Do you like jargon? Are you a regular user? If so, prepare to have a brick thrown through the window of your soul.

You don’t have to be a Grumpy Old Man to find jargon, buzzwords and clichés irritating. Back in 1996, I attempted to do something about this problem in the public relations agency in which I then worked. I took the unorthodox view that there was no excuse for professional communicators to use such language. Jargon got in the way of effective communication because it made us sound pompous, silly or unintelligible. Disciplining ourselves to use plain English would make us better communicators.

To illustrate the problem, I translated the beginning of the Book of Genesis into PR jargon:

1. At the outset, God’s agenda was to basically focus on his core deliverables, namely two leading-edge products, (a) heaven and (b) earth.
2. However, the earth lacked an overall concept, and had a low profile in terms of its key audiences. Obviously the Spirit of God had to step back and benchmark the existing waters before his game plan could get the green light.
3. And God’s key message was that light was a strategic objective, and it was covered-off.
4. And God’s perception of the light was that it was fit for purpose. However, his desired goal was that light and darkness should be differentiated in the marketplace.
5. So God branded the light ‘Day’, and the darkness he branded ‘I Can’t Believe It’s Not Light’. And the evening session and morning session made up Day One.
6. Then God set out with the object of factoring-in a firmament to interface with the existing generic waters, to bring to the party two segmented brands.
7. So God tasked himself with the job of rolling-out a firmament, to supply a proactive vehicle for launching his two distinct waters products, and it was up and running.
8. And God branded the firmament ‘heaven’. And at close of play, the prioritised actions for Day Two were ticked off.

(From my essay, ‘Let’s run this up the flagpole and see who salutes’).

The problem is still with us and I have my own pet peeves:

A few days ago, a dissident member of the British National Party posted his party’s membership list on the internet. The publication of this data provides us with some interesting information about the demographics of BNP membership.

The Guardian (20 November) published an interactive map showing the concentration of BNP membership by parliamentary constituency.

On BBC2’s Newsnight (19 November), its political editor Michael Crick drilled down further. Newsnight commissioned polling company Ipsos-MORI to analyse the BNP membership list. The top five places where BNP members live are Halifax, Blackburn, Blackpool, Leicester and Romford. There are hardly any members in Scotland and few in the rest of London outside Romford. The membership is 80% male.

The places where BNP members live was also analysed according to the ‘mosaic’ system used by marketing companies to break down the country into different social categories. The highest concentration of BNP members is in the ‘Ties of Community’ category, defined as “close-knit communities, small industrial towns, terraced housing, strong Labour voting”.

The second concentration is in the ‘Blue Collar Enterprise’ category, defined as “council estates, not well-educated, self reliant (often bought their council house), ‘Sun’ readers”. The category where BNP membership is weakest is ‘Urban Intelligence’, defined as “young single, well-educated, Liberal views, prosperous”. The biggest concentration of BNP membership in terms of social class is C2 (skilled working class), more concentrated there than among the lower D/E classes of unskilled working class and unemployed.

The demographics of BNP membership come as no surprise – older, uneducated, white males form the bedrock of support for far-right parties throughout Europe. But what this profile also illustrates is that, in demographic as well as ideological terms, BNP membership is the polar opposite of Liberal Democrat support.

Fifty years ago, the Labour MP for my home town of Lincoln was Geoffrey de Freitas. In those days, Lincoln was a very safe Labour seat and Geoffrey de Freitas was a very wealthy man.

In common with many MPs of that era, de Freitas did not maintain a home in his constituency (a practice that at least had the merit of incurring no controversial expense claims). Indeed, he spent little time in his constituency at all. On the rare occasions he paid a visit, he and his wife would get in the Rolls Royce and drive north to Lincoln, his …

The June edition of Prospect magazine includes an article titled Liberalise or Die by Richard Reeves and Philip Collins (no, not that Phil Collins).

The authors argue that the Labour Party must abandon its centralising Fabian tradition and become liberal. No mention of the fact that a perfectly acceptable liberal party already exists.

The article has already earned an angry reposte from John Harris in Monday’s Guardian.

Well, chaps, what do we think?

Five Lib Dems have so far taken up the challenge to tell Nick Clegg what he should do in his first hundred days: Paul Walter, Linda Jack, David Morton, Mary Reid and Mark Valladares. Now we turn to Simon Titley…

The previous contributors to this series have bombarded the new leader with laundry lists of demands without setting out clear, objective criteria for their choices.

And that’s the problem. Everyone will want a piece of Nick Clegg. He will face persistent and conflicting demands from the party, from parliament, from constituents, from the media, from lobbyists, from …

Vince Cable has deservedly won much praise for his recent performance as acting leader of the Liberal Democrats. He has set a high standard for next week’s victor to match. The danger is that we will treat Vince’s performance as an entertaining interlude before normal service is resumed. Instead, we should analyse and understand the generic lessons that the next leader (and other leading Lib Dems) can learn and apply.

There are essentially six things that Vince has got right:

1) Moral clarity – Politics is ultimately about making moral choices. Vince’s statements make it clear that he has a sense of …

A recent post on LDV speculated who would be in the new leader’s shadow cabinet. A more interesting question is who will occupy his kitchen cabinet.

Every political leader has one – a group of staff and unpaid advisors acting as an ‘inner circle’. At best, such groups provide leaders with a sounding board and confidential advice from people they can trust. At worst, a bunker mentality develops, with the inner circle isolating the leader and feeding him information selectively.

Ming Campbell was not in the job long enough for this to become a serious problem but all his predecessors, at …

In the Liberal Democrats’ leadership election, for all the strategic analysis and policy debates among the cognoscenti, it is the ‘armchair’ members who will determine this election.

This majority will rely on the mainstream media to make its choice rather than the party’s internal media and grapevines (bear in mind that the average age of party members is about 60 – this is not the Facebook generation).

The electorate is the whole paid-up membership of the party, 72,064 at the time of the previous leadership election in 2006, a figure that had fallen below 69,000 by the end of the year. …