Writing convoluted floriferous obfuscation...

...or boll*cks, as it should properly be called.

This is something of a speciality of mine, at least at work (I try to control it in my own personal writing). I'm not boasting, in fact I'm rather ashamed of it, but at times my job requires it. I tend to refer to it, with what is meant to be irony, as "blinding the public with waffle".

But I've just been reminded forcefully of George Orwell's famous rules on writing good English, in his essay "Politics and the English Language". This is a great piece of writing and I recommend it to anyone who hasn't come across it before. I don't agree with everything he says, but I agree with a heck of lot of it.

I admire the way Orwell manages to be perfectly even-handed, and even humourous, too, about a serious subject which clearly was hugely important to him. Re-reading the essay, I am reminded of how often I use what he calls "verbal false limbs", and I chide myself on my sloppy habits, and the sloppy thinking to which these habits are connected, as well as my tendency towards luxuriant verbiage.

It's a pity that the only place I've found the whole essay quoted online has the text in a form that is full of typos. That's ironic, too, and I can only hope Orwell would have found it funny...

I've just been reading a report from Defra, Kew's major government sponsor department. Draw whatever connections you like between that and the above...