TESSA JOWELL yesterday started a crusade against politicians who talked “bollocks” — or rather she rolled out a step change in stakeholder interface terminology. Either way it was doomed.

This is because the Culture Secretary is living proof that politicians find it almost impossible to say what they mean.

Ms Jowell said that she keeps a “little book of bollocks”, noting whenever a colleague spouts gobbledegook, usually a mix of modern managerial jargon and new Labour spin.

She has already filled some pages with “reprofiling expenditure”, “sustainable eating in schools” and “weaning the profile”, but her book will soon stretch into an encyclopaedic series.

“I just sit in meetings and I write down some of the absurd language we use,” Ms Jowell said. “The risk when you have been in government for eight years, you begin to talk the language, which is not the language of the real world.

“It’s cutting the crap, talking directly to people.”

A brief glance at her department’s 2004 annual report illustrates exactly what she means.

It announces that Ms Jowell has “developed our Project Based Working approach and developed our skills database, to support best practice at work”.

“Several projects have been initiated with a view to maximising the impact and effectiveness of local authority cultural and leisure services,” it says.

Sir Menzies Campbell, deputy leader of the Liberal Democrats, said that Ms Jowell’s campaign was ironic, given that her own ministers were some of the worst offenders.
................
One of the most infamously befuddling speeches was written for Gordon Brown, the Chancellor, in 1994 by Ed Balls, his adviser. In one sentence nearly 100 words long Mr Brown spoke of symbiotic relationships between government and investment in people and infrastructures. It prompted Michael Heseltine to quip “that’s not Brown, it’s Balls”.
....................
But although targets for jargon have been maximised under Tony Blair, the Conservatives are just as guilty. In 1994 Mr Brown won the annual award given out by the Plain English Campaign for the worst drivel, but Norman Lamont, the former Tory Chancellor was runner-up. Mr Lamont’s words now seem strangely appropriate.
“It seems to me absurd that the Government should be held to ransom by a taxiful of flotsam and bobtail.”

Jowell's uncultured language puts her jargon campaign to shame
London Times, December 24, 2004
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-1414615,00.html

Moral of the Story:

You can cut the crap anyway you like, but, in the hands of some politicians, it's still bollocks.