I am concerned that with the Blair government has come the word “excellent”, which has been used liberally to cover public services and many other areas of society.
People who work in the public services are not machines, but are fallible people who in most cases work conscientiously and strive to be effective.
The Government machine tends to make teachers, nurses, doctors and others feel like failures unless they reach the heights of excellence.
This is ridiculous. Teachers are now told by inspectors that “satisfactory” is no longer good enough. This makes nonsense of the English language. The word “satisfactory” would have to be redefined.
Mr Blair has proved to be a vulnerable and fallible human being whose performance at best could be defined as “mediocre”. So let us replace “excellent” with “effective” and stop demotivating so many hard-working people.
John Watts 2 The Limes Long Melford, Suffolk
