His, hers or should it be its?

If ever you wondered if the world had gone mad then the latest lunacy from the bureaucratic asylum of Europe should make your mind up.

Now I am one of those who found the term chairman as just the word for the head honcho of any committee, whoever it was. It didn't have a sex but once the air was filled with the smoke of smouldering bras every word was suspected of committing an offence.

Now we have got to the stage it seems where Mrs and Miss are now banned in the European Parliament along with their equivalents in the array of EU languages because they are sexist so women MEPs are now to be addressed only by their full name.

It's all in the "gender-neutral language" pamphlet where MEPs will also find man-made has had the chop in favour of artificial or synthetic - why not person-made you might ask?

Manageress has gone along with usherette, male nurse and air hostess but it seems the bureaucrats could not agree on a gender neutral term for waiters or waitresses so they stay as they are, as do midwives.

Somehow I don't think the language challenged noddies who came up with this load of old cobblers are trying hard enough. With a little ingenuity surely they could have found some inoffensive sexless term for waiters and waitresses - they both wait so why not call them godots or even Becketts while midwive is easy, Mid-cohabitees. Sorted.
Personally I think the people who came up with all this should be made personally gender neutral as soon as possible.

And, just to show the US are still world leaders in the language game, Concoran, a New York estate agent has had to institute its own word ban with bachelor, as in pad, out in its ads as it might offend couples.

Concoran is just protecting its back after a flurry of court cases sparked by the equal opportunities policies of the New York City Housing Authority. So you can't have within "walking distance" of anywhere as that could offend the disabled, "ideal for families" might upset the childless and "exclusive" is apparently racist.

Of course all of this could be stopped if just one judge, somewhere, had the bottle to stand up to the language terrorists who see, or at least claim to see, offence in almost every word with a vowel and told them to go off and find a life - then awarded costs against them and their opportunist lawyers.