Mar 2009 18

Agreeing with the LGA1

It's a rare occasion – indeed an event for the diary – today. I agree with something the Local Government Association have said. Yes, the people who normally spend their time arguing for higher council tax and more town hall bureaucrats have produced an eminently sensible piece of work. They are calling on councils to ditch the use of jargon and management gobbledegook.

The report lists 200 examples of jargon that the LGA wants to see the back of, such as "indicators of beaconicity", "coterminosity" and my personal bugbear "actioned" (used instead of saying "done").

Whils there are certainly some words on the list that seem to have been added to pad it out to 200, and I certainly wouldn't want the words "democratic mandate" to vanish from town halls, this is a good step in the right direction. It's a pity that local government has got into such a state that it needs slapping round the face and telling to use plain english, but it clearly does.

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Mark is a writer and political campaigner, ardent libertarian and eurosceptic.



  • http://www.camdencouncilrottenlandlord.blogspot.com/ Tracy Morgan

    The LGA could go one step further and instruct their members to stop the rotten self-serving practice of setting up bogus boroughwide tenant groups and pretending they represent tenants interests when they don’t – and to cease allowing tenants who sit on these bogus groups to defraud the public funds they are given.