Can I Desecrate Graves Too?

A man is exasperated after repeatedly being told he would have to pay hundreds of pounds to see a “deeply offensive” racial term removed from two gravestones.

Because the world should immediately cave in and do it for free..?

Last week, St Margaret’s Church in Rottingdean covered up the headstones to two white music hall singers who performed in blackface. It has now promised to put the memorials – both inscribed with the word “c**n” – into storage.

But it has since emerged that a man had been battling to have the offensive language erased since last April.

Joseph Letang from Telscombe Cliffs, who is of Caribbean heritage, was upset by the wording. He wrote emails to church authorities and took his complaint to the highest levels of the Church of England.

He was repeatedly told the Church could not consider changing the wording unless he paid a £296.20 fee to launch a petition in a church court.

Personally, I'd have preferred the church to say 'No, not at any price. This is someone's gravestone, and the only people who can change it are the descendants'.

But of course, they didn't. Because they too are cowards, these days.

He is astounded by the length of time it took the church to act, and that as someone hurt by the language, he should have to pay for its removal.

How was he 'hurt by the language'? Could he see these gravestones from his window? Did he have to walk past them every day?

Reader, of course not:

He heard about the inscriptions from his 24-year-old daughter, who saw the graves on a walk in the churchyard.

He didn't even see them himself....

Mr Letang said he did not intend for the headstones to be taken away.

He said replacement stones without the offensive words should be put up to remember the dead and the originals, or photos of them, should be given to a museum.

When are we going to stop abasing ourselves to this 'offence culture'? There's no end to it. And the backlash is already starting.