
- Church of Scientology, Blackfriars
How are you today? I am fine myself. The reason I am writing is that, on Tuesday, I was handed a leaflet by one of your people in the Tottenham Court Road. My curiosity piqued, on Saturday I looked in at your main HQ in Blackfriars. I’m afraid that, despite trying to be as open-minded as possible, I wasn’t convinced. If you’ll indulge me, I’ll explain why.
You see, The Church of Scientology, when it comes to criticism, you come across a little bit like a bad writer when the reviews come in. Do you know what I mean? Rather than actually address the criticism, you tend to either attack the critic or claim “religious persecution.” While you may think this is acceptable, to everyone outside your organisation it looks somewhat paranoid. An intelligent person will point out that you’re not actually addressing the question and therefore that the criticism is valid.
So, before I go any further, let me say that I am not going to persecute you for your religious beliefs. This, in part, is because you’re quite cagey and conflicting in your accounts of what they actually are. What I am going to do is point out where you are going wrong. So, without further ado, here are my suggestions.
Religious persecution is an attack on a person or a group of people specifically for their religious beliefs. If I say that the persecution of Catholics during the Tudor era was a Bad Thing, that is not an attack on Protestantism or Christianity as a whole, but a criticism of the government that pursued a policy of persecution. If I attack Fred Phelps, that is not an attack on Christianity, but an attack on a horrible man whose beliefs and actions do not accord with those of most Christians. If I point out that the Bible has self-contradictory points, that is not religious persecution. It’s religious questioning, and in my experience most religious officials are happy to address it.
Unfortunately, The Church of Scientology, you do not seem to understand this. When someone questions your beliefs, your church or your founders, you shout that it’s “religious persecution” even when it clearly isn’t. Now, to be fair, it might be argued that some anti-Scientology groups do attack your beliefs themselves – we’ve all seen that South Park episode, I’m sure, and it wasn’t exactly even-handed. But such attacks are normally based around concepts like Xenu, which you claim not to believe in anyway.
While you deny that a policy of “attacking the attacker” exists, the fact is that when you’re criticised, you immediately resort to ad hominem arguments. This is a very poor debating technique, even creationists know that. If someone is untrustworthy, point out the faults with their argument. Blow away the sand their castle is built upon. If you choose to strike at the person making the complaint, as I said above, it looks like they might be right.
If I may quote from my own upcoming self-help work, Awesometastics, “If you can’t laugh at yourself, someone else will do it for you.” The problem, The Church of Scientology, is that you don’t seem to have a sense of humour. The only time the average person sees a scientologist laughing is either at the expense of someone who has criticised the church or while gushing about how great Scientology is. This makes you look, if I may dip into the vernacular, kind of like dicks. Mean-spirited. It makes people turn against you. Look, having a sense of humour at your own expense is not a sign of weakness – I’d say it’s exactly the opposite. It shows that you’re secure in yourselves.
But more to the point, many of your detractors do use humour. That South Park episode was pretty funny, and so are some of the articles about you on Encyclopedia Dramatica. Why not take them on at their own game? Come on, you must have some comedy writers among your number, give them a shot. If you can get people laughing with you, not at you, you’ll win!
Along those lines, you need to be less uptight about what people say. Again, it makes you look bad when you overreact. Just ignore them, they’ll get bored and go away. Don’t – I repeat – do not throw lawsuits around like confetti. That looks even worse. That makes you look like a big bully who likes squashing the little guy. Have you heard of a case known as the McLibel trial? That, briefly, was a case in which two activists handed out some leaflets levelling accusations at McDonalds, who sued for libel and won. But it was a Pyrrhic victory, because McDonalds was forced to admit that while the allegations against them were not true, they weren’t entirely pure as the driven snow. Plus they looked like litigious jerks. Not that I’m saying you have skeletons in the closet, but you know, just be careful is all. Sometimes you just have to let it go.
Tom Cruise is a crazy sandwich with a side of pickled wrong. Stop using him as your celebrity figurehead. Everyone’s thinking “Scientology = nutjob” when they see him. There must be loads of celebrities you could use instead. I mean, don’t you have the guys from My Name is Earl? They’re great! You could do a skit with them. Something along the lines of, I don’t know, “How’s the list going, Earl?” “Well, Randy, Karma’s pretty good, but now I’ve discovered Dianetics!” Something like that. I don’t know, I’m not a professional writer.
Your understanding of the online world seems a little shaky. I’ve noticed this in your dealings with the group known as “Anonymous.” You only seem able to deal with them if you think of them as a conventional organisation. I’ve seen your Religious Freedom Watch website, you seem to feel that you have to paint them as some sort of grand conspiracy rather than a bunch of people with a common interest and Internet access. As if you can take the leader out and the rest will follow. It doesn’t work like that.
On the subject of your Religious Freedom Watch website, it really is very obvious that you own that. I mean, one look at the forums will show that the only religion that people are interested in defending on there is, in fact, yours. And the fact that there are only threads denouncing those who attack Scientology, with every post written in the same style, shows that you need to spend more time lurking on actual forums. Where are the misspellings? The inexplicable usernames? The funny signatures? The threads devoted to useless crap? It’s a blatant deception, The Church of Scientology. I’m not so much angry with you as… disappointed. I just think you’d look better if you either didn’t lie so obviously or, better still, didn’t lie at all. While we’re on the subject…
You deny the allegations of child abuse. You deny that L. Ron Hubbard demanded that people who turned against the church be killed using “Auditing Method R2-45,” i.e. shooting them with a handgun, claiming that this was a joke (and might I say that I don’t think that’s in very good taste). You deny that you pursue the policy that anyone who criticises you is “fair game.” You deny that you’re a cult. The thing is, The Church of Scientology, it can’t be denied that you do some pretty sinister things. I saw that Panorama documentary (you know, the one where John Sweeney lost his temper), and you were very blatantly sending people to follow him around in cars. What was the deal there?
And there was “Operation Snow White” in which you were caught performing illegal activities, which for reasons of space I will not go into here. And “Operation Freakout.” And that business with Noah Lottick. And Lisa McPherson. And the National Association for Mental Health in Britain. In these cases and others like them, you tend to deny any wrongdoing but – here’s the fly in the ointment – you also tend to act in a shifty, evasive and unhelpful fashion. It looks like you have something to hide. I am trying to be nice to you here, The Church of Scientology, but you really are not helping yourselves.
This is particularly relevant when you claim religious persecution, as I suggested above that you should not. But if you absolutely must claim religious persecution, it really doesn’t help your case if you’re going around acting like a less professional version of the Men in Black.
This is more of a nitpick than anything else, but when I visited your Church, the videos you had showing were in American English. The facts and figures they quoted referred to the USA, not Britain. It’s not as if you couldn’t afford to put new videos together for the British market. It just seems a little disrespectful to me. Not to mention the fact that I find myself thinking, “Well, maybe psychiatry did kill more people than the Spanish-American War, but I know nothing about the Spanish-American War.”
L. Ron Hubbard, in pretty well every non-Scientology source, comes across as a deeply unpleasant man. Racist, homophobic, egotistical, lying, fraudulent, bullying and generally something like the Used Car Salesman From Hell. Come on, Battlefield Earth featured a race of kimono-wearing, kowtowing aliens known as the “Chinkos.” Makes Jar-Jar Binks look like… something that isn’t a racist alien caricature.
Now look, I appreciate that by attacking Hubbard, I myself am indulging in an ad-hominem argument. But I really fucking hated that film, and an apology from yourselves would go a long way to rectifying that.
Now, I don’t know how you’ll take this. You may ignore it. You may attack it. You may laugh at it on one of your websites, possibly with a series of eerily similarly-worded replies. You may even start investigating me for past crimes (you could probably get me on fare dodging, forging signatures and trespassing if that helps) and start publicly laying into me. I suspect you won’t. I suspect you won’t even see this. But if you do, don’t dismiss it. Seriously. I’m trying to help you out here, many wouldn’t. Just think about it, okay?

Interestingly, Fawkes’ cultural status has changed in recent years, largely due to Britain’s succession of crappy governments. He’s gone from a symbol of treachery to a symbol of dissent. There’s a popular political blogger named Guido Fawkes (Guy’s name when fighting in Spain). The ambiguous hero of V for Vendetta takes his likeness from Fawkes. In turn, the online anti-organisation Anonymous, best known for their attacks on the Church of Scientology, wear V masks to protests.
You may have seen these posters around the place. Yes, they’ve made yet another version of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, which I swear must be the most filmed book in the entire world ever. This version, as you can see, stars Jim Carrey in 3D motion-capture glory (I hear he switched the lights on in Oxford Circus last night, good for him). He also appears to be getting some sort of sexual pleasure from that bollard there. No doubt this will be explained in the film itself. I won’t be going to see it, having already seen the versions starring Alistair Sim, Albert Finney, Patrick Stewart, Michael Caine, Bill Murray, Ross Kemp and Scrooge McDuck.

That aside, today was the day of the annual London to Brighton Veteran Car Run. This is an event held on the first Sunday of every November, first run in 1896 to celebrate the end of the Locomotive Act. This had limited self-propelled vehicles to a walking pace (down to 2mph in built-up areas) and – prior to an 1878 amendment – demanded that all such vehicles be preceded by a man with a red flag. This was the origin of the Act’s popular nickname, the Red Flag Act. The London to Brighton Run was originally known as the Emancipation Run, and opened with the symbolic destruction of a red flag.
The event is now run by the Veteran Car Club (of which Yr. Humble Chronicler used to be a member) and sponsored by Tindle Newspapers. It starts from Hyde Park and ends on Madeira Drive in Brighton. Contrary to popular belief, it’s not a race. For a start, I believe racing on public highways is illegal in this country, and doing so in vehicles this old would be downright suicidal. The rules also stipulate that no vehicle built after 1905 may partake, although it’s not unknown for petrolhead spectators to show up in later classics.
These days, the event serves as a sort of eccentric commemoration of the pioneering days of motoring. It’s commonly attended by celebrities of the motoring world – I think just about every Top Gear presenter ever has taken part, and racing drivers are common participants. Various organisations, such as King’s College, the VCC, the Royal Automobile Club and motoring manufacturers also tend to put their own vehicles in, although the bulk are privately owned vehicles that have either been passed down the generations or rescued and restored.
Period dress is not obligatory, but it’s certainly popular.
Manufacturers you’ve never heard of, home-built one-offs, kit cars and early examples from the great companies of today.
My favourite vehicle in the show would have to be the unique Salveson seen on the right. My comments about steam being clean and smooth don’t quite apply to this steam car, which is coal-fired and requires a fireman and a separate coal tender. It’s a magnificently steampunk-looking contraption that puts me in mind of the Arkansas Chuggabug from Wacky Races. 
As you can see, it shows a branch that is no longer there. A slightly pointless branch, in fact, given that Essex Road and Highbury & Islington are just a short walk from Angel (unless you’re lazy). This is the not-quite-departed Northern City Line.
So there it was. A short Tube line designed for greater things but rendered essentially useless by unfortunate circumstances. The Metropolitan Railway, as it was then, stepped in and bought it in 1913. They essentially aimed to finish what the Great Northern Railway had started, running services from the GNR station at Finsbury Park via the GN&C Line, extending to the Metropolitan station at Aldgate. But they weren’t allowed to build the extension, so that was that. The Metropolitan Railway was left sheepishly holding on to a line that not only didn’t go there, but didn’t even connect with the rest of their line.
One of the things that I found strange about this line – apart from the fact that it’s half regular railway and half Tube – is the fact that the stations are timewarped. This one, for instance, carries the colours of Network SouthEast, which ceased to exist in 1994. It rather reminds me of the way the Waterloo and City Line used to look before it was taken over by London Underground.
This building was at Drayton Park. I’d guess it’s either an old electricity substation or a goods shed.

Train departing Essex Road. If I were to set a low-budget horror movie on this line, this would be the point where our hero is left trapped in the station on his own with the monster. Wait, I think I just described the exact plot of Creep. Damn it all.
In order to get up to street level, you have to go quite a long way down from platform level. This may be taken as a sign of unfortunate planning, or possibly that the builders of this station wanted to mess with our heads in order to soften us up for the inevitable late-night vampire attack.









I can’t decide whether it’s utterly magnificent or utterly vulgar, but either way I like it. It was at one time the Carlton Cinema, designed by George Coles and opened in 1930.

Disarm Griffin by confronting the real issues. Once those are dealt with, the BNP will lose its grip on political legitimacy and return to the wasteland from whence it came.
Nor is his work particularly original. Take this one here. DO YOU SEE WHAT HE’S DONE THERE? He has combined Mickey Mouse and Ronald McDonald with a famous photograph from the Vietnam War to make a comment on American foreign policy and commercialism or something along those lines. Except both Mickey Mouse and Ronald McDonald have been subverted in the exact same way about nine million times already. Seriously, subverting those two is actually no longer considered subversive. How old is the idea of subverting these characters? Well, in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Ralph Steadman included a shot of Mickey Mouse wearing a swastika. That book was published a year before that famous photo of Phan Thị Kim Phúc was actually taken.
“Ah!” you could say. “But that’s not the point! Banksy is forcing us to reevaluate the famous photo, which has become over-familiar and lost its original shock value by taking the central figure and placing her in a new context!” Well, perhaps, but even that’s been done before. Take Marcus Harvey’s Myra, pictured right. The famous photograph of Myra Hindley is recreated using children’s handprints. This painting caused so much outrage that it had to be removed from display on the very day it was put on public display after being attacked twice by members of the public. The only people who ever attack Banksy’s work are council jobsworths, because nobody else feels even remotely challenged by the stuff he does.
This one here is one of his non-graffiti pieces, Elephant in the Room. What he’s done here, you see, is taken the expression ”elephant in the room” and portrayed it literally. This represents the things that are very obvious but which we choose to ignore. Do you see how clever that is? He has portrayed a metaphor literally! Along those lines, here is an artwork of my own, which I call Too Many Cooks Spoil the Broth.