Don't Knock It

Nice. ActionAid, an anti-poverty charity (as opposed to all those pro-poverty charities), has lodged a petition to have St. Pauls Cathedral in London demolished. The move comes after a mining company pressed forward with plans to develop a bauxite mine in the Niyamgiri mountain – that’s in India, by the way.

According to ActionAid, the proposed mine will displace the 8,000 strong Kondh tribe who inhabit the mountain, as they believe it home to the God Niyam Raja. That’s not all, tiger. ActionAid believe the mine will destroy local eco-systems, cause deforestation and adversely affect water sources. Bad news all round.

So, as the logic goes, by applying to knock down St. Paul’s, ActionAid will draw attention to the plight of the Kondh tribe and force the mining company, Vedanta Resources PLC (who must be spitting tacks by now) to withdraw their “outrageous” plans. Yea, sure – the logic is tenuous – but by crikey, has it worked. The story has been picked up by a large number of media outlets – including both Wigan Today and Worthing Today. And the BBC and some other places.

So, good on ActionAid. Do you know what would be really funny though? If their proposal went through and they tore St. Pauls down. Egg. On. Face.

Hitler vs Hot

Yea sure, David Davis returned to Parliament on 11 July, having (re)won the seat of Haltemprice and Howden with a majority of 15,355. For the innumerate among us, that’s fifteen thousand, three hundred and fifty five. Not a bad result, but slightly less impressive given that neither the Liberal Democrats nor the Labour Party put forward a candidate. Which kind of makes the whole thing a bit of a waste of time.

But the bi-election did throw up one interesting result – Tess Culnane of the National Front managed to beat Gemma Garrett of the Miss Great Britain Party by 23 votes. Now, I don’t want to be crass about it, but you have to be sick bastard to vote for the National Front over Miss Great Britain.

In case you didn’t know, The National Front is a white nationalist organisation founded in 1967 in opposition to multi-racialism and immigration. That’s how they describe themselves. Others would use slightly less generous and ambiguous terms. These might include “Nazis”, “racists”, “dick splashes” or “knob jockeys”, while our American friends would, quite rightly, refer to them as a “douche bags”. Not that anyone would know what that meant.

It’s a damning indictment on the people of Haltemprice and Howden. Not only would I vote for the Miss Great Britain Party over the National Front, I’d probably vote for them over Labour, the Conservatives and the Lib Dems too. In fact, I wouldn’t even demand an election. I’d be totally cool if the Miss Great Britain Party took power through a lethal, smokin’ hot putsch. A coup d’freakin' gorgeous.

I mean, I’d sympathise with the National Front supporters if Gemma Garrett wasn’t that hot, but she’s seriously hot. Right now, there are 544 people in North East Yorkshire who deserve a kicking. The National Front? You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.

Cruci-Fiction?

One of the greatest of all the conspiracy theories is whether Henry VIII was called Henry VIII because of the eight wives he had. But today I’m going to talk about the Crucifixion of Christ. Christians believe Jesus Christ sacrificed His life on the cross in order to save mankind, but the question that has been fiercely debated for millions of years is: Was He actually crucified?

Did you see it happen? Probably not. Did Mark see it? Matthew? Was Luke in the country at the time? Was John about? These guys claim to have seen it happen but how do we know they’re not just a bunch of jokers?

How about this to whet your appetite…

Research carried out by students at Cambridge (Polytechnic) suggests that the act of crucifying had not been invented at this time. One student, Thomas Benetton, maintained, “The actual act of crucifying had not been invented at this time.” In fact the first time the term ‘Crucifixion’ is used is in Shakespeare’s romantic comedy, Macbeth, when Romeo is expressing the pain he is in after getting shot... “Thy suffering is like the man whom gave up His life in the holiest Crucifixione”. However Shakespeare spells Crucifixion with an ‘e’ on the end so he was probably talking about something else.

It is evident from the immense number of works of Art produced over the centuries that the majority of people consider Jesus to have "died on the cross". There are others however who strongly believe He got trapped in some brambles after running away from a boar and eventually died. This is unlikely however as boars do not hunt man, and never have. A great number of paintings were produced that showed this event but they were destroyed by the Spartans during the Counter Reformation. These Barbarians swept through Europe (some time after Christ was born and a bit before the Renaissance) and destroyed every single one of these images. The reason we know that these existed is because a painting of a lost painting was produced before the original was lost. Unfortunately this is now lost, but a photograph was taken in 1943 but the photographer used too much flash so it’s pretty much illegible.

So, how did Jesus die then? If the students of Cambridge (Polytechnic) are right then we have been outrageously misinformed. Did Matthew, Max, Luke and John pull the event out of thin air? Did Jesus actually die in his sleep one day but this wasn’t interesting enough? These writers were probably young. They certainly sound young (you will be hard pushed to find any Lukes or Matthews above the age of 35), and like any budding journalist they “beefed up” the event to make it sound more dramatic. The punchy alliteration of the headline: “Christ Is Crucified!” would have had much more impact than “Jesus Found Dead in a Bed”.

I may have no answers but I have certainly played my part, and the debate must continue from the steps I have laid out in front of me (but for you to tread obviously. Not you in particular if you don’t want to but it’s there anyway so just bear it in mind…. N.B. I am not excluding wheelchair users so don’t write in please.)