Northerners have a reputation for being forthright and I dare say that in some quarters this trait does not go down too well, these days a great deal of waffling is employed before the point is reached...if it ever is. One has only to listen to the ramblings of a politician on any subject to observe this as at the end of their pontifications one is as a rule left wondering what exactly it was that they said.
This sad state of affairs has been added to greatly by the Politically Correct Brigade who's attempts to make speech insipid in our mouths leaves me wondering what some of the great writers of the past would have made of their nonsense!
English as a language is a marvel of precision, there is a word for absolutely anything and every thing........so why not use the right word? Well of course there is the possibility that some person or group may be offended by the correct use of a word and I can see well enough that tact must be employed on occasion ,but, are we really so stupid as to believe that a change of word changes anything.
There is in Government a department dedicated to advising local authorities on the use of language, they spend all their time searching for words which might give offence and recommending alternatives, no I am not joking this is a fact! Lists of these inflammatory words are sent regularly to local authorities and they are expected to employ the often ridiculous recommendations.
Examples of this can be seen on many an incomprehensible document but as a for instance I can tell you the some air head in the P.C. Department sent out a note recommending that the word Black Bird, used to describe.....a Black Bird could cause offence to certain ethnic groups, he recommended that in future the Latin name be used but did not actually give the Latin name of the bird in his epistle. I think we may be certain that he had not bothered to look up the translation himself, had he done so he would have discovered that the Latin name for a Black Bird is “Turdus”.....I rest my case!
Whatever we choose to call the Black Bird it is still black, calling it Turdus”will not change its
colour; a Black Bird is a black bird, it is a descriptive name and not a term of abuse.
News readers, once the bastion of correctness now misuse words as a matter of course, the breakfast programme on the BBC is one of the worst offenders, I understand that the facility for correct pronunciation as now only patronised by two of the BBC's many news readers and one of them is on maternity leave.
Language grows,changes and progresses as the population changes and that is fine, even text speak has it's place(they just have not dug it yet). What problems ( sorry, issues, we are not allowed to have problems any more, it sounds too negative) we have are the direct result of Political Correctness.
If I do not mind being called a Brit and an Australian does not mind being called an Aussie,if a New Zealander has no objection to being called a Kiwi why the devil is it considered racist to call a Pakistani a Paki, I just don't see it.
I have friends from many nations including India, Pakistan, Iraq and Iran, Russia, Lithuania,Poland ,Germany, New Zealand and America, Uganda,Israel in fact I could say that at times my kitchen resembles the United Nations.
What we have in common is that we are all human beings and as far as I am concerned nothing else matters, they are my friends.
We do not play the P.C game which can be as as divisive as positive discrimination of any kind,be it for the black ,the elderly,women, homosexuals what you will.
Such discrimination serves only to make other members of the community feel threatened and so it fosters the very thing it professes to be against.
I have travelled a long way from my opening statement but you see there is a point after all. Back in the early seventies when I was told to “Loose the Northern accent dear."My reply to this was that while perfectly capable of taking a world tour of accents while performing on stage I had no intention of altering my every day speech. This did not go down at all well but I stuck to my guns .
These days it is barely possible to gain a job in television without a novelty accent of some sort,but my argument is that words should be used correctly , no matter what the accent.
Regional accents are wonderful, regional dialects contain some of the oldest words in use today, and I do not just mean Anglo Saxon cuss words! Back in the seventies I was a victim of discrimination and I did not need a Government Department to fight my battles.
Let us there fore do away with all this mealy mouthed Political Correctness and try to regain our collective sense of humour which is surely the best defence against true, racism, ageism, sexism.........................................what you will
Please excuse bad spelling, poor punctuation,bad grammar etc.
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