I’m sorry. It just seemed silly to write a post about a poster without posting a picture of said poster. But it also seemed silly to post a picture of a poster that supported the party I’m criticising. So I butchered it. Anyway…

Is there any more time less appropriate than when election campaigning to be insulting large parts of the population? Probably not.

I’m certainly not of the opinion that this poster was designed to be Anti-Semitic, and I’m not even particular against it on that level. It just seems foolish to start a poster campaign that will insult a lot of potential voters.

But the worst part of this story is the response of the Labour bigwigs, as reported in this Guardian piece:

Labour has insisted that this is over-sensitivity and it can be argued that we now live in a culture in which squads of the thin-skinned are on 24-hour alert.

As usual, despite having made an honest error, Labour can’t bring themselves to apologise. Let me just reiterate on that point: The party which is being strongly criticised for being unable to admit mistakes and say sorry is refusing to apologise for it’s election campaign insulting large swathes of the population.

And, not only that, the party which wants to limit our free speech by virtually reintroducing blasphemy law claims that the public is ‘over-sensitive’.

This was a silly and simple mistake by Labour, but their response has made it far, far worse.

Update:

It is one of four designs e-mailed to Labour members, who were asked to vote for their favourite.

This seems to be something that’s circulating about various news stories, such as The BBC’s. But this is not just circulated by email - it’s also freely available on the Labour website, from where I downloaded it. I am not a member of the Labour party (doesn’t that go without saying?), and I don’t receive emails from them.

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This post has been referenced by another on this site:
sjhoward.co.uk » Who to insult next?

[...] Who to insult next? Filed at 16:00 on 5th February 2006. Brand new post published within the last few minutes. Filed under Miscellaneous by sjhoward. I’ve done Jews, Christians, and Muslims, and now I’m kind of wondering who to insult next. Little green men? [...]

» This pingback was received at 16:00 on 05 February 06

It is really strange that in the name of freedom of speech, These so-called lover of freedom never care the position of prophets of God. Being follower of Christianity, they make mokery of Holy Christ and show hostility towards Islam by making carricatures of Muhammad and in our view both acts are punishable as being Muslim we never accept such desecretion of any of the prophet of God as we have faith on all of them so it is advised to all so-called advocates of Freedom, not to tresspass the limit as their action will fuel the hatred and creat a divide among the followers of different faith and clash of civilisation…….Again I may remind where are those Freedom lovers when some one raise voice on myth of holocost on Jews and sent to jail in Europe for the unseen fear from Jews…..This is a conspiracy of Jews to encourage innocent Christians to come in confrontation with Muslims and they enjoy the situation sitting behind the scene……

All prophets sent by God spread love and peace and those enemies of God during the period of prophets, inflicted difficulties on all the prophets of God and now they know that no prophet will come again so they are ridiculing those by cartoons and writings…..mostly funded by the enemies of God (JEWS).

» This comment was received at 06:13 on 16 February 06

This post has been referenced by another on this site:
sjhoward.co.uk » Denmark cartoon controversy

[...] In this particular instance, I’m merely using the cartoon to illustrate a point. I have to say that I think the imagery appears to me to be somewhat offensive. But that’s not stopped me publishing imagery which may be offensive to followers of the Jewish faith for purposes of discussion. In such cases, posting the image clearly does not imply agreement therewith, but merely faciliatates discussion. [...]

» This pingback was received at 09:40 on 17 February 06

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