As the Eurozone crisis hogs the headlines again, BBC’s Newsnight’s take last night on “Austerity” highlighted how important language is in persuading the people to back or sack their governments. Only last week Cameron’s government starkly replaced the word ‘austerity’ with ‘efficiency’ not because of any policy change but because some words are simply too difficult for the demos.
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“Austerity” – the word that dare not speak its name (in a democracy)
A couple of weeks ago, Arnon Grunberg, a brilliant Dutch novelist with a column in ‘De Volkskrant’, said “Austerity” would be relegated to a footnote in history, just like “Glasnost” in order to please the people. He said: “Politicians should have known that, like love, capitalism lives by the grace of desire only. A desire that feeds acutely on instant satisfaction. In other words: by continuously spending money that isn’t there.”
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