Friday, February 06, 2009

Political correctness

Political correctness is something that seems to be hitting the news in the British media at the moment. Carol Thatcher is said to have used the word Golliwog which some found to be offensive.
I used to have some little figures called golliwogs which came from Robinsons jam jars back in the 1960's. These were things that many children in England had at the time and could be considered as part of our social heritage. Why are they now offensive?
There are other words which seem to be becoming taboo in the English language too. Take the names of some countries, Afghanistan for example, the people are known as Afghanis or Afgans around the world. The Stan bit of the country's name has an explanation, it is ancient Persian for "place of". Therefore Afghanistan is the place of Afghanis. Why is it that Pakistan is not the place of Pakis? Many people find this word offensive, but why? (see: http://www.worldatlas.com/aatlas/infopage/stan.htm)
People can call me a Brit, or the Irish Paddies, and the Scottish Jocks, but most of those groups would not take offence. Has the UK gone mad?
Is it not time we all found our sense of humour and learned to live together and stopped looking at others with the intent of trying to point a finger for saying something that one person may perceive to be wrong?
Call me what you like, I don't care, but be sure that I expect the same in return.

Wednesday, February 04, 2009

Microlight forums

Many microlight pilots around the world spend some time on the web. Forums have been very popular for exchanging information and posting pictures and videos. The BMAA has such a forum for UK microlight pilots and there is also an international forum at http://www.trikepilot.com which is base in the US and has a very good format. The BMAA has recently made an announcement that the their forum will be closed to none members. This would mean that all overseas pilots would have to pay £69 (about 130USD) just to read the forum. This has not gone down to well with the readers and members.
A new UK forum has been started at http://www.microlightforum.com and when there are more members and posts should be as good, if not better, than the BMAA forum.
I would urge all microlight/ultralight/ULM pilots to join the new forum and help it grow.