What’s in a name? It gets complicated!
OH, no! I hear the politically-correct zealots are trying to introduce a new form of veg-speak so we can eliminate age-old phrases such as “bringing home the bacon” in order not to upset animal lovers nationwide.
What with unisex toilets, hastily adopted by some schools and universities, you think the world can’t get any crazier but it does! Where will it all end? The latest mad move is to alter dozens of well-known snippets from everyday speech such as “two birds with one stone” to prevent upsetting tree huggers or nutty vegans.
Some nitwit even wants to alter placenames to promote the idea of protecting animals from cruelty. All very laudable – but bonkers, anyway. And animals can’t read.
And where does that leave nursery rhymes such as “Baa, baa, black sheep”? Adding the word vegan to the ditty would be ridiculous. “The cat which got the cream” would be OK, presumably, and “count your chickens” but “till the cows come home” might possibly need qualified legal advice.
Others want the word “man” expunging from the language wholesale. What they plan for the word human itself, I have not heard. They also want words like Mr, Mrs and Ms taking out altogether and anything which denotes a sexual context. Why not, therefore, ban the phrase “Bob’s your uncle” when, of course, he could, in fact, be your auntie if he/she decides to call themselves that. Gets complicated doesn’t it?
What truly baffles me is the fact of these half-baked whims come from decidedly minority groups. They seem determined to change law and language and have a stranglehold on “protests” generally. To use a useful animal aphorism, it’s rather a case of “the tail wagging the dog”, if you’ll pardon me using that little gem. But you can see just what chaos ensues when you start screwing with the language.
I’m glad I’m not on the internet/ Facebook because I would be bombarded with hate mail and other vilification from the Twitterati for holding such heretic views. I’m too old to think twice about phrases I’ve used all my life.
John Hyde, Parkway, Chellaston