The coronation of King Charles will take place in May. Some grifters see the teeming crowds going to the event as an opportunity, and are planning to attend. Now I have zero interest in royal shenanigans, but I think it’s fine if the people of England have a big party, and I certainly wouldn’t dream of disrupting it, so I don’t want us Americans to get the blame for a particular stupid bunch of party-crashers.
Ken Ham (Australian) and Ray Comfort (New Zealand) are teaming up to print these One Million Pound fake banknotes — they’ve printed 3 million of them — for evangelists to hand out at the coronation.
This is a tired old Ray Comfort schtick. The notes are worth nothing, less than nothing since they’re garbage, and are tedious old gospel tracts. For years, you’ve been able to buy these worthless tracts from Living Waters — here’s an American version.
Servers will be able to tell you that some Christians love to leave these as tips at their restaurant table. You can imagine how galling that would be.
Now these obnoxious twits are going to London with a gigantic pile of tracts to scatter. They are practically salivating at the opportunity — in this video, they are first excited about the size of the crowds at Queen Elizabeth’s funeral, and then cut to scenes from Elizabeth’s coronation. It’s a religious ceremony! It’s in a church! There are jewels and gold and pageantry!
Ray and Ken imagine that their cheap-ass cheesy old-timey tent-revival act will blend right in, and they’ll be welcomed by the crowds attending an Anglican ceremony, and that they’ll get hordes of converts by passing out pieces of paper with inane conservative Christian apologetics printed on them.
I think that at best what they’ll get is some deeply annoyed people offended by this foreign intrusion on their reverently observed historical tradition, and at worst they’re going to meet some hooligans who will make a strong response to their efforts. It could get ugly. I don’t think they’ll get to meet any royalty, but maybe a truncheon or Piers Morgan.
Hey, if anyone should get one of these, send it to me!
Well, not quite foreign, both are from Commonwealth nations.
I say that they should be forced to walk home.
As fir the US version, shouldn’t Nixon be on that bill? Or was he only on the three dollar bill?
Re: The fake tip thing. They don’t leave million-dollar notes because that would instantly be recognizable as fake. They leave folded (fake-side-up) realistic-looking notes because those actually force servers to look closely only to be disappointed. People who do that to other people who are serving them are awful.
(Also: fuck tip culture, but that’s a discussion for another time.)
“…reverently observed historical tradition,…”
I may be wrong but I think the Church of England has always been great friends with other religions and Bp Laud was one o the friendliest. If you dont believe me just ask Anne Hutchinson or Willima Prynne. Prynne was very proud of those marks on his face provided free of charge.
I do have some Ezekiel 23:20 bumper stickers to put over John 3:16 signs. Sort of the same idea.
Who knows maybe they’ll get arrested for passing fake money. It just a pity its not an offence to hand out false prophecy.
Several years ago, I was visiting a friend in Grand Rapids and we went to a street fair near his house. He wandered off with some friends, and I was by myself. Someone was handing out these fake bills, I thought it was kind of neat until I saw the back. I handed it back to him and said, ‘No, thank you’, which he decided was his opportunity to give me ‘The Atheist Test’.
This consisted of several questions without real answers (‘How many grains of sand are there are the beach’, and the like), with the point being, ‘Well, how can you really know there’s no God?’. I asked him about the invisible pink unicorn behind his couch, and we got into a discussion of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. We were drawing a crowd, and it was honestly just getting good when my friend reappeared and grabbed me by the arm and said ‘We have to go‘. He taught at the nearby Catholic college and was like, ‘I have to live here.’. :)
Ray and Ken have nothing to worry about, the royals stopped executing protestant dissenters ages ago. In fact, they’ll find plenty of fellow evangelical hypocrites worshiping this particular false idol.
Grift, grift, swindle, swindle. Hey. it’s what dummies like Dumb Idiot Ham and Ray Discomfort likes to do as long as they don’t get caught by the British constables.
Admittedly the kind of crowds you get at royal events are prime sources of slack-jawed, traditionalist idiots – the usual mark of the religious conman. The problem here, though, is that our native brand of slack-jawed, traditionalist idiot doesn’t have time for god – their craven submission needs are entirely catered for with the festival of useless, privileged mediocrities that form the royal family.
Is it too much to ask that the roof of Westminster Abbey collapses, crushing parasites, drooling parasite-worshippers and naieve god-botherers all in one go?
I sense that PZ and I are in agreement: although I have no interest in the lifestyles of rentiers and the infamous, I have no desire to destroy their party. Also, using the party as an excuse to pass out right-wing biblical tracts is disgusting, especially since the folks distributing the trash don’t generally know anything about the bible except for a few bits that make it seem like their god agrees with them.
When you think about it isn’t this passing off fake money tracts a form of both counterfeiting and fraud? Shouldn’t the laws be applied here?
If they must use the coronation of the symbolic head of state as a an excuse to proselytise – & they don’t – they should atleats be honest about it and could always use the slogan of a mythical religious King of Kings for the crowning of your figurehead earthly puppet king couldn’t they?
Talk about misplaced trust.
Let’s not lose sight of what a fucked up event this is. The government will be paying for a lavish religious ceremony to declare a man “defender of the faith,” the faith being Anglicanism. That’s the purpose of this, he’s already king and head of state. It’s also an opportunity to emphasize British/English imperial supremacy with stolen artifacts. From the Stone of Scone, the ancient coronation stone of the Scots seized by Edward Longshanks (Hammer of the Scots) which will be in Charles’ throne to the Koh-I-Noor, a diamond taken from a child Maharaja by the East India Company as a gift to Queen Victoria which will be in Camilla’s crown
I suspect the funeral will turn out to be a larger event than the coronation. This coronation will also be far far smaller than his mother’s coronation (which among other things was a chance to celebrate after World War 2 and years of rationing).
I note the Ham/Comfort stunt is far more likely to make people think their version of Christianity or Christianity as a whole is rubbish.
Children with play money.
dontlikeusernames #2
What is “tip culture”?
One of the few times I was working as a busser and thought I had gotten a tip. No. I had gotten 1 of those dumbass tracts. Another one I saw was down on the tracks of the railroad at an amusement park. It had either been placed there by some joker hoping someone would find it and fall onto the tracks, or it was someone who just dropped theirs. Difference was, this one was a $50.00 bill and not some farcical 1,000,000 bill.
Reminds me of the last time I worked in a breakfast cafe. It just happened to be the cafe the church crowd would swarm to after services. Not only were they crappy tippers, but sometimes they tipped with fake $20 bills that had bible BS printed on the back. One of the women there had a whole collection. Garbage people from a garbage culture.
chigau@16>
I’m assuming it’s referring to the situation in the U.S., where a lot of food-service industry workers are dependent on tips, rather than wages, for a large part of their income. I’m not well-versed in the current stats, but in a lot of the U.S., the minimum wage is ridiculously low (I think it’s less than $10/hr nationally, I want to say it’s ~$7.something?), and in many states, employees who receive tips can be paid an even lower rate (again, haven’t read up on it recently, but something around ~$3.ish sticks in my mind)
So, there is quite a large segment of the population, which tends to skew towards women and POC, that is entirely dependent for their survival on the whims and generosity of the customers whom they are serving, and it can get rather demeaning and ugly quite often. On top of that, it’s not uncommon to have the servers directly penalized for bad behavior of the customers, such as “dine and dash”, or returned/refused dishes.
And, like many other horrible things in the U.S., a lot of it can be traced back to slavery, Jim Crow, and associated bigotry.
Fake money tracts… and a king. I like the irony as both are bogus in terms of relevance.
Worse, it could get mocked. People standing around in a crowd or in a queue love to have a distraction to pass the time, while waiting for the main event. Anyway, it’ll probably rain.
@ ^ Rich Woods : From what I gather it rains 364 days out of 365 in England so yeah.
@ kingoftown : There’s been a series recently broadcast on Aussie TV called ‘Stuff the British Stole’ about thelegacy of the British empire’s looting. Its ben a pretty powerful, informative and worthwhile show. See :
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-11-08/how-four-young-scots-stole-the-stone-of-destiny/101580130
& https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-01-25/gweagal-shield-and-captain-cook-origins-questions/12941610
Plus trailer here
Plus this is real money – and one real blood diamond :
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-09-17/indians-want-kohinoor-diamond-back-from-king-charles-iii/101430400
In the King (& rarely Queen) of what used to be a bloody empire’s crown.
I remember the time I saw such tracts pinned up on the community bulletin board at a local laundromat where a dinosaur is shown on a fake dollar bill while on the back was Dumb Idiot Ham’s crappy young earth message and an invitation to his putrid attractions. I ripped it up and threw it away. It’s junk not worth seeing or buying.
I’ve always wondered what they think they are gaining when they give hard working servers fake $20s? I mean all they are going to do is piss these people off and make they less likely to listen to their religious BS, I would think.
veveverum@3,
You’re right. But of course most of the American colonies were also theocracies – their founders (with rare exceptions) didn’t object to religious persecution – they just wanted to change who persecuted whom!
The Bank of England claims copyright on its banknotes so there’s potential legal trouble in store for Ham and Comfort. These things can’t be protected by any “fair use” or “parody” claims, surely?
The Stone now resides in Edinburgh Castle, except when it’s needed for a coronation (this will be the first time since it was moved there in 1996). I wouldn’t be entirely surprised to see some attempt to prevent or interrupt its journey, which will doubtless be heavily guarded!
If it were me, I’d ban both from entering the country at all, for “behavior likely to cause a breach of peace” and be done with them.
I think the likely response to Ham et al. is engagement in one of the Great British pastimes: Taking the absolute piss.
Unless, of course, they really rile someone and they will be invited to consider the works of the great philosopher Mr William Connelly of Glasgow in which he differentiates between the meanings of two common phrases in the English language: “Go away” and “Fuck off”. For they assuredly are not the same.
I find it difficult to believe that the gentlemen will be physically remonstrated with by anyone, including the filth. They’re not black for one thing (so the coppers will move them along, not beat them), they are relatively well presented, and (despite being of the American Fundajelical persuasion) unlikely to make themselves a sufficient nuisance to merit an ASP to the mush. Being invited to jog most directly on by a mildly peeved person on the Clapham Omnibus is more likely.
Unless they don’t queue correctly. In that case someone gonna fuck them up.
Louis
It’s against UK law to pass fake notes in any situation where the recipient rightfully expects legal tender, so the trick of giving bible tracts on fake notes would be a criminal offence.
Then there is the issue of copyright on UK notes in the UK. Even film and TV productions have issues with this, since scenes with fake British money can be considered criminal without prior consent from the Royal Mint. Even Doctor Who had trouble with this, even though their notes had replaced the Queen with David Tennent.
Michaelviets @ 6
Q: How many grains of sand are there at the beach?
(Alien in V.O.R.): “More than twelwe”.
(If you read science fiction from the fifties, you get it)
BTW the practice of putting a bogus face on a religious tract is both rude and counterproductive.
I wonder if they understand that Charlie is head of the church.
They’ll basically be attending the crowning of the English pope.
@Ian King #33:
If the archbishops were to insist on viewing Charlie-boy’s balls before anointing him, I might actually pay some small degree of attention to the poncy parasite-crowning event.
“Weeell, they were there last time Ey looked. Camilla, old fag-end, you’ve seen them before, haven’t you? Oh god, Ey can’t bear this bloody thing!”
kingoftown@13 “The government will be paying for a lavish religious ceremony to declare a man “defender of the faith,” the faith being Anglicanism. That’s the purpose of this, he’s already king and head of state.”
Not quite. As I understand it he’s not properly a king until the assembled archbishops have perfomed the correct secret magick ritual with holy oil. In exchange for that, which apparently nobody else can do, they get seats in the House of Lords and in turn he becomes Head of the Church, whatever that means.
In my family tradition Nixon was on the three dollar bill, Reagan on the seven.