Okay, this one has to take the cake, sort of. In London, the Local Government Association has taken it upon themselves to create a list of 100 words or phrases that politicians are not allowed to use anymore. Unlike George Carlin's list of 7 dirty words, though, these aren't nasty words of any sort, but words this organization has deemed either too confusing or misleading to the general public.

What kind of words are we talking about? Most of us have heard "synergy", "brainstorming" and "empowerment". I'd never heard this term, but they've also banned "coterminosity," a situation in which two organizations oversee the same geographical area.

I fully understand this worry about jargon, something we here in America call double-speak. We now commonly use the term "weapons of mass destruction", but until Clinton said it I had always thought in terms of bombs and bullets. I was kind of thrown for a loop when black people were suddenly known as "people of color", then became "African-American" when someone determined that people of color covered way too many other people.

I'm of a mixed mind here, because whereas I know that there are these terms that make absolutely no sense, having a governmental agency tell someone what they can or cannot say when it comes to specific words that have nothing to do with putting someone else down (dare I use the term "politically correct"?) seems draconian at best. These officials have been elected by the people of that country, and for some other agency to tell them they have to choose different words seems, well, more communist than democratic.

Then again, this is England, and they're still under a monarchy, so maybe their system of government allows this type of thing. It just seems a little weird from where I sit; what do you think?