Comments on: LGA Expose: Blue-sky Bastions of Beaconicity Bollocks

By: LGA’s War of the Words

LGA’s War of the Words — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 16:17:44 +0000

[...] Beaconicity’ is in fact a central government term which came from this DCLG research report. (Read Jack’s piece here for a marvellous expose of why the LGA’s ‘banned word list’ is so misleading – [...]

By: JackP

JackP — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 17:00:43 +0000

Roger, thanks for stopping by and being so constructive. I don’t suppose you could take the time to explain why you think I’m taking it too seriously, or what you think the ‘bigger picture’ is in this case? Random abuse doesn’t really help, I’m afraid…

By: Roger

Roger — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 16:08:24 +0000

God you take these things seriously. Lighten up and start thinking about the bigger picture.

By: Peter Wardley-Repen

Peter Wardley-Repen — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 15:01:54 +0000

Moderately amusing to find “transactional” on the list. Next year’s Better Connected should be interesting – not to mention the possible meltdown of local government web projects all over the country…

By: JackP

JackP — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 00:42:16 +0000

Oh no Matt, one word will suffice. Providing — and this is important — that it contains enough syllables or that it is otherwise sufficiently esoteric.

By: Matt

Matt — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 00:36:39 +0000

In all honesty some of those are empty words which mean very little.

Some of them are fine, and the fact that they are frowned upon is more a mark of a dumbed down society.

So to put it simply citizens will feel more empowered, and community engagement will be an early win along with customer empowerment if some local authorities become bastions of beaconicity for plain English. Of course the indicators yielded from these pathfinders could show the direction of travel for others.

I think there is a rule in government commincation allong the lines of why use 1 word where 20 will do.

By: Chris Hunt

Chris Hunt — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 23:51:46 +0000

Two words on the LGA “banned” list:

“Empowerment – people power

Engagement – working with people”

Story on the LGA home page:

“Empowering engagement: a stronger voice for older people”

Physician, heal thyself!

By: Seb Crump

Seb Crump — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 22:15:48 +0000

Great exposé. I’m not sure that ‘procure’ (a complex legal process because of EU law) is the equivalent of ‘buy’ (more akin to a simple process of purchasing groceries) either – but perhaps ‘they’ have just got to me…

By: Ben Proctor

Ben Proctor — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 19:40:17 +0000

All fair points.
Of course the LGA is a membership organisation and has no power to ban councils from doing anything.

By: The Goldfish

The Goldfish — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 18:34:35 +0000

I must say that recent dealings with the council involved a few (admittedly less preposterous) words from the list. The word that particularly stung with me was the alleged verb “to action” as in the sentence “According to the computer, we received your letter three months ago, but it hasn’t been actioned yet.”