This year we have seen a word born like one of those volcanoes off the coast of Iceland. The word is issue, in a new and puzzling meaning. It had been looming through the seawater for many months before, but now it has come hissing and steaming above the surface.
I had become used to people, usually employed in the social services, speaking of issues around things like race, ‘gender’, poverty, class, alcohol. The adoption of the pronoun around was pretty annoying, and since many of the people who used issues around were fools, I quickly came to assume its use was foolish.
Moreover the meaning of issues in this context was slippery, it almost seemed deliberately so. At first it seemed to mean ‘questions’, but in many contexts ‘problems’ seemed to fit the bill. But problem is itself ambiguous.
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