When comparing things, we are deciding if they differ from each other. Not to or than each other.

I think it’s now time to purge the English language of other gender distinguishing words. Let’s stop saying ‘he’ and ‘she’. Let’s just choose one and dump the other. ‘He gave birth’ sounds strange now, but at one time, so did ‘She is an actor’.

These appalling events, still unfolding, gave rise to an entirely trivial observation on my part about nomenclature. They measure radiation dose in sieverts, temperature in degrees, length in metres, power in watts, and so on.

The seismic energy released by an earthquake, however, would be expressed for example: ‘magnitude 9.0 on the Richter scale’. Well, you wouldn’t say ‘a distance of 1500 on the metre scale’ or ‘the temperature reached 22 degrees on the Celsius scale’. So when it comes to earthquakes, Why don’t they just say ’9.0 richters’?

The omission of controversial words is a modern trend. It started with the War on ******* Terrorism of course. We became used to that one almost overnight.

I can see it developing still further. How about the French government’s proposals to ban the **** ****? Or the British government’s new ***** plan? Talking of government, all right minded people agree that there should be more ******* and ***** MPs in the House of Commons. Those that don’t can ***** with a ******!

Now everything in the supermarket has its ‘organic’ alternative. Still more expensive, but within range of those people who are not on a tight budget and are keen to save the planet whilst eating healthy food.

But who defines what is organic and what is not? Shoppers who assume it means food grown without pesticides or fertilizers need to do a bit of checking if they are not to be misled.

Here’s an example: Morrison’s Organic Corn Flakes. On the box it says

Organic standards prohibit the use of genetically modified ingredients and seek to avoid routine use of artificial pesticides and fertilizers.

Such weasely phraseology would make a home-flipping MP blush.

Good. Not that I have any appreciation of the game. I watch a football match on TV with the same level of comprehension as our cat. We can both see coloured shapes moving around on the screen but that’s about it. But Urbis has been a white elephant from the start.

The exhibitions I have visited were disappointing and a bit well, thin. There’s just too much space and not enough to go in it. And too many staff. For example the gimmicky lift which goes up diagonally has its own attendant. And he or she is actually in radio contact with other staff. “I’m just going up now.”

So I welcome the proposal to put this building to better use. It will be a draw to the city and if I visit the Football Museum I might even become a convert to The Beautiful Game.

HELP POINT – inside BT Telephone

Nice to know help is always at hand.

They are even more helpful at Levenshulme station in Manchester. The station name is actually shown in Sign Language.

I don’t mind that the British word ‘stroke’ or ‘oblique stroke’ has universally been replaced by the American word ‘slash’. But not ‘forward slash’, please!

It’s bad enough that media presenters and advertisers say ‘logon to …’ when they mean ‘visit …’ a website. Why not just say ‘slash’? You don’t say ‘I was in my car, driving forwards’, do you?

You have now successfully logged out

I think this sort of confirmation should be extended to other challenging everyday tasks. How about receipts which say

You have successfully purchased something

or perhaps on clocks

You have successfully checked the time

Congratulations like this don’t cost anything and make the world a nicer place. You have successfully read this blog entry.