Sunday, July 05, 2009



Using speech to cover up meaning

This is from Britain: A paper, signed by Sir Ken Jones, the former Chief Constable of Sussex and president of the Police Association. Do YOU understand what he is saying?
"The promise of reform which the Green Paper heralds holds much for the public and Service alike; local policing, customized to local need with authentic answerability, strengthened accountabilities at force level through reforms to police authorities and HMIC, performance management at the service of localities with targets and plans tailored to local needs, the end of centrally engineered one size fits all initiatives, an intelligent approach to cutting red tape through redesign of processes and cultures, a renewed emphasis on strategic development so as to better equip our service to meet the amorphous challenges of managing cross force harms, risks and opportunities.”

Source

When the incomprehensible gobbldegook was criticized, the police responded: "That’s how civil servants speak”. I don't doubt that for one minute.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

It's the usual message, "More jobs and money for the faceless bureaucrats, quangos, and senior police through the implementation of change for the sake of change."

Obviously, stating this in intelligible language would likely be counter productive.

Anonymous said...

It's much harder for politicians to con the people if they must speak plainly, which is obviously why they don't do it. Also, in order to speak plainly, one must actually have something to say, another reason they don't do it.

Anonymous said...

For Great Double speak, here is some Austrailian talking about a shipping accident.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bqTBh1yxbM

Mobius