When he's not steam-cleaning graffiti off estate walls, imposing ASBOs on 4 year olds with ADHD or strumming a Foreigner tune on his Stratocaster, Tony Blair is giving language enthusiasts exciting new meanings to words. Praise be to our glorious leader!
"Respect" is his latest one. Not that it's a new word:it briefly appeared as a slang term on the streets before Ali G made it fashionable as a parody of urban speech; George Galloway's bunch of Islamo-Trot chancers adopted it for their party a couple of years back (and now see Galloway showing no self-respect in the Big Brother house); but now it's different. Respect isn't just respect anymore. No, it's so much more.
As Simon Jenkins points out in today's Guardian, what are really needed are not new words and cryptic jargonistic phrases, but local communities having real power. What's the point of inventing a "Baby ASBO" or "Sin-bins" for anti-social families when people don't feel they actually have any say in how their local communities are run? I could go on, but I fear it will turn into a rant, so I'll just link to a site or two where people actually involve the local community in decision-making and leave it at that.
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