Saturday 14 January 2012

Words that make me gag

Is it just me, or has the phrase "policy maker" (even worse, sometimes the word "policymaker") gone from 0 to 100 uses per day on the BBC, and like media, in the last five years or so?

The most frequent use, it seems to me, is by self-righteous, self-styled "campaigners", lobbed softball questions on the Today programme, demanding that policy makers do this, that or the other thing, of which BBC-types would generally approve.

The very words make me retch. The implication is of a group of people, a class apart, possessed of preternatural ability, in dialogue with journalists and lobbyists, dreaming up things that are supposedly good for the hoi polloi. The only policy makers should be the self-same hoi polloi. The apparatchiks of political parties might offer up draft policies, for the consideration of the masses at election time or in referenda. But only the people should make policy.

My google searches on "policy maker" yield most mentions for members of the Bank of England Monetary Policy Committee and their counterparts at the US Federal Reserve. I'm not sure that much can be derived from google searches anymore, since they seem highly personalised, but certainly those people fit my definition very well, as people with executive authority who seem beyond democratic accountability. Their counterparts are now openly the unelected leaders of Greece and Italy, as nominated by Berlin, Paris and Brussels.

The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.