The hill I will die on: I really don’t like ‘like’ – or other imprecise and redundant speech | Louis de Bernières

Junk speak, like junk food, encourages verbal littering. It has to be one of the worst things about life in Britain

I live in the Norfolk countryside, and what irritates me most about living here is the deluge of litter that gets thrown out of car windows in the lane outside my house. It is always from junk food outlets, so the question arises as to which way round things are: does junk food turn you into an antisocial moron, or is it that only antisocial morons eat junk food? Could it be an unfortunate confluence of both?

I never eat it, and never throw litter out of my window. QED. I do find other ways of being antisocial, I suppose, but farts disperse on their own and don’t have to be picked up by passing dog walkers and irate householders.

Louis de Bernières’s fourth novel, Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, became a worldwide bestseller in 1994