Time to get busy with the firearms if you hear anyone who starts talking about low-hanging fruit, being ahead of the curve, hitting the ground running or blue-sky thinking.
Generally if you hit the ground running you end up with a wound that’ll extend from head to toe and if you are a blue-sky thinker you probably have your head in the clouds. When you hear any of these phrases, or something that sounds unnecessarily opaque or arcane it’s absolutely the best policy to say: ‘Could you explain to me what the hell you are talking about because, quite frankly, it really does sound like you are talking a Millennium Dome full of shite’.
This should stop this person in their tracks and it’ll probably nail your three-hour meeting laced with smoke and mirrors down to about half an hour.
Policy wonk
That’s so one vowel away from the truth.
Credit crunch/downturn
No, it’s a recession. Don’t try to jazz it up.
‘Satisfying’ the banks
Sick of George Osborne saying we need to ‘satisfy the banks’ in order justify swingeing cuts, and it’s more even galling when you hear that economies throughout the world are trying to cut deficits in order to stop the banks and money markets from freaking out. That’s a bit rich. These are the people who got us into this mess in the first place.