{"id":873,"date":"2006-11-23T13:17:08","date_gmt":"2006-11-23T13:17:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.willhowells.org.uk\/blog\/2006\/11\/23\/backing-ba\/"},"modified":"2006-11-24T10:41:45","modified_gmt":"2006-11-24T10:41:45","slug":"backing-ba","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.willhowells.org.uk\/blog\/2006\/11\/23\/backing-ba\/","title":{"rendered":"BAcking BA"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve flown British Airways a few times recently and the flights were cheap and very pleasant, so I would have no intention of boycotting them over their ban on visible crucifixes<\/a> even if I didn’t think their position was reasonable – but, as it happens, I mostly do.<\/p>\n

They seem to have bent over backwards to allow the employee in question, Nadia Eweida, to wear her cross: they told her it was fine to wear it under her uniform and offered her alternative work where she wouldn’t need to wear the uniform at all, but she insists that she should be allowed to wear it – because religion apparently deserves special treatment.<\/p>\n

“It is important to wear it to express my faith so that other people will know that Jesus loves them.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Oddly enough, when I fly I’d like the cabin crew to keep me safe and provide me complimentary food that isn’t too cardboardy. I don’t fly for reassurance that a particular religious icon is rooting for me. It wouldn’t be acceptable for Ms Eweida to hand out copies of the Watchtower with the inflight magazine, so why should she tell get to me Jesus loves me in other ways?<\/p>\n

Now, that said, I have no objection to people expressing their religious beliefs and it makes little difference to me whether BA’s uniform allows jewellery or not – interesting, and here’s where I do disagree with BA, they “accepted the cross was not jewellery”. But a uniform code is a uniform code and it’s the expectation the religion should be a special case that I object to. To take a facetious example given today’s date<\/a>, I watch Doctor Who<\/em> more often than many people who tick “Christian” on the census go to church, but would I have a leg to stand on if I worked for BA and wanted to wear a Davros badge on my uniform (to show people that Terry Nation loves them, perhaps)? Of course not.<\/p>\n

Update:<\/strong> Joe Otten has written a typically thoughtful post<\/a> on the same issue. I’m inclined to agree with him that British Airways’ best way of avoiding this sort of issue is to be less restrictive full stop, but I do think that, from a marketing point of view, their uniform does have a role to play in promoting them as a “quality” brand.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve flown British Airways a few times recently and the flights were cheap and very pleasant, so I would have no intention of boycotting them over their ban on visible crucifixes even if I didn’t think their position was reasonable – but, as it happens, I mostly do. They seem to have bent over backwards […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-873","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"yoast_head":"\nBAcking BA - No geek is an island<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.willhowells.org.uk\/blog\/2006\/11\/23\/backing-ba\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"BAcking BA - No geek is an island\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I’ve flown British Airways a few times recently and the flights were cheap and very pleasant, so I would have no intention of boycotting them over their ban on visible crucifixes even if I didn’t think their position was reasonable – but, as it happens, I mostly do. 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