Eggs, egging and to egg somebody on - a note

The failed attempt to egg Prime Minister Morrison at the CWA (Country Women's Association) conference in Albury was not a good look.   The satirical publication, the Shovel, reported it this way on Twitter:

"A young woman failing to hit the PM with an egg from 20cm away tells you everything you need to know about the skills shortage in this country. The Shovel on Twitter" 

I know that I shouldn't, but I had to laugh. The incident followed an earlier and more successful egg attack on Senator Fraser Anning.

Eggs have a certain tradition in Australian politics. In 1917, an egg was thrown at then Prime Minister Billy Hughes at Warwick in Queensland. One outcome was the establishment of the Australian Federal Police.

Writing on Ten Daily (These Witless Eggers Could Scramble Our Democracy) Hugh Riminton suggested that the Albury incident could have the effect of limiting political activity and our access to politicians by requiring greater security. I agree with him. Billy Hughes is a case in point in that the incident had long term effects.

Still, I think that there is a certain humour in the case. It was the CWA who are famous for their baking and the alleged offender, not a CWA member, had an entire carton of eggs with her.

Jumping sideways, I was surprised to learn that the phrase to egg someone on, to encourage them to do something unwise, actually had nothing to with eggs. It apparently comes from“eddja” which in Old Norse  means to incite or push someone to do something. I must admit to a certain sense of disappointment.

Monday Forum - what are your favourite idioms?

The phrase the curate's egg dates back to England in the 1890s. Today it means not bad in patches, but also dreadful! 

Do you know what phrases, idioms, like the curate's egg, double dutch, jump a rattler, hump a bluey, whistling in the wind, browned off, life's not all beer and skittles, windy or queer the pitch mean? Or indeed, where they come from?

 It will not come as a surprise that I was a bookish child. I suppose that I still am. Well, bookish anyway. I sometimes think that the child part still applies at times! My books came from different times and indeed different countries. I absorbed idioms from those books, but also from life.

I really first became aware of this part of a my language many years ago when a work colleague, a Canadian, asked me what I meant, In this case, I wrote him a one page story using Australian slang, Needless to say, he barely understood a word, so I thin explained!

Years later,  I was standing in the reception area at work when my friend on the desk asked me what something I said meant. She commented on the number of words or phrases that I used that she did not understand. Since I am a writer writing in the present, this was actually a useful corrective! Still, I have many terms that I am not going to give up.

So here is your challenge for this Monday Forum. What phrases do you love and use that may have dropped out of current usage, Feel free, of course,  to go off topic! And for those in other countries, do add in and confuse your Australian readers!

To get you thinking, this site might help - The Phrase Finder. .  . 

When to use the Oxford comma?

Just where do you place, or not place, the comma? Image Madam Grammar

I am not a grammar nerd. I fear the controversy over the Oxford or serial comma escaped my attention for a very long time. Wikipedia defines such a comma in this way: "In English language punctuation, a serial comma or series comma (also called an Oxford comma or a Harvard comma) is a comma placed immediately before the coordinating conjunction (usually and or or) in a series of three or more terms." In the graphic above from Madam Grammar, you can see the Oxford comma in the second example.

I grew up in a world without Oxford commas. A comma marks a pause as does and, so you don't use them both. Indeed, just last week in editing documents originally written by someone enamoured of the Oxford comma I removed them with a degree of frustration, However, the March 2017 decision of a an Appeal Court in Maine, a decision that I have only just become aware of, made me reflect.

The case involved the question of whether drivers for the Oakhurst dairy in Maine were entitled to get paid overtime for some types of work. Under state law, drivers were supposed to get 1.5 times their normal pay for working overtime (more than 40 hours per week). However, the law provided some exceptions. Specifically in this case, you do not get special overtime pay for the following:

"The canning, processing, preserving, freezing, drying, marketing, storing, packing for shipment or distribution of:
1. Agricultural produce;

2. Meat and fish product; and

3. Perishable foods."

The case revolved around the absence of a comma after the word shipment. That missing comma cost Oakhurst $US5 million. You will find the full judgement here. It may appeal if you are a grammar nerd. 

Now before going on, Liz Bureman has a rather simple even masterly piece on the Oxford comma that  is worth reading.

I struggled a little with the judgement because it seemed to me that it wasn't just a question of a missing comma, but one of bad drafting that could have been avoided. 

A key thing in good drafting, it's something that lawyers such as Legal Eagle or marcellous have in spades, is the avoidance of ambiguity, the establishment of clarity. I sometimes struggle with that.

Had that clause come before me as an editor, my instinctive reaction would have been to insert commas after packing and distribution, thus reading " storing, packing, for shipment or distribution, of". In this case you have a series of activities which are exempted from overtime if they are being carried out for shipping or distribution. The acts of shipment and distribution would still have attracted overtime. To provide greater clarity still, the comma between storing and packing could have been replaced with and.  

Now say someone had said to me in response, "that's not right, we want to cover shipment and distribution as well. Then the clause would be amended to read "storing, packing, shipment and distribution of", replacing or with and. 

I said that I am not a grammar nerd. I reserve the right to continue to delete the Oxford comma in simple lists because it adds nothing, just detracts from the flow. Where there are ambiguities, then it comes back to the construction that provides the greatest clarity and, in my case, sounds best!  

Monday Forum - the use and abuse of language

From time to time here we have talked about the use and abuse of words. Today's forum follows this up with an example that I am finding especially annoying at the moment, the abuse of the imperative.

It's being creeping into official documents for some time now with an almost mandated requirement. that things be expressed in positive terms. Say that your target is to create 2,000 affordable houses in ten years. You now have to say that in 10 years we will have created 2,000 affordable houses. Then you have a number of steps that you propose to carry out to achieve that target. You put those in imperative terms. To this end, we must....., industry must, the community must. .

Now you have yourself locked in terms of primary target and intermediate steps expressed in terms of absolutes. But what happens if that primary target cannot be achieved, or the intermediate steps actually won't deliver the results? What happens if you cannot guarantee that no child will live in poverty by a due date or a particular element of Aboriginal disadvantage cannot in fact be overcome in the desired time horizon?  

A strange variant of this type of approach has crept into broader English. Say you disagree with something .that Mr Turnbull is doing. You say, Mr Turnbull must resign.But this is silly.You have no control over Mr Turnbull. You really mean that in your view Mr Turnbull should resign.

With all this as background,  what are your present pet hates about the use and abuse of language,  words or phrases? As always, go in whatever direction you want even if it has nothing to do with the topic!

Monday Forum - as you will

Today's Monday Forum is another go where you like. But first, notes on a few things that have attracted my attention.  

My thanks to Sue for alerting me to the tweets of Donaeld The Unready. Quire funny. A few examples:

Canute. What a loser. Can't even hold back the sea.  It's just water. We're going to be so tough on the sea. Canute was too soft. Sad.
I've got only one thing to say to all those lousy so called scribes and their Twisty animals and weird callig, callig, writing. YOU'RE BARD!
Loser scribes saying Spokesmonk not accessible enough. TOTAL LIES! There's a door and a grating on his cell on St Kilda! Totally Accessible!
@ReillocNaes @projectania @realDonaldTrump We need more Angles and fewer Danes!
@emmaaum Flaxism. The insistence that flax is the only true weft and that outsiders like cotton should never be mixed in.
Mercia fallen behind in cutting edge weapons technology, particularly swords and spears. We must achieve New Spear Supremacy! FACT! 

It's hard to go past the theatre of the Trump Presidency, although we may be talked out.

From my first visit to the US, I have found US border control confronting. More so now, I guess. Professor Henry Rousso (photo), a French historian on his way to a conference in Texas was detained for 10 hours by US border officials and threatened with deportation. Australian children's writer Mem Fox was subjected to two hours questioning. Muhammad Ali Jr was also subjected to two hours questioning.  .

 In all the turmoil, the thing I find most discomforting at present is the adversarial relationship between the Administration and a growing section of the US media.

The New York Times is a case in point. Here there appears to be an unhealthy symbiotic relationship. The paper needs the President as adversary since this is driving circulation. The President needs the paper as adversary since this plays into the consistent theme he is trying to present of press as enemy. I do wonder where truth and objectivity fits in all this.

Here in Australia, the 7,000 word Santos Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) on coal seam gas on Liverpool Plains has been released, something I will have more to say on in a different place. In places, the "English" is best describes as convoluted. This led Jamieson Murphy in the Northern Daily Leader to try to provide some simple plain English translations. Here is one example:

Potential impacts on groundwater in the Pilliga Sandstone and Namoi Alluvium from the project are expected to indiscernible in relation to the existing variations in the groundwater pressures and storage volumes that occur in response to existing uses and replenishment, with the expectation that these changes would not be perceptible to existing bore owners. 

What that means: Farmers and other bore users won't be able to notice the drop in the underground watertable, as the drop fall within its natural rising and falling cycle. 

While we have discussed this before, I wondered what you find the most misused or meaningless terms in current English o, alternatively, the worst examples of garbled English that you have found?

That's all for an introduction today. Now over to you to go in whatever direction you want!

Postscript

On English, this is another example..

Ten Medieval phrases we use today

I am always interested in the derivation of words and phrases still in current use. A few interesting examples from this story on MEDIEVALISTS.NET 

A phrase I still use, by hook or by crook: 

"Records of this phase date back to the 14th century. One theory for its origin suggests that a medieval law about collecting firewood allowed peasants to take what they could only cut from dead trees by using their reaper’s bill-hooks or a shepherd’s crook."

A second phrase I use, to sink or swim. Now this one I guessed! 

"The phrase refers to the water ordeal, a medieval practice of judging whether a person was innocent or guilty by casting him or her into a lake. The belief was that water would not accept anyone who had rejected the water of baptism, so if the victim sunk they were innocent, but if they floated they were guilty. Chaucer used a similar phrase: “Ye rekke not whether I flete (float) or sink”.

I leave you to look at the rest. I bet you use most of them. 

Monday Forum - In a world where.....

In yesterday's post (Sunday Snippets - the end of the internet?) I concluded "In a world where constant improvement and change is seen as a given, it can be hard to recognise that stability, not doing new things, can be of very real value."

kvd, that master of the arcane, pointed out that the phrase "In a world where..." had been popularised if not indeed invented by American voice actor Don Lafontaine. This story provides examples of its use in film. While I was unaware of the genesis of the phrase, I had no doubt absorbed it from the ether.

This got me thinking. Sue and I were in London in 1979 when the film "Alien" was released. There were billboards across London all carrying the tag "In space, no one can hear you scream." I was totally struck by the tag. It was just so evocative, creating an atmosphere of fear. Since then, the tag has become cliched, but in 1979 it was fresh, still glowing.

So as a starting point for today's discussion,  what are some other examples of tags or phrases that so grabbed that they moved into the cliche class? Alternatively, what are some lines that resonated with you and why?

As always, feel free to go wherever you like. Red herrings always welcome!

Sunday Snippets - more on full bodied women, prehistory plus a tongue twister for you

Today's Sunday Snippets records things that I have noticed but not yet commented on.

From time to time I have written in support of full bodied women. In an article in Good, Tod Perry comments on Target Australia's Valentine Day advertisements. I quote:

Target has revealed a sexy new Valentine’s Day ad for lingerie — but, unfortunately for those of us in the United States, the campaign is running only in Australia. The ad features three women with realistic body types posing in seductive lingerie, proving that you can be sexy without having to be a size two.

I quite agree! Speaking as a mere male who has had to live through multiple dieting regimes, life would be a hell of a lot easier if women recognised that many body types are sexy, that they don't have to get thin to be attractive. Of course, if you wan't to diet for health reasons or because it helps your self-image do so, but it's not much fun making love to a rake. Rakes belong in the garden shed.

Staying with sex, the evidence continues to grow showing that different human species interbred. I'm not sure that I would go as far as this headline, Evidence mounts for interbreeding bonanza in ancient human species, but we clearly got around a fair bit!

Kind of helpful to remember at a time when there is so much focus on division and separation that, in the end, we are related to each other and may have some ancestors stranger than we realised.

Just as in Australia convict ancestry within us has moved from a matter of shame to considerable pride, so the Neanderthal within us is coming to become a matter of some pride.

Staying with prehistory, DNA evidence suggests a major shift in human populations in Europe towards the end of the last Ice Age. Hardly surprising, although we are only just coming to grips with the way climate change has affected the human past.

Meantime, new dating techniques have been developed that may allow us to more accurately date Aboriginal rock art.

Finally, and changing direction again, try this English tongue twister from 1922. How did you go?

Postscript

Following up on  the theme of full bodied women, kvd pointed me to this BBC piece on the life of Annette Kellermann.

Kellermann, the name is sometimes spelled with one n as in the BBC piece, had a truly remarkable career as a swimmer, star, performer and swim suit designer, constantly pushing the boundaries.

While I knew the name and a little about her, I had nor realised the full extent of her career, nor the fact that she was born in the Sydney suburb of Marrickville. That's somehow appropriate, given that Marrickville has become a very trendy suburb!    .

Watching Henry V on the 600th anniversary of the battle of Agincourt

Six hundred years ago today, Friday 25 October 1415, an English army under Henry V defeated the French at the Battle of Agincourt.  Almost six hundred years later, 30 September 2015,  Helen and I attended a performance of Henry V put on by the Royal Shakespeare Company at Stratford-upon-Avon.

We had been staying nearby at Harvington in the Cotswolds and decided to visit Stratford for the day. I will talk about my overall impressions of Stratford in another post. For a moment, I want to focus on Henry V.

Helen has been interested in drama since she was young and has taken part in a number of Shakespearean productions, so we went looking for the Royal Shakespeare Company. There Helen found that a production of Henry V was on that night and that tickets were available. The lure of seeing Shakespeare performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company in Shakespeare's birthplace was irresistible, and we promptly bought tickets. Since Harvington was so close, we were able to return there, eat and get back for the production.

Employing 700 people, the Royal Shakespeare Company is a very substantial organisation. Its Stratford Complex has recently been refurbished at a cost of £112.8 million. That's a fair bit of money.

The main theatre is built in the form of an open rectangle around the stage, with various seating levels stretching up into the high ceiling.   The kit built into the ceiling including the various lighting boxes is quite phenomenal. This allows for the use of minimal sets, since varying back-drops can be projected onto curtains.

As it turns out, I had neither read nor seen Henry V. I thought I had read it, but as the play proceeded I realised that I could not have. It was completely unfamiliar and the inclusion of large slabs of what was apparently French in the dialogue came as a surprise. I found it an unsatisfying play, in some ways unformed. I really needed the program notes to help guide me through the performance.

The Battle of Agincourt forms a key part of the play.. It is here late in the play that the most famous lines from the play appear.

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition;
And gentlemen in England now-a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs’d they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.

To give you another perspective, here is Kenneth Branagh with the same speech, this time in full.


The politics surrounding the original play are confused, as were the events themselves all those years ago. Shakespeare was writing for multiple audiences, including a population weary of the war that had been raging in Ireland. To my mind, this mixture of audiences helps explain what I saw as disconnects within the play. Interestingly, the program notes themselves displayed similar ambivalence, feeling an apparent requirement to deprecate or explain certain things in the pay in a way that reflects current British cultural and political attitudes and uncertainties.

Coming down in the lift afterwards, I listened to a well dressed older group who were clearly regulars. This was, one averred, the best production of Henry V he had ever see, going on to compare it to various productions dating back to the 1944 film staring Laurence Olivier. Not having seen the play before, I couldn't comment. However, while I greatly enjoyed the play, I thought that there were weaknesses from a purely technical viewpoint in the production, including camping up some scenes better played a little straighter.

  .  

Australian life - the selfie

Have you looked at The New Daily yet?  This is Australia's latest newspaper, just on line. It's mainly an aggregator, but its another source of information.

I see from The New Daily that the word selfie appears to be of Australian origin. I quote:

Oxford Dictionaries says in mid-September 2002, an Australian wrote on ABC online: “Um, drunk at a mates 21st, I tripped ofer [sic] and landed lip first (with front teeth coming a very close second) on a set of steps. I had a hole about 1cm long right through my bottom lip. And sorry about the focus, it was a selfie.”

Although “selfie” can be traced back more than 10 years, it only gained momentum throughout the English-speaking world in 2013.

Research suggests its frequency of use has increased 17,000 per cent over the past 12 months.

Thank you, Kevin!

Digging further, this ABC story suggests a strong linkage to New England. Again I quote: 

Hopey had started the forum thread seeking advice about whether licking his lips would make his stitches dissolve too soon. He went on to offer:

"Anyone wanna see a picture of it? It's pretty cool."

Hopey then posted a link to an image that was uploaded on the servers of the University of New England in Armidale.

The link is now dead - but the ABC was able to recover the photo via the wonders of the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine.

One thing is for sure: if this is the first selfie, it was not posted with the goal of garnering 'likes'.

Now the search is on to find Hopey!

Words - gay, misogyny, with just a dash of heterosexism

Oh dear, just when you think it's safe to come out of the water.

Once there was a word called gay. It meant happy, merry, but carried with it an expressive feel . Hence gaiety. Then it was taken over, the meaning changed to mean homosexual, especially male homosexual. The old meaning started to drop away. A male who said that I feel gay tonight could well be misinterpreted or, perhaps, not. It depended.

Then there was the word misogynist meaning women hater or, at least, someone who disliked women. It was quite a useful word, appearing in popular fiction including children's fiction with phrases like "so and so was a crusty old misogynist." The Australian Macquarie dictionary  has now announced that it is including a second string to the definition:   an entrenched prejudice against women. 

Some of the Australian media has interpreted this as an act of political correctness by the dictionary in response to the PM's speech. If that were the case, I would be very upset. But the meaning of the word has changed. We actually saw this in the responses to the PM's speech. But I checked around, simply asking younger ones for the meaning of misogynist. They came up with the new Macquarie definition. So the definition does reflect changing use of the language. Just the Macquarie timing, intentional or not, is unfortunate.

In the meantime, we have lost another word, for entrenched prejudice against women however defined certainly need not mean hatred of women. When I expressed sadness at the loss, I was asked what word I would use to describe the new definition of misogyny. I simply said sexist.

If all this wasn't enough, I happened to read this story in Sydney's Daily Telegraph: Being straight no longer normal, students taught. I am not normally a Telegraph reader, but the paper was there while I was waiting. This introduced me to a whole new term that I had yet to hear, heterosexism.

The story was about a pilot program in NSW schools. This appeared to define heterosexism, and I quote from the story,    

....the practice of "positioning heterosexuality as the norm for human relationship," according to the Proud Schools Consultation Report.

"It involves ignoring, making invisible or discriminating against non-heterosexual people, their relationships and their interests. Heterosexism feeds homophobia."

The program should "focus on the dominance of heterosexism rather than on homophobia," according to the minutes from the Proud Schools steering committee on March 22, 2011.

Now given the Telegraph's usual market positioning, I would be far from certain about the accuracy of the reporting. Even so, heterosexism? It's really all becoming far too confusing!

While chatting, I did a little testing in terms of some of the views I expressed in Abbott, Gillard - time to stop!. Not a scientific sample, I accept, but there was great dislike for the personal venom on each side.

Yours from a confused Jim who feels obliged to report but really, really, doesn't like all this.

Postscript

For other takes on all this, New England free lance radio reporter Kate Doak has yet another take on aspects of the Abbott/Gillard affair - The Tale of Two Tonys and a Julia...... It was Kate who released the tape of a young Tony Abbott talking on student radio at UNE during a visit.

Then in Misoneism?, Neil Whitfield took another direction, in so doing confirming that the Macquarie dictionary decision to redefine had been misogynist in the dictionary had been influenced by the PM's speech. I quote:

Sue Butler, Editor of the Macquarie Dictionary, regarded as the definitive authority on Australian meanings of words, said on Wednesday the political furore revealed to her fellow Editors that their dictionary’s definition was decades out of date.

The dictionary would broaden its definition from a hatred of women to include entrenched prejudice against women, she said.

“Since the 1980s, ‘misogyny’ has come to be used as a synonym for sexism, a synonym with bite, but nevertheless with the meaning of ‘entrenched prejudice against women’ rather than ‘pathological hatred’”, she said.

I think that's unfortunate. It also appears that the changing meaning of the word has been influenced  by very specific feminist debate.

In a comment on the NSW position, Winton Bates wrote: Jim, it seems to me that people who argue that hetrosexuality is not the norm for human relationships are possibly guilty of misogyny and misandry, as well as misinformation.

Misandry, the hatred of men and boys, is the dictionary opposite to misogyny. If we are going to redefine misogyny, it would seem perfectly appropriate to redefine misandry in the same way as entrenched prejudice against men. Defined in this way it certainly exists. Indeed, I have given examples on this blog. What's more, I'm not sure that it's getting better, although some have argued that things have changed. Whatever the case, we have a fruitful new ground for verbal conflict.

In his comment, Winton also shared my reservations about the content of the report, something that Neil picked up when he quoted the original objectives of the NSW pilot. The problem here is that objectives and the way those objectives are implemented are two very different things. We just don't know, for example, whether the claim about heterosexism is correct. It may be. We have seen some funny things in NSW before.

In any event, words will be words whatever I or anyone else feels. Further, life is too short to attempt to follow up the detail of every claim and counter claim.

I am quite comfortable with the position I articulated some time ago, that I support equality of opportunity independent of gender or sexual orientation. This includes attacking the barriers that reduce men's choices.

I am not posting today. Please treat this update as my post. 

What would you nominate as the most asinine slogan?

Note to readers: I am letting this stand as the front post for the moment, adding stuff from comments as we go along. Feel free to join in - there is still time.

A comment by Winton Bates on Winton Bates, kvd & monitory democracy got me thinking. Winton wrote:

You have nearly persuaded me that ‘monitory’ might be a good term to use to describe modern democracy, but kvd had almost persuaded me to the opposite viewpoint. I’m not sure that monitory captures the asinine aspect of modern politics – particularly use of focus groups to find meaningless words that have an appealing ring to them and using those words as a substitute for policies. For example: ‘moving forward with plans to build a sustainable Australia’.

Winton's example really made me laugh, for I have long complained about current "policy" statements with their pastel colours, obligatory if usually meaningless photos plus catch phrases devoid of content.

I thought, therefore, that I would issue a challenge to readers to nominate meaningless slogans. They can be actual examples, Working Australia comes to mind, or parodies. Mind you, they could be both! Again Working Australia comes to mind!

I am not sure that I can offer a prize, but surely between us we can come up with a list that might be a prize in itself? 

Just an immediate addition from Neil Whitfield:  

More later.

Quite a bit later

I think that we have to start with this one. kvd wrote:

For anyone interested, go to this page - http://www.liberal.org.au/Policies.aspx/ - to see the complete collection of Liberal Party policy PDFs. Click on any link, and what you get is an error page which says There appears to be a problem.

Wait, why am I here?

Says it all, really.

I thought kvd must be joking and went to check. At least at the time I write, that is exactly the message that comes up.

Katz nominated John Howard, January 1987: INCENTIVATION. No, I don't know what it means either.

Winton Bates wrote:

I have taken up kvd’s suggestion of trying to think up some new political slogans. However, I found it quite difficult to come up with phrases that were as meaningless as those which have already been used by professional politicians.
Here are some suggestions for the focus group to consider:
1. Building highways to happiness.
2. Health care we can live with.
3. Re-building the education revolution.
4. Working schools.
5. Launching islands of innovation.
6. Building a bigger Australia.
7. Empowering national ecology.
8. Moving people together. (That might require some explanation. It is a potential policy for solving the peak hour public transport problem in Sydney.)
At that point I lost the plot and starting thinking about how it might be possible to sell a stronger emphasis on defence spending without mentioning defence:
9. Diplomacy of the future.
10. Stepping up national sustainability.
Then, when the time comes to declare war:
11. Building bridges to peace.

Evan was forced to bow to Winton's Orwellian expertise, as was kvd. But kvd, that almost rusted on conservative warrior struck back

Jim
It's absolutely pointless competing against Winton's years of obfuscation - sorry, that should be experienced cynicism - but anyway:

For the Liberal Party:
We don’t stand for what they do.
We won’t stand for anything!
Sensible government: a new concept
Enough!
Time to believe in something.
Putting the ‘great’ back into expectations.
We have a plan.
We’re in this together
A plan to move on but in another direction.
Free scratchies for every vote.

Labor:
More of the same, only less so. Sorry.

And whoever concocted "moving forward" is a genius. Most probably Winton's nephew, I expect.
kvd

Mmm. Time to move forward, I think!

Meantime, over on Twitter, Paul Barratt was moving forward in a maritime direction:

Paul Barratt ‏@phbarratt

@JimBelshaw Stop the boats. Moving forward. Embracing a new future. A great big new tax on everything. #assinineslogans

If we move forward embracing a new future by stopping the boats we could well need a great new tax!

Keep it coming all!

A final postscript

Additions to those previously listed.

Ramana's Indian addition was divine benevolence. Winton and kvd have decided to cross-licence from each other 'We don't stand for what they do'" and "Launching Islands of Innovation" respectively. I could actually do something in real policy terms with launching islands of innovation!  And a final word from Paul Barratt:

Paul Barratt ‏@phbarratt

@JimBelshaw Must be room in there somewhere for comment that Afghan asylum seekers are behaving in an un-Christian manner#asinineslogans

Mmm.

It's interesting. When I began this post I was thinking of actual slogans that got attached to policy and could actually have no real meaning. They are rather different from political slogans that may not, of themselves, have real meaning but which act as hooks on which to hang a series of attitudes. The worst political slogans can be those that do have meaning.

Take Stop the Boats or a Great Big Tax as examples.

A Great Big Tax may not be factually correct, although that is arguable. In any event, it is a device for putting across a simple message. Apart from its impact on voter perception, the slogan carries no call for action beyond, perhaps, the repeal of certain pieces of legislation.

Stop the Boats is different. That slogan combines a call for direct action with a very specific hook designed to attract certain sets of views. That makes it very different from a Great Big Tax. Taken to its logical extreme, it could be achieved by the handy application of gun fire - or a torpedo or a missile, actions then justified by the slogan itself. We had to Stop the Boats.

You see what I mean?