…BUT NEITHER DO MOST MEN. However it appears that to say so off camera about a female linesperson when she is officiating at a premiership game, is sexist and punishable by, in the first instance, suspension from a lucrative job with Sky Sports.
Both Andy Gray and his colleague Richard Keys were the culprits who were caught musing about the shortcomings of Sian Massey who was the linesperson in question. It was not personal and Ms Massey has to her credit acted with far greater maturity than her two detractors. By her silence she has also put herself above the feminist backlash that has surrounded the ‘Sky Two’ from all sectors of the media since the incident arose.
What seems to have determined Andy Gray’s fate however, was his treatment of a female co-presenter, Charlotte Jackson, whom he jokingly asked to attach a microphone down the front of his trousers. Apparently Ms Jackson was not amused, but the incident, which took place before the Massey episode went unpunished by Sky at the time, and was only resurrected once the Massey incident reached the newsrooms.
Not since the 17th century when the country was in the grip of the Puritans have people had to be careful about what they say. Whether it be sexism, racism, homophobia or Islamaphobia, we all have to take care of what we say and who we say it to: and in this age of advanced technology, we must also have a thought for who may be listening.
Careers can be ended and freedom taken away for violations unknown of 50 years ago. Everywhere today, throughout childhood and into adulthood, we are politically corrected, whether in the classroom or in the workplace all kinds of newspeak like ‘diversity training’ is being instilled with minimum complaint.
It is irrational to dislike someone because of the colour of their skin, and both immature and nasty to make up names to humiliate with. But name-calling has never been a crime in England since that brief Puritan hegemony.
To refer to someone as a paki or nigger is indeed offensive, (although I have heard nigger being used by black against black without it being classed as a hate crime) but to drag someone before the court with the very real possibility of a prison sentence for such utterances should enrage a truly free society.
WHAT GRAY AND KEYS DID on the scale of ‘hate crimes’ was somewhat minor. But their target was ill-judged. Of all the isms and phobias currently seen as crimes, anti-feminist remarks are the most deadly to man in modern Western culture.
Like all dystopian concepts, political correctness relies upon fear in order to succeed in its aim of virally altering Western culture. Thus we have put onto statute ‘hate crimes’, punishable by terms of imprisonment, or the loss of a job. The modern workplace has become part of the nursery along with schools and academic institutions to help create a deadening variety of human being freed from hating or even disliking by the threat of punishment, as Andy Gray and Richard Keys have found to their cost in not understanding and naively falling fowl of this Brave New World in the making.
It is the right of every free born Britain to let rip free from the turn of the gaolers keys. It is our right to offend without telling untruths - untruths which can be challenged already through the laws of libel and slander.
Paki and nigger is name-calling, be it in a most extreme form. It will undoubtedly offend as it is intended to so do, but do you incorporate into such a law other types of similar offence. What of the disabled? I myself suffer with ankylosing spondylitis, a curvature of the spine that has left me exposed in the past to jibes such as hunchback and Quasimodo. These taunts naturally left me angry. But the last thing I would have wanted was for those who used those names to be punished by the law. For if we use the law in a way it was never intended to be used, it would be like using a sledge hammer to crack a nut.
The law cannot make people like each other and if it tries it amasses further resentment and ultimately the possibility of social unrest.
The use of the law is no way to protect the citizen from insults. Only the march of time unhindered by ideological palliatives such as political correctness can lead to common courtesy
Political correctness is Multiculturalisms Little Red Book and the sooner society is rid of both the better it will be for society. You cannot change human feelings to what you would like them to be through recourse to the law; you cannot alter human likes and dislikes by recourse to the law; and it is indoctrination to impose an ideology on a culture through schooling , work and the state broadcasting service.
Gray and Keys have fallen fowl of the thought police. Whether this episode will make them better citizens or make them resentful and more determined to resist this nasty and oppressive template of Multiculturalism remains to be seen. But I hope that any change in their behaviour will not have come about because of any fear of punishment from a frightened future employer.
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