Retarded

A relatively new aspect of my weekly schedule is that I do no to go to work on Tuesdays. I have to spend all day in the fields on Wednesday in return but so far the trade off is working well. The weekend finishes, I do a morning's work and it is day off time again. I think I like it. If I still had the newspaper delivered at Marmite soldier time Tuesdays would be the day when I could partake and then retire to the iMac to point the borax at someone on the back of what I had just read. Well the paper ain't going to be here until the Rural Delivery postie does his rounds. I have no idea when that is but about lunchtime seems about right - I think.

However I have had the radio on for the last hour. I am lazy in my radio listening habits. Radio Hauraki when in the fields, Radio Sport when driving to the fields and sometimes on the way back. Deaker on Sunday afternoons if it is raining and that is about it. Mrs O likes to have the News on at the aforementioned Marmite soldier time. This means having that smart arsed plonker Hoskins in my ear for twenty minutes before retiring to the charabanc for a bit of sport. Hoskins irritates me intensely. His inability to be wrong about anything is surpassed only by the totally most irritating man on radio Danny 'I am the expert of absolutely everything in the entire Universe' Watson. I cannot listen to this bloke when in the car as I am likely to drive into bridge abutments.

Despite all of the above if you filter out the smart arse arrogance of the breakfast presenter you can just glean an idea of what is making the morning's news.

There is another bloke in the main stream media, this time of the televisual variety, called Paul Henry. An idiot, but a largely harmless idiot. He makes people watch his program, and hence make his bosses and advertisers very happy, by being offensive. This is very clever offensive. He is never really very offensive but just does enough to get old ladies tut tuttung behind their net curtains - and boost viewership numbers. He also has a fourth form 'tits, bums and toilet' humour propensity. So in recent times he got into hot water for pointing out that a woman he was interviewing had a moustache - which she did. I forget the other hanging offences he has been in the gun for but it is all in the 'who cares?' mould. His latest transgression is calling that retarded, ugly Scottish woman who came second (I think) in a UK talent (sic) show ugly and retarded. I'm sure she is really worried by this as she trots off to the Royal Bank of Scotland to pay her first royalty check into her account. £2,000,000 is going to make sure her cat is not short of Whiskas for the foreseeable future.

All this is trivial and stupid enough you would think. But no. There is some concerned person about to get into full hand wringing mode. He is doing a survey, that presumably costs someone some money (and I wouldn't bet against that someone being me) to see if 'retarded' should be put on the Broadcasting Authority's banned list of offensive words. According to this retarded idiot 'retarded' needs to be in the banned lexicon next to 'nigger' and ...well I can't think of any others. Apparently this problem is so acute that there has been one complaint over the use of the word 'retarded' in the last ten years. Well, deary me.

The best known non word of the early twenty first century probably is nigger. Look at the trouble this has caused. Agatha Christie had to have the title of one of her novels changed from 'Ten Little Niggers' to 'Ten Little Indians'. Good book and to save you the bother of reading the whole thing, the judge did it. I'm sure even the new title is on shaky grounds and it will soon have to be changed to 'Ten Little Native Americans' or 'Ten Little Indigenous People'. That, however, will be offensive to Native Americans or Indigenous People. It will probably end up as 'Ten Little Middle Aged Anglo Saxon Males some of whom are gender confused and are really Women'. That will only offend (well, no it won't really) the likes of me and we don't matter.

Then we have Guy Gibson's dog in the remake of the Dam Busters. This canine companion was called 'Nigger'. Fact; that was the bloody dog's name. The aviator didn't call out across Nether Wapping 'Here Fido, I have a nice juicy steak for you' because the dog was called Nigger. He stood at the edge of the airdrome and shouted out 'Nigger'. And if any of the loony language police came his way he would likely bomb them - 'cos that was what he did for a living. In the remake of the film the dog has to be renamed. What will they choose? 'Black Dog' won't do even though that is what it was; just think of the offense caused to all those people with depression.

This lunacy has to stop. Offensive is vastly overplayed and is good fun if used judiciously. It is even better fun if sprayed around willy nilly.

Retard is a good word. How can you adjust your magneto without using it?

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