Cut out the jargon, keep the talk plain and simple

The directorate for education and lifelong learning, or the education department to you and me, decided that its plethora of long-winded job titles and sub-divisions took up too much space in its equally long-winded reports, and proposed a solution.

Now you might think the answer would be to get rid of all the stupid, windy terminology, and inject a bit of plain English into the proceedings. But in the rarefied world of local government, that's the last thing they would want to do. So instead, they came up with a series of even more abbreviations and acronyms, and a handy key enabling readers to decipher what all this guff actually meant.

I kid you not, there was a sentence in the report which explained that the key aim of DELL (the department for education and lifelong learning) was 'to provide accredited learning opportunities for young people through the CSLA, D of E, BELA and YAA'.

Glad we've cleared that one up.

It also explained that responsibility of dissuading young people from misusing harmful substances was the responsibility of CAD (Y&C) – or Community Against Drugs, (outreach worker, youth and community) to give them their full title. Trouble is, reading through all that waffle is enough to turn you to drugs.

There was also the suggestion that the PNI, DT, AYCW and DUE should join forces with schools and the sports development team to identify the learning and leisure needs of asylum seekers and refugees. But I couldn't tell you whether that ever was the case, because I haven't a clue what it means.

My personal favourite, though was the suggestion that it fell to Sure Start operatives – or the SS for short – to ensure that there was plentiful availability of child care. Would you entrust your children with an SS officer?

But the thing is, the amusing jargon is the only thing I can remember about that report, which some council official had no doubt diligently put together at great expense to the public. As a method of communicating with the public the work that the council was doing, it was a complete waste of time.

I've often wondered what it is about council chambers that turns folk into automated gobbledegook machines the moment they set foot through the door. Do they put some sort of 'truth drug' in the tea and biscuits before the meeting which makes them talk like this.

At the time I got to know a lot of the councillors quite well, and they usually seemed perfectly normal, decent people, who wanted to give something back to the communities in which they lived. They had wives, they had children, some of them even had jobs, but the moment they walked up the steps to the meeting room, for some reason they seemed to go native.

Street lamps became 'lighting columns'. Roads became 'improvement lines'. New buildings were 'new builds', and signs became 'signage'. I also discovered that every proposal was a 'strategy', except when there was no chance that any of it would see the light of day. Then it would become 'a bold and imaginative strategy'.

I've often pondered what happens to these people when they go home at night. Do they 'liaise in the dining room', suspend standing orders while they do the washing up, or draw up agendas for the weekend?

Last year it was reported that several authorities in the West Midlands were even sending councillors and officials on courses so they could learn to speak in plain English.

I'm sure there are many people around these parts who could say, in very plain English indeed, exactly what they think of that.