JOKES PLEASE - WE`RE BRIITISH!

The stiff British upper lip is quivering....

A seismic shift in the acceptability of jokes and slang within the UK workplace has taken place over the last decade, according to a survey of more than 270 company directors by the spoken communications consultancy, The Aziz Corporation.

Company directors are ten times more likely to find politically correct jokes acceptable in the office than they did ten years ago, when nearly 40% believed jokes were unacceptable at all times.

In 1999 only 1% of respondents found politically correct jokes acceptable in internal office meetings, today the figure has increased to nearly 70%. Another shift has taken place in the differentiation between offensive and inoffensive jokes. In the earlier survey 64% of directors thought politically incorrect jokes were acceptable in informal conversations with colleagues, if funny. Today the proportion has dropped to 47%.