On Thursday last week, the Times front page headline ran: “Sunak: Better education can be our silver bullet”. The report went on: “A Downing Street source said Sunak believed that if there were ‘one silver bullet in public policy’ that would improve lives, it would be investment in education and skills.” Long-suffering readers may remember that I deplored this solecism many moons ago. Let me quote the Guardian style guide: “Silver bullet: used to kill a werewolf and by the Lone Ranger.” Yet how many times have I heard this phrase trotted out? More than I care to remember. The correct term is magic bullet – “a quick and simple solution to a difficult problem”. For further elucidation, I recommend Beyond the Magic Bullet, by the late, great journalist Bernard Dixon.
A colleague reports that on the Today programme last week, minister Nadhim Zahawi uttered the following: “We have operationalised flights to Rwanda.” He then repeated the word later in the interview. How revolting is that. I’m not sure what his job is at the moment but I think a quick reshuffle is in order.
I was delighted to receive an email from Tom O’Brien from the Open University on the origins of corporate speak. My eye was caught by the following: “To optimise the process, we need to do a multi-factorial analysis to determine the variables to control so as to maximise streamlined flow within the fluid. This will then maximise the efficiency of the work input and minimise losses within the system due to turbulence and other non-linearities. The resulting model can then be applied to level-set the variables which we will present to you in due course.” This, Mr O’Brien suggests, can be simplified to “We need to control, streamline, maximise.” Just so.
Email jonathan.bouquet@observer.co.uk
• Jonathan Bouquet is an Observer columnist
