Thursday, March 19, 2009

Apply The Duck test

Violence against the language is on the increase .Gangs of state lackeys hang around 'level playing fields' brandishing 'best practice paradigms'. Sinister Europeans try to outlaw liniguistic sexism . Calling everyone Comrade used to work quite well
The point of 'income stream's ,'step changes' , and the like , is to make pen pushers sound like
experts . Conservatives should always be suspicious of an expert . He may be a charlatan but even if he is not, there are grave dangers in genuflection , you cannot see anything else .Harry Snook at the centre for Policy studies is on the case here .As he says ,Dr David Walker (the boffin in question )may be qualified to advise government on the medical effects of chocolate consumption ( The tax....) but legislation raises issues of freedom, and so on, in which doctors have no expertise The professional should be informing the debate not deciding the outcome
I imagine the Sean Hodgson will feel the “Expertise” problem keenly. It was DNA evidence that saved him ,vital expertise you might say , but he has spent 27 years inside due to faulty forensic evidence. So we need specialists ,but we need to be careful about the extent of trust. Certainly we must not assume that obscure and vaguely scientific sounding words , deserve any special respect
The po faced fact spitting Brownista will say ..”There they go , the world is facing a new apocalypse and they are upset by clichés "..But ( he said drawing himself up like Robert Donat in the Winslow Boy ) , it is a principle with immiediate consequences .
Ever since his golden 40% rule became the 100% golden rule Brown has gone on and one about “Fiscal Stimulus", Actually he has done little stimulating thus far . The Institute of Fiscal Studies Green Budget shows that only 21.1% of the planned increase in debt is related to the actions taken at the Pre Budget Report last year, the rest is stabilisers’ just the tax take falling and benefits rising.
“Fiscal Stimulus "rhetoric has chiefly been used to confuse the obvious fact that Brown’s Britain was in horrible shape to withstand a recession. Each of the 138000 who join the dole queue stop paying in and start drawing out and the un-sustainability of the flabby high tax big state Brown model is revealed as the cash tide goes down .
Sorry about the image but do not be intimidated by economist-speak , expert -speak , or bureaucrat -speak, just apply the duck test . You will usually be right.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I totally agree wid ye, Newms. Just to prove it, and in celebration of that divine Irish genius who calls a piss a piss:


"Buttermilk and urine,
The pantry, the housed beasts,
the listening bedroom.
We were all together there in a foretime,
In a knowledge that might not translate beyond
Those wind-heaved midnights we still cannot be sure happened or not.
It smelled of hill-fort clay
And cattle dung.
When the thorn tree was cut down
You broke your arm.
I shared the dread
When a strange bird perched for days on the byre roof.

That scene, with Macbeth helpless and desperate
In his nightmare--when he meets the hags again
And sees the apparitions in the pot--
I felt at home with that one all right.
Hearth,Steam and ululation,
the smoky hair
Curtaining a cheek.
'Don't go near bad boys
In that college that you're bound for. Do you hear me?
Do you hear me speaking to you? Don't forget!'
And then the postick quickening the gruel,
The steam crown swirled, everything intimate
And fear-swathed brightening for a moment,
Then going dull and fatal and away."

*The magical Seamus Heaney

*who has just won yet another literary prize, God bless him :)

Newmania said...

yes I enjoy his stuff although I have not come across a lot

banned said...

The religeonists used to hide behind a special language just to confuse the commoners, it was called Latin. The computer boffins tried the same thing in the 1980s, using a special language to appear all clever and virtually taking over many companies for a while.
The medics still do, scattering little notes on patients records, to be readable by other experts only; 'FEK' = funny eyed kid and suchlike.

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