Andy McSmith's Diary: You’d have thought 'terrorist' was a sufficiently bad name

David Cameron is now urging us to refer to Isis as 'Daesh'

These can either take the form of small operators collecting from local communities or big ticket donations. (Reuters)

Now that David Cameron has urged us to use the word “Daesh” instead of Isis, Isil, Islamic State and its variants, those of us unfamiliar with Arabic are left wondering what that word means and why the terrorists think it so insulting – the very reason why the BBC have, perplexingly, refused to use it. This is helpfully explained in a blog posted in February by Alice Guthrie, a professional translator, who appears to have been exasperated by the anglophone media’s almost wilful failure to understand.

Daesh, she wrote, is an acronym, just like Isis, and consists of the initial letters of the same four words – Islamic State in Iraq and Syria – but in Arabic rather than English. The “sh” is one letter which does not transliterate into a single letter of the Latin alphabet.

Terrorists do not like it because acronyms are relatively uncommon in Arabic, and can sound disrespectful, rather in the way that calling the Queen “Her Maj”, suggests an absence of reverence. “They want to be addressed as exactly what they claim to be, by people so in awe of them that they use the pompous, long and delusional name created by the group, not some funny-sounding made-up word,” Guthrie writes. Calling it Daesh “is inherently funny, disrespectful, and ultimately threatening of the organisation’s status.”

Taking no for an answer…

With today’s Oldham West by-election looming, the MP for Oldham East, Debbie Abrahams sent a written question to the Department of Work and Pensions asking how many disabled people and families with children will be hit by benefit changes due in 2016-17. Answer came there none. The minister Priti Patel declared that the information could be obtained only at “disproportionate cost”.

Would that be financial cost, or political cost?

Rosindell’s overly exercised

Andrew Rosindell, the bulldog-loving Tory MP, takes a close interest in former British colonies whose very existence many other politicians have forgotten. He is exercised because Norfolk Island, many miles east of Australia where the British used to dump convicts, is under direct rule from Australia, when it used to have its own elected assembly. He wants the Foreign Office to intervene, but the minister, Hugo Swire, told him there was no need, because “Australia’s respect for democratic self-determination is undimmed”.

Rosindell has also been demanding to know why the official representative of the Caribbean island of St Lucia on the International Maritime Organisation is a Saudi billionaire named Walid Juffali, who once paid £270,000 for a nude picture of Kate Moss, but who has no known expertise in maritime law. Juffali’s estranged ex-wife wants to sue him a British court over their divorce settlement, but cannot because he has diplomatic immunity. Rosindell thinks the appointment “strange”.

A job not to be sniffy about

The House of Commons is run by the people who serve but do not talk. Interviews have been held this week for the post of Principal Doorkeeper, as the incumbent, Robin Fell, retires at the end of January.

One of the Principal Doorkeeper’s tasks – not his most important – is minding the snuff. For a reason lost in history, it is an MP’s right to have a free snort on the way into the Chamber. A snuff box made from wood taken from a Chamber door splintered by a German bomb in 1941 is kept in an enclave by the entrance where the Principal Doorkeeper sits. He is required to make sure it is never empty, although – so far as I know – no sitting MP takes snuff. I had a sniff of it once. It has quite a kick.