Like spores and bacteria, there are words that lie dormant and disregarded for years but which, in favourable conditions, spring back to life and begin multiplying as if nothing had happened. Such conditions are those when politicans are hurling out sound-bites in all directions in the pressured environment of a general election. Lying half asleep this morning listening to the Today programme on BBC Radio 4, I picked out some old favourites, from, I think, a LibDem spokesperson but it could have been from any party. Targeted. Comprehensive. Fully-costed. And I think Crackdown might have been in there, inevitably accompanied by Avoiders or Dodgers.
My muse in matters satirical is Michael Frayn and he, many years ago, identified combinations of words that existed only in newspaper headlines and which conveyed some sort of meaning to readers, but often so vaguely that the same headlines could be used over and over in many different ways. Bid Probe Allegation Shock could be one. Leak Drama Move Slammed another. In the same way, when a party announces that, on taking office, it will solve all Britain's financial problems through a targeted, comprehensive and fully-costed crackdown, the dozing listener absorbs this in the way a damp J-cloth absorbs a spillage - the first wipe gets most of the liquid but always leaves a bit. The policy announcement gets blotted up and largely vanishes from the brain, leaving a slimy trail of those buzz words which convey something but, in the words of another great satirist, Lewis Carroll, "Somehow it seems to fill my head with ideas—only I don't exactly know what they are!"
When grappling with political ideas it does feel as though we are tracking the Jabberwock through the tulgy wood. Figures are thrown about like branches snagging one's armour - Rishi Sunak's recently invented claim that Labour measures would raise taxation by some £2,000 a household being a good example. He then claimed this was an official civil service calculation, only to have to withdraw when the Treasury said it was nothing to do with them, and to further withdraw when it became clear that it was £2,000 over the four years expected life of the next parliament. The details have become lost in the murk and only the headline "Labour Tax Bombshell Claim Shock" remains.
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Readers! Do you examples of words that come alive at elections? Send them in to the usual address and the very best will be used to make a suitable headline for a forthcoming piece. Comprehensive Terms and Conditions apply and have been targeted to be spot on with whatever they are required to do. A fully-costed copy will be sent on receipt of £2,000 or whatever figure you feel is suitable.
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