Is there no end to Cultural Sensitivity?

No there isn’t. It’s how we try to understand our fellow nitwits and ensure we hit the right buttons when we communicate with them. More examples, as threatened last time:

TOWN / COUNTRY: Most people here live in towns, and romanticise the country. When they take a trip there however they find no stage coaches rattling through quaint villages, no be-smocked peasants quaffing cider by haystacks and few hens scratching around drowsy farmyards in the sun.

Instead they find billions of chickens confined in tiny cages in giant sheds, a housing concept borrowed from towns and cities.

This town/country split was brought into sharp relief by the fox hunting issue which occupied more parliamentary time than any other in Blair’s government.

It’s largely people in the towns who seem to be against it, while if you live in the country you normally couldn’t care less until a pack of hounds and five dozen horses pursue a fox in through your front door and out through the French windows. Anyway, it’s illegal now, although I doubt if foxes have noticed.

LABOUR / CONSERVATIVE: When confronted, it’s always best to claim you base your voting pattern on local issues, because no-one will know what they are. This enables you to talk through your hat for hours, and gives you time to work out the point of view of the weirdo you so unwisely stood next to when you ordered your beer. It never occurred to you that this would be the reason for the free space at an otherwise crowded bar.

LIVERPOOL / EVERTON: It’s always wise to check if there’s any deadly rivalry going back generations between supporters of competing football clubs in your neighbourhood. This is essential information on Merseyside and in many other places too, especially Glasgow.

Remember that Glasgow Celtic manager Jock Stein, when asked if he thought football really was a matter of life and death, replied “It’s much more important than that”.

TEA / COFFEE: Unless you were counting on staying awake for weeks on end in a prolonged juddering caffeine fit, drink tea here in the UK. On business, however, go for coffee, since good tea is beyond most companies, and no-one will give you a glass of absinthe.

NORTH / SOUTH: Look around. Can you see rolling countryside, sunshine, sleepy country towns, orchards, wealth, Heathrow, traffic chaos, effete cultural behaviour or the French coast? If so, you’re in the south.

Or can you see driving rain, dark satanic mills, coal mines, steel works, factory chimneys, bleak moors, cobbled streets, back-to-back terraced housing, outside toilets, people in flat caps drinking thin beer out of straight glasses, pigeon lofts, whippet racing or black pudding? If so, you’re in the past.

GET IT / DON’T GET IT: People who get cultural sensitivity know that when they communicate they’re addressing something richer than a target audience. Those who don’t are condemned to wonder why their campaign bombed.

Let's do Cultural Sensitivity

When an American client asked if I could provide cultural sensitivity advice I saw a rich vein.

While PR people divide up populations into target audiences, modern societies consist of an interlocking network of entrenched camps populated by people of diametrically opposed views, and here in the UK we’ve had plenty of time to dig ourselves in.

The prickly English relationship with the Scots and the Irish dates back to the Iron Age, while Yorkshire and Lancashire are still divided by the Wars of the Roses which finished just before Columbus set sail.

There are many other opposing coteries here that you ought to be aware of if you want to enter pubs with any confidence and in general avoid the kind of social gaffe which could result in a visit to one of our diminishing stock of accident & emergency units. For instance:

UPPER / LOWER CLASS: It’s only in society that scum settles at the bottom. At the top of the greasy pole here are your royals, aristocrats and investment bankers. Everyone else is middle class, whether they like it or not, except the homeless. Wealth is not the point. It’s about breeding.

Foreigners are outside of this system of course, and simply foreign. Their breeding, if any, is irrelevant to us. Their quaint kings and queens are of no interest now we no longer cement our national alliances by inter-marriage between royal families. Instead we now have the Eurovision Song Contest.

PRO / ANTI EUROPE: The credibility of the EU is undermined by the fact that it’s a political construct. Since the real issues are so opaque, this is strictly a meta-division, defined by which division you’re in, not whether or not you agree with its alleged stance, hence the vacuity of the current debate.

PROTESTANT / CATHOLIC: This really only matters in Scotland, Ireland and the afterlife. That’s Celts for you.

OXFORD / CAMBRIDGE: This is mainly important on Boat Race day, when people realise that shouting for one crew over the other is the only way to remain awake during the TV coverage.

You’ll note that some of the more obvious divisions (eg black/white, straight/gay, male/female, lawyer/non-lawyer) are missing here, along with left-hand/right-hand, which is only relevant in cricket – where it’s astonishingly important.

This is because we’ve had plenty of time to get over these and move on. Our divisions are arcane, difficult to spot, and of course they cement society together, because people are members of different combinations of them. It’s what cultural sensitivity is all about, here and everywhere.

This is a rich vein. More when I get back from the fishing trip.