AIRSTRIP ONE RECEIVES LATEST NEWSPEAK DICTIONARY UPDATE: Mum’s the word: British university scraps the word ‘mother.’

When it comes to illness and disability, for some reason using the word ‘diabetic’ is no longer allowed and staff are instead encouraged to use language that focuses on people’s ‘abilities, rather than limitations’. In the eyes of Manchester University, someone is no longer ‘suffering from cancer’ but are a person ‘living with cancer’. Similarly, the university no longer says that someone is a ‘victim of dementia’ — presumably because dementia is something to be appreciated in the eyes of the inclusivity team.

Arguably though it’s on gender where the most radical changes take place. From now on gender-neutral terms are in vogue in Manchester, which means that ‘man’, ‘woman’, ‘mother’ and ‘father’ are no longer appropriate for use in university materials, to be replaced by ‘individuals’ and ‘guardians’. Cockburn imagines that things might become tricky this weekend when Brits celebrate Mother’s Day, which will presumably now have to be styled ‘Guardian’s Day’.

Really looking forward to David Gilmour and Roger Waters reuniting to update The Wall to reflect the current UK “Progressive” linguistic trends.