Politicians practice the art of confusion

UK prime minister Boris Johnson’s chief political adviser, Dominic Cummings has been in the news of late. The controversy has brought home the importance of words.

There are some words and phrases that go in and out of fashion. I’m going to leave strict instructions in my will that when I die, no one dare say: ‘Michael Commane has passed away’, But must say: ‘Michael Commane has died’.

As with so many aspects of our lives, people have different tastes, and the words we use are linked to our personalities, fashions and styles.

There is no end to what one could write about the meaning, etymology and use of words. For example, did you know that the word inflammable and flammable have the same meaning. Only in recent days an engineer told me that those two words have been replaced with combustible and non-combustible.

Keeping a keen eye on the Cummings controversy I was amused with British politicians and their use of words in the affair. It’s important to note that we come to situations with our own particular bias. I am no supporter of Johnson or his chief adviser Cummings. Before the last UK general election, a member of the Conservative Party and a former senior cabinet minister publicly stated that he believed that Boris Johnson had issues with the truth.

I carefully listened to Boris Johnson’s press conference on Sunday, May 24, and to the interview with the Secretary of State for Transport, Grant Shapps on the Andrew Marr BBC programme earlier that day. It may have appeared that they were floundering, at sixes and sevens. But might that have been their strategy, to confuse people? They avoided and dodged the questions. But what was most striking was, how careful they were in the words they used. They were real masters with their words. I was left in a haze of confusion having watched both men.

We can use words to tell the truth, to tell lies, to say nothing, and to befuddle. Clever people have the ability to confuse and befuddle when it suits their purpose.

I came away from both the Johnson and Shapps interviews in the belief that both men were being economical with the truth.

The following day Cummings gave an hour-long interview in the garden of Downing Street. Some of what he said was absurd. He told journalists that he drove his car on an hour-long journey to see if his eyesight was okay so that he could drive back from Durham to London the following day. That must go down as an infamous quote.

Cummings has a way with words. He’s clever and in his press conference he managed to garner a certain sympathy. I never before saw such a human side to the man.

I’m thinking of the late Archbishop of Dublin, Cardinal Desmond Connell, the time he said that he had made a mental reservation. Is that another phrase for telling a lie?

The story with words can often be like everything else in our lives: there’s one law for the rich and another for the poor.

But I have no doubt our world would be a better place for all of us, rich and poor, if the words we used were linked to truth. Words are sacred.