Oxfam came under fire this week for issuing a bizarre ‘inclusive’ language guide to staff. The Mail has more.
The 92-page report warns against ‘colonial’ phrases such as ‘headquarters’, suggests ‘local’ may be offensive and says ‘people’ could be patriarchal.
Workers were told ‘parent’ is often preferable to ‘mother’ or ‘father’, terms such as ‘feminine hygiene’ should be dropped, and ‘people who become pregnant’ should be used instead of ‘expectant mothers’.
The guide even suggests that ‘youth’, ‘the elderly’ and ‘seniors’ should be avoided – to afford respect and dignity.
Tory former minister Robert Buckland said: “Most people will find this particular use of valuable time and resources by Oxfam totally bizarre. It would do them well to remember the old adage that actions speak louder than words.”
The introduction apologises for being written in and about the English language, saying: “We recognise that this guide has its origin in English, the language of a colonising nation. We acknowledge the Anglo-supremacy of the sector as part of its coloniality.
“This guide aims to support people who have to work and communicate in the English language as part of this colonial legacy. However, we recognise that the dominance of English is one of the key issues that must be addressed in order to decolonise our ways of working and shift power.”
The official advice from the charity – founded in Oxford in 1942 to relieve famine worldwide – attempts to revolutionise its staff’s language across a wide range of fields.
It looks to outlaw ‘headquarters’ as it “implies a colonial power dynamic”; ‘aid sector’, which “cements ideology where an agent with resources gives support on a charitable basis”; and ‘field trip’ because it can “reinforce colonial attitudes”.
Oxfam said in a statement yesterday: “This guide is not prescriptive but helps authors communicate in a way that is respectful to the diverse range of people with which we work. We are proud of using inclusive language; we won’t succeed in tackling poverty by excluding marginalised groups.”
The charity said it was disappointed some had “decided to misrepresent the advice offered in the guide by cropping the document” online.
Released on Monday, the Oxfam publication tells staff not to say they “stand with” people they support because it “potentially alienates people unable to stand”. Even ‘people’ is a suspect word, as it “is often misunderstood as only referring to men”.
Readers are told “these guidelines are not set rules and should not be viewed as restrictions”. However the guide launches into long lists of problematic words and phrases beside a large cross and, in capitals, “WE AVOID”.
Worth reading in full.
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That asteroid can’t come soon enough, can it?
A science fiction story I remember from the past starts with aliens landing on earth who then immediately proceed to butcher and process humans for some mysterious purpose in vast numbers. All attempts to stop or otherwise fight them fail because of their superior technology and the doom of mankind seems a certainty until someone finally manages to communicate with them. At this point, they immediately stop these activities and sincerely apologize for the unintendend massacre. The problem was that they had entirely failed to realize that humans were something other than contaminated water.
Some certainly aren’t.
Me next for the suicide booth, Bender.
Bloody hell, this is getting dark!
Well, I’ll be certainly be AVOIDing them with my charitable donations from now on.
I accidentally blundered into their donation site, not realising it was an echo-chamber blog, and asked a neutral question exactly what they fund, and whether the White Hats were involved, which led to my being set upon by a gang of virtue-signallers with blue-and-white profile filters. I made my excuses and left.
Can charities (or their employees) be held responsible for misappropriation of funds? If so, this would seem be a splendid opportunity to do that: It’s a safe bet that nobody who ever donated money to Oxfam desired to commission an Oxfalish: English Expertly Undone For The Postcolonial Age report.
It’s pretty clear that big charities have been engaged and proactive in furthering political agendas for decades. How individuals view giving money to charities is up to them but the huge amounts given to them via government regulated lottery monies and directly awarded tax payers money is matter of great concern.
But what should we expect from a fake Tory Party?
What language isn’t “The Language of a Colonising Nation”?
Stand in the Park – Make friends & keep sane
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What utter planks! At least people like this don’t work for the BBC and civil service. Wait a minute…
“The introduction apologises for being in and about the English language.”— Quite so! In future, please submit your work (woke) in Sanskrit or Coptic.
Or Klingon. More people would understand that, and as it’s the language of a fictitious “colonising nation”, presumably it would be OK for the crackpots at OXFAM.
“In future, please submit your work (woke) in Sanskrit or Coptic…”
because none of the rest of us want to firkin read it.
Perzakerly!
How about Esparanto?
The people at Oxfam must get smacked of their tits on crack, then hold a meeting to discussing the best ways to p off their donors!
I stopped supporting Oxfam years ago when they changed their job description to ‘fighting the anthropogenic 0.001% of a gaseous plant food that keeps everything on this planet alive.’
When they are not using charitable donations to pay for prostitutes they are using them to insult their donors. They pay their CEO a six figure sum to come up with this?
That’s just like the former Silicon Valley Bank: Once a single woketard has managed to get into a position where he can influence employment decisions, he’s going to use that to hire more woketards doing ever more woketarding at the expense of the company until all of the productive staff has been replaced with drones issueing language guides and engaging in performance politics celebrating other woketards for also doing this. This continues until the money has run out. Then, the parasites jump ship and find another host company/ organization.
This is Andrew Bridgen’s speech from this afternoon. You Tube have already taken it down because it’s too much truth for them to handle. Can’t be getting that much contradictory information to the masses now…But if you’re quick you will see at the very start somebody taps the guy with the white hair in front, he goes over to the other side and speaks to somebody and they all get up and leave! So Andrew is left speaking to a near empty room once more. Disgusting! They should be obliged to remain out of basic courtesy! And the guy who replies to Bridgen has nothing in the way of come-back and is a right gonk. See what you think;
https://odysee.com/@AwakenWiki:c/Andrew-Bridgen—Efficacy-of-the-mRNA-covid-19-booster,-17-Mar-2023:e
I don’t have the time to watch this completely ATM (it’s about 27 minutes), but thanks for posting it.
Actually I haven’t watched it all either, just skipped it along. My preference went instead with a dose of The Walking Dead.
Government minister does not answer any of Bridgen’s questions. Same old safe and effective. One day this is going to bite them on the arse.
It’s both disgraceful and insulting in equal measure. I listen to these sock puppets and just think they cannot possibly believe what they’re saying, they’re just toeing the party line.
Extraordinary if true. I have never heard before of a Member of Parliament, speaking in Parliament, being censored. I listened to him speaking on BBC Parliament Channel. What he says is based on ONS data. It at least merits a response from government if they have a different interpretation. Otherwise the impression is that they just don’t want to hear dissent.
Well I’m disgusted because it comes off as being blatantly snubbed by your fellow colleagues. It’s both rude and unprofessional. Also, if this is the sort of treatment Bridgen has now come to expect, does it come as any surprise that these same MPs have also zero interest in listening to the public’s concerns, the vax injured or even contemplating starting an investigation into the safety of the products that they bullied, threatened and coerced people to get, all based on lies and fraud? Their behaviour in Parliament just speaks volumes of their attitude and disinterest towards the British public. I’m not even a UK resident anymore and I feel very, very pissed off watching this.
Thanks
Nations are colonising, by definition.
Oh well, language is difficult and should be banned, to avoid offending people who are a bit dense.
So, as I haven’t colonised anything, I shall now write that in my language, as follows:
Erdle flinsbuk shert’bhi grees klus.
Literally, anything colonised have not I myself.
Hope that hasn’t offended anyone.
Does the guide have lots of euphemisms for sexual offences?
Aren’t Oxfam up to their necks in pedophilia and child abuse in those countries that they claim are victims of colonial power. I’m wondering how they square that particular circle. Perhaps they could take a leaf out if the good book which advises “And why do you look at the speck in your brother’s eye, but do not consider the plank in your own eye?” What is it with these hypocritical parasites that makes them think we should do as they say and not as they do.
Watch this 6min video from Truth Be Told posted 2 hours ago, thanking Andrew Bridgen. Very moving.
https://twitter.com/CoviLeaksCVVAM
Thanks
The Newspeak is getting more Orwellian by the day, it seems.
I stopped donating when the prostitute scandal broke. Also our local Oxfam shop has a very peculiar smell which I don’t like and the ‘holier than thou’ attitude of some of the staff adds to my dislike of it.
This latest stuff is ridiculous. So, it’s nevermore for me and I’ll bet they’ll lose donations.
As per Oxfam’s Annual Report and Accounts 2021/2022, the salary of the current CEO Dr. Dhananjayan Sriskandarajah is reportedly well over ₤120,936 and the company’s turnover is ₤400,000,000. After the CEO, the highest salary is of CFO who is paid around ₤108,703. Isn’t the term ” pounds” a left over from Colonial rule? Just saying
A charity that can afford to spend donated funds on producing such guff, clearly has forgotten what it is for, it appears in common with many organisations it believes it is more important to virtue signal, rather than actually perform the job it is supposed to be doing.
I will no longer donate money, clothes, things to Oxfam, neither will I purchase from its shops, clearly it is spending charitable donations on too many staff, with too little to do whilst the poor and diseased suffer for Oxfams vanity.
So the English language didn’t exist before the English set up colonies? Gosh, the standard of history teaching is really impressive.
I know. And Yorkshire folk spoke something quite different from Viking before those colonisers showed up. B*stards.
And don’t get me started on the French
Not even the french like the french.
English colonies had by-and-large ceased to exist by the 1980s, ie, about 30 years ago. Hence, today’s decolonizers are preaching to an echo chamber filled with themselves about a supposed issue which doesn’t exist anymore. Or actually, exists in the exact opposite of what it used to be: Colonization is nothing but immigration of foreigners with the intent to settle permanently in the area they immigrated into. Usually, they don’t care very much about the natives and just themselves up exactly (or as exactly as possible) as things used to be in the place they came from. Considering this, the England of 2023 is a heavily colonized nation, to a degree where large parts are barely recognizable as English at all. There are even – although this is still officially denied – Sharia courts operating here handing out covert death penalities to people they deem religious transgressors and the police is backing them.
Silly buggers.
NEVER allow this absurd wokery to influence your world view. At all times choose your own words and thoughts, for if you let these insidious central planners choose them for you then your freedom is LOST, and as Joni Mitchell would say “You don’t know what you got till it’s gone”.
Oxfam’s owes its existence to the UK’s colonial heritage as do many other charities. Oxfam is known for its high salaries in the sector but I suspect if you look at its diversity record, most of its leaders will be the children and grandchildren of those very same colonalists from whom they derive their privileged positions and continue to benefit from albeit by trashing their legacy.
I suspect those who wrote the guide know very little about history besides what they have been told.
Human history shows that the Western culture has created the most free, richest, equal and diverse civilization in the history of the world.