The BBC reports that the government’s Planning Inspectorate has overturned a decision by the local council to reject an application to build a mosque in Dudley.
The proposal had been the subject of a bitter right-wing campaign by the likes of the BNP and UKIP, and the Birmingham Mail quotes Khurshid Ahmed of the Dudley Muslim Association as hailing the Planning Inspectorate’s ruling as a “victory for common sense and democracy and a defeat for prejudice and bigotry”. Indeed, you might have thought that the decision would be welcomed by anyone with remotely progressive politics.
However, Andy Armitage of the Pink Triangle Trust is not happy at all:
“People wrote letters complaining and the local council decided against it. But the politically correct Planning Inspectorate (possibly, but we don’t know, bowing to some political pressure) has decided that the good people of Dudley are to have a huge £18 million mosque, whether they want it or not….
“Religion wins out again – and gets to erect an out-of-character building to boot. If Muslims see so much as a mere image they don’t like – even on a postcard used for advertising purposes by a police force – they complain, and get their way. Residents complain about what they probably perceive is going to be an eyesore in architectural terms, and one many of them will have to pass each day, and they get nowhere….
“Stick your arse in the air five times and day and develop a disliking for pork and poofs, and who knows what you can achieve?”
See also BNP news article, 18 July 2008