Tuesday 21 September 2021
Daft name competition
And the winner is ……….Mr Alexander de Piffle Johnson of London SW1, who came up with the stunningly daft name of “The Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities”. Well done Mr Johnson, a cheque (by way of a generous donation to the Conservative Party) is on its way to you, subject to a little something back in the New Year’s Honours List, please.
When it was called the Department for Communities and Local Government, various people (including those in PINS) used to refer to it as “DeCLoG”, a name I delighted to use in this blog. The new name does not so readily lend itself to being turned into an acronym, although I suppose “DeLUge” might be a possibility? So the previous incumbent, Robert Jenrick can now go around Westminster intoning “Après moi, le DeLUge!”
Unhelpful and sarcastic suggestions for other acronyms or epithets would be welcome, provided they are printable.
© MARTIN H GOODALL
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Syntax has never been a strong point with this administration. There again, perhaps they really do mean that this is now a department for levelling housing (already quite easy using PDR); levelling communities (that's what "Growth" areas are meant to achieve, a concept which Orwell seems to have missed); and levelling some other mysterious thing called "up". Perhaps they mean they are going to flatten out hills? The removal of "Local Government" was also to be expected, as they'd quite like to do that more generally.
ReplyDelete“Après moi, le DeLUge!” - well I've heard them called The Damn Barstewards before now;)
ReplyDeleteI find the concept of levelling up a curious one in many ways, to "level up" you must take from elsewhere, which unless it is some form of socialism (the national variety perhaps?) then you have to take from the even lower areas?
I can't remember which publication, but I think "DefLUP" has been suggested as a possible acronym
ReplyDeleteDepLUPHoCom (perhaps Dep-LUP-Ho-Cus, to rhyme with diplodocus or hocus pocus...)
ReplyDeleteHaving looked through some of these suggestions, I suppose (if on is not too fussy about using all the initials in the right order - shades of Eric Morecombe), one might try "HeffaLUmp". I vaguely recall that Pooh and Piglet went to a lot of trouble to devise a Heffalump trap, but failed to catch one.
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