Mea Culpa: Setting a bad example for the loved ones

John Rentoul minds our language in The Independent over the past week

Jose Mourinho presumably having no strong opinion on the wording of our report (PA)

In an article about the bad example shown by Jose Mourinho, the football manager, who confronted and abused a referee in a car park after a game, we said: “A survey by the BBC of almost 1,000 members of the Referees’ Association found that more than 30 per cent said they had come in for physical abuse from spectators. A similar number said they had been threatened with violence against them or a loved one.”

I suspect that was the phrasing used in the survey, and it was certainly the phrase used by the BBC in reporting its finding, but I think “loved one” is twee and distracting. I realise this is a personal preference, and in some cases it is used to include partners and close friends, but in this case we could have said “against them or their family”.

Sick bean-counters: Our analysis of the potential use of injections that suppress the appetite in an effort to make the workforce healthier and more productive included this sentence: “The Treasury has traditionally been sceptical about investing in health prevention.” Thanks to Roger Thetford for pointing out that we did not mean to praise the Treasury for refusing to make people ill. We meant “preventative healthcare”, or similar words meaning “illness prevention”, which is the opposite of what we said.