Spin. The word has always irritated me but in recent years it's annoying me, really annoying me. It's a word which I consider to be a disguise but of course politicians are masters of disguise. They show their smiling public faces and imply with their 'spin' that all is well and we believe it, or did in the past.
The definition of spin ( in political terms) from the Chambers dictionary.
6 said of information, a news report, etc, especially that of a political nature: a favourable bias • The PR department will put a spin on it.spinning noun, adj. spin a yarn, tale, etc to tell a story, especially a long improbable one.
ETYMOLOGY: Anglo-Saxon spinnan.
My reason for this post is to ask why isn't the word 'lie' used? After all spin is an attempt to divert from the original accusation. It is the word used to disguise the word lie. If the Westminster parliament modernised and allowed Right Honourable (?) Members to voice the word lie then maybe, just maybe, spin may be reduced throughout the political world.
The definition of spin ( in political terms) from the Chambers dictionary.
6 said of information, a news report, etc, especially that of a political nature: a favourable bias • The PR department will put a spin on it.spinning noun, adj. spin a yarn, tale, etc to tell a story, especially a long improbable one.
ETYMOLOGY: Anglo-Saxon spinnan.
My reason for this post is to ask why isn't the word 'lie' used? After all spin is an attempt to divert from the original accusation. It is the word used to disguise the word lie. If the Westminster parliament modernised and allowed Right Honourable (?) Members to voice the word lie then maybe, just maybe, spin may be reduced throughout the political world.
The word lie is a simple yet brutal word. Nobody can misinterpret it. Nobody likes to hear it said but on occasion it should be said. A lie can be called an untruth but it's still a lie. Every time I hear the word 'spin' these days my brain registers the word lie and goes into switch off mode.
I wonder if anyone else feel the same.
I wonder if anyone else feel the same.
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35 comments:
We are on the same page.
Morning Admiral, of course it's evening with you I think. When listening (I seldom watch) TV earlier I just became infuriated with the repeated use of that word. Sorry if the post isn't well written but it's how I felt and still do.
It is written well.
If I never hear the word again I will be much better.
"... I just became infuriated with the repeated use of that word. Sorry if the post isn't well written but it's how I felt and still do."
Never apologise, never explain!
(Come to think of it, that's exactly what this awful bunch of Labour shysters do all the time!)
Oh Ted have I broken a rule of blogging? I do apologise if I have, in any way, diminished your view of my limited abilities :)
Its the difference between art and science...originated in the thatcher Reagan era as most awful things did
Talking about spin, what drugs are Gorgon taking.
Have you seen the letter he "wrote" to the Tory MP smeared sexually in his right hand man's campaign, of which he knew nothing.
I know he has only one eye but is the other one working properly.
Either that or we need to get someone to analyse his handwriting. Normally I think of this "art" as voodoo but I will make an exception in this case. IT should be hilarious.
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2009/04/15/article-0-04733532000005DC-350_468x340.jpg
WV = DIABAG how do they read my mind?
Sub R
Over on The Spectator WHO-will-not-allow-me-to-post.com
They are suggesting that Brown has mobilised his Virtual Praetorian Guard to undermine potential challengers (HarPerson, Purnell as well as many other before)and to elevate Ed Balls.
Has Brown nnot read or watched on the TV, I Claudius?
The comparison between the dying days of Rome and the fag end of the Labour Party are so deliciously worthy of a doctoral thesis.
If the Labour Party do not oust Brown and his Guard they are going down, perhaps never to come up.
Entirely agree, subrosa. The word 'spin' is itself spin. You should read Steven Poole's book 'Unspeak' if you haven't already. He also has a blog. He and his posters occasionally bore on about Derrida and the other postmodernist posers which they seem to take quite seriously (FFS) but there is otherwise a lot of very insightful stuff about the weasel use of language.
A sweeping cavalier bow to Fidothedog for this yin.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Life-Support-Derek-Draper/dp/1848500440/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1239784815&sr=1-1
Niko I don't think Margaret Thatcher's man Bernard Ingham was a spinner. He was just a liar but nobody had the courage to call him one.
I'm off to see what the Spectator says FC. Don't you be getting upset because they won't post your comments, you're in good company remember :-)
FC I've heard Gordon Brown's 'good' eye isn't perfect. Analysis of his handwriting would be interesting I agree.
Thanks for that link Vronsky. I shall certainly read it as it sounds up my street. or is it down my road ;)
I read that the other day Conan and just knew, once it got into the blogosphere, that the tags would increase along with the reviews. Clever stuff though but naughtly. Why can't someone just write 'rubbish'.
I suspect, initially, there was an attempt made by officialdom to explain carefully actions and reasons for them. Slowly this has become a need only to palm off awkward questions those in power do not wish to answer or consider the Public not savvy enough to fathom. Corruption of power. As for SpADs, as they are now referred to. Why should the tax payer fund them? If we did not, of course, Labour would be financially as well morally, destitute. Still doesn't stop the stench, however.
Sub R
As you know I live in different time zone and some would say a parallel World..
I have said elsewhere that Gorgon does indeed live in a parallel universe.
The Hedron Collider, under Geneva has, I think, a branch spur on the Bakerloo Line, under 10 Downing Street. Broon has been sucked into the vortex and communicates to us from his private parallel World by way of a ouija board and mystic writing by way of body possession.
Coming back to Earth, I live near someone who is retired from working in what can loosely be described at the Foreign Office.
We banter about nationalism, Scotland and independence. The conversation never rises above banter and he never allows himself to get into any details.
However some 6 months ago he said that Brown has a deteriorating eye condition that probably be his way out.
It does make some logic but then logic beyond Brown's self interest has been difficult to divine these past months.
Subrosa
Oh i dont know John Biffen did but with a bit more waspish wit than in these more modern times.
John Biffen retaliated by saying Ingham was the "sewer and not the sewerage"
Faux Cu
didn't the ending of the roman empire take centuries..with the occasional flaring back to life.
Subrosa, a chastened "oldrightie" has responded to your heartbreaking comment!
You are bang on the money.
Spin = deceit = lies
I always think of the term being derived from cricket, where the bowler tries to fool the batsman as to the true line of the ball by applying spin. It's a deliberate action to gain an advantage, unlike spinning a yarn, which has a lovely homely feel to it.
Niko I forgot about John Biffen. My head's still in the clip Diomhair had with Ingham's outburst.
FC I wouldn't say you're in a parallel universe, a pox on them who would :)
Interesting you mention Brown's eyesight. It wasn't so long ago I read (on a blog I think) that his notes for PMQs were in a 24pt font and that was because of his very poor eyesight. I noticed once when he was talking his notes were certainly large type.
Oldrightie you're forgiven. Such lapses are acceptable once we become mature adults I suppose or do I mean we find any'thing' is better than nothing?
Thanks Jim, you put it far better than me.
Sub R
Ask Traquir again.
I don't mind doing a couple of rough ideas / skeletal articles for him to craft into something intelligible.
Mr. Mxyzptlk
The Roman Empire did indeed take centuries to crumble from within but, they did not have the internet to help it on its way.
Let's see, 3 months to get news from Caledonia to Rome. Today about seconds.
Sounds about proportionate to me.
Broon is what we say, technically and scientifically speaking, GOOSED.
Sub R
I never want to be mature as in grown up.
I will ask him again FC but no doubt I'll receive the same answer while he smiles.
Neither do I FC but how I wish I could think like an adult and at times behave like a child. Most of us become too inhibited as we age. I blame it on my presbyterian upbringing.
Faux Cu
I think they did it was called 'roads' and later 'railways' then we had the 'telegraph'
(Ecclesiastes 1:9-14 NIV) What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.
Just dropped by to wish you 'All The Best' for tomorrow - I hope it goes well.
Many thanks GV, muchas appreciadas as they say in Dundee.
YES YES YES
I hate that this word has become so widely used, it always annoyed me - I always assumed I was alone there. They are not spinning a yarn, they are telling a lie.
Also, "bandwidth" in the context of how much work a person has on. If one more person in the workplace ever say they don;t have the "bandwidth" right now, my head will probably explode.
have to disagree here - the word may be relatively new but politicians have always spun the truth.
Spin is not the same as lying. It may involve a certain tweaking of the truth, for example the selective use of statistics to support a particular argument. You could perhaps accuse politicians who do that - and they all do - of lying by ommission. They will give you the facts that support their argument and ignore the facts that don't.
But there is nothing new in that. And selective use of facts is not the same as making facts up. That would be lying.
Perhaps what makes the spin culture more annoying these days is the interaction with the media. There are too many wannabe Paxmans out there. If you watch an interview with a politician the presenter generally jumps in about 40 seconds after the politician has started to answer the question with an 'ah,but' - even when the politician is answering the question perfectly straightforwardly. Those tactics I would say are justified when a politician is being evasive but not when they are being open. Yet the practice is so commonplace that the politicians have adjusted to it - they know they have just 40 seconds to get their line over and their rebuttal to any attack so that is what they do. What comes over to the viewer is a completely false discussion. If we did not have that media culture incidentally politicians wouldn't need SPADs. SPADs exist solely to deal with the media.
But to get back to the issue of lying - I do think it is very unusual for any politician to tell a deliberate lie i.e. to say something which is factually incorrect and which they know to be factually incorrect. They can make mistakes of course, but again that is not lying.
Unfortunately the practice of deliberately lying is so rare that other politicians are perhaps more naive about it than the public. They are used to spinning lines and bandying statistics about to make their points. But they are careful not to step across the line into outright falsehood. Therefore they don't expect any of their number to do that either.
When someone stands up in the House of Commons, for example, and says that he knows for a fact that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction capable of being launched in 45 minutes, MPs tend to believe that because the possibility that the person in question was telling a big fat lie in order to take the country into war would have been incredible to them. Prime Ministers just don't do that.
But he did. And the perverse honesty of all these spinning MPs is what made it easy for Tony Blair to lie to the House of Commons and get away with it - they couldn't believe that he was actually lying to them.
You're right of course Indy, few politicians have ever spoken the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
But I have to disagree with you. These days spin is the same a lying. It no longer means tweaking the truth but tweaking the lie.
Indeed the level of good interviewers these days is poor so I do agree with your point. But hasn't that culture in the media been created by polticians? I believe interviewers are told what they can or can't ask etc and therefore quality interviewers have gone on to other things.
Auch Indy Gordon Brown spouts statistics like prune stones at every PMQs. Once or twice I've taken the trouble to check his figures only to find out they're rubbish, even from the most forgiving angle.
The House of Commons needs a bluddy good shake up. Lies are told day in and day out. Your example of the WMD is a perfect one. Nobody questioned it as you say. What's the result? Hundreds of our troops dead for no reason. Iraq isn't a better place because of our intervention. Ooops sorry that's another subject altogether.
As you say Tony Blair redefined the word spin. Instead of it meaning a twist on a subject it became a lie and Gordon Brown continues to use it exactly in that way.
Thanks for your post by the way, they're always most interesting.
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