Bush and Blair accused of mangling English

LONDON: The English language is being destroyed by a "deadly virus of management speak" which has infected the mouths and minds of politicians like Tony Blair and George W Bush, a leading journalist says.

The Prime Minister and his ally the US President are mangling the language, destroying its meaning by avoiding the use of verbs, twisting nouns into verbs, and endlessly repeating phrases until they become "zombified".

He laments the inclusion of such words as "pertannually" in the proposed EU constitution – and despairs that when concerns were raised, the word was replaced with "insubdurience".

He urges the public, and journalists in particular, to reject meaningless phrases and to demand they are explained.

"When you get enough people pointing it out, the public starts to spot what is going on," he says. "That's why the battle has to be fought."

"We should expect – and should demand – that when people are setting out policies or trying to persuade us of something, they engage in proper debate and don't simply give us a set of unchallengeable propositions."