Ironically over here in the UK when employers phone job agencies looking for temporary staff they almost always now ask for 'non british' workers, this is because they do an honest days work in the main while british kids are so soft they don't know how to work anymore - obviously a sweeping generalisation but you get the idea.

Originally posted by johnb
Ironically over here in the UK when employers phone job agencies looking for temporary staff they almost always now ask for 'non british' workers, this is because they do an honest days work in the main while british kids are so soft they don't know how to work anymore - obviously a sweeping generalisation but you get the idea.

Good example. It shows that a good working morale gets you the job, no matter what your origin is.

Originally posted by sicklecell
To finish my little on topic/off topic rant i think political correctness is borne out of the desire for everyone to be equal to everyone else.
A nice thought but unfortunately everyone is not equal to everyone else, some people can do what others cant, its just a fact of life.

With this statement, you hit the heart of the matter.
If people would face this fact like they did back when, life would be easier.
I never thought telling kids, "you can be anything" would turn out this way.

You can be anything as long as you can actually "do" it.

A world in which you have to worry about offending other people is a hell. Instead, people need to learn how to deal with other peoples opinions and thoughts, and that means learning how not to be offended by words.

The true price of freedom is allowing it in others, especially when you disagree with them. When people are crying over being offended, then they are in effect denying others of their freedom, and they will lose it themselves as well.

My saying is this: You have every right to be offended, but absolutely no right to do anything about it.

People who get offended just need to get over themselves.

[edit on 8/19/2009 by badmedia]

Nice post, Skyfloating. This is exactly how I feel about political correctness, and am constantly saying this on this site . As far as name calling and stuff I have been called everything in the book. I dont really care, I encourage people to speak their minds. Takes a lot for me to be offended.

Peace

[edit on 19-8-2009 by jeasahtheseer]

Do those who approve of political correctness have anything more to say in its defense?

People who get offended by mere words have more important problems than someone using an Un-PC term.

Words are meaningless.

Anyone know the History of PC-ness? Where all this comes from? When it started?

It must have been engineered from somewhere, because its all around.

[edit on 19-8-2009 by Skyfloating]

Two pages, and no-one's stated the bleedin' obvious yet.

One poster came this close...

I'm offended by your post, expect to hear from my lawyer.

...and missed.

The reason for the vast upwelling of political correctness is fear of litigation. Businesses, government bodies, academic institutions and charities are all vulnerable to lawsuits against them for statements or actions thought to be offensive to certain people, destructive of their dignity and so on. So these institutions insist on PC, and thus it spreads.

Individuals who espouse political correctness have, however, no such excuse. I take noble, righteous pleasure in offending them.

In America, a nation ruled by lawyers (literally as well as metaphorically, as any rollcall of senators and congressmen will testify), PC will continue to spread until, presumably, the nation is completely paralyzed and the Chinese or the Russians, who don't go in much for PC, take over.

In fact, PC is mostly an Anglophone thing: Americans are bad enough but Australians and Canadians are worse, and New Zealanders are worst of all. Notice I don't include Britain itself; despite official efforts, Brits are pretty unPC. As for the French and the Italians and the Japanese and so on, for the most part they couldn't care less - though Germans and Scandinavians are hot for it. People in my own country don't think about it much, I'm happy to say, though in not-so-faraway India, where hundreds of millions of English speakers live, it is making steady, slimy progress.

Its origins? Laudable, really. A movement against racial namecalling was probably how it started. The pioneers would have been the best people: artists, intellectuals, political liberals, scientists and religious leaders of the tolerant sort (as opposed to the commoner intolerant sort). From such beginnings, it was natural that it should become de rigeur in academia. In particular, it permeated university arts and social-science departments. There it fell into the hands of people educated beyond their intelligence (that is what social-science departments at universities are for) and the rest is history.

Courtesy and nondiscriminatory attitudes are not political correctness, although they are what it originally grew from. Political correctness -Skyfloating and the rest of you are right - is a monstrous mutant child of the best of parents.