(Morning) Service as normal with the temperance nazis

Having gone to bed far later than is good for an over-the-hill hellraiser I missed the first part of The Big Question on the Beeb this morning, and only had time to laugh at clueless faith junkies for 25 minutes.
Bummer.
The question I did catch concerned drinking and driving, or more exactly if people should be allowed to drink any alcohol at all and then drive a car. Such is the power of temperance nazis that Campbell had problems finding anyone brave enough to say responsible adults should be able to do so in moderation.
The two gents who did were a journalist from a car magazine (and not of the Clarksonian variety) and a libertarian whose name I didn’t catch - I think a Libertarian Party speaker but possibly Libertarian Alliance as they once expressed somewhat determined views in a press release on this topic.
The journalist, reasonably I thought, said a law which treated some serious inebriate who kills while driving his Jag at speed through a built up area and a responsible citizen who has a pint of mild with a family Sunday lunch in a country pub then drives home safely in exactly the same manner is (a) bonkers and (b) bad for business and leisure interests.
The libertarian said, in essence, that drink driving laws don’t work and we’d be better off encouraging a culture in which people take personal responsibility for their actions. He also pointed to the experience of Sweden, where the permitted alcohol level is far lower yet the figures for drink-driving deaths are far higher.
As I wasn’t in the room, I could then laugh my socks off as a broad cross-selection of fanatical halfwits tried to outscream each other. Two of the loudest were the Catholic Herald’s most notorious ex-editor and that black lady vicar from Hackney who Lambeth sends whenever Anglicans need to look all-inclusive on the telly.
Funny thing is, I suppose they were both on the panel to stop it looking like the senile godbotherers who cynics like me snigger at before they even open their mouths.
Earth to Nick Campbell – you’re not fooling anyone, son. Give up now.
More seriously, it did highlight the fact that the deluded herd are easily fooled by any old emotional tosh, not just that nominally concerning their imaginary mate, and that even those with expensive educations start screaming in dissent before, not even during or after, a contrary argument has been offered or the evidence has been heard.
Sad, isn’t it? But also another reason why I think it is right to highlight not only the freethinking but also the libertarian aspects of topics I raise, and to look at ways of doing so which draw from both traditions rather than slip unconsciously into the secular methodism which, in my view, holds us back.

Christian Car Wars

I’ve blogged once or twice on the anti-social driving habits of Manx Christians, and in particular their habit of blocking narrow pavements or obstructing more considerate motorists with their gas guzzlers.
Yesterday I heard of some new outrages, and also of parking wars going on between tightfisted members of rival Douglas congregations. Considering there is adequate parking for anyone in Douglas on an average Sunday, this is taking ’Jesus Saves’ to ridiculous extremes.
St. Matthews, which used to be a lowly quayside parish church catering to seafarers and the local poor, is the latest centre for ugly goings on. The Gilbert Scott designed church got gentrified in the heritage boom of the 1980’s, and things got much worse when Forward in Faith - Anglican nutters who hate women and gays and favour hooking up with Catholics and Eastern European Orthodox churches – turned it into their island base.
The punters turn up in £50K motors and the pews are a chav-free zone. There’s also metered parking less than 100 metres away; but the skinflints won’t use it.
They prefer to block the sidestreets with their Mercs and Jags, and this has led to a run-in with another church. Two streets away is the Salvation Army hall, which has come up on here before for car crimes – quite ironic as the main culprits are employed to stop crime.
Then it was a Department of Home Afffairs executive level staff member parking his Chelsea Tractor on the pavement on a narrow, busy road, causing pensioners and mums with buggies to take their lives in their hands to get to their flats round the corner. These days it’s lighter stuff. The DHA staff continue to be immune to parking tickets or police warnings (not going to write warning letters to themselves, are they?), but elsewhere things are turning nasty as other Sally Army types and Anglo-Catholic reactionaries turn up earlier and earlier to get the few spots within metres of their respective places of worship.
But where would we be without Broadway Baptists and their ever more bizarre crowd-pullers? It’s all out war these days between Broadway and their redneck Southern cousins at Port St. Mary for ‘lowest common denomination’ status.
They’ve had ‘Weightlifting Ex-Cons for Jesus’, ‘Ex-Hells Angels for Jesus’ and every variant you can imagine on that to get ‘down wiv da kids’, and last week it was some ‘Cross and the Switchblade’ type imitator or other.
Now, Broadway punters could park in various well-protected spots over the road or round the corner. But that would mean walking up a hill or hurrying across a road.
Most of the burger-munching mouth-breathers who make up the congregation can’t or won't do that. So, they park their fatmobiles with two wheels on the pavement instead, blocking access up or down the hill to any pensioner out for a Sunday stroll along the prom.
And there’s no argument the hideous collection of vehicles blocking the street belong to them. Who else but a Baptist could own a turd-coloured people carrier with a holy haddock sign on the bumper. Who else would want the number plate MAN 4 60D?

More biblebashers going bad

What is it about godbothering pensioners and their attitude to the law?
Back in December I highlighted the case of an old cow who cut up rough when traffic police stopped her racing to church (see When biblebashers go bad on 17th December).
Now there’s an even funnier case – though potentially more serious. Again not on line, possibly again to spare the pious fossil’s blushes, so here’s a quick precis:
85 year old dear overdoes the wine at Sunday lunch, then decides she just must drive to church. Police are alerted to a car being driven erratically through Port Erin, and arrive to find said car has mounted the pavement by the local RC church and hit the wall. The visibly disorientated driver has to be taken 20 odd miles to Douglas (being a Sunday all other police stations are shut) and when eventually tested is way over the drink-driving limit.
In court her brief tries everything, from rounding up the congregation as character references to accusing the police of being less than Cary Grant with the geriatric gin-guzzler. The judge is also told she’s indispensable at church, where she launders the fancy dress costumes.
Does make you wonder, doesn’t it?
Fellow godbotherers who’ll act as character references, and priests with all expenses paid cars being waited on hand and foot. Obviously not that ‘indispensable’ if none of them could offer her a lift. With a £400 fine and 12 month driving ban, let’s see if they pitch in now she really has problems.
The funny thing is, the police are proudly saying how the Christmas drink driving figures are down thanks to their prominent campaigning (see http://www.gov.im/lib/news/dha/police/highvisibilitypo.xml). Every teenager and single parent from a sink estate who’s been random checked in recent months should now say ‘get off my back and stop a few biblebashers instead before they kill someone’.
Sadly, while death in the shape of godbothering grannies is now kept off the roads, the other subject area of my December posting isn’t improving.
For example, a Chelsea tractor parked on the pavement outside a Douglas religious establishment twice daily on Sundays which necessitates anyone (e.g. mums with prams or the disabled) having to step into the centre of a busy narrow road to pass. One pensioner was about to report it, only for a young mum to tell him not to bother.
Seems she’d almost been ploughed down a few times by the same vehicle in the prison car park while visiting, and finally reported it through the advised official channels – i.e. the senior prison officer then doubling up as acting prison governor.
Guess who the reckless driver was?
Knowing how admired he is in senior police circles – especially amongst fellow members of Christian police groups – what are the chances he will be told to park his car legally this side of an ‘unavoidable’ fatal traffic accident?

When biblebashers go bad

I was startled by a huge Examiner headline this week. It read ‘Ungallant police officers made speeder even later for church’.
But when I read the story, my wee daughter was concerned for my health, having found me on the floor, bent double, clutching my stomach and shrieking with laughter.
Sadly it’s not on line, but the jist of it is as follows:
Police clocked a 61 year old woman doing at least 45 in a 40 zone, just before a village. Apparently she was late for church.
Our boys in blue are usually lenient with minor speeders, preferring to concentrate on serious headbangers. We have no speed limits outside town and well signed 40 zones just before and after. So usually you get a polite reminder of why the few limits are there and sent on your way.
I’ve had a few myself over the years, but no follow ups. In TT Week I once saw a copper studiously ignore a stark naked biker cruising down Douglas prom with an Alsatian on the pillion, so the bar is not exactly low.
Yet this woman ended up in court, where she got a £150 fine and three penalty points. This tells me at once she must have lost it big style and annoyed them into prosecuting.
You get a hint of this from a letter read out in court in which she claimed the police ‘simply sprang out of their hiding place’ and this was the ‘very height of ungallantry’ which made her even later for church. Well, tut tut!
She went on to say that as getting to church was so expensive and life would be ‘intolerable’ without evensong where she could ‘rejoice in tribulation’ she now planned to return to Canada. Her diatribe ended sniffily with: “They do also say of the Isle of Man that nice people come here but they don’t stay. Why should they. Good riddance!”
Need a hand onto that plane with your bags, dear?
I wonder. Is it possible all those fundies on the Police Consultative Forum, forever ranting on about relaxing parking restrictions near churches and so on, have finally exasperated the police into action?
If so, can I also point out the habit evangelicals have of parking their cars with two wheels on the pavement close to their favoured faith hovels. Not hard to spot – newish Chelsea Tractors or people carriers in naff colours, fish signs on the back, personalised plates like ‘MAN460D’, close to a church with the door open and the sound of tuneless wailing wafting from within. Don’t even need to worry any more about a Chief Constable stood at the church door, prayer book in hand, dragging victims in and waving parking wardens away.
Go on officers: make my day. You KNOW you want to!