Make the Pope pay...

[JPreston]

...not for his obscene policy on the use of condoms, which together with his predecessor has killed an estimated 3 million extra people in (mostly African) places affected by the AIDS epidemic, but for the security cost of his upcoming visit to the UK which is estimated at £20 million and will be borne by the taxpayer.

Now, I like the pope - the pope smokes dope*. He's my favourite facilitator of child abuse and possibly the only person on Earth of whom it can be said that while he used to be a member of the Nazi party, he has grown more right-wing with age. But while the treasury normally pays for visiting real heads of state (few, if any, could attract the crowds and expense the pope's public pontifications will), the pope is head of a state so peculiarly defined that it is really no more than a historic tax-dodge.

£20 million of public funds is enough to pay for the 'MP's expenses scandal' forty times over (near as I can work out), the total annual cost of 'NHS health tourism', or any amount of textbooks or nurses or body armour for our troops or (insert own worthy cause) etc. At a time of recession when huge cuts are being proposed to education and the NHS and the country at war it is beyond ridicule that public expenditure on religious events should go through the roof. With 230 million catholics worldwide, the ill-gotten gains of centuries of deception and persecution, god personally watching his back and (should god fail for any reason) a neat bulletproof car the catholic church is more than capable of paying its way at its own publicity stunts.

The National Secular Society has already gained 19,000 signatures for the cost to be passed on to the catholic church. While the petition has probably no chance of influencing a Labour government which has done so much to pander to the religious so close to an election please at least consider signing up to further embarrass them. The petition is at:

http://www.secularism.org.uk/petition-the-pm.html

* this bit is not actually true. The rest is.

[Behemoth]

He's just a virgin in a £3000 hat. I don't see why we the british public have to pay for his visit, he's got more money than the average bloke on the street anyway.