United Kingdom: About a week ago, the Pagan Police Association received official recognition from the Home Office as a diversity staff support association. Whether this is the case is up in the air, but assuming it is, the main advantage that this confers is summed up most neatly by The Times: Endorsement would mean that chief constables could not refuse a pagan officer’s request to take feast days as part of his or her annual leave. (emphasis mine). There's certainly no funding involved, but that hasn't stopped the usual suspects from mouthing off before they got to the end of the sentence.

First up is Paul Nuttall, an MEP for the English xenophobic far-right party UKIP, who claimed:

It is politically correct madness of high order for the Home Office to give this approval. Everyone is entitled to their own religious belief and if they want to use their holiday entitlement to be off for their festivals that's fine but it should not be a legal right.

You see I added some emphasis there? He appears to be complaining about something while simultaneously declaring it to be fine. Unfortunately, Pat Regan of the Pagan Anti-Defamation Network felt the need to issue a rather bizarre statement, rather than a simple correction, and then failed to get a second pair of eyes to proofread it first. Here's an extract, copied and pasted:

Nuttall's disgraceful language belongs to a radical 1930s Germany and not a free and democratic UK 21st century society. I fully intend to expose and complain about Mr Nuttalls blatant ignorance and apparent bigotry, which may affect many ordinary Pagan families in society. After Pagans who will Mr Nuttall single out on next?

After that, I was terribly disappointed to discover that the Christian Concern for Our Nation press release was a simple re-telling of the story.

Pagan police get right to take festivals as holiday—The Times, 11th May 2010; Sefton and West Lancashire Pagans hit out at UKIP attack over holidays—Champion, 19th May 2010.