- The Guardian
- Issue #2160
Leaders/bosses
There’s a family of weasell-ish words that are transitive. That means they’re different depending on who you’re talking about. Countries the media respects have ‘governments,’ countries the media is demonising have ‘regimes.’
Likewise, corporations and unions. At the Australian government’s Productivity Roundtable, the Australian Financial Review, businesses and their lobbyists had ‘leaders’ (mature, responsible), while unions had ‘bosses’ (thuggish, nasty). Unions are infinitely more democratic than businesses, but you’re not going to hear that from the AFR.
Has seen
When a media outlet doesn’t want to talk about who was responsible, they use the passive mood, for example in Palestine, where there’s been a lot of “were killed in an explosion” and not much “Israeli troops murdered” reporting.
The Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), a pro-war ‘thinktank’ funded by Defence and arms companies reports that Australia “has seen a major influx of US forces rotating through Australian bases,” as though the US forces are clouds or weather pattens. It’s weaselly use of the passive mood, but since ASPI assumes Australia’s non-independence is a given, it sort of makes sense.
Nevertheless
This word can be just a fancy way of saying ‘but.’ It can also show that you didn’t understand or didn’t mean whatever you said before using it. For example “I’m sorry I was late, but the trains were late and it wasn’t my fault” really means “I’m not sorry, it wasn’t my fault, don’t be angry.”
Safetrac is an Australian company that runs compliance training, helping companies make sure they’re doing the legal thing. It’s been caught doing the not-so-legal thing by using staff laptops to spy on staff. Police are investigating and we wish the police well.
Safetrac has said that it is sure that what it did was “lawful, appropriate and justified”, but added that “Nevertheless, it remains open to engaging with relevant authorities and strengthening its already robust compliance framework.”
In everyday English, this means “We’re innocent, but since we’ve been caught red-handed we’ll cooperate and try to look like we won’t do it again.”
Already
See above for Safetrac’s “already robust compliance framework.” ‘Already’ is often used as a way of telling the world that nothing is wrong while admitting things need to be fixed. Governments love talking about improving already fabulous stuff, usually after a scandal involving the stuff in question. Safetrac have allegedly been sprung bad illegally spying on their staff, but can’t resist popping in an ‘already robust’ to try to save their reputation.
Rebalancing
Rebalancing sounds like a good thing to do. We like things to be balanced, in general. It’s weaselly here because Richard Holden, a pro-business economist who gets to opinionate in the Australian Financial Review, says that what’s needed is “a rebalancing of personal taxes between income and consumption.” Income taxes can be progressive, although they increasingly aren’t, thanks to the major pro-capitalist parties. Taxes on consumption pretty much have to be regressive – if you buy a toaster and Gina Rhinehart buys a toaster, you pay the same GST, but it’s a much lower percentage of Gina’s income. We need balance between the two sorts of tax like we need a balance between being healthy and having cancer.
