February 1986 Hackney Gazette, Tim Cooper took up Akass's story. He went to Beevers Nursery and asked parents there what their reactions were in turn to the Hackney council statement itself a reaction to the claim that Beevers had issued a ban. Cooper's story reported one of the nursery playleaders as saying: "We're run by parents and if they want us to stop singing it, we would. But there have been no complaints so far, though someone once suggested it could be racist". Cooper later stated that there had been no such ban, but that the statement issued by Millwood and Hackney council had given the story the impetus that it was then to run with: In fact, the playgroup leaders had requested the racialism awareness course, at which attendance was not compulsory, there had been no ban imposed by Haringey council and there was no evidence that the rhyme had even been discussed on the course. As before, only newspapers for the British black community reported these facts. The attempts by the Daily Mail to fact check the story that it had run, including posing as parents looking for playgroups and as supermarket managers wanting to run racism awareness courses, had failed to elicit a single playgroup worker who would confirm the alleged council ban. Haringey council initiated legal action against the Daily Mail, but was forced to drop it due to lack of funds. The Daily Mail ran the story again on 20 October, comparing Haringey council to Nazi Germany. Again, the council attempted to set the record straight with a press statement that noted the irony of the Daily Mail comparing the council to Nazi Germany when the Mail itself had supported Adolf Hitler right up until the eve of World War II. Again, only the British black community newspapers (the 3 November Asian Herald and the 5 November West Indian News) carried Haringey council's corrections. The story continued to be carried by many newspapers for months thereafter, including The Economist on 1 November and the Islington Gazette on 20 February 1987, this time with Islington council as the ban-issuer, a fact that was explicitly denied by a council spokesman in the piece, who said that "it is not council policy to ban Baa Baa Black Sheep but if individual nursery workers find it offensive the council is not in the business of forcing them to teach