Civil servants banned from bamboozling public
Did you know that civil servants have been banned from using meaningless buzzwords and told to use Plain English instead? In a victory for commonsense, Whitehall officials have been instructed not to use long words where short ones will do – ‘buy’ instead of ‘purchase,’ ‘help’ instead of ‘assist’, ‘like’ instead of ‘such as’ and ‘use’ instead of ‘utilise’, for example.
Bureaucrats have also been forbidden from using Americanisms like “fill out a form” rather than “fill in a form”.
