I'm sure in some council committee room today members are talking about best practice to create a level playing field for service users and improve community engagement by scaling back the use of jargon. Dumbfounded? It means, there's a much welcome campaign to cut out sloppy clichés and waffle.
Councils have been urged to ban 100 bits of jargon that make it hard for people to understand their work. The list of "non-words"suggested by the Local Government Association includes such obscure piffle as coterminous (whose meaning even the LGA seem confused about) and predictors of beaconicity (which baffles me).
The list is an attempt to get councils to think more clearly about how they talk to the public. It might be alright to waffle on about place-shaping and cross-cutting reviews in private meetings, the LGA says, but when talking to a wider audience it's better to stick to plain English or risk confusion.
It's bold of the LGA chairman, Sir Simon Milton, to take the initiative with councils - but why stop there? Surely health and social care are just as cluttered with waffle and cliché? Talk of joined up working and synergies are just as likely to crop up there, along with stakeholders and customers, personalised care and polyclinics.
My pet hates have to be community engagement and citizen empowerment. What's wrong with saying you want to get people involved and give them a say in decision-making? And saying there's been "slippage" is just plain silly: the word can't hide the fact there's a delay.
Sometimes it's the little things that really annoy. Author Lucy Kellaway, in an article discussing her business-cliché spouting creation Martin Lukes, says:
After eight years of being him I came to accept the nouns pretending to be verbs. To task and to impact... But what still rankled after so long were the little things: that he said myself instead of me and that he would never talk about a problem, when he could dialogue around an issue instead.
So which pet hates would you like to add to the banned list? Or are there any you think are useful and should be saved for posterity? Help signpost the best and worst.
