The Queen Mum: "A ghastly old bigot" & Has political madness gone correct?

Edward Stourton, something of an intellectual pash of mine (until it was ruined by coming across his photograph on an idle web trawl - rather like seeing what The Archers cast look like, and only marginally less distressing), is in the news this morning with the surprising-to-none revelation that Our Queen Mum was not one for political correctness. Claiming that she called our closest European cousins 'Huns, wops and dagos' he deemed her a 'ghastly old bigot' and recounts in his new book It's a PC World that 'The words were delivered with the eyes on maximum tiara-strength twinkle, but I am afraid I froze...I thought that what she had said was nasty and ugly.'

Now, if you've spent your Monday morning wildly, expertly procrastinating like what I have (earlier: gripped by sudden urge to tackle pile of clothes which I have not deemed offensive/slatternly until now, and right now: deciding the light at my desk is 'weird' and must be sorted out immediately - but where is suitable lamp/bulb - must therefore go to shops) and yet still feel no urge to tackle your in-tray or box, then do take a minute to whack the phrase 'political correctness gone mad' into Google. It's marginally less popular than comparing people to Hitler/searching for XXX teens, and is bandied about nearly as liberally as '110%' on X Factor (incidentally, as Becca has mentioned, WHAT WAS THAT ALL ABOUT?).

On a vaguely serious note, I'm not even entirely sure it's done a great deal to tackle racism - merely arming the nation with a list of unacceptable vocabulary to avoid. Which, I fear, just leaves those who hate to continue to do so, but just rather more carefully than they did before. A case in point arose in one of my former guises, when I slaved for solicitors in a sort of typing Boot Camp. One of my colleagues - a work-allergic sort who spent the entire day banging and crashing about the general levels of unfairness which she felt struck her, and her alone - was rather keen on bashing 'illegals'. She was very angry, readers, believing that anyone of Eastern European descent would rape your Granny and eat Our Great British Swans were you to turn your back for a blinked moment.

In some ways it was comical - all that wrath, bitterness and bile, eyes-a-poppin', everyday. But on another level, it was deeply depressing - all the more so, because her command of language, informed by political correctness, was intensely coded. It was nigh-on impossible to call her out on what she said. There was a meticulous care to avoid any language which might have been construed as overtly racist, and I felt powerless to venture a calmer, less tabloid-tastic point of view. Needless to say, it did not end well - with Roby eventually losing her Guardian-tastic liberal head and invoking a secretarial WWII. Office pariah status thus ensured, I left soon after with my furious, middle-class head held high.

Anyhoo, that is quite enough sharing for one day. So I shall leave you with a question to fathom, even though Mondays are heinous and head-troubling enough as it is. Lucky for you, it is not, as some wag on Yahoo answers would have it, 'Has Political Correctness Gone Mad?' but this: Has political correctness changed a thing for we womens? Or, given the distinct lack of lady-love in our presses and lad-rags, has it left those who perhaps needed it most, on an even trickier playing field than ever before?

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