Occasional Scribbles

And what to say…? Well I think I shall talk about ‘offense’ and comment on the recent news story about soldiers being asked not to wear their uniform in Peterborough lest it cause offense. The strange thing is, that when a random selection of people in the street were asked, not one could be found that was offended. We hear so often these days about ‘offended‘ people and much importance is put on how offended they feel or might feel if such and such happens. The offended are usually either a very tiny minority or are non existent and come in various shapes and sizes. Lots of things are being changed on the strength of a small number of offended people these days. They are in truth really quite hard to find. Much is made of the selfish behaviour of us all in this country towards the offended.

For a while now it has been the turn of the Muslims and other Ethnic people to be the ‘offended’. We have seen many examples of our disgraceful behaviour towards these people. For example: why must we have ham sandwiches in canteens across the country? And we really should be content to have Halal meat and go against all our soppy ideals about being a nation of animal lovers.

We are becoming quite small minded about our historic towns and traditions too. How dare we send each other Christmas cards as if we were a Christian nation. We must follow the lead of our charities in adopting the non Christian ‘Seasons Greetings’ and absolutely must not put up any Christmas decorations which may induce a feeling of being left out by other religious minorities, or offended. Up in Oxford amongst the church spires with their quiet, gentle inspiration, we must be allowed to hear Muslims call their people to prayer over a loud tannoy system as if in the Middle East itself.

And we really must stop banging on about our ancient system of law. That dusty, cobwebby institution that we have spent 1000 years refining simply must make way for another. Its dogged straight forward, measured ways must now accomodate Sharia law. It’s high time we allowed a foreign law to run along side even if it is the very opposite of our own. Where ours is most precise, Sharia is open to much interpretation and may mean different things to different people depending on how you feel on the day. Surely this is far easier to enforce. The old sins such as adultery that in biblical times wrought the fury of a sometimes seemingly mean God and for which we barely register shame today, should for our Muslim sisters, carry a punishment of those same biblical proportions, such as beatings and stoning. And how much better for our rapists if he finds that unlike our system of punishment that would mean a spell in prison for the offense, find that under Sharia law, he would almost never be convicted since the woman must find four men to say they witnessed the rape for it to be considered a rape. Fantastic.

Much has been made of our insistence on keeping the right to free speech. And this is at the crux of the problem between the ordinary fellow and the ‘offended’. God knows it is easy to offend anyone these days but for my part, I would rather be eternally offensive than have anyone’s right to be offended by me taken away.

O to be in England!

P.S. To anyone who may read this, should you feel offended I should like to point out that it is written with tongue in cheek and good humour demonstrating the wholly English trait that allows us to laugh at ourselves and of course other people.