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.

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?

Hallelujah, give us a handout/Revive us again

From this week’s local press (see http://www.iomtoday.co.im/news/isle-of-man-news/churches_facing_crippling_costs_1_3603130 ) it seems the largest local myth retailer wants more public cash to prop up a business selling produce hardly anyone has a use for.
I particularly liked the casual misdirection of:
“At St German’s Cathedral in Peel, the maintenance bill was £100,000 a year and urgent work to repair leadwork, gutters and downpipes, at an estimate cost of £80,000, needed to be carried out within the next year.
‘The big problem is that while congregations are holding reasonably well, the financial burden of maintaining ancient buildings is becoming too much,’ he said.”
This argument loses allure if you know that St. German’s, far from being ‘ancient’, is the charmless Edwardian equivalent of a Barrett Home, that it was extensively internally redesigned within the last two decades, and that a couple of years ago the Synod set up a new committee which – outwardly at least – includes business expertise and other denominations and whose sole task is to excuse massive government subsidy of parts of the building and grounds under the slim pretence of using it (or more accurately abusing vulnerable kids and adults) as an ‘educational resource’.
And just a thought, but, logically, should not at least economically minded Christians accept Adam Smith’s ‘invisible hand of the market’ concept (which presumably in Christian form is attached to an invisible arm, somewhere beyond the knowable universe), and agree that what the market cannot support has passed its sell-by date and so it is time to restructure, scale down, and close unproductive retail operations?
Or am I just following the reductio ad absurdum which dogs all religious ‘thought’ through to its inevitably illogical conclusion again?
I also worry at:
“Bishop Paterson told the Manx Independent that Mr Brown was surprised the grants for ancient buildings were a one-off and had assumed that the £20,000 would be paid annually.
He promised to investigate the issue.”
Considering how many superstitious numpties advise him, I bet he will too.
And I would also bet that (unless forcefully prevented by a public outcry which I dare not bet will follow) at the same time as the Government is drastically reducing what little remains of public services, the Government will (under various pretences) drastically scale UP public outlay on buildings currently only used by two men and a dog on Sunday mornings (always providing it isn't raining).

This squib just got damper

A month ago (see Another year, another damp squib) I mentioned that Firestarter, the excruciating annual loonfest put on by a bunch of Pentecostal Peter Pans, was moving to yet another venue. I also predicted that the honeymoon would be over as soon as the new venue sent the bill and Firestarter’s cheque inevitably bounced.
Again.
Seems I was wrong. Because the ill-fated couple didn’t even get as far as their shotgun wedding. From a Manxnet news item posted today (see http://www.manx.net/news/2478/firestarter-festival-moves-to-union-mills ) it looks like either Ardhwallan’s owner did a quick credit check or, being a little short of punters himself, has at least decided to cut his losses.
And Firestarter’s over-the-hill organisers seem to be doing the same judging from the new lower ticket price. Or maybe they just cannot sell any tickets and have resigned themselves to a couple of days of paunchy, ageing ’youth pastors’ playing alone sadly with their water pistols.
Again.

Nowhere to run to, Baby

Yes, I know, I haven’t blogged in a while. I could offer some feeble excuse, but the truth is I was off elsewhere having fun and I could not be bothered.
There is work, as in the unpleasant, done for the ungrateful in return for the stuff of which bills are paid, and then there is pleasure, shared free, gratis and for nothing with those I feel like sharing it with, when I feel like sharing it with them.
Look, my blog, done in my free time strictly for fun. As I keep saying, if you need more amusement, write your own.
Samuel Johnson may well have said that “no-one, except a blockhead, writes unless it be for money”, but in the 21st Century there are no blockheads offering to pay someone like me to write. Oddly enough though, I find it hard work reading anything contemporary produced by those who do get paid – sometimes lavishly – which is why recently I’ve taken to reading second hand books instead. Maybe Murdoch and his chums should pay the readers, not the writers, of this turgid twaddle. Until then, we should refuse to pay for it, and find ways to access the websites without racking up advertising.
But I had to giggle at this (see http://www.isleofman.com/News/article.aspx?article=36701) about Sentamu’s Apprentice going to Wales to play with Thomas the Tank Engine.
As keen observers of Manx tourist department bilge may know, he cannot play with it here because the Tourist Department cannot afford the licensing fees to run an event. Though even when the Bish was last photographed driving a Thomas train here one couldn’t help laughing at the irony.
We saw a clergyman, most of whose diocese does not exist, driving a train which serves no practical purpose dressed up for the day as another train from a work of fiction based on another C of E clergyman’s joke about one of the Bish’s predecessors – and particularly the non-existence of most of his diocese. Could you really make any of this up?
But maybe pontificating prelates could get fresh ideas from http://www.isleofman.com/News/article.aspx?article=36395 -a piece on the similarly non-existent Manx space industry.
When I read it for some reason I suddenly remembered Peter Sellers going to the Moon as the Reverend John Smallwood in Heavens Above , a 1963 film written by Malcolm Muggeridge, who went on to lend a hand to Mary Whitehouse’s Festival of Light cult and grumble about Life of Brian.
And I had a bright idea – well, bright by the standards of those pillocks in government who, not learning from our previous experience underwriting a Jurby airship that never flew, are now underwriting either new spaceships which will never get off the drawing board or old ones which will rust in a Jurby barn until the grants run out.
Manx evangelicals have a terrible predilection for ruining the lives of innocent people in poorer countries – or just stealing from them. I can never decide if we, the decent citizenry of the island, should get angry or just die of shame.
Alternatively, why not encourage them to follow John Smallwood into space?
An industry based around talking to the wall, led by freaks with monstrous egos who seem to have little difficulty parting the gullible from their savings? It ought to be a cinch.
Until then, we have to do something about these bozos instead of continuing to curl up in embarrassment every time they further inconvenience someone in another country run by crooks, charlatans and spook-fancying simpletons.
This, then, will be my contribution.
From this day, every time one of these nincompoops tells the Manx press about a ‘development program’ they are running, I will write a fulsome letter of apology on behalf of the Manx nation to the ambassador at the London embassy of the country concerned.
This is no idle threat. When some loathsome homophobes called the Christian Party started getting media coverage I discovered that their founder, a retired producer of gay anthems, ‘got religion’ on the island out of sheer boredom caused by our lack of any nightlife. From that point on, every time I see a mention of the Christian Party in any publication I write expressing regret on behalf of the entire Manx nation for any part we may have played, unwittingly or through sheer apathy, in the creation of this monster.
As I point out, we are one sad and sorry nation, but while this apology probably ought to come from our Chief Minister or the President of Tynwald, both are sad characters and neither appear to be capable of spelling the word ‘Sorry’.

Accidental altruism

Anyone who tried to read Proust knows that what is, I think, the longest novel in the world was caused by a single bite of a chocolate biscuit.
I’ve just had a Proustian moment. Don’t worry, I’ll try to be briefer than he was.
Recently I lunched with a friend. As I had to dash away before him I asked for my bill, paid by card without looking at it (I 100% trust restaurant workers from once having to be one) and ran back to work. Later my friend thanked me for paying his bill without telling him.
As well as being absent minded, I realised this also makes me an accidental altruist. But I also wonder if, like acts of random kindness, accidental altruism might be something to provoke for folk like me who understand and therefore reject ‘proper’ charity.
I was practicing acts of random kindnesss decades before Danny Wallace wrote the book. In the early 1980’s, for example, I was involved in ‘guerilla art’ groups who played games like leaving poems, jokes or short stories for commuters to find at random, and which ended by suggesting they did the same.
It was, as one collaborator said, like throwing a stone into a pond and watching the ripples. The funniest thing was that press reports soon after often quoted incidents and stories we did not create.
Now that is choosing to interact socially and provoke action, but in a manner which allows people to get on with it for themselves, not telling them how to do it or setting yourself up as an ‘expert’ so that if you don’t control it, everything stops.
Accidental altruism would be choosing to go even further, and probably work something in the manner of Adam Smith’s ‘invisible hand’ in free market economic theory. In effect, the best thing you can do for the less fortunate is to mind your own business and stay out of theirs, instead of patronising them to death while creating neo-colonial QUANGOs.
But there’s a difference between this and apathy. My argument would be that ‘traditional’ charity is built on the Christian example of the Good Samaritan and the command to "Love Thy Neighbour". Which is reasonable enough until you ask “What if my neighbour rejects my advances?”
Think about it. Isn’t there an eery similarity between the way evangelical charities in particular ‘help’ people who never asked them to interfere and the office junior trying to ward off the advances of a drunken manager at the Christmas party?
I’m not even going into the cases of fraud, economic opportunism, property speculation, political interference or just plain old rape that I know about where individuals have manipulated ‘charity’ to their own (and distinctly un-Christian) ends. I am talking about the general principles – the balance and abuse of power and the way in which the weaker party in such ‘negotiations’ can hardly be said to consent freely to the arrangement.
If you must start from ‘timeless’ religious ‘wisdom’ (I don’t, but others seem to need Mystic Megs just to get out of bed in the morning), how about the Buddhist “Do no harm”?
Take that as far as you like. If you’re determined to meddle in charity and risk wrecking the developing world faster than it can export heroin here for lack of an open market in any legal product, at least think your action through.
Buying that land to build and control housing for locals sounded good, but did the wealthy Westerner coming in and buying up land put land and property prices out of reach for self-sufficient locals who’ve been saving for years?
And if you insist on deciding the tenants yourself doesn’t that say you don’t trust locals to run their own lives? Sounds like blatent racism to me.
At a simpler level, why are you bowing to emotional blackmail and paying your quid to go with the Christmas basket a nice churchy group send to East Europe. Who distributes the baskets, are they only doing so through local evangelical churches who insist the poor come and sing hymns for them, and why do they need the quid if transportation is free, courtesy of a friendly road haulier?
And when a charity tells you they only act in the developing world after consulting with local’community leaders’, ask “which ones?” Often it will turn out to be ‘faith leaders’, which is passed off as a practical necessity.
Is it?
Can you imagine if Toyota were planning to build their latest hybrid car here, and they set the whole deal up via Churches Together in Mann? It would be a miracle if one car was produced, and if it didn’t have square wheels and a Sat Nav system based on the King James Bible.
I’m not saying don’t get involved in charity.
I am saying that far too much bad charity screws up lives because it isn’t thought through properly, or because the structures we have created for charity encourage, rather than prevent, fraud or the misuse of human good nature by powerful, anti-democratic and often plain nasty organisations.
And I am saying that every person who ever put a coin in a collecting tin without trying to find out exactly how it will be used contributes to that.
Another chocolate biscuit?