Keep watching the skies

HAVE you noticed how, whenever a controversial topic isn’t being taken seriously enough, they change its name, to make it sound scarier? “Global warming”, for example — which, if anything, sounds quite pleasant, particularly if you live in a place where it rains two-thirds of the time - became “climate change”, hinting at something more sinister.

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When merely hinting was found to be ineffective, “change” was swapped for “crisis”, to inject more urgency.

And when they decided this still wasn’t punchy enough, “crisis” was dumped in favour of “emergency”. I’d imagine “apocalypse” will be next, or maybe “armageddon”, or maybe just “aaaaaaghhh!”.

Definitely one of the A-words.

And after that? Well, presumably there'll be no need for further updates, terminology-wise. So that’ll be a comfort.