GROWING old gracefully used to mean not embarrassing yourself at the office Christmas party - but these days, it apparently means suing the office for embarrassing you.

Under new laws introduced this month, staff can take companies to court if they feel they have been harassed or victimised by 'ageist' comments.

At the risk of sounding like I'm writing for the Daily Mail, this is political correctness gone mad.

A Dorset insurance firm has already stopped circulating birthday cards for workers to sign for fear that light-hearted references to Zimmer frames and bus passes may result in expensive legal bills. Instead, employees will receive a card signed by the company directors.

I'm all for equal opportunities but let's exercise a bit of common sense here.

Far from being divisive, having a laugh is often how people bring themselves together - and growing older is something we all have in common.

In our office, which is populated mainly by sprightly twenty-somethings, it's a running joke to ask our news editor about growing up in the seventies and eighties - even though he is only 33.

Those who use the veneer of so-called humour in their efforts to offend may be rude and best avoided but it's not the Government's job to legislate good manners.

This self-censorship about age has actually been creeping for some time, with Government organisations describing care home residents as 'older people'.

Older than what? This morning's newspaper? A fossil?

I object to these insidious attempts to alter our collective vocabulary to Whitehall agendas, and will be talking about older people about as frequently as I refer to SNJ readers as stakeholders.

Why the Labour Party has introduced this nonsense is a mystery, since I'm not aware of any mass movement to make age-related jokes taboo. But if there's one thing you can say about the elderly, they do vote.