At the end of the day, it's annoying

Take your mind, for a moment, from the matters of the day. Forget the global economy. Forget President elect Obama, and what he is going to do for the world.

Forget, even, the Kylie Minogue concert that happens next week in Dubai. For Oxford University has published a list of the ten most irritating phrases in current circulation. Consider them.

These are they:

1. At the end of the day.

2. Fairly unique.

3. I personally.

4. At this moment in time.

5. With all due respect.

6. Absolutely.

7. It's a nightmare.

8. Shouldn't of.

9. 24/7.

10. It's not rocket science.

These are worthy entrants all. However, there are some phrases, or misuses of words, that are sorely missing from the list. Insight's absolute bete noir, for example, ‘going forwards,' is somehow not included.

The use of the words ‘going' and then ‘forwards' in succession, instead of the perfectly workable phrase, tried and tested, ‘in future,' causes this observer not only to grit his teeth, but to pass immediate and irreversible judgement over the interlocutor.

How did this terrible global craze for referring to tomorrow as going forwards begin? From where did it emanate? And what is the problem with ‘in future'? Which minority or single issue group could it possibly have offended?

Charities and other touchy-feely left wing organisations in the west have long tied themselves in linguistic knots, the result of a terrible fear of offending anyone.

For example, people dying of AIDS, must not, by these people, be referred to as AIDS victims, or AIDS sufferers, but ‘people living with AIDS.' This, apparently, is important to people with the life-threatening disease.

Everyone now knows that short people are not short, but "vertically challenged." Likewise, there is no such thing as disabilities anymore - there are only ‘special needs.'

Vegetarians have special needs. Strange to lump them into a phrase so woolly as to include people living with Down's syndrome, or Multiple Sclerosis.

"Stepping up to the plate" also did not make it onto the list. This slightly absurd baseball cliché last year seemed to be on the brink of taking over the world. Grandmothers who had beaten away prospective muggers were referred to as having ‘stepped up to the plate' under trying circumstances.

Nation was asked by nation to ‘step up to the plate' in anything from the war on terror (another incredibly irritating phrase) to agreeing on international fishing boundaries. Men proposing to women were said to have ‘stepped up to the plate.'

The only time Insight has ever knowingly stepped up to a plate was to do the washing up. For it, then, this is the image that is conjured every time the phrase is uttered.

Impacted is another very annoying non-word. Who made impact into a verb? But then, of course, there are thousands of these abuses against the English language.

Short of threatening offenders with life imprisonment in solitary confinement, the fight back by the people to whom these things are important is unlikely to be a successful one. How funny though, that at a time of such global gloom and worry, that some of the world's greatest minds have published such a list, naming and shaming offending phrases.

Judging from the massive response the list has generated on the internet, the public has long been waiting for something less serious than the possible end of capitalism to fret about.

An annoying phrase that Insight has encountered repeatedly recently is "I have no idea," the stock response of the telephone operators in the Dubai taxi call centre when asked how long it will take for an ordered taxi to materialise.

Dubai Taxi has long been a poorly run service. Ordered taxis have been known to arrive up to four hours late or early, or at the correct time on the wrong day. Of course, sometimes they never arrive. Often, they stink inside. How has it come to this?

The taxis are supposed to be providing a service in a city in which other forms of public transport are for the most part lacking. Dubai is not a big city. There are allegedly over 3,000 taxis.

How hard can it be for a proper system to be installed, in order that the whereabouts of the taxis can be monitored, and thus organised properly to respond to callers' orders?

Dubai provides itself on its service culture, but the taxis here are taking the sheen off the reputation. Ordering a taxi from Old Town, in the centre of the city, right by the business district, recently led to a two hour wait.

In fact, the taxi never arrived, but after two hours, Insight found an alternative. Repeated calls to the taxi centre just bought about the same response: "we are doing our best." Really? How ridiculous. It's not rocket science.

Damian Reilly is the editor of Arabian Insight.

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