My mum and her fight for righteousness
In Norn Ireland they place heavy emphasis on positive recruitment based not on skin colour but on who's got the correct fictitious deity.

I am the child of a mixed marriage (one parent Protestant, family in the Orange Order; one parent Catholic, priests included in the line-up). My parents raised me to be unbaptised nothing (although my mother later expressed sadness at my atheism and claimed she hoped I'd be "a little bit spiritual").

Anyway, employers like you to fill in forms that detail what religion you are. My mum had been in her job for ages when these forms came round.

You have to tick:
I am a member of the Protestant community.
I am a member of the Catholic community.
I am a member of neither the Protestant or Catholic community.

My mum hates people being labelled so she went to tick the third "can't pin me down" box. But no! Wait! Read the small print! The small print stated that if you said you belonged to neither community then they would work out what your religion was from what school you went to. (This, by the way, is a standard Norn Ireland conversational trick, along with finding out someone's surname and tricking them into saying the letter "h".) They'd do this by classing everyone who went to a school called "Saint..." as Catholic and everyone else as automatically Protestant.

My mum was furious. She refused to disclose her school. She said she hoped any Jew, Muslim, atheist or Jedi, etc, would do the same. She received sniffy, stern letters back saying she absolutely had to provide this information. She stood her ground. Eventually they sent her a small, weak pathetic dribble of a letter saying they were excluding her from the survey.

Norn Ireland. As if classifying people by religion wasn't causing enough trouble, they went and formalised the process.
( crackhouseceilidhband Fuck off back to Mumsnet, Fri 23 Nov 2007, 13:30, 5 replies)

I think
that religious/denominational schools should be eliminated. How can separating children on the basis of their parents' beliefs possibly encourage integration? It only fosters division at best, and hatred at worst. Kids have no inbuilt prejudices - such things come from the environment in which they are raised and educated.

I went to a comprehensive school in the east of Scotland which had pupils from various religions and backgrounds, albeit predominantly WASP, and I can honestly say religious differences were just not an issue.

It's different further west of course - look at Glasgow and the Rangers/Celtic crap that goes on.
( K2k6 has a proper job these days, Fri 23 Nov 2007, 13:40, closed)

..
How do Protestants/Catholics respectively pronounce the letter H? I simply must know.
(jennymnemonic, Fri 23 Nov 2007, 13:44, closed)

sibboleth/shibboleth
they pronounce it 'h'... :)

It's pathetically similar:
aitch for one group,
haitch for another

I was slapped at school for saying it the 'wrong' way.
( crackhouseceilidhband Fuck off back to Mumsnet, Fri 23 Nov 2007, 13:51, closed)

A bloke I know from Glasgow
was once asked if he was protestant or catholic.

"I'm an atheist", he replied, truthfully.

"Aye, but is that a protestant atheist or a catholic atheist?"
( K2k6 has a proper job these days, Fri 23 Nov 2007, 14:15, closed)

they pronounce it 'h'... :)
Stop it - I'm at work ... if I burst out laughing too often people will get suspicious!
(patently Was somewhere else on, Fri 23 Nov 2007, 14:57, closed)