Let's just pause for a moment to imagine what hideous karma-crimes I must have committed to have ended up with this fate.
Anyway, this morning's Green Paper started with this sentence:
In the recent decades the world has been moving at a faster pace.Apart from its grammatical clumsiness (why a definite article in front of "recent"?), it is utter nonsense. The world has been moving (by which I take it they mean spinning) at the same speed for centuries.
There has been absolutely no acceleration in its pace: if there had been we would have seen either days getting shorter than 24 hours, or years getting shorter than 365 days. Or both.
Now I seem to recall that the world is in fact changing pace -- but I vaguely remember that it is getting (infinitesimally) slower every year.
Either the EU is staffed by idiots. Or someone was trying to make a deep-sounding, sonorous metaphorical point but royally screwed it up.
You can tell I would much rather be doing anything than reading these turgid outpourings, can't you?
Postscript.
God: this is the third sentence:
Factory floors are progressively being replaced by creative communities.I would have thought there would be serious health & safety implications to that trend: how can you secure heavy machinery on top of creative communities, even if you can remove the floors from factories without the whole building then falling down? What happens to the people in those communities if you accidentally spill chemicals on them? I'm beginning to think these bureaucrats have absolutely no idea what they're doing.
Post-postscript.
This is just insane. Skipping over the meaningless reference to
Europe must ... invest in new sources of smart ... growth drivers[WTF?], we come to this gem in the 4th paragraph:
Europe must pioneer new ways of ... enjoying diversity.Can anyone think of a single new way of enjoying diversity, ever? Let alone one pioneered by Yoorp
What might new ways of enjoying diversity be? Taking a DVD of a Serbian folk band and, er, shoving it up your arse, perhaps (for those who like that sort of thing)?
I'm only on page 3. There are another 70 pages of this gibberish to go. I think I'm going to be physically sick.
9 comments:
Oh dear. I think we need to watch some more Grand Designs. Possibly set in the south of France or Umbria. Just to remind us that Europe has its advantages.
Good article......but you should have used some of the pictures in the "Horrific News" article to stress some of your points.
Fred in Florida
Lady V: Don't misunderstand me: as you know, I love my continent, and I love European union. The fact I'm about to bunk off to the south of France for a bit of R&R indicates just how much I adore the place.
It's just the fucking mind-numbing bureaucrats (British as well as EC) producing their bollocks-speak which -- and this is the annoying bit -- I have to then read and try to interpret. Fuckers. Although in fairness, NuLabour speak was among the very worst.
Anonymous: good point, well made. I can't think of anything I've ever written that wouldn't have been improved by the inclusion of cock pics.
oh do please read some more. I'm dying to hear how it ends. "Creative Communities" indeed!
I imagine that with the new stringency we shall be spared from a lot of the astonishing public sector non-job advertising which used to grace the Guardian: what a joy it was to read such twaddle! And why was taxpayers' money lavished solely on the Grauniad, I wonder?
Anonymous: You're wrong about it solely going to The Guardian: have you never seen the Sunday Times? That's where the most lavish adverts of all are always placed (the fact that many of them are placed by headhunters only adds to the expense).
The Guardian cornered the specialist professional market by being the first to produce targeted supplements. Once you get a critical mass (eg, Creative & Media on Mondays), everyone advertises there because that's where everyone looks.
The Guardian won in this field because it had the smarter commercial brains.
The really interesting question is what happens now when (a) most advertising is placed on the website (which is much less profitable and which doesn't drive sales of the newspaper) and (b) the volume of that advertising reduces. The Guardian is now facing a difficult time financially precisely as a result of its previous success.
As to the new government reducing the number of weird jobs I think that unlikely: just look at the numerous pointless ministerial roles it has created.
Although the Daily Telegraph is by far the most widely read broadsheet I imagine that its readership would be unlikely to produce many applicants for some of the more extraordinary public sector vacancies. Is it or is not a shame that the Grauniad's "smarter commecial brains" can't be applied to achieving a more numerous readership, I wonder? I share your taste for the chap on his bike!
Anonymous: "by far the most widely read": -- yes, but with a huge proportion of pensioners (the Telegraph's readership is much, much older than any other broadsheet) none of whom will be in the jobs market, and by proportionally more private sector than public sector workers (except in that creative & media field).
But the headline numbers are also a bit of a fib: for years the Telegraph included all sorts of dodgy giveaways in their distribution figures because they were desperate not to fall below their much-vaunted 1 million daily distribution-- how is it useful to advertise a job in Midlands local government to a visiting businessman from South Africa who gets a free copy of the Telegraph in his hotel room?
The Telegraph, like most of the other broadsheets, chased display advertising and neglected classifieds. The Guardian saw a niche and ran with it (possibly because the biggest money-spinner in their group was Auto Trader, which is built on classifieds). Why are you singling them out for approbation?
Equally, I am completely unconvinced by arguments that the bigger the sales, the better the product: yeah, right, and X Factor is the "best" tv programme in Britain, while Titanic (or possibly Avatar) is the "best" film of all-time, ever, because, after all, they sold the most tickets.
It's all about the quality, innit?
I can't bear returning to this, no matter jimbob's request, so here's a link where you can read the full ghastly thing for yourself:
http://ec.europa.eu/culture/our-policy-development/doc/GreenPaper_creative_industries_en.pdf
(Oh, and don't worry that the 1st page looks blank. They always do.)
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