Tuesday, August 13, 2013

Well, Duh!

Comment is almost superfluous (but I won't let that stop me) on this story: Tony Abbott, Australia's opposition leader, is quoted as saying "No one -- however smart, however well-educated, however experienced -- is the suppository of all wisdom."

Perhaps the kindest thing that could be said about this, from an Australian point of view, is that it diverts attention from the Australians' collapse yesterday in the fourth test match.

Or that, arguably, an earlier gaffe from a candidate in Queensland (of course), Stephanie Bannister, a female welder, describing Islam as a country, was not only worse but was only one of a series, leading her to be described as Australia's Sarah Palin.

Ah, Australia, where men are men and women are welders!

Monday, August 12, 2013

Fatuous

Here's another one for the meaningless apology collection. Geoffrey Miller, a professor in New Mexico (as opposed to old may he koh) has been disciplined (ooh-err!) for tweeting that fat Ph.D. candidates have less chance of success because “if you didn’t have the willpower to stop eating carbs, you won’t have the willpower to do a dissertation".

The university could have tried, in a disciplined academic way, to fault Miller's logic, or perhaps to force him to justify his conclusion with some statistics or a study (surely not hard to find enough fat students in America?), and, if he couldn't, to ridicule his lack of science. If he couldn't support his comments, they could have called him an inner fatty. Or is this what they meant when they "roundly" criticised him?

But no, the university has gone straight for the lazy PC option, saying that Miller broke "at least three"different ethics rules (Can't they even work out how many of their own rules he broke? Are these people too fat to count above three?) with the tweet,and demanded that he apologise to students and colleagues. Not just the fat ones, it seems, but all of them. So Miller (if he does so) will be apologising to thin people for something said in respect of fat people - an apology as empty as the calories the fatties consume.

Thursday, August 8, 2013

Banging The Drum

Finally, there is someone who doesn't apologise immediately after saying something that might, conceivably, offend anyone who is really rather pleased to be offended and to have the chance to parade their offendedness in the media. Ckufing PC wankers.

Hats off to Godfrey Bloom, who questioned Britain paying vast sums of aid, whilst still in debt itself, to "Bongo Bongo Land".

When questioned about his comments (for which, read 'asked to apologise'), Mr Bloom told BBC News it would be "absurd" and "ridiculous" to label them racist, adding that Bongo Bongo Land was "a figment of people's imagination. It's like Ruritania or the Third World. ...It's sad how anybody can be offended by a reference to a country that doesn't exist."

Mr Bloom also said: "If I've offended anybody in Bongo Bongo Land, I will write to their ambassador at the Court of St James."

Later attempts by worthies of his party, the UK Independence Party (UKIP), to smooth the ruffled feathers of the Bongolese by getting Mr. Bloom to apologies had mixed results. The Bloomster said:

"I used a term which I subsequently gather under certain circumstances could be interpreted as pejorative to individuals and possibly cause offence. Although quite clearly no such personal usage was intended, I understand from UKIP party chairman Steve Crowther and leader Nigel Farage that I must not use the terminology in the future, nor will I, and [I] sincerely regret any genuine offence which might have been caused or embarrassment to my colleagues."

Such is the hunger for apologies that the leader of the UKIP, Nigel Farage, claimed on the basis of the above that Mr. Bloom "apologised", whilst the Beeb itself sloppily or deliberately misquotes Bloom as saying "he sincerely regrets causing any offence".

Read it again, Messrs. Farage and Beeb. He "regrets" any "genuine" offence caused to individuals to whom the comment might have been personally pejorative (i.e. not the PC brigade). That means no one.

Good on you, Mr. Bloom.