To think that this is political correctness gone mad???!!!

[rdmommy]

elc have removed the pig from the happy land farm set as it may offend some religious groups!- i.e muslim and jewish. so am i wrong to suggest that maybe we should not have farm sets because it could offend veggies, the cows could offend hindus and maybe the sheep could offend the welsh???

this is bloody stupid... our town renamed christmas as fucking winterval!!!!!

The DM article doesnt muslim bash. In fact it includes a comment from a muslim mother who says its a stupid idea to remove the pig.

oh good grief whatever next!

@ccpccp. The article's heading is:

'Early Learning Centre bans toy pig from farmyard set for fear of offending Muslims'

They know exactly what they are doing. Many people won't even bother to read the article as the title ticks all the boxes with regards to a good 'PC gawn maaad' story. It just an excuse to inflame.

www.fivechinesecrackers.com/2010/01/winterval-beast-that-wouldnt-die.html

If you repeat an untrue story often enough it becomes Fact. "Journalism" Daily Mail-style.

And according to this story, ELC wanted to sell the same farm set worldwide, that's why they took the pig out. Saves money on marketing and distributing two different products. Makes sense.

My aunt still rants about Big Ears being removed from the Noddy stories. Last time I saw it on Five Big Ears was still there.

Winterval makes perfect sense for cost efficiency, when 3 or more religious festivals manage to coincide in the calendar in a strongly multi-religion area, I don't see a problem .

Of course
As an avid Seinfeld Fan, I am wanting to have the Oxford Street lights redone in a "festivus" theme, with pictures of Frank Costanza and aluminium poles all over the place. I want all work places (particularly the parliament) to discuss how everyone has disppointed each other over the past year (actually, might be a good idea for Parliament ...) and then there will be Feats of Strength.

But it is 'PC gawn maaad' capricorn76, and it was muslims who were initially offended. Just not necc. UK ones.

ELC have now removed the item from sale in some countries, and reinstated the pig in the UK.

I've seen some pretty shocking anti-muslim articles in the DM in the past, but this isnt one of them. Even the best voted readers comments are in agreement that it is ELC staff at fault, not Muslims.

Shhhhh, Riven, they'll all come over and oppress us! Oh, no wait, we're the minorities so of course we call all the shots, mwah hah hah!

Right so that's my DD marginalised Riven as her DF is from Ecuador and I'm Jewish, so no pigs in case it blinds her eyes and substitute them for Llamas instead so she gets her effnik background......right, that's it, I'm off to complain to DM.....arse, just realised, they hate me as I'm a single, effnik, coucil - flat dwelling mother....Netmums maybe??? Naaaaaah!

I thought this was a bollocks DM anti-Muslim story but DH has confirmed that when we bought DS this toy a few weeks ago there was no pig. He even tried to go into the shop to get one apparently.

The lady from ELC HQ has said that the pigs will be available on-line free to farm-buyers () but isn't sure how this will be done. Neither am I, we have no receipt and paid cash

ELC wants to sell worldwide.

Presumably in Muslim countries there wouldn't be a pig in the farm sets.

Presumably even the Daily Mail thinks that it's OK for people in Muslim countries not to want to have pigs in the farm sets muslim children play with.

So the ELC decided to minimize its costs by removing the pig from all of them.

The it changed its mind.

Non story.

Surely the real story here is "ELC too lazy to tailor products to markets"

Riven - Can I come along to your meeting even though I am a white (nominally) Christian? I promise to think of constructive plans to bring down middle England?

I actually know the mum in question who started the original netmums post (and yes I've tried to bring her round to mumsnet ). I don't think she ever expected to get that sort of answer from ELC when she emailed regarding lack of pig. The story has been lifted straight from the netmums post she made and not her alerting the media. She's now shocked at how much publicity it's gained, although she's still waiting for ELC to respond again to her original email . She wasn't even aware she could get a free replacement pig till one of the papers reported it.

Madness!

Ribena - I'll let you join. Start making a list of "all things you hold dear" and then we can plan on how to undermine it all.

I feel John Lewis is ripe for undermining ...

Can I undermine small village CofE schools?

Can I undermine Waitrose, please?

Oh, and the House of Lords, obviously.

So reading about it in the Independent, ELC removed the pig, but couldn't be arsed to rededesign the set in order to remove the pig-sty and the button that said "oink"?! lazy feckers!

ELC have the good manners to tell me which toys are for boys and which are girls

I think they stopped putting pigs in the farmyard set because they want to keep them separately to make a special herd of pigs set for good Christians so that they can happily re-enact casting demons into them and chucking them over a cliff. WWJD?

You may have a good point, I don't know.

I cannot read a post that begins with 'it's PC gorn maaaaaad' with a straight face, sorry.

Unless said Muslims & Jews were expecting to EAT the toy pigs I don't see what the problem is??

Read the thread, stardown

Um, I did seeker. It was a very tongue in cheek post.