Hate email is simply sickening

2:34pm Friday 14th December 2007

JUST when you think the world couldn't get any weirder (blokes with on/off beards going missing in canoes in the ocean and turning up years later) or stupider (politicians blaming each other for Swindon being up a financial gum tree) comes one of those emails that just leaves you dismayed, angry, depressed and despairing.

Yes, round-robin emails are the devil's own way of spreading misinformation, but this one was particularly pernicious. It announced that the Holocaust was to be taken off the curriculum because it "offended Muslims" and asked any recipients to pass on the mail as a way of creating a memorial daisy chain.

Rarely have I had the misfortune to come across such fanciful, ignorant, sanctimonious and dangerous rubbish - and this is particularly pernicious because it's dressed up in language that makes it look as if it's preserving the memory of Holocaust victims.

Needless to say, it's wrong. Needless to say, despite what the email claims, Muslims do not deny that the Holocaust happened. The idiot extreme may well do - historian David Irving, who you would struggle to class as a Muslim, spent time in an Austrian prison for Holocaust denial.

You could write off this email as a one-off example, but it wasn't the only case of casual Islamophobia recently. There was a story doing the rounds earlier in the week about a primary school up north which had banned kids from giving Christmas cards to one another.

From the quotes I saw the headteacher just said Christmas cards were stressful because any children not given them by their classmates felt left out - in short, it caused ructions. And yet all of a sudden the more excitable end of the daily paper scale had translated this to "Christmas cards banned to avoid offending Muslims".

There's no reason to be like this, and it's sad that - ironically at the so-called season of goodwill - there can't be a bit more of a charitable attitude, and more importantly more wit and sense shown at this time. Happy Christmas.

• YOU'D think that there might be quite a few people out to get the Home Secretary, seeing as the position entails being in charge of the law, and y'know stuff like that.

So it's good that Jacqui Smith can call on the loyalty of the police force to what's that you say? Oh, never mind.

• A PLAN floated this week to encourage people to vote in local council elections suggested copying a Californian plan and offering doughnuts to everyone who turned up to the ballot box.

And I thought you were lumbered with the doughnuts after they'd counted the votes, not before.

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