Richard Benyon's Westminster Diary

Richard Benyon MP • Published 29 Oct 2008 12:00 0 Comments

I HAVE been asked by a constituent to start talking the economy up.

He points out that there are many favourable comparisons to previous downturns and if we keep talking about how dreadful things are it will all become a self fulfilling prophesy.

It is a difficult balance to get right. On one hand he is right: politicians, the media and anyone in a position of trust should act responsibly in how they comment on our economy at this time. On the other, things are undeniably bad and getting worse.

I will just tell it as I see it. I can only give voice to the concerns being raised to me by small businessmen, people who are being made redundant and those facing negative equity on their homes.

In West Berkshire there is an organisation called a Local Strategic Partnership. What do you mean you've never heard of it? Where have you been?

Actually it is a good idea, if a bit New Labour. It gets the Council to sit down with local businesses and the voluntary sector to solve local problems. That description was plain English, I think.

The Minister responsible described it differently. She said LSPs are "cross-sector, cross-agency umbrella partnerships that offer real opportunities to streamline existing partnership arrangements and to make them more effective, by making better connections between individual initiatives."

She really said that.

The trouble is that ministers and civil servants speak like this all the time. Gordon Brown once described his economic policy as "neo-classical endogenous growth theory".

Apparently that line was written by his then sidekick, Ed Balls. This prompted someone to say the line "wasn't Brown's it was balls".

I am delighted to hear of an initiative among Conservative councillors to dump phrases that many of us find irritating. When I hear some ministers speak I want to stand up and shout, "What does that mean?" I bet half the time they don't know themselves.

While I can mangle my syntax as well as anyone, I pledge from now on to attempt to speak a language that people in the real world understand.

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This blog appeared in Reading Chronicle 30 Oct 08

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