Most natural thing in the world

This is about breastfeeding, although the title is actually about being offended in someone else's name, which seems to be the most natural thing in the world for busybodies and jobsworths.
Express.

A MOTHER was banned from breast-feeding her baby in public by civic centre bosses over claims it would cause “uproar” among Muslim visitors.
Emma Mitchell, 32, was preparing to feed her four-month-old son Aaron when a receptionist warned her it was a “multicultural building” and that she should use the nearby public toilets instead.
Furious Emma then had a stand-off with a manager at Oldham Civic Centre before being offered an empty room under supervision.
She said: “It was just awful. I felt humiliated, intimidated and guilty through the whole thing.
“We all live in Oldham and use this building and what I was doing was one of the most natural things a mum can do. I shouldn’t be made to feel it was wrong just because it’s not in someone’s culture.”
The incident occurred last Friday while Emma was visiting the town’s Citizens Advice Bureau.
When Aaron started crying, she asked if she could use an empty corner of the room to breast-feed him in, offering to face the wall.
But the receptionist told her it wasn’t allowed as “some gentlemen had complained in the past” and suggested she use the public toilets nearby. Emma said: “You wouldn’t eat your dinner in the toilets, so why should my son? She rang the manager who said ‘You absolutely can’t do that here’.”
A member of the complaints department then took her to a small room. Emma’s friend Michelle Booth, 38, who was with her, said: “They were implying breast-feeding was offensive to Muslim sensibilities. It’s political correctness gone mad.”

No doubt breastfeeding is offensive to some Muslims, God knows they get offended with just about everything else, but it's not about Muslims either, I've seen old women complain in cafe's about breastfeeding mums.
Granted not everyone likes to see a woman in full view feeding her kids via the breast, but, it's something that is encouraged and not something that should cause over officious jobsworths to step in and say use the toilets. Whilst I do have some sympathy for private businesses in a sort of my gaff my rules sort of way, if an area is designated as public access, then you take the risk of some woman needing to feed a hungry baby.
So it strikes me as being offended in someone's name seems to be the most natural thing in the world for some people.
Not me though, I'm offended about a lot of things, just not in anyone but my own name, it's part of being a real grown up. If people can't cope with real life as it's lived, perhaps they'd be better off living where it isn't permitted, rather than complaining to a receptionist.
As for the receptionist...
Words fail.

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You couldn't make it up.

I'm an engineer, I've done some daft things in my time going against the prevailing wisdom, following orders from the boss to the letter (and not the spirit) but I've always managed to avoid making a complete laughing stock of myself.

BBC.

Council bosses have admitted scoring an "own goal" after a fence was built through the middle of football goalposts in a park in York.

The new fencing was installed at a cost of £6,000 on playing fields in Heworth.
It was erected before £37,000 worth of new play equipment is phased in at the park over the next few weeks.
Dave Meigh, City of York Council's head of parks and open spaces, said: "We recognise that the failure to relocate the goalposts is a real own goal."
It has left local people who use the park to play football confused.
Mr Meigh said the council had asked the contractors to "resolve the issue as a matter of urgency and can only apologise for the error".

Spot the slight problem?

Truly a situation that mobile phones were made for, I mean what the hell were the contractors thinking? Nobody comes out looking that great from this, not the workers, the contracting firm or the council itself for not having any sort of oversight or input.
Made me smile though.

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Jobsworths (again)

Step up to the Plate Brent Council in North London who have decided to ban a 13 year tradition of doing an Easter March by the local Christian Churches.

Mail.

Every year the Christians from different churches get together to march a 400-yard route to celebrate Easter.

But this year their Good Friday parade has been banned – because it breaches health and safety laws.

Church leaders say town hall bureaucrats are refusing Christians rights routinely afforded to minority groups, and have vowed to defy them.

Last night Brent Council told the worshippers to walk on the pavement.

A spokesman added: ‘Brent Council was not contacted about the march until around a week ago. 

‘There is a strict legal procedure we have to follow to issue a traffic order closing roads so people can march in the highway, which includes advertising and consultation, and this takes about five weeks. 

‘We are very sorry to say there is now not enough time for us to legally facilitate this march.’

I'm sorry, but the not enough time to facilitate the march doesn't cut the mustard with me, the churches have been doing it for 13 years and I'm fairly sure that the council knows about the parade and where and when it's likely to take place. Can you imagine the furore if the GLC decided on health and safety grounds to ban the Notting Hill carnival in August because no-one had asked them about it? Not going to happen is it? This is just a piece of posturing by Brent to discriminate against Christians after all if they can hold and promote a massive Diwali festival as well as asking local mosques about Eid so they can promote that festival too...

Brent Council hosts a Diwali street celebration every year. Last November it boasted it had held the biggest Diwali event in the country, after more than 60,000 people turned out. 

And in July last year the council appealed to the Muslim community to notify it of any Eid events so it could promote them free of charge.

If they can recognise those other newer festivals then surely they can recognise Easter and the traditions in Brent that go on around that celebration that oddly enough have gone on for 13 years without until this year interference from the council.
Personally I think this is just a religiously motivated attack against Christians something that I'd bet good money on that Brent would never try against any other religion, I rather expect they'd move heaven and earth if the local Mosques wanted to do a parade at short notice and would allow them to have their way.
I'm still trying to decide whether it's idiocy or malice that defines all these attacks against the indigenous law abiding people of this land, though I'm starting to come down on the side of malice and a deliberate attempt to wind us all up into attacking a scapegoat for all the problems we face, rather than the political classes as they deserve.

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Going against (some) human nature

You often read about health and safety gone mad, occasionally from me, but mostly out there in the MSM where because of litigation claims spiralling out of control and people seeing easy money to be had over the slightest thing we are developing a "risk averse" attitude amongst various groups who don't wish to be sued should someone be injured doing their job.

Express.

TWO friends saved a drowning man by ignoring the health and safety advice of the ambulance service and jumping into a freezing canal.

Brave Josh Felvus and Liam Jempson dialled 999 after seeing the man floundering in the icy water as they walked home after a night out.

But when the operator told them to stay on the towpath for their own good, the pair refused.

Mr Felvus, 20, and his 19-year-old friend plunged in and dragged the victim to the bank, just as he was beginning to sink below the surface.

Yesterday both young men spoke modestly as they recalled their heroics on an 8ft-deep feeder canal off the Avon, in Bristol.

Mr Jempson, from Bristol, said: “I just couldn’t watch this man die. It all happened quickly but I knew I had to do something. It’s only afterwards that I realised it could have been dangerous going into the water. The water was freezing and I was in shock afterwards.”

Well done those guys, yes it was dangerous but they saved a life, though if they'd followed "official" advice from the ambulance service they could have stayed safe and watched a man drown.

A spokeswoman for Great Western Ambulance Service said: “We don’t ask anyone to put themselves in danger and try to keep as many people safe as possible.”

That's the official line, it has to be, the operator could/would lose their job if they told the lads to jump in and rescue him, but it's also a prevalent attitude in the UK where doing nothing and staying safe is actively encouraged by the state and various private companies in case they are sued. The prevalence of claims for injury adverts on the tv shows how deep this current fad for claiming for every single thing that happens to you that hurts goes, so much so that companies will now spend thousands on training their staff to be careful, putting up guards and generally coming across as more nanny state than the nanny state.
Not that I'm saying that people should put their lives at risk doing every day things, but that we should at least accept that there are some risks worth doing, risking yourself to save a life being one of them, yes those two lads could have been killed, but they weren't they were have a go heroes and a guy is alive because they were willing and able to take a risk.
It just strikes me as very sad that society has gone the way it has where people in authority have to actively discourage risk taking where a life is concerned, a simple don't do anything stupid, not a stay on the towpath should have been enough.
Perhaps it's time to reign back the compensation and risk averse culture in England at least.

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My flag is a flag not a religious symbol! update

Seems common sense has prevailed, in this case...

Inside the court 37-year-old Tilehurst man Ronald Peterson was on trial for religiously aggravated harassment. The court heard he went to the partially built mosque in Oxford Road, west Reading, on May 30 to protest over the way its planning application was handled by the borough council.

Peterson, with two other men, draped the St George’s flag on a fence, posed for pictures and chanted “E, E, E.D.L” and “England”.

Witness Urfan Azad, 32, told the court he was in the nearby Reading Tea House and went outside after hearing the chanting.

He said he dialled 999 because he was concerned the situation could escalate, and added: “My concern was the flag needed to be taken off the fence because it might be seen by Muslims as a religious symbol. I felt upset about the whole incident. I’m British myself, I was born in Reading. It’s made me feel a bit socially excluded.”

Now today...

Reading Chronicle.

A MAN arrested after hanging a flag of St George outside a partially built mosque has had the case against him thrown out of court.

District judge Andrew Vickers dismissed the charge of religiously aggravated harassment against Ronald Peterson, from Tilehurst, at Reading Crown Court today (Thursday).

Mr Peterson, 37, a member of the English Defence League (EDL), was arrested on May 30 last year when a witness called the police after seeing him hang the flag on a fence outside the Oxford Road mosque in West Reading and hearing him chant “EDL” and “England”.

Judge Vickers said he did not believe Mr Peterson’s words were threatening, abusive or insulting or that he was motivated by religious hatred, and added: “Was the display of the St George’s flag a challenge to the Islamic faith? I do not find that beyond reasonable doubt.”

Speaking afterwards, Mr Peterson said: “I’m happy but I’m not happy because at the end of the day I shouldn’t have been in court in the first place.”

Well done that judge!

Good news, but it should not have even reached the court, flying the flag of your own country in your own country should never be classed as a crime!
Again it seems as if the law enforcement agencies in this country will fall over backwards to pander to those who cry of racist particularly if it comes from a member of the so called "religion of peace"
And they wonder why groups like the EDL are growing at an incredible rate.

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Nuts

Healthy eating, just the ticket for the health Nazi's to try and control your life and it gives jobsworth's great opportunities to tell people off and generally make peoples lives a misery. Problem is with jobsworth's (other than the fact that they are jobsworth's) is that they never know when to stop, never, ever.

Express.

A MOTHER feeding ducks with her two children told yesterday how she was ticked off by a council warden – for giving the birds “unhealthy” white bread.

Lisa Taplin, 34, was told to bring granary or wholemeal bread next time.

The fluorescent vest-clad official said giving ducks white bread was like Mrs Taplin feeding her two sons chips with every meal.

The dance teacher yesterday described the episode as crazy – but her local council defended the official.

It's a duck! not a gourmet specialist, not an endangered species and not normally poisoned by bread. essentially it's a walking, quacking, swimming dustbin. I've got pictures of one of my kids as a toddler being mobbed by ducks anxious to get their beaks into a sandwich. I really fail to see what type of bread they get fed should be an issue. Apparently I'm not the only one.

Naturalist Chris Packham, presenter off the BBC’s Autumn Watch, said: “I wouldn’t stop anyone from feeding birds. We send out the message that wildlife needs our help all the time so it seems a bit churlish to tell people what food to use.”

Still, I suppose we should be grateful that council jobsworth's don't go around fining people for feeding the ducks.

Oh...

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