Competition | 8 May 2010

In Competition 2645 you were invited to submit an example of impenetrable ministerial waffle. Lord Mandelson set the bar high with his bewildering statement, ‘Perhaps we need not more people looking round more corners but the same people looking round more corners more thoroughly to avoid the small things detracting from the big things the Prime Minister is getting right’, which scooped the Plain English Campaign’s 2009 Foot in Mouth award. But you stepped up to the mark admirably: I was reduced to judging in short bursts as my eyes glazed over and my brain threatened to shut down in the face of such magnificently opaque prose. The winners, printed below, pocket £25 each. W.J. Webster gets £30.

Going forward our focus will be on addressing prioritised issues with decisive yet considered action founded at all times on the bedrock of our deep-core values. Our strategic approach will be evidentially robust and locked into a rigorous monitoring of outcomes. Pilot schemes in a balanced selection of economically and demographically defined areas will form the basis of a programme of ongoing initiatives to be rolled out nationally in integrated tranches. This dynamically incremental process is designed to ratchet in a consensual step-change in user attitudes leading to community empowerment across the breadth of the social spectrum. At the same time, science-based investment in technological development will ensure that costs are driven remorselessly down while standards rise commensurately in accordance with Century Twenty-one expectations. Foregrounded throughout will be a heads-up 360-degree awareness of climatological impact and the need to embrace and nurture the ecosphere.
W.J. Webster