Hot Air

Surely one of the most irritating facets of modern life is the overwhelming preponderance of "business speak" creeping into every corner. It's the underlying, with the emphasis on lying, ethos of the market made flesh. This carefully constructed language mirrors the (capitalist) system that gave birth to it and is filled accordingly with empty promises and delusional contradictions.

It's your manager asking you, just like he did 18 months ago, how we could "do things better round here" and you replying that he could implement the changes you suggested 18 months ago, knowing that in another 18 months you will hear exactly the same question again. It's hearing "our people are our greatest asset" while seeing wages slashed and jobs offshored (to a cheaper labour supply). It's all about your choices whether it is the NHS with their compare hospitals widget ("hmm, now, which A&E shall I attend for my slashed wrists?") or choosing your child's school from a league table (guess what, the 'good' ones get booked up fast!). It's the triumph of presentation over substance - from politician's promises to their crooked expenses, from the oversized wrapper protecting the undersized contents to the beautiful people billboard looming over a run down inner city.

And so it should be entirely predictable then that less than a week after environment secretary Ed Miliband fluffed his way through an ongoing commitment to wind energy, we see the occupation of the Vestas factory on the Isle of Wight by the workers. This factory makes wind turbines but was due to close this month, despite Ed's 'commitment' to renewable energy sources, with the owners citing "a lack of political initiatives". Around 500 jobs would be lost thanks to the nonsensical capitalist system, with those workers joining the ever lengthening queues wandering aimlessly along the never-ending path to Ed's prophesied 'green revolution' and those mystical 1.2m jobs that it will create. Aaah, wage-slavery Nirvana.