Those whose business involves making statements that are effectively meaningless but must appear to be full of pith and moment are always in need of new turns of phrase to make their airy nothings sound important. For some while, the phrase 'going forward' has been much employed, but lately it seems to have fallen out of use, having perhaps been too often lampooned. Time for a new form of words - and this morning I caught one that I think might well catch on. It was, of course, on the Today programme. I can't remember what the subject was, but a representative of HM Government found himself approving (or obliged to pretend he approved) of something his interlocutor had been doing. 'That,' he declared, 'is exactly the journey of travel the Government has been on.'Yes, journey of travel...
I think we are all, in a very real sense, on a journey of travel, are we not? Going forward.
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Perhaps a good slogan for conservatives at the next election would be "So, we'll go no more a roving."
ReplyDeleteWe would appear, as the new millennium wends it's weary way through time-space, to have found ourselves the unwilling audience in the theatre of rocky hard place, caught, on the dance floor, as the performers, the media and they who would rule us, are locked in a danse macabre as we look on, puzzled and weary.
ReplyDeleteCamille Saint Saëns would smile, pause and simply shrug.
I think 'going forward' is still going strong Nige. To me it seems to indicate an existential malaise in modern society. I felt this so strongly I was moved, a while back, to write a piece on it called 'Going Forward with Cressida Dick' on my blog roseatetern.blogspot.co.uk About fourth post down.
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