Just for a change, this has nothing to do with motoring or motor racing, it is one of my pet whinges about the misuse of English.

There is a promotion on Foxtel at the moment plugging a programme about the owners of a stately home in the UK and their quest for new staff. What really annoys me about it is the much repeated statement that: “The hoi polloi are hiring!”

If the person creating this material were to look up “hoi polloi” in the dictionary, it would become clear that it comes from the Greek and is usually taken to mean  “the common people”. Usually meant in a derogatory sense, it is translated in my dictionaries as “the rabble”, “riff raff”, but in the original Greek actually means “the many”.

Now back to the television programme. The people doing the hiring are the landed gentry (they could be minor aristocrats, but I haven’t looked too closely). In other words, they are hiring the “hoi polloi”. The “hoi polloi” are the hirees and not the hirers.

End of rant.