I think Lynne Featherstone can use yesterday’s Mail as a badge of success. If the Mail feels the need to turn its big guns on her, which it did, then she must be doing something right.
In one article they say the Home Office, supervised by Lynne Featherstone, is ‘telling Europe that Britons do not have the right to wear crosses at work’. It then says that the Home Office later contradicted this by saying that ‘people should be able to wear crosses. The law allows for this…’.
The reason for this – what the Mail calls a contradiction – is really very simple indeed.
The Home Office submission to the ECHR was specifically based on two cases involving employers and employees. It wasn’t a general statement about ‘banning crosses at work’.
Clue: any article which relies on quotes from Lord Carey and the Christian Legal Centre is worth taking with a large cruetful of salt.
In a second article Quentin Letts spends an awful lot of time on the most spiteful character assasination of Lynne Featherstone. He surpasses even his own high bar of bitchiness.
It is amusing that the Mail accompanies a piece supposedly upholding the rights of Christians with a personal attack that is notably low on Christian charity.
By the way, it is worth noting that if you take the British Airways case, one of the two cases in question her, Nadia Eweida has not been sacked. Indeed, British Airways have now changed their policy and allow visible crucifixes to be worn. In the other case, involving Royal Devon and Exeter NHS, the lady in question, Shirley Chaplin, was not sacked either.