The Observer reveals that Creationists plan British theme park. This was picked up by Pharyngula, the Dawkins site, and some of the other usual suspects in atheist blog-land. Prophecies of doom were uttered, comparisons made to the creationist nutters in the USA, and so on.
Nonsense like this makes you despair at the state of investigative journalism in this country. The AH Trust seems to be a project of the Zebra agency, a TV production company. I say that partly because they both have similarly illiterate websites filled with nasty javascript menus, but mostly because the same address is used in both domain registrations (that of a location which looks, from Google’s aerial shots, like a private house near Wigan). The Charity Commission’s registration documents for the Trust tell us that AH stands for “Assembly Hall” and that they originally had a site at christianassembly.co.uk, which now appears to be defunct.
The Trust’s annual report makes interesting reading for many reasons. The Trust reports that their income from donations was about £300 last year, and that they had £311 in the bank at the end of September 2007. (It’s possible, looking at the graph on page 7, that we’re meant to multiply these figures by 1000, but you’d have hoped they’d indicate that in the report somewhere).
The Observer tells us the Trust is talking to “a number of rich backers”, who I can exclusively reveal are called Mr Desk, Mr Chair, Mr Pen and Mr Stapler (Offler bless you, PTerry, stay well as long as you can), as well as a pair of investors to whom I am intimately connected.
For heaven’s sake, lefty journos, leave Christianity in this country to die in peace, with a bit of dignity, instead of writing yet another scare story about how we’re about to be over-run.
