tempus fugit

By ceridwen

Cutting the lamb

I left home soon after 10 am and walked down the lane to the bus stop past fields full of new-born lambs, their sharp little cries tearing the air with urgency. Eight hours later my train rolled up in Preston, Lancashire, a city where lambs abound as a civic logo like this one on every street lamp.

Supposedly it's the lamb of St Wilfred, the patron saint of the town except that no one seems to know if or why St Wilfred was symbolised by a lamb - wasn't that John the Baptist? It seems to depend on whether the lamb is sitting down or standing up... and then there's the business of the PP - we're told it stands for Princeps Pacis (Prince of Peace) but some think it means Proud Preston.

Anyway there are all these lambs holding banners all over the place so recently when the city council announced that £5 million pounds worth of jobs and services were to be cut over the next two years the local protest campaign redesigned the logo to demonstrate the impact in this way.
The group, Preston Against The Cuts, seems to have provoked a stronger reaction than they anticipated because the council have insisted they remove their "tasteless" version of the logo from their Facebook page and not use it for fear of causing offence.
Doesn't there seem to be a irony gap somewhere?

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