Language

When I was a yoof my dad was the owner of a small business. He called himself the Manager or Owner. It expanded a bit and he became known as Managing Director. His job hadn't changed. 20 years ago he would have been promoted to the role of Chief Executive. Today I am certain he would be a Chief Executive Officer, abbreviated as CEO.

His right hand man was called Stuart Budge. He was the Accountant. By the time I joined my father's firm he had become the Finance Director. If he was still with us he would no doubt be the CFO.

When I joined Honeywell in about 1980 I was interviewed by a Personnel Officer. I got the job! Later I became a manager and if I wanted to hire someone I had to discuss with Human Relations and a HR Officer. I met someone from the States who explained about the car hire company who was looking for Honeywell's business. The car hire company was called Alamo. Their Personnel department (I am old fashioned) was called Family Health. I just checked their corporate website to see if this daft expression had survived. It has not. It is now called Enterprise Mobility.

I could go on, but I'm beginning to bore myself.

It's fine if the world has changed. My friend Colin's big sister was the first person I had ever heard of who was a computer programmer. I don't really know what the equivalent is today but I see there are jobs for PHP developers. Having an inquisitive nature I looked for obselete jobs on Wikipedia. The first one in the list is alchemists and includes conquistadors ( a few of them in the Labour Party) , House Slaves (I thought they are now quite popular) and Reeves. I think there is only one of those in the Labour party, for now at least.

Language develops, which is fine with me, do we really need to rename perfectly normal and accurate expressions like minimum wage with Orwellian Nuspeak expressions like National Living Wage (thank you George Osborne aka Entitled).

What started me on this rant? I can't remember. I am old. I started it in another room and not sure why I came in here.

If my dedicated reader has anything to add to this nonsense, please leave a comment, preferably a polite one.