Jesus banned from M&S flower orders

speedboatchase

Interesting news story in today's Sunday Times. Daily Mail will have a field day with this but in fairness it's pretty shocking that Jesus isn't permitted but 'jihad' is good to go.

http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/news/uk_news/Society/article1525516.ece

THE words “Christ” and “Jesus Christ” have been placed on a list of banned abusive and offensive terms by Marks & Spencer.

Customers who try to include them in greetings with online purchases of flowers are prevented from completing their orders.

The policy emerged this weekend when a pastor’s wife was blocked from ordering a £35 bouquet of spring flowers as a gift. She was confronted with an on-screen warning: “Sorry there’s something in your message we can’t write.”

The blocked message ran: “Thank you for your care and practical help for Margaret in her last days . . . With love from her church family, Christ Church Teddington.”

Gerardine Stockford, 53, rang M&S’s call centre on Friday and was told a word must have been blocked. It turned out to be “Christ”. She said: “He had to write my message for me because I couldn’t do it over the internet.”

Margaret, 93, had been a member of the congregation for 87 years. Her funeral is this week. The flowers were delivered yesterday.

The Sunday Times found that other religious terms, such as Allah, Mohammad and Buddha as well as hajj and jihad were permitted, but inputting swear words triggered the same message as Christ. The term “gay” was also blocked. After a reporter approached the retailer, the messaging facility appeared to have been disabled.

Lord Carey, a former Archbishop of Canterbury, reacted with dismay: “If Christ becomes an offensive word in a Christian land then all of us should be alarmed.”

Andrea Minichiello Williams, chief executive of Christian Concern, said: “It is a sad state of affairs if the start point is to assume the word Christ is being used to be offensive.”

M&S said: “An automatic phrase-checker is in place to prevent the use and misuse of certain words and it includes hundreds of words of varying natures. It is common for us to override the checker at the customer’s request.”

DoYouEvenLift

Íosa Críost

kneemos

Do they have people writing out these messages?

Beyond me how it matters.

17larsson

An automated phrase checker stopped 'Christ' being typed in so the woman rang M&S and they typed it up manually for her and then changed the spell checker settings so 'Christ' is allowed now.

What a story

speedboatchase

17larsson wrote: »

An automated phrase checker stopped 'Christ' being typed in so the woman rang M&S and they typed it up manually for her and then changed the spell checker settings so 'Christ' is allowed now.

What a story

The story is why it was blocked in the first place.

The Backwards Man

speedboatchase wrote: »

The story is why it was blocked in the first place.

To stop yahoos ordering flowers with the message 'FCUK FCUK CNUT WANKER JESUS CHRIST', or similar I imagine.

hairyslug

I used to work in a warehouse that had an online store attached to it, for a few euro extra you could get your order giftwrapped and a note attached, we got some bad ones in but the worst went "fancy a trip to browntown, you grab the lube and ill see you there"

deise08

Blasphemers the lot of ye

corner of hells

hairyslug wrote: »

I used to work in a warehouse that had an online store attached to it, for a few euro extra you could get your order giftwrapped and a note attached, we got some bad ones in but the worst went "fancy a trip to browntown, you grab the lube and ill see you there"

What gift was ordered with that one ?

razorblunt

Well there goes Jesus the Mexican's valentines order next year!

coldcake

Do people really need this explained. Christ is often used as a swear word and the filtering program filtered it out. The ironic thing is that the term was probably added to the list of blocked words so that Christians wouldn't be offended for example if someone wrote 'christ that was an awful accident you were in'

Heroditas

The good news is that we can send flowers to any suicide bombers we know with a note saying "happy jihad!"

corner of hells

coldcake wrote: »

Do people really need this explained. Christ is often used as a swear word and the filtering program filtered it out. The ironic thing is that the term was probably added to the list of blocked words so that Christians wouldn't be offended for example if someone wrote 'christ that was an awful accident you were in'

What accident ? Where was the accident ? Was it near M & S ?

Princess Consuela Bananahammock

razorblunt wrote: »

Well there goes Jesus the Mexican's valentines order next year!

That's okay - nobody ****s with the Jesus anyway...

Zebra3

Slow news day.

El_Duderino 09

The Backwards Man wrote: »

To stop yahoos ordering flowers with the message 'FCUK FCUK CNUT WANKER JESUS CHRIST', or similar I imagine.

It's this precisely. The same story arose with Disney last month in the US. It's to stop Xians getting upset by words which resulted in Xians getting upset by absence of words.

Christian persecution rabble rabble.

El_Duderino 09

Heroditas wrote: »

The good news is that we can send flowers to any suicide bombers we know with a note saying "happy jihad!"

You could but jihad isn't a swear word.

'I'm gonna jihad you all night long' doesn't work.

Neither does 'you made a complete jihad of that'

Edit. I'm totally gonna use jihad instead of 'mess'.
'What's gone on in here? You made a complete jihad of the kitchen'.

iguana

Why have a swear word blocker at all? If a grown adult wants to include a profanity on the card, surely that should be up to them. Not everyone finds swearing offensive and it may well be part of a private joke between the sender and recipient.

cournioni

Nobody f*cks with the Jesus.

El_Duderino 09

iguana wrote: »

Why have a swear word blocker at all? If a grown adult wants to include a profanity on the card, surely that should be up to them. Not everyone finds swearing offensive and it may well be part of a private joke between the sender and recipient.

Yeah I agree but I see where M&S are coming from. Consider if someone uses the message to abuse someone based on racial, religious or sexual orientation grounds. M&S don't need to be involved in that news story so they sensor the language. The woman did get the message written once it was checked by a human.

Frynge

This word checker is a must for m&s because if I had a friend on a computer about to buy flowers and then they leave the computer unattended while getting their credit card, my inner child would have no choice but to make a jihad of their message with all sorts of profanity.

El_Duderino 09

Frynge wrote: »

This word checker is a must for m&s because if I had a friend on a computer about to buy flowers and then they leave the computer unattended while getting their credit card, my inner child would have no choice but to make a jihad of their message with all sorts of profanity.

Exemplary use of the word jihad

alchemist33

I got a teeshirt made for a colleague for Secret Santa before Christmas, mocking/commemorating a famous sporting moment from last year. They wouldn't let me use the word Gerrard so I had to use Stevie G instead. After some trials I found out Rooney was also banned. It seems there's much offence-taking out there.

shruikan2553

They found a problem with the website, called them and sorted the problem.

If only this was NI and they could have made a right jihad of it, M&S claims it is a secularist company so being made to use religious terms is persecuting them, the Christians as usual claim they are being persecuted. Maybe throw a cake in there and persecution intensifies. Or just call them up and they fix it but that wouldnt lead to a news story....oh wait.