Loughborough market is one of the oldest in Britain, dating back almost 800 years and laying the foundation of the Leicestershire town’s early prosperity and expansion.
Back in the 13th century, it was a major trading centre, attracting buyers and sellers from miles around, a tradition which continues today. Every Friday, Loughborough plays host to a vintage market, with 40 stallholders knocking out a selection of antiques, second-hand books and historical bric-a-brac.
For the past three years, one of those traders, Tina Gayle, has made a 200-mile, four-hour round trip from Didcot, in Oxfordshire, to flog her wares. Or, rather, she did until last week.
That was before the local council banned her from the market for selling ‘offensive’ items — coffee mugs depicting the ancient order of the Knights Templar. Apparently, someone complained that the mugs celebrated the murder of Muslims during the Crusades. When Tina refused to remove them, the council withdrew her licence.
Tina Gayle, has made a 200-mile, four-hour round trip from Didcot, in Oxfordshire, to flog her wares
The Knights Templar was a chivalrous religious order, a group of warrior-monks, formed to protect Christian pilgrims in the Holy Land from marauding Saracens. They became established in England in the 12th century, to raise money for the Crusades, and officially disbanded a couple of hundred years later.
Yet 700 years on, a sense of vicarious injustice still burns in the bosom of somebody in Loughborough who took exception to Tina selling £6 mugs featuring Knights Templar insignia and a Latin motto which translates as: ‘Not to us, Lord, not to us, but to Your Name give glory.’
Now there’s a hate crime, if ever I saw one. I’m surprised the police haven’t got involved. Only a matter of time, I’m sure.
Initially, the council refused to say why, exactly, the mugs should be withdrawn from sale.
Tina soon discovered that (just as she suspected) the complaint had been made by the same individual who had previously objected, back in August, to her selling Nazi memorabilia — mugs, badges, books and so on. We don’t know the identity of this sensitive soul, but clearly the council takes him or her very seriously indeed.
A sense of vicarious injustice still burns in the bosom of somebody in Loughborough who took exception to Tina selling £6 mugs featuring Knights Templar insignia
After being visited by council officers, Tina agreed to remove all Nazi-related items, even though she protested that they were mostly bought by World War II re-enactors. Anything for a quiet life.
But if she thought that was the end of her problems, she was sadly mistaken. A spokesman said: ‘We want the public to have a safe and enjoyable experience when visiting our markets and we have a duty to ensure that items sold do not cause public offence, a threat to safety or that could bring the market into disrepute.
‘It’s not for us to comment as to why the mugs were offensive to the complainant, however, we had previously asked the trader not to sell contemporary mugs or items which could cause offence so we asked for them to be removed.
‘The trader refused to remove the mugs from the stall so we issued a second letter which excludes the trader from all Loughborough markets. This decision is in line with our market regulations which state that if a trader has displayed serious misconduct, they can be immediately excluded from trading, with no further warnings required.’
Tina claims the council has confirmed, after initial reticence, that the complaint was about the Knights Templar killing Muslims during the Crusades.
Tina will have fallen foul of some miserable misanthrope — almost certainly a Guardian reader and Jeremy Corbyn supporter
So what?
Tina said: ‘Richard the Lionheart killed thousands of Muslims and I’ve had items relating him, and the Romans, and no one has ever complained. No Muslims have ever complained.’
Of course not. I shouldn’t have thought for a moment any Muslim in Loughborough was remotely offended by coffee mugs featuring the Knights Templar.
And even if they were, tough.
No, Tina will have fallen foul of some miserable misanthrope — almost certainly a Guardian reader and Jeremy Corbyn supporter — who specialises in taking offence on behalf of others as a way of asserting their own moral superiority.
The world’s full of these self-righteous imbeciles. But that doesn’t mean anyone should take any notice of them.
Where does Loughborough council — or whatever fancy name it calls itself these days — get the idea that it can prevent a market trader making a living because some nutter objects to her selling mugs depicting a 700-year-old band of warrior-monks?
Tina claims the council has confirmed, after initial reticence, that the complaint was about the Knights Templar killing Muslims during the Crusades
It’s the same kind of mentality which encourages universities to appease snowflake students who believe they have the right to tear down statues and exclude any point of view which upsets their sensibilities.
Public bodies — and, increasingly, public companies, too — live in fear of causing offence, real or imagined. They allow themselves to be bullied by single-issue lunatics. History is rewritten, or erased entirely, in pursuit of political purity to comply with contemporary pieties.
We’ve come to expect this kind of sanctimonious censorship in the political sphere and on the more deranged shores of academia. But these days nowhere is safe, not even the marketplaces of Middle England.
How the hell did we end up with a stallholder being put out of business on the say-so of an interfering, brain-dead bigot who objects to coffee mugs bearing the insignia of an ancient chivalrous order, which was officially disbanded seven centuries ago?
At least those pioneering Loughborough market traders in the Middle Ages only had to put up with plague, pestilence, robber barons and outlaws.
They didn’t have to contend with modern malcontents and jumped-up council jobsworths. If they had, they’d have soon put them to the sword.
Bring on the Knights Templar!
Step away from the tea urn…
It was a very British protest. Former nurse Jackie Brooks, 79, and her husband Jim set up a trestle table to serve tea and cakes to campaigners demonstrating against fracking at Kirby Misperton, North Yorkshire.
But the Old Bill turned up mob-handed to move her on. Twelve coppers forcibly removed Jackie, claiming that they were doing it for her own safety.
They said she was in danger from a ten-foot tall tower built by protesters. It might fall and injure her, or worse. Jackie said that was her look-out and insisted she was staying put. But the police were having none of it. Nothing must be allowed to stand in the way of elf’n’safety.
Former nurse Jackie Brooks, 79, and her husband Jim set up a trestle table to serve tea and cakes to campaigners demonstrating against fracking at Kirby Misperton, North Yorkshire
Look, I don’t support the protesters. And I think Jackie is misguided in watering and feeding them. But she was well within her rights.
Photos of the incident are pretty disturbing. Jackie is surrounded by burly coppers in black battle fatigues and baseball caps, topped off with hi-viz vests, naturally.
One of them is shoving a video recorder in her face and filming her at close range, as if she’s some kind of criminal.
What was the purpose of that?
We’d like to know a little bit about you for our files. I’m surprised they didn’t demand Jackie’s DNA.
One demonstrator shouted: ‘This is England, not 1930s Germany.’ I’m not sure I’d go that far, but they were partly right.
But the Old Bill turned up mob-handed to move her on. Twelve coppers forcibly removed Jackie, claiming that they were doing it for her own safety
This is England, 2017, sadly. And this is how the police behave, even towards the peaceful and innocent, as a matter of routine.
Mind how you go.
Ministers are reported to be asking the airline industry for a £250 per head contribution towards the cost of repatriating 100,000 stranded Monarch passengers.
One suggestion is that 50p is added to the price of all fares on flights from the UK to pay the £60 million bill for bringing home those left high and dry by the airline’s collapse. Doesn’t sound much, does it? Who’s going to miss another ten bob? But why the hell should hard-pressed holidaymakers be forced to bear the cost?
The Government already rakes in well over £3 billion a year in air passenger duty.
This extortionate tax, the highest in the world, brought in ostensibly to save the planet, goes straight to the Treasury.
Politicians should use this money for the Monarch airlift.
There’s been nothing like it since Del Boy went missing off Miami on a jet-ski. Four rescue vessels and a helicopter were scrambled following reports that a parachutist had plunged into the sea near Sunderland.
The RNLI and coastguard responded to a distress call from a fisherman.
Arriving at the scene, they found not a drowning parachutist but a large inflatable Spiderman. Everybody back on the boat!
Rioting prisoners at Long Lartin jail attacked warders with balls from the pool table.
Nearly 40 years after Ray Winstone demonstrated how to use snooker balls as a weapon in the borstal movie Scum, you’d have thought someone might have cottoned on by now.