Who deserves to be in Poets' Corner?

Friends and family of the late Harold Pinter have apparently suggested that he deserves a memorial in the Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey (see here). The rumour is that Pinter's "anti-religious" views may lead to the consideration that it would not be an appropriate gesture. Not to mention the fact, I expect, that he was a Jew. Are there any Jews in Westminster Abbey? Permanently, I mean ... I've been in there myself on one or two occasions.

Having read the article, I later came upon this poem:

A REFUSAL

Said the grave dean of Westminster:
Mine is the best minster
Seen in Great Britain,
As many have written:
So therefore I cannot
Rule here if I ban not
Such liberty-taking
As movements for making
Its grayness environ
The memory of Byron,

Which some are demanding
Who think them of standing,
But in my own viewing
Require some subduing
For tendering suggestions
On Abbey-wall questions
That must interfere here
With my proper sphere here,
And bring to disaster
This fane and its master,
Whose dict is but Christian
Though nicknamed Philistian.

A lax Christian charity -
No mental clarity
Ruling its movements
For fabric improvements -
Demands admonition
And strict supervision
When bent on enshrining
Rapscallions, and signing
Their names on God's stonework,
As if like His own work
Were their lucubrations:
And passed is my patience
That such a creed-scorner
(Not mentioning horner)
Should claim Poet's Corner.

'Tis urged that some sinners
Are here for worms' dinners
Already in person:
That he could not worsen
The walls by a name mere
With men of such fame here.
Yet nay; they but leaven
The others in heaven
In just due proportion,
While more mean distortion.
"Twill next be expected
That I get erected
To Shelley a tablet
In some niche or gablet.
Then - what makes my skin burn -
That I ensconce Swinburne!

The author of this poem is a gentleman by the name of Thomas Hardy. Where is he buried? His heart is allegedly buried in Stinsford, Dorset. His ashes were interred in Westminster Abbey, in the Poets' Corner.

the homer abbas giant

local pagans are getting their knickers in a twist over the latest publicity stunt for the new simpsons movie. according to the picture, homer has been temporarily immortalised alongside the ancient cerne abbas giant. the full story is here, and most of the other current reports seem to be using the same press association source. the paint will disappear as soon as it rains, and is biodegradeable.

i have to say i am rather amused. while on the one hand the report notes that the chalk outline is rechalked every 25 years, and the grass is regularly trimmed, it was not always so. in my teens i had a summer of thomas hardy obsessive compulsive disorder and when on holiday in dorset insisted my hosts take me to every place that really existed that hardy mentioned about in his wessex. this included the church where i took a rubbing of tess durbeyfield's gravestone, a farmhouse that had the most delicious scrumpy cider and i don't remember the connection, as well as a sighting of the giant. in hardy's time, or was it the time about which he wrote, anyway the point is that the victorians used to let the grass grow over the giant because he was so rudely rampant. also, there is a river piddle that runs through part of dorset, but that name was considered quite impolite and so one gets villages called affpuddle and tolpuddle instead.