Anthony McIntyre looks at the mysterious hand of God in the destruction of more than a thousand jobs in god fearing Ballymena.

Ballymena has a good reason to fear god. A major shareholder in one of the town's larger enterprises, he has just laid off around 1200 workers.

When Wrightbus bought the old Gallagher's cigarette factory in Ballymena in 2016, many in the bible belt town and surrounding area must have felt their manna from Heaven had arrived.

The bread had not yet turned stale. Then God was on their side. That's the thing about God: he always stands firm with those who hate the same things he does - queers and abortion seeking harlots tend to be front of the queue, with other abominations in close pursuit. God detests them, so his devotees can do likewise without ever having to entertain the notion that they blanket despise categories of people and then create a god in their own image who follows suit.

Dutifully and unwisely they placed their trust in a God bothering entrepreneur, Jeff Wright. It never occurred to them that their godly employer could be Jeff Wrong, pastor of Green Pastures Evangelical Church. And because they didn't believe in evolution, the moment of the Big Bang for them came in the form of a God tax: rather than profit being reinvested to keep the industry usefully afloat it was given to something as useless as a Church. Even though the writing was on the wall, it wasn't in the bible, so the faithful could not see it. The pastors remained "adamant that their money-making vision is all in the service of God and the local community."

Unadulterated wankology that allows Pastor Jeff to speak in tongues, all of them forked: 

"I had been tailor made to take over the family business ...  but I didn’t think I had the wisdom to do it. It came to a point one night, I fell on my knees beside my bed, just cried literally to God, ‘look, if you’ll help me, guide me to run this, I would give you this business’. I really felt I had an encounter with the living God that night … We made God a shareholder in the business – 26 per cent of Wrights is owned by an evangelical trust – in order to make sure He was central in everything the Wrights company does.” Then he felt that God had a new question for him. “Do you love me more than these buses?’ I said, ‘yeah, I do’. So God said ‘I want you to feed my lambs and take care of my sheep’.”

Only sheep could not have suspected a scam. Anybody deranged enough to believe the crap arguably is not capable of holding down a job other than perhaps being a church hassock to be knelt upon during Sunday service so that the betters do not have the burden of additional strain on their knees.

A bit late in the day, jobless workers, incensed that Jeff Wright would squander millions of profit in donations to his Green Pastures Evangelical Church, picketed the Church today, while inside Pastor Wrong prayed for them. Changed times from when the Catholic church in Harryville was being picketed by Ballymena bigots, for whom a leading apologist was Ian Paisley Junior. Today he can be found waving his greasy palm against demonising the owners of Wrightbus, the head honcho of which just happened to nominate Paisley as candidate for the Westminster seat. It is truly a miracle how he manages to find the traction to sit on the seat with so much snake oil oozing from the pores of his buttocks. God works in mysterious ways.

That's the thing - God does work but now his flock have no work because God stole it all for himself. Working people have seen their livelihoods sacrificed on the altar of “the church that helps you fall in love with Jesus” but won't help Jesus fall in love with you. In fact, the way things turned out, Jesus doesn't give a flying fuck about you. Ultimately, God told Jeff Wright to screw the workers and send the profit God's way.

From the prayers to the preaching, from the crocodile tears to the bible thumping, from the beseeching of Jesus the Robber, to the berating of the devil, bollix, all of it. Just one more religious racket legitimised by prosperity theology which holds that Jesus wants the soul saving swindlers to be rich and their sheepish followers poor because that's just the way God planned it. There's gold in them thar souls.

Time to get off the Wrong Bus.



Wrong Bus

Anthony McIntyre looks at the mysterious hand of God in the destruction of more than a thousand jobs in god fearing Ballymena.

Ballymena has a good reason to fear god. A major shareholder in one of the town's larger enterprises, he has just laid off around 1200 workers.

When Wrightbus bought the old Gallagher's cigarette factory in Ballymena in 2016, many in the bible belt town and surrounding area must have felt their manna from Heaven had arrived.

The bread had not yet turned stale. Then God was on their side. That's the thing about God: he always stands firm with those who hate the same things he does - queers and abortion seeking harlots tend to be front of the queue, with other abominations in close pursuit. God detests them, so his devotees can do likewise without ever having to entertain the notion that they blanket despise categories of people and then create a god in their own image who follows suit.

Dutifully and unwisely they placed their trust in a God bothering entrepreneur, Jeff Wright. It never occurred to them that their godly employer could be Jeff Wrong, pastor of Green Pastures Evangelical Church. And because they didn't believe in evolution, the moment of the Big Bang for them came in the form of a God tax: rather than profit being reinvested to keep the industry usefully afloat it was given to something as useless as a Church. Even though the writing was on the wall, it wasn't in the bible, so the faithful could not see it. The pastors remained "adamant that their money-making vision is all in the service of God and the local community."

Unadulterated wankology that allows Pastor Jeff to speak in tongues, all of them forked: 

"I had been tailor made to take over the family business ...  but I didn’t think I had the wisdom to do it. It came to a point one night, I fell on my knees beside my bed, just cried literally to God, ‘look, if you’ll help me, guide me to run this, I would give you this business’. I really felt I had an encounter with the living God that night … We made God a shareholder in the business – 26 per cent of Wrights is owned by an evangelical trust – in order to make sure He was central in everything the Wrights company does.” Then he felt that God had a new question for him. “Do you love me more than these buses?’ I said, ‘yeah, I do’. So God said ‘I want you to feed my lambs and take care of my sheep’.”

Only sheep could not have suspected a scam. Anybody deranged enough to believe the crap arguably is not capable of holding down a job other than perhaps being a church hassock to be knelt upon during Sunday service so that the betters do not have the burden of additional strain on their knees.

A bit late in the day, jobless workers, incensed that Jeff Wright would squander millions of profit in donations to his Green Pastures Evangelical Church, picketed the Church today, while inside Pastor Wrong prayed for them. Changed times from when the Catholic church in Harryville was being picketed by Ballymena bigots, for whom a leading apologist was Ian Paisley Junior. Today he can be found waving his greasy palm against demonising the owners of Wrightbus, the head honcho of which just happened to nominate Paisley as candidate for the Westminster seat. It is truly a miracle how he manages to find the traction to sit on the seat with so much snake oil oozing from the pores of his buttocks. God works in mysterious ways.

That's the thing - God does work but now his flock have no work because God stole it all for himself. Working people have seen their livelihoods sacrificed on the altar of “the church that helps you fall in love with Jesus” but won't help Jesus fall in love with you. In fact, the way things turned out, Jesus doesn't give a flying fuck about you. Ultimately, God told Jeff Wright to screw the workers and send the profit God's way.

From the prayers to the preaching, from the crocodile tears to the bible thumping, from the beseeching of Jesus the Robber, to the berating of the devil, bollix, all of it. Just one more religious racket legitimised by prosperity theology which holds that Jesus wants the soul saving swindlers to be rich and their sheepish followers poor because that's just the way God planned it. There's gold in them thar souls.

Time to get off the Wrong Bus.



5 comments:

  1. Why's this God character so bad with money that he needs it all the time anyhow?

    ReplyDelete
  2. It seems that as god gets older the more money he needs and the size of the places of worship that are being built Green Pastures as an eg,. are growing in a size that wouldn't be embarrassed beside nou camp.and all this with diminishing congregations, those stupid cunts that worked in Wrightbus were happy enough when the rock of ages were coming in and that monstrosity of a so called church was being built with the firms money ensuring pastor Jeff et all will be in gods good hands for many years to come while they pay the price for their silence, the people of Ballymena are now beginning to get the feel of how the people of west Belfast Derry and Strabane have felt these last years , if there was a god I,d call him KARMA ,

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  3. Would the ex-workers of Wrightbus see the irony in the name of the Wrights church that their livelihood has been squandered on ,,?GREEN PASTURES ...

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  4. I once had first-hand experience of dealing with Sir William Wright, the auld fella.....he was and probably still is as bitter an auld bastard now as he was then, 25+ years ago….never forget his blatant disgust at having a Taig in one of his offices never mind on his property….didn’t even try to hide it.
    As for the workforce, ….so what that they will lose their homes, their cars, next year’s holiday to Turkey or that their children will have to forgo those £100 Nike runners as a birthday present…………why should I show sympathy or support to them when they despise the very ground I walk upon?
    Like so many in the evangelical belt in the USA, the workers were swindled because they are cut from the same cloth as the Wrights
    So, in this case you can take that time honoured slogan about calling the workers of the world to unite and fuck’m and fuck’m hard for they hold the same politics as the Wrights themselves….
    Had this factory been in Kentucky and the workers paid up members of the KKK, how many would have lost tears today for their plight?

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  5. AM, you closing comment identified the real problem.

    "Just one more religious racket legitimised by prosperity theology which holds that Jesus wants the soul saving swindlers to be rich and their sheepish followers poor because that's just the way God planned it. There's gold in them thar souls."

    Prosperity theology is not NT theology, not authentic Christian theology. At best, where the leaders are sincere, it is delusional. Mostly it is just a scam.

    ReplyDelete