My Dear Old Mum...
works for our local council and had to attend a 'race awareness' workshop as part of her mandatory training. No worries she thought as she'd been in the same job for about 10 years and had worked well with the multicultural workforce.

Anyway, she turns up and is the only white woman in a room of 30 Black and Asian workers with a Black African woman holding the training.

Fair enough she thought, we are all on an equal footing due to the council being an equal opportunities employer and she won't be singled out....

"You" Bellowed the voice and pointed to my Mum

"How do YOU view racism"

"erm....." Mum stumbled "I just treat everyone how I would expect to be treated regardless of the colour of their skin.."

Good answer I thought... unfortunately no.....

Mum was suspended for 3 months without pay pending an investigation due a to her comment being racist, the reason? Being 'colour blind' means that Mum did not recognise or appreciate the oppression that Black people still had to live with due to the slavery and apartheid in their history.

Eventually the council saw sense and re-instated her.

Apologies for lack of humor!

Length - Never had any complaints before...
( FlexAlux laughed at something inappropriate on, Thu 22 Nov 2007, 15:49, 5 replies)

Hullfire
When I worked on Hullfire, the Hull student paper, we had a night at the union featuring a couple of Chris Evans' sidekicks. Can't remember who they are - but a lot of very beery types thought that this was wonderful. At some stage in the evening, the Evans-alikes invited some girl to come on stage and show her tits - which, being drunk, she did.

This caused a small amount of trouble around the Union - complaints were made to the entertainments officer, for example - and we reported this trouble in the paper. There was no photo, and no names: we merely mentioned that the Union had had complaints about what had happened on stage. The Totty Commi... sorry, Women's Committee took exception to this. To our report, that is. It was apparently sexist to report such events.

They therefore intercepted our entire print-run - something like 12000 copies, IIRC, and placed masking tape over the offending story in every single one. It took them days.
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Thu 22 Nov 2007, 15:47, 3 replies)

Not so much correctness...
... but pure ignorance.

The Black Dyke Mills Colliery band are considered to be one of the best brass bands in the UK.

Legend has it (I've not been able to confirm this) that they were on tour, and somewhere in America their concert was picketed and disrupted by gay-rights protesters, and people who were anti-racism.

Eventually they sent out the band master who explain that a "Black Dyke" is a particularly Dark Ditch... and nothing to do with skin-colour or sexual preference.

.. Similar to the time that the a Bloodhound Gang recording session was deliberately disturbed by gay rights campaigners, and eventually Neil Tennant (openly gay bloke of petshop boys fame, and a producer for the B-H-G once) went outside and told them to Fuck off and get a sense of humour. I wish I'd seen their confused faces...

=)

I have nothing to say about crap or masturbation this week. Sorry...

*waves goodbye*
( Humpty Dumpty was Pushed Is unaware of having any limits., Thu 22 Nov 2007, 15:42, 5 replies)

still ires me
I was about 9. There were kids from all backgrounds in my school. Racism just didn't exist for us, none of us could be bothered with it. Of course you got playground mocking if you were rubbish at football, or told outlandish lies, or whatever, but we'd all grown up together so we weren't at all fussed what colour each of us was.

One kid, formerly a friend of mine, decided one morning that he was going to tell everyone how many languages he could speak. He was Indian and apparently he learnt lots of dialects at school there (none of us twigged that he'd left India aged three, the only school he'd ever been to was the same one as us) and in a generally irrelevant-to-the-conversation way kept on going on about how wonderful his home country was. Fair enough, we thought.

So at lunchtime while lining up to go back into class we were all discussing who was well skill at football that lunchtime and said kid cuts in with a line about how football came from India.

- I'd like to point out, by the way, that this kid had never even mentioned the country in our school time together up until this point. -

At least three of us tell him to shut up. To one kid he says "oh, go back to Chelmsford." (the child's origin). The instant retaliation? "ah, go back to India."

The kid pauses, grins and runs off to the dinner ladies to tell on us.

One huge, screaming bollocking later, five of us spent the afternoon sitting shame-faced outside the headmaster's office, staring at the carpet and waiting for our parents to come and pick us up. Suspended for an afternoon for "racist taunting."

We still didn't care about his nationality, but that kid was a little shit.
( sanityclause is waiting until, Thu 22 Nov 2007, 15:42, Reply)

Swimming Pool
Here’s something that really, REALLY got on my tits. As it were.

When I lived in Nottingham, my local swimming pool was open from 7:30am till about 8pm. I never used to get home from work till late, and weekends are always erratic, so I tried to swim early in the mornings on weekdays.

However, EVERY weekday morning session from opening till 9am was for ‘Ladies Only’; which made it impossible for me to use the pool during the week.

I spoke to the manager about this, and asked if it was really necessary to have a women only session every single morning; it wasn’t fair on any bloke in the same situation as me, and to be perfectly honest, (the following is paraphrased) I found it a bit insulting that it was assumed that because I was male I would find it impossible not to start publicly masturbating at the sight of a bunch of female swimmers, simply because there was a pair of labia hidden somewhere underneath their rolls of fat and badly coloured bikinis.

I was told that the ‘women only’ policy was necessary because of the high Muslim population in the area, and the fact that the council had to be sensitive to their needs of not being seen partially clothed. I asked if they had any figures on the numbers of Muslim women attending these sessions to see if this justified the council's policy; as I didn't believe it would. I was told they didn't have any figures, no.

The pool could get pretty busy on weekends, so I asked if it would be possible to schedule a ‘men only’ session, (thinking 50% less people would attend). I was told in no uncertain terms that this would never happen.

Why the fuck should I be excluded from using the swimming pool (which my council tax pays for) every fucking day, because of some fucking hang-up other people have? I pretty sure this must constitute some breach of The Sex Discrimination Act, as it clearly discriminations against men in the provision of facilities, services and premises.

I did plan to get some sort of half-arsed legal case together and see where it took me. But instead, I chilled out, had a smoke and played Resident Evil 4. For the next 3 months. Then I moved to Shrewsbury.

It still fucks me off though.

But then again, so does pretty much everything.
(geegee, Thu 22 Nov 2007, 15:41, 5 replies)

When I was eight years old I was hauled in front of the headmaster for calling a kid Quasimodo.
In all fairness, he was a bit funny looking.
( Colonel Dracula Two manky hookers and a racist dwarf, Thu 22 Nov 2007, 15:33, 5 replies)

Personally
I think the trick is to treat everyone as a person, regardless of their race, ability etc. Which is why I really hate the crippled wheelchair Greeter at my local ASDA. Not because he's a grinning tit and a bolshy little fuck-pot from what I've seen, but because I don't need to be welcomed into a fucking supermarket by some moron who's paid to say it even if they'd rather see me dead. How hollow and meaningless is that greeting? And when I scowl at him, he just drools at bit and says something cheery like "Have a nice day, sir!"

I consider myself highly PC for disliking him. Everyone else says hello to him, but when some smelly old man who looks like a paedophile is the Greeter, people ignore him (as do I). Fair enough, I'd open a door for him or help him if his wheelchair fell down a manhole ([stifles laugh] but that doesn't mean I have to be nice to him otherwise.

But I do hate gypsies.
(frankspencer, Thu 22 Nov 2007, 15:30, 2 replies)

not perfectly on question
but back in the day, when i was all young and innocent at school, we were in drama class (compulsory, im not a thesp) and had to act out something or another which for whatever reason involved a bear, one of the people in my group was indian or pakistani or something like that, and i suggesested 'you should be the bear, you're the right colour'. God knows what would happen to me if i did something like that now, even if it was childhood innocence
( wjh31, Thu 22 Nov 2007, 15:28, Reply)

Cooookiiiiieeessss
Growing up in the late 70's and 80's I was partial to a bit of the old Sesame Street.

Favourite characters were Grover, The Honkers, The 2 headed monster etc etc. However out of them all it was THE COOKIE MONSTER

Now for those of you who haven't seen him - he is a big furry blue monster, who had a caring side and a stressed side, all subsided though when he got Cookies.

He loved them, NOM NOM NOM NOM and cookies would fucking fly everywhere. Quality

Here goes (i can feel my anger growing)

Last week ALL copies of DVD's that had early episodes of Cookie Monster going radio over cookies have been pulled from the shelves.

Apparantley it promotes obesity.

AAAGGGGHHH HOW?

Bert and Ernie loved rubber ducks, doesnt make me want to go and fuck something rubber.

So listen up you fat fucking pie eating cunts. Get to the fucking gym and stop stuffing your fucking faces you massive land slugs.

I want my monster back

FUCKING WANKERS.
(hoogie Original Cunt Horse Author, Thu 22 Nov 2007, 15:25, 10 replies)

When I was at college, my class was asked to pose for the front of the Prospectus
We were all the Performing Arts lot, so we said 'yes' immediately, as we loved the attention. It was a fun photo shoot, and afterwards we went to the pub. Lots of laughs were had.

A few days later we were told that there was a problem with the photoshoot. Didn't the film process? Yes, it did. Wasn't there a photo of us all smiling? No, a lot of them were very good photos. The problem was that all five people posing were white.

What?

So, we were asked to come in again. Only this time, we were joined with an ethnic kid who was on the Fashion Course. His name was Dip. All day, he kept rubbing it in our face that he was "personally asked to appear", obviously because "he has the looks of a model". So many times that day I wanted to yell "No! It's because you're black!". Sadly, we couldn't.

===

Story doesn't end there. When we were told we had to reshoot with a token black kid, we didn't know what to expect. He introduced himself as "Dip". This was an odd name. "Dip", I asked, "as in, Ip Dip Dog Shit?"

Turned out that phrase was used a lot in his childhood for racist insults. Dip never really got on with me.
(__, Thu 22 Nov 2007, 15:23, Reply)

SGT
People forget that political correctness itself used to be called ’spastic gay talk’.

(Courtesy of Frankie Boyle, I thank you)
( fannycradock, Thu 22 Nov 2007, 15:19, Reply)

Now the kids have to sing different songs
'Baa Baa rainbow sheep'
apparently.
(Meatfish BAH, Thu 22 Nov 2007, 15:18, 5 replies)

Our House...
Apparently Suggs has rewritten all his songs to remove any ethnic/gender/ability reference.

It's Madness gone politically correct I tell you!
( SteamedCleaner, Thu 22 Nov 2007, 15:15, 2 replies)

Why has b3ta turned into
the Daily Mail?
( smokey bobinson westing by musket and sexton, Thu 22 Nov 2007, 15:14, 10 replies)

Is it just me, or has the whole world gone mad?
Political correctness is not solving anything. At best, it is a sop to those with massive egos who think that referring to blacks as "previously disadvantaged individuals" will assuage fifty years of sadistic discrimination. At worst, it is condescending bullshit that serves only to further discriminate those being labelled.

I mean, equality is a very good thing. Especially in this country, everyone deserves a chance to make good irrespective of skin colour, sexual orientation or religious affiliation. That's all good. My problem is that work, study and economic support are being denied those in need so that those who can fiddle the system and play the race card can sponge off it.

By the way, I didn't get into university because the quota does not allow for "Jewish Caucasio-Africans" (quoted from a University of Cape Town letter) to be admitted to the law school as no more places are available. Being a normal person (not a member of the alleged elitist rich white fraternity that allegedly pulls the strings) I cannot afford to study overseas.

Oh well. Apologies for rant and lack of humour, I'm not having a very good day.
(Tiktock Beating off flamers with a shitty stick, Thu 22 Nov 2007, 15:13, Reply)

I used to work for HMRC
(no, i haven't got those two CDs, mores the pity - i could tell you some stories about posting information unsecurely but that is for another QOTW)

Anyway, back to the point.

Christmas

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not excactly a devout Christian, but at the end of the day Christmas is a Christian festival celebrated by, not exculively, Christians.

So why the feck were we told that any 'Winter Festival' decorations in our office could not be Christian orientated incase they offended any other culture/religion.

Of the colleagues who i spoke to, Hidus, Sikhs, Muslims, not ONE of them found the CHRIST in Christmas offended, and were deeply embarrassed by the PC in their name.

Anyway, we converted the end of the office into a full size nativity stable, straw and everything. My manager wouldn't let me bring in live farm animals, but papier machee goes a long way.

When anyone complained, a few of us got on our high horses and screamed - we are Christian, let us celbrate our festival.

We won that one - a victory against PC
( ogwen69 has returned from Reddit, Thu 22 Nov 2007, 15:12, 1 reply)

Chinky
There was a kid at school whose eyes were a bit narrower than the norm and so he naturally earned the name "Chinky". One day, as I was trying to extort his dinner money or something, he went crying to the dinner lady that I was racially abusing him by calling him Chinky. I was hauled before the headmaster and warned that it was a very serious charge. And the kid was no more fucking Chinese than I was! How about if I'd gone to the headmaster the next day and said that someone'd called me coon? D'you think he would have taken me seriously? Probably.

EDIT: I should say for the record that am not black. Though I fully support people who are, Or who are not.
(frankspencer, Thu 22 Nov 2007, 15:12, 1 reply)

dignity at work
hot desking may or may not be a policy you have heard of. i cant be arsed to explain, but you all have google so off you pop if you don't.

i have. And this story involves a greek.

A greek called george. well, crazy george to be accurate. He was often called this behind his back. and to his face as well.

We were having a prolonged period of hotdesking at work due to a lack of space in the office, and as everyone knows in this situation, whoever shows up earliest gets the pick of the seating on that day.

I was fractionally too late to bag my usual spot and had to look elsewhere. So i chose to sit where crazy george had popped himself the day before. This was my first error.

The second error was suggesting to the mad greek that if he would like his desk back he should physically move me. By this i actually meant he should wheel me down the bank of desks to the next one, which was free, but didnt have a mouse.

He took it as some sort of threat of violence and ran off to complain to the boss. bah.

Third mistake was thinking nothing else of it. i got pulled up by the centre manager a few days later. i thought i was geetting a promotion but when she told me that it was about the loony greek i actually blubbed. true story that.

the moral of the story? there isnt one. life is just a sequence of random events.

The other time this pc crap became relevant was when we made out that Bob Taylor had a smack habit. This went on for a number of months. Until we all got pulled in for a meeting about it. Then we switched to making out that he liked the rasmus. which he secretly does.

carry on then
(harestylenumber1 loves weiner, Thu 22 Nov 2007, 15:09, Reply)

Male, Female, Other
I work for a software firm.
We make pretty spanky HR software.
One of the fields on our main screen is gender. One particular customer made us change this from just Male and Female to M/F/Other just in case it offended transsexuals.

I mean ffs, they are changing from one to the other so what is the problem?

Oh, and we have a cool feature where you can upload pictures of your employees and then when you look at their record their picture pops up - cool huh? never forget who is who.

Anyway if you haven't got a picture, it pops up with a little cartoon bloke with a cool combover or a little cartoon bird with a pink blouse, based on the gender mentionned above.

You can guess what is coming now can't you.

Same customer again decided that these images may be offensive to people confused about their sexuality.

ffs

So we replaced the picture with one of their choice, so everyones 'photo', while still being a cartoon, is a picture of a.............


Computer.

wtf, ffs, onetyeleven!! etc
( ogwen69 has returned from Reddit, Thu 22 Nov 2007, 15:06, 7 replies)

I guess this is how it has affected me....
it makes me angry.

what most annoys me about PC-ness is that we (particularly in this once awesome nation of ours) are expected to bend over backwards (or forwards to accept a shafting) to be accomodating to other cultures which are in our midst, but god forbid we try and show some patriotism.

I'm not entirely sure how much exaggeration* is in these examples, but:

*I have subsequently been informed that the following are not true, however, the thought of it still fills me with boiling rage. but then, most things involving other people do that.

I've heard of people and establishments not being allowed to fly the English flag on St. George's Day in case it was offensive to other nationalities.

I've heard that there was debate as to whether the Red Arrows should be able to put on a display for the Olympics in 2012 because they are "too British".

Other things have been mentioned on the board today about schools in particular not being allowed to call it a blackboard, or use black bin bags, or sing baa baa black sheep. other things like that.

IF THE SHEEP IS BLACK, I'LL CALL IT A FUCKING BLACK SHEEP.

Fortunately I don't encounter this very frequently, otherwise there would be a lot of PC crusaders with shovels wrapped round their faces.

Finally, I'm sure that as some have pointed out, within reason, it's the feeling behind a phrase or word that makes it insulting or derogatory.

No one likes to be stereotyped, whether they are called gay, black, differently sexually oriented, of african descent, any of that shit.

Apologies for the rant, it is most likely poorly worded, particularly towards the end,
( Vipros. clever got me this far, then tricky got me in, Thu 22 Nov 2007, 15:03, 9 replies)

Bonkers
I used to work for a blue chip US multinational, and was all but hounded out by the PC driven loons that get into positions of power in corporations.

My mistake – giving a chance to a woman.

What happened?

Got a temp in for a few weeks working in a support team It was quite a technical role, just 3-4 calls a day to deal with, and she showed some promise but had a long way to go. After a few months I gave her a pay rise and a permanent job. Then she just ‘goes to ratshit’.
I’m a pretty good manger, I try different approaches to improve her performance, but nothing works for more than a week or so. I let her know I think she can do better, there’s no sanctions just coaching and help on my part (big mistake).

Turns out she’s spreading poison about me to every woman she comes into contact with at work– apparently I’m a sexist monster who’s shouting and swearing at her making her ill with stress.

By the time she finally complains officially with the support of the ‘coven’ it’s a done deal. The fact non of it happened, there’s no witnesses, no evidence doesn’t matter. She’s a woman making a complaint against a man, political correctness dictates I am guilty.

It wasn’t the end of the world, I left with a years pay in my back pocket and got a good job, but it stuck in my fucking craw for a while I can tell you.

What happen to the lovely Sarah? It took them a couple more years of shunting her around departments, but eventually they realized she was indeed a lazy incompetent lying cuntbag and sacked her…which was some achievement on her part, if you fitted certain profiles it was all but impossible to get the boot.

What did I learn?

I still employ woman in my new job, but they’ve got to be VERY impressive candidates. No way would I give a border line female candidate a job, it’s not worth the risk.

Well done PC fuckers, you’ve turned me into a sexist employer.
( Ring Of Fire A petty, drooling belming butthurt retard., Thu 22 Nov 2007, 15:00, 2 replies)

Psychology experiment
The other day, I bumped into a friend of mine who I'd not seen in a while and we got chatting about the experiments we've been doing lately, and how bloody busy we've been (busy students? Never!). She was telling me about her experiment in psychology. The experiment involved the subject picking up a box and pretending to hand it to an invisible person while she takes measurements or something like that. Simple eh?

Well, they could only use right-handed people for the experiment. Of course, a few lefties turned up and it was only after they performed the experiment that they told her that they're left-handed, thus meaning about 20 minutes were wasted.

I was confused, "Why didn't you advertise for right-handed people?" I asked.

And she then explained it. Turns out the department doesn't allow them to advertise for righties only, as it's against discrimination laws.

If that isn't political correctness gone mad, I don't know what is.
(I have a face also had a sig on, Thu 22 Nov 2007, 14:58, 5 replies)

Disabled objects?
In our software, we have various objects that can have a state of disabled. A very generic state that can be applied across all the main objects we use (Courses, learning objects, events, job profiles etc).

We were asked to change this by a client as it wasn't PC... For cock's sake, what could be offensive about a disabled course? It's just a course that can't be used... nob all to do with our wheelchair bound brethren.

Naturally we stood up for what was right and charged them a load of money to change all references of 'disabled' to 'not enabled'.

Kunz.
( Mr Spleen Can do better. C-, Thu 22 Nov 2007, 14:58, 1 reply)

Small, far away
When I think about PC, I always think about dwarves. I don't know why, but 'persons of restricted growth' just sounds less pithy.

Me and dwarves have a bit of previous, in my formative years, every single trip I took had at least one dwarf meeting interlude. So much so that I was convinced I was either being stalked, had one as a familiar, or a dwarf was my alter ego. Perhaps I'd seen 'Don't look now' too many times.

Anyway...driving through the Peak District a few weeks back, a motorcyclist came towards us. As he passed us, I turned to the missus.

"Weird how sometimes perspective does that to you, isn't it? I was convinced from a distance that that was a dwarf on a motorbike, now it would appear (more sensibly, I mean, dwarves on motorbikes come on?) that the motorbike was massive and the person was of average size."

"Yep, you're right" she said, "I thought that too."

Two minutes later, another massive motorbike comes hurtling past, (like a Harley on steroids), and we think the same thing. "Blimey, what a massive bike."

Turn the corner, and fuck me, it's a (googles the collective noun and is rather delighted to discover it is) shortage of dwarves, about forty of them, having a day out on [it very rapidly transpired] normal size trial bikes. What are the chances of that? Mad eh?
(Countryslicker, Thu 22 Nov 2007, 14:55, 2 replies)

Kinda relevant
I know it's not the links board, and some of this is a bit in-jokey - but the general thrust of www.butterfliesandwheels.com/euphemisms.php and www.butterfliesandwheels.com/dictionary.php is probably on tone.
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Thu 22 Nov 2007, 14:53, Reply)

Is it just me...
...or is everybody else getting increasingly pissed off by all these stories? AAAAAAAARRRRRRGGGGGHHHH!

Incidentally, a female colleague has just commented on how warm it is in the office today. I suggested that she should just take her top off. What this politcally incorrect?
(Reverend Fister "a disciplined fuckwit", Thu 22 Nov 2007, 14:52, 4 replies)

Donovan Bailey
Not how it affected me, but a good anecdote.

At some sporting event a few years ago, a couple American sports announcers were watching Donovan Bailey, at the time the world's fastest man. One of the announcers said "There goes Donovan Bailey, one fast African-American." The other announcer gave him a funny look and said "He's a Caribbean-Canadian."
(racetraitor has an alibi for, Thu 22 Nov 2007, 14:50, Reply)

Still unaffected by PC
...and excellently funny to boot:

http://www.tard-blog.com/
( sanityclause is waiting until, Thu 22 Nov 2007, 14:49, 1 reply)

School, part one
There will probably be more posts as I remember the anecdotes, but here's the first:

I used to be primary school teacher. In another class there was a six-year-old boy who had been repeatedly stealing other people's books, drawing on them, scribbling on walls and (the final straw) painting all over the new LCD computer monitor.

We called his parents in to "have a chat" about their son's behaviour. They seemed entirely unfazed by it and didn't see that there was a problem. This led to the inevitable question from us: "would you let him do this at home?"

Their reply? "Oh yes - we try not to challenge anything he does, we don't want to quell his creativity."
( sanityclause is waiting until, Thu 22 Nov 2007, 14:48, 3 replies)