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Monday, February 09, 2009
Offensive term "British," banned along with "negro" and "half-caste" by south Wales county borough
"This is political correctness gone mad," says UK Tory MP David Davies in response to a policy adopted by the Caerphilly council in South Wales, "organisations like this are using public money to propagate their own narrow nationalistic ideas." The Daily Mail reports:
The word ‘British’ can be as offensive as ‘negro’ and ‘half-caste’, according to a race relations body.
The publicly-funded organisation’s views have been adopted by Caerphilly council in South Wales for a leaflet advising staff on how to deal with the public.
In a section on what words or phrases not to use to avoid causing offence, the leaflet solemnly informs the council’s 9,000 workers: ‘The idea of “British” implies a false sense of unity – many Scots, Welsh and Irish resist being called British and the land denoted by the term contains a wide variety of cultures, languages and religions.’
The suggestion the word ‘British’ should be avoided appears alongside similar sections which warn that ‘half-caste’ implies ‘a person is not whole and so should be avoided’ and that ‘negro’ has ‘racist overtones and is linked with the slave trade’.
The man behind the advice is former Labour minister Ron Davies – who lost his Cabinet job in 1998 after what he described as a ‘moment of madness’, when he was robbed after meeting a man on Clapham Common, a well-known gay haunt.
He has been the head of Valleys Race Equality Council (Valrec) for five years. Valrec is funded by councils and the Commission for Racial Equality and it pays Mr Davies £27,000 a year.
Read the rest.
(h/t reason's daily brickbat)
Posted by Kalim Kassam on February 9, 2009 | Permalink
Comments
If I'm there, and they ask, I'll say I'm a Viking.
Posted by: dewp | 2009-02-09 4:40:10 PM
In 1976, I was watching TV in a motel, with a co-worker. He was an Irish Protestant working on a visa. Gerald Ford was giving a speech, and he referred to QE 2 as the "Queen of England". My co-worker went ballistic, and called President Ford a retard, proclaiming that she is the "Queen of Britain". At the time, I didn't see much difference, either way.
I suppose if he'd been Catholic, he might have been less upset.
BTW, Gerald Ford made GW Bush's speeches sound like Churchill's. He played football without a helmet.
Posted by: dp | 2009-02-09 8:31:27 PM
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