Winston Churchill’s famous term covers a world of evils

Photo: Toby Dagenhart, Unsplash.com.

When Winston Churchill referred to terminological inexactitudes he was referring, in his own inimitably elegant and charming way, to the ability to use the richness of language to disguise totally what you are really saying.

I began musing on this when I saw Rachel Reeves now infamous speech announcing a second round of tax increases earlier this year. Without a trace of irony, she informed the British taxpayer that she was asking everyone for a voluntary contribution. The precise terminological inexactitude here is that she was imposing an obligatory (very much non-voluntary) tax on the sectors she deemed to be privileged enough to pay it (very much not everyone).

Now I am not going into the politics of this at all, everyone will have their own opinion. I do, however, have an issue with the casually misleading use of language, because it can be very damaging. It may appear disingenuous; its effects are not.

We no longer live in an isolated world, pretty much every word we say can be heard by the world, and this has consequences. People have views of other people which can be stereotypes, of course, but they do apply them. Many nations consider the British to be inherently honest and will not be amused by being confused in this way. Were the Chancellor’s words a lie? Maybe, maybe not; let’s compromise and call them, well, terminological inexactitudes.

Now just to be clear, a lot of people do not consider the British to be inherently honest. The ex-British colonies do not share this view; and most of my Argentine friends think the British are a bunch of pirates. Or maybe they just think that about me. Hmm. Still, ‘pirates’ is a bit rich coming from the land of Maradona’s ‘Hand of God’.

Argentina also has form for this verbal ingenuity. The newly installed President Eduardo Duhalde, during his inauguration speech in 2001, famously declared that ‘those who had dollars in their (recently confiscated) dollar bank accounts would receive dollars’. Well, that’s all right then.

 What he disingenuously failed to clarify, was that you would not get anywhere near the same amount of dollars, and that you would possibly get them ‘in the fullness of time’, to quote the wonderfully obsequious Sir Humphrey in Yes Minister.

Sir Humphrey, the master of terminological inexactitudes.

But let’s spin this another way. I am a big fan of Julian Treasure’s excellent Ted Talk on the power of the human voice. In his introduction he says it all: ‘The Human voice. It’s the instrument we all play. It’s the most powerful sound in the world probably; it’s the only one that can start a war or say ‘I love you’. He concentrates on how we use this instrument to its maximum effect.

I prefer to focus on the tune the instrument plays, the precise words we choose to say. Any idiot can start a war, just tune into any news media for the evidence. Yet very few can genuinely say ‘I love you’, with all the vulnerability that opens us up to. Yes, B., that goes for you.

So, for example, what if a ‘voluntary contribution’ meant exactly that?

Bob Geldof at the European Parliament of Strasbourg on the 23rd of October 1985.

There was one, once; and it was the most spectacular appeal for a voluntary contribution I’ve ever experienced. Bob Geldof, a gangly, over-opinionated singer from a (for me) not very good band, but whatever. He was inspirational, moved millions of people all over the world for famine in Ethiopia. A TV report by Michael Burke on the BBC motivated him to do something enormous…and so Live Aid was born.

An inspirational figure, armed with conviction, asked for voluntary contributions. Actually, I think he said, ‘Give me your f****** money’; but hey, potato, tomato. Oh, and he did it with a bank of Bakelite land telephones and probably one faulty fax machine. Respect.

In June 1985 I sat and watched a full day of somebody trying to get a voluntary contribution from people. How did he do that? By uniting the biggest egos in the phenomenally egotistical world of elite rock stars to contribute …voluntarily… I was mesmerized by Status Quo’s opening bars; people were, literally, rocking all over the world.

Queen’s iconic show, and David Bowie’s performance, so brilliant and so generous, were the high points. Bob Dylan and Led Zeppelin across the pond, not so much. It doesn’t matter. Bob Geldof generated a voluntary contribution of tens of millions of dollars by giving people an emotion, a genuine reason to want to contribute. Governments, wake up?

There are so many examples of brilliant use of language. My own father, for example, was not particularly expressive at times. But…when I was a full on, self-opinionated teenager (yes, Sir Bob, if I give it, I have to take it), he one day simply told me: ‘Tim, when I want your opinion, I’ll give it to you before I ask you for it’. Hmm. Message understood.

My father seriously disinterested in my opinion, Indian Wells, March 1990.

More unfortunately, and knowingly, was when in Andrew´s presence, he greeted the ironing board in the closet with a simple ‘Hi ‘girlfriend’s’ name’. Andrew of course, still enjoys this story. Oh, and to cap it all, when my parents gave dinner parties, he would finish with the line: ‘Well, I’m having a great time in my home; I wish you were too.’ My mother, not so happy. Me, giggling inside.

There are some wonderful and far more public examples of superb use of the English language. In Blackadder Goes Forth, when General Melchett encourages the troops for the final (deadly) push, he says ‘We’re right behind you’. Blackadder in five words kills it: ‘Five thousand miles behind you’. Terminological exactitude.

General Melchett and a suitably unimpressed Blackadder.

My two favourites though, and this epitomizes the beauty or horror that the precise use of language can generate, go to the other famous Bards, Idi Amin and José Mourinho.

In the 1970s, the Ugandan dictator and self-proclaimed King of Scotland, Idi Amin once said something like ‘I guarantee freedom of expression; I cannot guarantee freedom after expression.’ Chilling, but brutally honest.

José imparting wisdom.

José once was asked something like ‘You were rude, don’t you think you should be the bigger man and apologise?’ Mourinho, in his Churchillian way, said ‘Yes, I was rude. But I was rude to an idiot.’

 I want to use that line one day. I doubt I ever will. Chapeau, José.