A friend forwarded this to me some time back. I believe it was contextualised in the United Kingdom. It brought a smile to my face because this appears to happen here too. Enjoy!

A Guide to Civil Service English and Other Elegant Nonsense

Please advise.
I don’t have a clue what to do with this.

Please draft.
Draft for hours producing a coherent and impressive letter so that I can fulfill my teacher-fantasy by needlessly amending it.

Please deal.
Do all the work on this yourself.

For your information, please.
Don’t even think of commenting on this but if anything goes wrong I’ll remind everyone you knew what was going on.

For your concurrence, please.
Preparation is at an advanced stage, or it’s already happening.  If you have any concerns, no-one wants to hear them.

For your approval, please.
Always a great way to pass the buck.

Concerned (as in “I was concerned to hear…”)
A senior official is about to explode.

Surprised (as in “I was surprised to learn of…”)
Another classic senior official understatement. Signifies utter horror, disgust and fury.

Up To Speed (as in “Are you up to speed?)
Have you got a brain?

I have reservations…
“If you do this then you’re an even bigger fool than I thought.”

As appropriate (as in “please deal with this as you consider appropriate”)
You may bin this, but don’t blame me if you are found out.

Happy To Discuss
There’s a whole lot more here than meets the eye and that I haven’t told you.  Should ring alarm bells.

Hope this is helpful
I’m well aware that it is not helpful at all.  Please don’t contact me again.

Please do not hesitate to contact me
Please do not ever contact me ever again.  If you really insist, try in two weeks time when I am on leave.

Thank you for bringing this to my attention
“Damn, I hoped nobody was going to mention that/find out about that.”

I would welcome your views on this
Does anyone have any ideas – cos I don’t – although I want to appear very consultative.

We Spoke.
Lets other people know that we have spoken and have a plan, but not what that plan is.   Always followed by a full stop.

You may recall
You will if you’re any good.

You may wish to note that…
No you won’t, it’s bad news I’m afraid.

You should be aware that
Even worse news – not my fault, honest.

You may wish to consider doing this…
Do this or else!

In due course
In a very long time …… if I remember.

On The Back Burner
Let’s just shelve it and pretend we will attend to it later.

Immediate
Desperately overdue and should have been answered a week ago.

Policy Consultation
The authorities have already decided what it’s going to do.  The document will contain one policy dressed up to look like several options, to give the impression that the authorities are open to
suggestions. It will also have a few ridiculous ideas, so officials can claim to be “thinking outside the box”.

Interim Report
A short document explaining why the full report will be late, how complex the issues are and how hard you are working on it. With luck, people will forget about the whole thing until you’ve moved to another post.

Resource Implications
This will cost money/need some manpower.  So either the department won’t do it or it will be done badly using existing resources.

Initiative
A totally impractical and over-expensive idea that skirts around a problem but makes it look as though we are doing something about it.

Toolkit
A mystical set of solutions that will somehow launch us towards public sector nirvana.

Brief
A very misleading word as briefs are anything but.

Media Handling Strategy
How on earth can we bury this?

Review
This policy is going wrong but we cannot admit it. Instead, in order to defuse the controversy, we will get someone who knows nothing about the issues to examine them for 3 months, following which they will provide a helpful synopsis of everything we already knew.

Workgroup
5 or more people sitting in a room failing to achieve anything.

Strategic Coordination Unit
There’re too many coordination units.  Nobody knows what the hell is going on or who is supposed to be doing what.  A new unit to co-ordinate the coordinators is therefore required.

Change Management
Finding ever new ways of saying “Like it or lump it”.

Empowerment
I’m not delegating this boring task to you because I can’t be bothered to do it.  I am empowering you.

Information Management
Posh term for “filing”.

Milestones
A form of signage still used in the civil service although they ceased to be fashionable on highways about 150 years ago. Sometimes imply strenuous exertions as in “deliver milestones”.

If Harry Potter were written in Civil Service English it would go something like this:
Harry, along with other key stakeholders such as English Partnerships, the RDAs and Gandalf, and in the light of a wide-ranging consultation exercise, thought that, subject to appropriate consideration of the options, he would head, in an integrated and holistic way, respecting the four key principles of public service reform, for the cottage built on greenfield land situated close to major transport infrastructure interchanges by the end of April 2004.

I was reading The Straits Times Forum yesterday, and came across this letter from an events photographer. He wrote about how he was mocked by an emcee at one of grassroots events he was assigned to photograph. The emcee on stage told the children in the audience to study hard, so that they would not end up as a photographer (gesticulating towards the letter writer at the same time).

What a snob. 

While I do not know anything about the photographer’s background or the quality of his works, I do know that the letter was written clearly and concisely. This probably means that he did not stop at a primary school education. What is apparent to me, however, is that the attitude of most people is to equate certain professions as those undertaken by the lower educated. If one had brains, one would use them. Inherent in that attitude is the assumption that taking photographs does not require any high level activity in your grey matter. 

But does it really? 

I don’t know about others, but I find myself racking my brains hard to look for photo opportunities. And in spite of that, many of my photos still turn out crappy. I would love to blame my camera for it, but I know I can’t. Most of the time, the problem is not the lack of interesting subject matter, lack of suitable lighting, lack of expensive equipment. It is more likely due to a lack of patience, discipline, imagination, creativity and sense of adventure.

I took comfort in this quote I chanced upon this morning, from the French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson, “For me the camera is a sketch book, an instrument of intuition and spontaneity, the master of the instant which, in visual terms, questions and decides simultaneously. In order to “give a meaning” to the world, one has to feel involved in what one frames through the viewfinder. This attitude requires concentration, discipline of mind, sensitivity, and a sense of geometry. It is by economy of means that one arrives at simplicity of expression. To take a photograph is to hold one’s breath when all faculties converge in a face of fleeing reality. It is at that moment that mastering an image becomes a great physical and intellectual joy.”

Does he sound uneducated to you? Perhaps it’s the “educated” in our society that ought to get an education. 

Have you heard? Have you heard the latest?!

Finally! After thinking about it for more than a year, I finally took the plunge and bought my first DSLR camera! I can’t wait to start bringing it out for a test run this Sunday! Heh. And of course, after spending so much on it, you shouldn’t be surprised that I am announcing this to the whole world.

But first, I have a very important (not to mention very painful) task. That is… to finish reading the manual…

Argh…

 I recently heard that an acquaintance had been living in a prison even though she had never been trialed in a court of justice. She had been sentenced to serve a jail term of between 15 to 20 years, although her time may be shortened depending on good behaviour.

 

Her crime?

 

Witnesses and experts could not agree. I would say it was envy.

 

Envy is a funny thing. Some people say it’s one of the seven deadly sins, along with sloth, gluttony, lust and…well, I can’t remember the other three. Unlike the other sins, however, where you at least have some fun before you suffer for them, envy is just pure misery right from the start.

 

Don’t get what I mean?  Take lust for example. People get some fun out of it, before they pay for their mistakes later. I have never heard of anyone having fun being envious of others.

 

I can see you scratching your head, wondering why on earth am I talking about envy and prison. Let me start from the beginning.

 

My friend was envious of people around her who looked rich. They drove big cars, carried expensive luxury bags, and were frequently decked in designer wear, flying off to exotic destinations for holidays. She believed that she was as “good” as those other friends, and hence she deserved to have those things too. The problem was she did not have the cash to get all those things at once. Neither was she willing to wait.

 

So she charged to her credit card. When she exceeded her credit limit on one, she applied for another. At last count, she had twelve cards. And she maxed out every single one. To make things worse, she had bought a car with zero down payment. She justified her purchase, believing that it was hard to get to work without a car. Besides, it was common for people to take up a ten-year loan nowadays. Wasn’t it?

 

She went for credit counseling after she realized that she was having difficulties scrapping together enough cash to make the $50 minimum payments for her twelve credit cards. She left the first session in a huff. She found it incredulous that the credit counselor wanted her to sell her car. She could not believe that the credit counselor was not sympathetic about how what she owed on the car was much more than what the car was worth. She was disgusted that the counselor wanted her to do her own laundry and sack the domestic helper.

 

So she decided to do it her own way by looking for extra money to pay off the twelve credit cards. She started moonlighting. The last I heard from her, she complained about how one of the potential bosses insulted her qualifications and made fun of her before offering her a job at a lowly hourly wage. I had expected her not to take it up, for it would make no more than $20 a night.

 

Evidently I underestimated the power of the prison of debt. She took it up, and hoped that the boss who insulted her would give her more jobs in future. At any lowly wage.

 

Come to think of it, I am beginning to understand why those experts could not agree on what her crime was. It sounds a lot suspiciously like insecurity instead. The thing is, trying to soothe that insecurity with the wrong balm ended up creating more insecurity for her.

 

I wish her well. If she keeps channeling extra income into paying down her debt, she may not need to serve the maximum sentence.  Let’s hope she took the credit counselor’s advice of cutting up her cards.

 

And in case you’re wondering, I had mixed feelings while thinking through this episode. Much as I would like to say that she dug her own hole, I couldn’t do it.

 

Not when the media keeps touting the (freak) lifestyles of the rich. Like today’s headline in the papers about some Chinese woman who paid S$835000 to receive her dog in VVIP style.

 

Not when in the same day, the papers listed Singapore’s top 40 richest people owning $56 billion, when the lowest 40% of the country’s population probably doesn’t even own half that amount.

 

Not when there are plenty of people who feel the need to put others down just so that they could feel good about themselves.

 

Not when our schools define education as teaching you how to make money, but not teaching you how to manage money.

 

Not when parents encourage you to pick certain professions because they offer the fattest paychecks.

 

Not when people equate happiness with owning things.

 

Not when people discredit contentment as complacency.

 

 

Whose fault is it anyway?

 

It started with a trip to the post office. My colleague needed to get stamps. Curious, I asked her what they were for. That was when I caught myself: just a decade ago, getting postage stamps were about as ordinary as getting bread or eggs, not something that you think twice about. Unlike now.

We started reminiscing about those “good old days” when we used to write to pen pals. I vaguely remember this international organization that helped to hook up pen pal wannabes from various countries, for a token fee, of course.

Ah… those were the days of waiting excitedly for the mail, when your heart would quicken upon receiving an envelope that was addressed to you, and you couldn’t wait to read and reread three full pages of handwritten text. Sometimes you might even find a surprise: a pretty bookmark, an interesting leaf, or a photograph of a recent outing to the zoo perhaps. Yes, it all sounds quaint now, I know.

What a huge contrast to my feelings today at opening the mailbox that is once again full. The letters are addressed to me, no doubt.  My heart would quicken when I get all that mail, though for all the wrong reasons. Credit card bills, mobile phone bills, cable subscription due, broadband subscriptions. Sigh… Ever so often, companies will include surprises such as “Special offer! For 3 weeks only! Fill in the form and we will give you MORE Ready Credit. You can now get in further debt!”

Those companies obviously have no concept of reciprocity. They deprive me the pleasure of writing to them. Firstly, I have no idea who to address the mail to, for they always sign off with: This is a computer-generated letter; no signature is required. Secondly, they would probably relegate my letter to the bottom of the pile should I dare to write to them, thinking that if I actually used a pen to write, I must not be educated and hence, computer-illiterate.

Perhaps I ought to recreate those feelings of actually looking forward to the mail.  I wonder what that organization was called.

Oh wait. I know what that organization would be called today: Facebook.