ABSTRACT
The attempt to be more precise about the language of choice concerns the attempt to link language to reality. Choice can mean a new localism, or choice imposed in consultations by a concept of ‘community’. ‘Customer’ is the word when we have a true choice of supplier and are willing to pay to obtain our choice of service or provider from among multiple suppliers. Customers, clients and citizens are all individuals, consumers of goods and services, some provided by the public sector, some by the private sector, and some by the so-called independent and voluntary sector, and a few co-operatively. The enemies of consumerism denigrate the concept of consumerism by calling the consumers customers, and attributing to consumerism the elements of customerism. Government contributes to this conceptual confusion by talking sometimes of putting the consumer at the centre of public services, and at other times of putting the customer at the centre.
