Virgin Mary - read this and weep

Can I just say that even us non-religious folk can experience miracles?
We’ve all heard story after story about the face of Jesus appearing on a crisp, the Virgin Mary seems to dash about the world like a mad bat on speed, verses from the Koran appear on…..well, you know the kind of thing.
Anyways, this morning my wife was checking how the scars from my recent op were healing up, as some are in places I can only see with a mirror and way more contortion than is good for anyone.
When she looked at my belly button, which was used as an entry point for some surgical implement or other, she burst out laughing.
Having just checked by standing on a chair and looking in a mirror while stripped to the waist (heaven knows what the neighbours will say), I can confirm her findings.
I have a Smiley Face on my tummy.
Wow!!
Atheists even get better stigmata than religious folk.
How cool is that?

Is there a Manx word for 'Equality'?

What seems like years ago, but was in fact less than 18 months, I helped contribute to a government consultation on a planned Employment Equality Bill. Yesterday I was informed the results had been published.
You can find them at http://www.gov.im/dti/employmentRights/closedwithresponse.xml, and I warn you now some of them are not pleasant. If anyone needed an accurate picture of the gap between the understanding of basic human rights and respect for others seen in the civilised world and the Manx view on such things, this is it.
Almost the only positive thing I can say about the report on the consultation is that, for once, whoever collated it reveals what was said and who said it. In that sense it is a valuable document for anyone who wants to understand just how Manx democracy and government happens – or rather, doesn’t.
I know personally from watching them in action that Manx government departments are often run by folk who care little for humanity, but the comments you see from some of them in this consultation might surprise everyone else. For example the total disinterest in giving disabled people basic employment rights and support which are now taken for granted throughout Europe.
The comments from religious organisations will surprise nobody, and to be fair they are quite upfront about their intent to ride roughshod over everyone else’s rights and feelings if they can get away with it. But it is still astonishing that government just doesn’t get it on religious privilege.
Despite having it explained in words of one syllable, they plan to allow religious organisations paid from public money to continue discriminating against employing women, gays and non-Christians as they see fit. One wonders what more we can do to educate our dimwit politicos or the culturally clueless who advise them – pictures, watch the bouncing ball singalongs in a Powerpoint presentation…or what? Someone tell me, because I give up!
Comments from others in the Manx community might also raise eyebrows, as will the government response. For example, it is astonishing that an organisation representing a dozen or so tosspot employers gets more government ‘weighting’ than the views of the Isle of Man Trades Council, which represents the vast majority of Manx working people.
You will also discover fairly quickly why the words ‘honest’, ‘compassionate’ and ‘Manx advocate’ are rarely, if ever, found in the same sentence – apart from this one.
The mind boggles at the astonishing sums which must have changed hands for members of the Isle of Man Law Society to write the responses of the employer and business organisations who, in theory, responded to this one, as well as ghost-writing most of the government department responses too (a quick review of government accounts shows the regularity with which ‘independent legal advice’ is sought on the most trivial matters). Yet the pretence is that the Society simply responded as one party.
Read this report. If you are an off-island reader I won’t blame you if you laugh out loud, but if you are local be very, very ashamed of what we are letting happen on an island which is, at least nominally, democratic and with residents who can walk without dragging their knuckles.

I'm not eating that!

Anglicanism is one of the last bastions of relative religious sanity. But every time you think at least they won’t get sillier, they manage it anyway.
Yesterday Ruth Gledhill, religious correspondent at the Times, reported that worshippers at Blackburn Cathedral have a two-track Communion service. This is so that fussy gits who won’t touch holy crackers consecrated by a woman can ask for one from the a la carte menu. All this because the most recent of three residentiary canons is a lady vicar, one Dr Sue Penfold.
Gledhill reports:
“Even though she is legitimately ordained and employed, it means that when she is celebrating the eucharist those who dispute the validity of her orders can make sure they receive “untainted” sacrament consecrated earlier by a man.
The special container, known as the “reserved sacrament” after practice in the Roman Catholic Church, is then housed in the cathedral’s aumbry, or tabernacle, and brought out on Sunday mornings when Dr Penfold is celebrating. It is used for those who do not recognise her ministry but many other worshippers also receive these hosts, unaware that they are different.”
You can laugh at the whole farce at http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article6726936.ece .
It seems that Blackburn, apparently notorious for misogynistic ministry, has gone so far over the top this time that even Backwards in Belligerence (or ‘Forward in Faith’ to people who take them seriously) disowned the practice.
Their spokesman (well, unlikely to let a woman get a word in edgeways, are they?) Stephen Parkinson said:
“I’ve never come across this before. It is pretty extraordinary. I can’t understand why the women priests put up with it.”
I can’t understand why anyone with more than two brain cells puts up with it.
(World weary sigh)
IT’S A PIGGING BISCUIT, YOU MUPPETS!!

Accidental altruism

Anyone who tried to read Proust knows that what is, I think, the longest novel in the world was caused by a single bite of a chocolate biscuit.
I’ve just had a Proustian moment. Don’t worry, I’ll try to be briefer than he was.
Recently I lunched with a friend. As I had to dash away before him I asked for my bill, paid by card without looking at it (I 100% trust restaurant workers from once having to be one) and ran back to work. Later my friend thanked me for paying his bill without telling him.
As well as being absent minded, I realised this also makes me an accidental altruist. But I also wonder if, like acts of random kindness, accidental altruism might be something to provoke for folk like me who understand and therefore reject ‘proper’ charity.
I was practicing acts of random kindnesss decades before Danny Wallace wrote the book. In the early 1980’s, for example, I was involved in ‘guerilla art’ groups who played games like leaving poems, jokes or short stories for commuters to find at random, and which ended by suggesting they did the same.
It was, as one collaborator said, like throwing a stone into a pond and watching the ripples. The funniest thing was that press reports soon after often quoted incidents and stories we did not create.
Now that is choosing to interact socially and provoke action, but in a manner which allows people to get on with it for themselves, not telling them how to do it or setting yourself up as an ‘expert’ so that if you don’t control it, everything stops.
Accidental altruism would be choosing to go even further, and probably work something in the manner of Adam Smith’s ‘invisible hand’ in free market economic theory. In effect, the best thing you can do for the less fortunate is to mind your own business and stay out of theirs, instead of patronising them to death while creating neo-colonial QUANGOs.
But there’s a difference between this and apathy. My argument would be that ‘traditional’ charity is built on the Christian example of the Good Samaritan and the command to "Love Thy Neighbour". Which is reasonable enough until you ask “What if my neighbour rejects my advances?”
Think about it. Isn’t there an eery similarity between the way evangelical charities in particular ‘help’ people who never asked them to interfere and the office junior trying to ward off the advances of a drunken manager at the Christmas party?
I’m not even going into the cases of fraud, economic opportunism, property speculation, political interference or just plain old rape that I know about where individuals have manipulated ‘charity’ to their own (and distinctly un-Christian) ends. I am talking about the general principles – the balance and abuse of power and the way in which the weaker party in such ‘negotiations’ can hardly be said to consent freely to the arrangement.
If you must start from ‘timeless’ religious ‘wisdom’ (I don’t, but others seem to need Mystic Megs just to get out of bed in the morning), how about the Buddhist “Do no harm”?
Take that as far as you like. If you’re determined to meddle in charity and risk wrecking the developing world faster than it can export heroin here for lack of an open market in any legal product, at least think your action through.
Buying that land to build and control housing for locals sounded good, but did the wealthy Westerner coming in and buying up land put land and property prices out of reach for self-sufficient locals who’ve been saving for years?
And if you insist on deciding the tenants yourself doesn’t that say you don’t trust locals to run their own lives? Sounds like blatent racism to me.
At a simpler level, why are you bowing to emotional blackmail and paying your quid to go with the Christmas basket a nice churchy group send to East Europe. Who distributes the baskets, are they only doing so through local evangelical churches who insist the poor come and sing hymns for them, and why do they need the quid if transportation is free, courtesy of a friendly road haulier?
And when a charity tells you they only act in the developing world after consulting with local’community leaders’, ask “which ones?” Often it will turn out to be ‘faith leaders’, which is passed off as a practical necessity.
Is it?
Can you imagine if Toyota were planning to build their latest hybrid car here, and they set the whole deal up via Churches Together in Mann? It would be a miracle if one car was produced, and if it didn’t have square wheels and a Sat Nav system based on the King James Bible.
I’m not saying don’t get involved in charity.
I am saying that far too much bad charity screws up lives because it isn’t thought through properly, or because the structures we have created for charity encourage, rather than prevent, fraud or the misuse of human good nature by powerful, anti-democratic and often plain nasty organisations.
And I am saying that every person who ever put a coin in a collecting tin without trying to find out exactly how it will be used contributes to that.
Another chocolate biscuit?

Cat herding for dummies

I was amused by a recent conversation with another Isle of Man Freethinker. Nothing new in that, as we often amuse each other. Unlike other local groups, we also robustly criticise each other’s ideas and nobody takes umbrage, especially if debunked by a good joke or quip. As it happens, I personally have done the same thing with local clergy for decades. Where the belief and person is honest, no offence is taken at a joke.
My amusement was on hearing that apparently this blog has been taken as some sort of Freethinker ‘party line’ – I can only presume by folk who like an organisation to have one in order that they can toe it and never, ever, have to think about morality again.
Oh yawn, here we go again!
Back in the 1980’s and again in the late 1990’s, when I worked for local papers, petty fiddlers and people who took themselves more seriously than I did used to threaten my relatives and friends to stop me pointing out their antics. I was never approached directly, and even my relatives or friends only got the threats via third parties who had, in their turn, been told half a story with the pertinent facts left out by someone else. I honestly thought that even on the Isle of Man that era was over. Maybe not.
But I will assume, for the sake of argument, that there is genuine misunderstanding. I honestly cannot see how, but will now do everything short of double spacing the following clarification to indicate you should read it as if I speak so slowly and clearly that even an MLC in the latter stages of Alzheimers could understand.
So…..
My blog cannot be taken as an Isle of Man Freethinkers party line because…..
(1) if it was, some simple indication of that fact, such as actually mentioning the group, would appear in the blog title. As you will see, it does not, and furthermore you will see no link to the Isle of Man Freethinkers website here either. I decided never to put one on, in order that malicious parties could never use my personal views to attack a group I happen to be a member of so that I can talk to the type of people who read newspapers which still have news in them.
(2) a party line would be anathema to a group like the Freethinkers anyway. As one of our number says regularly, trying to organise the Freethinkers is like herding cats, because the simplest instruction to any of us causes the rest to ask why…..or even why not.
In our early days we once tried very hard to thrash out ‘ground rules’, and for a few months got no further than something on the lines of “everyone has the right to disagree with everybody else about absolutely everything at any time without any party to the conversation taking the hump.” To be serious for a minute, we did agree some basic aims and objectives but never committed that one to print because it would be self-evident to anyone who ever attended one of our meetings.
(3) if you look at the blog topics and links on the sidebar, it is immediately obvious that much of the material here has little to do with humanism per se and much more to do with pointing out ludicrous goings on here on this island, that the world is not flat and does not end at Liverpool (for the benefit of Manx people), or that a speck in the middle of the Irish Sea between Liverpool and Belfast has (relatively) intelligent life on it (for the benefit of off-island readers).
By now, the jaws of off-island readers will be bruised after hitting the floor and their ribs will hurt from laughing. If it helps, I know faith healers who will offer to ease the pain by emptying your wallet. I don’t know how that works either, I’m just stating what they do without attempting an objective analysis because apparently that interferes with the chi…or something.
For those locals who know me – you also know that I, like my fellow Freethinkers, work on practical projects with Manx people of all faiths and none to increase interfaith understanding and reduce bigotry of all kinds. If only that were true of the self-styled ‘church leaders’ whose refusal to acknowledge or talk to other faiths caused the bigotry and social breakdown in the first place.
And for anyone who has read this far and STILL isn’t convinced – if you must dabble in evangelical cults don’t hand over your house deeds. They will probably sell your home and place the proceeds in an anonymous account based in the Turks & Caicos islands.

Oh ye of little faith

In today’s Manx Independent Sentamu’s Apprentice says Anglicans have a special dispensation not to sip communion wine during swine flu scares.
Can’t help smiling. Isn’t the whole point of religion that your fictitious friend looks after those who kiss the divine butt, and didn’t this omnipotent know-all decide your fate before you were born?
If so, what is there to worry about? If the bloke with the sickle is coming for you, he’s coming. Might as well have a drink while you’re waiting.
But, of course, SA didn’t come up with this himself. Ruth Gledhill at the Times revealed at
http://timescolumns.typepad.com/gledhill/2009/07/cofe-bishops-issue-swine-flu-warnings.html that the orders came down from Mumu and Professor Unwin themselves.
Her piece, with links to various C of E diktats, is hilarious reading. And not just for the pretence that ‘government ‘ has only just come up with advice for ‘faith communities’ or the intimation that a bagful of bishops would be closely involved in all that.
Pile of old toot. I was at a DHSS briefing to Manx ‘faith communities’ way back in January 2008 where all this, and more, was explained, and that in turn was based on guidance then floating around all UK regional health authorities.
Actually, it went much further, and in effect told churches to shut up shop on Sunday in a crisis rather than spread a virus. Much the same advice as was given to all holding public gatherings, in fact.
Even funnier, when the one evangelical who could be bothered to turn up without cash being waved grumbled about the ‘impossibility’ of closing an ‘important community resource’ (a café) he was bluntly told the court sentence given for knowingly causing harm in a national emergency. Never seen him at meetings since, but that might also be because the others didn’t tell him lunch is provided.
Almost as funny as watching one senior cleric try to make a case for clergy being ‘key workers’ who should be at the top of the list when limited vaccine supplies are being passed out while the masses riot, eat each other or just pop their clogs.
It wasn’t a dignified sight, and he didn’t come across as a caring shepherd. Even his fellows looked embarrassed.
Actually, I should say that the three clergy still attending our meetings are OK when not in full drag and in front of a congregation. Caring, ask pertinent questions and make good points.
The contrast between their down to earth knowledge that science, not prayers, stops disease and their public protestations is ridiculous.
But that’s showbiz for you.

Swells party piece

I only discovered yesterday that while I was in hospital recently an old friend was in another one, in a far worse state, and had died.
Steven Wells, possibly the most in-yer-face hack ever to work in the music press, finally popped his clogs in a US hospital on 24th June. Knowing Swells, he was probably more annoyed at dying in America than that he was dying at all.
I first met him way back in 1982, when I tried to bring ‘Seething Wells’ over to Belfast for a gig, along with fellow ranting poets Joolz Denby, Attila the Stockbroker and Wild Willi Beckett. It fell through, but I was so intrigued by this unlikely Bradford skinhead poet that I stayed in touch over the years. A couple of years younger than me but sharing all my background experiences and constraints, he was like the mischievous little brother I never had.
Somewhere I have his recipe for roast police horse from Attack on Bzag ( the fanzine he started with James Brown), his article on raizing the Globe Theatre to the ground to build a skateboard park and many other outrageous delights. As others have said, Swells didn't write just to annoy or disturb the comfortable, but to cut through crap and force fierce argument about things he deeply cared about.
A few years ago, he even contributed to the campaign to abolish the Manx equivalent of Section 28.
Way back in 1992 he was doing PR for Manic Street Preachers and sent an open letter to Pope John Paul, Axl Rose and numerous other homophobes suggesting they dress in sackcloth, wear a sign around the neck reading ‘UNCLEAN’ and ring a bell to atone for their sins if appearing in public. The ridiculous image, and attitude, stayed with me and when a Manx politician (currently responsible for transport though unfit to even direct traffic) suggested the ban shouldn’t be repealed because homosexuality ‘causes diseases’ , I asked Swells if I could re-use his challenge.
Typically he said "Go for it" and I did, in the local paper. After the campaign, I never found out if the politican involved, on resigning as Education Minister, really did receive a school bell as a parting gift from his staff. I do know it was suggested.
What I also didn’t know then was that while e-mailing me Swells was fighting lymphatic cancer. He never bothered to mention it.
Swell later wrote about that experience at http://www.philadelphiaweekly.com/news-and-opinion/cover-story/the_english_patient-38416404.html. He not only countered all the irritating touchy-feely hogwash about disease and charities that leech off the terminally ill he hated as much as I do, but set me up for my own hospital encounters this year.
A few months ago the cancer came back, and Swells topped his previous outrages with http://www.philadelphiaweekly.com/news-and-opinion/Cell-Out-42215357.html and
http://www.philadelphiaweekly.com/news-and-opinion/in-extremis/Steven-Wells-Says-Goodbye-49054426.html, the last things he wrote.
Damn you Swells! You couldn’t even die politely.