The danger of being inoffensive.

Jeremy Clarkson is in a heap of trouble over nothing at all again. He was being disparaging about a Ferrari and said this -

He said the F430 Speciale 'looked like a simpleton' and should have been called 'Speciale Needs' on the BBC2 show.

Note that he made no reference to any disabled group whatsoever. He was talking about a car. Cars, last time I looked, have never been offended by anything and have no pressure groups to look after their interests.

However -

Charities criticised the remark, with the National Autistic Society saying it perpetuated 'the prejudice and bullying which people with disabilities have to cope with'.

The BBC received two complaints. They did not say 'If you don't like him, don't watch him'. They edited the remark out of the repeats and debased themselves before the Altar of Political Correctness with a grovelling apology. Well, we're used to that by now. Anyone can claim 'offense' and whoever they claim it against has to plead for forgiveness and usually hand over money. It's just another feeble aspect of a society composed of the weak-minded and the worthless. It is disgusting to see and disgraceful to partake of.

It is also extremely dangerous.

For fear of causing people to become distressed, the manager at Aldgate didn't mention the bomb that ripped a train apart in her station when she spoke to her control centre.

She said she did not want to cause panic in the network control centre, adding: “When there’s a fire you don’t run around shouting fire. I tried to give as much specific information as I could rather than speculating in a panic reaction.”

This comes from the constant Righteous misuse of the 'shouting fire in a crowded theatre' line. When there is a fire, yes, you do shout 'Fire'. Very loudly. That's why we have a word for it. I mean, if you ran around shouting 'Reddy orangey hot stuff' during a fire, it wouldn't really help much. It would, however, be a lot more help than just staying quiet and watching the theatre burn.

The inquest heard that the control room was left under the wrong impression that they were dealing with an electrical surge and sent technical experts to Aldgate station to deal with the problem.

Well, that's useful for the train and the tracks but not a hell of a lot of help for the passengers. If she had used the word 'bomb', or even 'explosion', the control centre would have had police, ambulance and fire brigade on the line straight away. Not technical experts who probably wouldn't have had the parts with them to fix the train, never mind the passengers.

Hugo Keith QC, counsel for the inquiry said: “Did you think to call a fourth time and say ‘Right I’ve heard from someone in the tunnel now, there are people dying and he says we’ve got to get paramedics down here. That’s what I want to tell you?’”

Mrs Harrison said she did tell an off-duty policeman but did not contact her control room which would normally alert the emergency services.

She has direct access to the control centre. She has a phone too. What does she do? Find an off-duty policeman. All because of political correctness. If she had not been scared of disciplinary action for frightening a switchboard operator, she might instead have been shouting 'Explosion!' into the phone and everything could have moved so much faster.

It's easy to blame her, but it's not really her fault. She is a product of Righteous conditioning. Police are reluctant to release a description of a murderer unless it's a white male. Mention any other skin tone and it's racism, mention that the suspect is a woman and its sexism. If it's a gay black female amputee, they are well and truly stuffed. 'We're looking for someone who doesn't look like anyone else' would be their only option.

The police aren't doing that because they want to. Political correctness is doing it. You can't say 'bomb' when there's a bomb in case people get upset. You have to risk losing a murderer who isn't white in case a description of one man is taken to mean everyone who might look even slightly similar, and they get upset.

Well, they don't, of course. Black people want a black murderer caught just as much as anyone else does. Skin colour is irrelevant when the criminal is that dangerous. It's the professionally offended pressure groups who play at being upset.

I don't see how Clarkson's remark would offend anyone other than the car it was directed at. Perhaps its designer, but if he's designing for Ferrari he'll just wave his bank statement at Clarkson and then display his backside. Clarkson insulted an inanimate object and these charities think he was speaking about disabled people? Does that mean the charities regard disabled people as inanimate objects? Now that is offensive. I demand they apologise at once.

Yet from these seemingly trivial and superficially funny incidents comes the mindset that nobody must ever be upset or miffed or startled in any way, ever. A mindset that can only get worse, now that Smoko Clegg and Dai Puffer's Coagulation have enacted Hideous Harman's 'equality' bill. A bill that ensures everyone is under equal suspicion, all the time. Anyone can report anyone else for any word spoken, even if they were not there when the word was spoken, it was not directed at them, and they are not part of any group the word was used to describe. It needn't even really happen. Everyone is equally terrified to say anything at all to anyone else. We don't even have Newspeak now. Silence.

This now means that if you phone for an ambulance, you must take care not to unduly distress the operator on the line. You must think carefully before every word uttered. While whoever you're phoning for lies bleeding, you must take care to describe the event in entirely neutral terms. One word out of place and the police will be called before the ambulance, assuming the operator doesn't hang up in a huff and apply for counselling (and compensation).

This country has fought with France many times. Sometimes they won. sometimes we won. Now? All the French need do is send this guy and the whole country will be on the phone to the BBC in tears. It really is pathetic. It is certainly not a cause for mirth.

We now live in a land where, if you see a woman who has tucked her dress into her knickers in the toilet, you dare not tell her. You dare not compliment anyone on their clothes, hair or anything else. You must be careful about eye contact and don't smile - that could be considered leering. No jokes. No laughing. Absolutely no contact of any kind at all, ever. That's assault.

When faced with an insult, no matter how personal, my response is to think of a better one. Insults bounce off me because they don't hurt. They are only words. They are the one weapon we can all use, until they are taken from us too. I wonder if that's what upsets the Righteous? They can't get beyond 'racist-Nazi-bigot-paedo' so they have to shut the rest of us up. They're upset by insults because we're better at it than they are. It's possible. They are certainly small-minded enough to think that way. Well, now they have reached the point where we can't say anything.

There are those who decry bloggers as friendless saddos who only ever see the world on a screen and have no other human contact at all. Well, that really is the future. For everyone. Cocooned from birth, all children will grow up knowing only the face of Nanny on the screen. The same one, and she's not even real.

One day, we'll be wishing Orwell had been right because what's happening now is worse.