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Re: Crematorium
Barrie's comment popped up in my email inbox, it was filled with inaccuracies and I couldn't let it ride.
As I have said countless times before, the Crem was being redecorated and it was an appropriate time. We do get asked on an increasingly regular (although not exceptionally frequent) basis to cover the cross by groups such as humanists for their ceremonies. The cross is over seven feet tall, solid wood and very heavy so it was felt that a large portable one on the altar would do the same job but be easier. Blackpool remains the only authority in Lancashire not to have done this.
Britcliffe decided that telling the Daily Mail would be better than an email to me or anyone else in the Council. What should have been a reasonable discussion escalated into an attack on Muslims, somewhat inevitably and instantaneously.
I prefer tea and biscuits to having a full blown press argument because the full facts are never reported. Instead of a sensible discussion, we got the Britcliffe media explosion which I hated every second of and everyone came out of feeling antipathy towards everyone else.
In other words, nobody won and everyone looks bad to someone. The church managed to generate more bad feeling towards it by going public with Peter than it realises.
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