In the Scotsman this morning there's an article entitled 'Seeing ourselves as others see us in drive to promote vital and diverse rural communities.' It says it's been written Richard Lochhead, the rural affairs secretary. If it has been he's clearly a man whose first and last names have become muddled. It actually reads like something produced by a RPSG. Why do I say this? here are some crackers.
Opening lines.
Since taking office, I have been impressed by the level of commitment among farmers, businesses and service industries to developing vibrant rural communities.
I was particularly struck by the comments about the fragmented delivery landscape.
We are committed to creating a well-connected, safe and reliable transport system providing good-quality public transport which is integrated, accessible and affordable.
I agree with the OECD's assertion that rural Scotland has unexploited potential. We must realise this and, to do so, we have to get the relationships and context right. Through our economic strategy, we have focused central government and the wider public sector on increasing sustainable economic growth.
An RPSG? A Random Political Speak Generator...
Dick Lochhead begins his article by saying. "I was pleased to note the complimentary remarks made yesterday by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) about the level of innovation, both in quantity and quality, throughout rural Scotland."
He finishes it by saying "I look forward to examining the detail of the OECD report and considering what lessons we can draw for it to help meet our aim of supporting vital, diverse and sustainable rural communities."
Rather than launching off in some self serving drivel perhaps it would have been as well to read the whole thing first. It may well be that the devil is in the detail. He could then tell us in language that makes sense and makes us rural dwellers feel like someone is listening. All he's done is read the Executive Summary.
What does it have to say about putting up wind turbines and descamating the main source of income for most people in rural areas - tourism?
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I'm strongly reminded of something I came across years ago when I was reading Psycholgy at Uni.
An American researcher (it has to be, doesn't it?) was looking at the factors linking PhD thesis and the subsequent post-Doctoral salary achieved. He looked at subject area, institution, renown or otherwise of PhD supervisor, etc, etc and in the end he found that there was a correlation between post-Doctoral earnings and the weight of the thesis.
Literally, weight as measured on a set of scales - the heavier the thesis, the higher the subsequent earnings.
So he went on to write a computer program, a sort of automated bullshit generator, which would take any passage of text and inflate it by a chosen factor, say double, treble or quadruple.
He claimed his program achieved this padding-out while neither adding to nor removing from the meaning of the text.
Much of the stuff I read these days, relating to planning, public policy and so forth, seems to have been generated by a similar algorithm.
If you can't blind the public with science, baffle them with bullshit!
Which leaves me with only one nagging doubt. The people who produce this guff clearly intend to conceal, but are they trying to conceal the implications or the lack of implications? Do they do it to hide the meaning, or hide the lack of meaning?
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