Who is the guy who isn't Tony Blair?

You can tell how poor your brand image is when people define it by what it is not. As pointed as this is for Gordon Brown and his future, this approach to describing people and organisations is quite common. It may seem amusing, but it is also disappointing. Calling a spade a spade is not that easy. Especially if it’s new, obscured by what has gone before or simply contravenes majority values. Meat-free sausages. Non-governmental organisations. Childless couples. Such institutionalised language suggests that society is not very forgiving of anything outside the mainstream. Over time, I’ve moved towards the mainstream from the margins. On the way in through this asteroid field, I’ve dodged a lot of jagged acronyms. Up in the atmosphere, I’ve punctured many jargon filled barrage balloons. But then, it is my job to be precise, definite, say the unsayable, all with an imaginative flourish. So, naturally, I take great pleasure when I discover an example of precision that fuses language together to create a meaning that was always there before but never expressed. My singleminded friend, Mark E Smith, does this to great effect. In a song entitled Hip Priest, on the LP by The Fall called Hex Enduction Hour (released 27 years ago this week), the narrator nonchalantly says, ‘I got my last clean dirty shirt out of the wardrobe’. This could only have come from a working class Mancunian with a sharp wit and a pub habit. Just as the title of this piece could only have come from a blank and bemused American government policy wonk. But one has nailed the meaning in an unforgettable way.

Mark Griffiths www.idealconsulting.co.uk