Newspeak!

Some holier than thou simpering smug fuckwit of an old trout from the HMRC was on R4 this morning 'explaining' why they failed to answer 7.2m calls last year.

She talked about 'investing' more money to make it easier for HMRC 'customers' to get through to HMRC.

It's not INVESTING you witless old bat. It's 'SPENDING'. There is zero cash return on that spending so it cannot be INVESTING.

And, we are not fucking CUSTOMERS you deceitful old bat, we are TAXPAYERS!

Death's too good for them.

We own land! Give us money!

From Housing Excellence:

Housing Minister Grant Shapps today reassured anxious homeowners struggling to pay their mortgages of the wide range of support available to help them keep their homes, and ensure that repossession remains the last resort...

The Minister made clear that just as the Government is providing help* for people wanting to get on the property ladder, a range of support* is also available to keep them in their homes and avoid the threat of repossession... Also over the next two years the Government is investing more than £200 million into the Mortgage Rescue scheme. The scheme, available through local authorities, is designed to offer a last resort to the most vulnerable families to avoid repossession...

Notwithstanding that £200 million is a drop in the ocean, isn't this just another example of The New Maths or something? There's a fixed amount of housing, so for every household 'helped to stay on the property ladder' there is another household who are being prevented from 'getting on the property ladder'.

Whichever group you subsidise, you end up with higher house prices and higher profits for the banks, and if you subsidise both you just double up this effect. Conversely, if we scrapped the equal and opposite subsidies, we'd probably end up with a higher level of owner-occupation, at a fair old saving to the taxpayer.

*"Help" and "support" are NewSpeak for "give money to".

Newspeak or Weasel Words

There are phrases and words used by the financial services regulatory bureaucrats which infuriate me.

'Mis-selling' for example. This is nonsense as no-one can be forced to buy anything. Buying is voluntary therefore nothing can be 'mis-sold'. Especially if one of the cornerstones of English law is adhered to - caveat emptor.

The FSA et al have some other dillies:

'Consumer detriment' - eh? Product A costs more than Product B which you failed to buy, so you've suffered detriment even if no-one was aware that product B existed.

'Treating Customers Fairly' - Here 'fairly' is used to replace 'equitably' - as in fair and just.

'Retail distribution review'. Distribution of what? Review of what?

'Retail Mediation Activity Monitoring' - well, we do that but what it is that we do we don't know as none of the questions are answerable. I am sure that there are more.

Do you know any? And are they 'weasel words' or are they 'Newspeak'?

Fun Online Polls: Cheryl Cole née Tweedy & Pakistan

You really are a cynical bunch. The responses to last week's Fun Online Poll question, "Did Cheryl Cole née Tweedy really have malaria?" were as follows:

Who's Cheryl Cole née Tweedy? - 69%
Nah, she just wanted an excuse for a few weeks off work - 21%
Yes, she caught it while doing something for charity in Africa - 10%

FYI, Cheryl Cole née Tweedy is the little Geordie lass with dimples who's on the telly and in celebrity mags a lot. And the official version is that she caught malaria while doing something for charity in Africa.

So in future, when the do-gooders start wailing on about what a terrible killer malaria is, just remind them that Oor Cheryl came down with the disease on or about 6 July 2010, but by 16 August 2010 she was back on top form, flying out to Los Angeles to appear in a new telly program.

It's interesting to note that the Yanks don't seem to have any sort of immigration restrictions for people carrying potentially infectious diseases, and for those doubters who reckon she was ill with an eating disorder (NewSpeak for 'starving herself to death to comply with some modern fad or other'), the later reports informs us that "rather than devour the food and feed her dramatically decreased appetite, Cheryl chose to chain-smoke and down cocktails instead."
-----------------------------------------
Staying vaguely in the same theme, this week's Fun Online Poll asks "Have you donated (or will you donate) to charities collecting money for the Pakistan flood relief thingy?"

Vote here or use the widget in the sidebar.

Euphemism Of The Week

Extract from an email sent to residents by a certain local council, which will remain nameless*:

... We have contacted the Council's Licensing Officers. As it was Punch Taverns who owned the previous license and not the manager of the establishment, the venue can re-open again at anytime... We have asked the police to keep an eye on proceedings.

We have also written to Punch Taverns requesting a meeting to discuss both the future of [the two pubs they run] and to put forward some ideas we have for them, notably as possible arts and cultural venues, complementing more traditional community focussed public house activities.

* And why on earth is the council spending money campaigning for more police officers in the borough? Can't they, er, just employ a few more?

Three little words that say so much ...

Those three little words are "independent of government", of course, which appears to be NewSpeak for "government propagandists". From The Green Fiscal Commission website:

The Commission is independent of government. It is formed of Commissioners with wide experience and expertise drawn from a representative range of social, economic and political stakeholders...

... followed by a list of two dozen commissioners, nearly all of whom already hold posts on other quangos.

Faggot, pikey, chav (2)

Gregg Beaman's post on Words That We Are Not Allowed To Use reminds of an e-mail exchange I had with somebody at a leftie-think tank two years ago:

Me: Dear ...., I have just stumbled across your report ... Are you still allowed to say "mixed-race"? I thought you had to say "mixed ethnicity" (you use both terms).

To my amazement/amusement, I received the following response:

Dear Mark, ... thank you for pointing out my oversight on 'mixed-race' definition. Technically the Census collects data on what it calls "ethnic origin" and not race, and uses a "mixed" category rather than a mixed-race or mixed-ethnicity. I will bear that in mind in future work.