Meaning and Celeberiddeee

Darn it!  I’ve been meaning to check this out before, but one of my pet ideas is the removal of meaning from words in the modern world.  I‘d been wondering if this still goes on as it seemed to me it might be on the wane.  One example from a few years ago was the proposed renaming of the Post Office (what were they going to call it, Consignia or something?) so as to remove from its name any clues as to its purpose.  But it is clearly still going on.  For example my mum recently received a letter to tell her that Adult Social Care Services Lincolnshire (I think that’s the name) is being renamed (it’ll be ‘re-branded’ of course...) ‘Focus’ or somesuch.  So previously it had a name consisting of 5 words that gave up to 5 clues as to what it actually was - and this is now being replaced by a meaningless buzzword which makes you think of cars or photography or something.

I also have a theory (and I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one) that the word ‘celebrity’ has come to mean ‘someone very few people have heard of’.  I just found a list of the most recent Celebrity Big Brother contestants.  To my consternation I’d still heard of 2 of them, namely Louie Spence (the pantomime gay stereotype) and Ron Atkinson (possibly racist football manager).  I recognised the face of a third one too (Bruce Jones it seems) but I have no idea what he does.  Turns out he’s in Corrie...why am I checking?