And senior research fellow at the Australian Catholic University Dr Kevin Donnelly, who has just launched a book on the subject, agrees political correctness is destroying our cultural heritage.

Well, it’s certainly destroyed jokes.

A well-told yarn was once a popular affair but now there’s no room for this sort of clever wit in our boring PC agenda.

Jokes are really a male thing, and men who work alongside women are no longer game enough to poke fun at the opposite sex otherwise they could find themselves in all sorts of trouble.

And the problem mother-in-law was also a target for jokes but that’s no longer the case. Jokes like ...

‘Boss, can I have a day off next week to visit my mother-in-law?’

‘Not possible,’ says the boss.

‘Thank you so much. I knew you’d be understanding.’

Blonde jokes have also gone by the wayside because they’re classed as sexist. Ones like this: Two blondes go into a cave. One says: "It’s dark in here isn’t it? The other replies: "I don’t know, I can’t see.”

And, of course, there’s the good natured Irish jokes but these are now racist in the eyes of the word police …

‘Gallagher opens the newspaper and is dumbfounded to read in the obituary column that he’d died, so he phones his best friend Finney. ‘Did you see in the paper they said I died?’ he asks.

‘Yes I saw it,’ says his mate. ‘So where are you callin’ from?’

And pollies haven’t escaped: Did you hear about McDonald’s new Bill Shorten Value Meal? Order anything you like and the person behind you has to pay for it.

But hopefully jokes won’t vanish altogether and leave us with a totally humourless PC culture. That would really be a disaster. 

AREN’T we lucky we live in Orange?

You can wander across busy streets in front of cars wherever and whenever you like. You can ignore the red ‘don’t walk’ pedestrian lights without penalty.

You can stop and chat in large groups right in the middle of footpaths without thought of anyone else. You can stop and chat in the aisles in supermarkets, blocking the way and forcing other shoppers to climb through the shelves to get past.

You couldn’t get away with doing any of those things in Sydney. So, isn’t it great to be a bushie?

OWNERS of Apple’s latest iWatch will be able to send short audio messages to each other with a tap.

Each message will be preceded by a double beep so you can live out your movie commando dreams, although it’s all about 72 years behind the times. 

We old comic strip addicts know Dick Tracy, that square-jawed, hard-hitting, fast-shooting detective, had a two-way wrist radio back in 1946 that became one of the strip’s most immediately recognisable icons.

Created by artist Chester Gould in the Detroit Mirror, Dick Tracy had his watch upgraded to a two-way wrist TV in 1964.

Apple’s chief executive Tim Cook might have dug up some old Dick Tracy comics so his company could upgrade its smart watch. It just goes to show there’s nothing new under the sun.