November 01, 2006

England: Town council bans use of phrase "political correctness"

Kirklees Council in West Yorkshire (somewhere in England) has or had a 44-page booklet for their employees containing various far-left Gramscian suggestions, including a section banning the use of the phrase "political correctness". I couldn't find it on their site, and the new head of the council says they're no longer using it, but it does help illustrate Britain's slow Orwellian slide:

It states:'Political correctness is often used to describe what some of us think are unnecessary changes which don't really bother anyone.

'The term political correctness was coined in 1988 by John O'Sullivan III, who was a member of the Ku Klux Klan. He was making an after dinner speech complaining about how Black Americans were being allowed to take the jobs traditionally reserved for the white majority because of a wave of political correctness.

'Since then the phrase political correctness has almost universally been used to decry changes which aim to prevent offensive behaviour.'

It goes on to say because this takes the form of 'blaming the victim, denying peoples experience or expressing the view of a popular majority,' using the phrase can represent a 'physical attack.'

Other suggestions from the booklet at the link, such as their opposition to -man words like "policeman."

Note that a customer service satisfaction survey of a sort contains several complaints about political correctness:
kirklees.gov.uk/community/yoursay/talkback/October05Talkbackreport.pdf

Posted to MultiCultiCult at November 1, 2006 09:50 PM

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