Sustainable. Postcode lottery. Deprived. Call out. Innovative. Hard working families. Vulnerable. Take very seriously. Solutions. Learnings. Independent enquiry. Investment. Going forward.
Laziness. Corporate double-speak. Jargon. Cliches. Oversimplifications. Journalistic twaddle.
The collection of perfectly good words in the first paragraph (and I'm sure I could have added many more had I had a brainstorm with myself [yes; irony-alert]) have become one or more of the things in the second paragraph. I hadn't realised how much we're bombarded with them until I was listening to a Direct Line spokesman (for he was male) explain why important people from his organisation were on Merseyside that day when they were announcing the closure of a Direct Line office. It was "to help our people through this important change process" apparently. They were there to give them their redundancy notices. I'm not sure what offends me the most, "our people" (they won't be for long, will they?), or "change process" (you're sacking them). I don't expect businesses to be a charities, tough decisions have to be taken, but don't dress it up in nonsensical language, it just insults our intelligence.
I mention all this merely because over the last few weeks I've been avoiding the media's worst excesses mainly by not watching the news, and I've got another week and a half of avoiding work-based idiocy by, er, not being at work. Instead, in the next 10 days, I shall have a whole different set of well-worn phrases going through my head: amazing scenery, classic climb, fantastic descent, swooping corner, cloudless sky, aching limbs probably principal among them.
Yup, it's finally time for the Pyrenees. There's a nice hors d'oeuvre tomorrow, with t'eldest's graduation ceremony in Bath, a very splendid fish course over the weekend seeing the professional riders tackle some Pyrenean cols in the TdF, then the tasty main course of riding some of those same hills next week. Can't wait.
No comments:
Post a Comment