David Nutt talk - be there or stay misinformed

A couple of weeks back I hit a particularly rich and interesting research seam for another project. For that reason alone I cannot blog much until I find time to read through and start processing it.

Still, I can at least point anyone who hasn't yet heard towards the David Nutt lecture at the Manx Museum on Monday 28^th April. It's a co-production between Isle of Man Freethinkers and the Positive Action Group: no tickets or seat-booking and free entry/contribute what you can towards costs, so best be there at 7 PM for a safe seat. You can find more at http://positiveactiongroup.org/index.html.

And before anyone asks, no, though I have banged on about such topics regularly, I am not an organiser. If I had any influence on the decision to set up such an event, it is quite marginal, stemming from a proposal I floated to some of the older Freethinkers a few years back.

Following the death of my good friend Patrick Kneen, the Manx assisted death campaigner, and once a misguided attempt to prosecute his widow had gone away, I thought it would be a shame to lose the Manx public's new willingness to explore controversial topics in an open and civilised way. The Kneens' brave campaign opened the floodgates on an island where I had almost given up hope of seeing social change or even temporary relief from Theo-fascist twaddle. For once, local religious bigots and control freaks were caught on the back foot (despite their considerable government influence), as was also shown later by the way one homophobic legal or governmental barrier after another fell quickly in just a few years.
I tentatively put it to Mrs Kneen that it would be nice to remember Pat by setting up an annual lecture in his name. The general idea would be to bring over a knowledgeable, high profile speaker on the kind of topic locals might quietly have strong feelings about but no means to start a debate and keep their jobs. She was very keen, but as she moved away to rebuild her life and died just a year or two later, the idea got no further. I did then put it to the Freethinkers that, as possibly the only local grouping interested in social change but unlikely to ever beg public money, we really ought to give it a go.
I can hardly wait for the rare experience of entering a Manx public sector building to hear someone with expert and highly specialised knowledge willing to engage with the general public. Someone who is neither looking for nor seeking to perpetuate a public handout (and even if he was, not willing to lie or suppress vital research or evidence in order to do so). This may explain why it took two groups of enthusiastic, public-minded folk rather than a QUANGO or civil service body to set the night up. It also explains why nobody with a serious interest in the topic should miss it, and why I doubt anyone involved in the Chief Minister's Task Farce on Drugs and Alcohol or their ludicrous policies will be there.

Food for thought

You can tell Christmas is close when Manx religiots and their government chums, along with the business sector, kick off a bogus charity initiative.

Take http://www.iomtoday.co.im/news/isle-of-man-news/food-to-be-collected-for-the-island-s-needy-1-6280278 for example, which as usual, avoids all the important questions.

For example, what percentage of material in landfill is foodstuffs? 25%... 50%.... more?

Obviously, even with highly sophisticated 'just in time' computerised ordering, major supermarkets operating on the island cannot avoid throwing away food. Tons of it ... probably daily. They cannot even reveal how much waste there is or make some deal to give it all away without lots of awkward questions. They are, after all, businesses, not charities or the social services. The real problem is, neither are Manx charities or social services.

We also cannot make the island self-sufficient, and to my mind half the problem is that government refuse to admit they are not trying - just pretending - to. Despite the homely cover story, Manx agriculture (our only real nationalised industry) is (just like its old school communist role model) geared up to high price export, not the home market, and food fairs etc. are just a way of getting us to market test and subsidise this.

But it gets worse....

To my certain knowledge a large supermarket chain gave a Manx religious charity as much leftover food as they could carry every weekend for over 30 years on the understanding it would be discreetly redistributed to the needy. Also to my certain knowledge that charity did not distribute most of what it was given (because their workers regarded many potential beneficiaries as too feckless) but regularly gave away box-loads of tinned goods to well-heeled worshippers instead. In time, after successive Saturdays on which the charity could not even be bothered to turn up and collect it (but still blocked an attempt by a pensioners support group to use it instead) the supermarket broke off the arrangement.

So, seems to me there is a simple logistical mismatch here. People dispossessed by the government of the island where they were born lack food or the means to pay for it. Supermarket chains tied in by necessity to UK and European models of fast, massive food distribution and sale must throw away tons of the stuff and cannot be seen to give it away instead. In particular they throw away enough fresh fruit and veg to feed an army of pensioners and other paupers. A government agricultural policy is based on marketing and exporting Manx luxury foodstuffs hardly anybody local likes or can afford, but not the production of cheap staple foods for local consumption.

So, (sighs deeply), rather than untangle this mess or put things right...

Supermarkets (basing their campaign on another UK idea that is not locally appropriate) encourage shoppers to buy extra stuff they would never eat themselves which (under the supervision of a social services network which isn't social … or of service .... or a network) is handed to religious Klingons who have already proved they are too idle, incompetent or bigoted to distribute it and .... need I go on?

It's like a massive pass-the-parcel game amongst career chancers and the socially irresponsible, but with rotting fruit.

Here's an idea.. why not buy up all the old eggs and rotting tomatoes on the island and throw them at twerps and hypocrites who are also well past their sell-by date? That won't solve anything either, but it would be fun, and one less trip to the landfill at public expense.

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.”

Putting the real dealers out of business

I was stunned when I read this (http://www.isleofman.com/News/article.aspx?article=43818), though not for the reasons DASH want me to be. But when I read this (see http://www.isleofman.com/News/article.aspx?article=43808) I actually cheered, then laughed when I realised that also isn’t all it seems.
What stuns me is that the Manx government has been putting over £100K annually (a sum roughly equivalent to 80% of Swithinbank’s basic salary) into an organisation which struggles to achieve what any motivated volunteer on any island housing estate could do in their spare time if they wanted to. In addition it presents itself as having ‘specialist expertise’ yet relies on inaccurate, biased and out-of-date information pumped out by UK ‘dependency specialists’ rather than objective (and by any comparison cutting edge) information readily available to any rank but engaged amateur with access to the internet. Until now I honestly thought DASH’s government funding would be closer to the sum we know they still receive (i.e. around £27,250), and even that seems about £26,250 more than any voluntary group operating at this level needs.
It was tempting to believe that the Department of Anti-Social Careerism had finally come to its senses, until you consider that the money ‘saved’ is, by remarkable coincidence, about the same annual sum it needs to put aside to cover Swithinbank’s pension. This was the point at which I burst out laughing. Knowing that Swithinbank was employed in the first place because of his ability to cut costs, source off-island funds and put in place structures whereby ‘independent’ charities do the social care and philanthropic trusts provide the money and materials, yet government pulls all the strings, it makes sense. Perhaps his final juggling act was to fund his own retirement.
Interestingly a follow-up misinformation plant from DASH (see http://www.iomtoday.co.im/news/health/govt-funding-bombshell-for-drug-charity-claims-service-under-used-1-4303761 ) was quickly removed from the IOM Newspapers website, then reappeared heavily re-written and minus all but the most innocuous public comments. To be fair, most of the comments on the original version were so bonkers they might have come from prospective DASH clients. They certainly showed a lack of social engagement, some distancing from reality and a blinkered knowledge of current affairs peculiar to those fuelled by only the most down-market tabloids.
But it will be interesting to see what that ‘alternative service model’ will be, and especially if a ‘reformed’ cokehead now functioning as a quasi-pastor for an evangelical ‘drug charity’ will have anything to do with it. To my knowledge this outfit have friends within at least two relevant government departments, and the backing of other evangelical outfits who draw money for the (non) provision of Manx ‘public services’, in at least one case paid directly to an off-island parent which in turn acts as little more than a clearing account for ‘donations’ to a major church. As these venal, self-serving parasites, though worryingly under-informed (and under-educated in either the formal or professional senses in their fields of ‘expertise’), also featured prominently in the setting up of the Chief Minister’s Task Force on Drugs and Alcohol we can anticipate a smaller, but equally useless, public program which claims to be tackling drug abuse but actually just underwrites the activities of a shady business community which rots more minds and wrecks more families on this island than heroin dealers ever did.
Bottom line – we don’t need the ''alternative service model' either, because professional drug prevention agencies don’t work, and the best thing government could do is stop pretending it knows what it is doing and just butt out. The only thing that works is when a community decides if it wants neighbours and workmates dealing or taking currently illegal drugs or not, then what it wants to do about it. The only models I have ever seen over the decades that work are informal ones run by relatives and friends of those affected. They got people off stuff that was killing them simply by being around until they stopped taking it, and if they didn’t think the drug dealers should be there they just closed down the estate to them. It’s not rocket science, just compassion and taking an old fashioned pride in what you do and where you live and work.
The only thing government can or should do is deal with the strictly physical and medical aspects of drug dependency. They can provide adequate medical care, and if they are really serious they can (a) deal with the poverty and social inequality that makes the weakest people most dependent on drugs and (b) consider if the illegality of the drugs is a bigger problem than the physical damage they may cause.
As no-one else will say this, I will. If a cheap and easy local supply of Class A drugs dried up on the island tomorrow, the call centre operations which form the backbone of the offshore finance industry would close within weeks. Call centre workers get through days of battery chicken existence at a frantic pace by necking illegal stimulants or, if they can’t get those, semi-legal steroids which they obtain under the pretence of being dedicated gym bunnies. Their employers know and turn a blind eye to this, with the better ones offering professional counseling to employees whose habit gets out of hand and the worse ones constantly replacing staff (always at entry level wages and on short term contracts) who they expect to burn out within a year or so.
Maybe a better answer to the real problem is to legalise some of the substances, and let the market do the rest. Faced with a choice between reasonably priced merchandise of certifiable quality from reputable high street stores and the current options, the skanks selling milk and baby powder cut with knock-off East European pharmaceuticals whose name and provenance (never mind chemical construction) nobody can be sure of will go to the wall.
Of course government and local employers (even the wisest, bravest ones) are not going to go with that. Which is why all anyone can do is decide for themselves, and, where or if they think a problem exists, to get together with a few friends and sort it out.
Forget politicians, forget social services and any other government employees after a steady income and a good pension, and especially forget evangelical shysters. Like the smack dealers, they are just out for an easy living, and if we deny them that they will eventually get off our backs – or at least find a scam with less risk.

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.

Poor judgement should not excuse poorer new law

You can always tell when the local professional prodnose industry thinks next year’s government subsidy might be trimmed because fact-lite scare stories like this (see http://www.isleofman.com/News/article.aspx?article=40829 and http://www.isleofman.com/News/article.aspx?article=40838) appear.
Two immediate and awkward questions arise: just who are these government ‘drug advisers’ who apparently believe “stricter laws, more research and greater awareness are all needed to curb the spread of such drugs”, and do any of them have any professional expertise?
Knowing that the Chief Minister’s task force on drugs and alcohol was set up by individuals and organisations whose main reference point is the Bible, and who do not have so much as one basic qualification in medicine, psychology (or indeed the ‘hard’ or ‘soft’ sciences in general) between them, I do hope it is not them. Actually, what I really hope is that this idiotic ‘Advisory Council’ is disbanded pretty sharpish, because, on this evidence alone, none of them are capable of interpreting something as basic as a medical report to a coronary hearing.
No, I have not read the medical report either, but I do know that it does not say this teenager was killed by a legal high, and I do know, just from reading local newspaper reports, that that teenager had also consumed quite a lot of alcohol, and I do know, from reading many more reports over the years of inquests into ’drug deaths’, that with the possible exception of purer than usual heroin it is never a single chemical substance (legal or illegal) that kills the victim, but a particular chemical reaction caused by the combination of various substances, plus the victim’s particular medical history and the particular social circumstances of the death event.
I would also have thought that in this particular case other questions which might need answering include why a 17 year old had such easy access to alcohol (which unlike the MDAI really IS illegal -and supposedly the subject of very high profile tough legislation and social control which this case alone proves simply does not work either) and why she was apparently openly having a close relationship with a man twice her age yet nobody personally or professionally related to her thought that was odd.
Again, one of the conditions demanded by and granted to Manx evangelical homophobes for the lowering of homosexual consent to 16 was a clause preventing the ‘grooming’ of anyone under the age of 18 by an older adult. In practice, as UK gay organisations have pointed out, this type of legislation is only ever used to block same sex relationships, and never against the organisations whose employees are most likely to groom teenagers for sex, i.e. religious ones.
You can also tell how close the links are between the court services and the evangelicals who live off such moral panics because, coincidentally, there will always be a high profile case for a helpful coroner or judge to use to call for tougher legislation.
Just think about it. Why would a legal professional call for weaker or better legislation, or for people to take personal responsibility for their lives, or neighbours to look out for each other …..or indeed anything which people in the real world would recognise as common sense? That would be like turkeys voting for Christmas.
Of course, the other thing we can rely on is that either the Manx press were not at the coroner’s hearing, or did not find time to read such evidence as was on public record or the judgement in full, or just chose to concentrate on juicy morsels which ‘prove’ what their bigoted readers always want to think rather than doing their duty as journalists to report the fullest facts and best informed (though probably conflicting) opinion to us so that we can make informed judgements.
Considering the seriousness of some of the issues here, this ragbag conspiracy of self-serving idiots really does need to be treated with utter contempt. And we really should, as their employers, dispatch most of them to the Job Centre as soon as possible.

Poverty of Theory, Neglect by Government

According to this (see http://www.manx.net/isle-of-man-news/3649/poverty-and-neglect-conference-aims-to-start-debate-on-social-issues) (which will now have reached the ‘proper’ local press) the Children’s Centre are putting on a conference, chaired by the Pretzel of Tynwald and a government ‘consultant’ on children, to determine if there is poverty and neglect in the Isle of Man.
If these overpaid parasites have to ask they are more useless than we already knew, and we really need to ask in return why they have claimed so much public money for decades.
They really should know how much poverty and neglect there is. Most of the Children’s Centre committee are married into the business and political dynasties which caused the island to become two distinct nations in the first place, and from talking to some of their kids I also know how dysfunctional some upper middle class Manx families are compared to, say, the average sink estate family doomed to a second generation of lifetime unemployment.
Then there is the odd selection of speakers.
We are told, for example that: “Mr McCann is a motivational speaker who encourages people to look at life differently, helping them to take a leap that will change their lives for good and make a real difference in the world.”
So he will be talking to ......who exactly at this pseudo-conference, and encouraging them to...... do what? The permanently excluded perhaps, suggesting that as local business interests have no use for them, and also have no intention of taking (even as individuals) their fair share of the local tax burden, they might as well get used to it?
But of course not. He’s just another stooge brought in, like the canting priests who harangue us from another direction, to parrot the lie that we are equally and individually responsible for our plight, and that social or economic forces have absolutely no bearing on the matter.
I hope they’re paying this pathetic, two-faced twerp good money to push that lie: I also hope it isn’t public money.
And if you really must legitimate political inability to tackle poverty and social problems with an ‘academic’ overview, why would you pick a lecturer from an establishment about which the Daily Telegraph once asked: "Is this the worst university in Britain?"
That question was asked in 2004, when Luton had an unusually high course drop-out rate, and was additionally proposing to relax consequences of students failing second year exams. Luton answered back that as it existed specifically to give chances to the kind of folk who cannot normally consider higher education the drop-out rate was be expected and extra attempts to keep students studying needed, which is fair enough in my book. But then I read elsewhere that: “The QAA conducted a thorough institutional audit of the University as a whole in 2005 (prior to the merger of the University), which resulted in the audit team’s questioning of the academic standards of its awards and its lack of confidence in the university's quality standards.”
It seems that after the audit was taken the QAA got further information showing some appropriate action in response, but it was only in July 2007 that the audit was finally signed off. Again, to be fair, University of Bedfordshire constantly polls somewhere around 70th in most ‘league tables’ of British academic excellence, which puts it just above the lowest third, but potential employers wouldn’t dismiss a 'Beds' degree nearly as quickly as, say, an MBA from the Isle of Man Business School.
Then there is the strange link with an outfit called the Institute for Optimum Nutrition. The ION is regarded by more scientifically-based nutritionists as a “controversial” organisation, and that would be putting it mildly. For example, founder Patrick Holford's apparent advocacy of vitamin C as better than conventional drugs to treat AIDS was once described as “very scary” by the British Dietetic Association.
This has not stopped the ION offering a Home Study Course and a three-year Diploma in Nutritional Therapy (DipION). Another perturbing thing is that the University of Bedfordshire previously validated the DipION as a foundation degree, and only withdrew this validation in 2010.
So, with a wealth of British academic knowledge in the social sciences to choose from – much of it cutting edge – those responsible in Manx government chose a minor academic with no peer reviewed work from a university with no teaching pedigree in the field (and who just happens to have a book to flog) to kick off a major important social debate?
Yeah, that would be about par for the course.

Spot the real social problem

I was laughing today at an old Auberon Waugh article in which, apropos of nothing useful, he complained that care of the handicapped was becoming a UK boom industry for the hard of thinking.
I laughed first because at the time the article was written (being younger, idealistic and still unwilling to live off laundered crime proceeds in the Finance Sector) I was being interviewed for a Manx job working with the disabled. Thankfully, the Manx public and voluntary sector was then being run by even thicker, more faith challenged dimwits than now, so I was turned down in favour of some superstitious village idiot, who probably now advises the Manx government on matters they know even less about. I shudder to think what a mess I might have made of my life if 'managed' for years by people handicapped by both religious delusion and severe myopia regarding the outside world.
Which brings me to the other reason I laughed, and a more serious matter.
From a story where, with government encouragement, local media wrongly reported (see for example http://www.energyfm.net/cms/news_story_150964.html ) that a girl died solely because she took the ‘legal high’ MDAI, to the first precautionary amendment (see for example http://www.energyfm.net/cms/news_story_150914.html) by the Coroner, along with admissions that investigations were incomplete, to the first intervention by the government body which bears the major irresponsibility for such futile deaths (see for example http://www.energyfm.net/cms/news_story_151355.html ) we see a perfect example of the nonsense ‘Bron’ warned us about.
The sad, totally avoidable death of a Ramsey teenager points up everything wrong with Manx drug and alcohol policy, and that it is wrong because the Manx government (in itself a major source of ignorance) chose not to seek any expert or informed advice, and instead pandered to the whims of a bunch of cretinous, unemployable, faith-addled numpties who need to be kept off the streets.
Like the UK government (and governments elsewhere wasting resources in an unwinnable ‘war on drugs’) the Manx government could learn from criminal drug dealers, who are models of social responsibility by comparison.
For example, it was drug dealers and the better drug advisory bodies who enabled an informal ’drug testing’ information service in the 1990’s (known to clubbers and even distributed by clubs) by which rival ‘brands’ of Ecstasy were evaluated for content and purity, and rogue batches blacklisted and put out of circulation. Bear in mind, ‘E’, then as now, was illegal, so those involved risked both further arrest and loss of profit.
And also bear in mind that it was when clueless government drug czars made ‘E’ a Class A that, in the circumstances, both kids and dealers turned to older Class A substances which were cheaper and more deadly, on the basis that you would spend just as long inside if caught dabbling in either.
In those circumstances, is it surprising that Manx kids turn to ever more bizarre ‘legal’ variants of an illegal drug which, alone, has never killed anybody (because all the deaths credited by tabloid hysteria to Ecstasy, when properly examined by anyone with the patience to read autopsy reports fully, turn out to have been due to a mixture of substances – some, such as alcohol, legal – or simple dehydration, or a pre-existing medical condition)?
And is it surprising, in a social situation where their only ‘expert’ drug and alcohol advice comes from ‘professionals’ who rely on free handouts written by superstitious simpletons who, in turn, probably couldn’t scrape through GCSE Chemistry, never mind Sociology, that they turn to ever more bizarre suppliers?
‘Bron’, in typically black humour, went on to worry that the supply of handicapped people might run out before all the chumps can be found jobs negating the opportunity for such already put-upon souls to get on with their lives. Similarly, maybe the real reason we appear to be reading so many Manx tabloid scares about drugs, alcohol, homelessness, prisoners who cannot fit back into society, sexually transmitted disease and family breakdown is not because they are on the increase. Maybe, on any close analysis, the population percentages suffering such problems are the same as they ever were, or even declining.
Maybe they are just more prominently reported, and, knowing that few (if any) Manx reporters now actually find stories, go to events or even ring round contacts to flesh out the PR releases they are sent (predominantly from business and government) there is also another intriguing possibility.
Maybe a superstitious, previously privileged minority is terrified of people who take control of their own lives, and terrified of losing their ability to leech off social misery. So maybe, rather than the ‘great and the good’ dominating social care in order to abolish poverty and attendant misery, they are determined to dominate it in order to ensure it continues – or is at least seen to continue.
Oh tragedy of social tragedies, that vacuous godbothers might no longer find enough drunks, smackheads and other victims to pay the mortgage and subsidise their church expenses.

Of bigotry, class struggle and counter-insurgency

Here’s a tale of two shops which explores social attitudes in the Isle of Man, and also gives evidence that even the dispossessed can hit back from time to time.


Tale 1 – a customer in one of the island’s most decrepit charity shops approaches the counter with some items, none priced above 50p. In an obvious foreign accent she asks the bored pearl and twin-set volunteer cashier to wait a moment while she checks she has enough change to pay. The cashier ignores her to carry on conversing with another chinless wonder, punches in the numbers and rings up the total. The customer, having now sorted her change, finds she’s about 10p short.
BP&TS snaps “Well, you’ll have to put something back then”, folds her arms and sticks her nose in the air for all the world as if the innocent customer had loudly farted. The customer scans through all her potential purchases, rejects a 30p child’s T-shirt, places it carefully back on the rack, pays for the rest and puts the extra 20p in the charity tin anyway. All this while both damish dullards watch her as if to check no major shoplifting was going on.
I’m tempted to name the shop but I won’t. Suffice to say that as the charity has a royal patron it attracts the island’s most vacuous social climbers, none of whom have held down paid employment or would know enough about retail to cover the back of a matchbox. This might explain why (a) their shops are too untidy and poorly stocked to attract even the most desperate council estate pensioner and (b) the ‘charity balls’ where their supporters pat each other’s backs make no serious cash.

Tale 2 – five minutes before closing time today in one of the island’s most customer-friendly businesses, and the tannoy announces the store is closing so please make your way to the exit. This place is famously open seven days a week, every day of the year except Christmas Day, and if the staff don’t have the very thing you want they’ll not only get it but ring you to say it’s in and, if you can’t collect, have someone drop it round when it suits you. Me and Her Indoors are at the counter, paying off just such a special order.
An Afrikaner, dressed in the kind of over-priced tat no self-respecting benefit-fraudster would be seen dead in, decides to inform its equally hideous rugrat and spouse that this is a major inconvenience and it really can’t understand why a store would close at the very time on the very day when customers like it choose to visit.
After announcing this at foghorn volume it reaches for the door handle. At the same second the index finger of the shop manager’s hand slides under the counter. Mysteriously, the shop door will not open and so the Afrikaner looks increasingly vexed.
“Don’t worry, Madam, my colleague will be along to let you out just as soon as he is free”, calls the shop manager, soothingly.
‘MC’, hidden safely from sight in an office behind the counter, raises an eyebrow to us, carries on reading his paper and refills his mug with coffee. After about another minute, as we at the counter turn our back to the irate woman in a struggle to hold back our giggles, he saunters out with a large key, with which he pretends to open the door as the manager’s finger releases the security button.
“Thank you for waiting, Madam, do please come and see us again at a more convenient time” calls ‘MC’ to the three vanishing atrocities. As the door clicks shut all of us explode with suppressed laughter.
For obvious reasons I would not identify the store. Just thank the staff for proving to downtrodden decent folk that, even on the Isle of Man, from time to time we can always cut the great and the good who misrule this place down to size.

A Very Manx Fascism

I wish I could have got to the Positive Action Group meeting last Monday on the upcoming Children’s Bill (see http://positiveactiongroup.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=207:children-bill-2010-why-all-parents-should-be-concerned-&catid=113:children-bill-2010&Itemid=132 to get the basic idea).
Tristram Llewellyn Jones has had some excellent letters in the local press about this ugly bastard offspring of Big Brother and small town fundamentalism, and I would have liked to see him speak. Ironically, the reason I couldn’t was because, being a serious parent, I have other duties in the evening!
I’m not sure what annoys me most about this dim-witted law. Is it the Big Brother aspect, is it (as Henry Porter of the Guardian pointed out last year) that the UK blueprint is more to do with depriving kids in secure care of any rights than it is with protecting any vulnerable kid, or is it just the gobsmackingly mediocre intellect of most of the people who would gain more legal rights to snoop and comment on my family life?
I have absolutely no hesitation in stating that the biggest danger to children on this island comes from Social Services, the Education Department, the Department of Home Affairs and, in particular, the moronic fundamentalist groups whose members have first dibs on any job with the above. By comparison, I've met smack dealers with more socially responsible attitudes and long term mental institution inmates with a firmer grasp on reality.
It is nothing less than a sick joke that the excuse offered by the Manx government for a further intrusion on family life is that they don’t want another double murder in a kids home – a tragedy caused by the sheer amateurism of the very government agencies which now want to pry and report on, and impede, the capable and self-reliant even more.
It reminds me, too, of the cultural critic Jon Savage’s early 1980’s prediction of what might, in this particular example, be dubbed A Very Manx Fascism.
As Savage quipped, German Nazism at least had great architecture and well tailored uniforms. But if a British variant ever evolved it would be from a dowdy collection of mean-minded, parochial know-nowts. Sad, inadequate nobodies who would turn everything social and joyous into a beige wasteland because they can’t bear to see anything good, any sign of intelligence or people creating things because it might be fun, or useful, or make us happy.
Remind you of anyone we know locally?
I will probably ignore this Bill (if it passes) just as I have (at best) been mildly amused by most efforts of the various incompetent legislators and other control freaks I’ve outlived, side-stepped and generally ignored since I was a child. A ten year old with learning difficulties would have little trouble outwitting such simpletons, so I have few fears for kids, like mine, who have been taught since birth by decent parents to think, ask pertinent questions and stay away from slack-jawed lunatics with mad-eyed stares who talk to invisible friends.
For those of more serious demeanour, take a look at Llewellyn Jones’s contribution to the debate at http://positiveactiongroup.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=209:should-they-tell-you-how-to-raise-your-child&catid=113:children-bill-2010&Itemid=132 , and also some thoughts of Iain McDonald, the gent with the ill-fated job of Data Protection Supervisor to the Manx government, at http://positiveactiongroup.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=213:children-bill-and-data-protection&catid=113:children-bill-2010&Itemid=132.

Pruning flowers, appeasing deadheads

Keeping this blog is a bit like gardening. No, really.
When I started the thing my attitude was, leave it all untouched. If, a year later, something I wrote proves to be stupid, or a prediction way off, it shouldn’t matter. It’s supposed, after all, to be a record of what I observed on a particular day, so in the fullness of time it might turn out not to be the full picture.
Sadly, though I’m prepared to be that open and honest, let my mistakes stand along with the best stuff, allow anyone the freedom to comment or correct me and I will leave their comments intact, the world won’t let me. Not the Manx one anyway.
The thing is, this is an island where some folk have what William Burroughs used to call ‘The Right Virus’. It doesn’t matter about the evidence, it doesn’t matter about the civilised process whereby all ideas and things are constantly questioned in order that that which is faulty or no longer useful is stripped away and replaced by better ideas and things (at least until they, in turn, reveal faults and are revised, rebuilt or replaced).
No, you see, people with the Right Virus have faith. And furthermore, they have always run things, and have always been right, while you or I are wrong and are impertinent to ask questions. And that is that.
And people with the Right Virus also do not debate, or invite comment, or in any way engage with democracy, or science, and especially not things of the mind. Because, being Right Minded, they can never be wrong and subsequently do not need to.
The difficulty with all this is that if you are involved in a civic minded group, and invite someone with the Right Virus to come and speak to it on a topic of public concern, they won’t. Or more exactly, they expect to come along and give the same set talk they give to a few senile churchgoers who never read newspapers, then ask for contributions to their ‘good cause’, and finally leave, cash in hand, having said their piece but explained nothing.
They will not explain apparent anomalies in the things they do. In fact some will not answer questions at all, and none will entertain debate or helpful suggestions about possibly better ways to do things, even from those with decades of practical experience.
The point is, discussion of moral and social issues on the Isle of Man is based on a one way communication process, the sermon. Not even the lecture, following which the lecturer expects to take questions, or the seminar, at which the leader tries to get everyone talking, or just plain and open discussion based on the sensible notion that, individually, none of us can solve a social problem but, collectively, we might all contribute a little and get something good done.
And those with the Right Virus take something else from religious culture too. They brook no dissent, to the extent of informing the organisers of civic groups that, in order to have the dubious privilege of their presence, those organisers should first announce the Righteous’s appearance in terms which clearly indicate Divine Wisdom will be passed down, not social issues discussed, also refrain from all possible criticism of the Righteous, even to the extent of withdrawing past criticism, and finally ensure that all who might now, then or in future be possibly associated with the host civic group do the same. If you think I am joking you have obviously never met a Manx politician, civil servant or charity worker.
So, from time to time, I quietly prune a couple of the older items on the website. Not because my opinion has changed, not because the information proved inaccurate, not because of a legal threat, but to ensure that those prepared to at least try and hold together Manx civic society here have a slim chance of doing so.
It’s sad. It’s silly. But on an island run by superstitious village idiots, it’s just the way things are.

Liar, liar, pants on fire

I woke up this morning still annoyed at the Archbishop of Canterbury.
That’s both startling and too obscure a beginning, so I’ll start again.
Thing is, I read a report over on Ekklesia about the Arch of Cant’s visit to Japan. Well, Japan, close to International Peace Day so you’d think he’d spout something nice about the need to communicate instead of nuking each other, that sort of thing, wouldn’t you?
But no, seems he chose to blame rational thinking for all the evil unleashed in the 20th century, and presumably all the potential evil of the 21st.
For example, try…
"[T]he sober testimony of the twentieth century is that the rationality of secular thinking is no guarantee of universal understanding and reconciliation. A rationality that has brought us into the age of nuclear weaponry and global economic meltdown invites some sharp questions, to put it mildly."
Or there’s…..
"However secular our age likes to think it is, the disastrous results of exploitative habits and of financial obsession bring people back to the recognition that they need the element of the sacred in their lives – in the sense that they need the freedom to respond to the beautiful and the puzzling and the tragic, to all the things that we do not have the power to manage."
And even…..
"It is in this sense that a religiously grounded education is a deeply 'reasonable' one. It communicates the skills we need to inhabit the real world. That may sound a little strange at first. So often, 'living in the real world' is a phrase that people use when they want to justify ruthless competition, mistrust, low expectations. But the reality around us is not simply one of menace and uncertainty, a place in which the other is always a source of anxiety. It is a place that nourishes us and keeps us alive – through material processes and through human community, from family to society."
You can read the rest at http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/node/10285.
Oh…..pot, kettle, black….LIAR, LIAR, PANTS ON FIRE!
As if rationalism was the cause of 20th century social problems, not the primary source of opposition to them.
As if religion was something apart from the ‘real world’ when, if anything, organised religion is one of the most competitive, aggressive, materialist examples of capitalist excess, often brimming over into the outright fascism which it predated, nurtured, encouraged and profited from financially, politically and socially.
If Vincent ‘what, me, protect kiddie fiddlers’ Nicholls or John ‘here’s a trick with a balloon instead of a sermon’ Sentamu came out with this shite I’d just laugh. But Williams, whatever else, may be the only genuinely well read cleric in Britain, so I expect better.
In fact, he’s annoyed me so much I’ll reveal how he misused his education to pull a cheap rhetorical trick.
What he did was play on the post-structuralist ideas of Derrida and Foucault which he, alone amongst his peers, actually will have read and engaged with. In fact, he used to teach this stuff.
Foucault analysed discourse in order to examine how places like prisons, army barracks, schools and factories develop from religious to apparently secular institutions after the Enlightenment, and how that structure tends to constrain the individual even though supposedly our lives are human centred, not faith centred.
It’s uncomfortable stuff, and atheists from a hard science background hate him on kneejerk prejudice because of it, especially as he takes a poke or two at ‘our’ secular saints in passing. But that’s often because they’re too idle to read past page 1 of any book which demonstrates how science is also a discourse, not a set of stand alone hard facts. And without Foucault feminism, our understanding of sexuality or inbuilt prejudice in AIDS/HIV responses (to take but three fields) would be much poorer, and Queer Theory wouldn’t exist, period.
Derrida, the other post-structuralist heavy, is famous for ‘deconstruction’ – the art of taking apart the structure of any belief system (which would include the way we view natural science, not just supernatural pseudo-sciences) to reveal the in-built design flaws. Sadly, he did this so rigorously that he ended up excusing nazis, and also tended to call all his critics cretins instead of answering them. So, failure as a human being, but that doesn’t excuse dissing ideas which happen to be a tad uncomfortable.
What Williams does these days is to ‘problematise’ words we think we understand, like ‘rationality’. That’s fair enough, but he offers cartoons and partial pictures instead of taking apart the ‘belief’ or ‘idea’ properly to reveal internal contradictions. And he somehow considers religion above or apart from this, when the first thing he knows from all those books he’s read and all those classes he’s taught on the topic is that RELIGION IS A SOCIAL CONSTRUCT.
If it isn’t, who pays his salary, who arranged his plane ticket to Japan, who built the university where he gave the speech?
OK, he’s giving a public speech, not a post-grad lecture. But it was in a university, and his audience read the odd book (and I don’t mean really odd books like the Bible either). So, putting it bluntly, he was dishonest and he played on prejudice like a politician (instead of challenging it like the independent critic he pretends to be). And that makes him as bad as other religious throwbacks, such as the boy-nazi homophobic freak Brown just invited to tour Britain at our expense.

Radio Four and Against

So, as anyone who joined the fun this week knows, Mark 'Turd Of The Day' Damazer, the Radio 4 boss, isn't about to let anyone rational interrupt his daily two minutes of hocus pocus any time soon. I suspect he's taking instructions on the matter from one Andrew Graystone , the BBC producer responsible for the 'challenging' (that's mediaspeak for 'shite no-one watches') film prominently advertised before broadcast last Easter.
Graystone is an Evangelical Alliance stooge who Joel Edwards managed to get on to a statutory body which 'advises' the BBC on religious programming, even though he's absolutely incapable of objectivity as not only a spookchasing flake but the BBC employee who would get the work should one of his employers take his advice. After all, the EA must also pay him well for media work such as a website he does for them.
On the other hand another wing of Radio 4 is showing more taste. A month ago I ran something on the ridiculous plans to change prostitution laws, based mainly on evangelical advocacy campaigns which falsely paint all immigrant women as potential victims of mythical traffiking gangs
(see http://clingingtoarock.blogspot.com/2008/12/pimps-parsons-police-prostitution.html for more).
An article by Ruth Alexander at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7819984.stm politely but decisively trashes the trumped up evidence, and handily reveals the true source of the false stats evangelicals are waving about. It's also revealed that not only are they a decade old but that even the researcher who gathered them thinks they're badly flawed, being based on a vague survey that rang a few suspects almost at random and took a stab at what the overall picture ought to be.
Well worth a look to balance the hype due to appear unchecked throughout UK media in the next month or two.