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Anorak News | Fighting Talk

Fighting Talk

by | 3rd, October 2003

‘SOME stories seem to appear every year with the inevitability of the seasons.

‘Who are you calling a stereotype?’

So we are pleased to report that the controversial columnist Julie Burchill is once again being accused of anti-Irish racism.

This time her accuser is Noel Lynch, who is a member of the London Assembly and the Metropolitan Police Authority.

The Independent reports that he is to ask Scotland Yard’s diversity unit to investigate comments made by Burchill in a Guardian column published on 20 September.

In the course of the article, which was about the St Patrick’s Day parade in London, she made disparaging remarks about “the celebration of a religion that condemns contraception, abortion, divorce and the right of a woman to be a priest”.

This was too much for Mr Lynch. “We have had too much discrimination for too long to just allow someone to just abuse us whenever she feels like it,” he thundered. “It’s racism and it gets me hot under the collar.”

A similar article last year was sent to the Crown Prosecution Service, which decided that there was insufficient evidence to justify charges of incitement to racial hatred.

Burchill says her criticisms are of the Catholic Church and not the Irish as people. This doesn’t satisfy Mr Lynch.

“The St Patrick’s Day Parade is about as much to do with promoting the Catholic religion as Christmas is about promoting the Church of England,” he said, running a finger around his collar.

We agree. The St Patrick’s Day Parade is about red-faced drunks wearing giant leprechaun hats, “Fightin’ Oirish” scarves, and the hideous green shirt of a third-rate international football team while listening to cacophonous diddly-dee “music” and necking cans of over-rated black beer.

We are wholeheartedly behind Mr Lynch in his defence of this marvellous cultural institution, and we’ll fight any man who says otherwise.’



Posted: 3rd, October 2003 | In: Broadsheets Comment | TrackBack | Permalink