Political correctness...pah, shove it up your fat old arse!

I'm not even gonna go there!

During my early high school years I was always the pudgy boy. 

You know the kid that wasn't obese, or a right little Michelin Man, but just someone with a spare tyre and as a result someone that the other kids picked on.

It's such an awful time in any young person's life what with raging hormones, developing bodies and such terrible self esteem that anything different, be it a big custard filled pluke, wearing glasses, being smart or being really quite stupid, can and will attract the attention of other kids so keen to deflect from their own insecurities. 

Nasty dose of Rabies

Of course I can only speak from the chap's perspective obviously, but I remember quite clearly what I now know to have been the desperate quest to understand who I was. 

I remember the horrors of worrying about 'measuring up', quite literally, to those other boys around me in the gym changing rooms and I remember being teased about my boy-boobs. 

Don't get me wrong, looking back on it now it wasn't really terrible. I didn't end up with my head down the loo or become so ostracised by my peers as to suggest I may have been inflicted with a particularly nasty dose of Rabies. 

No I was just the target of some folks who had their own struggles to understand their place in the universe. 

That was until one day when I sat on the Irish kid. 

Now this kid and I had actually started out friends. He was from Eire, had just moved to Glasgow with his family and so was new to my school. 

In an attempt at being a martyr in this particular story, I'll suggest that as a nice kid I didn't want him to feel self conscious about his new home and so befriended him. 

Of course looking back now, not that I knew it at the time, the real reason for my beeline for this chap just off the proverbial boat to my then shores may, just may and I'm not admitting anything here, have been a small crush, just a wee one!

Fondness for musicals and great decor

So anyway we were buddies for a time and then inexplicably, he found the bad boys. 

He decided that he wanted to hang around with the kids who got into trouble, spat in the playground and heaven forbid, walked around with shirts un-tucked. 

Now to a kid like that, what with my pudgyness, spare tyre and that large sign above my head that flashed 'mask your own image based problems temporarily by picking on me', I represented prime pickings. 

So from friend to foe we romped very quickly indeed and the kid, who's name I can't remember now, called me all sorts from Sunday. The result of which was that I would go home at night and cry. Now to be fair I was a bit of a sensitive laddie and with hindsight I now understand that a fondness for musicals and great decor were ultimately what lay behind my deeply emotional personality, but still I sobbed and I sobbed.  

My mum tried invariably to comfort me by suggesting that 'sticks and stones may break my bones, but names would never hurt me!'. 

What a bunch of old shite I thought! Try telling that to Manfred Rommel,.....you just googled that didn't you?

But it was a couple of days after my mother's well meaning, but appalling attempts at understanding a boys high school life, that it was helpfully and rather too loudly suggested by some of Irish kid's friends, that the best way of sorting out this issue of his name calling and my not really liking it terribly much, was that we should have a fight. 

Saturn's moons

The idea of this fists based altercation filled me with utter and absolute horror. Not least you see as kicking and punching at this chap had never really been the type of rolling around on the ground I had pictured us engaging in to this point. 

But as a teenage laddie, to back down at this point would have been to seal my fate to boundless teasing and deeply unhelpful suggestions of my spare tyres resembling Saturn's moons. 

And so at 3-45 that day off we went, Irish boy and his mates and me, down to the park for this scrap. 

Now I have to be entirely honest, I was fucking petrified! 

Seriously, it was fight or flight stuff and it was only my own desperate need to get the bullying to stop that drove me onwards. The fight started. 

Now I've mentioned I was a big boy and long story short he got a couple of punches in then I got him on the ground. 

But you see I couldn't bear to actually punch him, no that would have hurt him...and me more's the point. So in perhaps not the most glorious of victories, not one to be on the mantelpiece in medal form if I'm honest, I sat on him till he admitted defeat. 

And here it is, the point of this unrelenting blabbering. As kids we're so keen to keep unwanted eyes from what we view as our own inadequacies that we'll do anything, even pointing out the inadequacies of others just to keep ahead, to make sure we're viewed as the best, the funniest, the most popular. 

As adults today we're expected to leap to the other extreme in the form of 'political correctness', in that we dare not utter certain words or phrases in fear of offending someone. 

So we all constantly walk through the minefield of conversation, three sentences ahead in our brains desperately seeking for anything that might offend.

Offending Muslimists

Yes of course we absolutely shouldn't deliberately say or do anything that is likely to cause offence or upset, but some of the societal rules being placed upon us these days are just mental. There's one for a start, I shouldn't have used the word 'mental' just in case it offends those who have experienced an unfortunate head injury of some description. 

Back in September of 2006, Top Gear presenter Richard Hammond had a horrific crash in which he nearly died whilst driving a jet car. 

Thank god, shouldn't say that either in case I'm offending Muslimists, he eventually recovered from his injuries. On his first appearance back on Top Gear his fellow presenter Jeremy Clarkson on questioning him about the events surrounding the crash and his ultimate recovery quipped, "so Richard, have you been left a bit mental then?". 

Now the vast majority of the millions watching understood the manner in which the jibe was intended and laughed uproariously. 

However did you know that comment sparked the largest number of complaints from mental health organisations ever received by the BBC to that point. I mean seriously, that's just bonkers! Damn it, can't use that one either!

Spring Spheres

Did you know the European Parliament has introduced a bill that would outlaw the use of the terms Miss, Mr, Mrs and Ms as they may cause offence. 

An English county council has ruled recently that the famous English dessert 'Spotted Dick', must be renamed as it causes offence. It's been tossed, if you'll pardon the expression, in favour of 'Spotted Richard'. That's worse! Those poor children named Richard with a few spots are left to a nightmarish world of beatings and name calling whilst at school!

A school in Seattle recently renamed the traditional hunt for Easter eggs, a hunt for 'Spring Spheres' as they were worried about offending those of a non Christian faith. 

A UK recruitment consultant recently submitted a job ad to a local job centre. In an astonishing turn of events, the ad was rejected for publication as it sought a 'reliable' and 'hardworking' individual. The explanation given was that it could be offensive to 'lazy' and 'unreliable' people. 

In Australia of all places in 2007, those hired to play Santa Claus in Grottos at tens of shopping malls up and down the country were told that they could no longer use the traditional Santa greeting 'Ho, Ho, Ho' as it was deemed offensive! 

What? I hear you ask, how on earth could 'Ho, Ho, Ho' be offensive. 

Well would you believe the view was that it was too close to an American slang term meaning prostitute! I mean Jesus Chr....nope definitely can't go there!

Copious quantities of Zyklon B

Come on people, we don't live in The Truman Show for a good reason. It'd be an utter nightmare! 

A good part of our successful relationships as human beings involves taking the piss out of one another. It causes us to laugh and at times to self reflect. If someone takes offence you back off, apologise and move on, you don't ban the joke or the subject forever after.  

Yes we absolutely succeed as adults in moving on from childish teasing and bullying, most of us anyway. But as people we can't, we shouldn't insulate ourselves from the world by banning certain words or phrases in case it might, at some point, sometime, offend someone. 

Recently I used a Scottish expression and described someone, not to their face, as a 'window licker'. It was a statement of how stupid I thought this person was and it was intended to be funny. 

It was, at least one other person laughed. But then it was suggested that it wasn't really appropriate anymore and that I shouldn't use that expression as it might offend someone. 

Now it wasn't as though I had suggested the Holocaust brought some advantages to our modern society and darling Hitler was quiet correct in his usage of copious quantities of Zyklon B. 

But you would have been mistaken for believing I had such was the reaction to my 'window licker' comment.

Surrounded by Ebola victims

And there we come to the crux of the matter. 

As kids we immediately leap to the vagaries of name calling or perhaps a fight as at that age we haven't developed the maturity to take a different tack. 

As adults we have the ability to choose our behaviors and I worry that we're removing the sense of personal responsibility from each of us. 

Why can't we be allowed to determine, on the basis of the company we're in, what is and what's not appropriate to say. 

I'm unlikely for example, in a room surrounded by Ebola victims, to start a conversation as to how those nasty Ebola victims make me want to be sick. No that would be callous and nasty. 

Equally, in a room full of feminists I'm going to make the decision myself that it'd be unwise to suggest that woman shouldn't be running that company as she's a right old sour faced cow who should be at home with the kiddies. 

See, I made the decision myself not to enter areas where offence could be caused or taken. I acted as a human being, I know, amazing right! 

So there we go, don't be nasty to each other and don't go bloody fighting because you're a window licker if you do. 

For me, political correctness...pah, shove it up your fat old arse!