Emotional placebo
Checks which wrongly brand some people as criminals were “regrettable”, the Home Office has said, in response to a newspaper report about the errors.
Regrettable? A strong word indeed. I love words like that out of the mouths of politician. It’s an emotional placebo.
Of course no politician is doing any actual ‘regretting’, just like nobody actually does any ‘mourning’ or ‘grieving’ when they pay lip service to dead soldiers of knifed teenagers. Such expressions however present the appearance of the emotional engagement required in the face of ruined lives that will be forgotten tomorrow.
Tell me readers, what word would you have used to describe the government pissing 680 people’s reputations up the wall (and I’m not talking about their own)?
Posted on July 5th, 2008 at 9:51 am
| See also • Getting real • Polly’s pejorative prescription • David Miliband: Regrets, he’s had a few. But then again… |
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Well, you could perm any from ‘disgusting’, ‘unconscionable’ or ‘outrageous’. But, knowing this bunch of incompetents, ‘typical’ is probably the correct word.
To be fair, this story does kind of cancel out the post immediately below. If the false positives from routine vetting are so high, the Tories’ non-use of it is understandable.
Of course, the real point of this story is that a lot more people are going to be vetted, which means that entirely innocent people who’ve made the mistake of volunteering at their kids’ school are going to be branded criminals. Pretty big disincentive and unlikely to encourage the ‘community’ our beloved leaders are always on about.
Backword Dave’s latest blog post… Blair Invites Head Of International Paedophile Ring To UK
“and unlikely to encourage the ‘community’ our beloved leaders are always on about.”
But this assumes that when they whitter on about “community” they don’t mean it (”community”) in the same way as they mean it when they use words like “regrettable”.
Creating disincentives for real people to volunteer their time towards their community creates spaces and “opportunities” (another weasal word straight out of the Blackadder book of cunning plans) for hand picked party activists at local level to take over. Effectively devolving control, rather than democracy down to the lowest level using the command and control model.
This has been a feature of the local landscape for some time now. Where all local activity and spending at “community” level is controlled through a variety of organisations set up with picked gatekeepers who are used to ensure that regeneration outcomes match those created from the centre of the corporate state.
And it makes absolutely no difference whichever of the three main parties are running the local, town, or parish council. Any sign of independence is ruthlessley stamped on and eliminated to ensure that the market and corporate model is the one put on the ground.
We are truly facing a Hobsons choice here. We are currently at the stage today (2008) where we were in 1995. Two years away from an election with the “official” opposition being lined up for government (with a small g) giving the illusion of change/choice.
The organisations used this time around will be different – church and religious groups will be more prominant once the Anglican Church in the UK has fallen to the current coup attempt. But the model, methods, motivation and outcomes will be just the same corporate Thatcherism we’ve had since the post war mixed economy was ditched in 1979.
I think “emotional placebo” is a bit unjust. After all, placebos do sometimes make people feel better.
Philip’s latest blog post… Britannia Rules the Waves
Oh come on. If I say that Rafael Nadal looks beatable, it means that I think someone might be able to beat him – I’d hardly be claiming that I could do so myself. Similarly, here, the Home Office is simply noting the theoretical possibility that someone somewhere could in principle regret that 700 people have had their job prospects needlessly destroyed.
How about multiple counts of libel ?
Some Merriam-Webster Dictionary definitions of libel