St Mary's thread (Admin discussions)

Tue 14 Feb 2012, 13:55

Thanks for your support Andrew. No offence at all was intended by my posting and I'm rather surprised that any has been taken. I was walking down Park Street on Sunday afternoon and was genuinely shocked to see smoke pouring out of the church - I hope the damage is repairable and not too extensive.

That said, I think we have to maintain a sense of proportion here. Within a few days of the sinking of the Costa Concordia, Billy Connolly was apparently making jokes about it in his live act and people actually died in that accident. Nobody died (or was injured) in the church and only property was damaged, for which the church will presumably be insured. I accept that some items may be irreplaceable but I would anticipate that by this time next year the church will look much as it did before the fire. The church has stood in Charlbury for more than 900 years and has survived two World Wars and the English Civil War. I think it is probably strong enough to survive one silly little joke.

My joke was an attempt to improve on another that had been posted before mine. The mood of levity had therefore already been set and was not instigated by me. However, as Andrew said, by removing the earlier comment in its entirety but leaving the bare bones of mine up with "Comment deleted" plastered across it it now looks as if I had started the whole thing. I shall be emailing Mr Fairhurst when he returns from holiday to complain about the very shabby treatment I have received at his hands.

Mon 13 Feb 2012, 21:14

[Thread started as a home for website-related issues from the St Mary's thread. I'm on holiday in Northumberland this week and typing this on a very poor GPRS connection so doing only minimal maintenance -- Richard]

Originally posted by Andrew Chapman:

In fairness to Derek a previous poster - someone called 'brian'? - had already made a jokey comment here; perhaps he removed it himself, but in any case the thread now makes it look as if Derek had said something rather more offensive than a mild play on words. The church hasn't 'burned down' so the comparison is captious.
This is clearly not the place for a debate on censorship or on the nature of offense and how readily people seem to take it, but if you're going to remove someone's comment, perhaps you should remove it more justly?
Anyway, I'm sure all of us hope that damage to Charlbury's beautiful church is limited and swiftly remedied.