Pretty much anything from my current job realy.
"residents" have become "service users" who have then become "supported persons". I can vaugely understand Supported persons, but in all honesty, I fail to see what is wrong with the term Residents to refer to the adults with learning disabilities that I help. It's not that I particuarly object to the fact that words, especialy official classifications change, but in all honesty the definition has not changed one bit. The thing that bugs me is that someone (probably me) is going to have to go through all our paperwork and change every damn word to it's latest form, or we get shitty marks from the investigating panel (Which also changes it's name on fairly regular intervals so I'm not entirely sure what they're called now, but again, what they do hasn't actualy changed much).

Another thing that bugs me is this idea that somehow by changing what we call things, and I'm sure this must happen in other fields is somehow going to improve things, or maximise productivity or somesuch shit. These changes in offical language happen so often now people barely take notice. Sometimes when we have to write down something we try and figure out exactly what the fuck our job titles are but other than that we just get on with our damn jobs, because that's what we've been doing all along, and that's what works.

I do understand that there may be some problems in various different industries, especialy in the one I work for, but these are mainly down to private companies squeezing the residents (sorry, supported persons) for every penny of their benifits available, while offering cut price shoddy contracted out services such as housing, activity centres ect to their mates, lack of staffing, poor staff training/conditions and a general lack of central accountability on the part of the companies. These problems are going to take more than a few new bullshit buzzwords and vaugely well intentioned changes in language to sort out. It's more or less a useless exersise in turd polishing.
(Fredz A graveyard of hopes, a dump of ambition, Tue 13 Apr 2010, 11:32, 2 replies)

Yes!
Much the same as spastic, handicapped, disabled, etc etc etc that have been 1. The politically correct euphemism many people didn't understand, 2. The correct term, 3. a bit outdated and then 4. offensive for no good reason.

Special, for example, was a way of saying 'mentally handicapped'. Now, you can be special or [adopt stupid face, and/or "finger quotes"] 'special'. Essentially, as soon as everyone understands the term it becomes stigmatised by the condition it's describing. So why try to avoid the offence by changing the word, rather than addressing the stigma?

It really boils my piss... (I've been gagging to use that phrase for 3 days now - love it!)
(Mumm-ra, Tue 13 Apr 2010, 13:45, closed)

Yup. Agree with ya totaly.
If you just change the word all you do is provide a new offensive insult a few years down the line. You've gotta change people's opinions and that to actualy deal with people using it as an insult.
(Fredz A graveyard of hopes, a dump of ambition, Tue 13 Apr 2010, 23:14, closed)