Grieving families left distraught after British council rules that wooden crosses are 'too dangerous' for cemeteries

A small wooden cross in a cemetery is "dangerous"? Pull the other one! It's just that Leftist hatred of Christianity again

A council is under fire for banning crosses from one of its cemeteries - over health and safety fears. Families have been left distraught after North Somerset Council started to remove wooden crosses from its graveyards.

One woman has told how her mother-in-law's grave was targeted after she died of cancer in May. Liz Maggs placed a 26-inch high wooden cross bearing a personal inscription on Rosemary Maggs' burial plot at the Ebdon Road cemetery in Weston-super-Mare, while the family waited for a headstone to be made.

But when Mrs Maggs, 43, returned to visit the grave with her husband Charles and daughters Zoe, 16, and Danielle, 14, just a few days later she found the cross had disappeared.

She reported it stolen to cemetery staff but they told her it had been removed because it did not meet council regulations.

Mrs Maggs, a carer, was told if she wanted the cross back she had to go and look in an alleyway at the back of the cemetery where items which had been removed from graves were stored.

The fact that the cross had been removed upset Danielle so much that she collapsed. The teenager has been in hospital since September for treatment for a stomach condition and is only allowed out on rare occasions.

Mrs Maggs said the family paid more than £1,000 for the triple plot. She said she was not made aware of the guidelines and decided on the wooden cross after seeing dozens of similar tributes on other graves.

She said: 'The whole incident has left us all very upset. We had a look around and saw wooden crosses on other graves so thought something similar would be appropriate.'

She added: 'When I complained to the cemetery staff I was told it was removed as it did not adhere to regulations and it could pose a health and safety hazard. 'I am very angry that it was removed without us being told.

'I think the rules are completely over the top and this incident has been very upsetting at a time when the family is distressed.' Mrs Maggs has now taken the cross home and placed it in the family's garden.

North Somerset Council said the cross on Rosemary Maggs's grave was not suitable because all the other graves in the cemetery had flat memorials, not upright headstones.

The authority said that because the cross stood about 2ft up from the ground it was a health and safety risk.

Council spokesman Nick Yates said: 'There are a number of regulations we ask people to follow and our staff did discuss with the family what could be placed in the cemetery and we do give relatives written information to this effect. 'Our staff try to deal with all situations in a sensitive way.'

SOURCE




Useless British police again

A once-distinguished body destroyed by political correctness and bureaucracy

A mother who accidentally locked her baby in a hot car was forced to smash her way into the vehicle with a hammer after the emergency services failed to turn up.

Leeona Woodburn, 20, from Kendal, Cumbria, phoned 999 as soon as she realised her son Logan was trapped inside the car. Almost thirty minutes later nobody had arrived to help her, so she grabbed a hammer from nearby National Tyres mechanic Steven Savage and smashed a rear car window. She was able to rescue her seven-month-old son herself but he was suffering from dehydration and had to be taken to see a doctor.

Miss Woodburn said: 'I was waiting and waiting and getting really distressed. I was told a police car would be sent straight over. 'Twenty-five minutes later I called them again and this time the woman on the other end said they weren't coming at all. 'They said it was a matter for the fire service. At that point I knew I couldn't wait any longer, I thought my son was going to die.

'Thirty minutes in that situation is a lifetime. It was a baking hot day and my son was scared, crying and started to throw up he was so hot. 'By the time I got him out he was absolutely dripping with sweat. I got him to the doctor who said he was suffering from dehydration.'

Miss Woodburn said she called 999 because that was the only number she knew and she does not understand why a fire engine was not called out on her behalf. 'If the police couldn't help, why didn't they send someone else?'

Mr Savage said: 'That baby was in a bad way by the time we got to him, because he was so hot. 'You'd expect the emergency services to rush to a situation like that. We were more than happy to help by giving Miss Woodburn the tools, but I am shocked the fire service was not sent.'

Chief Inspector Gordon Rutherford, head of Cumbria police communications centre, said: 'We are extremely sorry for the distress caused to Ms Woodburn.

'I have spoken to her to offer my sincere apologies and inform her that an investigation has been launched. 'This is not an example of the high level of service that Cumbria Constabulary routinely delivers. 'I would have expected a call handler to reassure Ms Woodburn and either inform her that officers would be with her in a set period of time or contact the fire service or AA to gain entry to her vehicle.' [Translation: We are embrarrassed to have our indifference publicized]

SOURCE




Jewish dance group attacked in Germany

But Muslim antisemitism is OK of course

A JEWISH dance group was attacked with stones by a group of children and teenagers during a performance at a street festival in the Germany city of Hannover.

One dancer suffered a leg injury and the group then cancelled their performance.

The teenagers also used a megaphone to shout anti-Semitic slurs during the Saturday afternoon attack, Hannover police spokesman Thorsten Schiewe said.

Police said the incident is under investigation and that they do not have an exact number of attackers yet.

Mr Schiewe said there were several Muslim immigrant youths among the attackers.

Two suspects, a 14-year-old and a 19-year-old, were being questioned, he said.

Alla Volodarska, whose Progressive Jewish Community of Hannover group held the performance, said that members were still in shock.

"What happened is just so awful. The teenagers started throwing stones the moment our dance group was announced, even before they started dancing."

Ms Volodarska said she did not attend the event herself, but had talked to several members of the eight-person dance group since the incident.

She said one dancer, a woman in her forties, was injured by several stones that hit her leg.

"There were many kids throwing stones, many of them, but we don't know the exact number," she said, adding that the community had performed Israeli group dances at many festivals in the past and never experienced this kind of hostility before.

Ms Volodarska said that the festival took place in Sahlkamp, an immigrant neighbourhood of Hannover.

SOURCE







More on Islamic derangement

That which a culture does not denounce, a culture promotes. Two items on the table tonight that need to get some wider play and some accompanying denunciation. First up, from Haaretz:

An Arabic children's choir has been racking up views all over the world with the new YouTube hit "when we die as martyrs, we will go to heaven."

The song was apparently recorded by the Jordanian-owned production company and television channel "birds of Paradise."

According to The Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT), one of the world's most comprehensive data centers on radical Islamic terrorist groups, the song is a hit on Arabic and worldwide websites and the children's choir performing it fast is becoming one of the most popular children's groups in the Arab world....

Journalist Fawzia Nasir al-Naeem wrote in the Saudi Arabian newspaper Al-Jazirah that "[Birds of Paradise] is one of the most widely distributed children's song groups in the Arab world, and it seems to have crossed the ocean to Canada and Britain."

She added that the group represents a new wave in Jihadist youth indoctrination, as it is child-friendly, as opposed to previous Jihadist programs.

A culture that uses innocents to promote martydom is a culture that's sick. Beyond sick. It's evil. And there's nothing anyone can say that would convince me to see it differently. But wait... there's more cultural sickness:

Exactly three years ago, on May 22, 2007, an Egyptian scholar was disciplined by Al Azhar University, one of Islam's most prestigious institutions, after he issued a fatwa calling upon women to breastfeed their male colleagues. Dr. Izzat Attiyah said that his fatwa offered a way around mixing of the sexes in the work place since breast-feeding established a maternal relation even if the beneficiary was not the woman's biological son or daughter.

Now, a high-ranking Saudi, Sheikh Abdul Mohsin al-Abaican, a consultant at Saudi Arabia's royal court, has issued a fatwa asserting that women could give their milk to men to establish a degree of maternal relations and get around a strict religious ban on mixing between unrelated men and women. [Because] a man who often entered a house and came in contact with the womenfolk there should be made symbolically related to the women by drinking milk from one of the women. Under the fatwa, the act would preclude any sexual relations between the man and the donor woman and her relatives.

Sheikh al-Abaican thus "modernizes" Dr. Izzat's position — that the man must breastfeed directly from the teat — by suggesting that "the man should take the milk, but not directly from the breast of the woman. He should drink it and then becomes a relative of the family, a fact that allows him to come in contact with the women without breaking Islam's rules about mixing....

At any rate, where do all these "adult breastfeeding" ideas originate? As usual: Muhammad. A canonical hadith tells of a woman who once asked Muhammad what to do about the fact that a young boy who had been living with her and her husband had grown into manhood: that a non-relative adult male was freely residing with them, seeing his wife without her veils, was upsetting to the husband. So the prophet told her to "breastfeed" the man. Shocked, she responded saying that he was a grown man; Muhammad said — according to some traditions, while laughing — "I know." The woman breastfed the man, and reportedly her husband was no longer upset, as the act of breastfeeding turned him into a kinsman. Muhammad's favorite wife, Aisha — the "mother of the believers" — frequently relied on this practice to meet with non-related males (one of the greatest debates of her time revolved around how many "breastfeeds" were enough —one, five, or ten — to make a man a "family-member." See here for more hadiths).

The importance of this breastfeeding business has less to do with its sensationalist quality and more to do with what it says about the overbearing and intrusive nature of Sharia law in Muslim life. Muslims cannot escape adult breastfeeding simply because it is contained in Islam's most canonical hadiths (including Sahih Muslim and the Sunan of Abu Dawud and Ibn Maja). Moreover, it has been addressed — and endorsed — by such Islamic authorities as Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn Hazm. To reject this hadith is to reject the sources and methodology of usul al-fiqh — in short, to reject Sharia law.

Imagine for a moment with me... imagine that what you've just seen, heard and read, imagine if these things were practiced by a Christian sect... imagine if it were to become popular amongst many Christians... imagine the denunciations, how negative the press would be, how these items would be played over and over again on MSM outlets, how they'd be played again each year during Christmas and Easter... can you imagine the reaction?

But because these are Muslims, you'll only see this sort of thing if you go hunting for it... you know it's true. That which a culture does not denounce, a culture promotes.

SOURCE

*************************

Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of other countries. The only real difference, however, is how much power they have. In America, their power is limited by democracy. To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges. They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did: None. So look to the colleges to see what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way. It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN (Note that EYE ON BRITAIN has regular posts on the reality of socialized medicine). My Home Pages are here or here or here or Email me (John Ray) here. For readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site here.

***************************