Making a stand

Mark Steyn today in The Telegraph writes about the United Kingdom's descent into dhimmitude which, he says, "is beyond parody".

He is referring to Tory-controlled Dudley Metropolitan Borough Council which has now announced that, following a complaint by a Muslim employee, all work pictures and knick-knacks of novelty pigs and "pig-related items" will be banned. Among the verboten items is one employee's box of tissues, because it features a representation of Winnie the Pooh and Piglet. And, as we know, Muslims regard pigs as "unclean", even an anthropomorphised cartoon pig wearing a scarf and a bright, colourful singlet.

Cllr Mahbubur Rahman, Steyn tells us, is in favour of the blanket pig crackdown. "It is a good thing, it is a tolerance and acceptance of their beliefs and understanding," he said. That's all, folks, as Porky Pig used to stammer at the end of Looney Tunes. Just a little helpful proscription in the interests of tolerance and acceptance.

Steyn's reaction is predictable, and one shared by any right-thinking person. He concludes – with reference to Winnie the Pooh – that the Hundred-Acre Wood is not the terrain on which one would choose to make one's stand, but from here on in it is only going to become more difficult.

But what of the BBC and last night's dire programme How Euro are you? In its facile "interactive quiz", it asks participants such leading questions as "If there were to be another war and the EU and Nato disagree with how to deal with it?", to which one offering is "stand with Nato".

Those who answer thus, and some others, are rewarded with the label "Mr & Mrs Little Islander" and dismissed as "Europhobes".

Bugger the pigs and Dudley Metropolitan Borough Council. I find that highly offensive. Not least, the term "Europhobe" is deliberately used as a patronising and provocative insult, addressed to those who not only feel that the EU is a dangerous, undemocratic political construct, but have more concern for the wider world, to which the EU member states contribute a mere seven percent of the population.

Yet this is the BBC which, on pain of imprisonment, forces us each to pay £125 a year to fund its "services" yet feels free to insult its captive payers in a way that its highly deferential PC luvvies would never consider appropriate for the porcinephobe Muslims.

To date, I have fought shy of joining in with the refuseniks who are withholding their TV license payments, but I am really not going to fund an organisation which, on the one hand, produces such dire crap and, on the other, feels free to insult me in such a cavalier fashion. It is indeed time to make a stand.

COMMENT THREAD