Enemies of Reason Poundshop potshots at the media moral maze.

St George’s Day approaches

...so that means the number of St George's Day lies will be ratcheted up by the scream sheets in the coming few days.

The story they want to tell is this: People are AFRAID of celebrating St George's Day because of POLITICAL CORRECTNESS and for FEAR OF UPSETTING MINORITIES but more particularly MUSLIMS who HATE US. They don't always need to come out and say this explicitly, because readers are pretty savvy creatures and know exactly how to join the dots.

Do you ever think they sit around the table in the Mail editorial conference and say: "Well, we appear to have accidentally misled a lot of people again. We haven't come out and said that Muslims have been attacking St George's Day, but somehow our readers appear to have gained that impression somehow. We need to be much more careful in future, lest we cause similar confusion in the future". I'm guessing not. I'm guessing it's not seen as a bad thing at all if readers get that impression, although I could be wrong of course. If the Mail and its friends really didn't want to give that impression, I think they would try a little harder not to; they could even try not to print a billion billion stories every bloody year about how St George's Day is the victim of political correctness when it isn't in the slightest. But no. It's quick, it's simple, it's cheap and you only need to change a few words from one year to the next; so here we go!

Over the coming weeks we'll hear from people who say they want to fly the flag of St George from some building somewhere but who can't FOR FEAR OF UPSETTING THE ETHNICS. We'll hear from columnists who decry the lack of English patriotism and national pride when England is compared to Scotland, Ireland or Wales, asking us to wonder why - perhaps with a handy picture of Muslim women in burkas (or as that bastion of satire Private Eye hilariously called them last week "Daleks" shouting "exterminate". Yes, I had to wipe away the tears of laughter as well as they poured down my face.) We'll hear about some survey somewhere that shows English people don't really give a flying one about St George's Day (the classical type being that they don't even know what day it is) and that this is somehow evidence of MULTICULTURALISM and its evil having pervaded our lovely white people.

Here's a good example in today's Mail, which has the bonus of being not only drivel from start to finish but also lumping Christianity in with St George's Day - not entirely unconnected things, of course, but on the other hand St George isn't in the Bible at all, which is kind of an important thing where that religion is concerned.

Bishops fear a backlash over St George's Day bell-ringing

yells the headline. It's actually an update of an earlier story, which you can find here, and which had a slightly more sober headline:

Only five of England's 44 bishops want the bells to ring out on St George's Day

Now, if you live near a church, you'll know that they aren't shy about using the bells. Oh no. Every ruddy Sunday. Random times during the week. Der-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding, repeat until brain vibrates into mush. Which is fine, and quite pleasant at a distance. My point is this: you do need bellringers to ring bells. They have to take time out to do it. They might not want to. They might be working. They might not want to ask the boss for time off work in a credit crunch to go bonging the bells on a random weekday because someone wrote a letter to the bishop. It's just a thought.

The second article is pretty much a copy-and-paste job from the earlier one, so we'll look at the first one first:

The lack of interest among senior clerics in England's patron saint stands in sharp contrast to London Mayor Boris Johnson's plan to hold a week-long celebration of St George in London, with traditional English music and poetry readings.

How nice of Boris to bravely do something which had existed for several years already, and which he was merely continuing rather than setting up, as he liked to give the impression he was, and which his fans in the tabloids blithely repeated because they couldn't give a shit to make a fucking phone to call to check a fact or anything like that. But yes. Good on you, Boris! You stick it to the PC dogooder leftie bastards, not like that England-hating cunt Ken!

Among those who supported Mr Johnson's initiative was Mail on Sunday reader and regular churchgoer Libby Alexander. In fact, she is so keen to celebrate St George's Day that she wrote to all Church of England bishops in February, urging them to take a lead by issuing a decree to churches to ring their bells on April 23.
One of the reasons church attendances had fallen, she told them, was 'the lack of assertiveness or confidence emanating from the top' and the 'strangulations of political correctness'.

Hooray! That's banged a big dinner gong for Mail readers. They know they're on the right side of this one now. And it's a nice, neat ready-packaged story for the Mail on Sunday which didn't require any original research from a journalist - citizen journalism at its cheapest finest. But what of this claim?

Only five out of the church's 44 bishops enthusiastically back the plan - and several are hostile, claiming it could be 'dangerous' and cause a backlash from other religious groups.

I'd like to see evidence of that.

The Bishop of Chester, the Rt Rev Dr Peter Foster, said: 'I agree the modern Church has a lack of confidence, but there would be dangers in reacting by putting on "public displays" of confidence.'

I don't quite see his point. What dangers? But that's left hanging in the air. Did he say more, that might qualify what he's just said? We'll never know because the Mail haven't found space for context.

The Bishop of Gloucester, the Rt Rev Michael Perham, said: 'I would find it difficult to make April 23 the principal day of the year in which church bells should ring out peals of joy. Getting together teams of ringers at midday would be challenging.'

So that's a purely practical point of view, there. Nothing about a backlash.

The Bishop of Portsmouth, the Rt Rev Dr Kenneth Stevenson, warned that if church bells were rung on April 23 'some secularists would claim the Church was imposing its beliefs and practices on the whole population' - though he was careful to add they would be wrong to do so.

Some people might well, and he'd be well within his rights to say they were wrong. But again, no 'backlash' from 'other religious groups'. Unless you call secularists a religious group, which they aren't. Come on, where's the bit about Muslims? Where is it? It must be in here somewhere.

The Bishop of Newcastle, the Rt Rev Martin Wharton, declared: 'It is not possible to arrange a peal of bells whenever we like.'

Another bishop explains the practicalities.

There was a haughty tone to the reply from the Bishop of Bradford, the Rt Rev David James, who rejected Mrs Alexander's call to issue a decree, saying: 'Let me enlighten you as to why I disagree. First, I would not be able to issue this decree with any authority. Second, I doubt there are enough ringers available. Third, some towers are not in a suitable condition.'

Ooh! Haughty!

But those are the only bishops quoted who were against the idea. No-one mentioned other religious groups, yet you could have sworn from the intro that they would have done. I love these conjuring tricks from the Mail. They make you think that something's there, even when it isn't. It's pretty clever.

The Bishop of London even says the following, which goes against the 'We hate St George's Day because of political correctness nowadays' narrative:

While I suspect it would be difficult to decree that bells should be rung in every one of our 16,300 churches, I have noted a gradual increase in the attention given to our patron saint in recent years.

An increase then, and not a decrease. At least according to a bishop. So that's something to shout about, isn't it? Er, no, because it's not the story the Mail want us to read.

Remember, not a single mention of Muslims in the article. And yet:

This country has been crippled by political corectness which seems to have spread to the church. It is St George's day, our day and we should be proud of it and celebrate it like the Irish and the Scottish do on their respetive days.
But in England you get called a racist and a xenophobe by your own government, while hate preachers are being paid benefoits and staying here even though they incite people to murder our own troops!
This country makes me sick to the core more often than not nowadays.

and

What about the Bishop of Oxford? He's keen on calls to prayer, no?

Yes! I bet he is! I bet he actually secretly prefers Islam to Christianity. I... oh hang on a minute, he's in favour of the idea. Shit.

Stuff the bishops. I want them to ring.

Shall we break into the churches and do it ourselves then?

These bishops really should stop worrying that religious 'minorities' do not want to hear the bells ringing on St Georges Day - most of them are quite happy for our customs to be celebrated alongside theirs. They really need to grow a backbone - nobody assumes a religion is being foisted upon them simply because it differs from their own.

I love the idea of the word 'minorities' being in inverted commas. To signify what - that minorities aren't really minorities? Or that by saying 'minorities' we're actually giving a nudge and a wink to what we really want to say?

And finally, a rather chilling comment:

The Church of England leadership is weak and becoming irrelevant. A pride is rising again for England; if anybody living in England doesn't like it then go and live somewhere else. The UK, especially England, is an oasis of cultural success in a sea of barbaric countries where life is still very very cheap. Many people come from those countries in search of safety; I am proud that we give them safety but have zero tolerance for them if they want to bring their broken way of life to my homeland. Integrate or emigrate.

Mm, lovely. Thank goodness for people like that, as opposed to those evil bastard bishops.