Hey politicians, write your own quotes don't just take whatever dribble the press office gives you...

A case in point:

“Whilst at this point in the bid development we have not identified specific schemes being proposed within constituencies, do be assured Coun Groves and the team are working closely with district partners and local stakeholders to ensure the content of the bid has the widest possible impact. We will also ensure we continue to keep local MPs informed as the bid develops.”

Nobody - not even the incredibly bureaucratic Cllr Susan Hinchcliffe - talks like this, yet we're supposed to believe that she actually spoke these words (they were in the press release after all, in quote marks and everything).

This comment is in response to a local MP, who happens to represent the constituency containing Cllr Hinchcliffe's ward, saying that his patch isn't getting a look in when it comes to doling out the transport money for the Leeds City Region. And it's a fudge because the politician (or rather the anonymous press officer - who used to work for the Labour Party no doubt) doesn't want to say the truth - "sorry Phil but we've looked at all the schemes, they've been assessed to death and the only ones that qualify have been put forward - I'm afraid none are in Shipley."

Instead we get a wiffly statement filled with partners, stakeholders and promises of information that doesn't, when you take it to bits, say anything at all about why some schemes are chosen and others aren't. The reader is none the wiser about how the West Yorkshire Combined Authority decides where to splash cash on boondoggles. I suspect this is deliberate- good grief we can't have regular folk understanding how we make funding decision for heaven's sake!

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Sorry but the language police are just a load of bullies

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It's a joke isn't it. We smile knowingly because we're in the know. Ho ho, 'grammar fascists' we chuckle, confident in our grasp of the lingo being enough to hold the line against the attacks. We're canny enough to remember not to use the words 'political correctness' when the irritation rises at yet another perfectly normal, regular word that's shoved off the agenda by the language police.

Look folks, I'm good at this stuff. I've got a vocabulary way bigger than the average person. And I know that those different words for different things mean subtly different somethings. But when you see someone saying not to use the word 'stupid' because it's offensive to those with learning disabilities a little whimper of linguistic pain escapes. Why, why oh why oh why do people want to do this stuff? What do they gain by setting themselves up to police the language? And on whose authority do they act?

I get it that we should be considered, respectful and thoughtful in our choice of language. I also understand that communication doesn't happen if everything we say is set around with caveats and qualifications. And - most importantly - I take the view that most of this righteous policing of others' language isn't about that respect and consideration. Rather it's simply bullying. They're not interested in the actual content of people's speech but in catching them out using the wrong words - 'coloured people' instead of 'people of colour', 'migrant' instead of 'refugee', any number of commonly used words that might just have some sort of connection to mental illness.

What happens is that this policing of language, this poking away at words, is used by those who do not want discussion to achieve their end - the closing down of debate. If you look at how this so-called debate happens, you'll see that there is no such thing taking place because critics are either excluded or shouted down for crimes against the latest iteration of linguistic controls. The substance of the discussion is of no consequence, this is replaced by an unremitting focus on attacking the language used by the critic. Followed by complete closing of any debate through the exclusion of that critic from debate because of:

...white supremacy, colonialism, anti-black racism, anti-Latinx racism, anti-Native American racism, anti-Native/ indigenous racism, anti-Asian racism, anti-Middle Eastern racism, heterosexism, cis-sexism, xenophobia, anti-Semitism, ableism, mental health stigma, and classism,”

And when you cry 'free speech' in response you get some like:

...we do not tolerate the actions of student(s) who posted the “All Lives Matter” posters, and the “Free Speech” posters that stated that “in memoriam of the true victim of the Missouri Protests: Free Speech.”

This is not respectful but rather bullying intended simply to prevent any challenge to a prevailing orthodoxy of speech. The people who do this - whether on Twitter, on university campuses or through hectoring folk from the comfortable platform of a newspaper blog - are the worst of the righteous, smug bullies who use their ability to raise a mob as the basis for punishing the critic. And this is all done while moaning about abuse, blocking half the universe on Twitter (very publicly) and talking very loudly about trolls. Where the definition of troll in their world isn't anything beyond someone who won't bow to their bullying approach to language, to their use of that palette of the banned as a means to judge people.

But it's not enough to just ignore the critic. No, that person has to be crushed, humiliated, exposed as the evil bad person they are for daring to challenge your orthodoxy. Someone says 'perhaps we'd have fewer problems if we'd been less open to migrants' and they are blocked, their words twisted to make them 'vile racists'. And that blocking is celebrated - waved around like a bloody trophy in front of the other righteous: "look at me, I've dealt with an evil troll, look at me".

I don't think we should be rude. If I've genuinely upset someone, I'll be the first to say sorry. But most of what I've seen - the long list in that quotation above or the offence at some students making a pretty straight point about free speech - isn't folk being upset but rather bullies using others' fear of language rules to close down debate, to impose their selective, exclusive orthodoxy on others. I've lost count of the times I've been insulted during forty years of active politics - some of it just banter but a fair bit spiteful, aggressive, in-your-face insult intended to intimidate. Yet that's OK - trust me it's OK or the righteous would have done something about it except that it's mostly the same people - whereas someone making a mildly critical point about immigration, free speech or the portrayal of women in computer games gets metaphorically dragged kicking and screaming to the nearest pillory for all and sundry to abuse them for their sins against the language.

It's not a joke. It's not even political correctness. It's patronising. It's divisive. It's intimidation. And it's used by bullies.

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The excitable crowd...

This is a hard post to write for I understand - more than I care to analyse - the power of words to wound and the ability of other people's lies to destroy a man. Those who wave "sticks and stones will break my bones but words will never hurt me" probably haven't experienced the agony - the torture - of incessant verbal abuse. Not the shouting sort but the quietly whispered version; the drip, drip, drip of nastiness, the exclusion, the endless pointing to flaws and failings.

So, yes folks, words can - and do - drive people to the point of no return. And we should respect that fact and act accordingly. But we talk here of persistent, deliberate, directed, personal attacks not the generality of criticising a place or a people. Such things do not wound, do not destroy and are designed more to irritate, to generate a response.

I recall the first time I was attacked on the basis of a stereotype - it was the north/south thing. This fellow student told me I was a rich, posh southerner who wouldn't understand real life because...well because I was from "The South". I was surprised mostly by the 'all southerners are posh' line since I'd never thought of myself as anything but perfectly ordinary, as far removed from poshness as most folk. What shocked me though was the realisation that this man saw the world through a prism of stereotyped prejudice - his 'rich posh southerner' line was little different objectively than the view of black people as good at sports but not much else.

I say all this to provide some context, to point out that there's a difference between tribal allegiance and personal feelings. There's a big difference between calling someone fat and ugly and saying that everyone from Denholme is an inbred. Both these comments are rude but only the first is personal. And those folk from Denholme revel in their slightly redneck image (although heaven knows how they got to be called Frogboilers).

Which brings me to the excitable crowd, the mobile vulgus - the mob. For it is in this monster and its exploitation by a savvy few that the real danger lies. Step back to the distinction between the personal and the general - the mob takes offence (or is directed to that fake offence) at the latter and, in doing so, uses the former to prosecute its case. In times past this resulted in some rows, maybe a fight.

Today - because the government wishes to control speech - it results in someone being arrested for being rude on Twitter.

It seems that the mob can issue any kind of threat once its dander is up - from whining, self-righteous victim-mongering to actual death threats. But the target of that mob's anger - whatever their initial words - is hounded, chased, attacked and threatened. And the men of the law - with their shiny police vehicles and politically-correct masters - do the bidding (as they ever did) of the mob.

These laws - the ones that get people arrested for joking about blowing up a snow-bound airport, making snippy comments about Olympic divers or making unpleasant remarks about people from Liverpool.

These laws are the real offence.

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Humpty Dumpty and the damage of political correctness

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I read an exchange on twitter in which two correspondents tied themselves into angst-ridden knots over the proper terms to use when discussing the paralympics. We scuttled about different phrases - "able-bodied", "people with disabilities", "the disabled" and "not disabled" - with, it seems some of these being 'offensive' and others not.

There is perhaps a whole thesis to be written about the evolution of non-discriminatory language and perhaps it will explore the fuzzy boundaries between giving respect to others and political correctness. How often do we read of some or other person causing 'offence' while not intending to do so - usually by using the incorrect iteration in the evolution of language to describe a particular minority.

There are two problems with this approach to language. Firstly it gives the power of the bully to those who are appointed (usually through some unspecified and undemocratic role as a 'representative' of the minority concerned) to police the language. By not being up with the latest 'approved' terms of description we expose ourself to causing 'offence' - even if we are using a term that is not disrespectful and has been in common and polite usage in the recent past.

Secondly, it removes context. The speaker is always exposed to the risk of challenge - regardless of intent or of context - simply for failing to use what we might call the "Approved Politically Correct Term" (APCT). The result of this is that language's subtlety is destroyed - the games of wit and pleasure we play with words are closed off because the guardians of the APCTs watch over us prepared to be offended. And to use their duly appointed bully pulpit to punish.

This brings me to one of the most important passages in English literature, a passage where the magic of words is revealed and where we are given permission to be in charge of the language rather than supplicants to some approved order:

    "I don't know what you mean by 'glory,' " Alice said.
    Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. "Of course you don't—till I tell you. I meant 'there's a nice knock-down argument for you!' "
    "But 'glory' doesn't mean 'a nice knock-down argument'," Alice objected.
    "When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less."
    "The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things."
    "The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master      that's all."
    Alice was too much puzzled to say anything, so after a minute Humpty Dumpty began again. "They've a temper, some of them—particularly verbs, they're the proudest—adjectives you can do anything with, but not verbs—however, I can manage the whole lot! Impenetrability! That's what I say!

The liberty that Lewis Carroll tells us about through the mouth of a nursery rhyme character is the very opposite of political correctness. It says that context is everything and that the author of the words sets the context. Rather than APCTs we have laissez faire language - joyous, challenging, exciting and - on occasion - offending. It is this that the deadening debate of precise minority descriptions destroys and the political correctness damages. The edge is taken away from communication, we concern ourselves more with the potential for offence that with the purpose of the communication - it's not just that people are offended by 'niggardly' and 'nitty-gritty' for no good reason but that when we use words, the word police ensure that they don't mean just what we choose them to mean. They mean what the politically correct have determined is their meaning.

All this kills language as we tippy-toe around certain subjects, eschew huge chunks of the dictionary and adopt a bowdlerised, dumbed-down language so as to avoid that moment of 'offence'. And the saddest thing is that, far from recreating sensibility and politeness, such political correctness makes for upset where there should be no upset and offence where there is no offence.

Perhaps we should take Humpty Dumpty's words and put them on big posters - make people realise that the language belongs to all of us. That we can wreck it as we wish, meddle with its meaning, love it and hate it as we wish. Maybe we should say to the bullies of language that we've had enough - respect is a reflection of character not a form of words. Political correctness is damaging, dangerous and joyless - it is time to get those words back under our control.

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Humpty Dumpty and the word police

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“…There's glory for you!'

`I don't know what you mean by "glory",' Alice said.

Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. `Of course you don't -- till I tell you. I meant "there's a nice knock-down argument for you!"'

`But "glory" doesn't mean "a nice knock-down argument",' Alice objected.

'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, `it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less.'

`The question is,' said Alice, `whether you can make words mean so many different things.'

`The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, `which is to be master -- that's all.”

It may seem a little trite to start a discussion about the serious issue of language by quoting from a children’s book – even one as famous as “Alice Through the Looking Glass” – but it seems to me that Humpty Dumpty’s point is important to this discussion.

I’ve always been with Humpty on the matter of words – at least in so far as we manage to get our meaning across. But it does concern me that an order of lexical understanding has grown up from a belief that words inevitably carry a cultural loading. That there must be a list - and ever expanding list - of words that we cannot use, words that might offend some protected group or other.

The proper use of words is compromised. People write badly by using the plural to denote the singular or through the soul-destroying use of passive language. All so as to avoid the possibility that we use a masculine singular to refer to someone who could be of either gender. As if this really matters in the order of things – in the desire to see women’s equality.

But all this is just annoying, limiting and slightly dispiriting rather than something to die in the ditch over. What should really concern us is the manner in which language has become a tool by which the powerful destroy the weak – unguarded comments be they about women, a polemical comparison of someone’s speech to that of a past fascist regime or innocently alluding to black people by reference to their skin colour.

The recent example of Greg Stone, Lib Dem candidate in Newcastle East, is a case in point. Under a pseudonym, Mr Stone posted some choice comments on the Guido Fawkes blog – perhaps ill-advised but not a hanging offence surely? However, to hear Nick Brown the Labour MP for the constituency, you’d have thought Mr Stone had been caught in bed with a goat, murdered his mum and run off to Morocco with a stack of charitable funds.

Or the endless resort of many MPs, campaigners and media hacks to accusations of racism, sexism or some other kind of dread discrimination. One slightly bufferish comment and the word police are down on you like a ton (or do we have to say tonne these days) of bricks. No-one’s actually been offended. No-one’s been prevented from doing anything. But the word police – motivated more often by power and spite than any semblance of genuine concern – are there and are not interested in what the accused has done beyond the instant condemnation for using the “wrong words”.

The existence of this word police presents a gift to the bully. Good men and women are destroyed by powerful men like Nick Brown because it suits them and their search for power. Local standards boards for Councillors do not raise standards but provide instead a platform for the bully. Allegations of discrimination are automatically introduced into employment disputes because the lawyers know they are treated differently and are more likely to secure a settlement. And the media loves a good: “Councillor in racist abuse” story – even when it’s nothing of the sort.

My words mean precisely what I want them to mean, nothing more, nothing less. If you think they are racist, sexist, ageist or homophobic, that's your problem because I'm not any of those things.

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