THE most powerful man in the world and the torturer supreme of the English language, George W. Bush, will not be leaving the White House empty-handed. He has been awarded the Foot in Mouth Lifetime Achievement Award by the Plain English Campaign for his services to gobbledegook, writes Wesley Boyd.
The campaign believes that President Bush captures the spirit of every true gobbledegooker when he says: "Let me put it bluntly. In a changing world we want more people to have control over your own life."
And: "I know what I believe. I will continue to articulate what I believe and what I believe. I believe what I believe is right." And again:"I hope you leave here and walk out and say 'What did he say?' "
The campaign went back to 2001 and 2004 for those quotations. Personally, I think his tongue has deteriorated with age. Here are a few gems I gathered from the latter part of this year: "I didn't grow up in the ocean - as a matter of fact, near the ocean - I grew up in the desert. Therefore it was a pleasant contrast to see the ocean. And I particularly like it when I'm fishing. . ."
"This thaw took a while to thaw, it's going to take a while to unthaw. . ."
"I remember meeting a mother of a child who was abducted by the North Koreans right here in the Oval Office. . ."
"There is some who say that perhaps freedom is not universal. Maybe it's only Western people that can self-govern. Maybe it's only, you know, white-guy Methodists who are capable of self-government. I reject that notion."
While many of its booby prizes go to politicians the Plain English Campaign is not prejudiced against them. This year it has given the former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher a special award for her work over the years in improving the use of plain English in government documents. "If we all wrote in plain English, how much easier - and efficient - life would be," says the baroness. "It is no exaggeration to describe plain English as a fundamental tool of good government."
Based in Derbyshire, the Plain English Campaign is an independent, self-funding pressure group. Its Golden Bull awards are given annually to institutions which produce incomprehensible communications.
Top of the list this year is Scottish Life for this letter to a customer: "The growth of the policy is calculated through more than one area in the plan, the annual reversionary bonus is only one area of this growth, the part of the growth rate of this policy is the increased rates of the terminal bonus rate for a policy with a term of 24 years is currently 24 per cent of the basic sum assured and the total bonuses attaching. The terminal bonus is only applied at the end of the plan and is not known to ourselves until this is applied."
Less wordy, but still confusing, was a letter from HM Revenue and Customs: "I will treat your Tax Return for all purposes as though you sent it in response to a notice from us which required you to deliver it to us by the day we received it." And how about this for a mystifying reply by a firm called DC Site Services to a simple question from a worker: how much will I get paid?
"It would of course take some time to detail the full financial logistics of running a company, especially one as modular as DC Site Services. What we mean by this is that we don't sell oranges." The firm then goes on to compare its employees to oranges. "We always try to get the best deal for our standard oranges, and it has also been known for us to give bonuses to our really fruity oranges. . . Please keep in mind our oranges are well treated, stored in secure areas, fed (contextually) well, adorned with pretty passes allowing access to peachy areas often out of reach to the average veg."
In all, eight institutions got Golden Bulls for the use of meaningless jargon and legalese. However, the campaign also gives awards for the use of clear and concise English. This year the Daily Mirror got the Best National Newspaper award. Best National Television was Newsnight on BBC 2 and Best National Radio was The World at One on BBC Radio 4. The International Award went to the Times of India.
Coinciding with the Plain English awards was the publication of the results of a survey carried out in Britain on behalf of the Ramada hotel group to unearth the most irritating business jargon. Switch on to any radio news or current affairs programmes and you can hear our Irish-grown captains of business and industry trotting such phrases out relentlessly.
Top of the list was "thinking outside the box", followed in boring, unimaginative order by "touch base", "at the end of the day", "going forward", "all of it", "blue sky thinking", "out of the box", "credit crunch", "heads up", "singing from the same hymn sheet", "pro-active", "downsizing", "ducks in a row", "brainstorming" and "thought shower".
Is it too much to hope that our business leaders will pro-actively get out of the box, do some blue sky thinking and, singing from the same hymn sheet going forward, will shoot the ducks in a row, touch base and heads up have a brainstorming thought shower that will downsize and take the credit crunch outside the box, all of it at the end of the day?