One casualty = one vote

British lives have been lost for no purpose. Panthers Claw was launched to make the Babaji area safe for election of the President.

The insurgent stronghold in the Babaji was captured area freeing 80,000 potential voters from Taliban control. But only 150 people turned up to vote, 13 polling stations were set up within the district but these averaged just over 11 voters each.

Since the launch of Operation Panther's Claw in early July and up to polling day on Aug 20 the British have suffered 37 dead and an estimated 150 wounded in action in southern Afghanistan.

 Speak Simply

A broadcast on BBC Four's Word of Mouth has stirred interest. I will be addressing a Transport Body on the subject next month. Some correspondence I received deserves attention.

It was sent this from a Mr Richardson,

I listened to part of a programme last night on Radio 4 as I was in the car on my way home at about 11.15pm. It was about the use of plain English and you were involved. The programme struck a resonance with

! I believe that many of our problems in business and so many other areas of activity and life are because we cannot properly understand what is actually meant when things are written down by other people at almost any level. I am a chartered surveyor who is frequently involved in large commercial property arbitrations. I have been until recently the chairman of the RICS sub-committee on dispute resolution. Property disputes and particularly rent reviews are a major source of significant arbitrations both in terms of numbers and their complexity.

That general area of activity is governed by the Arbitration Act 1996, which you will see if you have a look at it is a model of the use of plain English. To the best of my knowledge there has never been any dispute or doubt about the meaning of any part of the Act - no mean feat for the draftsman. If you are serious about the use of plain english I commend the Act to all in Parliament as a model. Those drafting it had the great skill of having used only reasonably short and pithy phrases and sentences - genuinely simple but understandable English.


Those of us who are responsible for the performance of arbitrators and for the Dispute Resolution area of the RICS have always been very keen to ensure the use of good simple english by arbitrators in their Awards so that the participants can understand why they have won or lost!

My reason for mentioning this is to encourage you and your committee to take the issue seriously. If relatively senior and well educated surveyors find it hard to use simple English well, it is likely that the problem is much greater than we may all wish to admit.

In reply I said:-

Many thanks David it was extremely good of you to write. The information you supply is new to me and fascinating. There was one Government Act in 2001 that was so incomprehensible that nobody understood it and a 'reform' act was passed in 2006 to explain what it meant. The committee has not reached any conclusions yet and I would like to add your comments into the evidence - anonymously or otherwise. I will certainly push the unique points that you make.

While it was an amiable end of term meeting, the committee take the issue very seriously. I am writing a book at the moment. The chapter I am on now is about select committees and the obfuscations we suffer. This is part of what I wrote last night:-

PASC is a new world of politics. The common purpose of revealing the truth swamps political sectional interests. One of the un-answered puzzles of New Labour is why Tony Wright was not offered a job as a minister. He has an abundance of political gifts and he inspires trust.

He has led PASC with charm, courage and persistence. Some of the Whitehall walls of silence and secrecy have been breached. Others remain unassailable.

I thought I had a landed a small coup when I was seated next to Tony Blair’s blue sky thinker at Channel Four awards dinner. Lord Birt had been forbidden to give evidence to PASC while he was working for the Strategy Unit. ‘Now that I’ve retired,’ he told me ‘I can come along’.

I was eager to question him on Blair’s rejection of the strategy unit’s condemnation of the Government’s drugs prohibition policy. Alas his appearance taught up nothing. He gave a master class in jargon-clogged obfuscation.

The language he used was clearly derived from English, but incomprehensible to all PASC members "Policy is a sub-set of strategy," with "three-to-five-year horizons" that "improved system outcomes" and "forward strategy".

"You wouldn't have a backward strategy, would you?" Tony Wright mocked. The sarcasm was lost on Birt. He ploughed on. ‘Some embedded strategies are rooted in incentive structures ... conventional performance measurement capability,"

Ian Liddell-Grainger asked Birt what he thought his three towering achievements at No 10 had been. ‘It is not appropriate that I share with you the insights I gained in government.’ We are the inquiring select committee. Who else should he share his insights with?

In some desperation I asked, “If Blairism ever becomes a religious cult, do you think you will be its Pope?". He was mystified; possibly because I was not speaking management speak. He said he was a great admirer of the Prime Minister.

Later a shell-shocked PASC convalesced with a brief inquiry into official use of jargon.

Comments

[HuwOS]

Apropos of absolutely nothing that has been posted here.

Many think Gordon Brown needs a saviour for not only his career but the economy too.

Is it at all possible that 8 year old math whiz Xavier Gordon-Brown could be the one?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/sussex/8224313.stm

[Paul Flynn]

I believe it was Winston Churchill who apologise for making a long speech because he did not 'have the time to write a short one.'

[Paul Flynn]

Thanks Richard Jones. It is not unusual for sections of bills to pass without debate. I will have a look at the section you mention. I will add it to the evidence that we will consider on the committee after the recess

[Tony]

Extract from an Economist article which I thought was spot on ..

“Short words are best”, said Winston Churchill, “and old words when short are the best of all”

and as a conclusion ..

Make your point well with short words, and you will have no use for long ones.
Make it not so well, and you will be glad that you kept them crisp.
So, by God, will those who have to read you.

[Richard Jones]

Paul, if you have a moment, you might wish to look at Schedule A1 of the Mental Capacity Act 2005 which was inserted into that Act by the Mental Health Act 2007. It comprises 185 paragraphs and is concerned with the very important issue of providing authority for depriving mentally incapacitated adults of their liberty. It is regarded by lawyers - I am one - as a hugely complex and badly drafted piece of legislation which must be incomprehensible to the vast majority of citizens. The reason I am posting this is to inform you that NOT ONE LINE of the Schedule was debated during the passage of the Mental Health Bill through Parliament.