Driving home tonight, I was listening to the Victorian Premier John Brumby’s announcement about the preferred tenderers to run Melbourne’s rail and tram networks.

Mr Brumby, and indeed his speech writers, need to understand that the world exists, as indeed the public transport system exists, in three dimensions of space and one dimension of time.  We’ve got considerable freedom when it comes to moving through each of the spatial dimensions, but we’re constrained by time in that, generally speaking, everyone and every thing moves forward.  We can’t, generally speaking, move backwards in time.

Mr Brumby, however, felt it necessary (amidst collaborating with stakeholders and ensuring the availability of multi-modal transport solutions) to reiterate that we are, in fact, going forward.  The transport plan is going forward.  The announcement is about looking forward.   The preferred tenderers are moving forward.  Everything, Mr Brumby assured us, is going forward:

“I can tell you quite emphatically that the performance standards in place going forward are higher performance standards than we have had in the past.”

“They (the new operators) will partner with our government in transforming the network going forward and they represent the best value for money for Victorian taxpayers.”

And when asked about the incumbent operator’s performance: “I don’t think it’s helpful to look back, this is about looking forward.”

Mr Brumby’s comments are reassuring, because those of us who regularly use Melbourne’s public transport system know that it’s been hurtling backwards for some time now.

Here’s a link to the Weasel Words website (essential reading).

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connex · john brumby · keolis · lynne kosky · melbourne · mtm · public transport · weasel words · yarra trams

Many of my friends delight in employing arcane, archaic and obscure language in everyday speech.

You know… the type of people that crunch through a cryptic crossword over lunch, or argue over whether or not a full stop belongs at the end of an abbreviation.

I confess that I enjoy using our language to communicate, and delight in discovering old and new grammatical oddities.

Occasionally I’ve used an abbreviation in report writing at work, where a particular incident occurs, for example, in the 2nd inst., meaning “the second day of the month”.  This is a Latin abbreviation for instante mense, meaning “this month” or “the current month”.

But a good friend asked me recently what the Latin abbreviation  was for ‘next month’, or indeed ‘last month’.

A quick Wiki-Google revealed that proximo mense may be abbreviated to prox. meaning ‘next month’, while ultimo mense may be abbreviated to ult. meaning ‘last month’.

Other Latin abbreviations can be found on Wikipedia.

Please use your new-found grammar responsibly.

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This is my favourite definition in Watson’s Dictionary of Weasel Words, Contemporary Clichés, Cant & Management Jargon by Don Watson, a Vintage book published by Random House Australia P/L, copyright Don Watson 2004:

call centre:  A place where calls are ‘attended to’. Attending to calls is offshorable: you may think the ‘first available consultant’ to attend your call is an Indian in Brisbane or Sydney, but he or she is more likely to be an Indian in New Delhi who works for a company that is not the one you thought you phoned but one you’ve never heard of. This is because attending to calls is not only offshorable, it is also outsourceable. But your call is no less important to them. Some people may find this disconcerting, but only those who think about it. You may be assured that it is in the interests of all stakeholders.

Please do not interrupt call centre workers: they will lose their place in the ‘lawyer approved’ script they are obliged by their employers to read. This script is non-negotiable and if they fail to follow it word for word they might be dismissed. Still we all need to have fun, and the worker can hardly be blamed if you say, ‘How’s the weather in Bangalore? Is Tendulkar still in?’ Or: ‘Talking to you reminds me of a great dhosa I had in Delhi in 1973.’ Conversations with call centre workers are often better than those you have with your mother. Many call centre workers will talk with wit about George W. Bush, Nicole Kidman or The God of Small Things. Local call centre workers are in general less inclined to wander into these areas: they quickly develop a whining tone and treat you like a pest or an idiot. Remember, call centre workers are in a bind: they are not allowed to hang up on you, but they are marked down by their managers for talking too long. When the say that the company has made ‘a commercial decision to charge fees for this category of transaction’ the pickle is passed to you – do you let them know in brutal detail what you think about the weaselly ‘commercial decision’ and the egregious bloody outfit that made it, or do you pay the innocent underpaid person on the other end of the phone the kindness and respect working people deserve?

Have a nice day.

‘Should you ever need to page Premier Steve Bracks, chances are you’ll have to speak to someone in Indonesia. And it’s not just the Premier – calls made to the pagers of a string of Victorian MPs yesterday went to a telephone call centre in Jakarta.’ –The Age, October 2003.

Weasel Words can be purchased “wherever good books are sold”. Dr Ron recommends this book as compulsory reading for all politicians, public speakers, corporate communication managers and all people who appreciate that George Orwell’s NewSpeak was, in fact, a timely warning.

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But wait! There’s more!

In order for Action Item Man to own this challenge, he needs to be goal-oriented and results driven.

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Gold, Jerry, absolute gold:

Weasel Words is a website dedicated to those “who have silently wept into a crumpled copy of their company’s mission statement, for teachers who want to work in classrooms and not customer service points, and for all those who have been underpinned by an innovative, value adding, creative, sustainable, diverse and optimised framework.”

Crikey… maybe even I’m guilty of some of these.  Ouch!

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Tune-in to your local ABC Radio National on Friday 11/04/08 at 5:55 P.M. to hear me rant about the use and abuse of the apostrophe.

Apostrophes do two things, that’s all: they make contractions, and they make possessives.

ABC Melbourne: 621 kHz AM. Follow this link for other ABC stations in your area. Many thanks to ABC producer Sue Clark for the opportunity to rant on Perspective, and thanks to Brett de Hoedt, Mayor of Hootville, for giving me a prod now and again.

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Tune-in to your local ABC Radio National today at 5:55 P.M. to hear me rant about indefinite articles and the letter ‘h’.

In this installment about the demise of the English language, I get angry about people who use an “an” in front of words with a pronounced letter ‘h’: an horrendous, an horrific and an horrible practice I’m sure you’ll agree.

ABC Melbourne: 621 kHz AM. Follow this link for other ABC stations in your area. Many thanks to ABC producer Sue Clark for the opportunity to rant on Perspective.

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Be sure to tune-in to your local ABC Radio National today at 5:55 P.M. as I rant violently about something that bugs the bejeezus out of me.

Some of you may recall my sporadic contributions to Brett deHoedt’s successful podcast “Hootville” (R.I.P.), in which I waxed lyrical about the demise of the English language.

On this occasion, I’m talking about those little dots that form part of the letters ‘i’ and ‘j’. The little dot is called a tittle.

Please remember to dot your i’s. And your j’s. And don’t forget to cross your t’s. Thankyou.

ABC Melbourne: 621 kHz AM. Follow this link for other ABC stations in your area. Many thanks to Brett, and ABC producer Sue Clark for the opportunity to rant on Perspective.

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