Will Hutton - The Baby Boomers And The Price Of Personal Freedom

[efdemin]

Agreed but there is the alternative career option today that we didn't have. Have a couple of kids and get a free house and income for the next 18 years. 50 years ago it was have a couple of kids, get them taken into care and never see them again.

Having kids is not a career....

[Authoritarian]

Do you think that those pre-war custodians of taste who controlled what we listened to and watched back in the early 60's just rolled over and said 'ok the kids know best, we give up'? No of course they didn't. they were swept away by a tide of new culture which simply said we've had enough of your cr@p. Trouble with gen x and y is that they, (with very few exceptions), have no vision, no creativity and are content to swallow X Factor, pop idol sh1te rather than create something new and fresh in the way we did in the 1960's.

The trouble is, if they say "we've had enough of your crap" they'll quickly find themselves banged up. The noise restrictions on local live music venures are so strict that if a single complaint is receieved the licence holder will quickly find themselves in court with a review on their hands. This is how the boomers strangle the culture of others at the grassroots level, they own most of the property and have filled up the local councils too ensuring that nothing goes on without their explicit permission.

Organising culture now has become such a bureaucratic nightmare that I wonder why people still bother with it, a new spontaneous summer of love would find itself stamped out via the democratic boot of the policeman in no time at all.

The boomers are leaving behind quite a legacy.

Edited August 24, 2010 by Chef

[Tired of Waiting]

The younger generation don't have to be entitled to anything.

But they should be offered a fair start, without this huge debt overhanging this country.

Exactly.

And the NIMBYsm of the majority of the boomers is the biggest problem. They have kicked the ladder behind them. Despicable.

[corevalue]

No, you and I had a greater laxity of outcome. You could make a mistake and another and another, go a bit wild and then still be likely to get a steady, secure job and start a family. It don't work like that anymore

Don't remember ever hearing the term "year out" in my youth.

Steady job? What's that? I was made redundant three times in my career, and most of my colleagues too. Remember Norman Tebbitt's ejaculation - "Get on 'yer bike", a warm, comforting phrase to mollify the millions affected by the industrial carnage Maggie and her henchmen wrought?

[corevalue]

The trouble is, if they say "we've had enough of your crap" they'll quickly find themselves banged up. The noise restrictions on local live music venures are so strict that if a single complaint is receieved the licence holder will quickly find themselves in court with a review on their hands. This is how the boomers strangle the culture of others at the grassroots level, they own most of the property and have filled up the local councils too ensuring that nothing goes on without their explicit permission.

Organising culture now has become such a bureaucratic nightmare that I wonder why people still bother with it, a new spontaneous summer of love would find itself stamped out via the democratic boot of the policeman in no time at all.

The boomers are leaving behind quite a legacy.

Ballcocks. I worked in the music industry in the 70's. Do you think it was any different? In the 60's, until pirate radio came along to save us, we had ONE hour of pop music A WEEK available! You had to listen to foreign radio stations, only receivable at night (and illegal to listen too).

[sleepwello'nights]

Reading the comments from the Guardian, I found myself agreeing with the comments made by "Bluefooty".

as much as can remember of the comment I noticed "Boomer envy. If you don't want the debt don't go to university".

For some reason all his comments have been removed by the moderator. Why is that?

Has he got close to putting up coherent arguments that repudiate the propaganda that they are trying to disseminate?

Edited to add, I notice that after 7.00 am the comments became more balanced, there were less rants about the boomers. I wonder why these people posting in the dead of night are so resentful?

Edited August 24, 2010 by sleepwello'nights

[lets get it right]

No, you and I had a greater laxity of outcome. You could make a mistake and another and another, go a bit wild and then still be likely to get a steady, secure job and start a family. It don't work like that anymore

That, in my experience is true. I dropped out of school half way through A levels (wanted to be a rock musician) - 6 weeks later Dad told me to get a job or 'get out' (nice, but, as it turned out, helpful) - got a job as a construction management trainee (a sort of non-trade apprenticeship) - was taught land surveying and, after two years, dropped out again and went freelance. At 21 I had no qualifications (other than O levels) and was earning twice what my Dad was earning (so I was earning about 2.5 times avearage salary).

I spent years earning great money - drifting in and out of jobs - spending periods as a professional musician too - and, whenever the band broke up or the money ran out - I could pick the phone up on a Friday afternoon and be guaranteed of a 'start' on Monday morning. The rates always seemed to go up. The first full time job I got after that was when I got my first mortgage - even then, after a couple of years - I packed it in and went back to freelancing.

It's a different world now. A completely different world.

[lets get it right]

Ballcocks. I worked in the music industry in the 70's. Do you think it was any different? In the 60's, until pirate radio came along to save us, we had ONE hour of pop music A WEEK available! You had to listen to foreign radio stations, only receivable at night (and illegal to listen too).

Ahh, the crystal sets we built. The valve radios. The one transistor radios! The copper wire as an aerial from your bedroom to the bottom of the garden. The coils we wound on ferrite rods.

Laying in bed at night with army surplus headphones on listening to Radio Luxembourg in the dark.

Standing in a freezing cold shed at night with a soldering iron in hand - until Mum or Dad switched the light off (from inside the house) to tell us (me and my brothers) it was time to come in.

I couldn't see my kids doing that sort of thing now.

[lets get it right]

The trouble is, if they say "we've had enough of your crap" they'll quickly find themselves banged up. The noise restrictions on local live music venures are so strict that if a single complaint is receieved the licence holder will quickly find themselves in court with a review on their hands. This is how the boomers strangle the culture of others at the grassroots level, they own most of the property and have filled up the local councils too ensuring that nothing goes on without their explicit permission.

Organising culture now has become such a bureaucratic nightmare that I wonder why people still bother with it, a new spontaneous summer of love would find itself stamped out via the democratic boot of the policeman in no time at all.

The boomers are leaving behind quite a legacy.

But that's not my f u ck k i n g fault! I don't know how we got into this situation but it has a lot more to do with the 'governing classes' than it has to do with me. Why we have evolved into all this red tape, rules and regulatory nightmare I have no idea - the worst of it has been done by politically correct, New Labour nutjobs.

What I would say is ... we grew up in an era of post war austerity and inherited victorian values. Didn't stop us coming up with rock and roll, beatniks, hells angels, mods, rockers, riots, sit ins, flower power, music festivals - long hair even! It is true to say we turned the world upside down - and not everything that came out of it was good.

Why don't you turn it upside down again?

[Stars]

Don't remember ever hearing the term "year out" in my youth.

Most people didn't go to univerisity at all and didn't have to. Instead they often spent three years living in a hedge tripping balls or pretending to be a struggling writer and here i s the different bit - after which they could easily find steady employment that would allow them to become a settled and established member of the community. I mentioned this to counter campervanman's complaint about the young people not being adventurous enough. The cost of being adventurous has risen prohibitively. Similar behavior now is likely to make your life a long term, uphill struggle

You do realise that this 'year out' is recorded in their cv so a boomer can perform a proper inspection of the candidate's 'adventurous spirit' and 'team player attitude'?

Steady job? What's that? I was made redundant three times in my career, and most of my colleagues too. Remember Norman Tebbitt's ejaculation - "Get on 'yer bike", a warm, comforting phrase to mollify the millions affected by the industrial carnage Maggie and her henchmen wrought?

This isn't a matter of anecdote but recorded history. Your cry that you were made redundant THREE times in four decades is quite amusing though.

[Cogs]

No, you and I had a greater laxity of outcome. You could make a mistake and another and another, go a bit wild and then still be likely to get a steady, secure job and start a family. It don't work like that anymore

I think that is a very, very good point. Boomer bashing aside, it is a very pernicious evil afflicting young people today. This sense of no second chances is very strong with young students now. I know 18 year olds who walk around regretting not taking some extra-extra-extra-curricular activity when they were 13 and feel their CV has been irreparably damaged as a result. Its easy to nod and agree that things have got more competitive, its quite another to take a good hard look at what that means for individuals, even the 'winners'.

[Cogs]

This isn't a matter of anecdote but recorded history. Your cry that you were made redundant THREE times in four decades is quite amusing though.

That made me laugh as well. Can't really hold it against the poster because its so far out of line it really just illustrates how one generation completely fails to understand the situation another finds itself in. File alongside; "don't go out for a couple of years and you'll have a deposit to put down on a semi".

Edited August 24, 2010 by Cogs

[PopGun]

This isn't a matter of anecdote but recorded history. Your cry that you were made redundant THREE times in four decades is quite amusing though.

My heart is bleeding something purple for corevalue, how about being served notice three times in SIX years?!? I doubt he/she will remember that happening in their 'youth'.

[symo]

I think that is a very, very good point. Boomer bashing aside, it is a very pernicious evil afflicting young people today. This sense of no second chances is very strong with young students now. I know 18 year olds who walk around regretting not taking some extra-extra-extra-curricular activity when they were 13 and feel their CV has been irreparably damaged as a result. Its easy to nod and agree that things have got more competitive, its quite another to take a good hard look at what that means for individuals, even the 'winners'.

Generally these extra circulars are required for non jobs in hot air industries. Engineering and Manufacturing tends to stick to : "Can you do the work correctly?"; "Yes"; "Then you are in", it's just a case of convincing people you are the best person for the job, whereas all the "service" and "creative" type industries have a "oh I see you are keen on am-dram" basis.

[Authoritarian]

But that's not my f u ck k i n g fault! I don't know how we got into this situation but it has a lot more to do with the 'governing classes' than it has to do with me. Why we have evolved into all this red tape, rules and regulatory nightmare I have no idea - the worst of it has been done by politically correct, New Labour nutjobs.

What I would say is ... we grew up in an era of post war austerity and inherited victorian values. Didn't stop us coming up with rock and roll, beatniks, hells angels, mods, rockers, riots, sit ins, flower power, music festivals - long hair even! It is true to say we turned the world upside down - and not everything that came out of it was good.

Why don't you turn it upside down again?

Because the boomers have made it illegal. The post war era gave todays elite a fresh start, culturally, politically and physically; the landscape needed to be altered after the devastation of WW2. Given this one in a multi-generation opportunity you proceeded to hand over our decision making powers to the EU, allow mass immigration and then use PC leftism to stifle opposition, hand yourself the family silver and grant yourself the freedom to pilfer from the earning capacity of the proceeding generations.

The game is weighted so heavily against gen's X and Y that opposition is hopeless; boomers have a V.I in impoverishing everyone else and will use the full force of the state to back up their unreasonable demands. The best outcome would be total economic collapse so all traces of boomerism can be wiped clean off the earth.

Edited August 24, 2010 by Chef

[corevalue]

Most people didn't go to univerisity at all and didn't have to. Instead they often spent three years living in a hedge tripping balls or pretending to be a struggling writer and here i s the different bit - after which they could easily find steady employment that would allow them to become a settled and established member of the community. I mentioned this to counter campervanman's complaint about the young people not being adventurous enough. The cost of being adventurous has risen prohibitively. Similar behavior now is likely to make your life a long term, uphill struggle

You do realise that this 'year out' is recorded in their cv so a boomer can perform a proper inspection of the candidate's 'adventurous spirit' and 'team player attitude'?

This isn't a matter of anecdote but recorded history. Your cry that you were made redundant THREE times in four decades is quite amusing though.

Living in a hedge tripping balls? Never in my universe. You worked, in a grubby factory or a mine (we still had them then). You had to have exceptionally well-heeled parents to be able to skive off and pretend to be an aspiring writer, and gaps in CV's were viewed in exactly the same way by employers, but if you were well-connected, did that matter? Nepotism was rife back then.

The benefits system hadn't been rigged in the 60s/70s . Get pregnant? Off to the unmarried-mothers hostel with you, no free flats. Housing benefit, what's that? Want a council house, WAIT! A lot of my peers who were qualified to go to University, couldn't, because their parents could not afford it - they were supposed to make a means-tested contribution towards your "grant", which was reduced pro-rata. I went to a Polytech, a lot of the people there were doing night school, ever heard of that? Where you lived at home, worked a full-time job, and studied in the evenings? Another load were day-release, again, holding down a full-time job and studying a couple of days a week. But that was back then, when it was felt we needed technologists, and not conveyancing clerks and nail-salon operators.

If I go for a job in technology now, I'm over fifty, and a young'un is also applying, who do you think will be favoured? Have you never heard of age discrimination? At least 1/3rd of the over-fifties are "economically inactive", weasel words used for when companies purge out older workers, to replace them with cheaper younger ones, who have the advantage of not having developed deep cynicism (yet). Although to be fair, I think today's generation is streets ahead of us in that one.

You should not confuse "boomers" with those who have power. Being old doesn't equate with being able to influence policy, although the principle of dead-man's shoes means that those able to set the agenda are usually the older generations. Same as it always was.

[corevalue]

Because the boomers have made it illegal. The post war era gave todays elite a fresh start, culturally, politically and physically; the landscape needed to be altered after the devastation of WW2. Given this one in a multi-generation opportunity you proceeded to hand over our decision making powers to the EU, allow mass immigration and then use PC leftism to stifle opposition, hand yourself the family silver and grant yourself the freedom to pilfer from the earning capacity of the proceeding generations.

The game is weighted so heavily against gen's X and Y that opposition is hopeless; boomers have a V.I in impoverishing everyone else and will use the full force of the state to back up their unreasonable demands. The best outcome would be total economic collapse so all traces of boomerism can be wiped clean off the earth.

FFS stop equating boomers with those who have wealth and influence. They are NOT the same group.

[Cogs]

<br />Generally these extra circulars are required for non jobs in hot air industries. Engineering and Manufacturing tends to stick to : "Can you do the work correctly?"; "Yes"; "Then you are in", it's just a case of convincing people you are the best person for the job, whereas all the "service" and "creative" type industries have a "oh I see you are keen on am-dram" basis.<br />

I don't really think that is true to be honest. Depends what you mean by engineering perhaps. When a large company or a corporation hires a graduate engineer, they are really thinking of them in terms of being managers by the time they are 30. Its not like anyone that knows anything has hiring authority either, the girls from HR need to interfere to justify their existence. I largely have to base this on situations where people embedded in these companies have requested a reference from me for someone and then gone on to indicate the sort of things I need to say if it were my intention to strongly support a candidate...hypothetically you understand. I'm afraid flexible team-working go-to enablers with soft skills on tap are what they need to hear about.

Bottom line is, if it were just about having the skills to do the job, Europe has tens of millions of people happy to do it emerging from cultures that have always valued engineering (this includes the former Eastern Bloc, not just 'West Germany' as is often suggested). Competition, competition, competition, they have the luxury of asking for the complete package these days. Gifted with good technical knowledge and intuition <b>and</b> clubbable, socially astute etc. The one trick pony is headed for the knacker's yard.

Edited August 24, 2010 by Cogs

[Scott Sando]

FFS stop equating boomers with those who have wealth and influence. They are NOT the same group.

Don't worry corevalue I'm a young man and I don't blame the boomers, how could I, I was brought up by them. What this is propaganda put out to turn our attention away from the power elite who caused this mess. The Frankfurt school hasn't done a number on me.

[Cogs]

Don't worry corevalue I'm a young man and I don't blame the boomers, how could I, I was brought up by them. What this is propaganda put out to turn our attention away from the power elite who caused this mess. The Frankfurt school hasn't done a number on me.

The work of the much-maligned Frankfurt school was mostly about understanding things like that. Horkheimer, for example, was particularly interested in how Naziism became accepted as 'reasonable'. When it was fashionable to keep bringing this up I asked for some sort of meat on the bones, maybe some page references, but the conspiracy theory is notably lacking in theory. Indeed, American sources don't even seem to undersand what 'critical theory' actually is which is hardly a promising starting point. But as you were.

[Scott Sando]

The work of the much-maligned Frankfurt school was mostly about understanding things like that. Horkheimer, for example, was particularly interested in how Naziism became accepted as 'reasonable'. When it was fashionable to keep bringing this up I asked for some sort of meat on the bones, maybe some page references, but the conspiracy theory is notably lacking in theory. Indeed, American sources don't even seem to undersand what 'critical theory' actually is which is hardly a promising starting point. But as you were.

I can apreciate some of the work Erich Fromm fear of freedom is a classic. But the main philosophy of the school was marxist, and they believed in destroying the old system and molding a new one out the ashes, and I think we can see where these philosophy's have led society. Yes lets give the state more power!

[Scott Sando]

Marxism + Critical theory = common sense . Not in the real world, maybe in a book.

[Stars]

Living in a hedge tripping balls? Never in my universe. You worked, in a grubby factory or a mine (we still had them then).

These comments weren't specifically about you.

The comments were meant to illustrate a point in a lively manner; a point which originally comes from camperman's comment that younger generation are not very adventurous compared to his generation. I am pointing out how times have changed and am using a generalisation to say that the costs of that kind of behaviour have changed dramatically. This part of my point has been entirely overlooked by you.

You are not defeating that generalisation by pointing out that the specific's i use for dramatic effect as illustration don't specifically or accurately apply to you personally.

The generalisation is reasonable because it is backed by millions of people's experiences and memories of the fifties-sixties and our recorded history..

[Scott Sando]

Theo Adorno Frankfurt school.

'What radical music perceives is the untransfigured suffering of man [...] The seismographic registration of traumatic shock becomes, at the same time, the technical structural law of music. It forbids continuity and development. Musical language is polarized according to its extreme; towards gestures of shock resembling bodily convulsions on the one hand, and on the other towards a crystalline standstill of a human being whom anxiety causes to freeze in her tracks [...] Modern music sees absolute oblivion as its goal. It is the surviving message of despair from the shipwrecked.'

George Orwel

Politics and the English Language

1946

'Most people who bother with the matter at all would admit that the English language is in a bad way, but it is generally assumed that we cannot by conscious action do anything about it. Our civilization is decadent and our language -- so the argument runs -- must inevitably share in the general collapse. It follows that any struggle against the abuse of language is a sentimental archaism, like preferring candles to electric light or hansom cabs to aeroplanes. Underneath this lies the half-conscious belief that language is a natural growth and not an instrument which we shape for our own purposes.

Now, it is clear that the decline of a language must ultimately have political and economic causes: it is not due simply to the bad influence of this or that individual writer. But an effect can become a cause, reinforcing the original cause and producing the same effect in an intensified form, and so on indefinitely. A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts. The point is that the process is reversible. Modern English, especially written English, is full of bad habits which spread by imitation and which can be avoided if one is willing to take the necessary trouble. If one gets rid of these habits one can think more clearly, and to think clearly is a necessary first step toward political regeneration: so that the fight against bad English is not frivolous and is not the exclusive concern of professional writers. I will come back to this presently, and I hope that by that time the meaning of what I have said here will have become clearer. Meanwhile, here are five specimens of the English language as it is now habitually written.

These five passages have not been picked out because they are especially bad -- I could have quoted far worse if I had chosen -- but because they illustrate various of the mental vices from which we now suffer. They are a little below the average, but are fairly representative examples. I number them so that I can refer back to them when necessary:

I am not, indeed, sure whether it is not true to say that the Milton who once seemed not unlike a seventeenth-century Shelley had not become, out of an experience ever more bitter in each year, more alien [sic] to the founder of that Jesuit sect which nothing could induce him to tolerate.

Professor Harold Laski

(Essay in Freedom of Expression )

Above all, we cannot play ducks and drakes with a native battery of idioms which prescribes egregious collocations of vocables as the Basic put up with for tolerate , or put at a loss for bewilder .

Professor Lancelot Hogben (Interglossia )

On the one side we have the free personality: by definition it is not neurotic, for it has neither conflict nor dream. Its desires, such as they are, are transparent, for they are just what institutional approval keeps in the forefront of consciousness; another institutional pattern would alter their number and intensity; there is little in them that is natural, irreducible, or culturally dangerous. But on the other side ,the social bond itself is nothing but the mutual reflection of these self-secure integrities. Recall the definition of love. Is not this the very picture of a small academic? Where is there a place in this hall of mirrors for either personality or fraternity?

Essay on psychology in Politics (New York )

All the "best people" from the gentlemen's clubs, and all the frantic fascist captains, united in common hatred of Socialism and bestial horror at the rising tide of the mass revolutionary movement, have turned to acts of provocation, to foul incendiarism, to medieval legends of poisoned wells, to legalize their own destruction of proletarian organizations, and rouse the agitated petty-bourgeoise to chauvinistic fervor on behalf of the fight against the revolutionary way out of the crisis.

Communist pamphlet

If a new spirit is to be infused into this old country, there is one thorny and contentious reform which must be tackled, and that is the humanization and galvanization of the B.B.C. Timidity here will bespeak canker and atrophy of the soul. The heart of Britain may be sound and of strong beat, for instance, but the British lion's roar at present is like that of Bottom in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream -- as gentle as any sucking dove. A virile new Britain cannot continue indefinitely to be traduced in the eyes or rather ears, of the world by the effete languors of Langham Place, brazenly masquerading as "standard English." When the Voice of Britain is heard at nine o'clock, better far and infinitely less ludicrous to hear aitches honestly dropped than the present priggish, inflated, inhibited, school-ma'amish arch braying of blameless bashful mewing maidens!

Letter in Tribune

Each of these passages has faults of its own, but, quite apart from avoidable ugliness, two qualities are common to all of them. The first is staleness of imagery; the other is lack of precision. The writer either has a meaning and cannot express it, or he inadvertently says something else, or he is almost indifferent as to whether his words mean anything or not. This mixture of vagueness and sheer incompetence is the most marked characteristic of modern English prose, and especially of any kind of political writing. As soon as certain topics are raised, the concrete melts into the abstract and no one seems able to think of turns of speech that are not hackneyed: prose consists less and less of words chosen for the sake of their meaning, and more and more of phrases tacked together like the sections of a prefabricated henhouse. I list below, with notes and examples, various of the tricks by means of which the work of prose construction is habitually dodged:

Dying metaphors. A newly invented metaphor assists thought by evoking a visual image, while on the other hand a metaphor which is technically "dead" (e.g. iron resolution ) has in effect reverted to being an ordinary word and can generally be used without loss of vividness. But in between these two classes there is a huge dump of worn-out metaphors which have lost all evocative power and are merely used because they save people the trouble of inventing phrases for themselves. Examples are: Ring the changes on, take up the cudgel for, toe the line, ride roughshod over, stand shoulder to shoulder with, play into the hands of, no axe to grind, grist to the mill, fishing in troubled waters, on the order of the day, Achilles' heel, swan song, hotbed . Many of these are used without knowledge of their meaning (what is a "rift," for instance?), and incompatible metaphors are frequently mixed, a sure sign that the writer is not interested in what he is saying. Some metaphors now current have been twisted out of their original meaning withouth those who use them even being aware of the fact. For example, toe the line is sometimes written as tow the line . Another example is the hammer and the anvil , now always used with the implication that the anvil gets the worst of it. In real life it is always the anvil that breaks the hammer, never the other way about: a writer who stopped to think what he was saying would avoid perverting the original phrase.

Operators or verbal false limbs. These save the trouble of picking out appropriate verbs and nouns, and at the same time pad each sentence with extra syllables which give it an appearance of symmetry. Characteristic phrases are render inoperative, militate against, make contact with, be subjected to, give rise to, give grounds for, have the effect of, play a leading part (role) in, make itself felt, take effect, exhibit a tendency to, serve the purpose of, etc.,etc . The keynote is the elimination of simple verbs. Instead of being a single word, such as break, stop, spoil, mend, kill , a verb becomes a phrase , made up of a noun or adjective tacked on to some general-purpose verb such as prove, serve, form, play, render . In addition, the passive voice is wherever possible used in preference to the active, and noun constructions are used instead of gerunds (by examination of instead of by examining ). The range of verbs is further cut down by means of the -ize and de- formations, and the banal statements are given an appearance of profundity by means of the not un- formation. Simple conjunctions and prepositions are replaced by such phrases as with respect to, having regard to, the fact that, by dint of, in view of, in the interests of, on the hypothesis that ; and the ends of sentences are saved by anticlimax by such resounding commonplaces as greatly to be desired, cannot be left out of account, a development to be expected in the near future, deserving of serious consideration, brought to a satisfactory conclusion , and so on and so forth.

Pretentious diction. Words like phenomenon, element, individual (as noun), objective, categorical, effective, virtual, basic, primary, promote, constitute, exhibit, exploit, utilize, eliminate, liquidate , are used to dress up a simple statement and give an aire of scientific impartiality to biased judgements. Adjectives like epoch-making, epic, historic, unforgettable, triumphant, age-old, inevitable, inexorable, veritable , are used to dignify the sordid process of international politics, while writing that aims at glorifying war usually takes on an archaic color, its characteristic words being: realm, throne, chariot, mailed fist, trident, sword, shield, buckler, banner, jackboot, clarion . Foreign words and expressions such as cul de sac, ancien r&eacutgime, deus ex machina, mutatis mutandis, status quo, gleichschaltung, weltanschauung , are used to give an air of culture and elegance. Except for the useful abbreviations i.e., e.g. , and etc. , there is no real need for any of the hundreds of foreign phrases now current in the English language. Bad writers, and especially scientific, political, and sociological writers, are nearly always haunted by the notion that Latin or Greek words are grander than Saxon ones, and unnecessary words like expedite, ameliorate, predict, extraneous, deracinated, clandestine, subaqueous , and hundreds of others constantly gain ground from their Anglo-Saxon numbers. The jargon peculiar to Marxist writing (hyena, hangman, cannibal, petty bourgeois, these gentry, lackey, flunkey, mad dog, White Guard , etc.) consists largely of words translated from Russian, German, or French; but the normal way of coining a new word is to use Latin or Greek root with the appropriate affix and, where necessary, the size formation. It is often easier to make up words of this kind (deregionalize, impermissible, extramarital, non-fragmentary and so forth) than to think up the English words that will cover one's meaning. The result, in general, is an increase in slovenliness and vagueness.

Meaningless words. In certain kinds of writing, particularly in art criticism and literary criticism, it is normal to come across long passages which are almost completely lacking in meaning. Words like romantic, plastic, values, human, dead, sentimental, natural, vitality , as used in art criticism, are strictly meaningless, in the sense that they not only do not point to any discoverable object, but are hardly ever expected to do so by the reader. When one critic writes, "The outstanding feature of Mr. X's work is its living quality," while another writes, "The immediately striking thing about Mr. X's work is its peculiar deadness," the reader accepts this as a simple difference opinion. If words like black and white were involved, instead of the jargon words dead and living, he would see at once that language was being used in an improper way. Many political words are similarly abused. The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies "something not desirable." The words democracy, socialism, freedom, patriotic, realistic, justice have each of them several different meanings which cannot be reconciled with one another. In the case of a word like democracy, not only is there no agreed definition, but the attempt to make one is resisted from all sides. It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it: consequently the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using that word if it were tied down to any one meaning. Words of this kind are often used in a consciously dishonest way. That is, the person who uses them has his own private definition, but allows his hearer to think he means something quite different. Statements like Marshal Petain was a true patriot, The Soviet press is the freest in the world, The Catholic Church is opposed to persecution, are almost always made with intent to deceive. Other words used in variable meanings, in most cases more or less dishonestly, are: class, totalitarian, science, progressive, reactionary, bourgeois, equality.

Now that I have made this catalogue of swindles and perversions, let me give another example of the kind of writing that they lead to. This time it must of its nature be an imaginary one. I am going to translate a passage of good English into modern English of the worst sort. Here is a well-known verse from Ecclesiastes:

I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.

Here it is in modern English:

Objective considerations of contemporary phenomena compel the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must invariably be taken into account.

This is a parody, but not a very gross one. Exhibit (3) above, for instance, contains several patches of the same kind of English. It will be seen that I have not made a full translation. The beginning and ending of the sentence follow the original meaning fairly closely, but in the middle the concrete illustrations -- race, battle, bread -- dissolve into the vague phrases "success or failure in competitive activities." This had to be so, because no modern writer of the kind I am discussing -- no one capable of using phrases like "objective considerations of contemporary phenomena" -- would ever tabulate his thoughts in that precise and detailed way. The whole tendency of modern prose is away from concreteness. Now analyze these two sentences a little more closely. The first contains forty-nine words but only sixty syllables, and all its words are those of everyday life. The second contains thirty-eight words of ninety syllables: eighteen of those words are from Latin roots, and one from Greek. The first sentence contains six vivid images, and only one phrase ("time and chance") that could be called vague. The second contains not a single fresh, arresting phrase, and in spite of its ninety syllables it gives only a shortened version of the meaning contained in the first. Yet without a doubt it is the second kind of sentence that is gaining ground in modern English. I do not want to exaggerate. This kind of writing is not yet universal, and outcrops of simplicity will occur here and there in the worst-written page. Still, if you or I were told to write a few lines on the uncertainty of human fortunes, we should probably come much nearer to my imaginary sentence than to the one from Ecclesiastes. As I have tried to show, modern writing at its worst does not consist in picking out words for the sake of their meaning and inventing images in order to make the meaning clearer. It consists in gumming together long strips of words which have already been set in order by someone else, and making the results presentable by sheer humbug. The attraction of this way of writing is that it is easy. It is easier -- even quicker, once you have the habit -- to say In my opinion it is not an unjustifiable assumption that than to say I think. If you use ready-made phrases, you not only don't have to hunt about for the words; you also don't have to bother with the rhythms of your sentences since these phrases are generally so arranged as to be more or less euphonious. When you are composing in a hurry -- when you are dictating to a stenographer, for instance, or making a public speech -- it is natural to fall into a pretentious, Latinized style. Tags like a consideration which we should do well to bear in mind or a conclusion to which all of us would readily assent will save many a sentence from coming down with a bump. By using stale metaphors, similes, and idioms, you save much mental effort, at the cost of leaving your meaning vague, not only for your reader but for yourself. This is the significance of mixed metaphors. The sole aim of a metaphor is to call up a visual image. When these images clash -- as in The Fascist octopus has sung its swan song, the jackboot is thrown into the melting pot -- it can be taken as certain that the writer is not seeing a mental image of the objects he is naming; in other words he is not really thinking. Look again at the examples I gave at the beginning of this essay. Professor Laski (1) uses five negatives in fifty three words. One of these is superfluous, making nonsense of the whole passage, and in addition there is the slip -- alien for akin -- making further nonsense, and several avoidable pieces of clumsiness which increase the general vagueness. Professor Hogben (2) plays ducks and drakes with a battery which is able to write prescriptions, and, while disapproving of the everyday phrase put up with, is unwilling to look egregious up in the dictionary and see what it means; (3), if one takes an uncharitable attitude towards it, is simply meaningless: probably one could work out its intended meaning by reading the whole of the article in which it occurs. In (4), the writer knows more or less what he wants to say, but an accumulation of stale phrases chokes him like tea leaves blocking a sink. In (5), words and meaning have almost parted company. People who write in this manner usually have a general emotional meaning -- they dislike one thing and want to express solidarity with another -- but they are not interested in the detail of what they are saying. A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus:

What am I trying to say?

What words will express it?

What image or idiom will make it clearer?

Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?

And he will probably ask himself two more:

Could I put it more shortly?

Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly?

But you are not obliged to go to all this trouble. You can shirk it by simply throwing your mind open and letting the ready-made phrases come crowding in. The will construct your sentences for you -- even think your thoughts for you, to a certain extent -- and at need they will perform the important service of partially concealing your meaning even from yourself. It is at this point that the special connection between politics and the debasement of language becomes clear.

In our time it is broadly true that political writing is bad writing. Where it is not true, it will generally be found that the writer is some kind of rebel, expressing his private opinions and not a "party line." Orthodoxy, of whatever color, seems to demand a lifeless, imitative style. The political dialects to be found in pamphlets, leading articles, manifestoes, White papers and the speeches of undersecretaries do, of course, vary from party to party, but they are all alike in that one almost never finds in them a fresh, vivid, homemade turn of speech. When one watches some tired hack on the platform mechanically repeating the familiar phrases -- bestial, atrocities, iron heel, bloodstained tyranny, free peoples of the world, stand shoulder to shoulder -- one often has a curious feeling that one is not watching a live human being but some kind of dummy: a feeling which suddenly becomes stronger at moments when the light catches the speaker's spectacles and turns them into blank discs which seem to have no eyes behind them. And this is not altogether fanciful. A speaker who uses that kind of phraseology has gone some distance toward turning himself into a machine. The appropriate noises are coming out of his larynx, but his brain is not involved as it would be if he were choosing his words for himself. If the speech he is making is one that he is accustomed to make over and over again, he may be almost unconscious of what he is saying, as one is when one utters the responses in church. And this reduced state of consciousness, if not indispensable, is at any rate favorable to political conformity.

In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of the political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism., question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenseless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers. People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called elimination of unreliable elements. Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them. Consider for instance some comfortable English professor defending Russian totalitarianism. He cannot say outright, "I believe in killing off your opponents when you can get good results by doing so." Probably, therefore, he will say something like this:

While freely conceding that the Soviet regime exhibits certain features which the humanitarian may be inclined to deplore, we must, I think, agree that a certain curtailment of the right to political opposition is an unavoidable concomitant of transitional periods, and that the rigors which the Russian people have been called upon to undergo have been amply justified in the sphere of concrete achievement.

The inflated style itself is a kind of euphemism. A mass of Latin words falls upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outline and covering up all the details. The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink. In our age there is no such thing as "keeping out of politics." All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia. When the general atmosphere is bad, language must suffer. I should expect to find -- this is a guess which I have not sufficient knowledge to verify -- that the German, Russian and Italian languages have all deteriorated in the last ten or fifteen years, as a result of dictatorship.

But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought. A bad usage can spread by tradition and imitation even among people who should and do know better. The debased language that I have been discussing is in some ways very convenient. Phrases like a not unjustifiable assumption, leaves much to be desired, would serve no good purpose, a consideration which we should do well to bear in mind, are a continuous temptation, a packet of aspirins always at one's elbow. Look back through this essay, and for certain you will find that I have again and again committed the very faults I am protesting against. By this morning's post I have received a pamphlet dealing with conditions in Germany. The author tells me that he "felt impelled" to write it. I open it at random, and here is almost the first sentence I see: "[The Allies] have an opportunity not only of achieving a radical transformation of Germany's social and political structure in such a way as to avoid a nationalistic reaction in Germany itself, but at the same time of laying the foundations of a co-operative and unified Europe." You see, he "feels impelled" to write -- feels, presumably, that he has something new to say -- and yet his words, like cavalry horses answering the bugle, group themselves automatically into the familiar dreary pattern. This invasion of one's mind by ready-made phrases ( lay the foundations, achieve a radical transformation ) can only be prevented if one is constantly on guard against them, and every such phrase anaesthetizes a portion of one's brain.

I said earlier that the decadence of our language is probably curable. Those who deny this would argue, if they produced an argument at all, that language merely reflects existing social conditions, and that we cannot influence its development by any direct tinkering with words and constructions. So far as the general tone or spirit of a language goes, this may be true, but it is not true in detail. Silly words and expressions have often disappeared, not through any evolutionary process but owing to the conscious action of a minority. Two recent examples were explore every avenue and leave no stone unturned , which were killed by the jeers of a few journalists. There is a long list of flyblown metaphors which could similarly be got rid of if enough people would interest themselves in the job; and it should also be possible to laugh the not un- formation out of existence, to reduce the amount of Latin and Greek in the average sentence, to drive out foreign phrases and strayed scientific words, and, in general, to make pretentiousness unfashionable. But all these are minor points. The defense of the English language implies more than this, and perhaps it is best to start by saying what it does not imply.

To begin with it has nothing to do with archaism, with the salvaging of obsolete words and turns of speech, or with the setting up of a "standard English" which must never be departed from. On the contrary, it is especially concerned with the scrapping of every word or idiom which has outworn its usefulness. It has nothing to do with correct grammar and syntax, which are of no importance so long as one makes one's meaning clear, or with the avoidance of Americanisms, or with having what is called a "good prose style." On the other hand, it is not concerned with fake simplicity and the attempt to make written English colloquial. Nor does it even imply in every case preferring the Saxon word to the Latin one, though it does imply using the fewest and shortest words that will cover one's meaning. What is above all needed is to let the meaning choose the word, and not the other way around. In prose, the worst thing one can do with words is surrender to them. When yo think of a concrete object, you think wordlessly, and then, if you want to describe the thing you have been visualizing you probably hunt about until you find the exact words that seem to fit it. When you think of something abstract you are more inclined to use words from the start, and unless you make a conscious effort to prevent it, the existing dialect will come rushing in and do the job for you, at the expense of blurring or even changing your meaning. Probably it is better to put off using words as long as possible and get one's meaning as clear as one can through pictures and sensations. Afterward one can choose -- not simply accept -- the phrases that will best cover the meaning, and then switch round and decide what impressions one's words are likely to mak on another person. This last effort of the mind cuts out all stale or mixed images, all prefabricated phrases, needless repetitions, and humbug and vagueness generally. But one can often be in doubt about the effect of a word or a phrase, and one needs rules that one can rely on when instinct fails. I think the following rules will cover most cases:

Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.

Never us a long word where a short one will do.

If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.

Never use the passive where you can use the active.

Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.

Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

These rules sound elementary, and so they are, but they demand a deep change of attitude in anyone who has grown used to writing in the style now fashionable. One could keep all of them and still write bad English, but one could not write the kind of stuff that I quoted in those five specimens at the beginning of this article.

I have not here been considering the literary use of language, but merely language as an instrument for expressing and not for concealing or preventing thought. Stuart Chase and others have come near to claiming that all abstract words are meaningless, and have used this as a pretext for advocating a kind of political quietism. Since you don't know what Fascism is, how can you struggle against Fascism? One need not swallow such absurdities as this, but one ought to recognize that the present political chaos is connected with the decay of language, and that one can probably bring about some improvement by starting at the verbal end. If you simplify your English, you are freed from the worst follies of orthodoxy. You cannot speak any of the necessary dialects, and when you make a stupid remark its stupidity will be obvious, even to yourself. Political language -- and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists -- is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. One cannot change this all in a moment, but one can at least change one's own habits, and from time to time one can even, if one jeers loudly enough, send some worn-out and useless phrase -- some jackboot, Achilles' heel, hotbed, melting pot, acid test, veritable inferno, or other lump of verbal refuse -- into the dustbin, where it belongs.'

Critical theory what balls.

[olliegog]

FFS stop equating boomers with those who have wealth and influence. They are NOT the same group.

+1

replacing the FFS by 'FGS' as I don't use four letter words.