“NHS claims ‘it’s raining cats and dogs’ is culturally insensitive,” ran a headline in the Daily Telegraph at the weekend, as young hack Emily Smith reported medics had been banned from using such idioms lest they upset patients from foreign cultures.
“Lancashire Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust instructed staff against using the phrases in its diversity and inclusion training, claiming that the terms were not culturally sensitive,” she said.
Inevitably, Conservative peer and rentagob Toby Young was quoted, with the founder of the Free Speech Union claiming that the NHS guidance could lead to witch hunts against staff members for using everyday terms.
“The result is that more and more NHS employees, particularly older employees, are finding themselves under investigation for being ‘culturally insensitive’, which is code for ‘racism’,” fumed the very silly Young.
“If you’re not fluent in ‘woke-ish’ – which is a constantly changing modern dialect – you will eventually be cancelled. Indeed, that may be the point of this language policing – to force older employees to take early retirement and make way for more pink-haired zealots.”
Suggested Reading
The Tories and Mail go loopy over Erasmus+
And is it? Er… no. Because inevitably, the NHS has not claimed “it’s raining cats and dogs” is insensitive, nobody has been banned from such idioms lest they upset patients from foreign cultures, and no older employees are making way for “pink-haired zealots”.
Rather, one NHS Trust has used it as an example of a phrase which some patients with autism may struggle to understand and therefore may be phrased better.
“Some people on the autism spectrum understand language very literally,” runs one of the “five top tips” issued to staff at the trust. “Avoid phrases that don’t say what they mean. Like ‘it’s running cats and dogs’. Use clear, everyday language.”
Indeed, Smith seemed to understand this, reporting as early as her third paragraph that the guidance “warned that the terms ‘may not translate well across other cultures’ and may need to be explained to international colleagues or patients”.
Not that it stopped her whipping it up into an anti-woke frenzy alongside Young. Nor, indeed, for Susan Hall, Conservative member of the London Assembly and a previous mayoral candidate, to post it on X alongside the comment “We have lost the plot completely!”. You certainly have, Susan!
Perhaps Smith should have a glance at another guide to language which includes such useful tips as “never take for granted the reader’s understanding of a subject” and “it is not insulting to set things out simply and logically”. Not an NHS tip book by pink-haired zealots, but… the style guide of the Daily Telegraph.
Most popular
The horrors of the online “Rape Academy”
Ozzy Osbourne wouldn’t have marched with Tommy Robinson. Why is Sharon doing so?
The truth about Trump’s Iran downfall? The worst is yet to come
Inside the Vance, Kushner, Witkoff Islamabad talks
