- The Guardian
- Issue #2162
Certainty
Certainty sounds nice but is only good some of the time. Certainty about your income for the next ten years would be nice, but if you’re not being paid enough, it’s not so hot.
Here, certainty is used to put lipstick on a pig – the pig being a dodgy royalties-avoidance deal with the Queensland LNP government (see Guardian #2160). Why yes, that’s the same Queensland government that cuts social services because it doesn’t have enough money coming in, however did you guess? Bravus’ chief operating officer Mick Crowe said that this deal looks massively corrupt, but saves his company billions of dollars in return for political donations.
Just kidding. What Crowe said was that the deal will “create certainty” for the people who work on its mine, as though Bravus wouldn’t have bothered with the mine if they had to pay royalties.
What is certain is that Bravus will drop those workers the moment it suits the company.
Being vocal
There’s a range of weasel words that exist to make horrible behaviour look like high spirits; ‘controversial,’ ‘feisty,’ ‘outspoken,’ ‘activist’ have all made bigots look just enthusiastic. Former comedy writer Graham Linehan decided in 2018 to spend pretty much all his waking hours attacking trans people, both online and in person. One British newspaper said Linehan “has been vocal about trans issues on social media.” This is a weaselly understatement – it’s true as far as it goes, but makes Linehan’s obsessive hate campaign seem like just an opinion.
Reasoned (see also sensible and considered)
Of course nobody wants to blame migrants for things migrants aren’t responsible for. ‘Nobody’ doesn’t include our two major political parties, who are both happy to throw migrants under the bus if they think it’ll help at election time. It’s kind of a ‘have your cake and eat it’ thing for the Coalition, which has done really well out of anti-immigrant racism for decades, but also doesn’t want to lose the vote of migrants who feel insulted.
So it is that Coalition immigration spokesperson Senator Paul Scarr has called for a ‘reasoned’ debate on the topic of ‘are migrants to blame for unemployment and the housing crisis?’ Of course Scarr didn’t spell it out like that, because the answer would be “no they aren’t.” But if you think the answer is “yes” or “maybe”, Scarr and the Coalition are on your side.
Grovel
Actual grovelling is really hard on the back and not recommended for anyone over 50 years of age. Come to that, it’s not a good idea for people under 50 either, unless they’re in a fun drama that requires a bit of comedy grovelling. Former Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews is 53. Nine papers’ resident China-disliker, Peter Hartcher has accused Andrews of grovelling to Chinese President Xi Jingping by attending a celebration of the defeat of fascism and standing within metres of the Chinese leader. Fortunately for Andrew’s spinal column the grovelling was just metaphorical as well as only taking place in Hartcher’s mind.
Real
We all know what real things are, but the word is weaselly when used to describe something that’s either not real at all or at least debatable. US President Trump has ‘shot the messenger’ by sacking the head of his statistics outfit because Trump didn’t like the unemployment figures. Now that some new job statistics are on the way, Trump was asked if he’d accept this lot of numbers. He said that the “real numbers” would come out in about a year once his economic plans have all been put into practice. Just so there’s no doubt about what he meant, Kevin Hassett, Trump’s director of the National Economic Council said in an interview that he expected the number of jobs to be “revised up.” No doubt. Trump thinks the only real numbers are the ones he likes, which must be annoying at his birthday parties.
