@McTag,
If by "our friend" you mean me Mac then I don't approve. Certain styles, or usages, in language are class markers and I have the same attitude towards them as I do with other class markers in, say, dress or any other outward show of an ability to sustain pecuniary damage.
Take the difference between a lady on the phone to her best friend and her on the phone to the vicar enquiring whether she might make a contribution to the repair of the church roof.
It is no accident that it is the Grauniad that is seeking to blurr such distinctions as it is the House organ of the wily counter-jumper. Getting the excuses in first for the irreparable lack of a first rate education.
It stems I think from the widely held notion, originating in the USA, that the custodial nature of secondary education implies that the incarcerated adolescents have a right, not having asked or having done anything to deserve their fate, not to be pressed too much and, to a large extent, be entertained. It is a sign of academic success that the football team is proud of the school or college.
It is, if you follow the money, a business proposition as the editor of that rag well knows.
A Jesuit would, of course, laugh at such ideas assuming he had given up worrying about what they portend.
