Refake, remodel

Maybe this just demonstrates the herd mentality of the marketing industry, but it has been quite a week for Manx ‘rebrands’. Now (see http://www.isleofman.com/News/details/52592/iom-alcohol-advisory-services-changes-name) it seems the piss-artists previously known as the Alcohol Advisory Service have joined in.

Oh Joy. A bogus charity that fails miserably (and at public expense) to address three moral panics whipped up by worry-wart godbotherers has also failed to re-invent itself as a happening private facility for market-led pseudo-therapies that are not needed and do not work.

Except, of course, that this is not private enterprise. In fact it will leech more off the public purse than a council estate of third generation junkies (if such an entity ever existed outside of the twisted imagination of Daily Mail readers).

Well, that’s progress for you.

Failure to fly

As we can see from http://www.iomtoday.co.im/news/isle-of-man-news/street-angels-need-your-help-1-5291318 the latest local attempt to suggest a Christian answer to a Christian invented moral panic may not survive long enough to pick up public funds.

I shouldn’t laugh. But I will anyway.

For once, a clueless scheme based on a growing folk myth, in turn based on the refusal of too many local journalists to do basic fact-checking because the guff they print was spouted by folk with crosses around the neck has not led to an outlay of taxpayer funds which might as well have been poured down the nearest drain.

Good. That’s progress by Manx standards.

It’s also hilarious that even in the space between the scheme taking off and the latest leader emerging the back story has changed yet again. Regular readers will spot at once that the cult did not start recently in Halifax, but in Brixton some years back – courtesy of an as yet unconvicted Ghanaian scamster who has now all but vanished from the script.

If anyone actually wants to know, the Halifax and flip-flop element entered care of a quite different West Yorkshire Anglican scheme to place chaplains into nightclubs to run chill-out zones. This was purely commercial on both sides by the way. Cheapskate nightclub promoters didn’t have to pay paramedics as the godbotherers worked for donations and converts only.

The real joke - as anyone who knew the rave scene there at the time knows - is that the nightclubs were run by major criminals as a means to launder money from far nastier activities. Nice friends you have there, vicar!

But locally, religious attempts at running social services rely only on links to governmental criminals and fall into 3 categories. (1) efficient community projects which happen to be run by churches (no problem with that, other than the government get paid to do it so should be doing it rather than franchising the business to their lesser qualified friends), (2) well meaning muddlers (no problem there either. If you want to help out your neighbours, good luck to you) and (3) leeches and predators wearing crosses (just lock them up or tag them).

To be fair, Street Angels seem to be a Class 2 problem – certainly not an efficient or necessary use of public time, energy and resources, but (unlike some Manx evangelical initiatives) not an actual health hazard either. As I said before, if elderly churchgoers really want to spend the night watching adolescents puke it’s up to them. Even sober they can’t do more harm than the drunks already do to each other, and if the police seriously thought it was dangerous they would find an excuse to stop it.

They see him here, they see him there.....

Just when you think ‘the religulous’ cannnot get dumber, they prove you wrong again.
See http://www.metro.co.uk/weird/869759-jesus-christ-found-in-walmart-receipt for example - the latest in a stream of unlikely sightings for effigies of their poster boy.
As you’ll see from the other links on the pages, tracking such lunacy is itself booming as something of a niche industry. For example, Fortean Times (a magazine by and for those, like me, who love winding up fundamentalist rationalists as much as fundamentalist godbotherers) now has a page ('Simulacra Corner') where readers can send in their own photos of odd phenomena. This month’s includes the Virgin Mary as revealed in the rings of a cut down tree trunk and the folds of a record cleaning cloth in a CD rack, and Jesus on an onion and the surface of an old baking pan.
You just could not make it up, or as Poe’s Law states:
“Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humor, it is impossible to create a parody of fundamentalism that someone won't mistake for the real thing.”