Monday, January 10, 2005

"TOWNSHIPS" INCORRECT

The Greater Manchester police in the UK have banned the use of the word "township" to describe its subdivisions, claiming it to be a racist phrase because poor black people in South Africa are described as living in townships. For now on subdivisions are to be known as "partnerships."

Says one local politician, "I find it hard to believe that this word would cause offence and I think the people of Greater Manchester would far rather police concentrate on catching criminals than on the finer details of textual analysis."

In other news, Greater Manchester police have given anyone owning a "race" car twenty four hours to leave town.

Manchester Online (UK) 6-Jan-2006. (Via Jerry Lerman).



Politically incorrect welfare in Australia

Minorities must not help themselves!

"Fierce criticism of a deal between an Aboriginal community and the Federal Government, initiated by the Aboriginal people to improve the poor health of Aboriginal children, can only be described as politically motivated nonsense. The critics included former ATSIC chief, Mick Clarke; chairman of the Australian Indigenous Leadership Centre, Mick Dodson; NSW Democrat Senator Aden Ridgeway; and Labor's Aboriginal Affairs spokesman, Kim Carr.

Their claim that the deal was "patronising and insulting", or reached "with a gun at their head", ignores the fact that the proposal originated with the Mulan people themselves. The Mulan Aboriginal community, which lives in the remote north-west of Western Australia, proposed that the Federal Government fund the installation of a petrol-bowser, in exchange for which the local community would ensure that children wash and shower regularly, and that rubbish would be removed from around houses.

The town of Mulan suffers very high rates of the preventable eye disease, trachoma, which, if left untreated, results in blindness. The contagious bacterial disease is spread when children in contact with an infected person, get the bacteria on their hands, then rub their eyes. Repeated infection leads to permanent damage to the eyes.

The community decided to put the proposal to the Federal Government, after the local Catholic school initiated a hand- and face-washing program 18 months ago. Since then, rates of infection among these children, previously around 50 per cent, had fallen to 16 per cent, according to The Australian. The community then sought an agreement with Canberra that, in exchange for a community-based program to improve children's health, a new petrol-bowser would be installed, saving a 90 km round trip to buy fuel. The community administrator, Mark Sewell, told ABC radio's PM program that the community itself came up with the idea of the agreement, and approached the Government.

He said, "We wanted to improve kids' health and wanted to get fuel sales here as well. And, but we just felt that, you know, perhaps to show Government that we really mean business, we sort of put it down as an agreement where we'd work on the kids' health if the Government could help us with the fuel-bowsers."

The comments of the critics suggest that they would prefer Aboriginal people to continue to suffer from the disease than that they enter into the agreement which the Aboriginal people themselves had initiated."

Is this not an example of the arrogant paternalism of which they accused the Federal Government?

Source

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