According to several commentators the use of the word "coloured" with respect to someone from one of the ethnic minorities is a no-no. This following Bernard Jenkin's remarks on the BBC

 In an interview on BBC Radio Essex, Mr Jenkin said: “There are lots of candidates who may be coloured or may be white who get disappointed in selections, and I don’t think it does you any good when you start throwing your toys out of the pram, and to imply that the selection committee are racist because they didn’t select him is rather an insult to them.”

To this fairly innocuous statement a Labour MP called Dawn Butler stuck her oar in thusly

“It is shocking that in 2006 a Member of Parliament would still use the terminology ‘coloured’. It is patronising and derogatory. You don’t have to scratch the surface too deep to show the Tories are still the same,” she said.

What then to make of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People?  Shocking, I tell you, shocking.