Feb
4
2010
Communicating science
I have been trying to get my head round the Climategate scandal – but it’s useless. I don’t understand the words.
› Continue reading
Nov
12
2009
Evolving skills
The sun has begun to set on my time as a public sector B2B editor. I am peering into the dark abyss of unemployment. There’s a lot of ‘restructuring’ going on where I work. Restructuring in this context means paying management consultants a lot of money to advise who to make redundant. But I am undaunted. I shall find a way of editing text – no one can stop me.
Oct
30
2009
Comparative conspiracies
Some of you may be wondering why I haven’t written about the conspiracy recently – that is the one to make a mockery of editors everywhere, to turn language into meaningless noise, to pollute our every moment with confusing messages and meaningless drivel, to litter our lives with the pointless delusion that we exist for a purpose, when in fact we are all drones serving the smug and swanky who think they’ve got the better of us in some way or other.
Sep
18
2009
Sustainability
Businessdictionary.com sent me the definition for ‘sustainability’. I was pleased. This is one of the words that I rarely, if ever, understand and yet it comes up so often in editorial work. I suspect the conspirators who laugh at editorial staff promote the words ‘sustainable’ and ‘sustainability’ just to cause confusion. They come up in almost every topic, apart that is, from plain English. › Continue reading
Sep
4
2009
Plain English management
I have been considering my prospects in editorial work. Humanity will always need people who can make sense of business speak and political nonsense and rewrite it in plain English. But the trouble is I have so much trouble understanding the words, I can barely lay claim to being one of those valuable people any more. › Continue reading
Jun
26
2009
Targeting my market
I’ve been using Google Analytics to measure visits to my blog. Every week I discover that new users are checking the site, but are they coming back? Then I found out about this thing called Blogpulse.com which tells you ‘what’s hot and what’s not’ in the blogosphere. I was surprised to see that editorial issues are not hot – positively frigid, don’t even come up in the search facility. › Continue reading
Jun
19
2009
Guerilla war of words
My colleagues goad me from time to time with confusing messages, telling me to “put all my ducks in line” for example. This makes me worry about my career as an editor in the public sector. And now I hear we should expect a ‘bloodbath’.
I don’t fancy a bloodbath – I’m a peaceful person, or at least too spineless to fight. I am frightened by the thought of ‘guerilla war’. Or at least, I was. › Continue reading
Apr
28
2009
The trough of recession
Along with worrying about the price of fags and booze, obviously one major concern for all of us on budget day last week was how to protect the UK’s long-term competitiveness. And who better to convey that concern than the management consultant ‘industry’?
Mar
7
2009
How to keep your job in a recession
How long do you think the recession will last? Six more months? Fifteen years? Only ten? Or is it impossible to tell because we’ve “never seen anything like it before”? Who knows, but one thing I’m sure of is that there won’t be any work for editorial staff by the end of it. Everyone will be a Globish-speaking publisher or journalist by then.
Dec
12
2008
transversal corporate functions for downturn virgins
The Woolworths Superstore Playset – on sale now
I notice since I raised the alarm last week – about the world being under threat and everything – Gordon Brown claims to have saved it. But he hasn’t saved the Woolworths superstore.
I wonder what went wrong there. Could it have been they weren’t listening to the management consultants?
If only they had turned to the Management Consultancies Association (MCA) website, they might have read the report on ‘Dealing with the Downturn’. That would have told them:
“We have seen nothing like this before.”
May be they did visit the site. But Woollies has been around a long time; their senior managers may not think of themselves as ‘downturn virgins’ and so must have assumed the report wasn’t for them.
May be what Woollies needed was some ‘thought leadership’. If only Logica worked with general stores. They offer “transversal corporate functions“. And who could argue with this statement?