Every B2B editor is familiar with jargon – it’s one of those things we live with. The buzzwords, the key phrases strung together like the lumps in a length of drool coughed up by a heavy smoker. We live with it, edit it – where possible we delete it. But what was I to do when I came across ‘sewerage undertakers’ this week?
My world this week has been turned upside down by distractions at Westminster. It’s been quite difficult to think of anything else with all this wondering who’s going when and why. And then – having to choose who to represent me at the European Parliament. Such a long list of candidates! Took me ages to read all their leaflets before making my choice. › Continue reading
Life just gets more and more terrifying, doesn’t it? If you thought swine flu and climate change were scary, then gird yourself for the terror of a bank holiday weekend. If you’re planning to leave home, you’d better think again. Statistics show that you’re more than likely to “face delays” as you “brave the chaos”.
Of course, if you’re travelling by train, tannoy announcements apologising and offering pathetic excuses will only add to your misery › Continue reading
Britons are – according to the pollsters this week – more pessimistic about their country’s economy than the people of other ‘leading’ nations. And Stephen Roach, Chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia, has warned of:
“a further destabilising outbreak of asset bubbles”.
Of course I don’t understand these words, but I suspect it means that we’re all going to lose our jobs and homes. That is everyone except my contact in the Employment Service who, in cheerful mood, has sent me a sample of the ‘Jobcentre Plus Lean’ newsletter. › Continue reading
It was only about a week ago that the news was full of foreboding, doom, depression, debate on quantitative easing and pictures of Gordon Brown, frowning like a constipated puppy next to headlines about deficit forecasts. But now we have all been saved (again) apparently – or have we? Could it just be that very few of us – economists included – really understand any of the words being used to describe the present ‘global economic crisis’? › Continue reading
The problem with plain English, is that it’s difficult to express in plain English, how totally exasperating the lack of plain English really is.
I am an editor who works for the government. I won’t say which part of the government, but I will say that I have to read and edit loads of guff that comes out of government departments. And I am supposed to understand this stuff.
I’ve worked in business too – and it’s the same thing. As if the world has been taken over by lawyers and marketing executives, so that it swings from over-formal, never-ending sentences that leave you gasping, then swipes you round the head with a cheesy tagline, or a corporate logo converted into a meaningless, but supposedly-catchy, acronym like “eNGaGe” or “SHOUT!”.
I have decided to do what any rational neurotic in the modern world would do. I have turned to the internet. I have searched and searched for someone who might understand what I am going through, but nothing.
My desperation is turning to bitterness. Now I must tap out the frustrations that have lurked in the most repressed corners of my mind for all these years. I am joining the millions who write blogs so that I can function, so that I can off-load my dark thoughts. The internet is the perfect place for this – a virtual sewer for all the effluent that spews out of the human mind.
Some say I wouldn’t mind the language so much if I didn’t have to work with it all the time. They tell me I need a change of career – suggest that I work with numbers or animals.
But I think they’re missing the point. What if it’s a conspiracy? What if ‘those others’ are secretly laughing at editorial staff everywhere? Laughing at our efforts to make government reports and financial documents even halfway readable? What if they don’t want us to understand?
Call me paranoid, but look at what’s been going on over the past few weeks. The world has gone crazy – there’s been talk about Armageddon and headlines about ‘carnage’ and ‘bloodbaths’ in the City.
The whole world’s been trying to work out what financial terms actually mean. First it was ‘shorting’, an expression that sounded painful and turned out to mean ‘short-selling’, which was just as obscure. Some said it was about betting on shares going up and down. Others said it was something to do with derivatives. Derivatives of what? Derivatives of futures. Eh? How can anything be derived from the future? People having conversations like this in pubs up and down the country – all over the world in fact – except that in other countries they have their own nonsensical jargon in their own languages.
Then, after a few weeks of the ‘Credit Crunch’– just when you thought you were beginning to get your head round what they were actually talking about – someone comes up with ‘credit default swaps‘.
Go on, click on that link and find out what a ‘credit default swap’ is – if you think you’re hard enough.