And the governance shall be upon his shoulders

Taboo words used to come with four letters, but if the press is anything to go by they have now been ‘super-sized’. Some would blame MacDonald’s, I blame universal education. Anyway, the latest taboo word seems to be ‘government’. Government used to be an abstract noun to describe the act of governing — running something — anything from companies, universities to countries. Politicians have had a bad press, however, so companies invented a new word — ‘governance’ — which does not mean anything different from government, but apparently avoids the association with our democratically elected representatives. In the Financial Times not long ago, this was taken to a new extreme when the policies of the British cabinet were referred to as ‘governance’. However Nature, as usual, wins the prize in an article of the 13th November, 2008, in which it referred to “the next president’s... style of governance”. If the president of the most powerful nation on the face of the earth isn’t involved in government, then clearly nobody is. Or has the religious right reserved this for Jesus Christ?

Missionary Position

On starting a new publication, it has long been customary for the originator to explain its purpose. In a recent copy of the scientific weekly, Nature, the editor felt the need to justify continuing this tradition for the launch of two new websites. He recalled an early editorial in the journal as follows: “The mission statement that appeared in the second issue of Nature in 1869 and is reproduced every week on our printed table of contents may use archaically high-flown language, but it still applies” (Nature, 6th June 2007).

The original editorial begins thus: “The objective which it is proposed to attain by this periodical may be broadly stated as follows...”. Archaic language, indeed. I would suggest that the word ‘objective’ has worn rather better than the late twentieth century monstrosity ‘mission statement’, with which the current editor of Nature seeks to replace it. The ugly adjectival use of the noun, ‘mission’, pales before the gross misuse of the word itself. Appropriate for Dr Livingstone or Biggles, ‘mission’ appears absurd when used to describe — or more often to disguise — mundane business objectives.

So what is the purpose of this blog? In part, as you can see, to poke fun at the editor of Nature and all those who would impoverish the English language by robbing words of their meanings. And for the rest? To give concrete expression to occasional ideas that would otherwise not even see what passes for daylight in this peculiar form of publication whose authors would seem to outnumber by far its readers. And if my pieces should be blessed with readers, may the latter be often amused, sometimes educated, and seldom angered.