Bill Carmichael: An unfair cross to bear for Christian nurse

This week, it was the decision by an employment tribunal panel to

uphold a ban on a Christian nurse who simply wanted to continue to wear a cross at work as she always had done.

Shirley Chaplin, 54, had worn the cross without any problems for more than 31 years, but suddenly, in the summer of 2009, the Royal Devon & Exeter Hospital decided that it presented a dreadful and imminent risk under "health and safety" laws.

Some deranged patient might seize the necklace around her neck and throttle the health worker to death, and therefore the cross must be banned, argued hospital bosses.

I've been observing these daft, pointless, petty regulations for more years than I care to remember, but even in our ridiculously risk averse, compensation cultured, nanny state, I can honestly state this is the most preposterous "health and safety" argument that I've ever encountered.

People have been wearing necklaces for at least a millennium or two.

And has there ever been a single recorded incident of someone being strangled by a piece of flimsy jewellery?

Simple answer – no.

If any homicidal patient were mad enough to grab the necklace we all know what would happen – the chain would break before any physical damage could be done.

Mrs Chaplin even offered to replace the fastening on the chain with a magnetic clasp that would break open under the slightest pressure – but hospital bureaucrats rejected the compromise.

Interestingly, the hospital bent over backwards to re-write uniform

rules to allow two Muslim doctors to wear the hijab.

Yet not only is the hijab more likely to carry the risk of infection, if you were of a mind to throttle a member of the hospital staff, a sturdy scarf would be a far more effective weapon than a fragile gold chain.

Mrs Chaplin also noted that other members of staff were allowed to wear non-religious jewellery without running foul of hospital pen pushers.

Logic doesn't come into it.

The only conclusion is that the nurse was singled out for persecution by the bullies of the diversity Gestapo simply because she is a Christian – and they knew they could get away with it.

So another small, valuable freedom is eroded by the forces of small-minded bigotry and dogmatism.

And isn't it exceedingly strange that the officials who are always banging on about diversity, equality and human rights are invariably the most reactionary, authoritarian and intolerant people one could possibly imagine?

A rotten system

According to a report by a prison watchdog this week, if you want

decent health care, you would be better off in jail.

While on the outside pensioners pull out their own teeth with pliers for lack of an NHS dentist and thousands die in filthy wards from hospital-acquired infections, criminals serving sentences for serious crimes enjoy "gold standard" health care.

The study by the Independent Monitoring Board into conditions at Full Sutton maximum-security prison, near York, said prisoners, including terrorists, murders and rapists, receive a standard of health care that is "probably above that which an individual could expect in the community".

The report also stated that a prisoner led a riot in segregation cells after kindly magistrates gave him a lenient sentence for assaulting a prison officer.

He bragged that thanks to our soft-touch criminal justice system he was immune from any effective punishment and so he celebrated his good fortune by inciting other inmates to wreck their cells.

The Prison Officers' Association has pointed out that moves by

government ministers and jail bosses to pander to prisoners and

liberalise the jail system has led to a enormous increase in assaults

in prisons – up by more than 30 per cent to nearly 15,000 a year since 2002.

Perhaps the best way forward is to let all the criminals out of jail – where they can take their chances with the clapped out NHS.

Then we can simply admit all the sick people to the nation's jails, where they will enjoy the proper standards of care that they deserve.