HERE in the North West, we’re supposed to be known for calling a spade a spade. We’re famed for saying what we mean, and perhaps that’s why I get annoyed when people give things silly names.
For example, why would a teacher be given the title “head of resistant materials”? I’m told this actually means head of woodwork. If so, why not call him/her that? Okay, I accept that wood is a material that offers a certain amount of resistance. Then again, attack it with a saw and it kind of stop resisting and puts its hands up.
Let’s be honest, it’s just flannel. It’s an attempt to make something sound more important than it is.
I first came across this phenomenon a few years ago. One of my bosses was trying to cover up the fact that he wasn’t offering much in the way of wages so he tried to make his jobs sound better than they were. Suddenly, the chief photographer became the picture editor, bog-standard reporters were renamed assistant news editors and the lad who mucked about with a few graphics was restyled head of design.
It was all nonsense and nothing changed. Perhaps a few vain people were taken in by it all but it’s hard to see how.
Overseas countries have their own version of our problem. In Yugoslavia (a country that existed before 1991) its dandy of a dictator, Tito, employed a divide-and-rule strategy. Virtually everyone there spoke the same language but he decided to create new ones.
Thus, alongside Serbian, you got Croatian, and new words were invented for the new language. So, what may have been termed a belt in Belgrade became a body-encompassing trouser holder-upper in Zagreb. Fiendishly clever these communists.
Only a few miles across the sea from Wales we have something similar. Take the political parties in the Republic of Ireland. Not for them a boring title like social democrats or liberals – you know, a name that might give some suggestion of what they’re about. No, we get far more exotic monikers.
Fianna Fail translates as soldiers of destiny, while Fine Gael is tribe of the Gaels.
Neither title gives you any idea about the ideas they espouse, which is just as well because they effectively believe in the same things. The only difference is which side your great-grandad supported during the civil war of the early 1920s.
And then we get Sinn Fein. They stand for a 32-county republic so why, at the start of the 20th century, did they decide to call themselves “we ourselves” or if you prefer “ourselves alone” rather than the republican socialist party? With a name like theirs you surely run the risk of being alone because no one will know what you stand for, in English or Gaelic.

Then a few years ago somebody - quite possibly that star football administrator Adam Crozier - decided to change the Post Office’s name to Consignia. Why?
However, I can’t exclude myself from criticism – well not entirely. Since my newspaper career ended I’ve been employed in a press office, except that it calls itself media, marketing and communications. Ever tried saying that when you answer the phone?
Could anyone ever have come up with a more pompous, self-gratifying title? I went to a meeting once, called myself a press officer and then cringed as the bloke on my left described himself as a media, marketing and communications officer. Please!
I put it all down to empty-box syndrome. The gift looks great wrapped in fancy paper and ribbons. But do a little unwrapping and there’s nothing of substance – fresh air. The sooner we get back to a little plain speaking, the better.
By the way, what’s a Big Society?