Dead in the Water

Michael Gove's jolly jape of inflicting a vandalised copy of the Authorised Version on every school in the country has run into much the same sort of trouble as his more recent wizard wheeze of using public money to give some of Daveybloke's relatives a new yacht. Daveybloke is all in favour of the Bible; indeed, our politics is steeped in it, from gay-bashing through militarism to genocide, and from the creationist lunacy of Genesis to the millenarian lunacy of Revelation. Only last month Daveybloke had a bit of a burble about our being a Christian country, whereupon he also very charitably burbled that he was not in any way saying that being non-Christian was somehow wrong; any more than it is wrong to be foreign, female, a Tourette's sufferer or otherwise laughable. Nevertheless, although Daveybloke has no objection to robbing the taxpayer in a good cause, Gove's hobby of breeding white elephants seems to give his public-relations conscience an occasional discomfiting twinge.

As one would expect, the Department for Faith Schools does not know if the Gove Bibles have been printed or, if they have been printed, where they may be stored; on the other hand, it is almost fairly certain that they will be distributed at Easter, so as to commemorate the original publication's four hundredth anniversary, which does not take place this year. Although Daveybloke has apparently ruled out using taxpayers' money, the legions of Michael are trumpeting that the Bibles will be distributed even if no private sponsorship can be found. Perhaps the Ministry of Justice has some obliging volunteers in orange jackets lined up to help.