Beware of politicians spouting cliches

FRIDAY, JUNE 1: Life’s a rush, so all of us use cliches. They save time and conserve brain-power.

We don’t have to think of a fresh or more accurate way of wording things when we use cliches. And listeners don’t have to think too deeply about what the words mean. They’ve heard the cliches so often they just drift gently by, leaving a vague sense of something — positive or negative, reassuring or worrying — but little more substantial than that.

Cliches are all over the place, but nowhere do they abound as much as they do in politics.

It’s hardly surprising. Politicians feel forced to speak (and speak, and speak), even when they have little or nothing to say.

And they often feel the need to induce reactions — positive or negative, reassured or worried − without the time and trouble of detailed justification.

That’s one of the dangerous things about cliches, and other things we’ve heard a thousand times before: They’ve been said so often by so many different people that we’re tempted to believe they’re true.

Here’s a cliche we heard the other day that’s worth exploring: “Playing political football”.

This is what Public Works Minister Michael Weeks accused his Opposition counterpart Mark Pettingill and the One Bermuda Alliance of doing over plans for low cost housing construction in Dockyard.

Mr. Pettingill had complained that a builder had been selected for the $36 million project without any tendering process. He also questioned why 100 units were planned to replace the existing 42 while there are, at the moment, many housing units in Bermuda sitting vacant.

This might, at first glance, sound like “playing politics”, which of course none of us are supposed to like. So it is easy to be lulled into accepting the cliche and join in Mr. Weeks’ blithe dismissal of the OBA criticism.

But hold on. Let’s take a look at the cliche.

First of all, politicians surely do “play political football”. It is the only game that politicians play. So if it can be used to dismiss the statements of Mr Pettingill, it can just as easily be used to dismiss the statements of Mr Weeks himself.

Secondly, the accusation of “playing political football” is being used here to suggest that the OBA doesn’t care about the sorry conditions in which Dockyard tenants now live.

Legitimate questions

Perhaps “playing political football” would be justified, if that’s what the OBA was doing, but it was not. The party was complaining about the type of housing being planned to replace the existing Dockyard derelicts, the total number of units, the heavy reliance on foreign workers for the job, and the absence of a tendered contract.

Finally, it is in fact the job of an Opposition party to question and criticize the actions and statements of the Government of the day. So unless the criticism is completely frivolous and arbitrary, then Mr. Pettingill was doing exactly what he was supposed to.

Of all possible issues, surely this was the least frivolous and least arbitrary for the OBA to criticize.

Like most Governments, the PLP’s accomplishments have been a mix of good and bad — and voters themselves will be mixed on which was which.

But the one area where the party’s actions, and inactions, have been repeatedly reprehensible has been in the awarding of government and quango contracts.

We all know Dockyard has been an area of serious infractions in this area — the Bermuda Cement Company silos and the new Dockyard cruise ship wharf come to mind.

So has the area of low-cost housing. The Bermuda Housing Corporation scandal comes to mind, as does low-cost housing in St. David’s.

I don’t know whether voters should kick the Government out of office for these infractions.

But surely they should vote against Mr Pettingill and the OBA if they failed to scrutinize, question and criticize the Government over over low-cost housing contracts.

So please think twice when you hear a politician utter a cliche of any kind. You’re going to hear a lot more of them before this year is through.

“Doing more with less”, “growth instead of austerity”, “tax and spend”, “grow the economy”, “balancing act”, “out of touch”, “putting Bermudians first”, “tough on crime”, “out-of-control spending”….you’ve heard them all before, because they’re cliches.

Sometimes there will be more meaning to them than meets the eye, and sometimes much less.

But more often than not they will sound significant, but they mean nothing at all.