Grombles

Religions are businesses: They all have brands and logos. They sell products and use incentives (forgiveness, blessings, afterlife, comfort etc). Most have high street outlets. The Church of England has 16,000 branches in the UK. They employ sales and marketing professionals to sell their brands (we call them priests). They issue product manuals (bible, koran etc). They provide aftersales support (worship, confessionals...). They use recruitment campaigns (christmas, festivals, brainwashing in schools...). Their officials have uniforms. Their founders are worshipped. But there are also a number of differences between religions and businesses: Their license to trade is often protected by laws such as blasphemy. They are permitted to brainwash children (no broadcast watershed for religious messages). They are even allowed to take control of children's entire education through branded faith schools. There is no equivalent to Trade Descriptions or checks on claim...

If someone cut off part of your child's body, without anaesthetic, because they heard voices that told them to do it, there would be an international outcry. It would make front page news in free media throughout the world. If caught, the perpetrators would be strung up from lampposts for extreme child abuse or at the very least locked away for the rest of their sorry lives - and in solitary confinement for fear of fellow inmates finishing the job that the baying lynch mobs would have obliged the public on the outside. Evil, evil people use knives on children. Period. But if the people who commit this horror are the child's own parents, the whole world turns a blind eye because "it's their tradition". We can't interfere with a parent's right to butcher their children if bearded nutters put the instruction in so called sacred books. Collective and total madness in the name of preserving balmy cultural heritage. It is estimated that over 20,000 young gir...