Mind your language
MISS Diane Abbott, the Labour MP, said the other day that being a mother helped her career in the Commons 'because I can put up with a lot of child- ish babble'. I know exactly what she means.
But why is it that MPs make so many blunders in what they say? Is it because they are always thinking, or half-think- ing, on their feet and feel that if they go on talking at least they haven't let the other fellow in?
Mrs Angela Knight, the newish Con- servative member for Erewash, also in maternal mode, remarked that the late hours in the Commons 'mitigate against mothers'. This error has become so pop- ular that it is almost impossible to use mitigate or militate (the word Mrs Knight missed) with any hope of being accurately understood. It is the old pre- varicate/procrastinate problem.
Mr William Waldegrave showed at the Scott Inquiry that he had given some thought to the weight of words, and he was at it again last week on the Today programme. 'I don't want to sound too short-termist — in the cur- rent jargon,' he said, neatly telling us what he didn't want to be thought and distancing himself from the very term he had just used to tell us.
Naturally Mr John Major, the Prime Minister, goes hunting for heffalump traps whenever the sun comes out. The Russians in Bosnia are 'pulling their muscles', he said last week — not 'pulling their weight' or 'using their muscle', but pulling several of them. Ouch!
Dot Wordsworth
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