[Gllug] BETT at Olympia

[Dylan]

On Friday 03 January 2003 20:25, Pete Ryland wrote:
> On Fri, 2003-01-03 at 19:51, Pete Ryland wrote:
> > Interesting.  IIRC, in Australia[1], the word 'disabled' is the one that
>
> <snip>
>
> Sorry, should have read the rest of the thread first.  Why am I such a
> sucker for OT threads anyway? :)
>
> FWIW, IMO there's nothing wrong with terms like spastic, deaf and dumb
> (not sure what 'joey' means).

It's a reference to a severely disabled boy much featured on Blue Peter in the 
70's and 80's (for better or worse...)

>  Children will always be children, and
> name-calling won't stop by changing terminology.

Luckily(?) these terms seem to be consigned to childhood name calling, but 
SCOPE was the "Spastic Society" ten years ago, and terms like 'cripple', 
'phthalydamide' (describing someone who may or may not have have been 
affected by the drug) etc. were very widespread.

>  One would hope that
> most people grow out of this, but sadly we know that there are quite a
> lot who don't.  It reflects on *them* and their lack of intrinsic
> confidence in *themselves*, not to mention their lack of intelligence.

To us it does, yes, but to the already disenfranchised disabled person? Or for 
that matter to the fat person, the four-eyes, or the poof? Don't get me wrong 
- I'm not in favour of the irrelevant pc attitude, but there is a core of 
good intention in it.

>
> And for this same reason (maybe this *is* on topic) we shouldn't deride
> other operating systems with name-calling and misspellings which at the
> end of the day is seen as negative and childish by others.

Ah, but I have a /choice/ to use GNU-Linux or Windoze...

Dylan

-- 
"Sweet moderation
Heart of this nation
Desert us not
We are between the wars"
                                     Billy Bragg

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