Too much political correctness clearly can’t make you happy

A Different View with Dave O’Connell

God knows we made mistakes in the past, when it came to political correctness – or the lack of it – and trawling through the skeletons in our collective closet won’t serve any useful purpose.

Shamefully, it took legislation – and penalties – to force some of that change through, but the world is a better place when you can’t make fun of minorities or the afflicted.

There are still those that do of course, and that’s why there’s a price to be paid – but to be honest, we might just have allowed the PC pendulum swing a little too far in the other direction.

Or it has in Gloucestershire for a start, where AJ’s Unisex hair salon in the city of Stroud has been barred from advertising for a ‘happy’ new stylist on the Government’s Find a Job service – because a staff member at the job centre judged the word to discriminate against people who are unhappy.

Alison Birch wanted her advert to read: “Part-time fully qualified hairdresser, must be confident in barbering as well as all aspects of hairdressing, must have at least five years’ experience working in a salon after being fully qualified. This is a busy, friendly, small salon – so only happy, friendly stylist need apply.”

But less than an hour after she’d placed the ad, she got a call from a man there saying there was a problem. He said she couldn’t use the word ‘happy’ – because it discriminated against people who aren’t happy.

Naturally Mrs Birch – a woman of maturing years, running her small salon for many years – though it was a wind-up.

It wasn’t.

And while it transpired that the response was from a new employee at the centralised job service – and that they were later described as ‘over-eager – it does illustrate how far this PC brigade has come.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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