23 March 2011

More budget alarm clock nonsense from Clegg

Just received an e-mail from Nick Clegg about the budget. It highlights some of the good things about the budget - increases in personal allowances, green investment, clamping down on Tory backbenchers er non-doms etc.

But it continues with the utterly excreable use of 'alarm clock Britain'. This is a phrase of stunning uselessness. It is so poorly devised it comes across as insulting, aloof and out of touch – the sort of desperate clever-dicked attempt that the minders of Gordon Brown tried but which spectacularly backfired and made him see even more removed from reality than he actually was. It is so bad it doesn’t even get laughed at in the pub – it raises hackles.

Clegg is better than this. When given the platform he can talk directly and engagingly to people without spin and the sort of garbling of language that these frightfully clever policy wonks and PR gurus seem to think help. It doesn’t - it gets in the way and further damages Clegg's already shredded reputation.

There is a simple test in these matters. Would your average Focus editor grace it on their pages? If the answer is no then don’t do it. And I know of no Focus editor who is prepared to grace this nonsense in print.

Stop it now Nick.

2 comments:

  1. You too, huh? I have never known a phrase to piss off people across every strand of our broad church of a party as Alarm Clock Britain.

    Now, I'm going to make you choose. Which is worse, Alarm Clock Britain or Have you got the guts to vote SDP? Still go with the latter after 25 years. Horrendous.

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  2. It's not just people in the party that dislike it - it's the very people he's trying to attract.

    I thought it had been quietly buried - but hope this latest appearance is simply its death throws.

    It has no merit - unlike the SDP thing which appealed to about 2% of the population.

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