Britain has lost all sense of proportion
Widdecombe
THE British sense of humour – wry, ironic, self-deprecating – was once our most recognisable national characteristic, alongside an imperturbability which we used to describe as phlegmatic. Lo! What a humourless, po-faced bunch Brits have become and how easily are they now goaded. An NHS boss, Sir Andrew Morris, cracked a joke about nagging wives and the sisterhood have reacted in a manner proportionate to mass rape. It is not that long since a Nobel prizewinner, Sir Tim Hunt, actually lost his university post because he joked about women crying in the lab. And only last week I pointed to the nonsense from the Advertising Standards Authority which wants to ban depictions of traditional male and female roles.
The joke should really be that anybody is daft enough to take these remarks seriously but the establishment is completely cowed by the apostles of political correctness. So predictably Sir Andrew apologises. Why? My response would have been: “Oh, get a life.”
There no longer seems to be any sense of proportion about anything.
“Do you want to be black or white?” I asked a visiting child this week as we settled down to a game of draughts on the carpet and shook out the pieces.
He looked at me horrified: “That’s racist.”
There is of course nothing funny whatsoever in the use of the N-word but proportionality still needs to be exercised when there has been no intention to be pejorative. My generation and that of Anne Marie Morris, the MP for Newton Abbot, grew up using the expression about the proverbial woodpile.
We learned not to use it after doing so for decades and it is simply not part of younger people’s vocabulary so it will and should disappear for good.
However it is well-nigh inevitable that occasionally that particular metaphor will slip from the mouths of those for whom it was once the widely-used norm and thus it happened with Ms Morris, who immediately apologised. Three years DO they employ robots or humans at Ryanair? A passenger suffered scalding when a cup of tea spilled on her leg. Never mind whether it was the air hostess or she herself who was to blame, the letter from Ryanair says it all.
It comes from somebody called Helga Popescu (customer services) and starts with a bald assertion that the passenger Mrs Tredgett was to ago a 78-year-old Bath councillor did the same on local radio. So, some years earlier, did a general on national radio.
These days apologies enough, however sincere.
NO CONCERN FOR THE CUSTOMER
are not So Tory blame, ends with a rude suggestion that she take more care in future and, unless passages have been censored from reports, expresses no sympathy for the pain or ruined holiday and contains no hopes that she has fully recovered.
Clearly Ryanair’s manners are like its services: barely adequate, dismissive and more concerned with the company than the customers. bosses paraded their own selfrighteous virtue and withdrew the whip from the MP.
Perhaps next time Mrs May goes to church and asks the Almighty to forgive her sins He will respond that apologies are not enough. Meanwhile I suspect the unspoken thought at Westminster among those over the age of 55 is: “There but for the grace of God go I.”
Grow up, everyone.