BBC local radio

[Tim Streater]

Perhaps you should find nicer people to hang around with.

[Tim Streater]

When did you last see a sign that said that, other than on "Gently"?

And no dogs here, thanks.

[Adrian]

No, they just go around calling people "Darky".

Oooh, lemme think - it's proof positive that your "good manners" did absolutely f*ck all to prevent entrenched discrimination.

"PC" is merely expecting those basic civilised values. If people hold them anyway, there is no point, no benefit, no purpose to have PC - and it does nothing. It just fades away. The _only_ time it could possibly rub anybody up the wrong way is if they do not hold those basic civilised values.

I think I do. But not in the way you mean.

No, deeply unpleasant individuals like McCririck will trot out the lamest "but it's deliciously naughty and everybody loves it really" bollocks to try to make out that their bigotry is just a jolly harmless little jape.

[stuart noble]

I notice builders are incapable of speaking to each other without swearing. I also notice that engineers and architects swear when they're on site. Must be something to do with hard hats.

Racism has been around for centuries and it ain't going to change overnight. It needn't be malicious. IME racial minorities are less bothered than middle England liberals

[Bill Wright]

That's speciesism that is. You can be had up for that.

Bill

[Bill Wright]

You are giving PC a monopoly on decency, just as the religious try to take the monopoly of morality.

You are no better than an archbishop.

Incidentally, if I was taking lodgers I'd had a sign in the window that said "This is a non-PC house. We call a spade a spade. If you don't like it bugger off."

Bill

[Adrian]

I can quite easily believe that.

[Bill Wright]

I'm serious.

Bill

[Adrian]

So am I, Bill. So am I.

[Tony Bryer]

The left would rather not be reminded of it, but it was the London dockers who marched in support of Enoch Powell's rivers of blood speech, whilst his fellow Conservatives disowned him.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Indeed.

I remember driving in someone's car to a pub for lunch in my first job, and saw a stunning Indian bint walking down the street. Stunning was what I clocked, but the driver grinned at me and said 'fancy a bit of coconut then, do you'

I was more than shocked. Mostly because I realised that where I had seen 'stunning bird' he had seen 'black/brown'.

You can't legislate against that. All that works is exposure education and example.

[Tim Streater]

But that's thoughtcrime, which is doubleplusungood, and you can be done for it, these days.

[Bill Wright]

The use of a grammatical form reminiscent of an elder statesman making a grave pronouncement doesn't alter the fact that you are talking bollocks.

[harryagain]

You are a pompous narrow minded prick, that's why.

[harryagain]

Yes and how right he was. Though that's not what he actually said. The dockers were concerned about their jobs going to immigrants.

Quite a messiah was our Enoch

[harryagain]

All arises out of our control freak governments.

[Roderick Stewart]

Old fashioned attitudes and modes of speech ought to be allowed to die a natural death, and provided this is what everybody wants, they will. We need to recognise that the process takes generations to complete, and cannot be accelerated by force. If a person thinks something, then that's what they think, no matter what anybody else would like them to think and no matter what any law says they should think, but maybe their children will think something different.

Rod.

[Jim Lesurf]

Language is a means of communication. That means the speaker and listener have to have an agreed and shared set of meanings. So *both* of them have a part to take in ensuring they agree. If you take the intiative to speak, then the initiative to ensure such agreement is on you as the speaker.

Jim

[Adrian]

The problem is that whilst people like the old boy who called the nurse "Darky" without realising the offence that could very easily be taken are on the way out, they're used as an excuse to perpetuate entrenched bigotry by the kind of neanderthal throw-backs who aren't nearly dying out fast enough.

[The Natural Philosopher]

My grandfather was, as were many of his gereantion (think Great War) mildly anti-semitic and shared the view of his generation that the colonies were full of unsophisticated people (true) that were unsophisticated because it was 'in their genes') (untrue).

His daughter, my mother, was not anti-Semitic at all. She had in fact fallen for a nice Jewish boy, a bit, but her father vetoed it. But she was deeply suspicious of dark skinned people.

Our generation brought up on the blues and soul music, and with a west Indian conducting every bus we rode, were far more used to seeing such things and seeing real skill and culture emanating from people with dark faces.

We started to see individuals, not skin color.

Exactly.

What made the difference for me was largely being around a lot of Blues musicians. Freddie king was someone I absolutely admired and saw several times. Hendrix was a sort of god... You cant admire a person with a black face and still think that 'they all look the same/ are the same' in one brain.

No, it takes time, and its not pleasant for those on the receiving end, but trying to legislate it away is simply making things worse.

Legislation that discriminates on the basis of ethnicity is worse than any individuals bigotry. It enshrines the principles of discrimination based on race alone in the law itself. Just as apartheid did.