Now we are sick

How many pathetic white flighters are there on the island, and how much would they pay to listen to a drunk they cannot even vote for?
The answers are 700, and £17.50. What sad lives some people must lead to hand over a day's worth of benefits.
Don't get it?
OK I'll try again.
Apparently Nigel Farage (the most notorious racist comedian since Bernard Manning did everyone a favour and died) is speaking at The Gaiety on November 11^th.
I'm not sure which joke is sicker, the date or the fact that the organisers can boast 700 tickets have been sold at £17.50. What, exactly, does a racist throwback who scrounges EU funds have to say to an island which can neither vote for his moronic party in the UK nor send one of his fellow parasites to Brussels, because we play no part in that assembly either? And what half-wit at the Department of Fun missed the significance of the date?
Anyways, when the half-cut one and his fans do show up so will some genuine Manx people. We will leave these no-hopers to bore each other to death inside, but leaflets from Hope not Hate will be distributed outside from about 6.30 PM. So if you don't spend much time in post offices, but secretly always wanted to know what a long queue of losers look like when not collecting benefits, come on down and join the fun.

The real public health menaces

I had the, um …... interesting(?) experience of meeting some people who either already are or shortly will be indirectly employed to tackle the island's so-called substance abuse problems last week.
Inevitably, I was not impressed, and rather than yet again hear fact-free drivel that's been printed uncut in the local media for years fell to musing what might be done to tackle one of the island's real social problems.
You know, some days I really worry about the Manx addiction to inventing social panics, linked to the ease with which intellectually challenged middle class deadwood can feed off a social network close to government which will find things for them to do. Frankly, I'd rather they stayed home and did something less socially damaging ..... drink a bottle of supermarket own brand sherry daily, read what Sunday supplement critics pass off as literature, weave baskets, make pots....anything really but engage with the real world and drag others down to their level.
Now this (see http://www.clivebates.com/?p=2391 ) is the kind of thing they should be reading, and to stay well ahead of their publically subsidised games you should too. Take a quick look and have most of your misconceptions about “public health” blown away ...... just like that.
And as Chris Snowden commented (see http://velvetgloveironfist.blogspot.com/2014/09/the-conceit-of-public-health.html for more):
“Clive is too polite to mention one of the other reasons why 'public health' people are "surprised to find there are people who get up and do something, and do it for nothing", which is that they would never consider doing anything without being paid for it, preferably by the government. A grass roots, volunteer-run 'public health' group is an oxymoron.”
Over here, it is even worse. I suspect most morons would be offended to be associated with the kind of woo-woo merchants and research-free tactics all too common in Manx health scams.
And for another succint analysis of the way this stuff works, you really have to see http://velvetgloveironfist.blogspot.com/2014/09/soda-sock-puppets.html
Local Government running an astroturf campaign to promote their own no-brainers and money-drainers to taxpayers? You just could not make this stuff up! Thank goodness that kind of stuff never happens on the Isle of Man...
..oh hang on a minute......

Some Manx jokes

I saw this today (see http://www.iomtoday.co.im/news/isle-of-man-news/should-isle-of-man-work-permit-holders-be-made-to-speak-english-1-6474791 )and cracked up laughing.
It's not just the idea of Peter Karran (nice guy, but not the most articulate man on the island – and probably even the least articulate in the House of Keys) saying anyone needs to learn English. It's not even the usual mongoloid mutters of support from semi-literates married to their cousins.
It's...
Story 1 – a lady, not from here, works as a voluntary literacy tutor on arriving on the island while waiting for job offers to come in. She applies for a government position teaching English as a Foreign Language and gets a written reply saying they want a native English speaker. It's so full of spelling and grammatical errors that for the next year she uses it to teach her Manx born pupils. This gets back to some local teachers, who mention that at least two Manx Education Ministers, even in their careers, have been blacklisted from presenting Speech Day prizes because they had such limited vocabulary that young kids would snigger.
Story 2 – me and same lady in Ramsey Co-op a few years back, chatting in Manx to the late Freddie Cowle – last of the original Manx language teachers and then very close to death. A local bigot behind starts grumbling to his wife on the lines of 'If you can't speak the language...' With a straight face, this lady asks Freddie (in fluent Manx) 'Do you think he knows there's a boat in the morning?'
Freddie doubles up with laughter. From his wife (a personal friend) I happen to know this was the last good laugh he had before he died soon after, because he was still laughing about it when he got home and she asked him what the big joke was.
Story 3 – Me and a carload of Hungarians passing through Randolph Quirk's birthplace, Cronk-y-Voddy. As we go along the straight, the whole carload, in true 'Wayne's World' style, are screaming 'We're not worthy, we're not worthy' at the tops of our voices while trying to bow in homage towards Lambsfell. Luckily there were no other cars around.
Actually, Story 3 is only for English language academics and my European readers in particular. Nobody under the age of 50 on the Isle of Man would understand the joke.
Which is what makes it twice as funny.

Silly Bankers

In his diaries, the late and gloriously camp Kenneth Williams often used the euphemism 'Having a Barclays' for the act of masturbation, and it seems to me no accident that 'Barclays' or 'banker' continues as handy rhyming slang for a person who is stupid or of low character.
Barclays always was, and still is, an awful bank, and it's a pretty good bet that wherever you find sweatshops, child labour, dodgy arms deals or 21^st century slavery you will find a helpful man from that establishment if you look hard enough.

Which makes it even funnier when the PR department for the local Barclays tries to intimate it has a cuddly management who care about the dispossessed of the world and want to make things right. Now, on reading this sledgehammer-subtle piece of hackery (see http://www.iomtoday.co.im/news/isle-of-man-news/recognised-for-operation-christmas-child-efforts-1-6347796 ) I don't think even for a second Barclays actually gave money to these chancers, but it's doubly funny when the muppets who run the gaff fall for a scam which shouldn't have fooled anybody apart from home-schooled Alabama rednecks. And, of course, triple funny when reading the comments and realising that island educational standards are even lower than Alabama.

Oh, if you don't already know why I'm alternately laughing my socks off and banging my head against a wall in sheer disbelief, just go to https://sites.google.com/site/occalert/ .

And believe me, as someone who's monitored this and similar scams since Franklin Graham and his shady peers started thinking them up, the OCC Alert site is remarkably polite.  

When you start to find stories elsewhere of, for example, Franklin Graham trying to persuade George Bush to send bibles instead of aid to saturation-bombed Iraq, or Samaritan's Purse telling victims of a South American disaster that they could only shelter in tents subsidised by US Aid if they attended Baptist services and effectively renounced their Catholic upbringings, then you might see why even the Southern Baptist Convention wants nothing to do with Graham any more.

I would like to believe that in 2014 the island can finally wise up to such nonsense. But reading the inane comments I know that is still far too much to ask.

But I still wish you all the best for 2014, in the hope that at least some of us can both laugh and rise above such idiocy.

Funny......absurd even......but just not fun

Someone close to me came home giggling today, after hearing a Creationist refugee from non-sectarian 'Norn Eylan' claim that I wrecked his chance to fleece Manx tinfoil-hatters - sorry, that's 'organise a challenging weekend of seminars from an eminent geologist'...no, sorry, wrong audience again, maybe that should be 'offer a prayerful exploration of alternatives to the atheistic theory of evolution for the benefit of true believers'........

Oh, you probably guessed it!

Actually, all I did was send a letter to the papers a few months ago pointing out to any churchgoer about to pay to hear a career creationist that said tinfoil-hatter also believes his Imaginary Friend commands bigots to execute gay people.

I wouldn't presume to tell anyone capable of believing six impossible things before breakfast to abandon their 'sincere beliefs'. There is very little point arguing with anyone who lives in a hermetic thought-bubble within an alternate universe, so I never bother. But even they have a public duty to consider if their odd ideas actually excuse genocide in what the rest of us recognise as the real world.

It appears that this odd character (clearly unable to distinguish between the results of several centuries of rigorously tested hard scientific exploration and the amanita muscarita-influenced ramblings of bronze age goat-herders) also does not understand why such views might be a problem.

My spy on the spot observed that he is considered an oddball even amongst his funny friends, so did not attempt enlightenment. For myself, I do not intend to follow the tongue-in-cheek example of experimental artist Joseph Beuys, who once performed a piece entitled Explaining art to a dead hare. It isn't just that it would be pointless, because I quite like the absurd.

It just wouldn't be fun.

We're Do-o-o-med!

We’ve had the oddest letter this week, which had me roaring with laughter and Management almost exploding in fury.

It seems Ramsey Baptist Church are going door to door asking if anyone wants them to pray for anything. This is the intellectually challenged clown troupe who wave their hands in the air like they just don’t care every Sunday down at the local primary school because, given sight of a ten pound note, the Education Department have less self-respect than a desperate crack whore.

Well, they could always pray for a collective two figure IQ between their entire congregation, but they shouldn’t expect miracles.

Seriously though. On the one hand, a religious zealot is rapidly dismantling what is left of the welfare state and any sense of collective responsibility or neighbourliness this septic isle ever had. On the other, all kinds of evangelical monsters are crawling out of the primeval swamp, picking off the lonely, the dispossessed, and other victims of this neo-nastiness.

How sick is that?

If I thought Ramsey had local politicians I would write to them, pointing out that such opportunism is on a par with cowboy builders who try to worry you into ‘replacing’ roof tiles then scarper with your cash. But as Captain Mannering (see http://www.manxradio.com/newsread.aspx?id=65011 ) has just taken charge at Trumpton Town Hall for the fourth successive term I doubt Dad’s Army will be on this case (or any other) within the decade.

So that’s it then. As Private Frazer would say “We’re all doomed”.

Though not as doomed as the Zombie Carpenter’s charmless chums when they knock on our door and Management answers it.

21st century child abuse

Well, profuse apologies but I’m still too bogged down with real life to get back to serious blogging.

But I couldn’t go without noting the kerfuffle this week when Tynwald approved the merger of the Isle of Man Adoption Society (still better known locally as the Manx Churches Adoption Welfare Society) with the Isle of Man Children’s Centre, thus also amalgamating the island’s fostering and adoption services (see http://www.isleofman.com/News/details/53740/bishop-s-concern-at-closure-of-iom-adoption-society and http://www.iomtoday.co.im/news/isle-of-man-news/bishop-doubts-over-charity-merger-1-5517942 ).

As reports say, it only squeaked through after the Bishop (who is honorary president of IOMAS/MCAWS) complained the Society’s directors had not consulted him and so the Tynwald vote was the first he’d heard of it. In turn, our Minister of Social Neglect was keen to point out that MCAWS management themselves had requested the handover of functions in order to close the society.

The immediate problem with this version of events is that, by law, the directors must formally announce the proposed closure meeting by public notice, and simultaneously give written notice to all concerned parties at least 21 days beforehand, so that the Bishop should have known of the meeting and resolution to close. Any ordinary member of the public who worries about such matters would have known, as it appeared in the local press in the public notices – where corporate crooks bury the other evidence of international scams being closed down if anyone can be bothered to look.

There is also the control of MCAWS by the Anglican Synod. In theory, any interested person of good character could offer their services as a director: in practice (and I have this from past attendees of such meetings) a private Synod meeting chooses suitable candidates. ‘Volunteers’ are ‘coincidentally’ proposed and seconded at the AGM and an election follows, conveniently never with more candidates for office than posts. How, then, could a MCAWS board exist unless very much under the thumb of the Bishop?

Another issue is the reasons for the closure.

Insiders suggest the government discreetly told MCAWS it would no longer fund separate adoption and fostering charities. This seems likely as the Minister for Social Neglect (another religious zealot, of course, though in his case a devotee of Rome’s new link to 1980’s Argentinean fascism) clearly demonstrates he believes there are ‘deserving’ and ‘feckless’ poor, and is gradually depriving all such sinners (be they old, disabled or simply too badly educated for employment) of the public support expected in a civilized society.

Then there is the matter of a Catholic adoption agency in Leeds, whose continued refusal to allow gay couples to adopt has been vetoed by the courts at every level of appeal. Following our Civil Partnership Act, MCAWS (one suspects with gritted teeth and rictus grins) have duly made it known that applications from straight or gay couples, divorcees or single people would all be considered without prejudice. Again, I’ve been discreetly told that gays and other such delinquents might have to have their applications considered by the island’s  moral guardians of religious rightness, but in practice would never be successful.

Sadly, though, this may not be quite the victory for common sense it appears.

Partly because from the 1980’s (when Manx government childcare was noticeably ‘dumbed down’ by cheap evangelical alternatives to trained professionals) through to recent years (with seminars being led by new age charismatics with no academic or professional pedigree) childcare on the island is itself something of a foster home for wacky ideas. 

Partly because the Children’s Centre is yet another ghetto for the ‘ladies who lunch’. You probably know the score here. Committees are formed by bored rich women whose husbands spend their days diverting foreign aid from the poor towards the offshore accounts of developing world dictators in return for control of natural resources by Western corporations. Funds get raised at glittering social soirees, and, inevitably, are spent with more regard for the latest fad than solid academic research.

Hardworking parents of lesser means find it ironic that while these legends in their own lunchtimes harangue the rest of us about raising children, their own offspring - deprived of parental attention - become the best customers of drug dealers or the first in line to hand their bank accounts to the venal leaders of dead-eyed cults. I say this having personally helped several Manx ’trustafarians’ (in the absence of parental support – or even interest) to escape such fates.

So, the failure to help troubled kids find loving families passes from religious flat-earthers to the kind of vacuous trophy wives who take horoscopes and new age twaddle seriously.

And this is progress?

Brand Zero

For the last few months I have been a reluctant local observer to a pointless ‘rebranding’ exercise. In the last few days the noise from empty heads stopped and the ‘product’ was launched at a glitzy private reception.

It would be too cruel to identify it. Suffice to say it flopped within 10 minutes but the self-obsessed marketers were too dumb to notice the sniggering of their guests, many of whom were present by compulsion rather than choice.  Seriously (or should that be “not so seriously”?), I was laughing so hard I had to sneak out after less than half an hour of the most ill-advised antics since 1980’s rock stars (allegedly) served coke on the shaven heads of dwarfs.

As I said to some real creative friends elsewhere that night, “Now I know what David St. Hubbins and Nigel Tufnel did when Spinal Tap broke up.” Yes, it was that bad, and at least one screw-up was eerily similar to the ‘Stonehenge’ cock-up in that classic send-up of naff arty types with delusions of adequacy.

Many months back, I had visions of what we might be in for when I accidentally discovered that the chumps trousering a six figure consultancy fee were led by someone who insisted on being called Binky, who appeared to have graduated from Cheltenham Ladies College circa 1970, dropped some bad acid and lived off the commissions of fellow rich inbreeds ever since.

It never ceases to amaze me how expensively educated people can have nothing but belly-fluff where most people keep their brain cells. I was around folk like Bill Drummond and Tony Wilson when they were starting out. I enjoyed myself, and I have a real soft spot for eccentrics and mavericks. But that was 30 years ago, and they were working on a shoestring and investing all they had.

Dipshit corporate ‘characters’ who risk only the family lives of real people are another matter. And anyway, while the business world talks vapidly of ‘edginess’ or ‘thinking outside the box’ the council estate all-or-nothing visionaries I loved, laughed and learnt with were simply not constrained by a box which only exists as a sort of collective hallucination.

Another thing you notice on these occasions is that, sadly, most of the brightest, most interesting people on the island are working for peanuts in the hospitality industry. More accurately, serving peanuts to clueless wasters who were lucky enough to be born here, or to be the offspring of economic refugees from emergent democracies.

It was like that back in 1983, when I first arrived here. These days the nationalities have changed but the pay has not, and the working conditions have got worse.

I hope those bright and beautiful wage slaves go on to better things, because they deserve it. But like me, at least for now they can laugh at naff products spawned by the stunted imagination of those employing them for less-than-minimum wages.

Thou Shalt Not Shall Be The Whole Of The Law

I am startled (but hardly surprised) by a report (see http://www.isleofman.com/News/article.aspx?article=48533) that the Manx police are seeking (or at least having foisted upon them) a power to stop drinking anywhere on island, rather than just isolated trouble spots which police records have identified. 

My first thought is that it is a shame we cannot have a bill to prevent idiocy outside the Wedding Cake, or public evangelising. Because as the wise and witty P.J. O’Rourke says “…no drug, not even alcohol, causes the fundamental ills of society. If we're looking for the source of our troubles, we shouldn't test people for drugs, we should test them for stupidity, ignorance, greed and love of power.”

There is also the planned legislation to prevent smoking in cars containing children  (see http://www.gov.im/lib/news/health/publicsviewssoug.xml ), which may sound laudable on a casual glance but is based on poor BMA research, which was quickly debunked but only corrected so quietly that the general public remain unaware of the problem.

One elementary fault in the research is that it is based on what happens if you smoke in a car with the windows fully closed – which even a hardened smoker will tell you is physically impossible. Another is that they simply got the sums wrong, by a massive percentage. See http://dickpuddlecote.blogspot.com/2012/10/bma-lying-again-say-their-friends-again.html for the latest in the saga plus a number of links which give a potted history of the way the legend has developed.

Further to that is the way that the BMA (and more particularly a professional anti-tobacco lobby) continue to press their case based on the sensational but now totally discredited version of the evidence, not the reasonable but much milder version which would allow for some sort of common sense debate and compromise. It really seems such parties are not interested in debate or democracy, just consolidating a position where they will tell us what to do without question, or else.

As I have never smoked (filthy habit) and am (at least in the true and original sense of the word) temperate I think I can claim an independent, unbiased view of these things. As I am also a responsible parent, what also niggles me is the way that pig-ignorant but powerful prodnoses not only presume, but are being allowed, to legislate based on their ridiculous assumption that most parents simply do not know, and cannot be trusted to do, what is best for their children. That is an insult, especially coming from cretins who cannot even read the Bible without moving their lips.

The most worrying thing about this is the way we’re slipping away from the English Common Law system towards European ‘Roman Law’. In a nutshell, common law is based on the idea that you are free to do something unless there is specifically a law against it. Roman law works on the principle that it is illegal to do anything unless there is a law which grants you the right to do it, i.e. there is a numbered code and regulation for absolutely everything and if there is not you are a criminal, go straight to jail.

Eventually, because smokers (like most Manx people in my experience) are conformists they will lose the latest battle, just as they long ago lost the one over smoking in even segregated areas of pubs staffed and patronised only by consenting adults.

As smoking has been moved by a mixture of social engineering and well connected but ignorant busybodies from being the social norm to the social exception (the action of an ‘awkward’ and ‘inconsiderate’ few), so social drinking is going the same way. It will soon be - at best - not tolerated and at worst actually illegal, because people who want to conform, to be friendly and not make trouble (i.e. to be sociable and neighbourly) do not know how to fight back in a civilised way against anti-social prodnoses who claim the moral high ground and have friends in all the right political places.

In the process, of course, these otherwise useless and unemployable busybodies create a nice little cottage industry as ‘therapists’, ‘counsellors’ and ‘advisors’, which we the public (and their victims) pay for from our taxes.

Nice scam if you can work it, but what a nasty way to destroy our community and the pleasures that community has long held in common. Little more than a miserable, mean-minded, happy clappy fascism, in fact.

Evolution-deniers on tour

Since my last post I've been digging further into the subject, and it appears that the Isle of Man is just one source of  easy cash from slow-witted folk with deep pockets. In fact the professional evolution-denier in question is on something of a UK tour of science-free backwaters, starting next weekend.

What is more disturbing is that, while the intellectually-challenged elsewhere will only host Mackay’s wacko antics once before pointing the way to the next houseful of eejits,  the Isle of Man is letting him spew his guff an incredible SEVEN times. Admittedly, four of these are being hosted by Broadway Batwits, but one of them is described as a ‘youth service’, and that has to be really worrying. Especially if you consider that some of the likely punters include public and third sector ‘professionals' who deal with vulnerable sectors of society.

See the full itinerary at http://www.amen.org.uk/cr/where/ . Note at once the absence of a date in any venue which might be even loosely described as a font of academic (or even theological) wisdom. And even swivel-eyed loons like that are not dumb enough to listen to Mackay twice.

The Isle of Man as an emerging British Isles centre for conspiracy theorists, flat-earthers, and antics peculiar to three-nippled, cousin-marrying, superstitious peasants in general? What an awful vision! 

Not quite the international image our wise government pays all those PR agencies so much to create, is it?

Beware prats in tinfoil hats

If you happen to be in the vicinity of Grill in the Park, Nobles Park on the evening of 25^th October or The Studio, Upper Car Park, Central Prom the following evening look out for people in tinfoil hats. Even if you spot people in more conventional dress entering these establishments you might want to make a note not to trust them with any important matter regarding you or those you care about.

The thing is, information passed to me indicates that the Manx Tinfoil Hat Tendency is fast gathering momentum. If you can bear to follow some of the recent odd exchanges on the local newspaper letters pages and IOM Newspapers website you know the sort of person, and their flaky views.

You would think that these freaks meet in the corners of dingy pubs at night (which quickly clear when they start talking) or perhaps the cheaper caffs during the day after they’ve signed on.  Surprisingly not, in fact it seems they are about to go into the after-dinner speaking lark.

In fact one John Mackay of Creation Research UK is due to make all but the wackiest upchuck their food on 25^th and 26^th October. As stuff I’ve seen suggests those arranging this visit are barely literate I’m not sure this is wise, but hey ho, any entrepreneur has to be encouraged during a recession.

 Mackay, if you’ll excuse the pun, is a real dinosaur of the Evolution Denial industry. He started in the 1970’s (so must now be over 60) and is now seemingly moving into Global Warming as his traditional market shuts down.

Creation Research UK is the European arm of an Aussie outfit, Creation Research, and Mackay pretty much runs both as a means to push DVDs and speaking tours of views he variously claims to be presenting as a scientific or theological academic (depending on the punters and venues). However, credible evidence of his expertise in either field seems as light as creationist evidence that the Bible should be taken literally.

The British Centre for Science Education (which IS run by scientists, and regards the likes of Mackay as menaces to the young and impressionable everywhere) says that:

“Mackay has a doctrinaire (dogmatic) belief in his religion; he has absolute belief in the absolute certainty of the revealed truth of the bible, as literally interpreted.

He was originally a school teacher and holds a degree in geology from a reputable Australian university (Queensland). What Mackay has never been is a professional, practising geologist. Despite the name of his ministry, he has never had a peer-reviewed article in any scientific or geological journal. Nor is the author of this report aware that he has ever submitted such a paper.

Mackay has also been described as a geneticist, presumably because he undertook a course in this subject as part of his BSc. However, one thing Mackay is not is a geneticist. What he would have learned in a 1st degree in geology is both years out of date and well below the breadth and depth of education which most consider necessary to be a practising geneticist. Mackay certainly has never practised as a geneticist.

Nor does Mackay appear to have any theological qualifications whatsoever.”

Actually, the BCSE study the professional creationist racket rather closely (for obvious reasons), but remain objective enough to ask the main players precisely what they mean to say, and how they mean to say it. In the course of this they uncovered something else about John Mackay.

Do not read http://www.bcseweb.org.uk/index.php/Main/MargaretBuchanan until you first place a pillow below your chin. You will need it to prevent your jaw breaking when it hits the floor.

Another day, another sick joke

 The Department of Sick Jokes just gets sillier and sillier.

Earlier this year it  ran the worst government ‘consultation’ in Manx history before confirming vacuous pro-life freaks with double digit IQs will dictate all care of the terminally ill. Which is exactly what the faith-addled pro-life freak posing as a health minister and his hand-picked faith-addled pro-life advisors always intended to do anyway.

It is now letting loose possibly the least-informed bunch of amateur prodnoses ever to register as a Manx charity (quite an achievement, given the sheer range of superstitious dullards and bored rich parasites already causing misery and chaos amongst the local dispossessed) to provide “open access, support and advice services for addictions.”

See http://www.gov.im/lib/news/health/departmentofheal53.xml and try not to burst out laughing.

There is some small compensation in knowing that this will be a complete waste of time. For example, the Department of Hopeless Affairs solemnly assured us not so long ago that the island does not have anywhere near the drug problems all the ESPAD surveys they underwrote said we have. For another, once you plod your way through the details of an expensive survey a few years ago which was supposed to save the AAS’s funding you discover that, actually, the survey of young people, well….wasn’t…. because the academics running it couldn’t find any young people. So they asked eight or ten random older bods instead and then just converted the whole thing into percentages which figured in scary press releases, which were dutifully run by a compliant press who simply never bothered to read the research.

To their credit, as they had to get it published in an academic journal to build up their own claim to be proper academics, the researchers did admit this. True, they only said it in a publication which the government though was only available at huge cost to academic institutions, but anyone (well, me) determined to track it down can find it for free. So, when government ‘experts’ claim to know about drinking patterns amongst the young (or indeed any age group or sub-sector of Manx society) I can just snigger with impunity, because unlike them I’ve actually read the evidence they commissioned. 

Thoroughly.

The dumbest thing is that, way before the latest troupe of clowns gained control of the Sick Department, we even had a perfectly adequate facility for dealing with alcoholics and some professionally qualified staff to run it. But rather than pay the going NHS rate for staff, the government left it empty for a year or two. Now they are handing money to a bunch of quacks without so much as a science GCSE between them, who are busily trolling local churches for even more clueless volunteers to do the actual counselling.

Please laugh loudly, and often, and then treat yourself to a drink…or possibly two. Considering how much we’re paying to keep these chumps in pointless employment I think we’ve all earned it.

Sick Note

According to a government press release this week (see http://www.gov.im/lib/news/health/volunteersneeded.xml ) ordinary members of the public are being invited to apply for six voluntary positions as Members of the newly-restructured and independent Health Services Consultative Committee (HSCC).

At this point, any Manx resident who has ever turned up for a routine hospital check or procedure only to be told that  the doctor didn’t, or the appointment was changed weeks ago but nobody bothered to tell you, or even that the clinic or service itself has been axed (i.e. pretty much anyone who uses the health service but isn’t related to a doctor or politician) will be thinking ‘Oh good, about time they got some feedback from ordinary punters.’

Except that they won’t.

Because: “To ensure that members are independent of the Health Service the members will be appointed by the Appointments Commission and will be appointed for a period of three years. Applicants do not need any formal qualifications, but a positive interest in the performance and delivery of Health Services would be very advantageous. Applicants should not be clinically qualified or be currently, or previously have been, employed in the Health Service.”

In plain English, that’s thickos with no knowledge or interest in the work only, appointed by a government puppet show remarkable only for each puppet’s ability to obey orders without question and be incapable of thought, which itself was chosen by a Sunday lunch sweep of the same desperate dives government ministers and civil servants hang out in.

The real question, then, is: ‘Where will the Appointments Commission find six individuals of such low intelligence and with such a small social circle that they don’t realise how badly the Health Department is being run, and by such  faith-addled throwbacks?’

Just a wild guess here, but how about in the same church pews they found the Appointments Commission and the health mismanagers?

Whinge if you're glad to be sad

I suppose I have to make some comment on what is passed off as a ‘response’ to a UK government consultation about gay marriage by the island’s Anglican area manager (see http://www.iomtoday.co.im/news/isle-of-man-news/bishop-s-view-on-marriage-reform-1-4654915 ). But, really, is there any point?

Oh well, then….

Firstly, the Bishop of Sodor & Mann has never had a right to sit in the House of Lords, but is the only bishop in the British Isles who, of right, sits in the upper assembly of another government. It is therefore a little puzzling - and more than a little rude - that he feels able to submit an opinion to the Westminster government when he is not governed by that country's laws, but is an unelected member of another country's government (and an unpopular and unwanted one at that).

Secondly, prior to his appointment as Bishop of Sodor and Mann, Paterson was personal chaplain to John Sentamu. He was chosen as the Manx bishop at a private meeting, attended only by three tame Manx politicians and three senior clergy, which was chaired by John Sentamu. Unlike the standard process for selecting a bishop - whereby Lambeth puts up two candidates and the selection committee chooses - his was the only name considered. Draw your own conclusions as to his ability to either act or express a theological opinion independently of his former 'line manager' (who, of course, was over here on a week long visit last month).

Third point, if you want to know what he actually said to his fast diminishing flock, go to http://resources.pihomebuild.com/sites/713/docs/www_1207.pdf .

Fourth point, he didn’t even come up with this guff. The ‘suggestion’ of introducing vows into civil partnerships to avoid having to introduce gay marriages is lifted wholesale from the Christian Institute. The rubbish about maintaining a distinction between ‘civil’ and ‘religious’ marriage is another direct lift, this time a CARE argument made when the Scottish marriage act changed a few years back.

Bottom line – both Christian fundies and the leadership of the larger churches (but not their general membership) are bricking it because when gay marriage is introduced in the UK (and it will be) the position of churches becomes even weaker – even if by some miracle they manage to bluster a way out of having to let those religions, Christian denominations and clergy who want to offer legally binding ceremonies to gays do so.

Think about it. What is the point of the churches being allowed to carry out ANY legal ceremony of commitment if they cannot - or will not - conduct them for most people, or even recognise that the vast majority of people’s chosen legally binding ceremony is the real deal?

They will, quite rightly, become even more of a laughing stock in the eyes of the general public than they already are, and there will inevitably be pressure on the UK government to finally remove the ridiculous privilege which allows them to pretend they are fit to rubber stamp any adult relationship as ‘legit’.

So can I just leave it at that?

Because a little while ago I vowed never again to knowingly add to the sum of misery in the world, and even having to acknowledge the dishwater dull ‘judgements’ outlined at the links above by this terribly sad man is depressing to anyone with more than half a braincell. Religion, politics and commerce are all sources of misery by the bucketful, and frankly, I cannot bear to consider them ‘seriously’ unless I have a VERY large bucket close to hand.

And incidentally, I know the 21^st century gay community goes to great pains to stress they are now just as drab, and lead just as dismal and pointless lives, as everyone else. But I still think any gay couple who want to get married in a church should be reported to the Taste Police. Because some things are just so tacky they cannot even be passed off as camp.

Release your Inner Llama

By now I’ve got used to the Isle of Man College running ‘spiritual’adult education nightclasses with titles on the lines of ‘Release your Inner Llama’. It’s not as if Manx college tutors are actually capable of teaching adults anything these days anyway. In fact their current range of ‘vocational’ courses illustrates exactly how low government expectations of the current and future workforce are.

But as the college brochure was chucked through the door today I had a quick glimpse to see and giggle at what wacko delights were on offer. And as ever, tucked amongst flower arranging and ‘how to turn-a-computer-on’ type offerings was the now usual quasi-Buddhist emptyheadedness for bored rich thickos, plus a sprinkling of other new age psychobabble such as Reiki. A new departure was giving over to numerous, equally ill advised (not to say imbecilic), explorations of ‘Celtic Christianity’ the chapel that came with the premises for the now disgraced ‘business school’.Um… yes…. quite!

So far, so stupid. Far more serious is the involvement of Care for the Family, puppet of infamous christocentric UK hate group CARE, in a course on ‘Alcohol Awareness’ run by a governmental advisor on that very topic. I have little doubt they will also poke their homophobic noses into another course, theoretically on drug awareness. I also doubt if either course, even without CftF’s ‘help’, would stand up to critical analysis. After all, nothing else produced by the Chief Minister’s Task Farce on Alcohol and Drugs has.
That might be because the Christian fundamentalist careerists who first proposed the project to a previous Chief Minister would never allow anyone who might have an academic or professional background in such topics to get involved in the first place. Apart from anything else, an informed person with even a modicum of social responsibility would be obliged to tell politicians what a dumb idea it is to give public money intended to prevent drug and alcohol dependency to those who deal in nastier alternatives.  Alternatives which screw up families and make weak people socially and financially dependent on free-loaders for far more years than bargain basement vodka or heroin.

Is it a bird? Is it a plane?

This herbert (see http://www.isleofman.com/News/article.aspx?article=45109 ) has been one of the oddest things happening over here this week.

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No it’s…CROSSMA-A-AN!! Oh, and possibly compulsory workwear if the Christian Institute and Christian Legal Centre ever had their way.

Having first come across the story when a visibly bemused Paul Moulton had to interview him last weekend for Manxnet TV (see http://www.manx.net/tv/mt-tv/watch/5363/cross-the-nations ) - which we can be sure had absolutely nothing to do with several Manxnet staff and a key local advertiser being involved in a bizarre evangelical cult - I was beginning to wonder if it was all hype. Sure, he got coverage in all the local media, but nobody could recall seeing him - and a saddo dragging a 12 foot cross up Manx hills is the kind of thing one tends to notice.

The lunatic fringe of Manx Christianity getting extensive media coverage for something that never actually happened would be nothing new. If you need reasons for this, consider, for example, that the ‘national radio station’ has more ‘religious broadcasting’ than news-gathering staff (though only one godbotherer gets paid to my knowledge) and the news desk only works 8-4 weekdays, and that, since openly moving control, management and production off-island, the ‘national press’ is now interviewing their own staff as nobody else can (or wants to) talk to them.

But he was finally sighted in Ramsey yesterday. To be accurate, he was spotted ‘resting’ at the unused picnic area in the middle of the main street (thanks to the infamous ‘mural’, nobody eats there for fear of throwing up and trade at adjacent sandwich shops has been decimated), though nobody saw him actually walk in or out of the town.

If you were to believe one gushing press interview, he has been happily received by locals all around the island, getting stopped by passing Mercedes drivers, asked to pray for ailing relatives and other such rot. Even if a few lonely nutters did recognize a fellow headcase and ‘inter-acted’, his reception in Ramsey was not warm. To my certain knowledge he was asked only two questions by locals.

Firstly “Isn’t it time you got a job” and secondly “Why don’t you just carry a Kalashnikov? It would still make you look insecure about your manhood, but at least Kalashnikovs haven’t been responsible for as many innocent people dying as that thing.”

If you were wondering who on earth pays for such nonsense, it may help to know that, having started the week off with Onchan’s creationist lobby, he is due to end it at one of Ramsey’s one-man-and-a-dog evangelical outlets tomorrow. There were five at my last count and they do not even talk to each other. The truth is, at the rate they fall out and form new splinter cults there could well be six or seven by the morning, so it is impossible to say where ‘Crossman’ will be preaching, or if anyone will be there to hear him. 

Turning a crisis into a cash cow

This (see http://www.iomtoday.co.im/news/isle-of-man-news/jeremy-clarkson-loses-fight-over-langness-1-4490271 ) was sad news.

Stripped of legalese, what it means is that the daughter of the only Manxman ever to win a Victoria Cross cannot prevent rubbernecking ‘nature lovers’ pressing their noses up against her windows under the pretext of observing local wildlife. This is really a bad joke, considering such peeping toms are more of a freak of nature than any known wildlife, and get way more public subsidy than the endangered species that dwell in Sites of Specific Scientific Interest around Langness. Bit of a mystery how these freaks breed in the first place really, given that most seem to be of indeterminable gender or age (though all are startlingly bearded and/or otherwise hirsute) and with drab plumage which biologists would agree should repel rather than attract a mate.

As I have mentioned before, I once worked down the road from the cottages, and two workmates were sons of the last lighthouse-keeper, so I know the inside of the cottages, the footpaths and the Bennies (as we nicknamed them) who troll there quite well. So, I have no doubt that (a) there is no need for walkers to go so close to the window (b) the action of the Bennies is deliberately intrusive (c) many are so trapped in a deluded little bubble that they are mentally incapable of understanding that they have duties or that others have rights (in fact there are valid arguments as to why they should not be allowed in a public place without competent adult supervision) but (d) that any court or legal proceeding staffed by objective, capable professionals would be able to find a way through this which allowed decently minded nature lovers to wander around enjoying themselves without the Clarksons having to sit at home with drawn curtains all day. Sadly, the Manx legal system is the last refuge (outside politics and the civil service) of rich, self-serving thickos who would otherwise be begging in the streets, so common sense or justice were never options open to the Clarksons.

Which leaves them with a dilemma – what to do next?

If I was them I would consider turning the tables on the Bennies.

The thing is, when I first encountered examples of this species in the early 1980’s, it struck me I had not seen any offshoot of Homo Sapiens so odd since nursing patients stricken with GPI (General Paralysis of the Insane) in Devon back in the last decade of the Victorian asylums.

GPI was not, strictly speaking, a medical analysis. It was a polite term for the feeble-minded offspring of Plymouth prostitutes born in the days when that city was still a major military port, syphilis was rife and penicillin not widely available. As the poor creatures were inevitably institutionalized once diagnosed the last of them were dying out even as I worked there. Granted, rumour had it that 10p and a Mars bar still bought patients the favours their mothers once sold for slightly more, but in reality once confined to asylums for life they could not have children, and as anti-biotics and the downfall of Empire ended both the oldest profession and its side-effects outside asylum walls GPI ended too.

When you see horror films featuring old school mental hospitals, the wild-eyed stereotype of the patient in the straitjacket is the nearest you will see to the GPI sufferer. Needless to say, it has not been seen in a real mental hospital in decades. In the early 1990’s, while at college, I did a few night shifts at the last ‘old style’ Yorkshire asylum. Staff close to retirement vaguely recalled the name GPI, but no-one younger had seen a living example, which makes the Benny even more of an Object of Interest.

Who can account for it? More importantly, how much cash would you part with to see one?

So, instead of being trapped at home by slack-jawed yokels, why not turn Benny-watching into a business opportunity? If wealthy Brit tourists will pay a fortune to look at lions and tigers in Africa, they would surely shell out for a weekend break watching equally exotic wildlife closer to home? It would be far cheaper, far funnier and less dangerous. While getting the wrong side of a lion gets you half-eaten, the worst a Benny can do is drool on your sleeve – and if the glass between the two parties is thick enough, it need not even come to that.

Forget the heritage-themed loser scripts on which the Manx tourist industry has bet our future. Forget scraping the barrel to try and find even one viable example of Manx life in past times which would interest more than half a dozen anoraks on limited incomes.

We have a real life freak show to sell the world, the Clarksons may own the theatre and they should clean up, if only to get compensation for the injustice and blinkered attitudes they have to put up with from the Manx government.

Glum Dummies and Fun Bunnies

Ah, Easter – second biggest opportunity of the year for the Christo-numpties to make prize prats of themselves. And this year’s crop of howlers is dumb as ever.
Up early yesterday, I turned on the BBC news channel –to be honest mainly to find out if religious extremists or UK-government-underwritten Middle Eastern despots had carried out any more massacres while I was asleep – but was surprised to see the BBC World Service giving undue coverage to this drivel (see http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-17611036). Not only that but they reported it exactly as scripted by the head of UK Catholic church PR (a part-time BBC producer who, when one of my uni tutors some years ago, offered me and other budding journos a guaranteed first in return for services to the church), without bothering to check the facts (there are none anyway) or to balance it with any point of view from a rational adult.
This blatant BBC partisan crap is quite interesting. In a 1991 conference organised by an outfit called Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom I heard Roger Bolton (then a determinedly independent and outspoken TV producer) admit that the BBC World Service – unlike the BBC in general – was not editorially independent, and that not only did the security services vet all potential employees but that the BBC actually provided offices for security service handlers whose sole function was to ‘advise’ the employees they had hand-picked and to wield the red pencil on scripts which crossed the guidelines.
I wonder if, with nothing else to occupy their tiny brains, the conspiracy nuts who run the 21st century Beeb have hooked up with Opus Dei instead? I cannot for the life of me imagine any other reason why a BBC presenter would allow the ridiculous Andrea Minichello Williams (of the Christian Legal Centre) to chunter on unchecked until her mouth was about to froth and her head to spin round.
Should one complain to the BBC? Possibly not worth the bother – although having our licence fees used to promote such tosh is very annoying. For one thing, watching a CLC nut’s eyes swivel and trying to guess what medication she is on is good entertainment. For another, every time that ridiculous, lying flat-earther O’Brien opens his bigoted mouth in public more Catholics of good conscience turn their backs for ever on a church which does not deserve to survive. We could give it until about Christmas at this rate and the twit will be talking to himself while his fellow priests scour the cathedral miserably, wondering where all the pretty choirboys have gone.
And then today it was Dumbledore’s turn (see http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-17646549).
I loved this bit:
“Dr Williams said a hostility towards faith and religion in public life may have been tempered by a recent appreciation of the social value of religion.
But he said the ultimate test of Christianity was not whether it was beneficial to the human race, but whether the resurrection of Jesus Christ actually happened.
He said that for Christians a vision of reconciled love between people "is there only because God raised Jesus" and that the answer was not in scientific proof, but by the way believers lived with and in their faith.”
Which explains why nobody takes them seriously, because the leading examples are all such money-grubbing, hypocritical careerist throwbacks.
Actually, compulsory religious nonsense in schools may serve some educational purpose. Only a few weeks ago, while watching imbeciles three or four times her age gabble their way through the Lord’s Prayer in assembly, my daughter discovered that not only do deluded people talk in their sleep, but that they do it in unison and most of them get the words wrong. This is the sort of valuable stuff I pay taxes for the Education Department to demonstrate empirically.
I suppose it will be at least tomorrow before the chumps who laughingly describe themselves as ‘the Manx media’ update us on the local sermons. Even with the Radio Cowshed (Manx Radio) news desk taking Sunday off and leaving ‘news’ to whatever the religious programmer drags in, the airwaves are refreshingly short of pontificating loons in fancy dress.
There won’t even be pictures from Peel Passion Play this year because Living Hell are hiding indoors - or perhaps just driving around sink estates in unmarked vans trying to kidnap any innocent who has not seen through their act yet. I have a sneaky suspicion that, after last year’s fiasco, even they worked out what a dumb idea it is to hold a mock crucifixion of people known to have helped a notorious 1990’s child abuser cover his tracks. For one thing, when the pictures appear in the local paper, diligent parents will show them to small kids and warn them “If you are ever in a public place and these guys appear, run, and don’t stop running until you find a police officer to bring you home.”
But enough of this - a chocolate bunny beckons.

More rantings from the madhouses

According to this (see http://www.isleofman.com/News/local/article.aspx?article=43483 ) the ringmaster at a notorious Manx freak show has confirmed the exhibits will continue talking to the fairies before the daily performance starts for real, the dogs jump through the hoops and the chimps throw excreta at each other.
So, no news there then.
Seems he was questioned after a well researched and executed campaign by the National Secular Society stopped the compulsory prayers which kick off council proceedings in England’s most deluded backwaters, which in turn has caused the most under-employed and ill-informed sections of the superstition industry to worry they might get culled.
How can you kill something if it is already brain dead?
The whole point of the ruling is that, as before, those who choose to can pray, but prayer cannot be a compulsory item on the council agenda. But the inability of Lords Spiritual to understand something which my 10 year old daughter grasped in seconds when she asked about it today is more evidence that they are unfit to be part of any serious political assembly. Not that the House of Lords could be described as a serious political assembly.
And talking of political assemblies which lack gravitas…
I have even less faith in Manx politicians than most of them have in the Imaginary Magical Friend they ask for help before another day spent trying to shaft the island.
But, thankfully, neither politicians nor civil servants have ever run the island anyway. Their task is merely to distract straw-sucking peasants by looking as dignified as anyone can while passing wind dressed in a bad suit. Meanwhile, those who actually make the decisions which determine whether or not we stay fed and housed for the foreseeable future do so, safe in the knowledge that they will not be chased by a pitchfork-wielding mob who would view the ability to use a calculator as evidence of witchcraft.

Worried? Me?

I wasn’t going to blog this week, mainly because I was told to get out of the way and read a book while Management and Junior Management did something important.
Problem was, a joke about busybodies in the book connected with some things I read this week, one story about a completely bonkers fundraising initiative involving a charity known to my friends and relatives as ‘Hangman’s Rope’ (because every time the public give them further licence to act, something else innocent dies), and another an ‘advisory’ evening on a health matter where, on the face of it, yet another bunch of rich, superstitious new-agers want parents to disregard good medical advice because of something they heard from a friend of a friend who read it on the back of a Tofu wrapper. Both the head-scratchingly inane ‘fundraiser’ and the new age unhealth warning demonstrate the continued persistence of that irritating phenomena, the Manx busybody of independent means.
Funnily enough, many such press releases enter cyberspace due to a once very strait-laced hack whose idea of ‘edgy’ used to be wearing a pink Argyle pattern sweater to play golf. Then, some years back, he got it into his head to try hallucinogenic mushrooms, which led to such a bout of soul-searching that he signed up for life with an evangelical cult. This, I humbly submit, may explain a lot of things.
But this is the problem now that Britain no longer has an empire. Once upon a time village idiots (especially interfering, pathological do-gooders who engage in charity work), could, after adolescence, be dispatched to the colonies to boss around natives until they either got killed by beri-beri or lead poisoning (courtesy of a bullet or two from an exasperated native employee or spouse).
True, those who miraculously survived sometimes retired here and could even bring the empire’s problems home by going into politics.
I can think of one who was so dull-witted he was unemployable here, even by the church which gave steady employment to his relatives, and was dispatched in utter desperation by his family to Kenya. There he failed dismally to make his mark or even get into white mischief, then came home once there were no older relatives to stop him and eventually drifted into a career as a political deformer from which he was only recently and forcibly retired, and where his weekly questions were so pointless and his blustering speeches so grey they made even his father’s sermons seem inspiring.
Another, similarly dispatched in his youth further East, rose to the top of what Interpol used to consider the most corrupt police force in the former British Empire – apparently not just without a stain on his character but without even noticing that his real employers were the Triads. No surprise, then, that he also went into Manx politics upon retirement, where he was highly respected for his work on issues of morality, law and order.
But that was in another era, when there were still far-off countries where a pompous (if semi-literate) buffoon could be safely absorbed into some minor regional bureaucracy. These days the only market for such chumps is Eastern Europe, because a century or more of colonial mistakes have made Africa, India and the Far East immune to even the most virulent forms of British idiocy, and as US tele-evangelists pump far more dirty money into such countries than puny Brit godbotherers, even ‘charity work’ with demented evangelical outfits is drying up.
But always remember the Romanians saw off Ceacescu. In fact, from my relatives I know of a long history going all the way back to Vlad The Impaler of unwanted interlopers being disposed of in colourful ways, and greedy illiterates with political ambitions ending up in unmarked graves then being quickly forgotten by their former near neighbours and collaborators. So even siphoning off EU aid to build substandard cow shacks passed off as ‘sheltered housing’ and ‘schools’ in the hope the roof stays on long enough for the tourist trade to pick up and the site to be sold on for ‘redevelopment’ no longer seems like a safe career option.
The real difficulty will be when the latest generation of demented ‘social reformers’ come home for good.
Their colonial era predecessors left in times of Manx economic hardship and retired to an island of full employment where the economy was bolstered by a growing offshore finance industry. The new generation were unemployable here even in such good times, which was precisely why they were packed off in the first place.
If they return to an island where employment and the economy are both far less certain, then even their superstitious relatives and chums in the public sector will never find paid employment for all of them. And as they are demonstrably dumber than any ‘at risk’ subculture they might be let loose ‘advising’ to, one struggles to think of any career choice other than living off the state at an even lower level of subsistence than, say, an evangelical minister with a franchise from a US parent church.
I might worry a lot if I could stop laughing long enough.
You are welcome to try both, possibly even at once.