Over on Guido's blog is a post about a lady who sent a letter to her local council expressing her displeasure about a gay pride march. In the letter, she used the words "sodomites" and "perverted sexual practices". Oh Shock! Horror! I may have an attack of the vapours!

The council's response was to report the letter writer to the police who, not having enough paper work to do or drug dealers to arrest, went round and warned that she had committed a hate crime. Now, don't get me wrong, what two blokes get up to in the comfort of their finely decorated hacienda is entirely up to them and no business of mine. However, sticking your willy up someone else's bottom is, and the dictionary definition will bear me out, sodomy, and some people think that sodomy is a perverted sexual practice. How Norwich council find this offensive, I can't possibly say but I suspect that they have been offended on someone else's behalf.

Update: I wonder if the lady who wrote the letter had been a Muslim rather than a Christian, would the council have been so quick to ring the police and report a hate crime.

Jimmy Carr told this joke, to 2000 people at the Manchester Apollo: Say what you like about servicemen amputees from Iraq and Afghanistan, but we’re going to have a fucking good paralympic team in 2012. Two people were offended and complained. Jesus wept, it was Jimmy Carr. What did they expect? Were these people amputees, soldiers, or former soldiers? I doubt it, they have most likely been offended on someone else's behalf. No doubt, during the same show, Jimmy Carr would have told jokes that were potentially offensive to fat people, politicians, Gordon Brown, women, men, small children and paedophiles. You pays your money and you takes your chances. If you are easily offended, don't pay the thirty quid and stop at home with your spaniels.

Even the BBC has fallen victim to causing offence to people who may be offended on someone else's behalf. Lord Stansted posits that a "contestant" on BBC Four's "The Unbelievable Truth" has caused offence by suggesting that the last entry in Anne Frank's diary recorded her delight at receiveng a gift from her father - a drum kit.

I left this in his comments:

Knock Knock!

Who's there?

Guess!

Guess who?

Guesstapo Miss Frank, please move zer bookcase.

I expect him to be offended. Good!