They had been emailing about a third person, and the person from outside the office had accidentally sent her email to the subject of their criticism. My advice was to ring the person and grovel. 

I thought about that when a person in the public eye did the same thing recently.

He had used some nasty words about a female journalist – and then sent the email by mistake to the journalist. That might have little or nothing to do with political correctness, but I thought of it as I sat down to write about political correctness.

Some people in our country are worried they can’t say anything without sending it to their lawyers first.

I came across a website recently that included what it called items of “political correctness gone mad”.

They included a Seattle school referring to spring spheres instead of Easter eggs; the BBC replacing brainstorming with thought showers in case epileptics would be offended; a United Kingdom job recruiter’s use of the words “reliable” and “hard working” rejected in case some lazy people objected; some stores in Australia banning Santas from saying “ho ho ho” because it was too close to American slang for prostitute; some USA schools having a “holiday tree” instead of a Christmas tree.

I was told recently a department had issued an instruction people were to stop writing about sex and use gender instead, even though gender through the years has had a different meaning.

To be politically correct is to choose words and sometimes actions that avoid disparaging, insulting or offending people because they belong to oppressed groups. This is highly commendable.

So far as I can tell, the term began to take hold in the middle of the 20th century.

Senator Cory Bernardi of Australia, commenting on political correctness, suggested a few years ago he did not need to be welcomed to his own country, because he was born here and as such was just as indigenous as anybody else. He mentioned a group that had renamed fairy penguins little penguins in case homosexuals would be offended.

Civil Liberties Australia commented:  “It is essential that we preserve the right to free speech provided we do not insult people for their race or religious beliefs.”

There are many examples of political correctness that are good, in the interests of equality. But in my opinion – and you might disagree - there are some that go too far.

Where is the balance? You’d better ask someone else for an answer to that, but the answer lies in balance.

I heard a good comment once: “If in doubt, don’t.”