Saturday, April 15, 2006

Police arrest three gollywogs.


Donald Reynolds own a small shop in the United Kingdom. Recently he received an urgent phone call from the police. Now such things are never good news. Either the police are about to inform you of bad news or the police are the bad news.

Reynolds was told to come to his shop immediately. He, of course, rushed to the scene. When he arrived everything appeared fine but a couple of irrate Bromyard police officers were standing outside insisting that he unlock his closed business immediately. They were there to "arrest" three toy gollywogs that were on display in Reynolds' shop window.

According to the police a complaint was filed that the gollies are racist and offensive. Reynolds spent some weeks worried that he might be prosecuted for selling these toys. As he said: "This is political correctness gone mad." Reynolds said he recently started selling the dolls but the dolls themselves have been around for over a century. The police started to realise that they had starting looking like fools for the raid and finally decided not to press charges.

But they were not willing to let it drop. They didn't want to appear totally wrong so they warned Reynolds about the toys. As the police announced: "Suitable advice about the sensitivities of placing such items on display is being provided to the store owner." But they admit that "no offences have been identified". Now if there is no offence here then exactly who are the police to offer "suitable advice" on how to conduct a business.

Tip: thanks Lindsay Mitchell