political correctness

When it starts to get dark on my way home from work, and the radiators come on in the mornings, I know I need to get away for a holiday. But it’s not just the damp cold weather creeping in, I sometimes feel I have to leave this country because our move to a nanny state is too much to bear. The latest ridiculous plan to force your best mate to undergo a criminal records bureau test, so they can pick little Jack up from footie practice makes me want to scream, and now the unions have decided I can’t wear high heel shoes at work. I need to go somewhere that will trust me to be a law abiding citizen, wear whatever I want and be treated like an adult - even if that means I might suffer a superficial body wound or upset someone.

Of course, the reason why I will always return to Blighty is because British people have the best sense of humour in the world. Or used to. We're self deprecating, ironic, witty and have a deepness of resolve not found anywhere else. No other country could have invented Vera Duckworth, cricket or Marmite. But political correctness is curtailing our readiness to run our daily lives without state intervention or have a laugh, and normal people are thinking twice before they say or do anything at all. Our essential Britishness is being eroded.

Surely there is nothing wrong with adults mixing with children or making humorous observations of . . . well just about everyone, as long as it’s not nasty or vindictive. I’m not fatist, ageist, rascist, homophobic, political or a sex pest. Although my husband may wish I was the latter. I have been brought up to be helpful and honest to others just like 99% of the world’s population. I was taught how to have a sense of humour too. It’s part of the art of forging relationships, making connections, knocking down barriers or alleviating a difficult situation. If it's done with warmth I don't understand what the problem is. I'm also worried that there seems to be an awful lot of people out there developing very thin skins. Get a life, become an adult and stop being so easily offended.

The humourless nanny stateism that is seeping into our lives, is like a cruel twist on Orwell’s 1984. Telling me what shoes to wear is complete and utter madness, it’s just like the last football World Cup. Suddenly we weren’t allowed to fly our own national flag because our great and historic red cross symbol might upset people who live here. Well bollocks frankly. If you chose to live or visit England and you don't like our flag, go somewhere else - try France, they're renowned for their racial tolerance and pluralism. In my experience, most people who have been born here but whose more recent family may be from other countries, don't mind the flag, of course they don't, it belongs to the English and that doesn't take account of the colour of your skin, or your cultural or religious background, it just symbolises the inhabitants of our country. If anything the English national flag celebrates that very diversity and I'm proud of that.

The people who are at fault – the ones who pronounce on these dictats with sudden declarations - are public sector bosses, council and union members or closeted civil servants who need to get out more. They are obsessed by rules, regulations and CCTV, using these tools to protect 3 people who may have a special need but making the rest of us 60 million suffer. The faceless ones who are making us all feel we live inside a bloody Big Brother series (but without the jacuzzi), clearly have nothing better to do. Why is the TUC using up valuable time debating killer heels, when they should be fighting for equal pay, better working conditions and good management practice? Why are council bosses faffing about banning Christmas parties, when they should be concentrating on public transport provision, better school facilities and helping the elderly? And more to the point who are these people, because we pay for them to be there. So let’s name and shame them, because I want to know exactly which fire chiefs in Barking, East London barred the local fire station from hoisting the English flag, when Barking Mosque Secretary Ashfaq Siddique (who sounds like a good bloke) declared: “We’re not offended — it’s a national flag!”

Do these people honestly think it helps tourism or race relations, and not hinder them? Shouldn’t they be saving us from burning buildings or cutting us free from car crashes? Political correctness and unenforceable legislation, has of course gone far further than petty controls over national flag waving. People in these positions must get their sense of humour back, and resist the temptation to protect everyone to such an extent that we may all end up confined to our beds by law so that we never hurt ourselves. There are lots of other examples too. Calderdale Royal Hospital in Halifax has banned visitors from cooing at new-born babies following a staff advice session (which feels way too huggy) highlighted the need for respect and dignity for patients. Yawn. Signs have been put up in the hospital saying, "What makes you think I want to be looked at?" Could the answer be “because you are the most beautiful miracle and our family love you so much”? The Sure Start Centre in Oxfordshire will not allow nursery workers to teach Baa Baa Black Sheep instead they have to sing Baa Baa Rainbow Sheep.In fact schools are fast becoming the worst offenders of political correctness, and I’m not sure it gives out a good message to our kids. A school in Scotland changed the names of its 1a and 1b classes because parents complained that the children in '1b' may be perceived as academically inferior. Get over it, I’ve been academically inferior for 40 years. One school has banned pupils from opening windows in case they fall out, another has banned daisy chains because the governors feared they were too unhygienic and yet another has banned conkers over fears of nut allergies. Is anyone, no matter what their age, really likely to look at a conker and try and eat it?

Still you can rely on The Professional Association of Teachers to take a hard stand against political correctness and preparing our kids for the realities of the harsh world out there. At one of their conferences they actually debated a motion which said that the term "failure" should be replaced by "deferred success". Thankfully the motion was defeated, well it was a deferred success anyway. Police bosses are at it too. Last year police in Gloucester brought food and cigarettes to a suspected car thief who refused to come down from the top of a building as they were concerned about his "human rights". I suspect however, that if they had denied him his ciggies he’d have been down in half an hour. A police authority was quoted in the Independent on Sunday as saying that it did not use Rover cars because buying "anything British, including British cars, was an overtly nationalist statement and could be considered offensive by vulnerable, deprived and ethnic minority groups in our society". It's not because the cars are crap then, and where did this person learn to talk like that?

And you could always rely on the ex-Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Sir Ian Blair, to make a ridiculous statement on a regular basis. He ordered the force's motto to be changed because it featured joined up writing which he thought, discriminated against short-sighted people. They can’t actually see the motto Sir Ian, so it doesn’t matter whether it’s joined up or not.

Stand up for your right to have a sense of humour, fly the English flag outside your front door, even if it does make it look like a council house (joke!) and go to work wearing the highest heels you own.

A few more which have completely driven me mad:

The County Council that issued guidelines for snowball fights for schools in Norwich, insisting that snowballs should not be thrown at less than 65ft apart
A hotel in Morecambe that was advised to obtain an entertainment license if more than two people take part in a karaoke session
Swansea Council proposing to scrap their "sickness absence policy" and call it "minimising attendance at work policy"
The local council that instructed a school founded in 1710, to drop the word "Saint" from its title in case it offended religious groups. Spokespeople for the Jewish and Muslim communities attacked the decision to change the name as being too politically correct
The swimming pool in Kent that stopped people from doing backstroke in case they bang their head on the edge of the pool
The case of the optician in Liverpool who was told that she could not place an advert for a receptionist with the Job Centre with the phrase "hard-working" in it. They told her that this would be discriminatory - presumably against fat lazy bastards who don’t want to work. Duh?
The first Children's Commissioner who has decided that children should be involved in selecting their head teacher. He said his own selection process involved a written test which was "set and marked by children"