#752 To Have no Qualms... (with transcript)

To have no qualms, Scotland gets a new First Minister who says he wants to eliminate child poverty. My thoughts on Miss World and beauty contests. Full Transcript: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Ai6G0i621YlF94L9p7Ox-SH4c8dav5VJhVWcYBuQRFo/edit?usp=sharing Extract Today's phrase is “to have no qualms” and if you have no qualms about doing something, it means you're not worried that it may be wrong in some way. You have no hesitations, apprehensions, uneasiness or moral difficulty with the action. For example.  if you recommend a certain way of doing something you can say,  I have no qualms with this.  It means I don't have any problems with it. I don't have any issues with that. Now, we only ever use this in the negative. Okay, you can’t say I have qualms with something. Maybe in Old English, that was the case, but we don't use that now. Let's look at some examples.  So, the doctor  is low on resources and he has to decide which patients he's going to treat. Is it going to be the one with cancer first? Or maybe the one with the flu. And the doctor might say,  I have no qualms about my decision. And in the past tense he can say I had no qualms.  Likewise a business owner, who's going to fire his employees during a tough economic time. He might say I have no qualms about downsizing the company.  In the past, I had no qualms or maybe even I will have no qualms in the future. Um, imagine that there's a breakup between two of your friends. Uh, maybe a relationship coming to an end. You might hear one of them saying  I have no qualms about this. No qualms about this coming to an end.  Uh, another example,  Someone who jumps out of aeroplanes and hopes his parachute will open in mid air, he might say, I have no qualms about risking my life. And also, with speaking your mind, Uh, if you're quite a direct person you can say  I have no qualms about telling people how I feel.  Now, this is very, very common and I use this a lot, I have no qualms about doing particular things. Telling people what I think of them I have no qualms. It doesn't mean being insensitive. It just indicates a lack of hesitation. Uh, getting things done. And that's really, really important. Especially in a culture like here where everyone kind of dances around each other being very polite. Sometimes you just have to say things in order for things to change. So, yeah, to have no qualms about doing something means to do something without a problem or hesitation very common, even in Business English.