Grumpy Old Man - I solemnly swear that the standards have dropped

Like swearing.

I remember the community outrage that erupted in 1974 when then Prime Minister Gough Whitlam described the Queensland Premier Joh Bjelke-Peterson as a "bible-bashing bastard".

People flew into a collective fit at the language being used, and one of the political cartoonists created an illustration about someone writing obscene letters, but Mr Whitlam stopping a call to police, saying he needed a new speech writer.

There was similar outrage a few years later in 1980 when TV variety show host Don Lane told Canadian magician and sceptic James Randi to "piss off".

The backlash was so severe that Lane had to offer a grovelling apology.

These slight utterances were against community standards, and the people stood up as one and said they were far from impressed.

But what has happened to those standards?

The language that caused outrage just a few decades ago has long been surpassed and forgotten - seemingly more suited to children's programs.

Instead we are being swamped by a flood of obscenities which have become so common they have lost their shock value or impact.

Maybe the real shock value will come from speaking complete sentences without liberal sprinklings of obscenities.

Perhaps there will be those who struggle to understand what was once viewed as plain and simple speech, unable to comprehend general verbs and adjectives without swear words or the word "like" inserted multiple times into every sentence.

So plain speech could be seen as revolutionary, a secret language that only a select few manage to understand.

But on the subject of language becoming more casual, I had an interaction in recent days that worried me.

I contacted a woman who was selling a few items, and she immediately fell into calling me "love" "hun" and "darl".

I had never met this woman, and she was immediately using terms that suggested we had been in some sort of long-term relationship.

Not that I objected to being treated with such affection, but there was a thought that struck me - what would happen if I, as a man of some advanced years, used these terms when speaking to a woman I had never met?

Would it immediately be seen as creepy, and raise allegations of sexual harassment, have me hauled before the courts of public opinion as part of the Me Too movement?

That would certainly be enough to have me utter a few expletives.