Did You Hear the One About the Council Banning Mother in Law Jokes? Yeah that was Just Made Up As Well.

The right wing press have yet again reported another story of "PC councils going mad" and in this case Barnet council have banned their employees from telling mother in law jokes in case they offend "elders and parents". This creates an ongoing narrative in the usual suspects of the red tops that the civil service is infested with politically correct puritan zealots who are so afraid of "upsetting" any minority peoples they will resort to unimaginable acts of PC overreaction at the expense of the "silent majority." If anyone who even casually acquaints themselves with the postings on the "Tabloid Watch and " the "5cc" blogs - reads this type of story in the papers, they know to smell a rat when they see one, and surprise surprise - this one is complete crock pulled out of some random PA wire copy, and then re pulled out of a "reporters" arse too for good measure. Yes the so called "cultural awareness booklet" is not some kind of Old Testament of PC that must be obeyed verbatim, on pain of death (which would presumably be a post mortally challenged issues and cadaver awareness diversity training in PC jargon.) but just a 12 part booklet that virtually no-one read; on various random issues offering advice on dealing with differing members of the public with courtesy, which was handed out at a one off meeting no one could really be bothered showing up for. It is not clear whether mother in law jokes were even mentioned in at all (the council says not.), or if they were (in the meeting or booklet) it was just to say that the parochial nature of them meant that they did not translate that well. Here is the councils response in full.

"A council has denied banning mother-in-law jokes after it was reported the puns had been outlawed.

A national newspaper reported that the north London council created a 12-page booklet saying the jokes were "offensively sexist" and disrespectful to "family elders".

A spokeswoman for Barnet Council said a document was created but was not widely published. It said there was no policy on the jokes but expects staff to be "polite" to members of public.

She said it was a handout given to 35 members of staff after a "one off" equality and diversity training session.

The spokeswoman said: "Barnet council does not have a policy on mother-in-law jokes.

"There is no booklet and no ban on mother-in-law jokes.

"Our advice to staff is that they should be polite and avoid giving offence to any member of the public."

Sounds fair enough to me. Though it gave the papers a chance to print some old "mother in law" jokes which I presume A) makes them look like they are defying the PC Stasi and B) shows what jokes were like in the good old days (some of the ones are a bit more recent.), when you could call a spade a darkie.. or something like that.

Just goes to prove in tabloid land if it looks like bullshit, sounds like bullshit, and smells like it. It is!