Lindsay Perigo
The Politically Incorrect Show - 13/07/2000
[Music - Die Fledermaus]
Good afternoon, KAYA ORAAAA & welcome to the Politically Incorrect Show on the free speech network, Radio Pacific, for Thursday July 13, proudly sponsored by Neanderton Nicotine Ltd, the show that says bugger the politicians & bureaucrats & all the other bossyboot busybodies who try to run our lives with our money; that stands tall for free enterprise, achievement, profit & excellence against the state-worshippers in our midst; that stands above all for the most sacred thing in the universe, the liberty of the human individual.
[Music up, music down]
One of the distinctive characteristics of our Politically Correct culture is the propagation of victimhood - the notion that all of us are victims of something or other & entitled to compensation from the taxpayer or from white male employers. Earlier this year came the news that "mental stress" was being mooted as grounds for claiming ACC. I remember salivating on this programme about the huge payout I was looking forward to from Radio Pacific because of the mental stress I suffer through having to deal with you lot. Radio Pacific were distinctly unimpressed, for some reason. Then, just yesterday, I read the following in the Herald:
"Two employees awarded huge sums of money because they were stressed were under no more pressure than other workers, specialists say. A medical group is urging the courts to use more commonsense before making awards of the type given to probation officer Christopher Gilbert, who received about $1 million, & police video operator George Brickell, who was awarded $242,000. Dr Bruce Gollop, chairman of the New Zealand Committee of the Australasian Faculty of Occupational Medicine, said there was no such thing as 'occupational stress.' Stress was a collection of symptoms that varied 'incredibly & enormously' from individual to individual. 'The courts appear to be unaware of the lack of objectivity & accuracy in diagnosing these syndromes, let alone the underlying causes, in this area of medicine.' Dr Gollop said he had read about the awards & did not believe either man had a special case - and both had stayed in their jobs for many years. 'There is an enormous range of stressful jobs. You look at the health sector where the emergency department personnel & St John's ambulance are scraping people off the roads.'"
Well, there's a thought for St John's staff - go for FIVE million & set yourselves up for life!
Tana Wells describes modern cry-baby attitudes as "Fear of Living" in her book of that name. "Born out of paranoid risk aversion, an obsession with health & arbitrary standards of correctness," she says, "fear of living leads to the refusal of risk as an inevitable & indeed bracing part of life as well as a petulant denial that accidents do happen & that products & lifestyles cannot be made completely safe. Inherent in the fear of living doctrine is the rejection of personal responsibility that in turn begets a society of both would-be totalitarians & complaining victims forever suing others."
Next time you read of a probation officer being awarded a million dollars for stress, don't just raise your eyebrows & shake your heads - ask yourselves what the world is coming to. Fear of living, the culture of victimhood, has taken hold here - and we are witnessing precisely the proliferation of totalitarians & litigious complainers Tana Wells writes about.
Now if you'll excuse me, I have an appointment with my lawyer.
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