Your View: Political Correctness Stories Gone Mad!

I was sorry to see that our beloved "Cottage Magazine" has started running silly "political correctness gone mad" stories because, besides being usually untrue, they have the unfortunate effect of stoking anger against vulnerable people.

 I tried to research various claims, stated as fact in the last edition of "The Cottage", starting with "children are not allowed to say YUK after trying foreign food." I traced this to a Daily Telegraph story which had great fun exaggerating a minor detail in a book by Jane Lane called "Young Children and Racial Justice" which suggests that Nursery workers should be alert to the reasons behind name calling and rejection of foreign food. Sounds quite sensible to me but the way "The Telegraph" exaggerated it led to hundreds of outraged responses on their comment page. They know they can always sell newspapers on these non-stories because they are fun to read and to tell to each other in shocked tones. Never mind that the story is essentially untrue. Or that a typical response on "The Telegraph" response page is, "I used to think I would never vote BNP but I'm beginning to think I might have to."

I could find no evidence of an offenders' register for little children who name -call, mentioned in "The Cottage". The nearest thing appears to be the "Violent and Sex Offender Register" which is for sexual offences. The tabloids' stories about school skirts being banned for fear of offending transsexuals blame the Equalities and Human Rights Commission but, looking at their website, they sound reasonable enough. They say it is up to schools to decide on school uniform. The only vaguely contentious statement I could find on their website was: "because trousers are conventional dress for women .. so.. there is a strong argument that it would be unlawful sex discrimination to deny a girl the opportunity to wear smart trousers as an alternative to skirts."

The Campaign Against Political Correctness article in "The Cottage" regrets the suspension of a police officer for using a baton on a protestor. The policeman, Delroy Smellie, had been cleared by the time "The Cottage" was published, but his suspension while the event was investigated seems fair enough, especially in light of the death of the innocent bystander Ian Tomlinson, after he was hit with a police baton. The article claimed that the police "protect Islamic protestors as they rant and rave against our brave soldiers." This presumably refers to a banned extremist group led by Anjem Choudary. He leafleted Luton in2009 trying to get people to join his protest against British soldiers but managed to get only 20 people out of the town's 20,000 Muslim population. When he tried to protest in Wotton Bassett, he was banned - since when was being banned another term for police protection?

It's so much more fun to read tales of not being allowed to wear England football shirts in pubs or not being allowed to say "blackboard" but these great stories usually don't stand up to investigation. Facts about a small incident somewhere are distorted, then amplified, until the impression is formed of a nation suffering under a burden of irrationalism and intolerance. Yet it is these stories themselves that are just as likely to reinforce misplaced concern and prejudice. Complex issues are dumbed down and, ironically, are particularly beloved by the very newspapers that like to complain about "dumbing down in schools" - another myth, but one to be left for another day!