...In October 2006, the Daily Mail reported that a 14-year-old school girl, Codie Stott, was arrested by police and detained in a cell for three hours after she asked to be moved into a group of students who spoke English in class. Stott was denounced to police for "racism" by her teachers at Harrop Fold High School in Worsley, Greater Manchester.
Codie told police that she had been placed in a group of five students who would or could not discuss the class work in English. When she asked to be moved to another group with whom she could communicate, the teacher responded, "It's racist, you're going to get done by the police." A week after the incident she was taken to Swinton police station under arrest. Codie told the Daily Mail, "They told me to take my laces out of my shoes and remove my jewellery, and I had my fingerprints and photograph taken."
In May this year, a shopkeeper in Manchester was threatened with prosecution under the race hate statutes if she did not remove a number of soft toys that some consider racist in origin. Moira Pickering, 62, was told by police to get rid of her stock of traditional English dolls called "gollywogs". Gollywogs, based on a children's literary character created by Florence Kate Upton, have been a staple of British children's toys since the late 19th century.
Pickering told the Daily Mail, "I find sex shops offensive, I find cabbage patch dolls offensive, but I wouldn't report them. Golliwogs have been going for years and I've always sold them. They sell very well. People are far too politically correct they go over the top."
In early April this year, a father of a ten-year-old boy was astounded when two police officers arrived at his Cheshire home to question his son for calling another boy "gay" in an email.
"I could not believe what I was hearing," Alan Rawlinson, aged 41, told media. "They told me they considered it a very serious offence. I thought they were joking at first… [T]his just seemed a huge waste of resources for something so trivial. I am furious about what has happened, it just seems the politically correct brigade are taking over."
"If somebody had called the police about something like this in my day they would have laughed - they certainly wouldn't have sent two officers out. It is completely ridiculous."
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