In umpteen years of reading Victor Lewis-Smith’s Funny Old World column in Private Eye I’ve yet to come across a case of a person being accidentally stabbed to death or even vaguely injured by a crucifix. But I’m presumably not imaginative or neurotic enough, because those things could take your eye out. At least, that’s what the folks at Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital think:

Shirley Chaplin, a committed Christian, has been told by her employers that she must hide or remove the cross or remain out of the hospital wards.

Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital told her that she cannot wear the one-inch tall silver cross openly around her neck, because it breaches their uniform policy and poses a risk to patients.

Atheist bigotry masked by health and safety? How quintessentially British. Throw in a paedo or a crooked politician and you have the perfect storm. If anyone’s under any doubt that the target is Christianity and Christianity alone, then here you have it:

While the Trust has banned the crucifix in its wards, it makes concessions for other faiths, including allowing Muslim nurses to wear headscarves on duty.

Exceptions are made for requirements of faith, but a crucifix is not considered to fall under this category, they added.

How can a crucifix, the most recognisable religious symbol and, dare I say it, brand logo of all time, not be recognised as a religious symbol? And what a nasty and petty mentality that so objects to such a symbol that it’s prepared to ruin someone’s livelihood for displaying it.

Shirley Chapman joins a long list of people hounded because of their Christian faith. Persecuted may be too strong a word - Iraq’s Christians are persecuted - but bit by bit various people in authority are trying to make it difficult for churchgoers to work in almost any job. Caroline Petrie, Duke Amnchree and Nadia Eweida might not have been crucified, but they were still made to suffer their faith.  How many more of these cases have to pop before moderate, atheist real liberals (as opposed to pseudo “Left-liberals”) wake up and remember that liberalism means tolerating other people’s eccentricities?

Many others have been suspended using anti-discrimination laws, such as Kwabena Peat, a teacher, who refused to go to some ridiculous sort of homophobia teacher training day. I happen to agree with Sue Sanders, the gay rights activist who spoke at the training day, when she said that people who didn’t accept homosexuality had “issues”; but I’d have to say the same about people who get so upset by the sight of the Cross that they start to resemble the bigots that liberalism once opposed.