In the UK we've had a bit of a hoo-hah about a conversation that took place in the green room of popular BBC chat show, The One. In a conversation after the show (and unbroadcast) Carol Thatcher, a roving reporter on the show, apparently compared a well-known black tennis player (who wasn't there) to a 'golliwog'. Complaints were made, the story leaked and over the last few days, Thatcher has been publicly condemned for her words and fired from the program. However that sacking created a controversy of its own and I have to admit I'm in two minds about how I feel about it.

Carol Thatcher is the daughter of Margaret Thatcher and seems to share the same ill-informed, elitist, condescending tone and demeanor of her mother. Quite what her qualifications for the reporter role were, I'm not sure, but she's done a few programmes previously and fared better than average in the 'I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Outta Here' - which basically sums up her career position to date. Now, her stupid words basically speak for themselves. Her rep has said the term was used in jest, but you'd have to be fairly stupid to use the term at all. Where once it might have been a vaguely acceptable but embarassing stereotype (to the extent of the famous badges/pins that Roberstons' marmalade) that was decades ago and now there's NO way you could use the term and see it as anything other than either (at best) gross naivety or (at worst) maliciously offensive. The BBC fired her when she wouldn't apologise.

The problem here is whether this was a private conversation or a workplace incident. However reprehensible I find the term and her use of it, I'd feel very nervous about someone being fired for having a private belief, expressed off-air and being unwilling to apologise for it. For example - I hate almost everything of what the BNP stands for, but I'd fight for their right to exist in a democracy. Should Thatcher have been made to make a public apology in that case? I'd say, no. If it wasn't for a convenient leak, the public wouldn't even know about it and I see no reason for a private conversation to be apologised for if it wasn't public to begin with. Now... if you take this as a workplace incident, where fellow workers felt distressed enough to make note of this and formally complain, then I think the organisation has every right to take action against an individual - though it might well have been more pragmatic to take her aside, give her a good talking to and told that it if it happened again, that was it. Out. Possibly tell her they weren't renewing her contract (subtley different than a firing). Then again, if the regular hosts had a problem with her, a quick and dignified exit was probably well advised.

Some papers say her firing was political (a broadside BBC revenge because of her mother - which seems a stupid idea as they hired her to begin with!) and many try to make their own advantageous links to other recent controversies (don't even get me started on the whole Jonathan Ross situation which has more hypocritical agendas than a council meeting rap sheet).

Bottom line: Thatcher is her own worst enemy, but in a climate where everyone is scared stiff of offending everyone else... if people even remotely suspect you're a racist idiot with the tact of a Big Brother contestant, better to keep silent or risk the result of removing all doubt.