More Over-Used Phrases

So, what 'overused phrases' am I talking about? The one that has been done to death is the one which was used during the COVID-19 pandemic. It's unprecedented. It had become something of a cliché. Why? I think it was an attempt to make out the pandemic was really worse than it was made out to be, mostly by the unelected scientists who were actually pulling the strings. And Boris fell for it, and we, the electorate of the United Kingdom, were forced, more at less at gun-point, to accept house arrest without question.

Kicking the can down the road. This means, in effect, putting something off, usually unpopular or unpleasant. For example, a sort of denial, knowing full well that something has to be done. One example would be a Chancellor of The Exchequer knowing that the country's finances are in a total mess and putting up taxes.

It is not always over-used phrases that annoy me, but those clichés the news media use, particularly television news. Here's a list. These are a few, but I'm sure, over time, I will discover plenty more.

1: Inflation, money: Piles of one-pound coins, stacked up, or images of one-pound notes. Shots of the Bank of England. Computer screens, with facts and figures over-laid or Photoshopped on. A person taking cash out of a cash machine. 

2: Care, usually of the elderly: Old people, usually seen from the waist down, with wrinkly stockings, tatty slippers, shuffling along, holding onto a Zimmer frame. Often out of focus. Or elderly people eating soup, or being served some food, usually looking revolting and totally unappetizing. Usually, the elderly portrayed are supposedly around 85 plus. So at what age do we become 'elderly'? That is a good question, and not easy to answer. 

3: Children/Education. Rows of empty desks, piles of exercise books, something written on a blackboard (which hasn't been used in schools for decades.), naughts-and-crosses on a blackboard, or some complicated bit of algebra. (Do schools teach algebra these days? They attempted to teach me that subject when I was at school, but I have never found a use for it.) Children are seen in a playground, probably playing, and we see just their feet. Sitting on a bench, just their backs, faces blurred or just from the waist down.

4: Law/legal: Shots of the statue on top of The Old Bailey. The one with the woman holding the balancing scales. Piles of documents, tied in red ribbons. 

5: NHS/Medical. Doctor in a white coat, with a stethoscope around his/her neck. Someone has their blood pressure taken. Piles of hypodermic needles, packets/bottles of tablets. Nurses looking after patients, filling in forms on clipboards, looking at X-Rays. A patient's arm with a blood pressure cuff on, with a nurse assisting. 

6: Employment: Shots of a Job Centre sign, job boards in a Job Centre. People queuing up to collect their benefits in a Post Office.

7: Recession. Boarded-up shops on a high street, in some undisclosed town. Factory gates locked, with weeds growing through pavements, bits of litter blowing in the wind. Then, graphs of numbers of employed and unemployed.