It's music, Jim, but not as we know it

Reading an otherwise innocuous bit of Education PR about a Christmas concert at http://www.gov.im/lib/news/education/ticketssellingfa.xml I was startled by a familar name at the end.
James MacMillan? Not the sad religionist James Macmillan who churns out such awful muzak?
'Who?' sez you. 'Oh sod it,' sez me, 'just read http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/religion/3116598/Composer-James-MacMillan-warns-of-liberal-elites-ignorance-fuelled-hostility-to-religion.html and we can cut to the chase'.
I do like this comment by the way
'Leading British composer'? That's almost as oxymoronic as 'Christian morality'! He's an idiot whose religious beliefs will thankfully soon be as obscure and irrelevant to the rest of us as his music.'
Wonder who said that? Oh - me.
No but seriously... the last patron of the Manx Youth Orchestra was Malcolm Arnold - and what a difference. Populist, wrote film scores and music kids could play, and liked playing. Even wrote a piece replete with foghorn chorus celebrating his local lifeboat crew specially for a local youth band. Glorious stuff.
When he wrote something for a Manx orchestra and the local fur coat and no knicker brigade were getting uppity about it I poked fun in the local paper, pointing out his best known composition was the theme tune to 'St. Trinians'. They fainted -but he roared with laughter.
What really worries me is if some bright spark also decides to commission 'Holy Jim, CBE' to knock out obscurantist drivel for Manx kids to struggle through at some point.
No prizes for guessing what kind of theme it will have with his track record. Still, at least it will never get a second performance, and no-one will go to the first unless their attendance is a job or exam requirement.

Oy, Godbotherer, you're nicked!

Some days you see something you didn't expect which gives you the hope to go on - and this is one of them.
A while back I spiked Manx National Prayer Week plans with a pisstake letter to the Examiner suggesting street evangelists should be arrested for begging with menaces, which got more attention than Stepford Central's carefully planned campaign. Poor them, after they got their space in return for advertising from godbothering local businesses and everything.
Just an off-the-cuff prank, and I never dreamed my suggestion that evangelists be pestered by the law would be taken up.
Then I saw an article on the IOM Newspapers website about cowboy builders (see http://www.iomtoday.co.im:80/news/Gangs-of-cowboy-builders-target.4760564.jp). Not the most obvious target for a bit of holy roller-baiting, but look at the first comment from Steve.
Hmm, thanks Steve.
Now, let's take this further, people. Let's write to our retards (sorry - politicians) and demand that the coldcalling clause is applied to thugs who threaten pensioners with badly misquoted scripture.
If this new Crime & Disorder Bill really could be used to criminalise door-to-door biblebashing we might actually see an end to a real social evil.

Read, note....then walk away fast

There's so much Horlicks going on over here at present, and so little time to unmask it, that it's hard to pick an issue.So, better take the biggest scam first.
According to an item on the Manx Radio website (see http://www.manxradio.com/readNEwsItem.aspx?id=29102 ) a new local charity guide has been published. Even if you're not as cynical about our poorly regulated charity register as I am, this is a joke.
First thing to note is that Connect2Charity is run by David Talbot, right hand man to the Stepford Central management, the Police Consultative Forum and Police Advisory Group (see As soon as this pub closes, the Revolution starts on 16th October for more on that), and many others. This crew have been flogging their dubious management skills around the voluntary sector for a while now, mostly trying to scare small charities into letting them 'help'. They are also a major component of the team behind the recent local Council of Voluntary Organisations, which seems intent on lobbying Tynwald to disband any half-decent social services left and replace them with predominantly faith-based amateurs.
All this kicked off when CARE came over about five years ago to 'advise' Manx fundamentalists on rebranding their businesses with a 'Christian ethos' in order to avoid anti-discrimination legislation - and taxes of course.
This set bigots counting on their fingers the potential profits to be made from loopholes in charitable and small business law if only the Manx government can be persuaded against fluffy liberal compassion, maintaining professional standards and stuff like that. About as hard as persuading the Pope to conduct a mass, then!
I'd give anyone who might be considering asking a Manx charity for help this advice. Take a look at this guide, note the names, and make damn sure to steer clear of all of them.

Child abuse as a public art form

As if our Education Department and Arts Council haven’t screwed up enough young lives with godbothering theatrical shite (see, for example 'How To Win Government Friends And Screw Up Kids' on 10th October), they’ve done it again.
Now they want to put on a ‘Rock Nativity’ in the island’s only community performance facility (though the real community will never be allowed to perform there anyway – and that’s another issue). See http://www.gov.im/lib/news/education/studentstakeonhe.xml for more details.
Look, I laughed my socks off with every other parent a few years back when my kid, then aged four, raced round on a wheeled toy donkey as ‘Virgin Mary’ in the nursery school nativity play. Tiny kids with towels round their heads playing holy mummies and daddies, making up their own words based on stuff they overheard at home and making you blush – that’s a proper nativity play.
Teenagers playing Joseph and Mary under threat of poor grades if they don’t? That’s seriously sick and someone should ring Childline.
I also love the fact that they’re wasting public space every night of the week ‘except Sunday’.
WHY?
Do you seriously think any 14 year old with more than two braincells would be in a church unless they’re drugged up to the eyeballs?
Maybe the emergency services should just rope off the Studio Theatre at Ballerkermeen School and declare it a disaster zone, because this is getting serious.
When a big chunk of not only Education Department cash but the island’s arts budget goes into what is supposed to be a ‘community facility’, shouldn’t that community have some access, and some say in what gets put on?
We are consolidating a ridiculous position where, as churches island-wide close through lack of punters, the superstitious still dictate our public arts programs and have open access to our schools as cheap churches on Sundays, because they can’t be arsed to repair their current faith hovels or rent a room like anyone else.
Meanwhile, try booking a building anywhere on the island to show a film, host a discussion or put on any public event either critical of religion or where views might be offered which differ from godbothering dictats handed down by national or international ‘faith leaders’. I have been trying it for two decades here, and I tell you bluntly it cannot be done.
This sucks. I’m writing to the Arts Council.
I want my money back, so I can spend it on something else. Any DVD splat or shag fest you can name - I don’t care how bad it is, any gig by any loud and raucous visiting over the hill punk band. I don’t even care if some colour-blind smackhead wants to spray-paint a wall in his own vomit and call it art. Anything, and I mean ANYTHING, is better than underwriting more superstitious shite with public money.

To Uganda, with ignorance

The island’s efforts to export evangelical misery to Africa got an extra boost this week, though you wouldn’t know so from reading the Education Department’s press release at
http://www.gov.im/lib/news/education/schoolraisesfurt.xml
Yes, on the face of it looks like a worthy project, but to know what’s really going on you need to know who Abaana really are.
You can find that out at http://www.abaana.org/home/about.php.
Starting to get the picture?
A key point to note is this is a Northern Irish evangelical charity. These have a murky history not known to anyone who hasn’t studied the sectarian conflict, and in particular the Loyalist tradition of abusing public funds meant to heal sectarian division and rebuild communities.
Briefly, in the 1980’s any biblebasher in the North could get public funds by claiming to run a ‘peace and reconciliation’ project - so many did. Background checks were minimal, Westminster was working flat out to support anything which got Ulster unemployment down and inevitably Loyalist local government departments looked after their own first.
All they had to do was use the magic word ‘bridgebuilding’ and UK government and charity funds rolled in –staff wages, office equipment, even rent-free offices in purpose built small business centres. Evangelical churches got so used to it some of their congregations have never needed another job – even though they were the root of sectarian hate in the first place.
Then peace broke out so they had to look further afield, and the Isle of Man is perceived as an easy target.
You should also take a really close look at the role of evangelical churches in Uganda. For example, consider the growing problem of evangelicals who accuse small kids of witchcraft, bag small fortunes ‘curing’ them until the parents run out of cash, then slope off leaving the families to get driven out of the village or lynched.
But surely that doesn’t involve Western evangelicals, and certainly not Manx ones?
Yes, it does! Just a few years ago I interviewed a Peel pastor who had a nice little earner going over there. Once or twice a year he went over to ‘cast out spirits’, ‘cure’ AIDS….and split the profits with an African partner church. Even my highly religious editor was so embarrassed he wouldn’t run the rantings of this lunatic as a story.
You also need to know that the teacher who introduced this project to St. Ninians moonlights with Port St Mary Living Hope Community Church's infamous ‘youth ministry’. In fact she’s one of the little clique who enable their pastor to have open access to schools and even pupil records. And yes, this is the same pastor who was the subject of complaints for pestering girls in their early teens with text messages. See previous postings for more on that!
Will the Education Department ever stamp this crap out?
I doubt it. Not if the alternative to easy publicity for bogus charitable projects they know no-one will ever investigate involves real research, properly thought through policies or employing qualified professionals at the going rate.

The curse of Dumbledore strikes again.

Well, I said getting the clergy to cast spells on public buildings causes problems (see Blessing or Curses on 7th November)........and I was right!
The Anglican bishop only 'blessed' the new school up here on Friday 21st November. Yet on the evening of Sunday 23rd I have it on very good authority that the holy rollers who met there that very morning got an earbashing from their 'sponsors'.
Seems Broadway Baptists, who underwrite the 'outreach project', don't think their Northern brothers and sisters are pulling their weight.
I know not if the problem is their economic or evangelical shortcomings. I DO know they have been told the plug is getting pulled if things don't improve PDQ.
The funniest thing is cynics quickly pegged this bishop as little more than John Sentamu's apprentice.
The usual 'consultation' between Manx and UK Anglicans before his appointment earlier this year was a short one. Basically the Archbishop of York not only formally chaired the meeting, but told them who they were getting - end of.
Even Downing Street didn't bother with the usual token 'approval'. Sentamu told Brown, and Brown had made it clear at the start of his premiership he was leaving the choice of new bishops entirely to Lambeth Palace, not making a token 'choice' between two formal candidates.
So that was that. Democracy Nil, Superstition Two.
Mind you, if whatever sorcery El Bish picked up from Sentamu gets hardline sectarian freaks out of our schools this fast, who cares? At this rate they'll be safe for kids within the year.

Christ in a Cage

I see that the tightwads up at the Tourist Department are up to their usual tricks again.
There’s an ongoing problem with places for kids to go and do stuff, but, hey, let’s not splash out on proper facilities. Why not just get some godbothering throwbacks to bring over a cross between five a side footie and cage-fighting. Then we can spend the difference on a ‘fact-finding’ mission to the Bahamas or something instead.
Think I’m kidding?
Take a look at http://www.gov.im/lib/news/tourism/giantsportscaget.xml.
But it gets worse. British Youth For Christ (charity number 263446) actually manages to keep 47 biblebashing halfwits off the dole and scrounge an annual income of almost £2,670,000 with this kind of crap. It says it exists ‘to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ throughout the world by promoting & encouraging the Christian evangelisation of young people & standards of behaviour which accord with the doctrines of the Christian faith’ and ‘to advance the Protestant and Evangelical tenets of the Christian faith in all parts of the world.’
What, like homophobia, burning witches and sectarian violence?
Then there’s the trustees. You can get the measure of them just by looking at their other charitable deeds.
Take Rev. David Stillman and Novi Most International (charity number 1043501), which says it is ‘a Christian charitable organisation which works with young people in Bosnia Herzegovina: to help them overcome the effects of their past, to equip them to enter their futures with hope and confidence, to empower them to become instruments of transformation in their communities.’
So a community in which Catholics and Muslims ethnically cleansed each other is going to get better because Protestant hardliners introduce a new sectarian divide?
Yeah, that’ll work!
I could go on, but why bother? I think you get the picture.
The government has been bellyaching for years about how kids are turning to drink, drugs and wall-to-wall Grand Theft Auto.
So do they put on some half-decent events, fund proper youth clubs?
No, they hand them over to the first brain-dead bunch of sectarian freaks who offer a bargain basement show alternating empty-headed US style sports entertainment with bible-readings.
Look guys. Try doing this properly.
Smack dealers will screw your kids up for about the same price, and NO smack dealer in the WORLD promises the junk they sell will give you life after death!