Rhodri's Plain English award

Oliver Kamm makes some sensible points about the Plain English gobbledegook award to Rhodri:

THIS WEEK the Plain English Campaign announced its annual award for gobbledegook. The winner was the Welsh First Minister, Rhodri Morgan, for stating: “The only thing which isn’t up for grabs is no change and I think it’s fair to say it’s all to play for, except for no change.” It is Mr Morgan’s second award; the first was in 1998 for asking: “Do one-legged ducks swim in circles?”

Yet, while Mr Morgan’s winning entry is cliché-ridden, it is not gobbledegook. It is a statement, comprehensible on first reading, that many outcomes are possible, excepting only stasis. Likewise, Mr Morgan’s comment about ducks, in context, is a clear and arresting metaphor....

Mocking convoluted English is a public service. As George Orwell wrote: “Silly words and expressions have often disappeared, not through any evolutionary process but owing to the conscious action of a minority.” The Plain English Campaign adopts the unrelated approach of intellectual snobbery; British public life has quite enough of that already.