Revisiting the F Word

How the use of the F Word creates a vague monster

Sometimes inspiration comes from brushoffs, from people who try to dodge a question, especially in a time-sensitive exchange on the floor of the House of Commons.

As we reported, Esther McVey MP asked Minister Maria Caulfield whether the UK Government intended to investigate excess deaths. Part of the answer the Minister gave blamed an increasing number of people being admitted to hospital “with Flu, with Covid…” during the month of December. She also blamed “other healthcare conditions”, especially since this was seen in other countries. 

Leaving aside the hot political potato of the yearly recurring crises in the NHS and the implication of “we are all in the same boat, ah well…!”, let’s concentrate on the first of the two words beginning with F and C.

C, we will leave to a later post. But what about F? We have already explained our reasons for not using the F Word, but the blatant attempt at brushing off the question interested us again. So we looked to the ONS data on the leading caus…