Don’t say German Measles ... you may upset Germans

Political correctness is one of the great banes of our lives today.
European and German national flags (Photo/Markus Schreiber)European and German national flags (Photo/Markus Schreiber)
European and German national flags (Photo/Markus Schreiber)

It rears its ugly head in many forms, and most of the time it is all total claptrap.

And now the World Health Organisation has jumped on the PC bandwagon by calling for the banning of terms such as swine flu, German measles and housemaid’s knee.

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Swine flu should be dropped because, it argues, it led to an unnecessary culling of pigs in the 2009 pandemic.

That might be the case - but now we get down to the serious stuff.

The use of the term German measles - discovered by German doctors in 1814 - should be dropped in case we upset German people. We should instead use its alternative name of rubella.

And the use of the term housemaid’s knee to describe a swelling caused by excessive kneeling or bending could stigmatise domestic servants, it argues. Best to use the term prepatellar bursitis, it says.

There are others equally stupid in its firing line, and like most things PC, they are so ridiculous you couldn’t make them up.