No doubt guided criminals are as lethal as guided missiles. Although that is not the BBC?s reasoning in substituting ?misguided criminals? for ?terrorists?, specifically those who carried out the July 7 explosions. The new term heads the top ten list of this year?s most politically correct words and phrases released by the Global Language Monitor. According to its chief, the BBC has homed in on a description of the July 7 terrorists that it considers neutral and emotionally non-committal. The result is fascinating ? and mysterious. Is it the root word, ?terror?, that is the problem, attributing as it does an emotion ? associated with cowering and panic ? to British people who are nobly free of it? Or is there an implicit assumption that all terrorists are Muslim, and the BBC seeks to free itself of such political incorrectness? For that, it will have already assumed that all terrorists are Muslim.

Neutral descriptions will have to be built out of newborn words, never heard before. The search for a word without a history of emotion and secondary meanings is itself sadly misguided, no less so than the terrorists that the BBC compassionately wishes to guide back to other, presumably more acceptable, forms of criminality. Political correctness terrorizes poetry: neutrality in language would make poetry impossible. The list is a marvel of competing absurdities, with ?womyn? offered as substitute for ?women? to dissociate it from ?men?. It is, reportedly, a feminists? favourite, possibly meant to erase the woe that comes with not being a man.

It is understandable when words carrying a history of racial or religious abuse are substituted; it is quite bewildering when the universe of possible verbal offence expands to include most of humanity in an era of indiscriminate and exquisitely variegated physical violence. Perhaps, sensibilities become proportionately tender, for ?deferred success? is offered as substitute for ?failure? and ?thought shower? in place of ?brainstorming?. The first suggests, unsurprisingly, that the human race prefers an untruth to the truth. The second protects those who have something wrong with their brains. Sensitive political incorrectness detectors have decided that ?thought? is somehow less disturbing than brain.

That perhaps is true. The descent into woolly-headedness (no offence to persons, meaning men, womyn and s/hemales, with hair the texture and appearance of wool ? and what about the sheep, then?) in search of political correctness (what about the children with success deferred who always get their sums marked ?incorrect? ? ?wrong? is too strong) is a perfect example (imperfection is universal, no offence here) of much thought showered in an exercise to excise the brain. The brain (no offence to those without) is usually accompanied by common sense. Nothing could be more neutral.