Happy New Year and a new decade too!  It’s now ten years since the invention of Big Brother; ‘local strategic partnerships’; ‘tsars’ for different parts of government policy; the Pokemon Movie; an ethical foreign policy (remember that one?); the New Deal for Communities…. and, of course, the Millennium Bug.  Which suggests some ideas just aren’t meant to last.  With that in mind, what’s about now we could do without? Which buzzphrases would you do away with before they have a chance to take hold?

Some words are just smug.  Take, for example, ‘app’ – three letters that seem to sum up the bewildering attitude of people who think they’re being clever, buying Apple.  For those who don’t get it yet, the rest of us are having access to a great big place where ‘apps’ are available free.  It’s called the internet.  Hey, if you want to go on paying too much for something because it’s branded, that’s fine!  But quit pretending it’s any different to buying Burberry.  Or Compuserve.

What about using two words where one would do? On the basis of economy, I could do without ‘early doors’.  As far as I can tell, it means ‘early’ – but mainly in Manchester and in the North of England.  In London, my researches suggest, it’s always meant ‘pants’.  (Rhyming slang: ‘early doors’ – for ‘drawers’.)  In any case, it’s a redundant phrase that surely needs to be retired.

Then there are the clichés. The nonsenses that are supposed to make you think there’s something in an idea when really it’s just old rope and bits of stuffing.  I’m detecting ‘scalable’ and ‘scalability’ have fallen recently into this mis-use.  It seems now to be clever to boast about (or question) the degree to which anything can be inflated without otherwise changing.  I’m waiting for when someone claims to have invented a scalable balloon.  Filled, no doubt, with hot air left over from too many dire ‘management team’ meetings.

Euphemisms – including some we might like to see go because they cover up things that should be said more plainly.  We had ‘collateral damage’ in the first Gulf War and then ‘ethnic cleansing’ from the conflict in Bosnia.  Whilst not quite as awful concepts, perhaps most of us would be thrilled to be hearing the last of ‘sub-optimal loans’ and banks ‘too big to fail’.  Sadly, ‘the global downturn’ may be harder to shake off, even than a dose of ‘swine flu’.

So – what about blossoming ideas that bring together all these dreadful qualities?  Smug, uneconomic, clichéd and  dishonest:  ‘blue ice‘ (er… ‘jettisonable material’) we’d be well rid of?  We’re looking for stuff that’s worse than mere self-satisfied geekery: wikis, blogospheres and webinars…  More grating than the mantras of management – ‘drilling down’ and ‘touching base’ etc.  More noxious than a ton of ‘toxic assets’.  What do you suggest?   Let’s have your nominations for bad language in the making…. We’ll pay cash for any information leading to the detection and arrest of a dodgy buzzphrase before it can do any real damage.  Whilst you’re thinking, here’s our ’starter for ten’…  I’m nominating the ‘personalisation of public services’.  It’s a desirable – even laudable – principle, but looks both unlikely and vague; radical but respectable.  The perfect covers for dishonest cuts and shabby treatment for neglected neighbourhoods and communities? Time – as the cliche goes – will tell.

NOMINATE BAD LANGUAGE in the making: simply tell us what – and why you think it’s dodgy.  Leave it as a comment below (including your name and contact information if you’d like to be in with a chance of winning) before the end of February.  We’ll be judging entries on the basis of smugness; long-windedness; cliche potential; and dishonesty – and announcing winners in March 2010.