Trevor Matthews, CEO of Standard Life, experienced a slip of the tongue earlier this week and it got him into trouble.
The chief executive of one of Britain’s biggest insurance companies has been forced to apologise for using the phrase “nigger in the woodpile” during a staff presentation, it was disclosed last night.
Trevor Matthews, head of Standard Life’s life and pensions business, used the phrase at the company’s Edinburgh headquarters on Monday afternoon.
Mr Matthews, 54, was setting out the firm’s employee pension proposals when he was asked why plans to close the final salary scheme had been buried on page 126 of last year’s prospectus.
“That’s the nigger in the woodpile,” he replied.
Like Trevor, I recall the phrase as commonplace during my childhood. It is difficult sometimes to bite one’s tongue and avoid language that we used as common parlance throughout our formative years. These things just slip out and nothing is meant by them; they are clichés used to oil the flow of language, nothing more. Adult intelligent people realise this.
He was forced to apologise after a staff member made a formal complaint.
Which just goes to show that not everyone is adult or intelligent.
Years ago, a family friend who farmed in the rural splendour of East Sussex had a couple of fine black Labrador gun-dogs. Naturally, one of them was called ‘Nigger’…
Nowadays it might be difficult for him to walk his dog anywhere in Britain.
It’s difficult. I can see that some once-commonplace expressions are very offensive, but wonder if those of us who grew up in the 50s/60s can be allowed tolerance. When my children were young, I wanted to read them some of the books that I remembered enjoying. Quite a few were out of print – and when I tracked them down I could see why! They were awash with racist and sexist language/assumptions that appalled me in the 90s, but we soaked it up unquestioningly as children. No matter how much my attitudes have changed, occasionally a reflex phrase like Trevor Matthews’ slips out.
(Of course, provocatively, I’d like to think that in another few decades people will look back on the way teenagers are talked about now with similar head-shaking…)
When I was young the word ‘nigger’ was in common use. I was taught a nursery rhyme ‘Ten little nigger boys’, my mother wore a ‘nigger brown’ coat and when you heard someone shout “NIGGER!” they were calling their dog. Now I wouldn’t dream of using such an insulting word, but it seems OK for a black person to use it when referring to another person of the same colour. Strange !
…. “but we soaked it up unquestioningly LIKE children”
this very similar comment could be said about political correctness ( aka brainwashing )over the past decade which inhibits all debate and seeks to rewrite English history.
Naturally, one of them was called ‘Nigger’…
I remember ‘nigger brown’ to describe the hue of a particular item of clothing, mainly shoes if I remember rightly.
Yes….I can recognise that….. diversity proponents seem to have a mental blank when it comes to understanding and accepting the cultural background of a 50+ male brought up in the North…..
But is that really surprising? So many groups who, for whatever reason, have requested tolerance and non-discrimination for themselves, on achieving their goal then seem to degenerate into a state of demanding that others should accept their views and standards as the only received truth, while simultaneously exacting retribution in a manner that is equally as intolerant and discriminatory on anyone that they believed to have been their ‘enemies’ in the past?
adult behaviour and intelligence are not always functions of time and experience….