Herding Refugees’ Cats In Wakefield – It’s Back

“It’s the aggression that makes the Mail powerful. I know of nothing anywhere in the rest of the world’s media which matches the unmitigated spite of an attack from the Daily Mail” – Nick Davies, Flat Earth News.

The obedient hackery of the legendarily foul mouthed Paul Dacre clearly thought that their attack on Wakefield and District Housing (WDH) earlier this year, over the case of electrician Colin Atkinson and the displaying of his palm cross in one of the company’s vans, had concluded successfully (you can see this blog’s coverage of the affair HERE, HERE, HERE and HERE).

Sad to say, though, that the combination of Dacre’s finest and the Christian Legal Centre (CLC) has not been sufficient to overcome their adversary, a body so dastardly that it, er, provides and maintains social housing in the Wakefield area. But WDH cannot be other than A Very Bad Thing, as it has suspended Atkinson, who no longer has a van to stick his cross to.

So is this, as both Mail and CLC are suggesting, yet more harassment of Christians? Sadly, the CLC gives the game away when it tells that Atkinson has been moved to another workplace location and no longer has a company van due to “general financial cutbacks”. And while the CLC asserts he was told to “travel by bus instead”, the Mail interpretation is “use his own or ... public transport”.

Anyone reading either account might conclude that Atkinson would be left hanging around at a windswept bus stop, had he not proudly discussed his Honda Goldwing with the Mail earlier. And they may have missed the thought that WDH have lost patience with a worker who goes running to the press when he has a workplace grievance.

This will continue to be painted as “Christianity under attack”, and every non-material item will be thrown at WDH (someone had a verse from the Qur’an in their own car, one of the bosses had a poster of Che Guevara on his office wall, a local Imam was invited to a “diversity day”, they have a climate change section on their website), but this is a workplace disagreement and nothing more.

That WDH has called out Atkinson for breaching confidentiality won’t do him any favours, either. But the aggression and spite of the Daily Mail will continue: not to let the targets of that aggression off the hook is part of the iron code of those who scrabble around the dunghill that is Grubstreet in the service of Paul Dacre.