Ms Barbara Janke, leader of Bristol Council, last week ordered council staff to stop calling members of the public "love" or "dear".

Pictures of Ms Janke were in all the papers, and I must say that she looks the sort of person you obey without hesitation if she gives an order. Her diktat read, "Please remember that security officers are the face of the council. Always address anyone that you are attending to as Sir or Madam."

But wouldn't it be gentler, Ms Janke, to say, "Anyone WHO you are attending to" rather than, "Anyone THAT you are attending to"? To refer to people as THAT is to treat them as if they were inanimate objects and it's a lot more unfriendly than the "love" and "dear" of which you disapprove.

I escaped London last week and enjoyed a blissful few days back in my beloved North-East. It was very reassuring to be called such as "love", "dear", "sweetheart", "honey" and "chuck" by everyone from the lass in the fish and chip shop to the bloke who sold me my copy of The Northern Echo in Runswick. (Am I allowed to say "bloke" and "lass", by the way?)

I wouldn't be frosty-faced enough to want to ban "love" and "dear", but there are some words and phrases I'd like to see the back of. I wish people would stop saying "Cheers" to mean anything from "Thank you" to "Good morning" and "Goodbye". The only thing "Cheers" isn't used for these days is for the traditional toast when we clink our glasses. It is used so indiscriminately that it has lost all meaning and could just as well be replaced with a grunt. And why, when you thank everyone from the plumber to the telephone operator for doing a good job, do people say, "No problem"? I didn't know we had to think that every act performed by a human being was a problem.

The hideously smarmy "Have a nice day" has died out, thank goodness - only to be replaced by the gruesomely sentimental, "Enjoy!" The linguistic traffic seems to float only eastwards across the Atlantic. And so the Americans who gave us the pedantic and longwinded, "At this moment in time" also make us say, "Right now." What's wrong with plain old "now"? Why do people say, "It's like" when they mean "It's as if"? But then "It's like" seems to have become the opening phrase in every sentence - even where it doesn't make any sense. Example: "It's like I was going to the pictures..." What is?

Having got all that off my chest, I should end by telling you what you know already anyhow: and that's just how lovely it is where you live in the North-East. We stayed at the Cliffe Mount Hotel in Runswick where the sea view from the top bedroom beats the view from the Grand Hotel Excelsior over the bay of Naples. And there's good old Saltburn with its imposing 19th century municipal buildings on the cliff top. Roseberry Topping. What can I say about it? "It's like it's literally one of the most outstanding hills around."

And it was good to hear some friendly Yorkshire, Durham, Cleveland and Teesside accents. Nice to hear some consonants for a change. We don't hear these in London. And we can't get proper fish and chips here either.

* Peter Mullen is Rector of St Michael's, Cornhill, in the City of London, and Chaplain to the Stock Exchange.