Hardly surprised, but then again, MN gets it from both sides.
Since some outside will have seen "shocking bad language" (which we nearly all use within our own four walls, from time to time), so they will consider MN unsuitable for regular access, while others assume that MN must have a strong censorship attitude (because of a few campaigns where things have been rejected as offensive / immoral, etc, and rightly so).
MN clearly has a "middle of the road" approach, in the main, treats adults as adults, who can cope with the odd four-letter word in context and discusses (almost) everything.
It's the rest of the British Public (and especially one MP who may have "Mary Whitehouse" traits), who cannot treat adults like adults, but think "they know best" what's "good" for us... MN falls outside their understanding, probably because they have gone on anecdotes from others and done little or nothing to try to observe for themselves (or have hit a particularly "rude" series of threads and don't see the breadth of content).
I suspect there are a few in IT (and the Leeds example looks like one to me) who push the "politically correct" line that outside local government has already been superceded as being rather out of date, replaced by more inclusion and tolerance, and allowing freedom of expression so long as it doesn't break laws on racial and other grounds.