Papal Visit

After the great invasion of geeky Scientologists comes the great September Papal invasion. The reluctant young Nazi himself will visit these shores and bless his many followers as he steps on UK soil and kisses the airport tarmac, lets hope he also blesses a few potholes on the way north. His blessing (whatever a blessing actually is, who really knows?) will cost our struggling economy £12m but sales of Papal tat and nonsense will be around £17m, so that's ok then. The bus companies, vendors of shite and motorway policemen on overtime will do best out of this ridiculous State Visit while sensible folks, as ever, look the other way. To add to the spectacle Tony Blair will no doubt get a private audience and an impression of the Pope's ring somewhere on the cover of his latest book . The Queen may also pocket a few quid in complimentary backhanders and the BBC will provide full and sycophantic coverage in HD of course.

This whole affair both intrigues and annoys me as it would any middle-aged, jaundiced sceptic. The Catholic Church, a simmering mound of pyramidal corruption, founded on a piece of misquoted scripture, battered murderously into shape by politics and planted in the gilded city of Rome from where it has been ruling and exploiting, ruthlessly sucking up to itself for nearly two thousand years without a proper challenge to it's ludicrous existence ever being made. So now, as before we bow to this glittering Roman drag queen and his minders as he visits, holds masses and generally gets in the way of buses; repugnant, almost as repugnant as Islam and err...Scientology, so back to where I started then. You are the masses? Open wide, here is your dose of opium.