Fuckin' Chancels

Here’s an interesting question for you. What does a British property owner have in common with a 16th century noble-woman? Bit of a head-scratcher isn’t it… well the answer is that there’s a both have a small possibility of being fucked by Henry the VII. I’m not implying that Henry the VII has some form of wandering time-cock, that’s the plot of the educational children’s book I’m writing.

I think this is Henry the VIII... well if it's
not I'm going to need new illustrations

Turns out that there is a very real way in which Britain’s most notable chubster is fucking with your chi and its buried deep in the idiosyncrasies of British property law. As a side-note I really hate the fact that nationalities need to be capitalised when being used as an adjective it looks ridiculous, I’m not going to do it anymore and red squiqqlies be damned. Anyway, way back in the never-never of the before times, that’s not hyperbole by the way we’re talking about a thousand years ago, the church used to own you. They really did, their job was to keep you in line while you were alive and when you died their boss got to own you forever.

It's really hard to find a picture of slavery that is not massively depressing...
but yeah the guy with the whip is god and the slaves are religious types, so yeah.

As such the upkeep of their prison of the mind was obviously not going to fall on them but rather to the little sheeplings who paid for the privilege of being told that they were evil once a week, now I come to think about organised religion has kind of a submissive/dominatrix kind of thing going on doesn’t it… I guess that explains all the kneeling. Anyway that money was used on the upkeep of the building proper, but not for the Chancel.

Is this a Chancel? I have no fucking clue to be honest.

Now I know what you’re thinking… “What the fuck is a chancel?” and rightly so, I used to be an altar boy and even I had to use Wikipedia for this one.

“In church architecture, the chancel is the space around the altar in the sanctuary at the liturgical east end of a traditional Christian church building. It may terminate in an apse.”

I think it's this... I mean unless this is an apse...
fucking Christians and their spooky language

Yeah I don’t know what half of that means either, but judging by the picture on the wiki it’s the bit around the altar with the windows… the really expensive windows. Now the maintenance for this area is paid out of the rector’s stipend. I don’t know why but it is. I’d like to just briefly mention the fact that the church has an awful lot of fancy windows and I can’t help but feel the window money might have been better spent on actually doing some good than making windows showing pictures of people doing some good. Anyway a whole ton of churches in Britain had their rector-ing done by the local monasteries; this was back during the great monk surplus, where Britain became so over-monked that accidental blessings became a serious public health threat. That’s why Henry the VIII decided to deal with the problem of the monasteries, now Henry couldn't fuck the monks out of existence and even as king he wasn't allowed to eat them so he just ripped ‘em down and nicked all of their stuff, less satisfying but it got the job done.

"Well I suppose so... bloody monks."

Now in a move worthy of Enron, Henry sliced up the land and started selling it off, with liability for the Chancels included, this is a very clever legal manoeuvre, known as ‘being a git’. Now obviously this was many hundreds of years ago and it has no bearing on the current legal landscape of Britain. Except that it totally does. In 2003 Andrew and Gail Wallbank received a bill for £100,000. I'm going to ask you to read that again because it isn't a typo. The church just rocked up to the door one day and demanded £100,000. I don't know if that's good money for a chancel... how much do chancels cost these days?

This is what you could've bought instead of a chancel.

Obviously the Wallbanks fought this and ended up £350,000 in the hole after legal fees. Let's make this clear, the church needed upkeep and instead of doing that thing with the drawing of the thermometer on a wall they sent a fucking bill to the house of someone who had nothing to do with the church and then when they refused to pay up they decided to basically fucking ruin them.

This used to belong to George Harrison... and costs £350,000

Now I think it is very important to point out that this theft (taking money someone doesn't want to give you without giving you anything in return) was entirely legal. Not moral though. That's the important thing here, that it is a fiercely immoral play. The government has played the 'tradition' card on this one, an argument that could have been made to defend slavery, the death penalty, the divine right of kings and just about every other butt-fucking retarded law that has ever existed.

Tradition is a great reason for stupid ideas.

So basically in Britain if you have the misfortune to buy a house that is on land that used to be a monastery then the local church is allowed to mug you. Regardless of the official views on theft that the catholic faith may hold the only real goal that it has is self-propagation they will fuck over every other moral they pretend to hold in order to get inside your pocket. Back in the hay-day of organised religion they used tricks and propaganda to get you to give them money like a low-rent Scooby-Doo villain, they've tried the jack-booted thug method in their time, but sometimes they are willing to go the devious recession causing scumbag root.

This is the face of organised religion,.

If you choose to believe in a higher power fine. I can understand why you might need that. I just can't understand why you choose to believe in people.


eddie <not paying for the upkeep of any fucking church>