The Theatre of the Terminally Stupid: Bristol Council's War on the English Language.
Ah, the beautiful, endless carnival of the human condition. Or, as I like to call it, the Theatre of the Terminally Stupid.
The Theatre of the Terminally Stupid: Bristol Council’s War on the English Language.
Ah, the beautiful, endless carnival of the human condition. Or, as I like to call it, the Theatre of the Terminally Stupid.
Look at this! Bristol Council. These are the people who can’t fix a pothole without forming a subcommittee, but now they’re playing at being the Language Police.
A woman, an academic, no less—which means she’s probably spent her entire life collecting degrees like trading cards—asks a question. A single, simple query about predatory men in single-sex spaces. And the Council’s brilliant, well-considered response?
“Offensive.”
Not inaccurate. Not misleading. Not, “we don’t have the data”. No, it’s just offensive.
See, that’s the new game, isn’t it? Free speech isn’t free anymore; it’s a subscription service, and the council gets to be the moderator. They’re not listening to the substance of the question; they’re just checking the box for the forbidden keywords.
“Predatory men.” Ooh, red alert! “Single-sex spaces.” Panic stations, mate!
The truth, no matter how uncomfortable, is now a micro-aggression. It’s not about public safety; it’s about linguistic hygiene. You can’t just talk about the things that make you nervous, especially if those things conflict with the current flavour of bureaucratic dogma. That would be disruptive!
And you gotta love the Green councillors. Eighteen of ‘em! A mass walk-out! \
Eighteen adults, paid by the public, literally putting their hands over their ears and walking out of the room because someone was asking a gender-critical question. That’s not a debate; that’s a playground tantrum at the taxpayer’s expense. “I don’t like the words you’re saying, so I’m taking my ball and going home!”
They don’t want to answer the question; they want to ban the question. They’ve decided that the maintenance of their own carefully constructed, fragile ideological bubble is more important than a woman’s right to ask, “Hey, is anyone watching the door?”
They call it progress. I call it cowardice wrapped in jargon. It’s the new authoritarianism, and it doesn’t come with tanks and jackboots. It comes with a council memo, a press release, and a committee full of people who confuse sensitivity with truth.
And they wonder why people lose faith in government. The politicians are so busy guarding the language that they forget to guard the people. But don’t worry, The Times printed it! So now we get to read about how the people in charge are more afraid of a couple of syllables than they are of reality.
Well done, Bristol. Keep fighting the good fight... against the English language.
The Great Utopia Switcheroo.
Ah, the Utopia. The perfect city, dreamt up over lukewarm tea and a sheaf of focus-group notes. You’re spot on, mate.
People didn’t vote for these clowns to ban perfectly reasonable questions from academics. They voted for promises. They voted for a vision of Bristol where the trains run on time, the air is clean, and, crucially, the people in charge aren’t faffing about with ideological piffle.
They were promised a Utopia, right? But the joke is, the modern political Utopia isn’t about fixing things; it’s about making sure you can’t talk about the things that are broken.
This Council’s vision of Utopia? It’s a place where they’ve achieved perfect linguistic compliance. It’s a sterile, beige echo chamber where nothing can possibly be “offensive” because all the hard, messy, reality-based questions have been politely escorted out of the room by eighteen Green councillors doing a mass flounce.
You voted for a beautiful garden city; you got a city run by people whose biggest emergency is an unauthorised syllable.
It’s the ultimate bait-and-switch.
They promise a better world. (Utopia!)
You vote in good faith. (Alright, sounds lovely.)
They get elected.
They discover running a city is hard. (Bloody hell, roads need repairing, do they?)
They pivot to the easy stuff: Moral Grandstanding.
It’s far easier to ban the phrase “predatory men” because it’s “offensive” than it is to address the actual potential problem of predatory men. Banning the words makes them feel like they’ve solved the issue without having to lift a single finger. It’s a cheap, half-arsed spiritual victory for them, and the public safety can go hang.
The voters wanted an efficient city run by adults. What they got were overgrown kids in suits, taking the mickey out of free speech, all in pursuit of a Utopia that is nothing more than a giant, bureaucratic safe space for their own fragile egos.
Bonkers. Absolutely bonkers.
I was there. As you say, bonkers. Rome is falling.