Happy 50th Birthday Navy Lark!

[Steve Crook]

name='Tonch']No it wasn't, it was better when we outgrew that... but before things went to the other extreme and people didn't have to tiptoe around self consciously on eggshells frightened of offending someone by referring to a snowman instead of a "snowperson" (an example I witnessed with my own eyes and ears). PC is a lazy overcompensation for the fact that some people (of all races and both sexes, btw) are and always have been ignorant and thoughtlessly rude.

Yet another person claiming that "the great PC conspiracy" exists, when it doesn't.



So where have you heard someone referring to a snowman (or snowwoman) as a "snowperson"? Why didn't you realise that they were taking the piss?



Steve

[Tonch]

To be fair Steve, I've never claimed there is such a thing as a "PC conspiracy" or even a "PC Brigade" as some do. But that "Political Correctness" exists cannot really be denied can it? And some po-faced, touchy souls (not you, nor anyone else on here as far as I can tell) latch onto it to try and force their thin-skinned chip-on-the-shoulder dogma down all our throats.



Believe me, if you had been in the shop I was in when the chap walked through the door covered in snow and harmlessly quipped "I'm like a snowman!" with a smile, only to be greeted with a waspishly serious "SnowPERSON!" barked at him by the clearly humourless shopkeeper (a known misery), there was no mistaking that "piss taking" wasn't on their agenda (if only it had been, we could have all chuckled at an innocent remark ).



That's without recounting tales of my cousin being taken aside and lectured to by a senior teacher (she was a trainee at the time) for referring to the "blackboard" instead of the chalkboard (this was in super sensitive inner city London in the mid eighties). I wish these were urban myths or apocryphal tales - perhaps you haven't encountered such incidents, I don't know - but sadly they really happened.



Having said all that I'd rather put up with over zealous, reactionary PC (and scorn it for the absurdity that it is) than revert to the horrendous era of "Paki bashing", "Queer baiting" and so on that ultimately spawned it. But let's not kid ourselves "PC" hasn't taken a foothold here and there eh? If you re-read my earlier post you'll notice I was lamenting a time before things drifted from one extreme to another, which I'm sure many people (though clearly not you, which is fair enough) would agree with.

[Steve Crook]

I have come across instances of what you describe, and I've laughed loudly in the face of them every time. They are absurd, and it needs to be made clear to anyone using them that they are absurd.



But I've worked for local government in the past and now I deal with many large organisations. I only very rarely meet cases of it when people don't realise how absurd they're being - until I tell them



In my opinion and experience there really are very few cases of it and where it does really happen, as opposed to apocryphal reports of it happening, it is just by a few self-important individuals. It doesn't take much to get them to stop.



Steve

[Tonch]

name='Steve Crook']They are absurd, and it needs to be made clear to anyone using them that they are absurd.



Steve

Seems we're more in agreement than I at least first thought



Problem is certain key people in positions of authority who should know better (you must have met them) are so terrified of tribunals etc (real or threatened) that they end up too afraid in these sensitive times to expose such absurdity for what it is. Then people lower down the heirarchy dare not point this out to them, and there is the risk that PC itself will consequently become "endemic" (I do also agree that the media love to whip this up beyond the level it has yet reached, just to provoke outrage).



Being my own boss I can gleefully demolish this nonsense whenever I encounter it. I get the feeling we'd get on well.