How To Be Right by James O'Brien

Author:James O'Brien [O'Brien, James]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Ebury Publishing
Published: 2018-11-01T00:00:00+00:00

Obviously, Andrew couldn’t really come back from a barrage of evidence which pops up pretty much immediately if you just google ‘Winterval’. I’m often asked how I have all this stuff at my fingertips but, while I have a bit of a magpie memory, most of it is at everybody else’s fingertips too. Every columnist, talk-show host, politician or barrack room lawyer who has talked of ‘Winterval’ in the intervening years could have availed themselves of the real facts in a matter of seconds. In light of this, it is somewhat telling that the Daily Mail felt compelled to issue the following correction in 2011: ‘Winterval was the collective name for a season of public events, both religious and secular, which took place in Birmingham in 1997 and 1998. We are happy to make clear that Winterval did not rename or replace Christmas.’

Unsurprisingly, the whole idea was dropped after just two years and I don’t know what happened to its instigator, the Council’s Head of Events Mike Chubb. I hope he flourished. His unwitting legacy remains one of the most stark examples of how almost all claims that ‘political correctness has gone mad’ invariably turn out to be based on hokum and hot air. The intervening years, alas, have done nothing to dilute the potency of the phrase. Neither have they brought us any closer to understanding precisely what people mean when they employ it. Largely, as usual, because those people hardly ever get asked.

Geoff in Macclesfield had a personal interest in the decision by the department store John Lewis to sell ‘gender neutral’ clothes for children. He runs his own clothing company and found the decision to eschew ‘girls’ and ‘boys’ labels outrageous.

Geoff: What’s wrong with just having ‘boys’ and ‘girls’? I mean, I don’t understand why they would want to bow to political correctness.

James: Why do you think it’s political correctness? What do you mean by that phrase?

Geoff: We hear that all the time now.

James: I know, but no one can ever tell me what it means. What do you think it means?

Geoff: Political correctness?

James: Yes. What does it mean?

Geoff: It means trying to say or do something that doesn’t offend anybody at all.

James: But loads of people like you are really offended by this.

Geoff: They are. That’s right.

James: So it doesn’t mean that, does it?

Geoff: It does mean that, but you’re always going to offend someone. There will always be someone who, sadly, doesn’t agree with the rest.

James: So it’s bad to try not to be offensive?

Geoff: No. You should try not to be offensive.

James: But that’s political correctness.

Geoff: You can’t please all of the people all of the time. James: I know that, but your definition of political correctness was trying not to offend people. So that’s either a good thing or a bad thing. It can’t be both. Did you maybe mean trying too hard not to be offensive?’

Geoff: Yes. Trying too hard.

James: So how hard should we try?

Geoff: As hard as is reasonable.

James: And who decides what’s reasonable?

Geoff: [Laughs] Very good.

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