Not Worthy Of Respect

Whatever happened to "Respect"? No, I don’t mean it in the way Tony Blair means it, I mean whatever happened to that perfectly innocent little word? How come it’s been appropriated by New Labour’s army of management consultants and spin doctors, and turned into some kind of Frankenstein’s monster?

 

The latest example is the publication of Labour’s Respect Action Plan, an appalling piece of management-speak from beginning to end. What makes it worse is that all the ridiculous verbiage ("Everyone is part of everyone else") has successfully driven out any useful content that might actually be part of a plan of action.

 

Justin McKeating, over at the Chicken Yoghurt blog, gives the document a fine old fossicking* and fails to come up with any nuggets of value in its 44 pages. Simon Jenkins, in the Guardian today, also blows the plan a well-deserved raspberry. His opening paragraph is a model of well-aimed derision at the mindset of the people that seem to have infiltrated New Labour.

 

I’ve been watching The Thick of It on TV recently. It’s painfully funny and, judging by the antics of New Labour, painfully accurate.

 

* To fossick – to search for gold in abandoned claims, or to rummage around for anything of value.