Standing Room | 28 March 2009

Last week I was invited to join Radio 2 to discuss the European parliament’s most recent time-, energy- and money-wasting wheeze

Last week I was invited to join Radio 2 to discuss the European parliament’s most recent time-, energy- and money-wasting wheeze: a pamphlet asking staff to refrain from using titles such as Miss or Mrs. Apparently these titles are considered archaic and a hangover from the past, as they ‘indicate’ a woman’s relationship to a man. According to Strasbourg, Ms is the politically correct prefix all us women should adopt; for despite being impossible to pronounce without sounding as though one is impersonating an angry mosquito, using Ms doesn’t — God forbid — denote a woman’s marital status.

Most popular

Lee Cohen

Mandelson is the wrong man, at the wrong time

Shortly before going on air, the presenter Matthew Bannister politely asked how I’d like to be introduced.