British granny accused of displaying "potentially racially offensive object"

The PC police are at it again, this time in the small city of Ely, Cambridgeshire, in the Disunited Kingdom. A couple of days ago, members of the local constabulary [For our US readers, that means "police". Ed.] knocked on the door of 70-year-old Anne Feast to make enquiries [For our US readers, that means "inquiries". Ed.] about a "potentially racially offensive object" hanging in her window. Here's what they were looking at.

Two police officers, a man and a woman, knocked on the door at about 7.30pm," Granny Feast told the Daily Mail. "They told me they needed to speak to me about the 'black body' hanging in my window. I said 'Pardon? Do you mean the baby gorilla?'"

Mrs. Feast said she explained to the Peelers [You can look it up. Ed.] that she loved to knit and loved even more to display the toys she had knitted in her window for the amusement of neighborhood children. But the super-PC cops told her that — gorilla or not! — she still had to take down the toy because it had offended someone. And guess what? Granny Feast refused!

A spokesthingy for Cambridgeshire police later said that there had not actually been a complaint at all. "The police did not receive any calls from members of the public about this. Instead, while out on patrol, two PCSOs saw an object hanging from a window which they thought might be seen as a potentially racially offensive object."

But the spokesthingy denied that the officers asked Mrs. Feast to remove the toy from the window. "After establishing that the object was, in fact, a handmade knitted gorilla and nothing offensive," he/she said, the officers left and carried on their patrols."