Offence seeking déjà vu

Do you remember the end of 2010? I do. My very last blog post of the year was titled "Last effort for the Offence Seeking Twat of the Year Award" and was about the Top Gear Christmas special outraging literally some people, most of whom were white, middle class Graun readers. Oh, and Andy Choudary.

Needless to say I haven't actually seen Top Gear's "Three Wise Men", and being a Christmas special I expect it'll air here between Easter and late June, but it has already made some news here. And it's all thanks to James May, a rock, a few square yards of black cloth, and bloody Anjem "Is-It-'Coz-I-Is-Slamic" Choudary. It seems that James May brained himself with a rock somehow and that when he came out of hospital, for reasons I don't pretend to understand, this was what he was faced with.

Jeremy Clarkson and Richard Hammond disguised themselves as women by wearing Islamic face veils which only revealed their eyes in a Christmas show filmed in Syria.

Don't fancy yours much.

Andy, with almost gravitic inevitability, was upset because he saw this as an attack on a symbol of his religion, which as far as I could tell the burqa isn't, having been predictably silent over the years about Muslim attacks on the symbols and traditions of other religions.

Still, all to be expected, and so is the nature and level of outrage directed Top Gear's way over this year's Christmas special.

Jeremy Clarkson has been accused of offensive behaviour once again after mocking Indian culture in a Top Gear Christmas special.

Okay, can I interrupt to make a brief point. There's no 'accused of offensive behaviour' about it - if someone was offended then ipso facto his behaviour was offensive. The question is whether that's a reason for doing anything, and since nobody's ever done so much as two fifths of fuck all about most of the things that offend me, and since that doesn't keep me awake at night, I'd say the answer is no, no reason to do anything at all. Being offended is painless and causes no loss unless someone chooses to allow it, which says more about them than what they're complaining about. By all means take offence and say so if you like, but don't tell me it harmed you and the other person must be silenced.

Viewers have complained to the BBC after the outspoken presenter made a series of controversial remarks about the country's clothing, trains, food and history. At one point, Clarkson appeared to make light of the lack of sanitation for poor residents by driving around slums in a Jaguar fitted with a toilet.

And? It's not the wittiest way of making the point but unless it's actually wrong and Indian slums typically have indoor plumbing, piped water supplies and sewers now I don't see the problem. These people are dreadfully poor and literally don't have a pot to piss in. I'm not saying that Clarkson was subtly highlighting the issue of Indian poverty but it's not as if he was saying something that isn't true. Even if he was the appropriate response is rebuttal, not howls of righteous outrage and the usual demand to have him sacked and flogged with broken glass.

And then we have the actual volume of complaints.

A spokesman for the BBC said they had received 23 complaints about the programme, which was broadcast on Wednesday evening.

And how many watched? According to the Graun, who I imagine would like nothing better than the anger of the terminally thin skinned over Clarkson's shoot public sector strikers remark to kill TG's viewing figures, five million people watched and it was the most popular show in its time slot. Assuming every one of those 23 who complained actually watched the show that's 0.00046% of viewers who were offended, and given that about a million people in the UK are of Indian ethnicity it says even more that only 23 complained. Not that all those 23 were necessarily Indian - some are probably white, middle class Graun readers getting offended on behalf of Indians, who presumably don't know when they're being offended. Certainly some of the people taking to message boards and Twatter seem to be.

Owen Hathway tweeted: “Whats wrong with the BBC that they think casual racist stereotyping is acceptable on top gear?”

No idea, Owen, but why don't we leave it up to the million British Indians and the billion Indian Indians to decide whether to be upset. Many of them might think it's some middle aged white guy making a tit of himself and find it amusing. But no, they're clearly mistaken and should be as outraged as the Owens are on their behalf, because it's raaaaaaaacist, see? Raaaaaaaacist!

Which reminds me, where do I write in to complain about this sketch by Goodness Gracious Me from a few years back? I thought it was pretty funny at the time, but now thanks to 23 anonymous complainants and an assortment of condescending pricks I now realise that it was mocking English culture and... what was it again? Oh, yes, I remember: casual racist stereotyping.

I mean, what is wrong with the BBC that they thought it was acceptable?

 

What's good for the goose is for the gander, offence seekers, and you can't have it both ways. Either both are bad and offensive and shouldn't be allowed, or both are fair play regardless of whether someone somewhere is (or just decides they ought to be) offended by it. I'd say the latter because, as I've said before, there is no right to go through life and never be offended, and since one person can be offended by something that is said while another can be offended by it not being said there never can be a right to not be offended.

As someone who's offended by opening the paper and has moved somewhere that has its own special name for the English my advice would be to get offended all you like as often as you like by absolutely whatever you, er, dislike. Just don't sit there fuming and expecting it means you have a right to insist that anyone else has to accommodate your feelings, because a free society can never work that way and all an unfree society can do is to pick sides.

Hero of the Day - UPDATED

In a small way Gerry Reynolds is a minor hero today for speaking up in support of Jeremy Clarkson's freedom to be as hyperbolical as he likes.

He said: “I have decided that if I am ever put in charge that I would like to line all the UK’s copycat complainers up against a wall, tell them that I have had enough, and shoot them myself.”
... “Of course, that is a joke, I don’t own a gun, never want to, and would rather use a sledgehammer.
“The reason why I want rid of these people is simple. Just as I take the freedom to walk across a picket line as seriously as the right to stand on one, the freedom to express jokes and opinions is very dear to me.
“The moment creativity is constrained by the opinions and values of copycat complainers, religious fanatics or people trying to sell newspapers, we are in seriously deep trouble."

Good for Gerry Reynolds for understanding this very important point about liberty, and good for him also for ignoring the inevitable offence seeking, freedom-phobic handwringers who promptly complained and demanded the comments, made on a council blog, be removed as well as the editor of the blog who said he didn't see anything wrong with what Gerry Reynolds had said.

“It’s a blog and it is personal opinion. I don’t agree with all he says, or with his high opinions of Jeremy Clarkson. There is a comments box if anyone wanted to put forward an opposing view.
“He is not writing this as a council officer, and he is not representing Northings or Hi-arts. It is a person blog.”

In fact about the only thing a reasonable person could have against Gerry Reynolds is that he too is a public sector employee, occupying the position of Events and Promotions Manager at Highland Council. And since I feel that events and promotions management should not be a function of any level of government I'd suggest that his reward should be to be taken out and shot. Or possibly just his job since he sounds like someone who'd find something in the private sector without too much difficulty.

UPDATE - Gerry Reynolds himself has ducked all the gunfire going on to leave a thanks and a FYI that his blog is not a council one but a personal one on which he avoids talking about anything to do with his employer. Fair dos, correction noted.

Too bad

Click for linky

Cynthia Crawford, who worked as Lady Thatcher's personal assistant from 1978, said the Hollywood biopic was likely to upset her friends and family.
She said the opening scenes of The Iron Lady, starring Meryl Streep, were likely to be particularly distressing as they show her suffering from dementia.

I have exactly the same thing to say to offence seeking right wingers as to their offence seeking left-wing oppos. There is no right to not be offended and there never can be such a right because I for one would find the imposition of it extremely offensive (and no, I'm not saying that to be bloody difficult but because I'm a fucking adult my skin's thick enough that I don't need some paternalist twats wringing their hands on my behalf). If someone says something you don't like, don't listen. If they say something you think is wrong then debate it. If they make a film that you think is unfavourable to someone you admire in that it portrays them with dementia, even though they really do have dementia in real life, then just don't go and watch it. And so on.

This is not rocket science. Grow up and get over yourselves.

Hell hath no fury like a public sector union ridiculed

Oooh, Jezza, you are in trouble now. It was one thing having a pop at the Prime Mentalist of Britain and his eyesight, though I felt the term 'one-eyed Scottish idiot' just served to identify exactly which of the 600 or so idiots was being talked about in case anyone didn't catch the name, but how very dare you use a typically hyperbolic expression that only a attention seeking moron with a Pavlovian response to take offence to almost anything would take literally when talking about the heroic public sector workers.

Heroic workers

Within hours, public servants had bombarded the BBC with more than 4,700 complaints, but Dave Prentis, the general secretary of Unison, took matters further. He said Clarkson’s “revolting” comments were “totally outrageous, and they cannot be tolerated”.

Okay, more than 4,700 complaints from the two million or so that Dave Prentis claims were striking. I make that less than a quarter of one per cent who got sufficiently bent out of shape about it to complain. Or who knows, perhaps a quarter of one per cent is about the number who complained when they were told to by Dave Prentis? Or any combination of the two.

Or is it 4,700 out of the six million or so people in Britain who are either in the public sector or who depend on it for a living, making it well below a tenth of one per cent? Or should we go the whole way and just say that it's 4,700 out of the 50 million or so adults in the UK, making it less than one per cent of one per cent. I suppose given the minority rule model of democracy practised in the UK and favoured by left and right alike, but I feel especially the left, acting on the wounded feelings of one person in every ten thousand seems almost reasonable.

Clarkson should be sacked by the BBC, he said, adding that the union was “seeking urgent legal advice about what further action we can take against him and the BBC, and whether or not his comments should be referred to the police”.

Britain having long since given up any pretence of free speech. Look, Dave, this is a phrase that's been used by people in the same exaggerated style for decades. as pointed out in The Tele by James Delingpole.

... he was employing it as a figure of speech. I know this won't mean much to half the morons who complained to the BBC yesterday, but the English language is an extraordinarily rich and nuanced thing. Sometimes, when the speaker says that someone should be shot, he really does mean it: if, say, it's an officer giving orders to a firing squad about to shoot a deserter or a looter in 1915. More often, though, he doesn't. For at least the last fifty years "they should be taken out and shot," has been a socially acceptable, perfectly unexceptionable way of expressing colourfully and vehemently one's distaste towards a particular category of unpleasantness, be it striking Unison workers, revolting students, poorly performing members of your football team or the Lib Dem members of Cameron's cabinet. Context is all.

And that's easily confirmed by googling variants of the phrase and setting filters to exclude all the stuff from the past couple of days. In a couple of minutes I'd found people who'd said that health nuts should all be shot, jobless hippies should all be shot, fairweather motorbikers should all be shot, people who like Elvis Presley should all be shot, and somewhat ironically, someone who'd said journalists should all be shot. Jeremy Clarkson, having certainly started out as a journalist and I expect technically still being one, would Dave Prentis and the 4,700 complainers be leaping to his defence in the belief that he's about to be killed?

And calling in the police? For heaven's sake, Dave, do you have any idea how ridiculous that looks to people in the real world? If Clarkson had control over people who both had the means to take strikers out and shoot them and were willing to do it then maybe, just maybe, it might have been incitement. But Clarkson doesn't control the judicial system, police and military, does he? He doesn't even control what he describes as the pokey little motoring programme of which he's a third of the presenters, much less its entire fan base - very few of whom in the UK would possess guns and even fewer of whom would think his comments were anything more than his usual over the top style.

It's not a crime, Dave - no, not yet even in non-free speech Britain - if no rational person would take it seriously, and on that point what does it say about you and the 4,700 complainers that you do seem to take it seriously? I mean, if they really think a right wing bigmouth like Clarkson would mean it when he says he'd have people shot and could follow up on it would they themselves be dragging people into the street if Ed Milivanilliband had said it?

And now before I go any further, a mandatory blog warning in the spirit of regulations that don't yet exist but might one day. Readers with recent surgical stitches may be advised to look away now.

In a rant worthy of Clarkson himself, Mr Prentis suggested children watching the programme “could have been scared and upset by his aggressive statements”.

Ahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha. Ahahahahahahahaha. Ahahah. Hoohoohoohoo. Ahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha. Ahahahahahaha.

Dave, are you that desperate to score a point or are you actually clinically delusional? Look, this is how the BBC describe The One Show: "Magazine show with topical reports, features and interviews from around the UK."Do you really think any child of the narrow age group that is old enough to understand what was said but too young to recognise it as nothing more than exaggeration for cheap laugh (which of course was the reaction it got in the studio, and is probably the kind of thing that helps children learn what not to take literally) would be watching? I don't mean in the room at the same time it was on, I mean looking and listening and paying attention to the content. I'd suggest the number to be hovering right around zero with even less remembering it by the next morning, though I'll concede that there might be a few whose heads were turned to the TV by loving but very PC and extremely fucked up parents who whispered, "That nasty man on telly says he wants to take mummy and daddy away from you forever." They might still be upset because some tool of a union boss keeps bloody going on about.

Seriously, Dave, this is almost the right-on version of Godwin's Law. "Won't someone think of the chiiiiiiiiiiiiiiildren" is the last refuge of a scoundrel, and when someone resorts to it it's a good sign that their argument holds less weight than a paper bag that's been left in a puddle of piss for a month and won't smell much better. For that reason alone I think Dave Prentis loses any credibility and forfeits the argument.

We could call it Lovejoy's Law.

Pish of the Day redux: dessert course

In the comments the Ambush Predator wondered what our fishing averse tourist David Copp might find if he tried a bit of self-googling. When I looked earlier links to articles about his whining that fishermen catch fish and bring them ashore dead rather than swimming around in little bowls appeared about halfway down. I checked again just now and I saw one that wasn't there earlier, and it's tone is, shall we say, less than neutral. In fact the Irish Independent is just heaping more ridicule on the man, and doing it well enough that I'm just going to have to quote the whole thing.

David Copp (46) brought his family on a break to Devon and had a horrid time.

He was shocked -- shocked! I tells ya -- when he was confronted by the appalling vista of 12 crates of dead fish which, he says, were really smelly and left his two children ,aged seven and nine, "quite distressed".

Now, it should be pointed this happened at Ilfracombe Harbour, a working fishing village and the crates were there to be taken out to sea to be used as bait by the local trawlers.

But that's not good enough for our thin-skinned hero and his overly sensitive children, no sirree Bob.

In fact, after the local trawlermen basically told him to feck off and pointed out that when you're in a fishing harbour there is a very good chance that you might bump into fish, he contacted the local newspaper to complain and said: "It's not the sort of thing you want to see on holiday, there was a real stench. These people should be a bit more considerate of holidaymakers."

Yeah, those nasty fishermen and their . . . fish.

Although I do have some sympathy for the man.

After all, I once went down to a dairy farm in the country and there I was shocked to see some cows.

I couldn't sleep for days because of the trauma.

Sarcasm - not the lowest form of humour, sometimes an essential dose of common sense and often the only choice when someone is acting like a colossal dick.

Pish of the day

Pop quiz: what do you expect to find in the harbour of a British fishing village or town? I know the industry is a shadow of its former self but I'd still hope that most people of my age, give or take ten years, would probably say things like harbour walls, jetties, boat ramps, chandlers... oh, and since there's a bit of a clue in the word 'fishing' there, probably some fishing boats. Cynics, and I'd count myself among them, might expect sheltered, state edumacatified townies with little ability to picture the source of what's on their plate to be surprised to find fishing boats in harbours, but surely not someone in their 40s. Surely not.

Oh no, you've got to be kidding.

... when David Copp came across a fishing trawler moored in Ilfracombe Harbour he took great offence and complained about the “disgusting” smell.
The 46-year-old was outraged that his children, aged seven and nine, had been forced to endure the sight of 12 crates of dead fish and crabs, piled up on the quayside.

Oh, the humanity! Er, piscinity? Whatever.  (Image from here.)

Look, David, you peanut, it's a fishing harbour. Fish-ing. Har-bour. What the hell did you expect to see there? Bubble pits? A petting zoo? Disney's little mermaid?

He said the ordeal had left them “quite distressed” and demanded to know why the harbourmaster was not more considerate to tourists.

Yes, David, you demand those inconsiderate fishing people trying to make a living supplying seafood be evicted and replaced with Ariel and her mermaid friends, just so it doesn't upset your kids. Or not.

AAAAAAAARGH! DADDY, IT'S COMING FOR ME! 

“There were flies flying around and the smell was awful,” he said. “The ship was just sat there not doing anything, and there were 12 crates of dead crabs and fish just lying there covered in flies."

Yes, David, because they'd just been pulled out of the sea not long before and had not yet been cleaned and gutted. Did you think fishing boats just lower nets and bring the catch up already boxed? Who would kill and box the fish down there? Well, apart from that creepy red headed mermaid, of course. She looks like she'd murder anything else with fins just for shits and giggles, and could probably be persuaded to package them up ready for the supermarket in exchange for your children's souls. But otherwise ten seconds rational thought should have told David Copp that what he was seeing was pretty much what he should expect to see.

But instead he rang up and complained.

Mr Copp called Ilfracombe harbourmaster Rob Lawson to complain about the smell that had emanated from The Lady of Lundy trawler before calling the North Devon Journal to air his woes.
[...]
“He was very upset that he had come across the boxes of fish and thought it was entirely inappropriate and not a good sight or smell,” [Mr Lawson] said.

I'm glad to see that unlike my last post on offence seeking there's no report of any apologies being made here. Rob Lawson simply explained the facts of life in a working fishing harbour, though with apparently limited success.

Mr Lawson tried to explain that fishermen depended on the daily catch for their livelihoods and that it was a common site on a working quayside.
[...]
“I explained the workings of the harbour and that it was a working quay and that while it was not ideal, sometimes this happened.
“But he didn’t calm down, he went to the local newspaper and then when they printed his complaints, he came back to me to see what I had to say.”

So having blown a good opportunity to educate his kids about where food comes from in favour of looking up the actual phone number of the actual harbourmaster and picking up an actual phone to complain, this tool then compounds it by whinging to the papers when the harbourmaster doesn't take his complaint about fishing boats in a fishing harbour terribly seriously. Jesus Christ on a jetski!

How things have been resolved is not reported, but I understand that the suggestion that Birdseye will be redesigning their packaging is a rumour and has no foundation.

I still call Australia ho... a bit touchy

Qantas (the post title is from their advertising jingle, "I still call Australia home") has set the offence seekers a tweeting and a twatting recently. They're racists, you know, oh yes, really. Oh, they've apologised of course, but the secret's out now. Racists to the very core, every single one of them.

Qantas celebrating indigenous Australian culture with VH-EBU
"Nalanji Dreaming" - the intolerant racist pricks

And what have they done, you may ask? Well, they only went and ran a competition on Twatter for a couple of tickets to the annual Bledisloe Cup rugby match between Australia's Wallabies and the New Zealand All Blacks, and get this, they asked entrants how they'd support the Aussie team. Can you believe that? Raaaaaci... wait, what? Sorry about this. I must have missed something obviously racist somewhere. Let me just re-check.

To win, competitors had to tell Qantas via Twitter how they intended to show their support for the Wallabies at the match.

Ah, there, see? Raaaci... no, actually that isn't really, is it? Ah, it's the winners because they chose to dress as their favourite player.

Charles Butler, from his twitter account pek_anan, promised to ''dress as Radike Samo. Complete with Afro Wig, Aus rugby kit and facepaint''. For this, he won the free tickets.

Yes, it's the winners, the racist bastards, and so Qantas are racist bastards for picking them. Radike Samo must have been terribly wounded to find out that he's the favourite player of such appalling rednecks, and no doubt he'd have blanked the pair of them if he'd run into them. Except that actually he posed for a photo with them and was completely cool with the whole thing.

"I don't know what all the fuss is about. These guys were actually paying me a tribute. It was a bit of fun and I think it was great they regard me as their favourite Wallaby. I didn't have an issue with it at all. I was glad to be in a photo with them, so I don't know why anyone is getting worked up - that sort of reaction is just silly." - Radike Samo

And to be fair, if your favourite sporting hero is black with a big afro (actually he's from Fiji but I don't know if there's such a thing as a Fijfro) and you're white with just regular white guy hair it's pretty difficult to dress up as your idol without the face paint and the wig. I mean, rugby players don't really have permanent shirt numbers so if you don't make some kind of effort with the star's distinguishing marks nobody's going to know. "Who are you supposed to be, then, eh?"

Uh, don't laugh... Radike Samo? Hey, my eyes are up here.

Except you look like every other supporter wearing merchandising so probably nobody will even ask.

And anyway, how the hell's it racist to dress up and even get made up like someone you admire? Was Lenny Henry racist for whiting up and putting on a grey wig to impersonate Steve Martin (about 3:15 in) because he thought Steve Martin is a comedy legend? And if it's not about whether or not it's someone admirable then was it racist of Dave Chappelle to do the sketch about the white supremacist who didn't know he was black (content warning: do not drink coffee near keyboards approaching 1:15)? Or is this another one of those things where it's only racist if white people do it?

And above all what's it got to do with Qantas? All they did was run the comp and since Radike Samo himself was clearly not offended in any way, if anything a bit flattered by the sound of it, why shouldn't they choose these guys as the winners?

"Shame on @QantasAirways for backing such ignorance."

Oh, do shut your fucking face hole, whoever you are. Get it into your head: expression of admiration for a great player, okay? Said great player thinks it was awesome, okay? Said player plus the Australian Rugby Union support the two fans, right? Two-fifths of fuck all to do with everyone else, d'you see? Unless... unless these people crying racist think that Radike Samo is incapable of deciding for himself when he's being insulted. Yes, that must be it. It was an insult after all and Radike Samo needs it explained to him by these well meaning white people who... hey, wait. Isn't that a little paternalist, thinking Samo can't decide for himself if he should be offended by something? In fact isn't it really quite patronising? So if these people do think that the fans were insulting him and Samo just wasn't getting it, doesn't that make them...

RAAAACISTS!

Probably not, of course, and if they really did it'd be up to Radike Samo to decide if it was offensive to him and/or racist, albeit well meaning racism. No, what we have here is classic offence seeking, people desperate to be seen as right-on and PC and taking offence on behalf of other people. They must surely know it wasn't meant as anything other than a tribute to a player by a couple of admiring fans, and they certainly know that Samo took it in the spirit it was meant because he's told everybody. And since the two fans and Qantas know that they know it's a mite disappointing that they caved in, took down the photos and issued apologies. Good on the ARU and Radike Samo for being the ones to tell it like it is.

"... that sort of reaction is just silly."

This isn't about racism or prejudice. It's about self righteous pricks getting a hard on playing Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells, except the tweets are probably coming from places like Kirribilli and South Yarra. Someone must be running a course.

Non Sequitur by Wiley Miller

Second hand morris dancing

Clearly it's a filthy habit and non-morris dancers might come into contact with bells and handkerchiefs, so The Swan and Three Cygnets pub in Durham was quite right to ban a bunch of morris dancers.

"A woman member of staff hollered 'no bells' at us.
"One of our group, wearing his morris dance gear, went in first and was served a pint of beer without question.
"But when two of our lady members followed wearing bells they were told to get out."

So they went round the corner to a different pub instead, possibly with a whack-fol-a-dildo though if so it appears to have gone unreported.

Of course nobody is insane enough to think that there's such a thing as passive morris dancing or that there it'd be a 'public health' problem if there was.* Not yet anyway, although Wikipedia mentions that some dances involve a couple of clay tobacco pipes and you just know that that must be upsetting someone somewhere.** The morris dancers weren't chucked out for being morris dancers but because the pub had a ban on music, and someone in the pub decided that bells on shoes counted as being musical. Probably bollocks but the way things are in Britain these days I wouldn't be at all surprised if the pub could cop a fine for being in breach of some licence or other if any music was played, and nor is it a stretch to imagine that some over-zealous local authority prick wouldn't say that morris bells, if that's the right term, are music even without accordions and fiddles joining in.

But here's the thing, it's their pub and that means they get to decide who drinks there, just as is the case for the Half Moon which was happy enough to take the morris dancers' money and serve them with beer. Yes, the morris dancers have their noses out of joint because they couldn't drink in the first pub they went into, but such is life - presumably if it had simply been too full to get near the bar they'd have just gone to another pub without thinking anything of it. As it happens this pub is weird about people wearing bells and the other one wasn't. As long as at least one pub was prepared to have them - and the Durham I recall had enough pubs that I'm sure there'd be far more than just one - who cares? Let The Swan and Three Cygnets become whatever kind of pub it wants to and cater for whatever kind of clientele fits in with that. If you can have biker pubs and gay pubs and student pubs and so on why shouldn't there also be a nice quiet pub for librarians or whatever? Just as long as they're not all like that and fat bearded men who like to dress in white and wave sticks at each other to music have somewhere to drink as well. And since that seems to be the case I'd say it's all working pretty well.***

Now, why can't the same thing apply to smokers?


* I believe 'public health' is the correct term for not letting someone do something they want to do on the grounds that you think it's bad for them or that you just don't like it, and possibly making up a lot of crap to justify the restrictions you're demanding.
** Good.
*** Meaning it's either a bit of a slow news day or The Teletubbygraph has jumped onto the offence seeking bandwagon.

YouTube's sense of humour failure

The Go The Fuck To Sleep book is probably pretty well known by now what with the press it got when it came out and especially with the Samuel L Jackson reading. So it's slightly surprising that when Noni Hazlehurst, who I'd never heard of but apparently was on the Aussie Play School for twenty years or so, put up a clip of herself reading the book Play School style, and which amused me enough to blog and embed it here, YouTube pulled it.

Noni, to her credit, has promptly put it back up again, and bloody right too since other versions of it were never taken down.

Former Playschool presenter Noni Hazlehurst says the decision to remove a recording of her reading mock children’s book Go The F--- to Sleep from YouTube was ‘‘laughable’’ and ‘‘absolutely ridiculous’’.
The video was pulled late last night only to be posted again about 5am today.
[...]Her video was removed, but others including those read by German arthouse film director Werner Herzog and American actor Samuel L. Jackson stayed online.
‘‘It’s ridiculous, absolutely ridiculous, and to leave all the others up there is even more ridiculous,’’ Hazlehurst said.
‘‘The hypocrisy just makes me laugh.’’
[...]
‘‘Anyone with a tenth of a brain would realise this is not meant for kids,’’ she said.

The trouble is, Noni, that some people who look at YouTube probably have less than a tenth of a brain.

A YouTube spokesman said no comment would be made about individual videos, but they could be removed because a user had flagged them as offensive or because the person who had posed (sic) the video was underage.

Since Noni Hazlehurst is in her fifties it sounds like the latter. I'm speculating here, but I reckon some softcock, and sadly it's probably an Aussie who saw her name and thought 'Oh, this will be sweet and harmless', got offended by it and complained to YouTube rather than take the more practical option of turning it (the fuck) off. Samuel L. Jackson's version? Well, he's an actor who says bad words in lots of his films so our mystery whinger(s) may never have come across his version. Werner Herzog? Arthouse film director? Hmmm, ditto I expect. But sweet Noni Hazlehurst who used to - she's not presented the show for a decade - sing songs down the TV at toddlers and make stories with teddy bears and dolls, that Noni Hazlehurst going all potty mouthed? Oh no, the childhood of some 30-somethings is irrevocably shattered. It can't be borne, so it must be banned.

And of course SupineTube caved in.

Fellas, it's aimed at adults. It's humour for adults who can laugh at the frustrations an adult may feel when trying to get a noisy baby to shut the fuck up and give them a little peace. And maybe, according to Noni Hazlehurst herself, a bit of a warning.

The book and her reading are a bit of fun, she says, ''but there's a serious underlying issue. People need to understand when they're talking about how nice it would be to have a baby that it's a huge undertaking.''
[...]
''Many of the kids I entertained are parents themselves now, and I think it's pointless saying, 'Make sure your child has a lovely environment to sleep in'. I think we have to speak in a language people understand.''

This subtle distinction is apparently lost on YouTube, who'd rather pull something not meant for a general audience because someone's had a whine about it, even though other versions remain on their site. It's a little tempting to go trawling through the place looking for any overtly religious damnation-to-sinners type videos and flag as offensive as many as I can just to see whether or not they pull any of those, but that'd be unfair to anyone who actually did get their video removed. Instead I think I might make and put up a video myself and then log in as someone else with some bullshit complaint about how it offends me, and then we'll see what they do.

In the meantime, here's Noni Hazlehurst hosted by EyeTube...



Complaints may be addressed to gothefuckaway@tellsomeonewhogivesashit.com

By any other name...

I'm all for the principle of everyone having the right to their day in court but sometimes I do wonder how the hell some people expect to have their day without being openly laughed at. The list of legal actions falling somewhere between the frivolous and the outright ludicrous is ever increasing, and from America we have one that may just top them all. A prison inmate, Gerard Domond, is suing the prison service for US$50 million for...

Actually, before I continue I should perhaps warn readers to carefully put down any food or drink well away from the computer and swallow anything they'd already taken a bite or slurp of before sitting back down and reading on, as this has the potential to ruin a few keyboards. Done that? Okay. Prison inmate Gerard Domond is suing the prison service for US$50 million for calling him a prison inmate. Yes, really. It's stigmatising him, apparently.

THE family of a cold-blooded killer serving 25 years to life in state prison for shooting a man in the head complained he was being stigmatised by the use of the term "inmate".

Okay, well it seems it's actually his sister doing the suing, but still. And why does she have a problem with her prison inmate brother being called a prison inmate?

The label "implies that our brother is locked up for the purpose of mating with other men," Marie Domond claimed in a lawsuit against New York State Correctional Services Department.

Yes, her surname is Domond and not Malaprop, and since her dear brother has been locked up since 1987 I find it difficult to believe that she's only just heard that he's been referred to as an inmate and that she doesn't actually understand what the word means. For her benefit a quick visit to dictionary corner is in order (Webster's since we're interested in the American English definition), and it says anyone who is lawfully detained so as to take it up the Gary Glitter with monotonous regularity. No, of course it doesn't. It says this:

I've checked a couple of other dictionaries and nowhere is there any suggestion that the word inmate implies any particular purpose in locking up people, least of all the specific purpose of encouraging hot botty man loving. In fact it doesn't even necessarily mean that someone is locked up, although that is a common enough usage that the word probably does imply that someone is forcibly confined. Not that that helps the Domonds since Gerard is without doubt forcibly confined. So why is...

Acting as her own lawyer...

Ah. I've never been a fan of that lawyers' sneery line about someone representing themselves having a fool for a client, but I have to admit that there's probably something in it now and then. This might be one of those times.

Acting as her own lawyer, Marie insists: "The suggestive nature of the word is disgraceful. This cruel psychological programming has weighed heavily on our emotional and psychological well-being.
[...]
"I couldn't understand why no one recognized that somebody being labeled an inmate, why they wouldn't recognize that."

Oh, good grief.

"It's something that's bothered me for a long time."

But, and I'm assuming for the moment that all of that is genuinely meant, it doesn't seem to have bothered her enough either to have questioned why nobody else has been bothered by the use of the word over the centuries or to have done anything about it until only a couple of years before Gerard may get out. Ignoring the possibility that fingers may be crossed in the hope of a fat windfall coinciding with whatever they call release on licence in New York state, it doesn't seem like it's been much of a priority, does it?

"To me it just sounded very wrong," said Marie.

Oh, well, if it sounds wrong then clearly it must stop and he be referred to as something else forthwith.

How about 'murderer'?

The Shut-the-Möhne-and-Eder-dams-down-without-hurting-anyone-ers

As ably blogged by Longrider and Max Farquar I see that the remake of The Dambusters, which I've been looking forward to, has caved under politically correct pressure over the real life name of Wing Commander Guy Gibson's dog, which, in case either of my readers (hello Mum) weren't already aware, was a black labrador called Nigger. Actually I think my mum would have seen the original before they began changing the name for PC reasons. As far as I can remember I have only ever seen the sanitised version in which no dog's name is also a derogatory term for a person of any particular ethnicity, but in which I'm sure Germans were still referred to as 'Jerries', 'Krauts' and possibly even 'filthy Huns' (with an option on 'Boche') and well over a thousand of them were eventually killed by the good guys in an operation that would now be prohibited by the Geneva Convention. Clearly bad-mouthing a whole nation before killing off large numbers of its civilians and destroying civilian infrastructure is a mild character flaw compared to the swivel-eyed racist psychosis that must be necessary to call your dog 'Nigger', but I digress.

The remake is being produced by David Frost and Peter Jackson and scripted by Stephen Fry, so it's safe to conclude that the people behind the film are bright and well aware of the historical facts, but of course they are also aware that the word offends a lot of people and they've known for some time that this was going to be a bone of contention.

[Peter Jackson] said, when announcing his plans in 2006: "It is not our intention to offend people. But really you are in a no-win, damned-if-you-do and damned-if-you-don't scenario.
"If you change it, everyone's going to whinge and whine about political correctness. And if you don't change it, obviously you are offending a lot of people inadvertently."

To be pedantic, Pete, people are taking offence where you are offering none, but we all get what you were saying. To be honest I'm not strongly in either camp and if you're adapting an historical account for the purposes of entertainment it's not too big a deal if changes are made, right? It's not like you're rewriting history books or making a documentary and deliberately including a 'fact' that you know to be incorrect, eh?

Except...

Except that for a lot of people these days mainstream entertainment is nearly all the exposure to history they get, and while artistic licence is to be expected from the world of fiction, movies and TV - especially the latter two - when you then slap 'based on a true story' all over the posters you will inevitably get people leaving the theatres and turning off the TV assuming that what they saw on the screen was what actually happened. Hells bells, there are a small number of people out there who can't distinguish between a fictional character and the actor or actress who plays the role on TV, it's hardly surprising that, thanks to the magic of Hollywood, there are people who think that an Enigma machine was first captured by the US Navy in 1942 rather than the Royal Navy the previous year (and months before the US had even entered the war) or, to stick with just one nationality, that Apollo 13 was saved largely by the guy out of CSI: New York while the astronauts on board nearly came to blows (all of which was politely corrected by astronaut Jim Lovell on the DVD commentary). I can understand why it's done - the makers of U571 wanted bums 'asses' on seats in American cinemas and sticking to history in those bits of Apollo 13 would have meant having to increase an already large cast and losing some good dramatic tension - and clearly we can't expect a little red warning sign to flash up saying 'this bit didn't actually happen this way'. However, the problem is that people do go away having been told that the film is based on reality but crucially without knowing which bits were not. Peter Jackson worries about inadvertently offending people but arguably Hollywood has a track record of inadvertently offending people who value history by, again inadvertently, dropping certain historical facts down various memory holes.

As I said I've been looking forward to the Dambusters remake since I first heard about it, mainly because I like special effects to be convincing enough for me not to notice that there was a special effect and what was available in the 50s stood out like a dog's balls.* And while I'm not a history pedant I was also hoping that Peter Jackson, having already stood up to the legions of the professionally thin-skinned and offended by refusing to rename The Two Towers on the grounds that not many would confuse fantasy Middle Earth thousands of years ago with New York on September 11th 2001, would show the same stuff again and not change the dog's name. And that wasn't the only reason (my bold):

Stephen Fry, the actor who is writing the new script, was asked to come up with alternative names for Nigger.
But Sir David Frost, the executive producer, is reported to have rejected all the options Fry offered.
Sir David has been quoted as saying: "Guy sometimes used to call his dog Nigsy, so I think that's what we will call it.
"Stephen has been coming up with other names but this is the one I want."

But that was then and this is now and it seems that in the remake the dog, and incidentally 'dog' is Australian slang for a despicable person who's a bit of a scumbag, is now to be called 'Digger', which by the way is a nickname for Australian and New Zealand soldiers that dates back to World War One. Presumably this is no worse than a thousand or more German civilians being casually referred to as Krauts, Jerries and filthy Huns before being drowned in the dark following the destruction of the local dam.

Of course the film makers can spend their money how they please and make whatever changes they feel they need to in order to sell as many cinema tickets as possible and maximise their return. If they want to call the dog 'White Trash' knowing that a lot of people will call them on it then they're free to do so, and of course that would get just as much discussion as, well, as simply calling it anything other than 'Nigger'. And of course that's had the unintended consequence of making nearly everyone who'll see it well aware of what the dog was really called because the word is being used in articles about the new movie nearly as frequently as it was used in The Wire by black characters to refer to each other, which, presumably because it was being grittily realistic, was also not offensive though I'm not sure why the same would not apply to an equally realistic portrayal of something that happened two generations ago. It can't be just that a white guy is saying it because allowing people of one ethnicity to do something that people of another ethnicity may not would obviously be racist.

Musical interlude, apropos of nothing

Personally I feel they've missed a trick here. Stephen Fry, whose knowledge may be vast but whose intelligence I've doubted in the past due to his inability to grasp why politicians fiddling their expenses is wrong, could have written a script which sent a subtle message that this was how people thought in the 1940s and that doing so today would be frowned upon in the same way that, say for the sake of argument, bombing to destruction a dam causing mass civilian casualties would be. Sort of 'we did that then but we do not do it these days', or at least not on purpose if we can possibly avoid it.** But instead of that or even just an honest admission of historical fact we are again treading the path of political correctness.

Well, fair enough. No reason to avoid offending people if you don't have to, especially when you want them to be your paying audience. With that in mind when I go to see the movie I expect it to be completely inoffensive by being completely Kraut, Jerry and Hun free and by implying that Barns Wallace's genius was to design a bomb that would safely disable the dams' generators and drain the reservoirs without harming a soul, and perhaps even a brief apology to the Australian Defence Force at the end for using the word 'Digger' to name a dog. Perhaps many Diggers wouldn't care much and many Germans will be over it all by now, but if you're so desperate to be even handed about anything and everything that might cause someone somewhere a degree of offence then there isn't much option but to sanitise it completely. To do otherwise would be putting the interests of one group ahead of others and, er, just a wee bit prejudicial.


* Probably a dog called "Whitey" or something. Just to be on the safe side.
** Yes, I know it could be argued that sometimes we could have avoided it by not getting involved in a pointless and unnecessary war but I'm sure you get my point.

Unintended consequences of anti-tobacco zealotry

The Big Pharma sponsored anti-tobacco crusaders have had a couple of their ideas bounce back at them in the last few days. First is the news that the fact that no smoking signs actually outnumber smokers, or at least seem to what with laws requiring them to be put up just about everywhere imaginable, may actually be encouraging people to smoke. Remember this bit of TV from a few years back?



Partcularly the bit where he says that you immediately think of a black cat when someone tells you not to think of a black cat. Well, it seems that the no smoking message being plastered on every available surface is having a similar effect.

Easily confused

Via the Ranting Kingpenguin, a story of breathtaking offence seeking to the Nth degree. A persons who is a living, black woman with a lack of facial hair consistent with her gender claiming offence over the similarity she has with a scale model of a dead white guy with a beard you could insulate your roof with.

Yes, really.

For a poster advertising a primary school parents’ meeting, it is certainly unusual.
Using models, it depicts scientist Charles Darwin surrounded by an angry mob wielding flaming torches and makeshift weapons.
According to the school governor who created it, City executive David Moyle, it is a satirical joke about pushy middle-class parents demanding higher standards.

But...?

Yet when black headmistress Shirley Patterson saw it, she believed it represented her surrounded by white parents.

Do fucking what? What, did she think it was supposed to represent?

She reportedly compared it to a scene from Mississippi Burning, a film about the Ku Klux Klan’s racist lynchings...

Starring Morgan Freeman as Charles Darwin? Oh, wait, no.

... saying it left her ‘fearing for her and her family’s safety’.

Oh, please. Anyone with a torch is evocative of Deep South Klansmen lynchings? Really? Indiana Jones? The Statue of Liberty? The Fellowship of the Ring? Shall we go on?

Torch and a scale model. Also bearded.
RAAACIST!

Needless to say the constabularists were called in although they said there was no law against it, which is slightly surprisingly since the definition of racism seems to have been broadened to include anything that anyone anywhere might perceive as racist even if it's not aimed at their own race. But you just know that's not going to be the end of it, don't you?

Although the police realised Darwin was white, and said no crime had been committed, Southwark council insisted it had ‘appropriately’ investigated the ‘deeply disturbing’ poster.

Seriously, guys, the only thing that's deeply disturbing is how quickly some people are able to see a race issue in something so patently unrelated to anything to do with race, and even a fairly cursory investigation should have found that out simply by asking David Moyle.

He found the image on a website mocking ‘creationists’ angered by Darwin’s theory of evolution...

And a few minutes googling backs this up since I've found the same scene photographed from a different angle in a piece dated March 2009 about Darwin and the creationist/evolution argument. So you'd imagine the investigation would be over pretty quickly, eh?

I'm kidding. Of course you wouldn't. Not only is it a local council and almost certainly shot through with political correctness, but it's a Labour run council and likely more prone to PC bullshit anyway. And so inevitably...

‘A two-week investigation was carried out into the toy Charles Darwin’s ethnicity, before it was ruled “indeterminable”.
[...]
The Labour authority refused to reveal details of its inquiry – which involved half a dozen officers at a time when 500 jobs are set to be cut.
And it will not discuss how a model of a white, bearded, Victorian scientist could be confused with a black 21st century headmistress.

I doubt it's justifying its assessment of the image as disturbing either. Oh, sorry, not just disturbing but

“deeply disturbing and damaging to children”

Altogether now: Won't someone think of the chiiiiiiildren?

Fucking twats.

And the poor sod painted as a racist by this collection of idiot offence seekers, self righteous arsewipes, and bullying pricks? What of him? Well, having been suspended as a school governor over this lunatic claim he's not surprisingly thinking of taking his kids out of there and sending them to another school. Personally I think he has another lesson to learn.

"[...] as an ardent supporter of local government, I was taken aback by the reaction of the council, who not only fully endorsed the disproportionate reaction of the school management, but also contrived additional charges about the poster that had no relation at all to the original complaint.

An ardent supporter of local government, eh? Mr Moyle, I think I've just spotted your mistake.

Austria ≠ Australia

Click for linky

Per your own fucking article, folks, that'll be Austria, not Australia.

Austria's ORF network has so far banned a total of eight episodes, including one that features scientists Marie and Pierre Curie dying of radiation poisoning.

Australia didn't get a mention, although the softcocks at Channel Ten have since followed suit.

"All new and repeat Simpsons episodes are, as a matter of course, reviewed before going to air in case sensitive issues are detected, particularly during natural disasters," a Ten spokesman said.

"In light of this, we have decided to rest certain episodes that refer to nuclear power storylines." Ten screens The Simpsons on its digital channel, Eleven.

Look, you could find a reason that something in every single episode of every single program ever made might offend or upset someone somewhere. Everyone has sensitive issues at some time or another. What are you going to do, broadcast nothing just to be on the safe side? Of course not. You assume that if someone sees something they don't like they'll reach for the remote and turn off or over. And guess what? That's what they fucking do. Well, normal people anyway. I realise there is a small minority of DOTWs that will carry on watching because it'll help them achieve offencegasm.* But everybody can tell the difference between cartoons and reality, and if one is an uncomfortable reminder of the other they're capable of deciding not to watch. They don't fucking need you to decide for them. Adelaide Now! has a poll up on the subject on that article if anyone's interested.

Meanwhile at The Teletubbygraph they've managed to link detection of trace amounts of Iodine 131 in Oxfordshire and Scotland to Japan's ongoing problems at Fukushima in a single headline, before going on to say in the article that actually it might not be related at all.

But, just to clarify, Iodine-131 is also used as a radiopharmaceutical.
"So it might just be worth the people checking there that this is not some slight release, just above background, associated with people washing their pharmaceuticals down the drains in Scotland.

And then adding

The risk to human health at the levels that they are talking about, I think, are basically zero.

Nowhere do they mention that ¹³¹I has a half life of just over a week and so in a couple of months where it came from will be moot since effectively there won't be any more than you'd find normally.

in other words it's the usual bullshit doom laden headline before clarifying in the main article, at a point which the attention deficit generation rarely reach of course, that actually there's nothing to worry about.


* Disgusted Of Tunbridge Wells.

"Restorative" justice

Click for linky

Oh FFS.

The woman officer had visited Purbeck School in Wareham, Dorset, last month to talk to the boys about a playground scrap as her role as a school liaison officer.
It is understood she was called the names 'PC Nipples' and 'PC Ball Sack' while she was out of the room and was told of the remarks moments later.
The boys were sent home and their parents were informed about the incident that night and asked to attend the restorative justice conference which took place last week.

And what happens in one of those, then?

In this instance the woman PC, a sergeant and two other officers met with the boys to make them aware of the consequences their behavior had on the victim.

Victim? Oh, Jesus. I'd explain how ridiculous this is except that one of the parents already has.

"I presume this woman officer will be called other names during her policing career, is she going to hold a restorative justice conference with all of those who do it?"

Quite. I can be contacted by email if PC Thin-Skinned Fragile Chinwobbling Timewaster wants to talk to me about what I've just called her, and in that unlikely event rather than apologise I'll suggest that she could do herself, her sex, her career and her profession some favours in the image department by learning how and when to put down a couple of pretty pathetic comments by teenage boys who, stolen wank mags aside, probably haven't caught sight of a nipple since they were weaned and whose own ball sacks contain little of interest to anyone. You ought to have been able to walk in there and reduce them all to about an inch high each in front of their entire peer group, but instead you chose victimhood. How's that going to play with your colleagues? Are they going to wonder if someone who can't take the pressure of duty at a school without becoming a victim of a few puerile comments can be relied on when the chips are down? Are some of them going to think that PC Delicate might be best off behind a desk in an interior office or even, dare I say it, in front of an oven while the boys and girls who can take the stick that goes with the job go out and get on with it?*

Frankly you'd do everyone a favour if you just came out and said that you were just being officious because the kids gave you an opportunity to do so and you thought 'fuck it, why not'.


* I freely admit that I couldn't take the stick and would probably have quit or been sacked or jailed inside a year if I'd joined the police. Which is why I, you know, didn't. Just a thought.

Offence seeking for toddlers

Okay, Rastafarian mice seem a bit lame, though not as much as mice with cat hair stuck in them, but racist? Oh, please, people, try try try try to get a fucking grip.

... Rastamouse has provoked more than a hundred complaints to the corporation with parents expressing fears the show is racist and encouraging the use of slang.
...
One mother on the Mumsnet forum, using the name TinyD4ncer, says she is concerned her child be attacked for repeating some of the Jamaican Patois phrases used by the mouse.
"The thing I'm most worried about is her saying the words like 'Rasta' and going up to a child and saying (these) things ... my child is white and I feel if she was to say this to another child who was not white that it would be seen as her insulting the other child."

Okay, I know I had a pop at wiggaz in a footnote the other day but a toddler copying a cartoon Rastafarian rodent is hardly in the same league. And hey, TinyDuncer, don't you think that deciding for another ethnic group whether something is offensive to them instead of leaving it for them to decide is maybe a bit patronising? A bit racist even? No?

Actually it isn't because it's not about other ethnicities at all, is it? What did you say again?

... my child is white and I feel if she was to say this to another child who was not white that it would be seen as her insulting the other child.

This is just your middle class right-on white guilt, isn't it? It's not about kids upsetting each other but about how your own self image and how you want to be perceived among your peers, especially the white ones I expect, am I right?

Another parent, on Bumpandbaby.com, says: "just watched a couple videos .. i'm going to say it is racist,"...

Thank you, o discarder of capitals and wise suppository of wisdom on what is racist. We'll all come to you the next time we need a ruling on that, shall we? Arrogant cunt.

And how many of these tools are there? It's not going to be many, is it? It never usually is.

The BBC has received complaints from six viewers that the animated show stereotypes black people, while another 95 have complained about the language used in the show.

101. All this for 101 complaints. I'm tempted to make it 102 by writing in to complain that it stereotypes fucking rats and sign it Mister Squeaky.

Grow up, the fucking lot of you. If someone's offended you'll know and they'll get over it. They have no more right to live their entire life in blissful unoffendedness than you or I. And to prove it I'll tell you that I'm fucking offended that these witterings came from the mouths of people who are apparently the same species as me, and I find it deeply embarrassing. And offensive. Actually doubly offensive because I hate having to take the BBC's side. That's you all told, but don't feel obliged to do or say anything - I'll get over it.

See how it works? Good. Go practice.

Non Sequitur

It's funny that so often lately I've blogged about something that has infuriated me and then later found that Non Sequitur cartoonist Wiley Miller seems to have either read my mind or thought about the same thing. Or maybe it's just chance that I keep seeing applicability to stuff I've been rating about in his strip. Whatever it is it's happened again, and so bearing in mind recent posts on freedom of speech, offence seekers and the way they think I wanted to share these two with you.

Click for links to originals

PS - This one came after, and while it doesn't have any bearing on what I've been talking about it made Oi larf.

Un expected news: the BBC caves in.

Twice in quick succession, in fact. Most recently to Mexico, of course, because a proud nation can so easily be brought to its knees by jibes about its cuisine from some shortarse Brummie TV presenter with a famous dislike of any food that looks like it comes from further than Kent, along with some old stereotypes that nobody takes seriously anymore.

The BBC said it had now written to the ambassador to say it was sorry if the programme caused offence.

And also to Japan because of the A-bomb comments on QI, because sixty-five years is too soon even for what were very light hearted remarks.

We are very sorry for any offence caused.

The usual format non-apology apologies again, you'll have noticed. Why can't a 'spokesperson' just be fucking honest one day and say that they're not bloody sorry and that this culture of offence seeking is the worst kind of one-sided, passive-aggressive, bullshit control freakery, and it says far more about the people who practise it than those whom they seek to silence. For Christ's fucking sake, Stephen Fry has had to cancel plans to go to Japan because of this! Watch the fucking clip - the poor bastard is being nailed to a fucking cross despite the fact he barely said anything beyond Yamaguchi being either the luckiest or unluckiest man ever depending on how you looked at it. And what the fuck's wrong with that? Yamaguchi was unarguably very unlucky to have been present and on the receiving end for both hostile uses of a nuclear weapon, yet he was also incredibly lucky to have survived both. An entirely factual remark delivered with no hint of disrespect (a word I don't like to use because it's one of the favourite verbal whores of the professionally offended). Is it because Fry hosts the show and sits in the middle that some Japanese are blaming him for the less sensitive (but still very lightweight) comments of other panelists, or does the translation into Japanese imply something beyond Fry's fairly neutral and factual remark? Could be the latter.

Roland Kelts, a half-Japanese author who had been due to work on the parts of the production due to be filmed in the country, suggested the reaction to the QI comments had been over the top.

"In video footage, one can easily see, if one speaks and understands English fluently, that the hosts are tiptoeing around the obvious offence, trying to strike a balance between humour and respect."

He added: "In this age of instantaneous visual language, all subtlety was lost, especially on reactionary right-wing Japanese folks keen to kick up a fight."

Maybe, but I also worry that the 21st Century is becoming the age of the professional offence seeker and the professional apologiser (usually know as an unnamed spokesperson for the offending organisation).

Well I'm offended too. I'm offended by the way these constant apologies make my native country look like a bunch of weak-kneed, insecure, spineless, contemptible softcocks who are so pathetically worried about what other people think that they don't dare have an opinion or a thought of their own in case someone else doesn't agree, takes it the wrong way or finds it even vaguely upsetting for almost any reason whatsoever. It reflects poorly on... ancient nation... noble... proud history... national pride... particularly disappointed that apparent admission makes Britons look guilty of accusations made... implies we are ignorant and xenophobic savages... deeply hurtful...  cultural values...  etc, etc, etc.
Fill in the fucking blanks and send me a cheque.*

Alternatively just harden the fuck up next time and explain to whoever complains that the right to free speech means accepting that in return for being able to say what you wish you must accept that you may not always like what you hear, that there is not and cannot be a right not to be offended, that how one person chooses to interpret and react to the remarks and opinions of another is their own choice, and above all that if any of this might lead to problems then not watching the TV, or indeed not ever even leaving the fucking house, is the only practical course of action.

And if that offends anyone, that's too fucking bad. I try to be honest enough to let you know that I'd be lying if I said I was sorry.


* Actually I will think seriously about drafting a letter taking offence at the constant capitulation to offence seekers. It might be interesting to see what sort of response it gets.

Useful idiot wants thought police to get money for her.

Oh for fuck's sake.

A Mexican has instructed lawyers to bring a test case against Top Gear after her countrymen were branded 'lazy, feckless and flatulent' on the hit show.
Iris de la Torre, a jewellery design student in London, is bringing the claim under a new equality law. Her lawyers claim it could cost the BBC £1million in damages.
They have demanded the hit BBC1 motoring show is taken off the air and an investigation made into the comments.

For holding a fucking opinion, even if it is a bit of a childish one?! And only the other day they were saying how things had apparently now reached the heresy by thought stage.

On Sunday night's show, Richard Hammond was discussing a Mexican sports car and suggested that vehicles reflect the national characteristics of the country they are from.
He added: 'Mexican cars are just going to be lazy, feckless, flatulent, leaning against a fence asleep looking at a cactus with a blanket with a hole in the middle on as a coat.’

Oh, dear, poor poor Iris. God, being a Mexican in England and dealing with that must be like, oh I don't know, maybe being English and living in Australia where everyone calls you a pom and jokes that you're from a nation of people who can't cook and won't wash properly. Oh, hey, that's... that's awful. Where's my cheque? Who do I sue? C'mon, Iris, help me out here. We're in this together, you and me and other folk oppressed by the hurtful thoughts of other people.

Or we could just, y'know, grow the fuck up and laugh it off. You are, if reports are to be believed, thirty years old. Thirty! You're not a child anymore, Iris. You're a grown woman, for fuck's sake. Isn't it time to act like an adult instead of a kid whining about what someone else said in the fucking playground? Or is there a possibility that a big fat cheque for basically doing nothing at all other than holding an opinion and taking umbrage that not everyone shares it just too big a fucking lure? For what it's worth I'd agree that Hammond's comments are probably ignorant in a literal sense, especially about the food - just watch the show for a while and you'll see how his laughable unadventurous and picky eating is a running joke whenever they go abroad. And the whole idea that cars reflect national character is silly anyway. Aussie cars don't chuck a sickie when the cricket's on and British made cars come with a satnav that doesn't know anything about anywhere beyond the end of your own road.

'I was shocked at what the BBC allowed to be broadcast. I have never had a bad experience in the UK due to my nationality.'

Well you can probably fucking expect a few now, though not because of your nationality so much as your character. It took me less than ten minutes online to find both your website and that of a gallery where you've worked or exhibited your work, plus your rough CV and your photograph. And if I can then what's to stop someone else? So don't be surprised if some "grow the fuck up" type messages appear (though not from me - I've better things to do).

And you want to know what the really sad thing is for Mexicans? British perceptions of their national character probably will change as a result of this, and not for the better. Because the two Mexicans who had more newsprint used to write about them in the UK than probably any of their countrymen in the last decade or more (with the possible exception of Alfonso Cuarón - directing a Harry Potter film will do that) are acting like whiny little children with angstrom thin skins, fragile egos, low self-esteem and absolutely no sense of humour. Which I'm sure is unrepresentative of most Mexicans, and is certainly unedifying even by comparison with what was said on Top Gear. Fat, feckless and flatulent actually sounds like much better company to be with than pathetic, attention-seeking, whinging crybaby.

Oh, and a special nod to Harridan Harperson, without whose work this woman might have had to act like everyone else does when they hear something they don't like and just fucking deal with it.

If it goes to court, the case could be the first to be brought under the Equality Act which came into force last year.

Well done, Harriet, you've made thought crime even more of a reality than it was before. Thanks for fucking everything, you hateful bitch. Now do the human race a favour and disappear up your own arse before you deal any more harm to personal liberty.

H/T Down With That Sort Of Thing.

Sticks and stones - UPDATED

I rarely watch Top Gear these days as it's been especially ruined for the Australian audience by a commercial channel that appears to have no idea how to cut it for ads, but I do appreciate the public service they still provide by highlighting offence seekers for the rest of us. This time the professionally offended is the Mexican ambassador to Britain.

Eduardo Medina-Mora has written to the BBC about "insults" made by Richard Hammond, Jeremy Clarkson and James May in the show broadcast in Britain on Sunday.

In a discussion about a Mexican sports car, Hammond said vehicles reflected national characteristics so "Mexican cars are just going to be lazy".

Not his best effort at schoolboy humour, I have to say. I've seen motoring reviews before where a car has been described as lazy so on it's own that could be read as meaning underpowered or perhaps a very relaxed and indulgent ride. A little more context would be... ah.

Reviewing the Mastretta, Hammond said: "Mexican cars are just going to be lazy, feckless, flatulent, overweight, leaning against a fence asleep looking at a cactus with a blanket with a hole in the middle on as a coat."

The presenters then described Mexican food as "sick with cheese on it".

Later in the exchange, Clarkson said "we won't get any complaints about this because the Mexican ambassador's going to be sitting there with a remote control like this" - and he slumped down in his chair and faked a snore.

And that's raised the offence seeking level to DEFCON 1 just fine.

The "outrageous, vulgar and inexcusable insults" risked stirring "bigoted feelings against the Mexican people", the ambassador wrote.

No they don't. Most people take these comments for what they are: schoolboy type banter for cheap laughs. It's to be taken no more seriously than the Stig intros when they say he doesn't understand stairs and once punched a horse to the ground. Or for that matter when they insult people from parts of Britain - I vaguely recall suggestions that people from Norfolk are so backwards they all stop and point when an aircraft flies over and that the West Country is fond of incest. Or some of the abuse they pile on your northern neighbours in the US. Nobody, with the obvious exception of the increasing numbers of professional offence seekers, treats it with any seriousness.

And even if they did risk, what was it again, "stirring bigoted feelings," well so what? Just feelings, man. That's all they are. Someone else's feelings have never done me any harm, and I'm not quite sure I see how they can possibly affect a country much larger, nearly twice as populous and five thousand miles away from the UK. Feelings are as substantial as the breeze and affect someone only as much as they choose to let them. Even if you believe - and personally I doubt that you or any other offence seeker really does - that feelings and thoughts are somehow directly harmful it's still incredibly unlikely to have any effect when the total number of Mexicans most British people have ever met hovers around zero. I'd even bet that a large majority can't even name anyone from Mexico apart from Speedy Gonzales.

So true about the boy bands.

So no, Eduardo, this risks absolutely nothing of any substance happening at all. People are not really going to believe that all Mexicans are fat or lazy or wear blankets or eat sick with cheese on, they're really not. In fact, and in some ways this ought to upset you more, most Brits watching the show probably wouldn't think of Mexicans at all afterwards for the reasons I gave above: it's far away and its people are rarely encountered by the average Brit. Or at least that's what almost certainly would have happened, but of course now a lot of them will be thinking that the Mexican ambassador is thin-skinned and easily upset, and possibly wondering if that is typical instead.

It's just a few words from some middle aged TV presenters on a poky British motoring show, not the fucking end of the world (that's next year, isn't it?). Harden the fuck up.

UPDATE - A point raised by the inestimable Mrs Exile: it really shouldn't be all that difficult for Mexicans to laugh that off when they could simply point out that they were building the largest stone monuments ever at a time when Britons were still constructing huts out of twigs stuck together with shit. I think there may have been some cathedrals as well but I get her point.