Kindly, Gently...

"In the nicest possible way..." is the gold standard of passive aggression.

I find that 'I don't want to be rude' is just as bad. Why mention rudeness if you don't at least suspect that you are being rude?
It is possible to avoid rudeness by being direct and respectful. Eg rather than 'I'm not being rude, but you can't keep asking for lifts all the time', something like 'Giving you a lift would add an hour to my journey and I haven't got time for that. See you there!'

It’s usually on a thread where the person has something genuinely upsetting going on though. Time and a place and all that.

OP: my daughter has been throwing up daily and losing weight and I can’t get a GP appointment.

Poster: gently, do you have health anxiety, OP?

Thanks for your reply. I was trying to reply to a post but clearly not succeeding!

I’m irritated by ‘Thank you for not…..(smoking etc)’ signs. Or ‘Thank you for turning off your mobile phone’ announcements. It was clearly some bright idea a few decades ago to be ‘positive’, but I’d much rather people were frank and just issued the unvarnished request!

Yes, she was basically a kind woman who really wanted to help people in a practical way. I think Jay Rayner is her son?

Reminds me of people I've come across, mostly in the workplace, who use, 'Bless him/her' to soften their bitchy comments.

'Deirdre likes her low cut tops bless her'
'Tim's ruined my spreadsheet again bless him'
'Tough for Carol always having to leave early to see to the kids bless her'

etc

There are many boards that may help.

On the blue banner at the very top is "Talk" , click on that and then "All talk topics". In there are many subjects, Relationships, Work, Pregnancy, Health, Mental Health etc. Then you can start your own thread to ask for help.

I hope that is useful

I love you @MasterBeth

It’s almost universally used by posters who are being MASSIVELY unreasonable. “I gently suggested that having a drink/bicycle ride/fart without my permission in the 5 months before we tried to conceive or during my pregnancy meant he was an alcoholic/was abusive/was both. I could not believe his reaction!”

Not sure I’m doing this quite right as quite new to this site.
I don’t think this the post was targeted to work. If you want to pick up, happy to be a contact, having some issues myself.

If you want to be rude just be rude, don't be disingenuous & think plonking a kindly at the start makes something rude, less rude!

Ugh. One of my Mumsnet pet peeves. You always know if a sentence starts with kindly or gently that it's going to be anything but kind or gentle. As others have pointed out, people on here use it as a way to try and excuse being arseholes. It's not a get out of jail free card. It doesn't soften the nasty shit that generally follows it.

She was great!

She would be, as you say, kind but no nonsense. Like a boarding school matron dealing with a bed wetter.

Some of her advice was "of its time" but she was kind and I think did genuinely help some people.

Exactly this!🤣

It’s something said by the most passive aggressive people on the planet…. I can’t stand it. It’s so patronising.

I’m old enough to remember Claire Rayner, a sort of TV and radio health expert/agony aunt. She had this ‘Look, Love…’ opening phrase when asked about some STI or other embarrassing problem. It was meant to come over as a no-nonsense, refreshingly frank, kind and friendly way of putting people at their ease.

I think part of the issue on MN with annoying phrases is that so many people have a superficial acquaintance with psychology-as counsellors, therapists for eg - or maybe from training courses or self-help books and the therapy/counselling jargon filters into their everyday usage.

This is my thinking, I know people use it sarcastically a lot and it's absolutely rude but there's a few times where I've said it because I wasn't sure if the op would get the tone i was trying to relay and wanted to make sure they knew I was being sincere.

Gnu.

Well, I marginally prefer acknowledgment that it is a bit rude to the self-exoneration in "I'm not being rude..."

This!!!! Love a bit of Terry P 💚

Kindly, I don't work in a corporate environment so hadn't heard it before.

Sir pTerry Pratchett wrote t

“...William wondered why he always disliked people who said 'no offence meant.' Maybe it was because they found it easier to to say 'no offence meant' than actually to refrain from giving offence.”

@Cucy , I find a light 'Norma, could you... please?' is polite.
'Would you kindly...' invokes a 'do fuck off' attitude in me.

No, don’t acknowledge it’s going to sound rude but then say it anyway. Just don’t say it!

I call them the trapdoor spiders. They lurk about beneath the surface ready to pounce when someone makes a statement that they can leap on and make a big song and dance of, usually derailing the thread with their own pet topic. These accusations often involve labels that end in "ist."

Why do they do this?!
The OP will say it was 7pm & I was cooking dinner when x. The trapdoor spiders (great label ) will ignore the X & start tearing the OP apart because she said dinner not supper or the fact she will be sitting down to eat at 8pm etc and then this will be extrapolated to wild leaps like the OPs dc will become delinquents or her marriage is in trouble.