by Brendan O’Neill, Telegraph
There is absolutely nothing wrong with describing an evil terrorist organisation as ‘disgusting’
Speaking the truth is now a risky business in Britain. NHS nurse Jennifer Melle was admonished by the hospital she works at in Surrey for referring to a male paedophile as “Mr”. The man, known only as Patient X, identifies as a woman. He’s also a convicted child sex offender.
And yet it was Ms Melle who found herself in hot water, because when this criminal was brought to her hospital for treatment she called him “Mr”. That sounds perfectly polite to me. Not to mention accurate. But apparently it’s a reprimandable offence to prefer reality to fantasy.
And now we discover that a sewage worker was sacked for calling Hamas “disgusting terrorists”. Damon Joshua was given the heave-ho by Severn Trent Water after slamming the Jew-killing terrorists of Gaza. On the first anniversary of Hamas’s October 7 attack, he posted an image of the Israel flag on an internal staff site alongside some stiff criticism of Hamas.
It’s a year since Israel was “horrifically attacked by a group of violent and disgusting terrorists”, he wrote. We must “stand in solidarity”, he added, “with our Jewish, Israeli and Zionist colleagues against the evils of Islamist terror”.
The post was taken down by managers on the basis that “the terminology was very derogatory”. Yes, how dare you be rude about Hamas? That’s as bad as causing offence to a paedo.
Welcome to modern Britain, where you can get in trouble for calling a man a man and calling terrorists “disgusting”. This is now a nation where saying “Mr” to a fella and lamenting the “evils” of Islamist violence could see you hauled before your bosses to explain yourself.
I miss the days when you had to say something really outrageous to get a telling-off. Now you just need to say what every student of GCSE biology and every person with a moral compass knows to be true: that men are men and terrorists are scum.