I had thought of placing this in the Grumpy Rant Room, but perhaps it's more interesting here.
I was again yesterday struck by the list of things "Passengers must not" do on our local buses. The first reads:
...stand forward of this point
Is this some kind of slang for "stand
further forward than this point" I wonder? Since the position taken in standing is not
per se an actual
function of "this point" it must be wondered what actually
is the point.
The second thing "passengers must not" do is this:
...speak to or distract the driver's vision while the bus is moving
Now while I have many times wanted to speak to the
driver - often to complain about the ride - I have never thought of appealing to his
vision!
What is detected here, of course, is known as "political correctness"! How else can a sentence be framed that avoids using the pronoun "his"?!! But isn't something really wrong when PC requirements override those of the English language?
We have a strong ethnic mix in my part of the world, and more than 100 languages are spoken every day. It seems to me that if I (as a native
Englishman) cannot understand such important Health and Safety regulations, what must they mean to the rest?
Baz
