Council clamps down on 'man on the street'

My sensitivities have been hurt!

Having read this enlightening article on the sensible steps being taken by the council, I found myself rendedered speachless by the job advertisement sitting next to it, asking for a "Project Manager", surely this should be a Project Personager?

@ Bootnote

Revenue^H^H^H^H^H^H Speed cameras.

Fista.

nuLabour

:-)

Time to end this wicked discrimination

Why are only 'persons' allowed 'spokes'?

What about furries, vampires and zombies? They can hardly be descibed as 'person'. Further, use of the word 'spoke' implies that only beings capable of audible communication can participate and when our gaseous bodied thought-communicating alien overlords finally arrive* they will not be pleased at this attempt to exclude them from mainstream life and cultural activity.

I would suggest we need a radical overhaul of the language in which we replace all species specific references with the word 'dooh-dah'.

Yours disgustedly

Colonel RC Matheringham-Smythe

Tunbridge Wells.

IHIOGA** that this is scheduled for a week next Monday.

** I have it on good authority

Shocking, truly shocking...

That The Register would besmirch the wonders of Marmite.

Of course, 'man' couldn't refer to 'mankind', could it?

Actually, if one wants to be pedantic about this whole PC nonsense, then we should stop calling them 'women' and refer them as 'men' from now on - after all, female actors are no longer referred to as actresses, etc., and calling them 'women' really marks them out as different.

Womens views

are not invisible, we just don't pay any attention to them, until they are vocalised repeatedly or until we are presented with a threat to withold certain benefits. At which point we are all ears.

Thumbs down or under the thumb you tell me.

PC used to mean Police Constable, now it means Pile of Crap!

"This includes the sensitivity of various individuals and groups, and current thinking in society in general."

So for the troubled few they decide to enlighten everyone. I sure as hell don't have a problem with "man on the street" and most defiantly don't assume it means a man!

Old person?

I'm thirty five, you know!

/montypython

Person - sorry, not allowed

As a manager known for his lack of sense of humour once pointed out to us, you can't use person as it contains the word son which is gender-biased.

Mine's the one with STRATOS written on the back (in-joke).

Almost as bad...

as a recent in office announcement, informing us of the appointment of a new "Handy Person". (Yes, it is a bloke!)

Pass the PC sick bag please.

council?

I think we should be referring to councils as dick heads and calling them councils suggests that they have some ability to govern in a reasonable manner.

Hey! Marmite is tasty!

That Colpoys feller sounds like a reactionary old gimmer to me.

I think you'll find..

That the correct term is "per-offspring". As "son" is gender specific.

Human therefore becomes Huperoffspring.

Simple really.

Stop

Could we stop this guessing that someone somewhere will be offended PC nonsense please?. FFS people these phrases have been used for countless years if anyone was offended don't you PC nutters think you'd have heard about it by now?

Wait until someone complains then, like the ASA, uphold that one complaint. Just don't let trivial things like one complaint out of 60-odd million citizens stop you.

That old codger managed to offend even more

"This kind of thing really _gets my goat_ - it's not as though anybody _in their right mind_ would believe that the 'man in the street' referred solely to the _male sex_. It's just _stupid_, I've never heard anything like it."

His quote is offensive to goats, homosexuals, mental patients and stupid people. He should have said:

"This kind of thing really _annoys me_ - it's not as though anybody _who is not mentally challenged_ would believe that the 'man in the street' referred solely to _males_. It's just _obtuse_, I've never heard anything like it."

Hmmmm

Well with all the problems facing society today; education, environmental problems, crime and violence in the streets, unemployment and the credit crunch.

I'm glad to see that so much time, resource and money is being spent making sure that totally inoffencive and harmless expressions no longer repress and discriminate the common person.

No doubt millions of affected people will now sleep soundly in their beds tonight, under the safe and unassuming blanket of political correctness that are local governments provide.

Bravo.........

This takes pathetic to a whole new level

I was considering brainstorming some new PC terms but I thought it would be a load of nanny-state labourised bollocks.

There is nothing wrong with suffusing the word 'man' into posts. Should we relabel our species as Hupersons?

Get a grip you overpaid council idiots - get the bums off the streets, help out the broken homes, stop treating fat people like they are diseased and pour money into education instead.

I get really wound up by people nit-picking at what are now considered to be non-pc terms.

Britain is officially* the most PC state in the world and I want to leave.

*I made that up but it feels that way.

Mine's the man-sized one in a manly dark colour.

Gareth Keenan knows how to be politically correct

Gareth: "My dad, for example, he's not as cosmopolitan or as educated as me and it can be embarrasing you know. He doesn't understand all the new trendy words - like he'll say "poofs" instead of "gays", "birds" instead of "women", "darkies" instead of "coloureds"."

Gareth: "I'm not homophobic, all right? Come around, look at my C.D collection. You'll find Queen, George Michael, Pet Shop Boys. They're all bummers."

"Promotes the view that the world is male"

...and it also promotes the view that everyone is "on the street".

What percentage of people are in their houses or offices at any given time? Are their views to be ignored, beholden to the point of view of people whom have nothing better to do than stand in the middle of the street?

Please don't use person!!!

Son is masculine. Kin would be more suitable so it shouldn't be person, but perkin

Paris (coz I'm sexist)

A seven page guide?

That'd be a MANual then, wouldn't it?

Furries, people?

Since when?

Alien because we have no masks.

Cunning Linguists

The manual runs to seven pages because it has been printed in 21 different languages inlcuding braille and esperanto.

The real question should be ...

... are the editorial staff at El Reg attempting to get Nelson over at "Speak Your Branes" to create a new Vulture's Vadge category. This all reads like a deliberate attempt to provoke the hard-of-thinking to fulminate publically, which you have all duly done.

It's perfectly right.

The only problem here is that it's exactly right.

"it's not as though anybody in their right mind would believe that the 'man in the street' referred solely to the male sex," fumes some (male) Tory twat. Except that it is. The phrase is sufficiently old enough that it was used to mean exactly what it said. When a newspaper discussed what "the man in the street" thought it really did mean the man in the street, because the woman in the street was supposed to be thinking about knitting.

Call it political correctness all you like, but that doesn't make it wrong.

Knee-jerk reactions to anything at all which attempts to address sexism, racism, or any other form of prejudice as "political correctness" are far more damaging in the long run.

People of Chichester

You are paying for these idiots!

I'm offended

"manning the switchboard"

They use an actual switchboard?? like a board of switches?? Surely they should be using something with buttons and integrated circuits?

Now, what about one of my school teachers... Mrs Manning... should she now be referred to as "married-person personning" to avoid gender-specificity?

OLD can't use that!

I was told by a local council PC manager last year that you cannot use the term "OLD" as it;

1. Refers to age of a human

2. "OLD" is refers to decrepid or unreliable as you often throw things out simply because they are "OLD"

So unfortunately this particular council has dropped a major PC clanger here!

Anyway I must go as we have a "very unreliable" human wearing a skirt waiting for me in the welcome suite!

Paris! because she will still be horny when she is "unreliable"!

@ Greg & Chris

Greg quoting some council flunky: "what we are seeking to do is to be more sensitive and responsive to the needs of others in our society."

These are strictly imaginary needs. The thought process is closely akin to the insane health & safety regulations that forbid all interesting activities on the grounds that someone *might* get hurt, instead of accepting that, yes, people do get hurt on occasion and H&S regulations should be limited to the relatively few activities that have a proven track record for causing serious injury. A skinned knee or a wounded ego is not a serious injury. Likewise, calling someone a spokesman does not deny anyone any needed ego stroking -- except for a few insane feminists with no sense of perspective.

Chris: "The manual runs to seven pages because it has been printed in 21 different languages inlcuding braille and esperanto."

Reminds me of when I was working in a public body that annually issued property assessment notices to all property owners in British Columbia and prided itself on having had the information leaflet translated into a large number of languages, including some indigenous tongues with under a dozen speakers left. I laughed myself silly when a gentleman whose name implied he was a Sikh wrote an indignant letter about the paternalistic attitude implied in the translation. To paraphrase, he bitched "you are telling me that someone capable of buying real property is incapable of reading English."

Good point. The PR types and spin doctors were puzzled and could not formulate a coherent response.

Bollocks!

Oh, sorry, I mean ovaries, Oh no, too far the other way, I mean gonads.

@RW

I live in British Columbia. My apartment is in fact owned by my partner's mother, who doesn't speak English. I imagine she's rather happy to have all the relevant council information translated to Chinese. I don't see how communicating with people in their first language is "paternalistic".