Dope

The Pope is coming, lock up your children!

Alright, I admit it, I'm not a fan. After all, the Pope apparently believes in 'God', so it would be somewhat difficult for me to be an admirer. I don't generally hero worship the mentally ill.

I could go on about how El Papa's visit to the UK is going to cost me and my fellow taxpayers £10m plus all the policing costs. But so what? We frequently host vile heads of state (although I note that Joe Ratzinger's status as such is highly debateable - something to do with an illegal agreement signed by Mussolini). Anyway, £10m is nothing in the scheme of things. What is it compared to, say, the molestation of nine boys by a priest in one case in one diocese in one country (the scale of paedophilia in the Catholic church is such that Wikipedia lists 10 separate cases involving hundreds of children in the UK alone - not even a catholic country. I refer specifically to the case of Father Michael Hill, jailed for abusing nine boys over 20 years, so take your own guess at the true number he abused.)

Actually, most of the things worth saying were summed up slightly obliquely by Ben Goldacre a few days ago in The Guardian (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/sep/11/bad-science-pope-anti-condom), so I leave it to him:

"You will have your own views on the discrimination against women, the homophobia, and the international criminal conspiracy to cover up for mass child rape. My special interest is his role in the 2 million people who die of Aids each year."