Learning set for confusion

Can't understand a word of this - hopefully someone will...

What on Earth is an action learning set?

Facilitation support for action learning set tender

VONNE is looking for a consultant to provide facilitation support for an action learning set on issues of empowerment and engagement with one of the core delivery group members, the North East Equalities Coalition.

Keep it simple

Will

welcome to hell - well regional sports journalism anyway

It's not just policy nerds who love their jargon and meaningless sentences. Sometimes the people who are paid to explain this stuff get lost up in their own lingo.

Tonight's Evening Chronicle - awful rag - contained a column from sports writer John Gibson. Bizarrely, it's called Straight from the Shoulder...

Anyway, tonight's opening sentence was a classic. It read:

United must return to the torture chamber within the next 48 hours to search for the key by which they can escape.

Now, I'm no Newcastle fan - I like my teams to win stuff - but what on Earth does that mean?

If United return to the torture chamber, to get the key, surely that means they've already escaped?

Does the torture chamber refer to the match or something else?

And if it is the match, isn't that kind of an extreme way to describe a football match?

Reminds me of a rather over-the-top features writer I once worked with  who described a runner as "Belsen Thin" and when I complained on grounds of good taste told me it was OK because the Sunday Times once used it...

Keep it simple

Will

Think Different

At work I have to use an horrendous black box called a Dell.

At home I use a wonderful Macintosh. A sleek white MacBook. You know that I'm  a Macintosh nerd. Love them, always have and I always will. They just work.

Now what's this got to do with Plain English? Well nothing, but it has a lot to do with keeping it simple - my other consuming passion.

Today I had to burn some pictures to a compact disk. Unfortunately I had to do it on the Dell.

1. Why on Earth doesn't the CD Rom appear on the Finder - sorry Desktop - when you put it in the machine?

2. Why, when you eventually find the blank disk - hidden away somewhere on the system - and drag it across doesn't it copy the file straight away?

3. Why do you have to then click on another option called write this file to disk? Of course I want to write the file to the disk - why the hell else would I drag the file into it?

4. Why doesn't a simple box pop up telling me that the operation has been successful?

It's infuriating.

Keep it simple (and get a Mac).

Will

dual of death

Dual heritage, remember that? (see earlier post). Like a two berth caravan? It's now official, I've just heard it on the BBC.

Now, mixed race sounds awful - that I'll admit. I can understand why that might be offensive to some people. But dual heritage is worse.  Much worse. Now it's becoming part of the old Queen's English.

Did anyone ask anyone who is mixed race, dual heritage, or whatever before making up this piece of jargon?

Keep it simple

Will

Gosh what happened

Whatever happened to blogging? I'm back. I'm cool and I'm even more surrounded by useless jargon. Reams and reams of the stuff.

Where I work is going through a 'transformation', a process run by people with strange job titles and even stranger ways with words.

I've got so much to say, but I first I need to shout.

Keep it simple.

Will

this message will self destruct...

The 'War on Terror' gives rise to its own strange jargon.

I'm not playing down the seriousness of the attacks in London and Glasgow this weekend and the bravery of those involved.

Breaking news throughout the day on Friday told us that police had discovered a 'potentially viable explosive device'. 

What an horrible piece of language to describe a much uglier act.

But does the police's reluctance to use the word 'bomb' revolve around a technicality or is it a way of making the threat seem more real by coating it in the language of officialdom?

Keep it simple

W

people are news and news is people

 

That was the first thing I was taught in journalism school and probably, next to a smattering of shorthand and an ability to touch type, the only thing I remembered.

Its a simple maxim, always put people at the heart of any story you do. If you're writing about a gas pipeline - write not about the logistics of laying it but about the hapless householders whose back gardens are about to become a building site.

Even hacks on the dullest trade journal should look to put people at the heart of their stories - a tough ask if you work for Estates Gazette or Gravel Now.

I'm not a staff journalist any more, I've gone over to what my ex-colleagues call The Dark Side. I now help third sector clients gain coverage in regional, national and specialist media.

But the news is people and people are news maxim still holds true for me.

I spend a great deal of time with clients finding great human interest case studies to sell in to journalists. I want people who can vouch for the fact that their lives have been changed for the better by my clients.

I know some charity PRs are unhappy with what they call the Tyranny of the Case Study.

And I understand. It can be difficult to find that Libran single mother, with a mixed race child and a missing limb at 4.30pm on a Friday afternoon.

And isn't it great when you meet that deadline, only to find that there's been an government resignation/Big Brother eviction/inexplicable change of mind that makes your case study surplus to requirements?

It is easy to be cynical, but I've done work in the education sector and dug up some remarkable stories that would have your average features editor cartwheeling around the newsroom with joy.

There was the pensioner who used her degree to set up a sexual abuse survivors network, the ME sufferer who became a BBC weather presenter after studying environmental science and the former New Romantic pop star who journeyed into space thanks to his degree in Aeronautics.

I made that last one up, but you get the picture. You're always looking for the kind of stories you would want to read about.

Case studies are tough to get and take a little bit of managing and updating but the pay off in terms of great positive coverage is fantastic.

And in terms of media relations, it is the perfect deal. The journalist gets that human interest story of tears, heartache and triumph over adversity and you get that shameless plug for your otherwise rather worthy but dull event.

It's true, people are news and news is people.

Keep it simple.

Will