Cheap laughs in other people's misery

The recent stooshies surrounding the humour of some English media types is probably heaven-sent propaganda material for certain right-wing tabloids who will use it in their latest campaign against 'political correctness'. Some in the London-based media would just love it if they could call a spade a spade and come out with the kind of hate-filled bile that even the BNP are scared to speak today.

Ha! Another murder!

The Matthew Wright incident is harder to brush off though as the predictable objections of a few lefties. It does however shine a spotlight on the hypocrisy that surrounds both the tabloid media and the kind of shock-comedians and presenters who make cheap laughs and money out of the misery of others.

Wright's employer is of course Channel 5 which is interestingly enough owned by Daily Express czar Richard Desmond. The Express, it should be remembered, is a campaigning paper and likes to see itself as being 'tough on crime' - as much as despised journalists can be. Desmond by the way is also the owner of various porn mags and one time donor to Blair's Labour Party - could this all be more righteous than it already is?!  Paxman's interview with Blair, if you can find it on You Tube, makes for classic viewing.

Wright though peddles a different kind of porn - and not one than young lads can have a quick hand-shandy to - poverty porn. This is usually bad enough - watching the smug bully that is Wright revel in the problems of various 'schemies' and 'chavs' confused by their 15 minutes of fame and hyped up on free coffee. However, hearing Wright and his fellow bullies smirk and guffaw at their own jokes about the murder of a teenager in the Isle of Lewis really does make the stomach churn. Like all of his ilk, he chooses his targets wisely though. This 'may only be a laugh' but why doesn't he laugh at the deaths in his own family? Why not laugh at soldiers blown apart in Afghanistan? Why not IRA victims?

Strange how these folk can come over all PC when it suits them.

Hope their families are watching.

Wright is not alone. His case swiftly follows that of yon fat buffoon Jeremy Clarkson. Hearing a bloated ex-private school windbag who drives cars for a living at the tax-payers' expense courtesy of the BBC, saying the striking teachers and nurses should be shot makes even this atheist wish for a wrathful God to suddenly demand Clarkson's biblical-style circumcision. How would JC fare in an inner-city school trying to teach the offspring of society's detritus? Would he have picked up the pieces of human bodies after London's many terrorist bombs over the years? Cannae see it somehow.

Or as someone else put it:

A Banker, a School Teacher, a Tory MP and a Daily Mail reader are sat around a table. In front of them is a plate, on which there are ten biscuits. The Banker scoffs nine of the biscuits, then the Tory turns to the Daily Mail reader and whispers in his ear "Watch out, that teacher is after your biscuit."

Which role would Clarkson play?

Whit ye waiting fur? Jist git oan wi it!

Scotland has its own prize hypocrite though. Billy Connolly. His laughs came from the beheading in Iraq of Ken Bigley. Ho-ho! However, I can't recall his jokes about Princess Di's early demise? Maybe his friendship with Prince Charles and the Royal Family has something to do the 'Big Yin's' selective political correctness? If not, I look forward to hearing his jokes about Chas' uncle, Louis Mountbatten - "1st Earl of Burma" - who the IRA infamously assassinated in 1979. Maybe the famously working-class Connolly does have some boundaries after all?

Not all school bullies grow up to become policemen.

Out of the frying pan into the fire for Scotland's Presbyterians

There's a battle in my garden with weeds. An aggressive specimen introduced from the Middle East has been wreaking havoc. The only good thing is that this specimen will, in time, apparently destroy itself - constantly breaking up into smaller and smaller pieces until there's nothing left but some annoying little nodules that wear orange sashes and become animated at the sound of a flute.

The genus is Abraham. The species is Christianity. The varieties are legion though there are several that fall within the Calvinist category. Sadly, these have taken root in Scottish soil and despite the efforts of various stalwart gardening experts from David Hume to Hugh MacDiarmid and Iain Crichton Smith, this poisonous weed still thrives in some quarters. Even calling in modern day pest-control experts such as Richard Dawkins and Iain Banks hasn't solved the problem.

The Church of Scotland sub-variety has been in turmoil of late. This is the creation that decreed that the Highland Clearances were the work of god. God had, apparently, chosen idle syphilitic landlords to get rid of poor crofters who sinned against the guy in the sky by living unprofitably on land that could instead by occupied by god's chosen sheep. In later years it orchestrated a vitriolic campaign against a Roman variety of this weed whose seeds were brought to Scotland from neighbouring Ireland. In recent times, the Auld Kirk has become more benign and in a fit of enlightenment recently allowed gay men the right to preach the musings and prejudices of Semite tribes. Some local pods rebelled against this and a few seeds have now ejected themselves and joined with their Free Presbyterian variety.

However, the 'Wee Free' variety is also not without its problems. After years of playing 'bad cop' to the Kirk's 'gay cop', It recently gave the godly green light to music in the house of god. This may seem incredible to most normal people who like a tune or two but many in the Free Kirk still contend that music in any form is the work of Satan and will only worship their god with ancient psalms. Each to their own, I guess. I wonder though what the stern and dour seed pods of the Wee Frees will make of a new crop of all-singing, all-dancing happy clappy Church of Scotlanders joining in?

Park on the Isle of Raasay

The Wee Frees are to reason and progress what the Lib Dems are to honesty and principles. Recently, one Wee Free supporter on BBC Radio nan Gaidheal, bemoaned 'the passing of the Sabbath' on the Isle of Lewis after Caledonian MacBrayne decided to run a Sunday service. His logic was that were humans to disregard the Good Lord's commandments regarding work and play on 'his' day then it wouldn't be long before 'thou shall not kill ' went out the window too and murder and mayhem would ensue. As this man's church also believes that we are all sinners anyway, no matter how heterosexual or sabbatarian we are, and that we are all destined for hell, then one has to ask why a Sunday sail on the Minch would make much difference?

One wonders if all these homophobic Calvinists will insist on upholding other parts of "God's word"? Shall their be stonings of tattooed men? Will adulterers be hung from lamposts? Will a dour but godly minister inspect every new born boy to check that his foreskin has been sliced off? Will there be a campaign to stop men conversing or worse, touching, their wives during their 'monthly uncleanliness'? Indeed, I understand that Deuteronomy even frowns upon women who wear 'men's clothes' as it is 'an abomination unto the Lord'.

Or will the 'gentle churches' content themselves with, as Sorley Maclean put it in his poem 'Ban-Ghaidheal', to speak about the lost state of our miserable souls?

Sing if you're glad to be British

Talking of music and homosexuality though... those Village People of Northern Ireland and their followers will take to the streets of Glasgow this weekend. This tiny but very aggressive variety of Abrahamic horticulture usually goes under the name of the 'Orange Order'. They proclaim their opposition to the aforementioned Roman variety due to its love of 'idols' (that means statues, pictures and photographs to me and you). However, their wind-blown meanderings along West of Scotland byways often sees them miss the entrance to their churches and instead end up inside the football stadium of Ibrox. It has also been pointed out that as they march under large banners of King William of Orange that they too are guilty of 'idolatry'. While this pedantry is nothing that a good dose of laxative wouldn't solve, it has also been observed that 'King Billy' was reputed to have 'enjoyed' more homosexual liaisons than all the gay ministers in the Church of Scotland put together.

Funny that. Nothing like religion to give you a good moral compass and consistency of disapproval.

Not the Tartan Taliban?

Its been one hell of a godless week. A smattering of press articles on the under-scrutinized subject of religious mania in Scotland appeared and Bill Maher's religious-bating comedy-documentary Religulous arrived on the doorstep courtesy of the entertainment spirit known as Lovefilm and all to a soundtrack of melodic intellectual punks Bad Religion with hymns to non-belief such as American Jesus and Don't Pray on Me.

It is one year since the first Sabbath breaking ferry gave those on Lewis who are not affiliated with one of Abrahamic splinter groups, sects and outright heidcase cults the 'Satanic choice' of travel on a Sunday. It is roughly 5000 years since pre-Celtic inhabitants erected the first Calanais stones, probably because of some vague religious stimulus, ironically in the rough shape of a Celtic cross - predating the suicide mission of the son of God (or was it just God himself in a convenient flesh and bone package?) by some 3000 years. Surely the best scuppering of Roman glory until Italy's recent embarrassing exit in the World Cup.

A recent BBC report brought a smile to my face in which a spokes-mortal from the Free Church Continuing denied that his band of Old Testament obsessed zealots were bullies or 'Taliban'. Some may point out that were the various churches that exist in the Isle of Lewis that extreme then they would have wasted no time in removing yon monument to paganism that is the idolatrous complex of stones at Calanais as did the Taliban with ancient Buddhist statues.

I cannot claim here to offer documented proof of the following as there are so many sub-sects of hardline Presbyterianism active. Further to that, even island congregations of the more 'moderate' Church of Scotland tend to be more extreme, like some kind of St Kildan mouse - more rugged and robust than its effete mainland cousins. To my knowledge though the 'Wee Frees' demand rigid adherence to the Old Testament of the King James' Bible. This results in opposition to:

• the theatre - I've never really seen the theatre as a kind of petri-dish of Satanism but I guess King James' grasp of ancient Hebrew was better than mine
• Sabbath breaking - only 'work of necessity' should be carried out on the 'Day of the Lord'. However, if you are gonna be anal about it, then the Sabbath means Saturday. End of.
• pleasures of the flesh - the classic bogey man. Gay sex, women's rights, masturbation, adultery, sex outside marriage, abortion, scud mags, contraception etc... The usual bugbears of virtually every religious heidcase from Stornabad to Islamaway. But why cherry pick these fruits? Do they also demand that every boy is circumcised? After all, the guid book tells us that God almost killed Moses, of all people, for refusing to mutilate his son's genitals. Or how about women's 'monthly uncleanliness'? While Biblical enthusiasts may shout about the above on a regular basis, they seem less forthright about their chosen punishment for those of us who fall by their spiritual wayside - death. Maybe its this one point more than the others that sees equation with the Taliban as a given. Traditionally, such sinners were put to death by stoning or burning. Do they uphold this? I look forward to learning more.
• music - as per the theatre, another test tube in which Satanic microbes breed uncontrollably. Unfortunately, according to Professor Willie Ruff of Yale University, gospel music has its origins in the Presbyterian psalm singing of black slaves. Join the dots from gospel to RnB to blues and the irony of it is that the unaccompanied psalms of Gaelic-speaking puritans may have given birth to the very rock 'n' roll that sees young girls seduced by ageing Rolling Stones and Oi Polloi singing 'When Two Men Kiss'.
• vanity - myself and the Wee Frees may find some common ground if we were discussing the forthcoming Tom Cruise family reality show but of course, the Wee Freaks take it all too far. I was told by an islander of a native Niseach who went on Radio nan Gaidheal to talk of his wartime experiences only to be later castigated by his local kirk for 'vanity'. He may have survived being torpedoed by both the Nazis and the Japs but the guided missile of Calvin didn't miss.
• dancing... Auld joke time: "Why are Presbyterians against sex standing up? It may lead to dancing."
• black magic - or an sgoil dhubh in Gaelic. One reverend who recently called for Calvinists to 'lighten up' and see the likes of Harry Potter for the classic kids' literature that it is was criticised for "endorsing witchcraft".
  

The fact is that these maniacs are an embarrassment for most islanders. Religion in one form or other has always existed in Scotland, however this dour and extreme Calvinist doctrine is itself a relatively recent import as observed by Gaelic historian and Sabbath-breaking enthusiast Dr. Finlay MacLeod,

"A posse of Calvinists came to Lewis three or four generations ago. They were very effective. They turned Lewis effectively into a theocracy."(Click here for the full article from the Herald)


Though the Leodhasaich may now travel to the mainland by ferry or plane on a Sunday some normal aspects of everyday life are still banned by the cowardly Comhairle nan Eilean Siar such as keeping sports centres closed. Is this out of respect for a dwindling number of mostly aged Christians? Or do they really fear the wrath of god as some proclaimed was witnessed when a whirlwind hit Stornoway last year?! Whatever, some islanders are campaigning for the right to swim in Lewis like you can in Catholic Barra.

Religion remains a poison. Good morals come from common sense and not from ancient middle-eastern texts that encourage us to see women as second class, foreskins as evil, literature as Satanic and whatever other people do with their bodies in their own bedrooms as our fucking business.

You can read an islander's perspective on Iain MacIver's blog here.