Vilification or over sensitive?

The social, cultural and sporting battles between England and Australia are legendary.

From the moment the first convict set foot on this land, sent here by a British penal system overloaded with prisoners, the rivalry between the two nations began.

Australia was the dumping ground for all sorts of convicts, from those who stole bread in an effort to feed the family of Industrial England to prostitutes, con men/women, fraudsters, minor criminals. A good number of them were ex-soldiers, convicted of mutiny, desertion and insubordination. A lot of the Irish, however, were political prisoners.

Needless to say, a lot of Australians are descended from these people, and are proud of it; kind of like Mayflower descendents - though for different reasons.

A lot of piss and vinegar has been thrown backwards and forwards, most of it name calling. We call them 'Poms, bloody Poms and whinging Poms'; they call us 'convicts, sheep-shaggers and skips (short for Skippy the Bush Kangaroo). It's usually good natured, in the same way we call the French 'frogs', Americans 'yanks', Japanese 'nips' and New Zealanders 'kiwis' just to name a few.

It's an Australian thing to find a nickname appropriate to culture, social status, sporting team or person.

Now, though, there is the BPARD; the British People Against Racial Discrimination who are trying to get a beer ad banned because it views the phrase 'cold enough to scare a Pom' as a racial slur.

The story quotes BPARD spokesman David Thomason as saying: "The Oxford Dictionary classes Pom as being derogatory just like wog, wop, dink, dago, coon and abo, it's every bit as bad as the term nigger."

Say... what?

As far as I know, the term ‘nigger’ was representative of a culture of slavery and oppression that the British have never suffered at the hands of Australians, quite the reverse given the origins of Australians.

But comparing being called a 'pom' - a term of affection - to something as repulsive as 'nigger'?

BPARD should suck it up and move on. The word ain't going away as longs as there is an Aussie who knows this country's history and why we call 'em 'whinging Poms'. Perhaps we'll now call the stuffed shirts of BPARD 'Girls' Blouse Poms'.