady characters with cheesy grins on the photo accompanying the release, this should surprise nobody. Take a peek at http://www.gov.im/lib/news/health/dignityandchoice.xml  and see what I mean.

Turning to what is laughingly described as a ‘care plan’ itself (see http://www.gov.im/lib/docs/health/news/endoflifecareframeworkandimple.pdf ), as soon as I saw the quote from Cicely Saunders (the superstitious airhead behind the ’Hospice Movement’) I started to suspect how poorly this ‘survey’ was done. Any government publication which includes – anywhere - material from someone lauded by those notorious religious apologists the Templeton Foundation deserves to be treated with utter, utter contempt. Beside Saunders, other winners of the Templeton Prize include religious marketer and all round bigot Billy Graham and Mother Teresa, that notorious economic parasite on the poor and dying. I think you catch my drift.

But, being a proper researcher, I did try to set gut instincts aside, so then looked at what documents were quoted in the appendices. Sadly, the narrow, one-sided and utterly inadequate selection of ‘research material’ further confirmed my suspicions.

Then I checked the names on the ‘steering group’, only to find far too many names I’ve learnt to associate with an ability to swallow whole religious, pseudo-moralistic twaddle (and at least two who I know never take a moral decision without consulting a priest) or to bury anything resembling evidence that the government policy they are paid to produce might just be flawed.

The ‘plan’ runs to 38 pages, but I could summarize it in four sentences.

“We’re superstitious and so are most of our tunnel-visioned friends. We don’t listen to anyone else – especially if they have academic or professional experience which contradicts our childish beliefs. Dying? Not our problem, once we’ve milked you for all we can you’re on your own.”

I'm planning fun, not a funeral, for a friend

I was sorry to hear of the death of one of my friends yesterday, though glad that at least in death he got some of the local recognition he richly deserved in life (see http://www.manxradio.com/newsread.aspx?id=56742 ).
At 93, Denys really was my oldest friend, and since I moved back here one of the dearest. I first met him at a party to launch Fermi’s Paradox, an extraordinary CD by the quite unique Sulby Phantom Band. Denys, even then over 80, was the narrator of an extended poem by his son(and essentially the Sulby Phantom Band), Roly, around which the CD was based. While most of the island’s self-described cutting edge thinkers were there to look cool and hang out with Roly, I was there at Roly’s suggestion specifically to meet Denys and chat about another matter.
Denys wanted to form a Manx group to mercilessly mock local religious hardliners until the Manx public stopped letting them get away with murder (or at least rape, fraud and propagation of general ignorance). Roly, knowing I had similar ambitions, thought his dad and I should talk and see what might be done.
We had a lively chat; I recognised a similar spirit and that night found a role model for my autumn years. Though nothing happened immediately, and neither of us can take credit for calling the meeting which lit the fire, a few months later Denys, Roly and I were amongst a small group of folk who became the Isle of Man Freethinkers. And the rest, as they say, is history.
What I shared with Denys was a belief that satire is the best – sometimes the only –weapon which can neutralise blind belief. If, like us, you chose to balance the joys of Manx life (the scenery, the laid back pace at which anything -or usually nothing- happens) with the mindbogglingly stupid antics of Manx politicians, civil servants and their religulous mates, you also need to be able to laugh.You will never stop the hardcore few who choose such belief, but in poking fun you might limit the damage done by the hypocrites whose wages they pay, and those who we all pay to produce the obscenities which become Manx government policy.
Denys (so I recently found out) had a longer record for top-flight relentless satire than most. He had served as a Royal Artillery officer in World War Two, so saw the savage stuff which fuelled the English post-war satire boom, from Pinter and Theatre of the Absurd at the high culture end to That Was The Week That Was and Monty Python at the lower end.
But arguably this boom was launched well before that by another ex-RA wit, Spike Milligan, with the Goon Show. And in researching some stuff about the Goons and the English Theatre of the Absurd a few weeks back I discovered something amazing. I’d always known Denys was once a plummy-voiced BBC announcer in the days when they wore evening dress to read the shipping forecast, but he was also the narrator of at least one series of the Goon Show.
I can’t claim to have done anything so grand with Denys, but we did launch the League Against Cruel Schmaltz ( a spoof campaign to get Manx radio to play less MOR muzak and find at least one point in the day when Denys’s frail wife, along with many similar housebound oldies, could enjoy some tunes they knew too).
We also harangued the military misfits who turn ‘national remembrance’ days into Bridge Over The River Kwai torture-fests. Pointless two hour prayer dirges, with six hymns, bible readings by dignitaries and a sermon from the Anglican Area Manager, rather than the beer, sandwiches, Vera Lynn and Glen Miller anybody, like Denys, who actually saw off Rommel really wanted.
Sadly, chinless ex-officers who, in their own careers, were too young to have seen a gun fired in anger at anyone but Belfast 10 year olds never listened, and now it’s too late. But we tried, and we definitely had fun, as we also did in the most unlikely campaigns on the most serious issues, such as the assisted dying campaign run by another founder Freethinker, the late Patrick Kneen.
At one point Denys and I had a bit of a private competition going as to who could get the most outrageous letter in the Manx press. When he moved away that stopped, but I would hate to finally win by default, so maybe I’ll take up that baton again just as a tribute to Denys.

No cover ups, no new privileges

I am puzzled by a report in the Times today that Jewish and Muslim families will be allowed to prevent autopsies being carried out on dead relatives (see http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article6140789.ece ).
Why?
Surely the whole point of an autopsy is to answer questions about a mysterious death. Frankly, my dears, it doesn’t matter which sky fairy you believe in and what your particular book of mumbo jumbo has to say about the matter. If your relative dies inexplicably there are questions to be answered.
It doesn’t matter if you, personally, are content in your flat earth belief that it was preordained. What if Dad/Mum/Brother/Sister/Baby died of something that could be spreading to others and that hasn’t been identified yet? The health authorities have a public duty to make sure, and your only public duty is not to get in the way.
And there are other considerations too. This blog reports on and has links to campaigns to prevent honour killings and similar violence against women around the globe. The grim fact is, these things do and will increasingly happen in the British Isles too. However many decent religious families there are, there are still fundamentalists with such a low opinion of their own womenfolk that they will kill them for ‘giving offence’ to medieval cretinism. If or when they do, they must not be able to hide behind ‘faith’ or ‘tradition’ to stop the crime being revealed.
There is a simple rule of thumb to follow here. Either the next of kin of all who die mysteriously have the right to prevent an autopsy, or no family does. The bizarre ability of some families to believe any given number of impossible things before breakfast simply should not be a factor or a ‘special case’.