Miriam Alli is a Nigerian woman who lives in Ireland with her five children – who are all Irish-born and Irish citizens. Juwon is 11, Arafat is eight, twins Kenny and Tai are five, and Shukra is six months.
Earlier this year, their father, Kabir, was taken away by officers of the Garda National Immigration Bureau and deported. Kabir is one of many fathers who came to Ireland seeking asylum a few years after their wives moved here and gave birth.
The official and legal justifications
So what did the Minister for Justice, Dermot Ahern, have to say? He said that Ireland operated “probably one of the most progressive immigration laws in western Europe” but “our system must also be robust”.
The High Court rejected a challenge – based mainly on the Irish Constitution’s protection of families and children – to Kabir’s deportation order in December 2009. Judge Maureen Clark said she was satisfied that deporting Kabir would not “impact in an excessive way on the personal and family rights of his wife and children as there were no insurmountable obstacles to their going with him to Nigeria”.
She also said that Miriam would not be “excessively inconvenienced if her husband returned to Nigeria”. After all, she pointed out, Miriam had managed to live without him for three years.
Let’s see what “progressive but robust” immigration laws and “no excessive impact” on the rights of wife and children mean in human terms.
The family’s feelings
The family were interviewed by Irish Times Social Affairs correspondent Jamie Smyth (3 April 2010, Irish Times). Eleven-year-old Juwon said he greatly missed his father. “He used to play football with me every day and help with the local team that I play for here in Lusk.”
Five-year-old Tai said: “I like Ireland and my school, but I miss my daddy. I want him back.”
Miriam does not want to return to Nigeria. “The education they get in Ireland is much better than in Nigeria. My children are also integrated into Irish life and I have to think of them first, so we will stay.”
She added: “The children have cried a lot since Kabir was taken away, and they get angry a lot.”
Barnardos advocacy director Norah Gibbons commented: “One day your father is there with you in the family and then a hand reaches in and removes him. This is bound to make a child feel unsafe. It could lead to disruptive behaviour, poor performance at school and make it difficult for a remaining parent.”
She added: “We claim in this country to cherish all children equally.”
Henry and Gillian
In another case (also reported in the same article by Jamie Smyth), Henry Olabode was bundled on to a charter jet at Dublin Airport in March, and flown to Lagos. He had come to Ireland in 2007 and applied for asylum, claiming his life was in danger because he had campaigned against hostage-taking in the Niger Delta region in Nigeria.
While waiting to be ‘processed’, he met an Irish woman, Gillian, who lives in Athlone with two children from a previous relationship. She and Henry married shortly before his claim was rejected. They lived together for nearly one year.
Gillian told Jamie Smyth: “I met him when I was out for a few drinks with friends, and we clicked right away. They took him away from me without interviewing us or asking any questions about our marriage.
“I’m heartbroken and will fight to get him back into the country. This is unfair. Why can’t an Irish citizen choose who to marry?”
Stop complaining, Gillian. Irish immigration laws may be robust, but they are progressive. And remember: you may be heartbroken, but you are not excessively heartbroken.
Stumble Upon
Del.icio.us
Buzz
Ryanair chief Michael O’Leary is a remarkable character (love him, hate him or love/hate him). He’s remarkable both in what he’s achieved (love or hate his methods) and in the way he talks to the world. Here are some examples:
Plane English a la Michael O’Leary
“We need a recession. We’ve had 10 years of growth. A recession gets rid of crappy loss-making airlines and it means we can buy aircraft more cheaply.” (3 November 2008)
In economy no frills; in business class it’ll all be free – including the blowjobs. (Talking of plans for a transatlantic service: 2008)
You don’t see the government confiscating lipsticks and gel-filled bras on the London Underground. Most of them couldn’t identify a gel-filled bra if it jumped up and bit them. (Complaining about increased airport security checks: 2006)
At the moment the ice is free, but if we could find a way of targeting a price on it, we would. (October 2005)
Every idiot who gets fired in the industry shows up as a consultant somewhere. Shoot consultants and advertising agency specialists. (October 2005)
I’m probably just an obnoxious little bollocks. Who cares? (2006)
Some people are so ideologically opposed to O’Leary that nothing he says could amuse them. Perhaps, though, they might admit that he always achieves rapid lift-off.
Official spokespersonese, Ryanair-style
In contrast, some of his spokespeople indulge in the kind of officialese that is so loaded with heavy baggage the verbal machine remains firmly stuck on the ground.
Recently, a 52-year-old ex-Viking from Norway had a little problem about a “chicken premium sandwich” he was presented with on a flight from Berlin to Rygge. Since the meat was made out of rubber, he refused to pay for it. The flight attendant threatened to call the police. He assumed she was joking and fell asleep.
At Rygge airport, three men in orange police jackets came on board and took him off for questioning. The Rygge police confirmed later, reportedly with chuckles (yes, Norwegians are capable of chuckling), that they’d never been called out for a passenger complaining about a sandwich. No charges.
A Ryanair spokesperson explained: “The captain on flight FR8904 requested police assistance on arrival after a passenger became disruptive in flight. This matter was addressed with the passenger by police on arrival. Ryanair crew only request such assistance when deemed absolutely necessary based on their assessment of the disruptive passenger behaviour and their reading of the situation.”
No, it’s not the worst example of officialese, but it’s surprising (and inconsistent) that bossman O’Leary doesn’t charge his spokespeople for each wasted word, and also for each long word that is not “deemed absolutely necessary”.
How would O’Leary himself have put it?
“We had to call the police to deal with this Norwegian bollocks who’d refused to pay for his *x!king sandwich. Yeah, maybe we flew off the handle a bit, but what do these gobshites expect on a Ryanair plane – a Michelin five-star?”
Did you know that there’s an organisation called the Queen’s English Society?
No? Nor did I, until today.
On its website, it shouts out its key message – in capital letters (but gentlemen shouldn’t shout, so I won’t inflict them on you): “Good English matters – the world uses it – we must keep it safe from declining standards.”
The Queen’s English Society was established about 40 years ago, but it has now announced (June 2010) its plans to set up The Academy of English, an English version of the French Academie francaise, aimed at keeping the language pure.
The society’s press release said: “Other languages, French and Spanish for example, have supreme authorities that try, while moving with the times, to define what is good and acceptable usage and what is not. They do not stop the language from changing over the years, but they do provide a measure of linguistic discipline and try to retain valid and useful new terms, while rejecting passing fads.”
The academy would “set an accepted standard of good English” in our “hectic, modern, digitalised world.” It would protect the Queen’s English from alien impurities, bastardisations and text-speak horrors.
Poxridden and pathetic
Stephen Fry was slightly dubious about the idea. He tweeted: “Of all the foolish, ignorant, poxridden, pathetic and tragically misbegotten notions, this one beats them all.”
A London Times report gives an insight into the mentality of the founder of the academy, Martin Estinel; he said he still used the word ‘gay’ to mean ‘happy’ but “grudgingly accepted that its newer definition was now in the dictionary”.
There are a number of problems about this plan, apart from the poor use of English in the press release (what, for example, is a ‘fad’ that does not pass?).
One of those problems is that English is spoken by quite a number of people, who are not, incidentally, subjects of the woman of German origin who sits on the throne of England, such as more than 250 million Americans, 79 million Nigerians and 49 million Filipinos.
It also happens to be a near-universal language, spoken by millions more as a second language.
In their use of the term ‘the Queen’s English’, the people behind the academy seem to think that English is owned in some way by a feudal relic who rules over a small corner of the English-speaking world (and who probably still believes in ‘the divine right of kings’). Not any more, chaps.
The anarchic millions
Certainly, current English displays a lot of sloppiness and execrable jargon, but it’s not likely that a group of stodgy verbal police will be able to exert much control over those anarchic millions. In particular, it’s unlikely that the academy will make much headway in getting all those millions of American linguistic vandals to speak the Queen’s English, since they and their forebears have been doing their own independent thing now for a few centuries. (For Pete’s sake, they can’t even spell ‘colour’.)
No, the new academy won’t even be able to control the tongues of the majority of English people, who refuse to ‘speak proper’ (after all, the BBC has to keep them off the airwaves in case they offend polite people). But they’ll go on doing their thing, committing appalling grammatical and syntactical crimes in strange local accents.
Ah well, maybe English will survive. After all, it’s a uniquely rich language thanks to the fact that it’s really two languages – a Germanic foundation hugely enriched by the French during the century or two when they ruled England. And then there are all those added riches contributed by foreigners who immigrated to Britain and that were absorbed during the centuries that English wandered around the world.
Yes, English will go on growing and changing and surviving linguistic crimes as it continues to spread – and Mr Estinel is going to be very ungay when he realises that there’s nothing he can do about it.
Spelling errors? Big yawn. Who cares – as long as you get across the big message?
I just came across a message sent to a LinkedIn group from someone anxious to publicise his new CD:
“I’m proud to announce that my inspiprational and motivational “Amplify Your Success” CD is now available.”
The CD is titled: ‘Highly Effective Back to Basics Approach for Building Your Confidence & Achieving Success’.
We mustn’t get too pedantirrational about such little errors. But the subject of track No. 7 on the CD is: Make A Great Impression. (Let’s ignore for now the subject of track No. 8, which is ‘Confident Communication‘)
Nice suit, pity about the stains
Imagine someone standing before a group of wide-eyed people keen to learn the Secrets of Success. He’s wearing a well-cut suit, smart tie, sparkling cufflinks. He looks smart – and successful – from a distance.
It’s a bit draughty at the back of the room, so you move up to a front seat. You get a closer look at Mr Successful Guru. A little white stain on one of his lapels. Hm, careless … happens to us all. Then you notice another little stain on one of his sleeves … and then another on his trousers. You start counting them – seven in all.
You haven’t heard a word he’s been saying for a minute or two, so you focus back on his words – in a slightly sceptical frame of mind.
Little thing, big effect
Like stains on one’s clothes, spelling and other types of errors in our writing are little things that can have a big effect.
One or two minor errors don’t matter much (we all do it). Consistently making errors is another matter.
Say someone is offering website services. The marketing message is: Fantastic. Best in the business. Unrivalled service. But the copy is riddled with mistakes, so a secondary message is being conveyed: Sloppy. No attention to detail. Unprofessional.
Yet everywhere you look you see errors – in LinkedIn discussions, forum comments, marketing material, website copy – committed by people who are trying to promote themselves.
A lot of the writing is so slipshod you can’t even work out what the person is trying to say. But that’s a matter for another day.
Yes, I know, this is not a very inspiprational bit of writing, but we need to remind ourselves to pay attention to our words before they go public. If we do, we’re more likely to Make A Great Impression.
(Meanwhile, if you’re doing some public speaking and want to Communicate Confidently, don’t forget to check your clothes before you go on stage.)
How do you render a word meaningless? One good way is to use it repeatedly in such a way that it ends up meaning nothing.
That is the current fate of the word ‘significant’, which has been so over-used that it now means ‘insignificant’. That’s some achievement, isn’t it – to render meaningless a word that means ‘meaningful’.
Here are some examples:
- A senior police officer says there will be “significant arrests” of those involved in a riot in a British city.
- A youth-justice organisation “reveals significant achievements and improvements in the youth justice system over the last year”.
- The US Department of Education issues a list of “significant guidance documents” – as distinct from a list of “insignificant guidance documents”.
- Police report a “significant” drop in crime. By how much, do you think? 4.6%? 9.9% 15% 22%. As it happens, 8.3%.
- The BBC announces a “significant change” to its online news offering.
- A police officer is killed in Ottawa. The president of the Canadian Police Association says: “This is going to be a significant, significant loss.” (More precisely, he also said: “His death will have a profound effect on the force.”)
- Engineers make “significant progress” towards putting a new cap on BP’s leaking oil well in the Gulf of Mexico.
- NASA discovers a “significant amount” of water on the moon. How much would that be? Fortunately, the scientist announcing the discovery offered a significant illustration, holding up several white plastic containers and adding: “about a dozen, two-gallon bucketfuls”.
What does the damn word mean?
Now, according to the Oxford Dictionaries online, ‘significant’ means (in two senses):
“1 sufficiently great or important to be worthy of attention; noteworthy …
“2 having a particular meaning …”
If you announce something, then, it is presumably “sufficiently great or important to be worthy of attention”, so you hardly need to say it is “significant”.
It’s almost automatic to say or write ‘significant’ now to save us from the effort of being more exact. Small, very small, minor, big, major, huge? Damn it, significant will do.
What a relief it is to find the chief executive of Anglo Irish Bank acknowledging that the Irish government’s bailout for his bank involves, not a “significant”, but a “staggering amount of money” (Irish Times report, 1 April 2010). He correctly realised that corporate euphemistic generality and vagueness would not suffice.
‘Significant’ does, of course, have an exact meaning in statistics (look it up if you wish). And, according to my calculations, in non-statistical texts the word is used in an insignificant (that is, meaningless) way in 87.56% of cases.
So, next time you’re about to use the word ‘significant’, stop for a second and do something significant for the health of the language: use a different word.
If Professor Michael O’Keeffe, Consultant Ophthalmic Surgeon in Temple Street Children’s Hospital, Dublin, is as good a doctor as he is a man, then he’s one of the best.
On 9 July, he was interviewed by Pat Kenny on RTE Radio 1 (‘Today with Pat Kenny’).
What provoked the interview was the cancellation of operations at Temple Street on children with cataracts, glaucoma, etc. Mr O’Keeffe pointed out that such children risk going blind if the operation is not carried out in good time.
One of the children was, in fact, a six-week-old baby with cataracts – and a baby of six weeks, he said, is at a “critical period in visual development”.
Mr O’Keeffe went on to contrast the PR spin – “the statistics” and “the lies” – of those who manage the Irish health system with the “reality on the ground”, which is “a disaster”. The “system is breaking down”, he said: inefficiencies, cutbacks, phones not answered, lists cancelled, outpatients not starting on time or cancelled.
“I think patients have become a nuisance in hospitals,” he said sardonically. “We could run them so well without them.”
Meaningless jargon
He added: “We talk about grandiose schemes … a ‘world-class health system’ and all this sort of thing, this jargon, which is meaningless, because none of the basics are happening.
“I recently got an email from one of the hospitals saying they now wanted to discuss biological management of patient care. Now you tell me what that means, it’s meaningless stuff, this is the sort of garbage we’re into …”
Looking after patients was “really quite simple, but we’re into management speak”, complicating things, and “we’re forgetting the basics”.
Pointing out the current jargon for closing down – reconfiguration – Mr O’Keeffe said: “World-class means nothing down at my level.”
He spoke passionately and with a savage indignation that it’s not possible to convey in print.
‘Transformation and reconfiguration’
After listening to the interview, I went to the Health Service Executive website and had a look at its 2009 annual report: “implementing our transformation and [here we are!] reconfiguration agenda”, “have achieved 70% of our 2011 targets in 23 of the 35 representative areas … we maximised every possible measure to protect frontline services”, and so on.
Then I googled world class state of the art best practice and got three million results. One of the sites listed was a “world-class data center” which uses various “mission-critical systems”, including a “state-of-the-art fire suppression system”.
Another of the sites was that of a “leading” American health-care provider, which asserted: “Our expert and caring medical teams are empowered and supported by industry-leading technology advances and tools for health promotion, disease prevention, state-of-the art care delivery and world-class chronic disease management.”
This health-care provider may actually be quite good but, if you’re fussy about hyphens (or the lack of them), you’ll notice that the phrase “chronic disease management”, strictly speaking, means “chronic management of disease”.
Indeed. After all, what Mr O’Keeffe was surgically cutting into was all the grandiose, high-flying management speak that masks chronic management and ”disaster” at the ground level.
A new rule
With the shakespearean perception “Methinks she doth protest too much” in mind, I now suggest a new rule:
The quantity and grandiosity of management speak is in inverse proportion to the quality of the service provided.
