Council Blasted for Web Link to Pagan Site

Prejudice against pagans is still alive and well in Britain, where a Tory politician has blasted the decision of the Waltham Forest Council to include a link to the Pagan Federation in a section a links dedicated to "Beliefs and Faith" Apparently, despite the fact that paganism is a "belief and faith" which has a long tradition in Britain just isn't good enough for him.

Tom Hutchison writes for Waltham Forest Guardian:

[Julien Foster, of Abbotts Park Road, Leyton], who is the prospective Tory parliamentary candidate for Leyton and Wanstead, believes money used to add such a link to the website should be used on more important services. He said: "This is political correctness gone mad. The council has provided information about the great religions on its website and obviously someone thought that, in order to be inclusive, information about paganism should be included. Council taxpayers paid for someone on the council with time on their hands to enter this information on its website. I think this is a grotesque waste of taxpayers' money.

I wonder if Foster has the slightest idea of how much money it really takes to add a link to a website? Even if we are generous in terms of how much time it takes to decide where to link to, we are talking about... 15 minutes, perhaps? Adding the link itself probably took about 60 seconds, from beginning to upload, with the rest being the research. Especially interesting is the fact that Foster doesn't consider paganism to be much of a religion - he's OK with them linking to sites about Christianity and Judaism, it seems, but not other faiths.

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• Religious Intolerance & Bigotry