YOUR LETTERS

RENATO Bertorelli questions why “Paki” should be considered a derogatory term. Well, Renato, of course it shouldn't be.
I have sat, raging, watching various TV stations pumping out populist rubbish under the guise of news; junk that does nothing to inform but everything to perpetuate lowest common denominator views of contemporary British life and the sensibilities of the politically correct insane. “Paki”, is, as Renato says, nothing if not simply the abbreviation of Pakistani; if one can see insult in the term, then by definition, that implies insult in the term Pakistani which, by simple extension, must indicate that there is something terribly wrong and shameful in being Pakistani. How strange, then, that some people of that origin appear to share the view that “Paki” is an insult; what do they know that the rest of us do not?

For the record, let me state that I do not share any notion that the Pakistani people are any more strange, unworthy or somehow suspect than members of any other nation. It is simply that, somehow or another, nationality has become confused with religious fanaticism and the outer reaches of acceptable social behaviour, a blanket vision that does an injustice to all.

Bowing the knee if not the neck - perhaps much the same thing in the longer term - to these extreme views and interpretations of the English language serves no-one well. We ignore what is happening to our freedom of expression at our peril.

I shall not even mention the latest, latched-upon nonsense about Sooty! Let your wife disagree, Renato; that's one of her freedoms, a wifely option. Rob Campbell,

Puerto Pollensa

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