PAKI-GATE
This space reserved for the huffing and puffing that will inevitably follow PakiGate (By Royal Appointment).
I am also taking this opportunity to check with family members over the derivation of "harry/hari" + word:
From my earliest days in Hong Kong, it was a family phrase - I think I heard it was 'of Indian descent' - to use 'hari' or 'harry' with certain words as a simple friendly prefix:
It was so much part of our family vocab that neither my bro nor I queried it til years later when the origin was lost in the mists of.
So along comes the apt if somewhat strained 'Hari Pakers' which is soo appropriate given the prince's name ...
Given the pent-up hypocrisy in the land and the slimy ability of the News of the World to spin things out, this will have legs.
Harry Leakers : But of course the video was 'leaked' of Prince Harry's amiable reference to his compact buddy. Good practice for all the 'senior defence force' leakages about the forthcoming 'internal army investigation'.
Can't you see the reptiles rifling thru their contacts books? Scramble scramble.
Harry 'Sooters' - So Prince Charles et famille call a pal "of Indian descent" (delicately put, sirrah), "Sooty". Excellent. AND Kolin 'Bob' 'Sooteh' Dhillon is into polo, neatly echoing my spoof on "Major General Ahmed 'Paki' Khan ... Damn'd fine fellah - terror on the polo field."
This one hasn't stretched even one of its five legs.
Harry Banters: The 'All We Are Saying is Give-Racism-the-Red-Card' brigade blunder into the fray.
Zero Tollers. Ach! Not concentrating. Didn't mean to give "0-T" its own page but tack it onto the growing limb of P-Gate.
Zero tollers: Some of the lingo floating around all this Harry-met-'Paki' brouhaha; wouldn't be surprised if a lot of it floated up into Pseuds Corner:
- "Formally reprimanded"
- Military ... zero-tolerance policy on racism
- Air Commodore Ali 'Raza-sharp 'Paki' Khan having 'since revealed' that he has received an apology ... and now regards the matter as closed.
- "A nickname which is usually very insulting, but I know he didn't mean it that way." No, he meant it exactly as a fond-ish nickname. If the intention was to insult, it would have been delivered accordingly.
- General Sir Richard 'Dickie' Dannatt: "Disappointed and extremely crorss."
- Senior Government official: the use of the term ... done "immense damage" to the Army's attempts at recruiting more people from the Asian community. I think not. Maybe put orff the wilting flowers that wouldna fitted in in the first place, but the sticks 'n' stones brigade would've kept their dhotis on and soldiered ahead - by golly, there's an old fashioned term one doesn't bump into very orften.
- Same official: "The term 'Paki' is deeply abusive – it is not a term of endearment." Fellah obviously never done a stint in the Forces or been a new bug in a posh boarding prison.
New Comment just in: :
"Geoffrey Vickers, as a junior diplomat blah blah ... met Goering in 1938 yadda yadda ... observed etiquette but in other ways was - tactless, interruptive, unthinking about others ..."That's enough.
Hari Splitters: Nothing scandalous or racist. I just wanted to fit in a pic of this hot young gel. I've forgotten what euphemism 'party-loving' is in Fleet Streetese - something like 'enjoys a drink ... not averse to fooling around ... so forth.' You know, like 'confirmed bachelor' 'ebullient man about town', 'debs delight', speaking of which I saw that 'Dirty' Dai Llewellyn popped this mortal coil, seducer of debs, brother of Roddy consort of Princess Margaret. I saw him once at some posh club I'd been taken to - he looked a lot of fun and of course the women draped around him were Grade A Belgravia Prime.
Diverse among equals: Normally I sulk if someone comes up with something I was planning to post - as Sinbad did with this latest on HakiGate - but I've just been outside to feed our lazarus no-longer-lame Koutsi and to my huge relief I actually saw the ginger tom that's been hanging around sent literally flying by hitherto somnolent Sambo.
We've often wondered about soppy Sambo, if he'd be any use in an emergency, and tonight set my mind at rest:
I'd taken Koutsi's food out to set by the kitchen door, seen the ginger and was about to clap my hands in ineffectual 'shoo!' when out of nowhere came this lightning streak of velvet, just a hint of killer growl, grabbed the tom and tossed it in the air like a corrida bull with one of those foolhardy dare-devils.
Wonderful sight and I applauded him and made straight for his treat plate of bones as he disappeared into the night in baskervillainous pursuit. Good boy !
So golli-gosh, back to PakiGate and my notes from earlier:
Prince Harry to be sent on a 'diversity' course, ho hum what a farce.
Sorry, an equality and diversity training course.
I feel like Glenda Slagg: do me a ragheaded favour.
"Like all recruits, Harry was given an initial diversity course lasting a few hours, but commanders have ordered him to brush up his racial awareness."
Brush up, eh? Tar brush up, more like, and if that's not going to send someone with any impatience with this sort of crap further down the path of unawareness, I don't know what will.
Thank gawd I didn't encounter this sort of nonsense when *I* was growing up oop t' Fragrant Harbour or being ragheaded around the changing rooms of costly Brit schooling.
Harry is required to wince and groan and keep a straight face through "Fairly standard stuff about making people aware of being sensitive about what they say."
What on earth does 'fairly standard' mean? Standardly standard?
The powers-that-be blather on about it being no big deal, "normal army disciplinary procedures", blah blah, but the only twerps making anything AB-normal about this storm in a Darjeeling cuppa is the MoD itself on the run from the slimey 4th Estate.
Here's CBC News' take on this wogging farce, just to rub in what a load of codswallop this all is.
More anon, you can be sure.
1 comment :
Yes, Hari (or Harry, we never found out) Pakers doesn't sound the sort of thing we'd say back then, doesn't have the ring. More like Harry Corfers as in an eagerly awaited Ionian hol, 'Harry Corfers, here we come' where, if someone had got impressively tanned in a short time, they'd appear at dinner to cfries of "wow! Harry tanners!" That is a perfect example. Later, primped and pomaded for a date, exuding fragrance de Brut apres-rasage, one ran the risk of mockery from the rest of the family, as in "Wow! Harry fraggers!"
It's something one only used within the family since no one else either understood it or could sense when to use it and not. I suppose the skill was cutting it fine. One could come down to brek next morn looking a bit sous le temps and be greeted with "Hmm, a little harry hangers this morning, are we?" meaning a bit hungover ... but I can't say why my instinct tells me it is right ... likewise, one could legitimately also say of ones headache, "Groan, a but harry headers this morning" to which the rest of the family would bellow 'serve you right!!'.
Most recent example was over xmas when I used it completely unconsciously with a non family member, wincing at my night of indigestion as "harry indijaggers" which takes us up to a next level of family-speke. I must see if anyone still alive from our far east contingent knows how it came to be such essential part of the Holmes vocabulary.
Good point, well raised.
Post a Comment