I'm sorry - must be missing something here. What's racist about what I was reporting? I'm going by what an inmate in a prison told me and others about what had been said to him directly. Not hearsay. Nor heresy, although what that has to do with anything beats me completely. What had been said to him wasn't racist. It was plain stupid, but not racist. He didn't think it was a myth. He was upset about it, because it was affecting him. He wasn't being even slightly racist about it, either. He was, quite simply, upset.
If you can't be bothered to read my original post and subsequent comments on Emma's report, please at least try to think of a more appropriate term to beat us all around the head with. We might possibly be talking religious intolerance, but there's no sense in which it had to do with race. I think it comes down to an officer (or possibly more than one) deciding to wind up the inmates in his, her or their charge, clearly very effectively, at a time of the year when feelings run higher than usual.
And before you tell me I'm mistaken, perhaps you'd like to visit the prison in question and speak with the men I spent two days working with about this and about the general unhappiness in their prison. The group of men I was working with (as I did say before) included black, Asian and white prisoners. They were united in their views on this.

Oh, and I wasn't there to find out their problems - I was running a workshop on telling stories to children. This piece of information came out of a spontaneous outburst straight after lunch from the man in question. I couldn't believe my ears but he was adamant about what he'd been told by the officer. "Sources that can be verified" isn't something that applies here - even if I told you the prisoner name and number and he gave you the name and details of the officer concerned how would that help? I don't myself think for a moment the officer would admit to an outsider that he'd (iirc it was a male officer) said something so crassly stupid. I do think it was said to wind up the prisoners, without any Home Office or other guidance whatsoever.

Wouldn't it be nice if all uncomfortable bits of news were just myths?

Anne