Christmas and Positive Money.

We Positive Money supporters in the North East of England are a talented lot. Me in particular, of course. But there's also Gillian Swanson. Below is Gillian's variation on William Wordsworth's poem "I wandered lonely as a cloud", followed by Gillian's cynical definition of various fashionable Weasel words.

I wandered, gloomy, sad and bowed,

From store to store, by Sales, by tills,

And thought, all sweaty in the crowd,

How little Christmas shopping thrills:

With feet than ache and wobbly knees  -

Oh! but this season is a tease!

Continuous as the lights that shine

And twinkle down the streets today,

They stretched in never-ending line

To have their goods wrapped up and pay:

Ten thousand saw I at a glance

Staring ahead, as if in trance.

The tills beside them rang, as they

Out-did the Jones’s shopping spree:

The old, the young, the straight, the gay,

All spendthrift flocked in company,

While, dazed and fazed, I little bought:

What wealth I had too soon fell short.

And now, as on the couch I lie

With vacant purse, in pensive mood,

I wonder at that dash to buy,

At how each docile wally queued:

For when they start to measure bills,

Finances bust, they’ll curse the tills.

Weasel words and phrases.

“Centres of excellence”: establishment-approved set-ups.

“Best practice”: establishment-approved ways of doing things.

“Stakeholders”: carefully chosen special-interest groups courted and flattered into the belief that they are helping the powerful to shape policy.

“Civil society”: members of any special interest groups considered important/amenable enough to be “stakeholders”)

“Governance”: the replacement of representative government with techniques that steer tame “stakeholders” along pre-determined paths towards a desired outcome.

“Consultation”: the process by which “stakeholders” are fooled into believing that they actually wanted to go down those paths anyway.

“Facilitator”: the stooge trained in group dynamics who makes sure the “consultation process” doesn’t go astray.

“Consensus”: the apparent unanimity resulting from the elimination of opposition by a skilled “facilitator”.

"Participatory democracy”: the side-lining and ostracism of dissenting majorities and minorities by systematically excluding them from participation in “civil society” and “the consultation process”.

"Networking": collusion among “stakeholders” in pursuit of their own interests, without regard for those barred from participation in “participatory democracy”.

“Opinion-formers”: the supra-national political and academic establishment, plus influential “stakeholders” who have achieved “consensus” via corruption or the “consultation process”.

“Law-makers”: an up-and-coming term, increasingly used as a synonym for representatives, heaven help us!