by Rab Bruce’s Spider

To be fair to Theresa May, if somebody had asked me what I thought of Cadbury’s and the National Trust banning the word, "Easter" from their chocolate egg hunt, I probably would have responded that it was a ridiculous thing to do. To that extent, I have some empathy with her statement.

That, however, is as far as my empathy goes, because there are a few other quite ridiculous things about this silly saga.

First of all, it is ridiculous that the media should whip up such a storm over a story which, it transpires, is Fake News of the classic sort, since Easter has not been dropped by either Cadbury’s or the National Trust. You’d think any journalist of reasonable competence might be able to check little details like that but, as in so many areas, the UK media is about as much use as a chocolate teapot.

The whole absurd claim seems to have emanated from the Church of England who, for reasons best known to themselves, seem to want people to believe that Easter is being relegated to the status of some minority religious festival. OK, maybe that’s fair, since Easter, for most people, is more about chocolate eggs than religion. And before you get upset about that remark, compare the number of people who eat chocolate eggs to the number who go to Church, and you’ll see what I mean. In that respect, I can appreciate the Church wanting to make a bit of a fuss, but making false allegations surely isn’t a very Christian thing to do, is it?

The media, of course, has been complicit in highlighting the non-story. That’s because it has an agenda, which is to distract the public from more serious issues, which is another of the ridiculous things about how the UK system works. Never mind embarrassing threats of war with Spain, never mind Brexit, never mind fresh cuts to Social Security coming into force, never mind the potential break up of the UK. Let’s just complain about a non-existent threat to what they seem to think is the Christian tradition of eating as much chocolate as we can.

Then there is the most ridiculous aspect of the whole thing. Giving Theresa May the benefit of the doubt and assuming that the question about chocolate eggs was put to her unexpectedly and wasn’t a set-up, it still seems odd that she is willing to denounce this as ridiculous but seems incapable of denouncing other things which some people might regard as perhaps more important. You know, things like her trying to sell more arms to Saudi Arabia so they can murder Yemeni civilians, or Michael Howard and others making bellicose threats against a NATO ally. But no, these things appear to be further down the list of issues than chocolate eggs. That’s not only ridiculous, it’s downright disgraceful.