What a week! First it has been a very busy week, filled with lots of work, a lot more than there should be for the start of a new fiscal year. Of course, just like me, Congress cannot do the one thing they have to every year on time: pass a budget. So we are spending transportation money with no idea of the final top line………..Come to think of it, that’s just like Congress too!
Then I came across this little tidbit:
For those of you residents of bloggerville who have been on vacation or in a cave, let me bring you up to date. It seems that in West Midlands U.K., the British council there is mighty afraid of offending Muslims. So they banned:
NOVELTY pig calendars and toys have been banned from a council office’s in case they offend Muslim staff. Workers in the benefits department at Dudley Council, West Midlands, were told to remove or cover up all pig-related items, including toys, porcelain figures, calendars and even a tissue box featuring Winnie the Pooh and Piglet.Bosses acted after a Muslim complained about pig-shaped stress relievers delivered to the council in the run-up to the Islamic festival of Ramadan. Muslims are barred from eating pork in the Koran and consider pigs unclean. Councillor Mahbubur Rahman, a practising Muslim, backed the ban. He said: It’s a tolerance of people’s beliefs.
Oh really?
What’s next? Banning Charlie Brown comic signs, because they might offend losers? Not allowing me to post beer and babes because they might offend recovering alcoholics and fat women? Maybe we should remove all art work and “I love me” plaques off of office walls because it might offend unsuccessful people?
Only one response to that. It’s just not fit for small ears……
There has been a body of thought that says , “well this is just a British phenomenon”. Think again folks, Americans and other countries have been just as guilty of the same silly sort of foolishness. Consider in America:
In December 2001, in Kensington, Md., an annual firefighters Santa Claus festivity to light the Christmas tree was objected to by two families. The city council, in the name of Political Correctness, voted to ban Santa from the parade. Fortunately, due to citizen outcry, the decision was reversed in the end and many people protested by dressing up as Santa.
“A team of Indiana firefighters, volunteering to help rescue victims of Katrina, went to Atlanta, where Federal Emergency Management Agency staffers told them that their job was to hand out fliers and that their first task was to attend a multi-hour course on sexual harassment and equal employment opportunity.”(From US News and World Report)
Stephanie Bell, a fourth-grade teacher at Williams Elementary School, taught the word “niggardly” to her class last week in an effort to improve her students’ vocabularies. Now, a parent wants her fired.
There are plenty of other examples that show the lunacy is not just confined to Britain. Quite simply this is accommodation run amok. Were I the king of the world, immigrants would hear the following speech upon arrival in Britain:
” Ok folks, here is the deal . Because the United Kingdom is an enlightened nation, because we believe in opportunity, we are allowing you to enter the heart of what was formerly the seat of the greatest Empire that ever strode the earth. The English language, English measurement, English scientific method, British systems of justice, social justice, and law have become the gold standard by which the rest of the world is judged. Because of the prowess of our explorers and discipline of a great Army and Fleet that we built, we stole a march on humanity of over 200 years , that only now are the pitiful countries you emigrated from starting to even begin to walk towards.
So! If you want to come here and receive the benefits of being in a modern Western society which is far superior to the one of your birth, then, by God, you better understand a few things:
1) You can worship as you wish. However I too can worship as I wish and there are more of me than there are of you.
2) You cannot just choose to live apart. Assimilate into this great culture, Goddamn it! You want to hold on to the tired old values of the old country? Fine, but keep them at home. This is and will remain a Western country with Western values. Assimilation into this society, wearing real clothes and interaction with real people will serve you a hell of a lot better than wearing stupid caps and growing beards.
Don’t like it? You know where Heathrow is.
3) English is the language of this country. LEARN IT! USE IT! Its not wrong to expect residents of England to learn English, anymore than it is unreasonable to expect residents of Japan to learn Japanese. We are through accomdating you, its you that need to accommodate us. Impossible you say? Well, the experience of 150 years of European, Indian and Chinese immigration proves you wrong.
4) Don’t like it? Get over it.
This would be good advice for the INS to give people applying for green cards too.
Lets all join the cause. 
Post a pig on your blog!
Accordingly I’m going to link you to a pig here.
Go drink a lot of these!
Then rip the Burkas off a couple of these:
Hey Skippy! Let me make you some pork chops!
Piglet sidled up to Pooh from behind. “Pooh!” he whispered. “Yes, Piglet?” “Nothing,” said Piglet, taking Pooh’s paw. “I just wanted to be sure of you.”
~ AA Milne
