theguardian: by Aisha Ghani —

Nigel Farage’s Ukip branch rebukes BBC for ingrained liberal bias in holding straw poll about leader in front of noted Muslim place of worship … wait, hang on 

Westminster Cathedral: not a mosque.

Nigel Farage’s local Ukip branch has rebuked the BBC for its ingrained liberal bias in holding a straw poll on the party leader in front of a London mosque. The mosque in question was Westminster Cathedral.

On Tuesday, The Daily Politics, the BBC show hosted by Andrew Neil and Jo Coburn, tweeted:

As Daily Politics fans will know, @reporterboy is journalist Giles Dilnot, who conducts straw polls of public opinion using coloured balls.

The clip referred to showed him speaking in front of an ornate, domed, pink and terracotta religious building, and it seemed to irk the Ukip branch in South Thanet, Kent, where Nigel Farage has been selected as a candidate for the general election next year:

Ukip South Thanet asked Dilnot for the location of the building; he replied with a link to Westminster Cathedral, adding: “Not sure you’ll find a mosque in there though.”

The branch later apologised:

Farage was asked about the mix-up on Thursday’s edition of The Daily Politics. “Well, the people’s army are not wholly trained,” the Ukip leader said. “They are enthusiastic volunteers, and volunteers make mistakes and that lady made a mistake.”

Actor and writer Alex Andreou responded to the initial mistake by tweeting images of buildings that were not mosques, using the hashtag #ThingsThatAreNotMosques:

Here are some of the best tweets:

None of these are mosques. Not even this City Hall:

This isn’t the first-time a rightwing party has got its buildings confused. The English Defence League mistook Brighton’s Royal Pavilion for a mosque last year.

The site of Westminster Cathedral was acquired by the Catholic Church in 1884, and the cathedral was designed by the Victorian architect John Francis Bentley. It has a distinctive candy-striped red and white brick facade, towers, floors set with mosaics, and features 100 types of marble and geometric patterns, inspired by ornate Early Christian Byzantine and Ottoman styles.

Origional Post here:  http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/nov/27/-sp-ukip-mistakes-westminster-cathedral-for-mosque

• This article was amended on 27 November 2014. An earlier version said the EDL co-founder Tommy Robinson “had tweeted #creepingsharia when he saw a picture of the Taj Mahal in India on the Twitter homepage”. In fact the picture in question was not of the Taj Mahal but of the Grand Mosque in Muscat, Oman.