Listening to this morning's Today programme I just avoided throwing something at the radio, which was a good thing, since I was driving at the time.
Sarah Montague was interviewing the International Development Secretary, Douglas Alexander, who appears to have forgotten how to speak English.
Was it time, Montague asked, to negotiate with the Taliban? Only, Alexander confidently replied, "if they renunciate violence." "Renunciate"? What's the matter with the word "renounce"? A little later he was warbling about "stabilisation" rather than the word normal people use, "stability."
Even if Douglas Alexander was actually saying something important, which I beg leave to doubt, any message he had was lost in a forest of word-mangling. It is a disease of politicians, and it is spreading faster than swine flu.