“Was not their mistake once more bred of the life of slavery that they had been living?—a life which was always looking upon everything, except mankind, animate and inanimate—‘nature,’ as people used to call it—as one thing, and mankind as another, it was natural to people thinking in this way, that they should try to make ‘nature’ their slave, since they thought ‘nature’ was something outside them” — William Morris


Wednesday, September 24, 2014

"Deficit"

Thank you BBC for amplifying the tweet of my old classmate, the chancellor, who said that someone didn't say the word “deficit.” When I say thank you, it's simply because it cements my existing opinion of you nowadays, and I like having my opinions cemented. Maybe.

You only say “deficit” if you are

1. Terribly terribly dull.
2. You have accepted a discredited piece by two economists who forgot to press a certain button in Excel.
3. You have confused deficit with debt.

I'm not making that up. They forgot to press a button and came up with the idea that you should start to destroy education and healthcare as soon as your debt to GDP ratio reaches 90%.

In other words “He didn't say deficit” means “He didn't vow to eliminate healthcare, and that's bad.”

1 comment:

sean said...

Classic Tim Morton here folks.

Other examples include:

"utilize"

and

"societal" !