I can bring up a lot of Rudd-speak.

One of the best lines I heard was from a British politician Lord Peter Mandelson and watch how he handle the question about his title: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TdQb6seAdJM

BTW, his title is Baron Mandelson, of Foy in the County of Herefordshire and of Hartlepool in the County of Durham, First Secretary of State, Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, President of the Board of Trade and Lord President of the Council.

But hear his response about his title because it is a title with a purpose.

and then there is the fabulous overuse of the word “platforms” to launch everything from a “strategic vision” to a “moon landing” and then there was “global combined with strategic” ie the worst I ever heard was “we are a regional global university with a strategic vision”. I wont dob in the uni by telling you who it was.

How about “our global platform matrix of objectives helps us to achieve a strategically aligned visonary approach to our clients”….

blather, blather blather….

I just detest these intangible meaningless unpackable for all occasions “takeaway” expressions.

Can any body think of any more?.

When I mean “transferrable skills” I mean that they have enough life experience that they can go back into a previous profession. A professional politician can’t do much but a person who has had some real life experience means that they will not feel needed to have to win because they know they couldn’t get a job elsewhere.

I didnt hear you say they were worth it did I Sean?

Forget the pat hackneyed jargon like “transferrable skills” Sean. It makes you sound like a twenty something recruitment agent. They cant judge a candidate properly so they ask people to list their “transferrable skills” and basically it means little.

Interesting that some here are aware of how French Unionists have stopped the privatation of their postal system. As it happens, there is an article about that (not wrtitten by me) on my blog site. It is “French organise national resistance to Privatisation of Post Office” of 5 Oct 09. It was written by Sheila Newman, based on a French Language news story she watched on the Internet.

Had anyone read that appalling article ” Queensland asset sell off the only choice” in the Courier Mail of Monday 26 October by Anna Bligh in defence of the fire sale? She wrote:

I didn’t take on the premiership to squib on the tough choices. I’m prepared to stare down the critics … in order to do what’s right.

As I responded on an anti-privatisation mailing list:

‘Staring down’ also happens to be a favourite catch-phrase of News Limited journalists. I know it has already been used at least once by a Courier Mail journalist to depict the way she got the Labor Party state conference to rubber stamp her fire sale plans.

It has also been used on at least one occasion by Imre Saluzinsky, the chief pro-electricity-privatisation propagandist for the Australian newspaper. Please see “Media contempt for facts in NSW electricity privatisation debate” of 18 Sep 08. (Unfortunately, at the time I wrote the article, I could not find the article in which Saluzinsky lauded Iemma and Costa for having ‘stared down’ the Labor Party following the state Labor Party’s roughly 7 to 1 repudiation of privatisation at the state conference of May 08.)

I somehow doubt if 84%+ of Queenslanders, opposed to privatisation, would have taken too kindly to them having been “stared down” by Bligh over her privatisation plans during the March elections.

Politicians are from a political class. That is their profession and they get paid very well for it. What is happening is that because they have no transferrable skill set, they are reliant on re-elections in order to keep them employed. That means that they are more reliant on donors and using their arbitrary decision-making power which breeds corruption.

Ask yourself this question – what transferrable skill does Rees have?

Compare the pollies today to those of twenty years ago and see the quality fade.

It is not a model I would expect Aussie unions to follow.

Im disgusted that that Nathan Reesn (Nathan Rees Loser – “NRL” thinks for one minute he or a representative in his PATHETIC government is worth 351K or even that Carmel Tebbut and others are worth over 220K (she who has never been known to do a decent thing ever while she was education minister except display a frozen half smile…).

Im really angry – how dare they pass themselves off as politicians? That we have sunk this low without noticing reflects on all of us.