The Age has produced a fantastic report on the use of management speak in government. We’re quoting them here but click on this link to see the original report:

British bureaucrats have been warned: no more synergies, stakeholders or sustainable communities.

The body that represents the country’s local authorities has told its members to stop using management buzz words, saying they confuse people and prevent residents from understanding what local governments do.

The Local Government Association, whose members include hundreds of district, town and county councils in England and Wales, on Friday sent out a list of 100 “non-words” that it said officials should avoid if they want to be understood.

The list includes the popular but vague term “empowerment,” “coterminosity,” a situation in which two organisations oversee the same geographical area; and “synergies,” combinations in which the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

continue reading "Management Speak Invades Local Government"

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A simple biology lesson here: babies are brought forth from the womb, not the stomach - so why avoid the fact in a newspaper headline? The Sun devotes an entire department to catchy headlines and puns, yet the New Zealand Herald seems unable to muster any sort of excitement or effort in its reporting of Angelina Jolie’s pregnancy. “Jolie’s Stomach Steals Thunder at Cannes (+photos/video)“.

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Want some male enhancement? New blouse bunnies? Extend that schlong. Spam can actually be fairly amusing at times - that is if it hasn’t just shut down your server, e-mail account or got you in trouble with your boss. I’m amazed at the number of names for intimate body parts they’ve thought up in the never ending battle against spam filters. It ends up sounding like that scene in Austin Powers:

I do feel sorry for the original Spam though. What a marketing nightmare when your product has a name that is now ubiquitous with illegal and destructive computer programmes. Bugger. It wasn’t that nice after all. Even Monty Python are glad to see the back of it.

(1 votes, average: 5 out of 5)

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The only way to truly ruin a day is to have to deal with an irate customer or hair-splitting client. In one weekend job I had an indignant customer who complained because the assistants didn’t know how to give a refund in pounds to a customer who bought an item in France - before the sale - and would like another item in exchange, that is only available in a different store so please could you order it for me and I’ll pay the difference. !!

Fast forward several years to office jobs where fussy clients think they’re the only person giving the firm work. They ask for records from decades ago just to give the office junior the opportunity to do battle with spiders and layers of dust amongst the badly labelled boxes in archives. They’ll ring up every hour making you put other people on hold, just to see how you’re getting on.

Finally, I moved up a bit in the world and had to start having to deal with “stakeholders” - a term I objected to out of hand. It goes in the same hellish category as “blue-sky thinking”, “top-down structuring” and “putting speech marks around everything”. Stakeholders are people who like to get in the way of you doing your job. They nit-pick and have an opinion and organise useless meetings until you start up your own company just so you don’t have to consult them ever again. Thank God for that.

(1 votes, average: 4 out of 5)

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“1xtra, 1xtra, News, News, 1xtra News”. Anyone who listens to the radio all day will understand what I mean when I say radio jingles suck. They repeat the title, or parts of the title several thousand times in different voices as though we don’t get the point.

Anyone who has seen Family Guy season 5, episode 2 “Mother Tucker” may recall “The Weenie and The Butt” radio show where the DJ’s play endless jingles and countless sound effects giving the lost and found announcements no chance.

Chris Moyles does some good parodies of this phenomenon and I found some amusing jingles on youtube but couldn’t get past this fantastic video of what it is like to actually record them - how do they keep a straight face? Watch the guy who keeps the time with his right hand:

(1 votes, average: 4 out of 5)

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I’m impressed that Kanye West wants us to think he drinks Ribena, and would have believed his non-written rouse, if it weren’t for one thing…

Please Kanye West, explain to me, how does one pronounce the word “rubbish”?

(1 votes, average: 5 out of 5)

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The evergreen pushy momma’s boy Usher is a perennial irritant: coming back year after year with his absurd lyrics and insanely catchy base-lines.

Usher’s music is generally above average; the guy can sing; and he also, in his mother, has a built in maternal publicity/management machine. And this is where my questions begin to appear.

Let’s take “love in the club”, the Ush dog’s latest musical offering. I’m worried about any mother who - as manager of her beloved son - would seemingly condone such questionable activities as engaging in promiscuity in a nightclub toilet. On the floor.

That’s not cool, mom.

(3 votes, average: 4.33 out of 5)

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Will & Grace has two qualities that none of us look for in a comedy: it’s turgid and unfunny.

For some reason, team written American comedy is still huge, whether the producers are still churning it out or television schedulers around the world are still showing endless repeats in back-to-back episodes, we simply cannot get away from these canned-laugh-a-minute exemplars of inoffensive ‘humor’.

Will & Grace is the worst of these, mostly due to the characters: one of them is funny because he is (hee hee) gay; one of them is funny because she is (ha ha) a woman with problems. Except that none of them are funny at all.

Watching episodes of Will & grace is like a form of torture most inhumane. All episodes need to be pulled from the face of the Earth, there is no redeeming feature.

(3 votes, average: 4.67 out of 5)

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How very seasonal! How very wonderful! The day when we all get to lie to each other and call it a joke.

April fools gags can be funny - wearing a sling to work, saying you won £5,000 on a scratchcard, or something equally harmless and witty, but when newspapers and tv stations feel the need to invent stories to ‘catch us out’ I draw the line. That’s not funny. That’s business as usual.

Its hardly a great prank to come up with a plausible story which just isn’t true. Despite using clever word play, or some oh so hilariously named sources.

(2 votes, average: 2.5 out of 5)

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“Er, could you fax those signed documents over to me by the close of business?”

“FAX - HELL NO - ITS NOT 1985!”

(2 votes, average: 4.5 out of 5)

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