The Post-Partisan Emporium

  Language Emergency – they are cleansing our vocabulary! As more and more words are rendered unacceptable, we face a language emergency. Frank Furedi  Why have so many words and expressions used in everyday conversation for centuries become the target of the language police? Why are they forcing people to embrace newly invented terms, pronouns and expressions? Why are cultural and educational institutions and public sector bodies such as civil service ceaselessly issuing lists of approved words and terms? Some of the most taken-for-granted, everyday expressions are now deemed unacceptable by the seemingly never-ending publication of new ‘inclusive language guides’. Words like ‘mum’ and ‘dad’, ‘homeless’, ‘ladies’ and ‘gentlemen’, ‘ex-pat’, and terms like ‘deprived neighbourhoods’, ‘second generation’, ‘lifestyle choices’, and ‘economic migrant’ are now deemed unacceptable by the   Inclusive Language Guide  published by the   Local Government Association . ...

  While the US government is dispensing millions of dollars in resources to treat balloons as an existential crisis, a small town in Ohio finds itself engulfed in what actually looks like the apocalypse.  Perhaps by design, all of the drama surrounding violations of US airspace by Chinese spy initiatives has done well to keep what is becoming one of the worst environmental disasters in recent memory from getting any headlines. The chaos began early last week when a train of more than 100 cars derailed in East Palestine, Ohio near the state’s border with Pennsylvania with roughly 5,000 residents. The accident launched fifty of those hundred freight cars from the tracks. Twenty of the freight cars on the train were carrying hazardous materials, ten of which were detailed. While the accident had no fatalities, of those ten cars,  five contained pressurized vinyl chloride, a highly flammable carcinogenic gas. Scenes from East Palestine In order to address the volatile scenari...