Rember the controversies over the word “niggardly”?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversies_about_the_word_%22niggardly%22

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/local/longterm/williams/williams020499.htm

So my question is: What is the demographic makeup of the people who responded to those polls? I would stake my life on it that the majority of those respondents do not represent the ‘denizens’ of this blog.

I cannot be any clearer than that…

I can’t agree with Random Guy @31 because I can’t understand what he has said. The last sentence following “hint” is syntactically ill-formed and therefore semantically anomalous. Is there any chance he could rephrase it using fewer embedded clauses, that is, in plain English?

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Jest?? What would Chris Rock say?

Ask, and ye shall receive…..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OesOn1yz4ew&feature=related

I found this to be an interesting article on what Prince Harry said a few weeks ago.
http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/6098/

Surely thats a case for looking at the demographics of those who responded. Hint: The majority who are saying no offense was caused relative to whether or not they belong to the affected group(s) who are most likely to be pissed off at racist bullshit i.e. like the ‘denizens’ of this blog.

I do think however that Thatcher has been stitched up here. She said something offensive but this was never broadcast. Therefore this should have been dealt with as a private disciplinary matter instead of the whole country knowing about it.
Surely whoever leaked the story to the press is also guilty of breaching employee codes of contract.

And allow me to cite a couple of responses in a Times online poll, kindly supplied by Sunny Hundal elsewhere:

http://extras.timesonline.co.uk/pollresults.htm

Question: Last week a video from a home camera was released in which Prince Harry described an army colleague as a “Paki”.
Majority response: It was used in a good-natured way and wasn’t racist 68%.

Question: It also emerged that Prince Charles has for some years used the name ‘Sooty’ to address an Asian businessman with whom he played polo.
Majority response: The businessman does not mind so nobody else should either 78%.

I wonder how the denizens of this blog and similar ones account for the general discrepancy between these responses and their own.

Let’s look at MacPherson. If ever there was a kangeroo court it was that one. Nearly all of the evidence came from interest groups who were already saying what the enquiry found. All that happened was a judicial version of the CRE reports, hundreds of them over the years, which always found racism. To be investigated by the race industry was to be found guilty. Now I know nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition but at least they actually did find some people not guilty of heresy!

I have been involved in activities against the far right all my life and do not accept the MacPherson report if only for the fact that I was not consulted. Neither do I accept the myth of “Institutional racism”. I also know that when coruja brands the white working class a racist it means that person doesn’t actually know us.

A look at the leaked BNP membership list shows that it has support across the stratum which makes it much more dangerous that the National Front. It is hacking into support from both Labour and the Tories and its candidate in a coming by election in Croydon is a former member of the Animal Liberation Front, a bunny hugger if you please!

I would like to think that coruja is being ironic but I am afraid these views, while discredited, still have some currency among the professional white haters of the race relations industry and the guilt tripped whites who finance them.

It has always struck me, and I commented on this a couple of days ago whilst out BNP watching on one of the strikes down the Thames estuary, that the anti fascist movement is “hideously white”.

Now quite clearly this is a breach of some race relations act and this blatant discrimination where the anti BNP movement is dominated by “institutionaly racist” members of the white working class.

What is needed is a Royal Commission which will take evidence from organisations like Operation Black Vote and the newly founded Istitute of Practitioners in Equality and Diversity, no I didn’t make it up, they will be paid very large consultancy fees for the forgone conclusion that the anti fascist movement is racist and quotas will be enforced on all anti BNP activities.

Naturally this will have to be monitored so there will have to be a new supervisory body possibly the Anti Fascist Action Regulatory Trust (AFART)which will have the power to ban any anti BNP activity which does not fulfil the required racial quotas.

People like myself who insist on going on these blatantly racist anti fascist activities would be fined and persistent offenders imprisoned.

Far fetched? Don’t you believe it, the race industry with its inbuilt hatred of white people and insatiable greed is capable of anything.

Whether speech codes are common in workplaces or not is irrelevant to whether they are right or not. I can sort of understand the BBC having to restrict what its employees say in public, although I’m slightly surprised that you stand up for employers rather than the employee on these issues. However, I’m not sure that this is actually relevant to the case at hand which relates to off-air comments.

I think Ravi probably has it right. The BBC should have asked her to desist and then if she refused she could have been thrown out for insubordination. But she shouldn’t have been forced to apologise, the BBC having its special duty towards the widest possible interpretation of free speech.

BNP members can work for them I’m sure, as long as they stick within BBC policy of not being racist.

As for speech codes – you have at work everywhere. You’re telling me a company cannot say to its staff that they shouldn’t say anything that jeopardises its reputation? That’s absurd. The BBC already has to restrict staff in talking to the press or expressing their opinions openly because of its remit. You’re living in fantasy land…

Still, she did use the term gollywog inside BBC premises among her co-workers, and therefore, it doesn’t seem unreasonable that she was sacked. But couldn’t she get a warning to watch her language?

Incidentally, Carol Thatcher is 25% middle-eastern. You can watch her face when she was told her ancestors came from very far away.

As for your other point, I don’t think what she said was “hate speech”, which is usually defined a speech inciting hatred of someone. You seem to be conflating offensive speech with hate speech. And regardless of that, I don’t think the BBC should be imposing speech codes on its staff. The risk is that hate speech gets conflated with offensive speech and then with politically incorrect speech and…well, you get the drift. The only sensible place to draw the line is at incitement. Anything else is too subjective.

Representing a view through journalism is rather different than employing someone who holds those views.

She would be breaching her contract because I believe its a responsibility of public sector employers to stamp out hate speech from employees.

If she didn’t though, I am convinced she shouldn’t go.
If the BBC were a private employer I would have no problem with them firing her. In fact, if she worked for me I think I might fire her myself (although I doubt very much if I would have employed her in the first place). The situation for the BBC is different. It is funded by coercion and is meant to represent all views, including unpleasant ones – it’s taken money from all. That’s why it quite properly gives airtime to the BNP, at least at election time.

Coming back to the possibility that she breached her contract, I would still be appalled that the BBC was putting speech codes into its contracts. That doesn’t seem responsible for a body that is meant to be at the forefront of free speech in this country.

And the right of employers to sack employees who betray the guidelines they were hired under?

sure – she can rant and rave on Hyde Park Corner and I wouldn’t give a crap. But why should by license fee support a racist?