A lot of computer manufacturers will have smiled with relief when they saw the launch of Apples iPad where, to the disappointment of many, it was a case of nothing much to get excited about.
Of course lots of people did get excited. What else could they do? The hype had been hyped, the film crews had been booked and the flights had been flown. They could hardly admit there was nothing to get excited about could they?
The iPad is very stylish. Nobody could argue with that but as to functionality there seems to be nothing at all to get excited about unless you have poor sight in which case a large screen iPhone might be what you need. Apparently it is not even a phone though so it fails to do that too.
A pretty ebook reader it may be but if you also need a laptop to do other things then you may as well use that instead and you will be able to do a lot more besides.
I suspect the iPad was intended to be more but due to design and production difficulties this was all they could produce by the appointed launch date. I suspect there will be a much more capable version released in six months or so and that may be a game changer. We will have to wait and see.
We have heard a lot in recent years how the police are having to spend so much more time dealing with paperwork than they ever do in doing proper police work. A possible demonstration of how bad thigs have got is revealed in reports that say a mouse nest was found in the pile of paperwork on a policemans desk in South London.
Apparently pest exterminaters were called in to deal with a mouse infestation and they were found to have set up home in a pile of paperwork. If our police services are spending so much time on paperwork that they cannot do their job they might as well stay at the police station and keep a tidy desk instead. They could occupy their time by switching on the most wonderful invention of mankind to date.
This is a machine whose only purpose is to switch itself off again. Wonderful. Perhaps the government could spend it’s time operating machines like this instead of forever coming up with new laws and requirements that prevent the poolice getting on with doing their job.
Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me. You know that saying? Goodness only knows who first came up with that. The phrase has been around for at least 100 years and probably considerably more.
It isn’t true, of course, and we have all been hurt by words of derision, spite, jealousy and even the truth when we have seen how we may have been wrong to say or do certain things ourselves and been proved to have been naive, stupid or jut plain ignorant of the facts. We all make mistakes and we must expect to get some critisism when we do.
We try to laugh off those comments that hurt us but they do have an impact. Sometimes things are said in childhood that affect us subconciously for many years into adulthood and perhaps for all our lives. Words do have an impact.
So what if someone tells me I am a banana or a sozy twat? Should I be offended? Frankly I would find it rather amusing. What if they call me an Aussie, apart from being wrong, I would not feel it was derogatory or offensive, other than being wrongly attributed.
I remember the Falklands war and the Argentinians were referred to as Argies. It was, at that time, probably partly being used in a derogatory way but it was after all an abreviation of the word Argentinian. We talk about the French as being Frogs, the Germans as being Krauts, Americans Are Yanks and the Polish are Poles, so what is the problem with Pakistanis being called Pakis?
I understand that this is a term that was used mainly, for a time, with the intention that it would be considered derisory. It was, at that time, being used by people of limited brainpower to try to help them think they were better in some way.
Racial slurs have always been used that way and in any war or dispute there will always be a derogatory term used about the enemy when referring to them and such terms are probably used to try to convince ourselves we are better than them but that does not make the word unusable after the disagreement. Over time these terms can become friendly terms and perhaps even affectionate. We Brits, (or should I say English?) have fought the French many times over the centuries, even though we were conquered by a Frenchman in 1066 but these days they are probably one of our greatest allies even though we continue to have disagreements and refer to them as frogs. I’m not sure what they refer to us as but I am sure they have their own pet name for us which may or may not be freindly. We did, after all, slaughter large numbers of them over the years and I’ll bet there are more than a few who still recall Agincourt and get upset about it. To be honest I feel bad about it too but times were very dfferent back then.
Couples give each other pet names, soldiers give themselves names for their regiments and others give them more derogatory names. Kids in school have names for other schools nearby and football teams even choose to have a name they are known by.
So given that it is human nature to call any other group by some sort of group name why would anyone object to being called a Paki? It is only that this was used by idiots in a way that they felt was derogatory yet it was, when used to refer to Pakistanis an accurate short form of the word Pakistani. If we are expected to assume that it is a derogatory term then the white, racist thugs have won and that would be a bad thing.
Any Pakistani should be proud of their heritage and they should be happy to be referred to as a Paki. We have so much Political Correctness around these days that it is destroying the most natural human behaviour like grouping people together and referring to them by a name.
We had several incidents reported in the media last year where someone had referred to someone else as a Paki and there was a huge fuss about it. It even included one of the royal princes. I’m not sure which one as they all look the same to me. He was referring to one of his comrades in the army and it was said in a friendly and warm way the way we might refer to a friend as a Brummie or a Southerner. It was not nasty, cruel or unkind and I would imagine the person it was aimed at considered it a warm and friendly way to be referred to. I know that I would not be offended in any way if a prince or anyone else, spoke to me in such a way.
I am concerned that political correctness proves that the racial thugs won and that they succeeded in making something racially offensive that never was before they used it and should not be thought to be now. To the Pakistanis in England, Britain, The United Kingdom or anywhere else in the world I would say be proud of who you are and please let us forget that this term was once used by idiots in a derogatory way and let’s get on being humans again, using human traits such as referring to any groups as some phrase or another, as we always have done and always will.
There is no reason to be offended and considering such a term offensive is the only thing that makes it so. I sincerely hope nobody has been offended by anything I have said here. I would not want that to happen. My whole point is that none of these terms is offensive in it’s nature and by considering such terms offensive we reinforce the racial slurs the braindead racial thugs so desperately wanted everyone else to believe were significant.
