Love Barnsley

The Daily Mail (well I suppose it would have to be) has taken exception to a District Judge at Barnsley objecting to defendants calling court staff ‘love’.

http//www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2051798/Judge-accused-discrimination-ban-Yorkshire-defendants-calling-court-staff-love.html

Now I’m a Yorkshireman born and bred but I too have, on various occasions, instructed those before the court not to call the court clerk ‘love’, an almost automatic reaction in my part of the world.

Well that must make me also guilty of discrimination against traditional Yorkshire dialect if Graeme Garvey of the Yorkshire Dialect Society is to be believed. I prefer to think of it as an expression of good manners not to use a familiarity to those you don’t know, especially one with overt sexist overtones.