I
made toast and had a little look at the Internet. I was pleased to see that the
squabble on the Lego Maxifigure page had settled. Someone had posted a picture
of the “215: Red
Indians” Lego set. It features Lego figures with a reddish-brown hue
rather tan the standard yellow. Some chap new to the group had taken offence
and was being incredibly abusive, claiming that anyone who didn’t throw those
figures away was a neo-nazi and supported genocide. He’d gone on to say that he
rather expected this of the group as it wasn’t overwhelmingly American.
Apparently most European people don’t really understand how offensive they (we)
can be… or so we were told.
Amazingly
it transpired that the chap causing all the aggro was posting from a fake
Facebook account, (being too cowardly to put his own name to his ranting)
and it was that transgression of the rules that got him thrown out.
Back
in the day I would have laughed and asked how a harmless child’s toy could
cause such bad feeling. But (it turns out) that the term “Red Indian”
*is* offensive to some native Americans. When I took scouts to Canada a
few years back the native Canadians we met assured me that they weren’t at all
bothered by the phrase.
But
I *really* don’t want to give offense. And I *really* don’t want
to get sacked.
Seriously.
In these days, saying things on-line which doesn’t go with the politically
correct agenda (for want of a better phrase) would seem to leave you
open to a charge of professional misconduct. It really does (click that link to
see!) I shall be keeping an eye on the HCPC’s hearings page to see what the
outcome is. Does one’s on-line non-politically incorrect rantings seriously
amount to misconduct? If so, George Orwell’s Thought Police aren’t as fictional as
we might have hoped. This isn’t the world I was hoping for my grandchildren…
I
got the dogs together and we drove up to Kings Wood. As we drove some rugby
player or other was being interviewed on “Desert Island Discs”. I have a
theory about that programme… the more interesting the speaker, the less of
their eight music choices actually gets played. There was far more of the four
bits of music I heard as I drove played than there usually is.
We
got to the woods; we had a good walk. The puppies said “hello” to all
the dogs we met, and Treacle studiously ignored them. There was a minor episode
with one toffee-nosed woman with two dogs on leads about a mile from the car
park, but the puppies came when I whistled.
With
walk walked we came home where I hung out laundry and opened up the rat grave.
“Daddy’s Little Angel TM” had the corpse of Boris in her
freezer (poor thing), so I dug out the hole in readiness. It took a lot
less time than I had expected.
I then spent a little
while ironing shirts and watching episodes of “Stranger Things” until “Daddy’s
Little Angel TM”, “Stormageddon – Bringer of Destruction TM”
and “Darcie Waa Waa TM”
arrived with the corpse of Boris. We had a little rat funeral and buried him,
then got some KFC after which “Stormageddon – Bringer of Destruction TM”
got progressively more and more over-excited.
“er
indoors TM” drove them home, and I had a fight with GSAK. The freeware
that makes sat-navs do geocaching seemed to have given up the ghost since I last
used it. It only took two hours to sort it out… and that was through resorting
to the ultimate geo-fix… emailing Gordon.
I hope the fix worked…
I shall find out tomorrow.
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