In the national interest and other useless phrases

Submitted by James Purser on Mon, 19/04/2010 - 02:33

Okay here's a list of phrases that have been rolled out in the election campaign (whatever anyone else tells you, we're in election mode federally) so far that I think should be banned:

"In the nations interest"

This is a catchall phrase that seems to get tacked onto anything and everything lately. I assume the purpose is to make what ever it is referring to seem to be critical to the survival of the nation, be it gold batts in the ceiling, private health insurance or shamelessly playing the "bloody refo's" card. Soon I expect to see canteen reform being pushed through the local P and C "in the nations interest".

"Working families"

Sooo, the government is apparently only concerned with working families. So if you're single, unemployed, retired or disabled, sorry folks your bum out of luck. Next time you hear a politician use this phrase within ear shot, ask them why they don't care about the rest of the country.

"We'll release the policy closer to the election"

Okay I know enough about politics to know that this phrase will never go away. Party politics and the media has ensured that policy development isn't about long term benefits to the nation, but rather what's going to get you elected or re-elected. So the focus isn't on true policy debate, but rather carefully stage managed release cycles that minimise the amount of time a policy is in the public space, able to be deconstructed and examined. We get policy by sound bite.

"We want a mature debate"

This has been creeping up lately. In the context it seems to be used where-ever the government has not gotten it's own way on a policy, so they then pull it back and say they'll re-release it when they can have a more "mature debate", which really means "we screwed the pooch and people didn't like it, so we'll forget it for a while then see if we can slip it back out there".

Actually this has also become one of the favourite phrases of everyone's friendly communications minister. In this context it appears to mean: "Why is everyone picking on me!? Why do they keep pointing out that my policy won't work?"

"He's a real man"

Little tip here, if you have to keep pointing out how "real" your man is, there is a very good chance that he isn't. 

Well that's just some of the phrases that are bugging me at the moment, I'm sure others have more and I'll add more when I come across them.

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Comments

Submitted by Peter on Mon, 19/04/2010 - 05:43.

They've only been concerned about working families for a while now. I'm single with no dependents, but the government are still intent on protecting my children by filtering my internet connection. 

Submitted by Russell Coker on Mon, 19/04/2010 - 08:52.

Is "Working families" a code for "white families" or something similar?

Also who says "He's a real man"? Do they know that slightly more than 50% of the population is female and comments which reveal misogeny (such as any reference to "real man") can probably be expected to lose some votes.

Submitted by James Purser on Mon, 19/04/2010 - 10:58.

 Also who says "He's a real man"?

All of the Coalition about Tony Abbott. One of their lines of attack against Rudd is that Abbott is more of a "real man"/authentic person, based on the fact that he takes part in manly activities.

Submitted by Russell Coker on Tue, 20/04/2010 - 09:02.

I've spent some time reading web pages referred by Google but haven't found anyone of note calling him a "real man". I've seen some references to him being "real" in terms of a genuine person, but that's quite different to being a "real man" like in the old "Solo man" commercials.

I've seen references by semi-anonymous blog commentators about him being a "real man" in the macho sense, but those people don't count for much.

I hope that you can provide a suitable clue to finding these things, presumably it's one of those cases where if you know the key phrase to search for then Google gives you lots of results that you desire.