A couple of people have pointed out to me that my emails to Sid Cordle have been less than ideal.

I believe that satire is a powerful and effective medium for causing debate and anger. And I do not regret using this. However, I do regret being a poor representative of Christianity, which I believe is the case when my position appears rooted in hate. So to address this, I’ve written back to Cordle, apologising, and restating my position in a more direct and less hostile manner. Here it is:

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A while back I emailed a “political” party, the Christian Peoples Alliance (sic), to ask them if they could include an apostrophe in their party’s name. The reply was astonishing. They told me, straight-faced, that they’d focus tested the name and people prefered it with without the apostrophe. Nothing could possibly bring more confidence in local government leaders, eh? Democracy in action!

After some more recent correspondence, I focus tested myself, and it turns out I prefer to spell their name, “Cruel Hatemongers”. Here’s why!

As a result of my request, I found myself on their mailing list. Most of it is mindless local government nonsense, a lot of it is ghastly attempts to prevent Muslims from building mosques, and then this delightful press release arrived:

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Ooh, three of my favourite things combined: bemoaning Derren Brown, tricksy mathematics, and slagging off homeopathy!

I hadn’t even heard that Derren Brown had a new show, until Tim IMd me to let me know it was great. I read the summary – Derren Brown reveals he has a system for winning horse races, and proves it – and sighed. Same old trick from him – do a crappy magic trick and dress it up as paranormal powers, while saying how he doesn’t believe in paranormal powers. I bemoaned to Tim that it would just be a trick, wah wah. Tim clearly smiles to himself, and lets me know that might be the point of the programme.

(You can get hold of it via Channel 4′s abysmal 4oD service. Assume I’m going to ruin any surprises below.)

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Thanks to Tony who pointed me toward this wonderful news story:

NHS trusts ‘reject homoeopathy’

Here’s an excerpt:

“NHS primary care trusts are slashing funding for homoeopathic treatment amid debate about its efficacy and the drive to cuts costs, a study has suggested. More than a quarter have stopped or cut funding for such services, research by the GP magazine Pulse has found. The Royal London Homoeopathic Hospital, the country’s largest, confirms it has lost eight contracts in a year and referrals are down by 20%.”

Skip, skip, dance, dance.

It’s still utterly terrifying that qualified doctors – people with medical degrees – are falling for this woo-woo bullshit. And that they can come out with statements like,

“The homoeopathic hospitals provide a specialist service that has helped hundreds of thousands of NHS patients over the last 60 years and has extremely high levels of patient satisfaction. They are particularly well equipped to treat patients whose complex chronic health problems have not been effectively treated by conventional medicine.”

He somehow forgot to add, “We’ve never produced a scrap of evidence that anything we’ve done in those 60 years has had any effect beyond placebo and basic counselling,” but I’m sure the BBC just cut him off or something.

Don’t forget that homeopathy is deadly. Yes, it’s laughable, but it’s also vile and cruel, preying on those whose symptoms are imaginary, the frightened and dying, and those too stupid to know better. And it’s murderous, deliberately preventing people from taking effective medicines, such that they die because they drank a bottle of water. Nevermind how many conclusive studies come out proving it utter crap, we just go around and around the same pointless pole of stupidity.

People may be interested to have a look at page 11 of the new Private Eye (ish 1201).

The original obit to Greening is here, my comments on the emails are here.

It’s Christmas time! That can only mean one thing: I’m going on about how annoyed I am with people’s whining about “the true meaning of Christmas being eroded”. It’s an annual event, but despite my righteous truth on the matter, the same tripe is trawled out by those poor hard-done-by, white, middle class Christians.

I’m convinced I’ve ranted about this here before, but a search can’t find any evidence. So if I’m repeating myself, well, welcome to me.

Christmas is just about the least important moment in the Christian calendar, and the more commercial it gets, the better. I LOVE that Christmas is commercial.

The second part first. Imagine if Christmas weren’t commercial. Imagine if it were as you can only imagine those flapping their wings at this time of year wish it were: Church, then lunch. Weeeeee.

Christmas is about one thing and one thing alone: presents. We can lie to ourselves and others as much as we like about it being about the Baby Jesus, but good heavens to betsy, no it’s not. It’s about getting and giving presents, and all the fun and danger that involves. Remove the presents and no one would bother with the day any more than they do Pentecost or Ash Wednesday.

Then add in the decorations in the shops. Sure, it’s annoying to see them in September, but it’s bloody brilliant to see them in December. Everywhere looks so fun and tacky, gaudy tinsel and colourful flashing lights brightening up a dreary shopping precinct. Just look at the shops in January, or your own home come the day you take the decorations down. Suddenly everything is drab and ordinary, that brief frolick with tasteless abandon a memory. All thanks to the commercial nature of Christmas. Throw in Christmas crap on the TV, the non-stop joy for children of Father Christmas/Santa Claus, the fun of reindeers and a Charlie Brown special. All and all and all because Christmas is so gloriously commercial. Amen to that. Don’t you dare ruin my Christmas with your religion.

So talking of religion – just exactly what role does Christmas play in the Christian story?

Well, one that’s of so little import that two out of four Gospels don’t even bother to mention it.

You know where Mark and John begin? With John the Baptist, and Jesus’ baptism. Because that is the beginning of the Christian story. Matthew gives Jesus’ birth a cursory paragraph, and while Luke spends a little longer describing the events, he spends about as long discussing those of Zechariah and Elizabeth, and the birth of John.

And as we all surely know by now, the Bible never mentions a donkey, a stable, lowing cattle, and certainly no three kings. (There are an unknown number of magi who visit Jesus about two years later). Sorry, nativity fans.

So these politicians, who disappear up their own ballot boxes whinging that a local predominantly Muslim school isn’t putting on a nativity play, start to look pretty damned stupid. If you’re going to fight for your faith, perhaps take a brief glance at the faith for which you think you’re fighting.

Even if you do think these events that two Gospels mention – one in passing – is of so much importance… how exactly? What are we supposed to be celebrating? According to the twenty or so tedious carols dragged out every year, we are celebrating the arrival of our Lord on Earth. But are we? What we’re celebrating is the arrival of a barely sentient bundle of organs that poos and cries (despite the protestations of Away In A Manger, I think we can assume the infant Christ cried much like regular babies). And yes, I’m not stupid – I’m aware that Christ’s existence as a human is reliant on his having been born. But I just don’t think this inevitably necessary occasion should quite be the centre-point of the Christian world. I’d say it’s a pretty minor event when compared to those that followed.

If we wish to celebrate the beginning of Christ, we should celebrate his baptism – a moment of sheer wonder, so beautifully told by Mark in his rushed, over-excited way.

And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. And a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved, with you I am well pleased.’ (Mark 1: 10-11)

That is the moment of wonder that should stop every Christian in her or his tracks, drop everything and simply worship in joy. That is the distraction from the commercial, from the worldly. It’s the beginning of the Christ, of the holy spirit on Earth, of our human relationship with God.

One story is life-beginning. A crucial part of our understanding of Jesus as fully human. But the other story is life-changing, and so fundamental to Christianity.

I could more easily argue that perhaps Christians might want to focus their efforts and energy into Easter – the most crucial and transformational moment in all of Christianity. You would think that all these people who get so furious about their precious Christmas being spoilt by fun and happiness might more usefully channel it into having Easter even be noticed, beyond getting some extra chocolate.

Everyone knows that Christians stole pagan festivals for Christmas and Easter. It seems the world has reclaimed Christmas, and I think the gracious and graceful response is to accept this, and indeed embrace it. (Only Christians would make a massive fuss because too many people were celebrating their holiday). Because Christmas doesn’t matter very much, compared to so much else that I never hear these angry campaigners even allude to.

A quick side-story. I was ranting about this in Waitrose a couple of years back, to my friend Sian. “Everyone keeps yelling that we’ve forgotten the ‘true meaning of Christmas’!” I complained, probably waving my arms around in frustration. “But no one, when I ask them, can tell me what this true meaning is!” The lady behind the till looked up and said, “Well, it’s about new hope, isn’t it?” Which stopped me in my tracks. And yes, I think it is. It’s about hope. And we can hope at Christmas, while surrounded by presents and festivities and trees and huge meals and bad TV and decorations and the abundance of things that have nothing to do with Christianity.

Merry Winterval everybody!

Tim pointed me to this fantastically stupid article in the Guardian.

It’s a response from hippy charlatan Denis MacEoin to Ben Goldacre’s extended piece providing all the arguments and evidence one needs for dealing with the murderous witchdoctors in the homeopathic practice. And it’s a supremely silly and wonderfully idiotic attack.

Lines accusing Goldacre like, “he paraded his superior knowledge,” are a thing of joy. How dare he! How dare he prove he is an expert in a subject?! These people with their superior knowledge, pointing out that my pile of lies practise is a pile of lies! He must be stopped!

He then goes on to announce that Goldacre clearly doesn’t know what he’s talking about because he is, “sure he has not acquired any homeopathic qualifications, and I’m confident he has not sat in with an experienced homeopath for a year or so or worked at a homeopathic NHS hospital.” Excellent work Dr MacEmptyhead! It’s impossible to criticise homeopathy unless you are a homeopath, working for a homeopathic “hospital”. Brilliant. So doing massive amounts of research into the subject, following the studies, and most of all, recognising that A BOTTLE OF WATER DOESN’T CURE ANYTHING BUT A SLIGHT THIRST, cannot be enough. You have to be entrenched within the subject of your doubt before you will be heard by these stubborn morons.

And of course MacEoin then trots out that homeopath favourite: it’s impossible to test homeopathy by scientific means. Regular tests for medicine can’t work on homeopathic snake oil, because homeopathic snake oil isn’t like other medicines! Even though a homeopath will state that a bottle of their expensive tap water, taken five times a day for a week, will cure you of your ailments, at the moment someone wants to test this, it’s suddenly something that takes months and years to work, and requires thousands of different bottles of tap water. Oddly the follow-up to this is never, “So we’ll have to devise a double-blind, peer-reviewed test based on these criteria.” It is instead to just sort of stop, in the cute belief that if they obfuscate the rules enough, it will bewilder those sciency nerds and their “superior knowledge”, and they’ll just have to accept it works.

He then spits in disgust that Goldacre would be so stupid as to think scientific rationale is appropriate for homeopathy.

He must know something as elementary as this about homeopathy, yet he puts up an Aunt Sally, “proves” homeopathy does not work, and calls all homeopaths “morons”. This is not science, and as someone who believes strongly in science, I would challenge the good doctor to prove that his vaunted trials had anything to do with homeopathy at all.

Yeah Ben! It’s elementary, you big old thicko! Don’t you even know that?! Duhhhh! Cor Ben, I bet you feel a bit stupid now, madly treating homeopathy with the dignity that it could be scientifically measured. MacMoron continues,

“It would be to his credit to come clean on this and to help design trials that would match the homeopathic way of prescribing. If he isn’t willing to do that in collaboration with homeopathic doctors who know as much as he does about the science and are not morons, he is demeaning the very notion of scientific medicine.”

That’s right – the one thing Ben Goldacre has refused to do is offer a rational scientific process for fairly measuring the efficacy of homeopathy by homeopathy’s own rules. Oh no wait. He did exactly that in the piece to which MacEieio was so angrily replying. Goldacre devised criteria for a test that would take into account the ridiculous charade of months of homeopathic consultations, and twelfty different potions. How very, very odd that MacBlind missed this bit, and wasn’t able to recognise it in his response. A more cynical person would suggest that he’s a deceitful conman, purporting his witchcraft bullshit for financial gain, terrified when someone writes a rational and reasoned piece demonstrating how his “medicine” is an utter fabrication.

When these are the people who puff their chests out and declare, “I’m a sceptic too! I believe in the importance of science too!”, when these are the best and most scientific that homeopathy has to offer, the ridiculous charade becomes only more apparent. Or at least you’d think it would. But instead the NHS is investing vast sums of UK tax payers’ money into researching this utter drivel. In fact, I find it frankly insulting that money is being spent on tests for the idiotic parade when it’s literally BOTTLES OF WATER being sold. What has happened? How has the NHS of all things reached this point of giving even vague credence, let along swathes of money and dedicated hospitals, to the most obvious and blatent of con tricks?

Hello, the NHS please. Hi, I’ve invented a cure for all diseases. It involves having me kiss the person better. It definitely works, because I say so really very firmly. Could you spent millions of pounds wasting money on investigating this please, rather than spending it on your collapsing hospital infrastructure? Thanks!

PS. This tragic story from Australia should shed some perspective for those in any doubt.

Homeopaths are not content with trying to sue people who report their desires to murder people with malaria – now they’re going to cure AIDS too.

This latest attempt at genocide through expensive ignorance is being led by one Peter Chappell, who will be heading a conference held by the The Society of Homeopaths, called the “HIV/AIDS Symposium”. This vile human being is claiming,

“Right now AIDS in Africa could be significantly ameliorated by a simple tune played on the radio across Africa. Or there is a slower solution using pills, and drops that works very well, but is harder to deliver.”

As homeopathy frantically tries to throw around medical terms, and skews study results in desperate attempts to reveal a glimmer of hope that a bottle of water could be more powerful than, er, a bottle of water they didn’t put a label on, morons like this at the head of their organisation make the entire thing more of a laughing stock than it already is.

But more seriously, this piece of excrement is claiming that playing a song can significantly improve the AIDS epidemic – a hateful deception that could potentially kill untold numbers of the desperately hopeful.

Perhaps he is simply ignorant, you might say. His actions are not evil, but naive. But no such claim can be made. His own site states,

“While we have no proof in scientific terms that the AIDS treatment is effective, in practice it is very reliable and thousands of people have recovered and we supply this treatment FREE through the Amma Resonance Healing Foundation.”

He KNOWS it does not work. And obviously the Amma Resonance Healing Foundation present all their data on this subject? Oh, they don’t. They have nothing but their own studies, apparently published only in homeopathy pamphlets and not on their site, and the statement, “We are now in the process of building hard science based results to consolidate this new technology for the benefit of humanity.” Well, they started this in 2006, and oddly enough, results have yet to emerge.

For those who still hold on to the belief that there is some possibility that homeopathy does anything beyond sell lies to the sick, the wonderful Ben Goldacre has written the definitive article on the subject, addressing all the various wriggles homeopaths attempt to use when explaining why every accurate study reveals it to do nothing over placebo. It’s a wonderful read. A favourite moment:

Many people confuse homeopathy with herbalism and do not realise just how far homeopathic remedies are diluted. The typical dilution is called “30C”: this means that the original substance has been diluted by 1 drop in 100, 30 times. On the Society of Homeopaths site, in their “What is homeopathy?” section, they say that “30C contains less than 1 part per million of the original substance.”

This is an understatement: a 30C homeopathic preparation is a dilution of 1 in 100^30, or rather 1 in 10^60, which means a 1 followed by 60 zeroes, or – let’s be absolutely clear – a dilution of 1 in 1,000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000.

To phrase that in the Society of Homeopaths’ terms, we should say: “30C contains less than one part per million million million million million million million million million million of the original substance.”

At a homeopathic dilution of 100C, which they sell routinely, and which homeopaths claim is even more powerful than 30C, the treating substance is diluted by more than the total number of atoms in the universe. Homeopathy was invented before we knew what atoms were, or how many there are, or how big they are. It has not changed its belief system in light of this information.

Everyone in the entire world, with the single exception of me, is STUPID. And I’ve had enough. If you all don’t stop it right away, I’m going to start killing you.

First of all, this has really pissed me off. Originally announced in May, and included in the year’s round-up of things the BBC website staff didn’t know (I’m still looking forward to the appearance of the correct use of “its” and “it’s”), it’s SOMETHING I FIGURED OUT WHEN I WAS A CHILD. All these pathetic questions that people ask rhetorically when trying to announce the unanswerable nature of life’s mysteries make me so damn cross. There’s not a single one in common use for which the answer isn’t perfectly obvious and easily discovered. “Why is grass green?!” Because chlorophyll doesn’t absorb the green region of sunlight, you vacuous cretin. And included amongst these moronic platitudes is, “Which came first, the chicken or the egg?” As a child, I stopped when asked this, and replied, “Well, it will be the egg, cos whatever evolved into a chicken would have laid an egg that was the first chicken.” And now I read that this May, twenty years later, this is some sort of bloody scientific revelation, announced to the world by leading experts? And worse, the BBC responded to these gits trying to garner limelight for themselves by stating the achingly obvious with coverage, surprise, and even an inclusion in the end-of-year compilation? DO BETTER. Everyone, for crying out loud, take a look at yourselves and DO BETTER.

More frequently driving me to crazed distraction (and blimey is it hard to maintain a head of fury while listening to The Album Leaf) are people who WILL NOT THINK WHEN TALKING. Nothing makes me shout more loudly than Radio 4′s Any Answers. Following the generally dreadful Any Questions (Question Time on the radio, television plebs), it’s an opportunity for listeners to phone in and offer their own unique perspectives on the issues discussed. Oh wait, sorry, typo. Offer the same idiotic drivel they read in the editorial of the Daily Fuckwit last week, before having it confirmed by a squawking chav interviewed on Sky Bloody News. Never, EVER do they listen to bumbling twit Jonathan “I’m Not As Useless As My Brother” Dimbleby, as he attempts to ask them to provide some thinking behind their trumpeted bile, but instead they press a giant red reset button on their forehead and repeat what they’ve already said, only adding in some fresh new racism. These ghastly insults to oxygen are the lowest form of human life. I’d rather sit down to eat with a member of the Taleban than any single caller to that programme. Why do I listen, you ask? Because somehow, no matter what time I go into the kitchen to make food on a Saturday, it’s always 2.05pm by the time I’m in there. This same mystical blackhole chooses 2pm and 7pm on weekdays to make sure I catch the sodding Archers at least once a day. If I go too early in the morning for it to get away with warping ahead to after two, then it will make sure it’s 10.20am so I get the most awful part of Women’s Hour.

I’m sure my neighbours have considered calling the police, thinking that I’m horribly abusing a spouse or something, as I scream in rage, “YOU DISGUSTING COW, DIE OF RABIES RIGHT NOW,” or similar, at some broken glass-voiced old Daily Mail-reading bitch proclaiming the “coloured people” are stealing our jobs.

Anyway, the point of all this was to despair at the comments that have appeared beneath my obit to Mike Dicken. I thought, seeing that he was dead and all, it would be a good and decent thing to write something honest about him, as his relatively low profile would mean little media coverage. But obituraries make me furious, as they’re simply cowardly lying. Dicken was an arsehole in many respects, and I think such things should be remembered. But despite this, and despite there being an appropriate place for whiny sentimental tributes on the station’s website, somehow my comments section is filled with barely readable nonsense about how he – nrrgghhhhh – “spoke for us all”.

NO HE BLOODY WELL DIDN’T.

He spoke for stupid people who think that their majority stupid opinions are being oppressed, because their six million selling newspaper tells them that no one’s being allowed to say the thing they’re saying to six million people (along with five other six million selling newspapers) because of the oppressive liberals and their politically correct agendas. These gutwanks read this and are aghast. “No one’s allowed to say this thing that I’ve just read in this national newspaper, and indeed any number of other newspapers?! What can be done about this?!” And then later that night when their hoary old radio presenter lazily reads out the story from the Shithead On Sunday, they think, “God be praised! This single man was brave enough to stand up to the legions of LEFTY PINKO NAZIS who are preventing everyone else in the whole world from daring to utter such secret and radical truths.” And from this the champion is born, the Chosen One risking his life to state the opinions of The Oppressed Man On The Street. I’ve said what I have to say about Dicken, and I did secretly like him, but I cannot cope with the sanctimonious drivel being posted beneath it. Why are you people reading this? Did someone link to it or something? Please, go, run away.

So I went shopping today. And yes, I realise this was a bit bloody stupid of me. But it really confirmed the excellent reasons why I should never be allowed to carry a weapon. Ipswich would be forgotten after the trail of dead I would have left in my wake this afternoon. Look, I know I’ve gone on about this before, but for THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS GOOD AND PURE, am I really the only person in the world who makes an effort to be conscious of who is in front, to the sides, and behind me at all times? Answer: Yes. Yes I am. The only one. I now have no hesitation before growling loudly at people who stop dead in the middle of the street for NO GODDAMN REASON. And I mean growling. There’s no better release for the circumstance, and no better reaction from the selfish bastards who do it. But blimey, did I snarl a lot today.

Every now and then you catch someone who at least understands. Stood behind a group of four who were blocking the entire pavement and standing dead still, I raised my bags of shopping and brandished them as a weapon at their hateful heads. Across the street a dad with kids saw and laughed understandingly. He might live.

Sales appear to bring out the very worst of human kind. It was as if all the inmates of Britain’s prison hospitals were having a day out in your Beautiful Bath, released from their shackles for one afternoon only. Everyone shuffled painfully slowly, like bad extras from One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, no one trying to do anything or get anywhere. I wouldn’t have been even vaguely surprised if they were just slowly stepping backwards on escalators, ensuring their mindless trudging was as purposeless as could be. I despaired for humanity while shopping for jumpers today. Please, everyone, go back to work. I want my town back.

Is the name of the forthcoming Fox TV programme, in which O.J. Simpson hypothetically describes how he would have killed his wife, if he had done it.

It’s hard to know what to add.