Sunday 10 March 2013

To Paraphrase The World's Greatest Archaeologist...

"Council officers. I hate those guys..."
A pensioner could be kicked out of his council home for comparing housing officers to “Nazis”.
*taps irony meter*

Damn! Broken again...
The local authority claimed the language was “very alarming, inappropriate and offensive”, adding it was a breach of tenancy to abuse its staff.
Sounds pretty damn 'appropriate' to me! What a shame that - unlike libel - the truth isn't a defence...

10 comments:

Lynne at Counting Cats said...

Old bloke, "You're a bunch of Nazis!"

Council official, "And you're homeless."

The real abuse in this case is one of power. Oppressive behaviour (aka bullying) in public office is alarming, inappropriate and offensive.

Jugal Sharma, the council’s head of housing, said: “We do not tolerate racist, homophobic or anti-semitic comments directed at staff or anyone else.

WTF?

What part of calling a bunch of shiftless, unsympathetic local government numpties Nazis is racist, homophobic or anti-Semitic? Are there new and esoteric legal definitions of those terms that ordinary people are unaware of? Inquiring minds would like to know.

MTG said...

Time matured our public servants into masters of the public. Were it not for their arrogant expectancy of a douceur for turning up, not a vestige of servitude would remain.

Accurate descriptions are the most hurtful but "Nazi" is one of the kinder descriptions. None can justify eviction or gassing and such punishments are not even legalized, yet.

John Pickworth said...

Thing is, he doesn't appear to have called the twits from the Town Hall anything.

According to the article; Mr Melson said some tenants were “thinking of ‘hanging out their swastikas’”

Merely thinking!

Fair enough, we know what Mr Melson was implying but Brighton and Hove's Dept of Fun appear to have read a lot more into the comment than common sense would warrant.

Anonymous said...

Nothing the otherwise unemployables at the council like more a than a nice soft thought-crime target.

And they don't come any softer than 74 year old pensioners.

And it is Brighton, the southern epicentre of all things freaky.

Anonymous said...

Stonyground says:

So let me just get this straight in my head. Some old guy implied that council officials are behaving like nazis. Their method for proving him wrong is to behave even more like nazis. Have I got that right?

The Jannie said...

I thought for a moment that John P had put "town hall" and "common sense" in the same paragraph. Now THAT would have been a serious error.

JuliaM said...

"Oppressive behaviour (aka bullying) in public office is alarming, inappropriate and offensive. "

And, I suspect, growing...

"And it is Brighton, the southern epicentre of all things freaky."

This is indeed true.

"Have I got that right?"

It does seem to be the size of it. Self-awareness is clearly in short supply there.

Furor Teutonicus said...

XX Self-awareness is clearly in short supply there.XX

Self abuse, obviously not.

Antisthenes said...

Cultural socialism also brings with it the need to suppress the freedom of expression and speech.

Anonymous said...

Crumbs! Godwin's Law is legally enforceable now?