The best bangers and mash I have had was in a pub at Streatham in South London. So I am surprised to see that a native of this traditional English epicurean paradise has been named as the winner of this year's Foot in Mouth prize by the Plain English Campaign for the most baffling remark made by a public figure.
Streatham's best-known supermodel, Naomi Campbell, was awarded the trophy for the comment: "I love England, especially the food. There's nothing I like more than a lovely bowl of pasta." The exotic 36-year-old London lass joins the ranks of past winners who include Donald Rumsfeld, Richard Gere and Tracey Emin.
The Plain English Campaign, which was founded in 1979 to fight gobbledygook in public life, has also announced the winners of its annual Golden Bulls awards for the use of confusing and contorted English. One goes to our very own Crafts Council of Ireland for a circular letter with the following gem: "The re-writing of the vocabulary of intemporal Irish heritage is a possible vector for submissions on the condition that this transposition is resolutely anchored in the 21st century through a contemporary lens that absolutely avoids drifting into the vernacular."
Writer and broadcaster Germaine Greer also qualifies with these lines from her column in The Guardian: "The first attribute of the art object is that it creates a discontinuity between itself and the unsynthesised manifold." Ms Greer has already offered a robust defence in the newspaper, declaring that "most reasonably educated Guardianreaders would, I faintly hope, have recognised the phrase 'unsynthesised manifold' as an English version of a basic concept in Immanuel Kant's Critique of Judgment. . ." So the Plain English Campaign, she went on, "can take their Golden Bull award and stuff it". Plain English indeed. (Paradoxically, The Guardianis named as Best National Newspaper in the Campaign's more positive awards section for using language that is clear and accessible.)
Local authorities again feature strongly in the gobbledygook stakes. Fife Council gets a Golden Bull for this letter about bin collections: "It has been brought to our attention that due to changes made to your grey household wastes bin collection dates within your new calendar. Your bin will be emptied week beginning the 20th March 2006, then next collection would not be until the week beginning the 10th April 2006. Thus having to wait 3 weeks for collection. Therefore we are to provide a normal collection on your normal collection day, week starting the 3rd April and again on your new collection date, week starting the 10th April then thereafter every 2 weeks."
The financial experts too are always around to bamboozle us. The Institute for Fiscal Studies is awarded a Golden Bull for this: "While the literature on nonclassical measurement error traditionally relies on the availability of an auxiliary dataset containing correctly measured observations, this paper establishes that the availability of instruments enables the identification of a large class of nonclassical nonlinear errors-in-variables models with continuously distributed variables."
And, of course, our legal friends are invariably at the front of the bar when it comes to creating confusion. Bury County Court gets a Golden Bull for this order: "It is ordered that the claim be adjourned generally with permission to the claimant to restore to the list without formal application not later than 16.00 hours on the 12th September 2006 whereupon the claim do stand struck out if not so restored." On the good use of English the Campaign, which is a non-profit making organisation, records that there was a record number of entries for the Plain English Website Award with "overall standard very high". The winner is Her Majesty's Prison Service.
It gives a great deal of information about the prison system, "a very difficult subject for some people". Yet the website has "a warm and sensitive tone" according to the adjudicators.
Away from the annual awards, the campaign announces the results of a survey carried out by the organisation Investors in People on the use of jargon in the workplace. More than half the employees interviewed said management jargon was a problem in their companies. Phrases such as "blue sky thinking", "helicopter view" and "singing from the same hymn sheet" did not improve communication and created barriers between managers and their teams. Let us hope that the situation gets better "going forward".
During the World Cup the Campaign asked its 11,000 members to nominate their best footballing quote of all time. The winning utterance was from the legendary Liverpool manager Bill Shankly: "Some people believe football is a matter of life and death. I'm very disappointed with that attitude. I can assure you it's much, much more important than that."
Second place went to Manchester United's French superstar Eric Cantona, when he replied to a question about his playing tactics with a phrase he must have picked up in an English-French language guide: "When the seagulls follow the trawler, it's because they think sardines will be thrown into the sea." Paul "Gazza" Gascoigne ended in third place with his profound quote: "I never predict anything, and I never will."
Other nominations included: "I spent most of my money on birds, booze and fast cars. The rest I just squandered" (George Best). "I think this could be our best victory over Germany since the war" (John Motson). "The World Cup is a truly international event" (the same Mr Motson). "If Glenn Hoddle said one word to his team at half time, it was concentration and focus" (Ron Atkinson). "They think it's all over. . .It is now" (Kenneth Wolstenholme).