James Gatehouse has an entertaining FSB piece on the lack of nourishment in UK political word salads. Entertaining, but also an aspect of wilful idiocy as in the previous post.
Word Salad and Politics
I’m no great fan of salad, although from time to time you do experience a good one. Anything with celery in it is a no-no as far as I’m concerned, so anything Waldorf-ian is definitely out. People who make tasty salads are in short supply, I guess.
Poor salad recipes are nevertheless much the fashion these days. Take these modern culinary classics as examples. [a Labour government will] kick-start economic growth...make Britain a clean energy superpower...take back our streets...break down barriers to opportunity...build an NHS fit for the future.
Like the limp lettuce infesting some supermarket sandwich packs these appear to have lost any of the savour that a proper chef might have brought to them. These are poor salads designed to sound good on the label, but lack any power to evoke a sense of satisfaction once eaten. For one thing, all of these word salads are at best meaningless without added context. What does it mean. Precisely. to “kick start” an economy, or for that matter to make it “grow”? Was it stopped and has it been kickstarted by now? Is energy dirty? And in what way precisely does it make me or anyone else mucky?
I’m no great fan of salad, although from time to time you do experience a good one. Anything with celery in it is a no-no as far as I’m concerned, so anything Waldorf-ian is definitely out. People who make tasty salads are in short supply, I guess.
Poor salad recipes are nevertheless much the fashion these days. Take these modern culinary classics as examples. [a Labour government will] kick-start economic growth...make Britain a clean energy superpower...take back our streets...break down barriers to opportunity...build an NHS fit for the future.
Like the limp lettuce infesting some supermarket sandwich packs these appear to have lost any of the savour that a proper chef might have brought to them. These are poor salads designed to sound good on the label, but lack any power to evoke a sense of satisfaction once eaten. For one thing, all of these word salads are at best meaningless without added context. What does it mean. Precisely. to “kick start” an economy, or for that matter to make it “grow”? Was it stopped and has it been kickstarted by now? Is energy dirty? And in what way precisely does it make me or anyone else mucky?
Well worth reading, as word salads are all the UK political menu has to offer. They are hideously expensive and indigestible salads too, but Rachel Reeves seems to think they are still too cheap.
9 comments:
We'd a jolly good Nicoise for dinner last night with both the toms and the French beans being from the garden. I admit we bought the tuna, anchovies, olives, ...
When did we, or maybe he just means the gubment, lose the streets?
I doubt that he even knows how, or even has had to actually do a kick start, let alone knows what it means. Nasty non electric transport. How about jump starting, or push starting the economy.
Millibrain's energy seems "clean" provided you ignore the minerals extracted by school age children in Africa,.The solar panels and steel wind turbine pillars produced using coal (ugh, nasty) in China. But the problem Surkier and Millibrain care not to think about is what are we going to do with end of life batteries and wind turbine blades?
We are fooked.
From The Motley Fool:
"What does commoditized mean?
When a product category becomes flooded with a range of virtually identical offerings that only compete through price, it becomes commoditized. As a result of commodification, individual products and services become interchangeable, prices are pushed lower, and profit margins are pressured."
Arguably our politics has become commoditized. We cannot shop on policies, only what we think our vote will cost us. And because the parties are interchangeable they have to use word salads to dress up their offerings. Patience finally ran out with the word salad Conservatives and Labour are now fining that word salad is not enough to convince potential voters.
dearieme - I used to rustle up a reasonable Nicoise, but it's one of the recipes we forgot about as new ideas popped up. I don't know why, because we enjoyed it.
Doonhamer - "But the problem Surkier and Millibrain care not to think about is what are we going to do with end of life batteries and wind turbine blades?"
I agree and however it is done there will be subsidies unless the priorities of UK government undergo a radical change. Fat chance of that as far as I can see. We are indeed fooked.
DJ - that's a good point, what can be done by any political regime has been packaged into a standard array of off the shelf "initiatives" with standard off the shelf blurb. No political party has demonstrated a willingness to change this, although Reform tells us it has the solution.
Tonight's salad was mainly continental cold meats: we had nothing from our own garden but we did eat some of the figs that neighbours had given us.
Children of other neighbours are fond of sweetcorn so we had them round to look at our plants and pick themselves an ear each.
I do enjoy the time of year when the kitchen garden is really producing.
dearieme - we don't grow much, but we've pulled up a few spuds which seem to have been more successful than last year and we're trying Jerusalem artichokes this year. I think the artichokes may struggle while we're on holiday though - we'll see.
Our Jerusalem artichokes are tough as old boots and spread further every year. They make a lovely winter soup but you must cut it with 50% potato or you get a fartfest. It's a good use for tiny or damaged potatoes.
More salad news: last night we had chicken liver salad - v good. The garden's contribution was lemon balm and mint.
dearieme - thanks for the winter soup idea, fartfests are best avoided if possible. We have mint growing in one or two places in the garden but it is nowhere near as rampant as the mint in the garden of a house house we bought in the seventies. The previous owner had owned a horse and we had to contain the mint in a galvanised bucket.
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