Cllr Robert Light: Kirklees council leader blamed his political opponents and said the booklet was no longer being used by council staff
Posted on 11/01/2006 1:52:53 PM PST by Stoat
Cllr Robert Light: Kirklees council leader blamed his political opponents and said the booklet was no longer being used by council staff
A council has warned staff against using the phrase 'political correctness' at work because it might offend people.
A booklet outlining 'equality' policy to council workers claims using the term at work can be damaging and even linked it to the Ku Klux Klan.
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Council worker paid £91,000 to fix the lights
The bizarre publication also orders staff not to use words like 'policeman', 'fireman' and 'chairman', suggesting they are classic examples of 'exclusionary language.'
While the word 'ethnic' is also outlawed for being not 'appropriately descriptive.'
The 44-page training book called 'Equality Essentials' has been used for staff training courses at Kirklees Council in West Yorkshire.
The publication outlines forms of damaging behaviour in the workplace and rates them on a five-level scale.
The authors claim that moving things around on someone else's desk is as serious as punching or kicking them.
And workers are instructed to come up with 10 things they can do every day to make colleagues feel better.
Tory MP for Shipley Phillip Davies, a patron of the Campaign Against Political Correctness, branded the pamphlet 'extreme and patronising.'
'How much is it costing to produce all this garbage?' he said. 'The policy is full of either the blindingly obvious or utterly ridiculous nonsense.'
A section of the 'PC booklet is devoted to denouncing the use of the words 'political correctness'.
It states:'Political correctness is often used to describe what some of us think are unnecessary changes which don't really bother anyone.
'The term political correctness was coined in 1988 by John O'Sullivan III, who was a member of the Ku Klux Klan. He was making an after dinner speech complaining about how Black Americans were being allowed to take the jobs traditionally reserved for the white majority because of a wave of political correctness.
'Since then the phrase political correctness has almost universally been used to decry changes which aim to prevent offensive behaviour.'
It goes on to say because this takes the form of 'blaming the victim, denying peoples experience or expressing the view of a popular majority,' using the phrase can represent a 'physical attack.'
The authority's new Tory leader Robert Light blamed his political opponents and said the booklet was no longer being used by council staff.
'We don't think it is relevant to use this booklet. We are trying to achieve the situation where the council has a more professional, modern approach. Diversity is still an issue for us but we will be taking a common sense approach rather than being part of the PC culture.
'Kirklees Council has had the title of most PC Council in Yorkshire and we are determined to change that view.'
Mr Light added:'References to the Ku Klux Klan and Nazi Germany are really extreme to use in a training guide even as a reference, it's very bizarre.
'I find it more unbelievable that they complain about the use of the word ethnic when it is the term that Government bodies, think-tanks and local leaders all use. It's very off the wall.'
Kirklees Council employs more than 18,000 people and has a budget of more than £470 million.
'The term political correctness was coined in 1988 by John O'Sullivan III, who was a member of the Ku Klux Klan. He was making an after dinner speech complaining about how Black Americans were being allowed to take the jobs traditionally reserved for the white majority because of a wave of political correctness.
Proof that this particular claim is a lie can be found here, where the term "political correctness" is used on June 19th, 1983. I urge Freepers interested in this term to do some searches on Google Groups, which stores messages sent across the Usnet through the early 1980s. You'll notice that the term "politically correct" is used frequently by leftists until they lose control of it because the truth is, that's the source of the term.
that FPOS poofter has never been punched in the mouth if he thinks moving a pen on a desk or hearing a word is the same thing... i'd love to demonstrate to him the difference 8^)
Isn't that remarkable? A fly speck on the map, a remote corner of one of the loneliest shires of England, with fewer than four hundred thousand people, needs eighteen thousand socialist goldbrickers to administer its affairs.
Mesa, Arizona, of comparable physical size and population, manages with only 4000.
-ccm
Fascinating look at old NNTP headers and net addresses.
"Politically correct" is at least as old as Lenin. It may be that this Council has already banned the sort of history book in which one might find that information.
A great expression. Was it used in the context of commentary on speech or thought control?
Others here have done some SUPERB research on the roots of the term; their posts are definitely worth a look.
Even if she didn't coin the expression, she certainly did her part to implement it in the worst possibly manners of policy.
Their attribution of the term is definitely wrong, and is part of the all encompassing lies of PC and the Left.
I'm sure it's true that some were offended, but I would suggest that the ones who were offended were the ones who were (are) attempting to inflict Leftist social engineering upon others, by legal fiat. They are offended because their hidden agenda has been exposed and properly ridiculed.
Others here have done some excellent research on the expression, their posts are well worth a look.
:-)
I would say both. There's a situation that took place in a Twin Cities public school yesterday, and it appears that "political correctness" along with "diversity" stifled any common sense reaction to it. A listener called in and railed about both. If I recall correctly, he indicated "political correctness" prevents anyone from saying what should be said and then called it "intellectual fascism."
Both have their material base in the process (still slowly developing) by which the class and the historical organisations of the class — the “working class” and the “labour movement” — first become divided, and then come to counterpose each other. What does this mean concretely, and where will it lead us? The first thing to say is that the goal, the aim of this approach is the solid recomposition of a politically correct relationship between the two moments.
Certain Socialists agree. John Molyneux gives this reference to Paul Berman in the International Socialism Journal article referenced HERE -
'Politically Correct' was originally a phrase on the Leninist left to denote someone who steadfastly toed the party line. Then it evolved into 'PC', an ironic phrase among wised up leftists to denote someone whose line-toeing fervour was too much to bear. Only in connection with the PC debate itself did the phrase get picked up by people who had no fidelity to radicalism at all, but who relished the nasty syllables for their twist of irony.
By 1988 the term was so old it was already being used in irony as it is today by its foes. Its proponents apparently have only lately caught onto the sting of the thing and have therefore banned it. Pathetic.
Thank you for the clarification. I think that the caller was exactly right, and we should all use that term as well as terms like it to call out the Left and their endless efforts at underhanded Socialist / Stalinist manipulation. Uncle Joe would be proud of the Modern Left's sneakiness and shameless doublespeak.
Gag me with a very large spoon....
This politicial is just evidence of Doublespeak BS that dominates the POLICALL CORRECTNESS movement.
(iow: what a weenie)
What is breathtaking to me is their shamelessness about their motives....it's a reflection of how stupid they think that the 'average' person is.
All Socialists need to be put in cages to prevent their inflicting their goals upon humanity as well as to prevent their procreation, and then studied so that their ilk can never sully the face of the planet again. How many billions of lives have either been lost or ruined as a direc result of the Left's policies? It's an infestation that must be eradicated.
But "using the phrase can equal a physical attack" lost out to
"the word 'ethnic' is...outlawed for being not 'appropriately descriptive."
Gotta wonder what they had in mind to replace 'ethnic'...?
I'm guessing that their verbiage selection criteria would run something along the lines of:
The ludicrous and illogical nature of it all would be grand fun to sit back and watch if it wasn't for all of the lives that the Left and their idiotic policies ruin and destroy along the way.
Oh, I like that. That just replaced "political correctness" in my lexicon.
Very true, and we can witness it from an even closer vantage point than Great Britain. Canada has bushel baskets full of speech codes that will get you thrown in JAIL if you dare to say the wrong thing about the wrong 'type' of person. "Hate Speech" is very much a serious crime in Canada.
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