All That Jazz

October 2, 2018 Longrider General News, misanthropy, Political 11

Oh fer Gawd’s sake!

A student union has ditched clapping, whooping and cheering in favour of “jazz hands”.

Reps at the University of Manchester voted to replace noisy appreciation with the British Sign Language (BSL) equivalent – a wave of both hands.

Union officer Sara Khan said traditional clapping can cause issues for students with autism, sensory issues or deafness.

Really?

But the move was criticised by some who accused students of being “pampered”.

Because they are.

Ms Khan, the union’s liberation and access officer, who proposed the motion at a recent meeting said clapping can “discourage” some from attending democratic events.

Again, really? Seriously? I’m not keen on loud noises, but I can certainly cope with a bit of clapping. It wouldn’t have stopped me from attending democratic events. The term snowflake was invented for such childish idiocy.

So-called “jazz hands”, she said, encouraged an “environment of respect”.

Bullshit.

“I think a lot of the time, even in Parliamentary debates, I’ve seen that clapping, whooping, talking over each other, loud noises, encourages an atmosphere that is not as respectful as it could be,” she said.

Welcome to the adult world. You are not entitled to respect, you have to earn it – oh and grow up. Mixing with the real world as it is, is a part of that growing up process.

News of the measure was met with criticism in some quarters, with broadcasters Piers Morgan and Jeremy Vine among those weighing in.

Morgan said it was a sign of Britain “losing its mind”, while Vine posted a picture of soldiers in the trenches during WW1, suggesting they had managed to “ignore the difficulties caused by sudden noises 100 years ago”.

Well, quite. And many of them were damaged by it, but I’m certain they would have coped admirably with a bit of clapping. I do wonder how the snowflakes at Manchester University would have coped on the front line. I suspect that the Kaiser would have walked in unopposed.

11 Comments

  2. Every Student Union President needs to secure their place in Student history by creating a movement of change which will fundamentally impact not only on Universities but how wider society operates.

    The problem is, this is the biggest problem they could think of. Back of the class Moron, and don’t forget to wear the cap with the big D on it. And no fucking “jazz hands” in recognition either…

  3. Of course the only problem with “jazz hands” is that it is not only racist (as it comics 1930s ragtime dancers for whom it was a signature move) but it also cultural appropriation of same.

    Oh dear…

  4. A blind speaker will feel unappreciated if all the pillocks in the audience are ‘applauding’ with jazz hands.

  5. Many moons ago the marketing department of Manchester Uni decided that they would stop using the man.ac.uk domain and force everyone to use manchester.ac.uk instead. This was because the concept of combining the domains, such that blah.man.ac.uk was equivalent to blah.manchester.ac.uk was beyond their tiny minds; also beyond their comprehension was the mess that forcing header re-writing in the email systems would cause.

    For a long time after, I toyed with the notion of getting some cats-paw in the union to raise the issue that this change discriminated against the dyslexic, since big words are harder to spell. I never got around to it, and most Manchester departments are now rightly ignoring the edict anyway so the issue is moot. Had I but known what a bunch of politically-correct plonkers were present there, though, I might certainly have tried that spoof.

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