Fed up of silly sayings

Richard Butt
9/ 5/2008

SOMETIMES the strangest things annoy me. One is the notice that some buses display. "Sorry. Out of service."

Who, exactly, is sorry? The bus isn’t sorry. It’s not capable of any thought. And, even if it could think, I doubt that sorrow would be among its gamut of emotions.

The bus company? If it were truly sorry, the bus would be in service.

Anyway, it’s perfectly acceptable for a bus to be on the road and going somewhere while not taking passengers. It’s really not necessary to sweeten the pill for anyone at a stop who’s waiting for a bus. We know this. Our lives carry on perfectly acceptably.

In fact, we’d be amused if it had the legend "Tough! Out of service" instead. That’s what it really means, after all. At the weekend, I saw a bus with only the word "Sorry" on it.

We had to wait for the rest of the message on its laser display board thingy to say "Not in service".

And, to my intense irritation, even though I knew what was coming, I did wait to read the rest of the message.

It would have been amusing if the bus had been sorry for something else – the economy, the death toll in Iraq or the fourth (and worst) series of Blake’s Seven, perhaps.

Another one of those messages is the "Well driven?" signs on the back of some commercial vehicles. They have a telephone number to ring at the bottom of it. It’s a way to get the general public to snitch on white van drivers and their ilk when they’re cutting us up. I should ring one of those numbers and say: "I’ve just seen a Vauxhall Vivaro being driven mediocrely. No, nothing wrong at all. Just thought you’d like to know."

What the sign should say is "Badly driven?" That’s what it really means.

It’s just another euphemism.

There was once a time when euphemisms were the preserve of defecation, urination, drunkenness, sex and death. We all spent a penny, went to see a man about a dog, got tired and emotional and enjoyed a bit of how’s your father? before we passed on. America is the land of the euphemism. The place you’d find a toilet (a euphemism itself, which is why posh people prefer "lavatory" or even "loo") is a "restroom" or "bathroom" (no bath is required for a bathroom). Indeed, in an advertisement for one of Bill Bryson’s books, it says something along the lines of "Is this funny? Do bears go to the bathroom in the woods?" To which my answer is "No. There are no bathrooms in woods."

I went on a coach in the States that had the following notice. "This bus is restroom-equipped for your convenience". In Britain "Toilet on board" would have sufficed.

Euphemisms are increasingly being used in politics.

"Religious" is "faith-based" to make schools based on supernatural belief somehow more acceptable.

"Family values" either means "none of that pervy gay stuff here" or "men are in charge". "Community" describes just about whatever you want it to. "Intelligent design" means "God created it all a week last Tuesday, you carbon-dating believing Darwinian dummies".

Does this apparently-polite obfuscation really make us view the world differently?

I suppose it must, which is why people use it.

Just look at the way the word crippled became replaced by "handicapped". Handicapped became "disabled". Disabled people became "persons with disabilities". Persons with disabilities became "Persons with disablements".

And we had "challenged" and "differently-abled" along the route there somewhere too.

There are good reasons for a lot of those changes.

But those changes seem to come along like buses (in or out of service). The words might change but, no matter how you dress it up, the reality doesn’t.

Richard Butt edits Channel M’s early evening news – every weeknight from 5pm