Don’t adjust your computer monitors, this is not a drill. While it may be a Thursday, it’s also the Thursday before the Easter weekend and so is basically like a Friday, but better because it’s come one day early. The revolution might not be televised, but Society Diary will be published on special occasions.
This week, Scottish campaigners call for Buckfast monks to have charitable status revoked and a bunny rabbit is for life, not just for Easter!
A mountain out of a monk-hill
First up this week, we turn our attention to Devon and its Buckfast Abbey – home to a sect of Benedictine monks known best for their so called ‘tonic wine’; a heady mixture of red wine, divers phosphates, lashings of caffeine and something called ‘vanillin’, an organic compound derived from the vanilla bean.
Return readers of this column may well remember that it has covered the charitable associations of Buckfast Abbey, and the less than charitable effects of its self-titled ‘tonic wine’ in the past. In 2015/16, the monk’s heavily inebriating wine raked in over £8m worth of income for Buckfast Abbey’s charitable trust. The Trust said that it would be using the money to refurbish parts of the abbey itself so as to future proof the charity’s second biggest income generator: tourism.
No harm, no foul, right? Wrong! It was the week before Christmas when this story was written and, frankly, this column had more pressing issues to attend to but, in the cold hard light of Easter, Diary now feels it let the Benedictines off lightly.
Buckfast tonic wine has a decidedly sinister reputation, particularly north of the border in Scotland, where its consumption has been linked with spikes in all manner of serious and violent crimes.
One helpful infographic on the BBC’s website says that, of a survey of young male offenders in Scotland in 2007, 43.4 per cent said they had drunk Buckfast before committing their offence – more than any other alcoholic beverage, including Scotch.
As a result the National Secular Society, a non-party-political organisation which “exists to challenge religious privilege” in the UK according to its website, has called on the Charity Commission to strip the Buckfast monks of their charitable status, as they are effectively enriching the trust by aiding and abetting (in a fairly roundabout way) Scottish criminals.
An NSS spokesman said: "Charitable status and the accompanying tax benefits should be granted only to religious organisations that deliver a demonstrable public benefit. Where the good is simply not good enough, public confidence in supporting charities risks being undermined."
The Commission for its part has said it will be contacting the Abbey. However, to linger any further on the facts would drag this perilously close to becoming a news story, and Diary’s not having that.
It remains to be seen whether or not the monks of Buckfast Abbey will lose their charitable status, or change their ways. Given that they’ve been brewing their Bucky tonic wine since 1922, Diary would say it’s hard to see them changing the HABIT of a lifetime.
Get it?
Seriously, don’t abandon rabbits!
Diary never ceases to be amazed by just how vacuous and moronic some people can be, yet, some new event – like video footage of Leicester City fans in Madrid yesterday clashing with riot police and chanting ‘Gibraltar is ours!’ – or a public holiday comes along and suddenly the bar somehow gets set a little lower.
The RSPCA and SSPCA have both been forced, through the stupidity/cupidity of people, to put together separate Easter campaigns to remind people that, in fact, a rabbit isn’t just for the holidays, but for the life of the rabbit! Because it is, you know, a living, breathing, sentient being and not a stuffed animal or made of chocolate or wood, or whatever else people make things out of.
To be fair they probably haven't had to do too much original thinking - the campaigns are remarkably similar to Battersea's annual Christmas campaign reminding the public that dogs are for life.
Anyway, this time last year, according to the RSPCA, it had to rescue over 3,000 bunnies across the UK, including the best part of 1,000 who had simply been abandoned by their owners.
What is wrong with these people? If you only want a rabbit for a few days, buy one of those Lindt chocolate ones. They’re so delicious that it’ll be completely gone within a day or two (product placement, waiting for the Lindt royalties to come streaming in)!
So if you’re thinking about buying a rabbit this Easter then please remember: a bunny isn’t just for Easter but for life… you idiot.
Have a great long weekend!
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