Friday, August 13, 2004

BUREAUCRATIC BRITAIN

Paedophilia as a ludicrous excuse for dictating to people

Fairlands Valley Park in Stevenage, Herts, in the UK told a man that he could not take a photograph of his OWN SON at a public swimming pool without first getting permission from everyone who was at the pool at the time. "It's absolutely ludicrous - red tape gone mad. What bureaucratic numbskull trying to justify his fatcat wage thought that one up?" asked angry dad Barry Jackson after being told by a lifeguard that taking photos at the pool was banned. "What next? Will they ban cameras on beaches or in parks?"

The pools are owned by Stevenage Borough Council but run by Stevenage Leisure Ltd. The company defended the rules, designed to stop paedophiles. A spokesman said: "It is our duty to protect children using the paddling pool."

Photographing your own kid in public is paedophilia? If that is their idea of paedophilia you can be sure the real paedophiles are cruising free

UK Sun 3-Aug-04. (Via Jerry Lerman).



DISHONEST POLITICAL VOCABULARY

Just some excerpts from an excellent article on the way political jargon is being used to mislead:

"Investments in . . ."

Politicians are not known for candor. So it is not surprising that pork-barrel projects are often referred to as "investments." The terminology of investments -- with its suggestion of stock market-like returns -- eases the minds of taxpayers. Thus, elected officials trumpet "major new investments in . . . education, Medicare, health care, homeland security, energy independence, the environment, compassion, and the unemployed." It is a vain struggle to remember the last time you heard a politician say that the government should increase "spending." In our feel-good society, spending is continually targeted for cuts, while so-called investments enjoy funding increases -- even from that great mass of officeholders who describe themselves as "fiscally responsible."

"Undocumented Worker"

Often used to describe illegal immigrants, the term "undocumented worker" brings to mind the quip about the Holy Roman Empire: it was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire. Indeed, millions of supposedly undocumented workers do possess documents (albeit fraudulent or expired ones), and a significant proportion of these individuals are not workers, but rather criminals or scammers looking to game the system. Politicians use the term to avoid criticism and to dodge meaningful debate, while the media prefer this politically correct platitude over accuracy. As Edward Abbey has written:

The perfectly correct terms 'illegal alien' and 'illegal immigrant' can set off charges of xenophobia . . . [so] [t]he only acceptable euphemism, it now appears, is something called undocumented worker. Thus the pregnant Mexican woman who appears, in the final stages of labor, at the doors of the emergency ward of an El Paso or San Diego hospital, demanding care for herself and the child she's about to deliver, becomes an "undocumented worker."

"Nondiscrimination" . . . "Equal Opportunity" . . . "Affirmative Action"

Contractors and institutions that receive federal funds are required to include "equal opportunity" clauses in their contracts with the government. This sounds quite reasonable until one considers the government's Orwellian definition of equal opportunity. According to the Department of Labor, "equal opportunity . . . requires . . . affirmative action." Thus, businesses are responsible for developing a "utilization analysis" and hiring based upon "the presence of minorities and women having requisite skills in an area in which the contractor can reasonable [sic] recruit." The non-Orwellian term for such a policy is "quota."...

The government's "nondiscrimination" policies appear to be motivated by the same logic as the U.S. Supreme Court's Orwellian plurality opinion in the seminal Bakke case: "In order to get beyond racism, we must first take account of race . . . . And in order to treat some persons equally, we must treat them differently." Or, as Orwell put it in Animal Farm: "All animals are created equal, but some animals are more equal than others."

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