David's Daily Diversions

Connecting the Dots with an

Connecting the Dots with an Imaginary Line

It has been well-publicised that the last time the British government tried to prove that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, they plagiarised an old PhD thesis. Now they have fallen for simply forgeries that a basic knowledge of the countries involved would have exposed.

Supposedly secret documents about Saddam’s attempt to purchase uranium were passed to the US by MI6, the UK’s equivalent of the CIA. The International Atomic Energy Agency has shown that the documents “bore the wrong names of ministers, were stamped with incorrect dates and even carried the imprint of a junta deposed a decade earlier.”
If they are going to do this, they need to do it right.

It’s All in the Name

Osama Bin Laden’s niece is attempting to launch her career as a pop star. Something tells my Uncle Osama wouldn’t approve of his rather unreligious, burkha-less neice collaborating with a producer who has with Madonna in the past.

She may have been disowned by most of her family, but unless she changes her last name, she has little chance of success. The Pop Idol judge Simon Cowell noted, “There’s only one worse surname you could have to launch a pop career — and that’s Hitler.”

Hot Cross Councils

Four local councils, Tower Hamlets, Liverpool, York and Wolverhampton, have taken hot cross buns off of the school menus. They don’t want to offend non-Christians. I kid you not. They are afraid of protests.

In the case of Tower Hamlets, an east London borough, apparently there were objections to pancakes being served on Shrove Tuesday (a custom so common here that Shrove Tuesday is always referred to as Pancake Day by the media and supermarkets stock special displays with the ingredients). The council said they had “a lot” of complaints, but could actually say how many. A council spokesperson said, “We are moving away from a religious theme for Easter and will not be doing hot cross buns. We can't risk a similar outcry over Easter like the kind we had on Pancake Day. We will probably be serving naan breads instead.” So it wasn’t just complaints; it was an outcry.

Call me thick, but I’m not sure exactly what other theme there is to Easter. Pretty much the whole thing is about the Resurrection of Jesus (and by implication all the things leading up to said Resurrection). And I didn’t realise that local councils had authority to pick a theme for Easter.

Even the Muslim Council of Britain described this as “very, very bizarre” A spokesman said: "This is absolutely amazing. At the moment, British Muslims are very concerned about the upcoming war with Iraq and are hardly going to be taken aback by a hot cross bun.

"Unfortunately actions like this can only create a backlash and it is not very thoughtful. I wish they would leave us alone. We are quite capable of articulating our own concerns and if we find something offensive, we will say so. We do not need to rely on other people to do it for us.

"British Muslims have been quite happily eating and digesting hot cross buns for many years and I don't think they are suddenly going to be offended."

Conservative MP and former Home Office minister Ann Widdecombe (who arranged my job as an intern at Westminster in the early 1992) summed it up: "It would appear that we should know about everyone else's culture apart from our Christian tradition. It seems that anything that comes from an ethnic minority is fine, while anything Christian is wrong.”

UPDATE:

Following the publication of this piece, I was requested to remove it or face legal action from Tower Hamlet Council. Apparently, the existence of this piece will incite racial hatred in East London. Now my traffic stats would indicate that about the only people in East London reading David's Daily Diversions are apparatchiks of the Tower Hamlets Council. But that's enough for them.

As I have explained in my further story on this, I'm not removing what I have written. In the spirit of fair play, however, I am willing to append hereto the official press release from Tower Hamlets. Of course, as with any governmental statement, I reserve the right to comment upon it. So feel free to read the press release, giving it the same credibility you would give anything immanating from government sources in general and Tower Hamlets in particular:

"Response to Sunday Telegraph article, 16.3.03

"In response to the article concerning Hot Cross Buns (pg 11) in the above newspaper: Tower Hamlets Council would like to make it clear that it has never ordered schools not to serve hot cross buns at Easter. This allegation is entirely without foundation.

"In addition:
"1. Tower Hamlets Council, as the Local Education Authority, has a recommended Religious Education curriculum which encourages schools to celebrate the full range of religious festivals and to take a multi-faith approach to religion.

"2. However, the Local Education Authority is not in a position to order any school on its religious requirements for food. That is a decision to be taken by each school.

"3. The Council respects each school's choice as to whether it takes part in any marketing event regarding school catering.

"4. All schools in the borough were given the option of whether they wanted pancakes to be provided on pancake day and we supplied pancakes to all schools that requested them. We are unaware of any complaints.

"5. Tower Hamlets Council celebrates the rich cultural diversity of its community and the benefits that this brings.
"-Ends-"

First of all let's cut the crap. Paragraphs 1 and 5 are irrelevant. Nothing wrong with them, but they have no bearing on the truth or falsity of the article in the Telegraph. Of course only a Liberal Democrat-controlled council could make perfectly legitimate statement sound like they don't actually stand for anything. According to paragraph 3, the serving of hot cross buns is a marketing event??? And most paragraph 4 is again irrelevant. Neither the Sunday Telegraph nor I suggested that schools weren't given the option to serve pancakes. But paragraph 4 seems to taint the truthfulness of paragraph 2. If the LEA is not in a position to order, what is it doing giving options?

So you decide. Which is more credible, the Sunday Telegraph or Tower Hamlets Council?