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John8pies,

What's your view on this?

Many of our least able people become civil servants. As a rough rule of thumb one of their basic principles is never to let common sense get inthe way of a good theory. This is just stupidity-it's not as if you have to read the thing.

Never let the truth get in the way of a good story.

It started with University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust’’s attempt to prevent the spread of MRSA infection in its hospitals. But thanks to the media’’s weak immune system for religious scare stories it soon developed into a full blown panic about an alleged Bible ban in Britain’’s hospitals.

The notion seems to have originated with a news agency report two days ago which said that hospital bosses in Leicester were considering moving Bibles from patients’’ bedsides because of concerns about spreading the so-called superbug MRSA.

To add spice, an angle about the presence of hospital Bibles upsetting non-Christians was dropped in from an anonymous source. Soon the buzz on media street was of ‘‘bedside bans’’. Gideons International said it was ““political correctness gone mad””.

A Guardian headline on Thursday declared, ““Superbug threatens Bible's place in hospitals””. The Daily Telegraph preferred, ““‘‘Offensive’’ hospital bibles may be banned.”” This unfortunately appeared on Google News as a straightforward ““bibles may be banned””.

The bug soon spread internationally. US and South African outlets said that ““British hospital bosses”” were involved, transmitting the ““ban”” from Leicester to the whole country. An Indian paper then declared that ““Britain may pull hospital Bibles””.

In Canada, a pro-life news site decided that Leicester NHS Trust was ““publicly declaring its political bias against Christianity””, and dragged in Hindu and Muslim spokespeople to condemn their bias against ““a Christian country””.

However, back in the boring old world of fact, the Leicester NHS Trust clarified that while discussions were imminent about the safety of storing reading material in patients’’ lockers, it was basically a matter for investigation and consultation.

So the issue was not about the Bible, it was about different ways MRSA could be spread through the potential attachment of bodily fluids to bedside objects. Questionable, maybe. But not deliberately vindictive.

The Trust emphasised that no decisions had been made and said that ““regardless of the outcome of the discussions, patients can be reassured that religious texts will continue to be made available at the trust's three hospitals.””

Many of the increasing number of stories omitted this information. The BBC reported it, though the headline ““Bedside Bibles could be removed”” might have created a different impression.

By yesterday morning the BBC’’s report (now entitled ““Hospitals defend MRSA Bible move””) included a response by Leicester NHS Trust representative Anne McGregor denying that they are preparing to remove copies of the Bible from their wards.

What was happening was that the Trust was considering where to put the books. Ms McGregor also contradicted reports that the move was prompted by concerns the Bibles might offend non-Christians.

““We are looking at safer storage …… but we want to accommodate all types of religious material on the wards,”” she explained.

The Guardian today blames a hospital chaplain who allegedly rebuffed Gideons for the debacle, and re-diagnoses the situation as ““public relations disaster”” for Leicester’’s hospitals.

Meanwhile the Bible ban story bug continues to be spread by journalists across the globe, with one media analyst suggesting to Ekklesia that it may reach Mars by next Wednesday.

MRSA stands for methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus, and describes strains of an organism resistant to commonly used antibiotics. It has been a health hazard in Britain’’s hospitals for some time and became an issue in the recent general election campaign.

No Bibles were harmed in the writing of this report.

http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/content/news_ ... 4bug.shtml

Now I have just heard that a cemetery has been forced to remove a wooden cross in case it `offends` non- Christians (in fairness, I must say it is usually the PC brigade who starts up these things,not the immigrant families themselves)

john8pies wrote: Now I have just heard that a cemetery has been forced to remove a wooden cross in case it `offends` non- Christians (in fairness, I must say it is usually the PC brigade who starts up these things,not the immigrant families themselves)


I presume you haven’t bothered to check the authenticity of this story John.

You know how they build those church buildings right on street corners where everybody can see them? Man… somebody has got to stop that. They are in plain sight where anybody could be offended. A simple change to the International Building Code requiring all buildings to look alike would stop that problem. Everybody knows those golden arches at McDonalds represent hamburgers and hamburgers are meat. Can you imagine the torment vegetarians must be experiencing? The change to the Building Code will take care of that as well.

If someone was truly concerned about the spread of disease, it doesn’t matter to me. I’m exercising my constitutional right to be offended. My right not to be offended by far outweighs all other rights.

All these problems relating to Chr*stianity being found offensive by other faiths really stem, in my opinion, from the Cr*sades, where imagery of the cr*ss was firmly associated with rapine, murder and pillage.

Now, the imagery of the cr*ss is consequent on Saint Paul having chosen J*sus to have been the S*n of G*d. The simple way to abandon the imagery is to update Saint Paul and decide that he actually would have meant Saint Sebastian, had he only lived a bit longer. We might need a committee to validate that observation sometime.

So, cr*sses out of the churches, perhaps a small tasteful sheaf of arrows on the front wall instead, and a single arrow round necks in place of cr*cifixes. We can be members of Sebastianity instead, and all will be sweetness and light in interfaith dialogue.