When Cardiff councillor John Dixon visited London last year to buy a wedding ring for his wife to be, a stroll past the "Dianetics and Life Improvement Centre" on Tottenham Court Road (just round the corner from our office, as it happens) prompted him to make the following quip on Twitter:“I didn’t know the Scientologists had a church on Tottenham Court Road. Just hurried past in case the stupid rubs off.”This has appeared to generate a bit of a problem for poor John Dixon, as the "Church" of Scientology made a complaint to the Welsh public service watchdog. As a consequence Dixon's facing disciplinary action. Problem is, as someone who's read Russell Miller's biography of Scientology's founder L. Ron Hubbard (the wonderfully titled Bare Face Messiah), I rather inclined to agree with Dixon. It's also why I place quotation marks around "Church", and why I believe Scientology is complete claptrap and an exercise in generating a huge income. Herewith my modest contribution to the Streisand Effect. On the other hand (and in a spirit of even-handedness), I suggest the core beliefs of most established religions are equally loopy.
Flies and Bikes Blog
Welsh councillor gets hassle for labelling Scientology "stupid"
The New Humanist blog is one of many web sites reporting on a fracas involving criticism via Twitter of Scientology (Welsh councillor in trouble for calling Scientology "stupid" on Twitter ). The synopsis of this story is that