Phrases/words that set your teeth on edge.

[french frank]

I'm sitting there and they're like saying

A general point of interest which I've noticed is that often when people want to report what someone has said they say: And he's like, OMG what are you like? And I'm like, Waddya mean, what am I like? Bi-zarre.

[anorak]

So, this is summin you might like yeah?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_b1Y-Rl_Uo

[french frank]

So, this is summin you might like yeah?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_b1Y-Rl_Uo

So this is me to him yeah.

[smittims]

You're having me in stitches here, innit? Or will Julie Burchill come along and call us middle-class snobs for making fun of honest working-class speech?

Dialogue I actually overheard in Crewe town centre (when there was a town centre there; don't ask) :

Young woman with push-chair to older woman just arriving ; 'Where've ya bin?'

'Well, I went to M&S and then I had to go to the... '

'A did'n ask ya that, I said where've ya bin?'

'Well, I've been to the market and...'

'A don' wanna know; A said where've ya bin?'

By now we realised she didn't mean 'where have you been?' but ' Are you not ashamed of having kept me waiting?'

[Serial_Apologist]

"Berjorn [sic] says it's a stupid name {ABBA]. I think Stockholm Syndrome would be a fantastic name" - Jeremy Vine on his thick baby boomers targeted show this morning.

[Lordgeous]

Fully costed, fully funded.... broke the economy...... etc etc etc....

[Serial_Apologist]

Fully costed, fully funded.... broke the economy...... eetc etc etc....

"Surrender" - don't "surrender" to Starmer's immigration policies, don't "surrender" to Labour's tax increases, Sunak tells us. Exaggerated language designed to stir up over-reactions to arguably rational policies - over which we can discuss and debate sensibly. Fat chance!

Surrender should be reserved for situations such as Ukraine's in relation to Putin's threat to its sovereignty if it is not to become yet another once useful and now devalued term.

[gradus]

'Living your best life'...ugh!

[Serial_Apologist]

Just because "everybody is talking about it" does not automatically make whatever it is that "everybody is talking about" (which in any case they probably mostly aren't) "a good thing". This gets said more and more on the "meedja", and I am getting heartily fed up with it. When is somebody - a presenter, interviewer, another person on the panel - just going to say "Stop right where you are! - this very idea is ludicrous and a total non-sequitur"?

[oddoneout]

Just because "everybody is talking about it" does not automatically make whatever it is that "everybody is talking about" (which in any case they probably mostly aren't) "a good thing". This gets said more and more on the "meedja", and I am getting heartily fed up with it. When is somebody - a presenter, interviewer, another person on the panel - just going to say "Stop right where you are! - this very idea is ludicrous and a total non-sequitur"?

In medialand I thought that "everyone talking about it" is a good thing. There ain't nothing to fill the vacuous space otherwise.

[smittims]

Maybe I shouldn't mind the fashion for chumminess in corporate messages.

A letter from British Gas:

Hello, we've prepared your gas bill for you.

Oh , you're too kind. You really needn't have bothered.

I once went in the loo on a Virgin Voyager and as soon as I locked the door a woman's voice started up: ' I never wanted to be a toliet.. (blah, blah blah. etc.)' .

[Serial_Apologist]

Maybe I shouldn't mind the fashion for chumminess in corporate messages.

A letter from British Gas:

Hello, we've prepared your gas bill for you.

Oh , you're too kind. You really needn't have bothered.

I once went in the loo on a Virgin Voyager and as soon as I locked the door a woman's voice started up: ' I never wanted to be a toliet.. (blah, blah blah. etc.)' .

You might now expect a follow-up email from British Gas asking you if you are satisfied with the "service" you have just received - i.e. presumably the letter they've sent: because this has now happened to me twice. You then grade the breakdown of their satisfaction indices into from not satisfied at all to very satisfied, so my recommendation is to just tick the neither either middle column right through, and where additional comment is optional write "Next time please allow enough warning time for me to prepare the door mat" - which will leave their computer vexed as to whether you mean your actual doormat or yourself.

[french frank]

A letter from British Gas:

Hello, we've prepared your gas bill for you.

I think we just need to accept that the way 'most people' relate to each other is not what it was. Formailty is out. In dress and address. As an undergraduate, my experience was that lecturers always addressed students as Miss/Mr So-and-So. As a postgrad at another unviersity, students were addressed by their first name; and as time progressed students referred to (the younger) lecturers as Bill, Jon &c. Don't be surprised if a new R3 presenter turns up and treats you on their first day as if they were at secondary school with you.

[Roger Webb]

.........................Don't be surprised if a new R3 presenter turns up and treats you on their first day as if they were at secondary school with you.

What! Stick my head down a lavatory?!......well it feels like that sometimes.

[Pulcinella]

What! Stick my head down a lavatory?!......well it feels like that sometimes.

Lavatory?
You must have gone to a posh school!