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HR practice

PC brigade goes one step beyond

by Personnel Today 14 Nov 2006
by Personnel Today 14 Nov 2006


There’s been a bit of a hoo-ha in the national press lately about a council training document that banned the term ‘politically correct’ – the document itself now being banned for being too PC for its own good.


Guru believes this is one step too far, as political correctness has become such an integral part of the British psyche that it should be treasured in the same way as other anachronistic and outdated concepts, such as hot chocolate, the Queen, and Noel Edmunds.


Having said that, Guru always felt it was more appropriate to label a female person chairing some committee or other as ‘chairwoman’ rather than ‘chair’, as to have a chair, sitting in the chair, chairing a meeting about… er… chairs, could be a tad confusing.


To retain our sense of good old British absurdity, perhaps we should take a lead from our beloved legislators who recently gave credibility to the term ‘gangmaster’ for those dubious chaps exploiting cheap migrant labour, despite the risk of apoplexy among the PC brigade. By default, this happily revives the status of the ever-interesting term ‘mistress’, which always held out hope of so much more exploitation than a mere ‘woman’ ever could – gangmistress, chairmistress, firemistress, headmistress.


Guru has to go and have a bit of a lie down.


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Personnel Today

Personnel Today articles are written by an expert team of award-winning journalists who have been covering HR and L&D for many years. Some of our content is attributed to "Personnel Today" for a number of reasons, including: when numerous authors are associated with writing or editing a piece; or when the author is unknown (particularly for older articles).

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