Every now and again, Brits pick on a word or phrase, and use it on all possible occasions. When I hear a current 'most popular and over-used word' I am reminded of Mr Evans, my English teacher of years ago, who gave us a paragraph containing 'nice' some twenty times. We had to eradicate the lot. David Cameron should have been in our class as he used the word difficult about a dozen times when he appeared on the television at a tractor factory. I think he and his side kick has lost the plot and should start thinking of leading to which he has not done much of in the past two years.
There are several such words/phrases at the moment.
Take the business leader who says "Our plans going forward…" I shout at the radio, in the hope that he will hear my request, asking him to tell me about his plans going backwards. The whole point of a plan is that, by definition it is looking forward!!!
"At this moment in time …" is simply verbose, though it could be used, with advantage, occasionally, in a formal speech. But in every day chit-chat, 'now' is much preferred.
The current biggie is the dreaded 'actually'. It is especially annoying because it seldom adds anything to the meaning of the sentence/speech. Radio 4 interviewers rarely use it, but their interviewees seem to revel in it. One recent person squeezed it in four times in a single sentence. I still wholly fail to see what it adds. "I was there when it happened." "I was actually there when it happened." "I was actually there when it actually happened." It is a garbage word and should be sent to the shredder!! About the only time when it is justified is when someone is telling you about an incident, not knowing that you were present at it. In such circumstances, "Actually, I was there as well" is a smidgen less abrupt and, hence, a smidgen more polite than "I was there as well".
However, all this is a minor controversy, and as that is one of the few things that I moan about, I am at the moment, a fairly happy and contented person – though the rain outside and the hose pipe ban give cause for concern. At present, I am at home dealing with the wet weather, planning the meet in November and pondering over the thought to forming a new political party to put the GREAT back into Great Britain. It can be done with strategy as we have our oppos spread wide and a bit of campaigning to take the seats would put us in power then we could raise our pensions to which we have paid into to make our life easier.
Plans for the jubilee party are going great had a write up in the paper yesterday and had two cases of wine donated by a local councilor, trying to get some more.
Toodle pip!! Magic
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