Bob

The British Humanist Association (disclosure: they pay me) made mild celebratory noises about the introduction of new legislation (under EU Consumer Protection Regulations if you must know) which replaces the 1951 Fraudulent Mediums Act. The change in law should offer some protection to people who are duped by the more outrageous claims and/or prices of supposed psychics and mediums.

I mean, really, all their claims and non-claims are outrageous and every medium is “fraudulent” in the sense that none of them are actually speaking to your granddad, but it’s people who are most vulnerable and most ripped off who should have some recourse to the courts under the new rules.

I’ve had a little dialogue of letters in the Worcester News about this. One of the responses mentions — apparently as if it’s a good bit of evidence for their argument — that Jesus and Merlin were aliens and that the Celts came from the Pleiades cluster.

The Pleiades cluster (emphatically not where Celts come from):

Where “the Celts” actually came from:

Can you guess which side of the debate she was on?

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The interface between politics and ethics is utterly frustrating. In this letter, Nick Chance attacks Worcester MP, Mike Foster, for going along with the Labour whip (it may have been a largely “free vote” but we all know the pressure was on!) when it came to the Embryology Bill, calling him “craven and wicked”.

That Mike Foster MP toes the party line like a well-honed ballet dancer (… I’m imagining him tip-toeing up to the line in little pink shoes, if you didn’t get that) is a criticism I have made myself.

So how to respond when he actually votes the right way?

My letter was published this morning. Full text below, edited portions in bold.

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I have slated Kentucky Fried Chicken, and Worcester’s response to it, in another letter published today. My favourite bit is the phrase “the oil-soaked carcasses of force-fed chickens”…

The full text follows (sections cut from publication appear in bold).

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There are now widgets “for girls” on Netvibes.

According to the Netvibes blog post announcing this scrumptious news, girls (not women, note, but “girls”) are apparently interested pretty much exclusively — or so it would appear from the skipping, pied-piper, “This way girls!” tone of the annoucement — in the following things:

• “fashion news”
• “Glamour”
• “Portfolio”
• “Marie Claire”
• “New York Magazine”
• “Hint Fashion Magazine”
• “cooking”
• “fashion”
• “gossips” [sic]
• “love and dating advice”
• “Cosmopolitan”
• what to do when “you have a last minute dinner to prepare”
• or “you just want to stay informed of the latest “in vogue” cooking recipes”
• “healthy living”
• “healthy food eating ideas”

All this and more… “only and exclusively for girls!”

Yippee!

After delivering this excellent, sugar-sweet news, Netvibes asks the following inciteful and not at all patronising question: “Feel’s good doesn’t it?”

Because of course, that’s how women arrive upon all their opinions: their immeditate warm and fuzzy feelings.

Look at the picture Netvibes choose to illustrate this news with.

That’s right, “girls”. That’s you. You’re a bunch of mad, dumb-looking, goggle-eyed bimbos, and according to the thought bubble depicted, you are collectively obsessed with cakes, romance, marriage and/or jewellery (or probably both), heeled shoes, and last but not least, vibrators — or no, sorry, lipstick.

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What should you do when, following a previous exchange, a renowned but recently much-criticised minor local celebrity starts dissing you in the papers?

[Letter from George Cowley to Worcester News, 19th May]

SIR - I am a Christian agnostic myself, Helen Bate (May 10) [link]. If God is up there, benevolently looking down on us all, why the hell doesn’t he stop little girls of three dying in agony from cancer?

The reason I called Mr Churchill an “odd-ball,” is because, despite all his protestations of calm, dispassionate reason,’ he seems to relish putting the boot in to Christians, calling us “irrational.” He shows scant respect for religious people, but seems to consider himself more enlightened than we are.

You write back, obviously.

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I managed to skip right from the announcement about doing it, to a review of being in it, without saying very much about The Blue Room. And now it is fading into memory…

So here’s some filler: there are pictures up at the play’s page on the Swan Theatre Amateur Company site. It was good fun. I very much enjoyed doing a piece which - though funny in places - had a bit more seriousness and gravity than previous plays I’ve been in.

I am sad that my new working circumstances will probably mean I can’t do any more shows for the foreseeable future, what with being splitting my time between London and Worcester at opposite ends of the week. But it’s a satisfying and meaningful job (for me) and I can write more when I’m not distracted by perpetual guilt for knowing there are lines I should be learning.

If The Blue Room does indeed represent my theatrical swan song (for the time being) at least it felt to me very much like the pinnacle of the shows I’ve done since joining STAC; a slicker and more accomplished play overall, I think. Unfortunately I think part of the reason for this feeling is that people judge the quality of a show in large part not by the best moments and performances but by the worst, and it is easier to control and keep the quality up if there are only two actors. And yet since 80% of community theatre audiences are made up of friends of the cast and crew, and because actors who have other jobs to do often can’t commit to a massive schedule, two-hander casts are few and far between. This is a shame, because the involvement and the intensity of a acting a two-hander is an experience of a whole different character which I would go out of my way to re-capture in future.

All that said… there is an Oscar Wilde coming up. If only I could cram my schedule around that!

My slow metamorphosis into George Cowley — or a sort of opposite but nonetheless curmudgeonly reflection of George Cowley — is nearly complete.

Here is another Worcester News letter, spawned from my metaphorical pen.

The executive summary: Bob doesn’t get baby competitions.

(The full text follows below. Bold text was cut from the published version.)

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I’d like to think that if I saw a toddler, sat alone, riding a bus, on a 30 mile journey, that I would do something about it. Like say “Hey, is this kid with anyone?” Apparently no one in Lancashire thought to do this.

I mean, that is, I would say “Hey, is this kid with anyone?” if I wasn’t totally freaked out by the fact that he was just sat there (according to the report) “quietly”, probably all wide-eyed, like a little boy ghost. What if I said “Hey, is this kid with anyone?” and my fellow passengers replied “What kid? … There’s no one there.”

Slow turn back to the seat…

Holy fuck he’s gone!

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Like a traditional recurring sitcom character, the lovable, inveterate, letter-writing wannabe hack, is back. From our previous exchanges it seemed at last that all was forgiven. But now George Cowley is back in the newspaper, bashing atheists.

In response to my letter about the Theos data in which I pointed out that belief in the literal resurrection of Jesus obviously is not as commonplace as Theos and the Bishop of Worcester would like it to be, Mr Cowley wrote that:

Christianity, Bob, is about love - are you saying that today people no longer love their immediate kin and neighbours?

Our whole British culture, law and moral outline is steeped in Christianity. Oddball atheists are still few and far between, thank God, but they shout a lot.

This time, however, I am not alone in responding. The tide has turned.

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“The threat from international terrorism is real and severe,” Mike Foster MP tells us (Your MP Writes). This is true, obviously. Terrorism is indeed a real thing, and death by terrorism is a rather severe event to befall anyone.

So far, so trivial.

However, we must put these factoids into context. I’m the last person who wants to die in a ball of fire, but I also know I’m about three-million times more likely to die because I get in a car, or randomly of heart disease, or because I choke on hummus, than because I cross the path of a suicidal fundamentalist.

Apparently there are “some 30 known plots and more than 200 groupings or networks, totalling about 2,000 individuals,” Mike Foster MP tell us. Impressive figures? Let us consider.

If there are “30 known plots” and “200 groupings or networks” then what exactly are the other 170 “groupings or networks” actually suspected of?

And what of these 2,000 individuals? Obviously there isn’t enough evidence to immediately arrest any of these people-shaped blips on the radar. 2,000 individuals rationally and rightly convicted of genuine conspiracy to murder would be one thing, but 2,000 individuals who are merely “known” to the authorities is not a compelling reason to enact new laws.

“I believe,” Mike Foster MP goes on, that “the police and security service have a duty to intervene early to protect the public at a point when there may not be much evidence against suspects.”

Iraq, anyone?

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