Cemeteries and left-wing opposition to Islam

No, the two are not related. However, they both reflect two things that I have seen or heard recently. One left me disgusted, the other left me encouraged, so I thought that I would relate them to you, dear readers.

Starting with the disgusting story: As I've mentioned before, I sometimes like to take a stroll around Brompton Cemetery, that magnificent 41 acre burial ground nestling in the shadow of Chelsea's Stamford Bridge stadium. Last week, when the weather was very good, I decided to go for a walk, and, finding that my route took me past the cemetery, decided to go in. Because the sun was out, it was significantly more crowded than usual (although I personally prefer it when there is a light drizzle and a grey overcast sky - much more atmospheric). And it was the behaviour of some of the members of the public that really disgusted me.

Although Brompton Cemetery is one of the Royal Parks, and although the public are permitted to walk there for their recreation, it is still the final resting place of thousands of people, including a large number of soldiers who fell in World War One. As such, I think that anyone going into the cemetery should behave with a degree of respect. However, the behaviour of the public was anything but respectful. People were jogging through the cemetery, cycling through it, even roller-blading through it. This was not the worst of it, however. I actually saw one man - reasonably well-dressed, in his fifties, and sipping from a container of organic orange juice - reclining on a tomb! He was actually using someone's grave as a place to put his feet up! And this despite the fact that there are benches all over the cemetery, for anyone who wishes to sit down to make use of. The sheer obscenity of his behaviour only struck me afterwards, but I really do wish that I'd told him what I thought of it. Although he'd probably only have responded to complaints about this physical obscenity with a verbal obscenity.

I am quite interested to know what my readers think about this. Do you agree that what this man was doing was obscene? Or am I overreacting?

The second thing that recently happened to me was considerably more encouraging. I was in the pub the other day with a friend, who is certainly not a hardline right-winger. Indeed, she is a member of that egregious organisation, Liberty. However, in the course of the conversation, it transpired that she felt exactly the same way about the threat posed to this country by Islam as I do. This is, I think, very encouraging, since it shows that even people of a decidedly liberal bent are waking up to the threat posed to this country. Polls have shown that 53% of the British population see Islam as a threat, and I believe that this number must surely be increasing all the time. Perhaps the day when public pressure forces our politicians to take some form of action will come sooner than we think.