KILL-JOY GOVT TO BAN WEDDING PHOTOS!
Wednesday 4 June, 2008
UK
Politics
By Clifford Hill
The evidence is mounting that it is not only the Prime Minister who is losing the plot but the whole of his Government. For the latest good idea dreamed up by the Home Office is to try to abolish wedding photographs! It sounds almost too bizarre to be true. But then most things coming out of Whitehall these days are either incredibly cynical or breathtakingly stupid.
I have always suspected that the New Labour Government would like to abolish marriage altogether. There have been so many measures designed to undermine marriage and the traditional family, all of which totally ignore research studies showing that married couples provide the safest environment for children. Yet still the Government presses on with its libertarian policies based upon some doctrinaire belief that all types of family are equal.
This latest diktat from the Home Office banning the taking of photographs of wedding couples signing marriage registers would surely take first prize in any competition of crazy ideas. Wedding photographs are powerful symbols of married bliss, of love, security, faithfulness and all the other things associated with successful married life.
There can be few girls who aren’t moved by the thought of a beautiful wedding dress and the celebrations that go with it. Photographs of couples signing marriage registers adorn millions of homes in Britain. And parents of the happy couple proudly show them off to their friends. But all that is now to be stopped.
It looks as though the same old bunch of secular humanists who have been trying to destroy family life for more than a decade are at it again. They hate anything that might encourage people to get married and live happily ever after.
The Government kill-joys have ordered the General Register Office to ban the taking of photographs of couples signing marriage registers. One Register Office official said: “We were told photos could not be taken of couples signing the register because it would breach data protection. It seems absurd as these are pictures of couples signing important personal documents. It is hardly likely people are going to be able to read the names of other entrants on the page, let alone misuse that information.”
A Home Office spokesman said: “There are data protection issues which we do raise when someone else’s details are put into the public domain. This is about being aware of people’s identity information.”
Another Home Office spokesman explained: “Taking a photograph could be construed as a copy of the entry and a breach of the Crown Copyright. There are four entries to a double page, so the details of another marriage could also be photographed.”
Of course, other entries could always be covered up by a piece of blotting paper, but you could hardly expect them to think of anything so simple.
The spokesman went on to say that, if the bride and groom look at the photographer, it may distract them from signing in the correct place and errors on marriage registers are difficult to correct. He also explained that holding a fountain pen over marriage registers is dangerous.
Surely the most dangerous problems are to be found, not at a wedding, but in the Home Office!
Photo: Luke Wilson
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Michelle Adams wrote:
Why do they implement this kind of rule, does the government turning like communist? I was watching recently for the Beijing Olympics Complete Medal Tally 2008 and I saw that China almost open her doors.
Ruth Day wrote:
I thought N.Z.govt were dictatorial humanist but U.K. govt are infinitely worse. Where is the backbone of the country? Why do people not protest. Don’t take it lying down as this is the thin end of the wedge.
Alex Woods wrote:
How nutty can you get? Another of the thousands of rules and regulations by the secular humanists to make us all criminals. If the Ten Commandments were observed society would be a lot safer.
Ruth Day wrote:
It appears that the U.K. is under a communist dictatorship. Where is democracy and the rights of the individuals. Surely banning wedding photos is infringing on a persons human rights.
Get married in a church or are they banned there too?
Roger Marsden wrote:
What a Negative attitude
angela arnold wrote:
Well, there is an easy way round this. My local vicar didn’t allow photographing of signing the register when we were married but he did allow us to take photgraphs of us posing as if to sign the register after the ceremony was over, and that way the photographer was able to get in close enough to only show our own entry, the pen did not have to be anywhere where ink would drip and we were able to be smiling in the right direction.
Some vicars have already solved the problem before the government even saw there may be a problem!
David R Graham wrote:
Good morning Clifford,
Thank you for the above article. I find it hard to comprehend how a government, some of whose members frequently lose reams of documents containing the personal details of scores of ordinary people, can suggest that the simple act of signing a marriage register is in some convoluted way a threat to peoples personal information. If you are correct in your suggestion that this latest government diktat is yet another attack on the institute of marriage it is strong evidence of the real need of a new media that can take up the defence of marriage and family life and values and speaks the truth about the covert intentions of those who are set on turning us all into morphological lumps.
Bob Wolton wrote:
Surely the first question to be asked is what evidence of abuse is there and how prevelant is it.
It seems to me that the Labour Party has a terminal death wish.
Sincerely,
Bob Wolton
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