A business in Australia has been barred from calling itself “Pommiebasher” after a tribunal found the term was potentially pejorative and could offend some members of the public.
Jeebus that’s gay.
“That is particularly so where the expression is used outside the context of cricket or another sporting event … Devoid of the cricketing or sporting context, I find that the expression Pommiebasher is likely to be offensive to members of a section of the public. It follows I find that its use as a registered business name is undesirable.”
Admittedly I’m descended from someone who both took the assisted passage in the 1850s and also left the place as soon as she could find a man who would get her out of it. So I wouldn’t say that I’m genetically pre-disposed to like the place: although I might cop to the robustness of my language having something to do with those couple of decades imprinted on the genes.
But seriously, when did the Wild Colonials allow the gits to take over?
But seriously, when did the Wild Colonials allow the gits to take over?
Oz has been pozzed for ages. I blame air conditioning.
Before AC only the toughest, drunkest, Crocodile Dundee-est of Bruces and Sheilas could cope with the crotch-melting heat.
Since then, the limp-wristed urban hipsters, ratty-haired environmentalist queefs, and blue-haired feminist land-elephants have not only survived – they’ve multiplied to catastrophic numbers.
Australia needs myxomatosis 2.0 to thin out their numbers.
All the fault of “British People Against Racial Discrimination”. Does that make me an oppressed minority? Where do I collect the cheque?
For at least ten years. Read Tim Blair’s blog.
Dunno about my fellow countrymen, but I don’t mind being called a Pom by some bloody Ocker!
I was very surprised on my first visit to Oz to find it more nanny state than Singapore, with an added dose of pursed-lipped political correctness.
The Australian projection of themselves as rough, tough chaps from the bush has been absurd for generations. They are a bunch of suburbanites who are good at cricket and rugby.
Hell, when we lived in South Australia it was illegal to drive with the window open and your elbow on the window frame.
I’m a whinging Pom and proud of it.
I always thought in most cases the term “Pommie” made the speaker sound very camp.
Tim – you might like to discuss that proposition with the Sydney Ozzie rules team…!
But with the general trend of the thread, I agree totally, and I think it can be dated more or less to when they adopted the metric system.
By the way the same is true here.
And once the USA does as well, and your average engineer out in the sticks starts talking in centi-fucking-meters then you’ll know the writings on the wall.
There’s always been a lot of ‘wowsers’ in Australia. It’s not that they’re a majority — as in other Western countries they’re a small minority. But they’ve gradually gained power and are now in the ascendancy.
” I might cop to the robustness of my language having something to do with those couple of decades imprinted on the genes.”
???
(A joke, right?)
Generally given the recent references to Dame Edna, I have to agree with her nemesis Sir Les Patterson:
Australian men are now all either pillow biters or shirt lifters or both and the woman are all lezzas who have faces like half-sucked mangoes, apart from Kylie of course.
Yeah and look what happened to Shane Warne !
After his transmogrification, I struck Elizabeth Hurley off of my marriage list.
Kylie is still at the top and unlike Gwyneth I won’tneed to bring my steam cleaner .
The Sydney Aussie Rules team is called “The Swans”; the faggots.
When James Delingpole had been censured by the Aussie Press Complaints something or other for being “offesnsive” he wrote a riposte entitled “Australia, you are so gay”. He included a photograph of two young men on a beach, dressed only in pink y-fronts and dancing in front of a VW Beetle painted pink. Underneath he declared “Australia, if you were a car you’d be this one”. He went on to explain he meant “gay” in the really offensive sense.
Outstanding.
Allow me to be the dissenting voice here. When I lived in Aus, the pommie bashing went beyond the ‘aw look, it’s just friendly banter mate’ – it gets tiresome and unfunny and unbantery.
I am a bit of a milksop, though
You have to be pretty thick-skinned to live in Aus, and that goes for Australians too: their allegedly ironic sense of humour is pretty robust. Or was, 20 years ago.
It used to be just Melburnians that were precious and up themselves; seems to be the whole country now.
cultural marxism is alive and thriving in australia.
But dont tell anyone or they may report you.
I blame Sir Les Patterson. I think the Australians were mocked out of being Australian in the same way that Monty Python, and pretty much everyone else since, mocked Toffs out of being too Toff-ish.
dearieme – “Hell, when we lived in South Australia it was illegal to drive with the window open and your elbow on the window frame.”
You worked on the Bomb programme? Black Knight?
Ironman – Classic Delingpole. Haven’t bothered reading The Torygraph since he left.
Sorry it just sort of crept up on us.
When I lived in Aus, the pommie bashing went beyond the ‘aw look, it’s just friendly banter mate’ – it gets tiresome and unfunny and unbantery.
Doesn’t it just?
You have to be pretty thick-skinned to live in Aus, and that goes for Australians too: their allegedly ironic sense of humour is pretty robust. Or was, 20 years ago.
I disagree with you there. I was startled by how thin-skinned they were, and I heard similar complaints from other English people working there. For all their self-described thick skin, they take offence pretty quickly. Australia’s the only place where I have been sued for calling somebody useless at work: if you did that in Aberdeen you’d be laughed out of the industry.
Fair point, Tim. I well remember how shocked and stunned people were when we told them we were going back to England. But it’s full of Poms! someone said, with no trace of irony.
They can dish it out but they sure can’t take it.
At least some of the larrikin spirit survives:
http://www.theage.com.au/national/melbourne-man-faces-stiff-opposition-to-penis-signature-20160106-gm0sx6.html
@Matthew L: and here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-australia-34853486