More from the beardy men...

So, Mr Blair has been advised to "ditch holocaust day" because it gives the impression to Muslims that "western lives are more important than non-western lives" and "sounds too exclusive to many young Muslims" and "Muslims feel hurt and excluded that their lives are not equally valuable to those lives lost in the Holocaust time."

What utter bollocks.

But if you ask these stupid beardy men questions, then you will get stupid answers. It would be too much, I suppose, to ask these shadowy Muslim "advisors" to Tony Blair, and the bumbling MCB, to call upon their common sense of humanity in this matter? To accept that actually, of all the terrors in the world, of all the genocides that have taken place, that the enormity of The Holocaust is deserving of its own memorial. Not because it happened in Europe. Not because it happened to Jews. But because the murder of millions, organised in an orderly and industrialised manner, carried out over many years, rubber stamped by authority in many countries, was indeed modern history's darkest hour.

I am not a Jew, I have no Jewish associations, but I don't feel that's necessary in order to understand the exceptional horror of the killing factories in Poland.

I'm feeling more and more that we need to be careful about who we allow to "advise" us on matters of faith and community. I felt it first over Behzti, the play written by a female Sikh(Gupreet Kaur Bhatti, who has since had to go into hiding) that was pulled off the Birmingham Rep because of a mini riot by a mob of beardy men. The play had been popular with female Sikhs because of the gender issues it explored, but the beardy men were not happy with certain aspects of it and when The Rep refused to change it, the beardy men got very angry. But to a certain extent you can see why that happened. The Rep had asked these beardy men for their input into the play, they had actually "consulted" them. So when The Rep then turned around and decided that they didn't agree with what the beardy men were telling them, and refused to change the play, you have to ask, why bloody ask them anything in the first place? If you are just going to go ahead and do what you want anyway, then why "consult" at all?

(And since when did playwrights, or any other writers or artists for that matter, have to "check-in" with beardy men, sorry, community and religious leaders, before they create works of art?)

I think I might set up a Beardy Watch. Point out every time that someone's mad uncle gets a say in British politics. But then again, the British media do that anyway. With less than hilarious consequences.

I would like to say that my dad has a beard, and that this post is not meant to offend facial hair.