Good article from the BBC yesterday about the increasing description of everyone as ‘customers’. Synopsis: ‘customer’ implies choice; but what ‘choice’ do we have as ‘taxpayers’ (or train ‘passengers’)? *

I also see customers as ‘consumers’ of services and goods. I don’t see how I’m a ‘customer’ when it comes to pay my tax bill. I have no say in how much tax I pay or what it’s spent on. Perhaps if I could say I don’t want any of my tax paying for illegal wars (or even ‘legal’ wars) or the royal family I might be more inclined to think that the term ‘customer’ had any real meaning in this context.

By a process of serendipity, I opened the current Scientific American at breakfast to read Michael Shermer’s ‘Skeptic’ column. Here’s an article about the Feynman-Tufte Principle . Tufte is a leading expert on a ‘core tool of skepticism: how to see through information obfuscation’.

The article is worth reading in full, even though it doesn’t mention the word customers once. What it does outline is the need for, in Tufte’s words, ’simple design, intense content’. And I would add, a language that the target audience understands.

* the railways I use are now characterised by a language of ‘customers’ (passengers); ‘train operating manager’ (guard); ‘calling points’ (stations); ‘vestibules;’ (the end of the carriage). Does anyone in the real world say can you when they get in a cab ‘Please take me to Kings Cross calling point?’

With military matters, the divergence between words and meaning get even more obscure - ‘collateral damage’; (civilians) ’soft targets’ (hospitals); and so on