It's just a military controller habit of speech, Gertrude. They mean no harm. They know that they can't really boss us around, not least because talking on the radio is so hard that our brains explode whenever anyone does so. I've often had that nice bloke at Marham say stuff like "Traffic, 2 miles, 4 o'clock, under my control" meaning: another blundering puddle jumpist not unlike myself is flying a similarly random trajectory somewhere else nearby in the middle of nowhere. Brace for impact.