Banned wagon
A weekly survey of the things our rulers want to prohibit
IT WAS to much liberal rejoicing that Kenneth Tynan first uttered the word 'fuck' on television in 1965. How quaint now seem the days when the state's arbiters of taste — in this case the BBC — were able to censor words from our language. Except that 35 years on, lib- eral consciences are engaged in their own assault on the spoken word. The Scottish Executive has just decreed that henceforth school teachers and pupils shall not be allowed to utter the word 'sissy'. Those who transgress may be suspended from school.
The justification for this measure is that sissy, which means literally 'sister- like', is used as a term of abuse for homosexual pupils. Perhaps it is, but then equally it is used as a friendly taunt towards fellow pupils who shirk at per- forming somersaults on their skate- boards or whatever. Banning one word in playground vocabulary is hardly likely to have any bearing on bullying in any case because there are always dozens of alternative words to hand.
One of the most common insults used by school bullies, incidentally, is the word 'gay', as in 'don't be so gay'. But will the Scottish Executive ban the word 'gay' from schools? Of course it won't, because it is the word which homosexu- al activists chose for themselves and one which they would prefer we should all use instead of 'homosexual'.
Why can't it be left to teachers to decide whether a verbal assault consti- tutes bullying, and to be trusted to act accordingly? Because when you're creat- ing a new tier of government in Scotland and spending £200 million on a spanking new building to go with it, you've got to justify your existence in some way — and banning things is the easiest way of doing so. Let's hope we're never lum- bered with a Yorkshire parliament: the loss of the word 'namby-pamby' would be too much for our language to bear.
Ross Clark
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