Wednesday Rant

ARRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHH

If there is one thing I hate more than meetings it's the impenetrable jargon it fosters/festers. Weird gobbledygook speak designed to obscure and complicate simple ideas. Devoid of content, these phrases strangle the English language turning it into an abomination of mangled words. My particular pet hate is: 'moving forward'. My boss and friend, who used to be a scientist, has moved forward to 'Administrative Management' and interjects into every meeting the phrase, 'moving forward', when he should be saying, 'from now on'. It grates and grinds on my sensibilities with its stultifying banality; sadly, he should know better- he's a very intelligent man. 

While I'm at it: I'm not a fan of 'team leader' instead of boss. Although not exactly jargon speak, it is one of those phrases that has insinuated itself into the English language about the same time the 'Personnel Department' became 'Human Resources' and heavy truck haulage became 'Logistics'. And while I'm ranting off topic I must mention the word, 'Workshop'. Whenever I attend a scientific conference there is always a 'Workshop'. A word for a meeting within a meeting. Frankly, if you are a not carpenter or a worker in light engineering you have no fucking right to call a meeting, a 'Workshop'. Digression over- back to the main rant.   

Here are a few particularly good/bad examples of business speak gathered randomly from the net:

“telephonic culturally competent disease management program can improve the health of African American members with hypertension”

“a leading global provider of integrated financial governance, transaction risk management, and compliance solutions”

"look for a paradigm shift in your KPIs, you need to benchmark your organisation against best practice in generating marketing messaging statements"

Now my readers (is there anyone there?), can feel my pain.

I challenge anyone out there to interpret these insane sentences into anything vaguely intelligible or coherent. Imaginative, witty or humorous contributions will win Flaxen’s Award for Rhetorical Sane English,  or A.R.S.E, for short. Don't disappoint the Flaxen haired one.

I'm so incandescent and discombobulated I'm off to burn down an orphanage.