No place for excuses
It’s not like the Daily Mail to find good things to say about the European Court of Human Rights. And the paper managed not to, while praising its decision to allow Christian crosses to be worn openly at work. “Every once in a while, even the European Court of Human Rights makes a just decision,” conceded the Mail leader writer grudgingly, before repeating a familiar mantra: “Of course, this is not to say that the unaccountable foreign judges of Strasbourg have any business dictating the laws of the UK.”
The Mail was as pleased as the rest of Fleet Street that the ECHR had upheld the right of British Airways check-in worker Nadia Eweida, 60, from Twickenham, south-west London, to wear her cross. The Daily Mirror, meanwhile, wondered why “David Cameron and other Cabinet ministers were so quick to congratulate the Court on its ruling when the Government had spent a fortune on lawyers to contest the case.”
Miss Eweida, a Coptic Christian, was sent home in September 2006 for displaying a silver cross on a chain round her neck. A tribunal found against her when she claimed religious discrimination and that decision was upheld by the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court. The ECHR overturned that, r uling BA had interfered with her right to express her religion. British Airways has since changed its uniform policy on jewellery.
“The irony here is that this tabloid hero has found vindication in the tabloid bogeyman of the European court,” observed The Guardian. “Let us hope this does not go unnoticed. Balancing religious and other rights is horrible work, which somebody’s got to do. Strasbourg reminded us that it does it as well as anyone else.”
But The Guardian was wrong to think this might be enough to placate the Mail. The Mail was not so happy at the ECHR ruling that a decision by the Royal Devon and
Faith is the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted in spite of your changing moods.
CS Lewis Urban Myths The story is told about the baptism of King Aengus by St Patrick in the middle of the fifth century.
Sometime during the rite, St Patrick leaned on his sharp-pointed staff and inadvertently stabbed the king’s foot.
After the baptism was over, St. Patrick looked down at all the blood, realized what he had done, and begged the king’s forgiveness. Why did you suffer this pain in silence, the Saint wanted to know.
The king replied, “I thought it was part of the ritual.”