WHEN FALSE TONGUES ARE USED TO BEGUILE US
WORDS have meanings and in our beautiful and immensely practical native language usually very precise ones, which is why I love the lingo. When you see words deliberately prostituted, there is usually a rogue, cheat or liar behind the practice.
Take “expenditure”. It means money out of your pocket and not coming back. But a politician never wants to spend your money, only “invest” it. Thus hard Labour rogue-in-chief John McDonnell (shadow chancellor) wishes if he were in office to borrow over £330billion more, on top of the £1.8trillion we already owe in our national debt. This would be spent on “investments” (i.e. highly socialist schemes). For 50 years I have been watching money blown away on these utopian schemes that never work. The trouble with these extra £330billion is that they would need £270billion more to service the interest over a five-year parliament.
He never mentioned that, simply waved the problem away with the phrase that all his fritterings “would pay for themselves”. Oh yeah? Like all the previous Labour schemes that made us so rich?
Another category of words being used to deceive, not inform, is the endless reference to “reality” shows on radio and TV. There is a tidal wave of them being offered to us at the moment, mainly in the form of game shows of weird and wonderful format. The truth is they are all as “real” as a four-pound note.
They are totally confected like the icing on a Bake Off cake, choreographed and the contestants coached. Woe betide the punter on stage and on camera who does not scream and dance like a dervish after winning 50 quid or claim they have had a wonderful time when actually they have been humiliated as something like a borderline moron by the machine or professional “quizzer” against which they have been pitted.
So each evening the parade of round, dumb, moon-faces, thinking they are going to go home rich, greeted by another Bradley Walsh with fathomless sycophancy, before saying “Pass” to a litany of pathetic questions and going home with nothing but the assurance that they are brilliant but had bad luck.
The final insult is that they are a random sample of the British people. No, they are carefully selected not to win but to lose. Thus my personal nickname for Mr Walsh’s show: The Custard Quiz – thick and yellow.