Kevin Rudd's cliches: 23 in 330 words!
I can't take it anymore! Please, Kevin, hire a speechwriter! You think you can write. Lots of people have this delusion about themselves. Your writing is terrible.Here is the goddawful cliche-ridden conclusion to last night's address to the nation. I've italicised what I think are cliches. Just the cliches; not the drab bureaucratic language, nor the mixed metaphors, like his interesting image of people's fears being fed by a stream. Or sentences that are just terrible, like: "And we’ll build on it soon with the Government’s nation building agenda, to build the infrastructure Australia needs for the future." Whoa! Can you fit build in there one more time, Kevin?
Nonetheless, as Prime Minister, I was not prepared to stand idly by while people’s fears here were being fed by the stream of bad economic news from abroad.
That’s why the Government took decisive action on Sunday to guarantee all depositors and all deposits in all Australian banks, building societies and credit unions, for the next three years.
My first responsibility as Prime Minister is to take whatever action is necessary to maintain the stability of Australia’s financial system.
And I will continue to exercise that responsibility.
In the last few weeks, the global financial crisis has moved into a new and dangerous stage.
And that is its effect on the real economy, on growth and jobs, around the world and here in Australia.
Growth will slow, and unemployment will rise. That’s why the Government today announced this $10.4 billion Economic Security Strategy to support continued positive growth in the national economy, and to provide practical help to households as well.
This strategy is designed to help pensioners, carers and families, and first home buyers.
The Government believes in long term planning. That’s why we set aside a $22 billion surplus earlier this year in the Budget, as a buffer against tough times.
Those tough times have now arrived.
And that’s why we’ve decided to take decisive action today with this Economic Security Strategy. And we’ll build on it soon with the Government’s nation building agenda, to build the infrastructure Australia needs for the future.
History tells us that when the economy slows, responsible governments step in to strengthen growth. And that is what we have done by using the surplus.
As Prime Minister, it is my job to level with the Australian people. I don’t intend to gild the lily. There will be tough times ahead.
But the Government remains determined to take whatever action is necessary in the future to steer the economy through this global financial crisis.
And I have absolute confidence that as a nation, we will get through these tough times together.
posted by Nicholas @ 12:01 PM
6 Comments:
I still remember all the nauseating and vacuous cliches in Rudd's acceptance speech on election night. After 11 years of Howard, I was hoping for something a little more cathartic and a little less coma-inducing.
But you are a tough critic Nicholas. Is "global financial crisis" really a cliche? Sometimes it's useful to have a shorthand term for something amorphous. Should he say something like "increased credit spreads accompanied by widespread deleveraging, margin calls and asset collapses"?
I notice the plan is intended to help pensioners, carers, families and home buyers. Looks like single, young renters with online book businesses miss out again.
Memo from Rudd to Nicholas: I don't care.
I use the fiction writer's definition of a cliche - anything you've heard before, ever. I suppose "global financial crisis" at least omits "the worst" and "since the Great Depression", thank god. Sometimes there is no better way to phrase something than the traditional way, but you can still try, like the NY Times article today where the valiant scribe took a deep breath and wrote, "The worst financial crisis since the 1930s." I felt like applauding...
As for "helping pensioners, carers and families": it may be hard from your geographic distance to understand how throwing money at those categories of people conveniently helps Rudd politically, as well as stimulating the economy. I wouldn't even mind if it was "low income families", but it includes middle-income families who have been given handout after handout through Howard and now Rudd's governments, who don't need it, and get it merely because they represent the swing demographic that decides elections. See here for the insanity that is Australia's middle-class welfare - 42.2% of Australian families get more money back in various credits than they pay in tax in the first place! That's before these latest handouts! Fuck the working families!
Rudd certainly has a tendency to scrape the bottom of the barrel (erhem) doesn’t he? Though maybe he is just being careful, came across this linked from elsewhere http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/10/13/081013fa_fact_wood Obama is copping it for being wordy and articulate. Too many fine arguments, not enough shootin’ at lip-stick smeared pigs. Wait, how many garbled metaphors was that?
Heheh, everybody's so conscious of their cliches! Me too - I was, like, should I really say "I can't take it anymore" in a post about cliches? I let us all off because we're blathering on a blog, not adressing the nation.
As for Obama, well if that's what passes for overly wordy and articulate in the US... most of his verbal constructions seem to be about as complex as "See Spot run" to me. AND Obama's taken up "working families" as a phrase. AND i don't know if I can cope with eight years of him beginning every answer with "Well, y'know..."
my cliche was deliberately constructed!
sorry! i got that it was self-aware, but missed it was deliberate. when i assume, i make an ass of u and me both.
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