Style

Simon Lancaster

Chapter Chapter 8 in Winning Minds, 2015, pp 109-114 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract Cabinet reshuffles are an exciting time in Whitehall. As speechwriter to a cabinet minister, you never know whether the boss is going to move; nor can you be sure that, if they do move, they’re going to invite you along with them. In 2007, I moved with Alan Johnson when he was shuffled from the Department of Education to the Department of Health. Instantly there were a number of major speeches and parliamentary statements to write. I was plunged head first into a series of meetings to acquaint me with the issues. These meetings were horrendous. Everyone spoke this awful jargon. Everyone was constantly saying words like benchmarking, collaborating, beacons, deliverables, frameworks. I emerged from one of these meetings and said to the official beside me, someone who had been working at the department for years: ‘I didn’t understand a word of that.’ ‘Oh!’ she said. ‘Thank God! I thought it was just me!’

Keywords: Short Word; Short Sentence; Exclamation Mark; Cabinet Minister; Informal Style (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:palchp:978-1-137-46594-8_9

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DOI: 10.1057/9781137465948_9

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