KERRY McCarthy, shadow environment secretary, wants us to drop using the term ‘fishermen’ because she thinks it is sexist and wants us to use a more ‘gender-neutral’ term.

Given the major environmental issues facing the planet, I’m astonished that she has the time to waste on such trivial nonsense.

This is political correctness taken to its most extreme.

What next? Manchester to be renamed Personchester? And manholes to be referred to as personholes or, as was decided some 30 years ago in that cradle of political-correctness, California, ‘subterranean access points’, SAPs for short - and how very, very appropriate?

ROBERT READMAN Norwich Avenue West, Bournemouth