Tuesday, October 24, 2006

Concerned Vampires’ Fellowship for equality and non-discrimination
(Open letter to the European Commission)

I have just received this open letter for publication from a group of fellow vampires, who, out of pure civic duty, wish to call the attention on a burning problem:

We, the members of the Concerned Vampires’ Fellowship for equality and non-discrimination (CVFEND) are delighted to hear that the European Commission has designated 2007 as 'European Year of Equal Opportunities for All' as part of a concerted effort to promote equality and non-discrimination in the EU.
We raise our voices to give our support to European Employment, Social Affairs and Equal Opportunities Commissioner, Vladimír Špidla, who said: "Europe must work towards real equality in practice. The European Year of Equal Opportunities for All and the framework strategy will provide a new drive towards ensuring the full application of EU anti-discrimination legislation, which has encountered too many obstacles and delays. Fundamental rights, non-discrimination and equal opportunities will remain key priorities for the European Commission."
It is our conviction too that only by concentrating power in the hands of the enlightened bureaucrats of the central government of the European Union will our continent know finally of a new Golden Age of tolerance, peace and understanding.
Filled by this spirit we would like to point out, however, a grave problem that has come to our attention recently. There is a growing tendency to use in official documents of the E. U. the discriminatory and intolerant expression: “chairperson” or “spokesperson”. This is, of course highly discriminative towards many animals as well as plants and non-living beings. Furthermore, we would like to point out to Brussels and Strasbourg that even expressions like chairentity or spokesentity, though much less discriminative, make an unjust difference between the being and not-being, in the unfair advantage of the first. In order to avoid completely such discriminations we suggest that the best thing, for the officials and decision makers up there would be to… just shut up.

Sincerely yours,
The CVFEND

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