Geordie fundies break record
The hateful homophobes of the Christian Institute are bragging that “some 900” anti Jerry Springer: The Opera protestors turned up at the opening night at Newcastle’s Theatre Royal – the highest turnout of the tour so far.
Colin Hart of the CI:
A show like this may be popular in London’s West End, but the people of Tyneside have more respect for common decency.
Give over.
“900 protestors” my fetid cock. Let’s see a photo.
Don’t hold your breath. When did you ever hear of christians using evidence to back up their claims?
Makes them sound great-
‘We don’t want none of yer fancy Southern blasphemy round these ere parts!’
XD
Ooo-arrh Wurzel, I can smell the bullshit from ‘ere.
(A northeasterner-in-exile writes.) While I’m not sure why Marc has broken into south-western dialect to represent Geordies 😉 I’ll make a bet. The CI presumably believe that Methuselah lived for 969 years (Genesis 5:27) – about one year for every member of their supposed crowd. I bet the size of the crowd was much closer to the number of years that Methuselah actually lived – let’s be generous and say he might have gone on for 80 years. Perhaps we can adjust all such claims for Old Testament genealogy. We’ aye man!
What the CI carefully omits to mention is that, even given a figure of 900, it’s very likely that same 900 who are picketing night after night, but it’s not the same 700–800 or so theatregoers who are going into the theatre every night. Given a seating capacity of, say, 700 for only a fortnight’s run, six nights per week plus a matinée (and I don’t know what the number of performances is, but this is a good enough estimate), we’d get 700 x 7 x 2 = 9,800, which is more than ten times more than the 900 they claim. Even if only a week, it’s five times more.
Of course they may be doing the exact same mathematical trickery that was done with the amount of swear words in JS:TO, meaning that the actual number of protesters is 900/14, which is roughly 65. So it could be the same 65 protesters protesting at every showing.
Interestingly, I can’t get a ticket for Saturday’s performance because the phone lines are too busy at the Theatre Royal. I can only assume that they’re busy with people ringing up and going “Ooh, you horrid, horrid men! We really dislike you!”. Anything else would make the Christian Institute liars, and lies make Baby Jesus cry.
I received my usual email bulletin from the Christian Institute this morning. I note that they’ve now released a video of a little over a minute showing their new building, and they say,
Now just why do they need a building costing £1 million-plus to do what many people can do with a few mates in their front rooms or bedrooms and their computers linked by the Internet? It would be interesting to see the workload of the people such a building is required to house, and to know what salaries they’re on. More interestingly, what about the top bods? What did the man they follow say about camels, eyes of needles and the Kingdom of Heaven?
More interesting is the mention of giftaid. They must be a registered charity then. I can’t help feeling that organisations who spend vast sums just to annoy people with thier daft beliefs should not get full charity status. Its an insult to worthwhile charities such as medicins sans frontier and the PDSA.
If memory serves me correctly, registered charities are very limited in the sort of political activities they can do.
Just to show how useful the internet can be, the website of the Charities comission has a few details at http://www.charity-commission.gov.uk/registeredcharities/showcharity.asp?remchar=&chyno=1004774
Note than in 2003 they made a PROFIT of around £450,000, and more than £200,000 profit in 2004.
You can also get their accounts for 2003 from a link on that page, which make for interesting reading. £200,000 on staff, £4,000 on computer costs, almost £10,000 on telephone costs, £22,000 on travelling (half of what they spent in 2002!) along with several other items. And all that on “furthuring the objectives of the charity”!
Interesting stats, Andrew, thanks. It would be interesting to know just how the money is spent. There seems to be an awful lot on travel, for isntance (doing, presumably, much that could be done on the phone, or via phone or video conference, or by email or letter). Unfortunately, any organisation that promotes a religion can qualify for charitable status, so my former MP told me a couple of years ago. I ought to have known, I suppose, but must admit that I didn’t, and it came as a shock. So people can set themselves up as the deliverers of bullshit (much of it toxic bullshit, too, if you look at how they think we poofs should be treated), and get all kinds of fiscal and other benefits for doing so. It’s just so unjust.
Interesting how the charity commissioners consider some forms of rabble rousing (e.g. Amnesty International) ‘political’ (thus you can’t be a charity) and others not (fuckwit rightwing Christians? no problem!).
On another note – you say the last full published accounts are 2003? Technically,at that level of income & expenditure, if the last posted accounts are over 2 years old they’re breaking the law and the Charity Commissioners should be either closing them down or posting a strong suggestion to potential donors that they’re dodgy.
Maybe we should start suggesting they do so. If nothing else, it would cause the CI massive embarrasment to have their ability to add up and account for money questioned.
They have submitted accounts for 2004 (not available on the website though), but none yet for 2005. They were requested in January, but as the site indicates, they routinely submit them in October.
Humph. I’m just annoyed that they got more protestors in Newcastle than we did in York; just imagine the increased wind-up potential! Although we did manage to piss off Stephen Green in person, which is probably worth at least twenty protestors on its own. Has he been attending all the other shows too?
Commissioners should be either closing them down or posting a strong suggestion to potential donors that they’re dodgy.
Maybe we should start suggesting they do so. If nothing else, it would cause the CI massive embarrasment to have their ability to add up and account for money questioned.
Stuart, I think it would be an excellent idea if someone started a proper campaign to get these hateful bigots off the charity register.