Therese Coffey, health workers, and the Oxford comma

[hitmouse]

Thérèse Coffey’s ‘be positive’ order angers UK health workers

New minister issues ‘patronising’ instructions, including ban on use of Oxford comma

www.ft.com

The new UK health secretary has riled healthcare workers by telling them to “be positive” and avoid using policy wonk “jargon” as they grapple with job cuts and the deepening cost of living crisis.
Thérèse Coffey, who was appointed by prime minister Liz Truss this month, issued the guidance to hundreds of health staff in an email last Thursday.
Staff were also told to avoid using “Oxford commas” — referring to the contested punctuation mark that precedes the last item on a written list.
Insiders said that the instructions — entitled “New secretary of state ways of working preferences” — had been published on the Department of Health and Social Care’s intranet. An email, seen by the Financial Times, shows Coffey’s guidance was also forwarded to UK Health Security Agency staff.
The rubric has angered health workers, many of whom were on the front lines during the Covid pandemic and who now face real-terms pay cuts and added pressures as infection rates are expected to rise over the winter.
Coffey’s office asked employees to “be precise” and “be positive — if we have done something good, let us say so and avoid double negatives”.
The email was “super patronising . . . It does make you consider if you’re in the right place when a new minister comes in with this,” said one person with knowledge of the mood at the UKHSA.
“The idea that we have to frame issues positively indicates a person who doesn’t want to deal with problems, so that’s not encouraging,” they added.

 

[steveo87]

JRM gets lambasted as the ultimate Tory, but to me Coffey is far worse.
She strikes me as someone who would tell someone with MH to 'pull themselves together' or 'when I'm sad, I buy myself some [insert generic comfort food here]' and I feel much better.

JRM is just an put of touch fascist.

 

[two sheds]

 

[LDC]

Thérèse Coffey’s ‘be positive’ order angers UK health workers

New minister issues ‘patronising’ instructions, including ban on use of Oxford comma

www.ft.com

10/10 for emoticons in title though.

 

[andysays]

JRM gets lambasted as the ultimate Tory, but to me Coffey is far worse.
She strikes me as someone who would tell someone with MH to 'pull themselves together' or 'when I'm sad, I buy myself some [insert generic comfort food here]' and I feel much better.

JRM is just an put of touch fascist.

Didn't JRM do something very similar a few years ago, including seeking to ban the Oxford comma?

Imagine being so bereft of genuine ideas that you resort to recycling his old stuff.

 

[belboid]

naah, he banned it after and, not before. He might well have meant to ban the OC but he’s actually rather thick so got it wrong.

He would have been right too, the Oxford comma is usually an indicator of a poorly constructed sentence. It’s very occasionally useful but it’s pretty rare these days that anyone needs to say ‘my parents, god and Harvey Weinstein’ these days

 

[2hats]

"Be positive" presumably the new administration's pandemic management policy?

 

[Edie]

For some reason this made me laugh. I think I’m hysterical.

 

[Pickman's model]

How bereft of friends coffey must have been to bond with truss. And vice versa too

 

[Smokeandsteam]

Surely Coffey's advice could have been improved had she also advised workers to leave the NHS and train as a banker? At a stroke job cuts, the lack of bonuses and a pay rise and the cost of living crisis all vanish immediately probably doing wonders for their mental health?

 

[NoXion]

She's in charge of health policy for the entire country, yet her missive includes such a triviality as the usage of commas? What fucking pettifogging bullshit is this? We had a pandemic start up just two years ago, how about she deals with the aftermath of that, instead of playing at being an English teacher?!

Fucking idiot, completely unfit for office.

 

[platinumsage]

She's in charge of health policy for the entire country, yet her missive includes such a triviality as the usage of commas? What fucking pettifogging bullshit is this? We had a pandemic start up just two years ago, how about she deals with the aftermath of that, instead of playing at being an English teacher?!

Fucking idiot, completely unfit for office.

It’s literally a style guide issued to departmental civil servants in Whitehall, its commonplace for new ministers to issue these, and of course the media is focusing on the Oxford comma bit because the rest of it isn’t newsworthy, stuff about reducing jargon etc.

It isn’t going out to nurses.

 

[NoXion]

It’s literally a style guide issued to departmental civil servants in Whitehall, its commonplace for new ministers to issue these, and of course the media is focusing on the Oxford comma bit because the rest of it isn’t newsworthy, stuff about reducing jargon etc.

It isn’t going out to nurses.

Why would civil servants need a directive to reduce jargon? They're supposed to know that kind of stuff to do their jobs, and it's not exactly public-facing work, is it?

Unless of course Coffey is asking them to dumb it down because Tories are thick posho cunts. That would make sense.

 

[belboid]

It isn’t going out to nurses.

The UKHSA does include nurses and other front line practitioners.

 

[Yossarian]

"Therese Coffey says the people she admires most include her parents, Margaret Thatcher and Boris Johnson."

 

[Raheem]

It’s literally a style guide issued to departmental civil servants in Whitehall, its commonplace for new ministers to issue these

Do you really think so? It might not be unprecedented, but how many new ministers do you think actually decide to themselves "I'm going to hit the ground running by offering some highly educated people advice such as 'Avoid double negatives' and so on"?

Seems to me just totally clueless behaviour.

 

[Pickman's model]

Do you really think so? It might not be unprecedented, but how many new ministers do you think actually decide to themselves "I'm going to hit the ground running by offering some highly educated people advice such as 'Avoid double negatives' and so on"?

Seems to me just totally clueless behaviour.

this would be in keeping with everything else we know of coffey

 

[NoXion]

The UKHSA does include nurses and other front line practitioners.

But but but, the meeeeja! They must be twisting things, they must! It can't be that Tories are petty-minded, incompetent, tone-deaf scum.

 

[platinumsage]

Do you really think so? It might not be unprecedented, but how many new ministers do you think actually decide to themselves "I'm going to hit the ground running by offering some highly educated people advice such as 'Avoid double negatives' and so on"?

Seems to me just totally clueless behaviour.

I think it’s normal, where the minister gets to set the tone for communications etc. According to the Telegraph: “One official said: ‘Although there is usually some guidance, it’s not so prescriptive.’”

 

[Edie]

It’s literally a style guide issued to departmental civil servants in Whitehall, its commonplace for new ministers to issue these, and of course the media is focusing on the Oxford comma bit because the rest of it isn’t newsworthy, stuff about reducing jargon etc.

It isn’t going out to nurses.

Ah that makes more sense. Media hysteria.

 

[Raheem]

I think it’s normal, where the minister gets to set the tone for communications etc. According to the Telegraph: “One official said: ‘Although there is usually some guidance, it’s not so prescriptive.’”

It won't (or, at least shouldn't) be to do with external coms, because all that is covered by existing style guides which civil servants are not supposed to deviate from (ditto the NHS), and which are not up to ministers to change. Of course, it's possible that Coffey has no idea about all that.

I know this because I happen to know someone who works in a coms-related job for the DWP.

I also know from her that Coffey is very much into micro-mangement. During her time at the DWP, she asked for (but was never provided with) a list of all staff above a certain grade (this grade was below the level of a Job Centre manager) along with details of the work they undertook and their direct contact details.

I don't think it will be much fun getting her as your new boss.

 

[Ming]

I’ll give myself the luxury of some massive hypocrisy (i‘m a nurse with a terribly unhealthy lifestyle). So that out the way…

Our health secretary.

 

[SpookyFrank]

Do you really think so? It might not be unprecedented, but how many new ministers do you think actually decide to themselves "I'm going to hit the ground running by offering some highly educated people advice such as 'Avoid double negatives' and so on"?

Seems to me just totally clueless behaviour.

Yes as always with this kind of shit the content is irrelevant, she's just establishing her right to order people around despite a complete lack of any genuine authority that might come from knowledge or experience. It's just pissing on a lamppost to mark your territory.

 

[platinumsage]

Here's some more:

Michael Gove issues civil servants with grammar guidelines

Ministry of Justice staff are told to avoid starting sentences with ‘yet’, not to use ‘impact’ as a verb and to write ‘make sure’ instead of ‘ensure’

www.theguardian.com

Leaked demands portray minister as an eager diva

Liam Byrne set out his daily demands in an 11-page briefing including when he likes his coffee

www.theguardian.com

 

[Agent Sparrow]

I am a health professional and they’re not taking away my Oxford commas I’m also quite partial to a double negative when it adds to the effect of the words.

 

[Supine]

 

[brogdale]

Pointless, stupid, and a dead cat.

 

[Rebelda]

it’s pretty rare these days that anyone needs to say ‘my parents, god and Harvey Weinstein’

More likely a tory cabinet minister than a department of health civil servant I would wager.

 

[existentialist]

I am a health professional and they’re not taking away my Oxford commas I’m also quite partial to a double negative when it adds to the effect of the words.

Anyone with half a brain would realise exactly what would happen when they started micromanaging the means of expression of a large group of educated, motivated professionals.

If I were more conspiratorially inclined, I would be suspecting that Madam Covfefe was involved in some subtle campaign to absolutely ensure the use of the Oxford comma in every piece of writing that emerges from the NHS. Judging by the reactions on Twitter, she will have been successful in this.

 

[two sheds]

It's the "be positive" that I find the most condescending - proper management attitude most likely to make people think "fuck off".