Spreading
Off to Brussels by train and to train Eurocities (“a platform for its member cities to share knowledge and ideas, to exchange experiences, to analyse common problems and develop innovative solutions, through a wide range of Forums, Working Groups, Projects, activities and events”).
Its mission statement gives you some idea of the issues, but the people were great: bright young things from Sweden, Holland, Portugal and Poland who speak a swathe of languages but needed a bit of help in writing to communicate.
Depressingly, their grammar (despite the fact that only one had English as a first language) was better than most people who attend PMA courses.
On the other hand, they did admit to using the word modalities and not being very sure what it meant. (It’s a favourite word within the EU, meaning, er, “the classification of logical propositions according to their asserting or denying the possibility, impossibility, contingency, or necessity of their content”. Any the wiser? Nor am I.)
Still, I was told that in Westminster, an even worse word is very popular at the moment: granularisation. Think it means breaking things down into smaller parts, but I could be wrong. People who use it ought to be granularised.
It amazes me that so many organisations (generally government departments or large companies) claim to encourage plain English but actually fill their reports, briefings and proposals with those bullshit bingo words. I had an article sent in a few weeks ago that talked of “empowering our silos to have a two-way dialogue on the issues”. Uh?
All examples of similar meaningless tosh gratefully received.
Meanwhile, may I commend those travelling to Paris or Brussels to take the Eurostar, rather than suffering the airline indignity of being charged for being a kilo overweight on your luggage.
I left St Pancras at 1pm, and was in the heart of Brussels at 3pm. Beats hell out of trying to outrun the Easyjet crowd across the tarmac.