Bible Basher

The Education(!) Secretary Michael Gove wanted to implement a move to ship out thousands of King James Bibles to British schools to a tune of £377,000 at the taxpayers cost. Probably as part of the ongoing Tory Crusade against the Infidel amongst us (for Infidel read: Muslim, Jew, Sikh, the unemployed, anyone that doesn't earn over 50k a year, students, etc, etc). Thankfully the Government has seen sense and his plans have run aground (probably in the yacht he wanted to buy for the Queen the other week...). But my friend, let's call him Mr GB, wrote an email of disgust to Gove in light of this news. I present it below in full (with his permission):

Dear Mr. Gove,

I recently read in the press about your plan to send a single copy of the King James Bible to each school in the country at a reported cost of £400,000 of tax payer's money.  While I recognise that the Bible is a beautiful and important book and although I am personally very fond of the King James version, I find myself baffled and upset by this project.  At a time when frontline services are being cut, why would you want to allocate a large sum of money to a vain and obviously unpopular symbolic gesture like this?

How would a school use a single copy of the King James Bible?  Is it to be placed on a lectern at the front of the assembly hall like a copy of Mein Kampf?  If your goal is to give children the experience of there being a weighty and important book they are not allowed to touch, why not go for a spin around the charity shops and pick up a few copies of Moby Dick?  If you want children to actually become familiar with the content of the Bible, why not organise the distribution of an e-book copy of the King James Bible?  These can be read on computers, Kindles and smartphones, and there are a number of versions available freely in the public domain.  I'm not sure how effective this would be as I remember that every child in my school was given a Bible by the Gideons:  our response (which I very much regret now) was to graffiti them, actually wipe our arses with the pages, and finally see who could kick theirs the furthest across a wheatfield.  If you are hoping to instill Christian values in our
young people, I feel this is a naive way to go about it.

If I can be of any assistance to you in future, please let me know. 

Yours in anticipation of your response,

Mr. GB

PS If you have a warehouse full of unused books, I may be able to take a crate of them off your hands for no fee.

Did you know that 'Education Secretary' is an anagram for 'Cunt'?

The Autist

I went to see The Artist with Sam last night. It's a silent movie, so here's a silent review:

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8 on 10

An Ecstasy of Fumbling

Yes, what did YOU do at the weekend? I bet you spent your weekend on your fat can shovelling jelly babies into your gaping maw. I bet you lay like a sloth ensconced on your sofa drooling at the latest idiots to parade across the screen in X Factor. I, on the other hand, spent last weekend in a replica First World War trench dressed in the Service Dress of a Great War soldier.

Now, I have made my opinion on re-enactors quite clear at this stage, I think, and you could level the accusation that I spent the weekend re-enacting, but this was certainly NOT re-enactment. Re-enactment involves a bunch of fat men dressing up like nineteen year old soldiers fielding questions from the public at stately homes before pretending to advance as a six man pike block and finally getting pissed up on mead at the campsite. Re-enactment is basically camping in period costume. This, on the other hand, was a tough challenge that was an attempt to understand a little of what the men of the Great War went through. TV's Andy Robertshaw is the luckiest man alive in that he has a patch of ground that he has constructed a Great War trench system in, complete with two fire bays, officers dugout, other ranks dugout, kitchen area (before it collapsed) and latrine.

Yes, that's me...

Andy was writing a book based on our experiences of being in a front line trench for 24 hours carrying out the trench duties that a soldier would have done in 1917. OK, so we weren't under the threat of death from artillery or snipers, but we certainly lived in the trenches pretty much as they would have been in 1917.

It was good fun, but beyond this there was a lot to be learnt. For instance, just the shear weight of Service Dress makes doing even the simplest job a drudging chore. even passing one another in the trench was a bloody hard job and led to argument and fighting:

The plan was to stay in the trench the entire night and although I almost made it, I knew I had a four hour drive back home the next day so made sure I got a few hours sleep at least. The problem was, in the firebay we were posted in the water had risen and taken away any space to sleep so by 4.00am the exhaustion was really kicking in:

Justin managed to stay out for the entire night however and sat on guard in our firebay:

The next morning after breakfast we got to write letters home, these were then passed on to the Lieutenant to censor. For some reason, mine passed censorship:

What we did get out of the experience was how much comradeship and laughter counted to keep us going through the night. The good humour of the British Tommy is famous and we were no exception. All in all, it was a great experience and I'm not going to relate everything that went on in that 24 hour period, you'll have to wait for the book to come out.

All photos by Dr David Kenyon and Martin Stiles.

Miserable New Year

I hope everything you've strived for in 2011 is dashed on the rocks like a ship wreck in a stormy ocean. I hope every new venture you attempt in 2012 is doomed to miserable failure. I hope your fate involves being strung out on the meathooks of dreary fortune. Fuck New Year and Fuck You.

Fuck Christmas

I hope all you got for Christmas was a dead rat in a box. I hope your Christmas turkey was riddled with listeria. I hope your house burnt down and all your possessions with it. Fuck Christmas and Fuck You.

King Kong merrily on high

I was at the pub quiz last night and as it is close to Christ's Mass, it was a Christ's Mass themed spectacular. I'm normally above such base degradation, but in this instance each team had to sing Christ's Mass carols at the interval of every two questions. We were all given a song sheet with the lyrics on and we ended up with Once in Royal David's City. 'Fuck that!' we three said as one 'We'll do Tannenbaum. We'll do Tannenbaum, in German.' Nathan wrote out the words, since he'd spent the week learning them and when it was our turn we belted out the ditty.

We do what we want, and we do it with style...

It went rather well, except of the three of us, two had shaven Neo-Nazi style skinheads and I was wearing my Tiger Tank t-shirt. Added to this Nathan's Seig Heiling posturing and also adding the last line' The Fatherland will rise again!' to the song and it was like the Bürgerbräukeller Putsch and Kristalnacht all rolled into one!

 C'mon Adolf! Sing louder!!

The night ended with each of the teams having to sing a line from the Twelve Days of Christ's Mass. We had Twelve Drummer Drumming. I like this song as it has nothing to do with religion and you can belt out
Fiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiive Gold Rings!! 
As the the entire pub did, every time it came round...

I spent today in a blasting icy wind on a hill in Huddersfield trying to hold onto the archive, directing Nick where to put his survey rod and fighting off a hangover caused by too many Roosters.

Kim Jong's Ill

Farewell to the world's greatest golfer...