My New Year’s Resolution

In 2007 I published a post about picking brambles in the middle of the city. Since then the place where I took the photo has been levelled and become an ‘ipark‘. As far as I can see the ‘ipark‘ is just a collection of large sheds that will contain the same characterless businesses that dozens of other industrial estates have. But just in case we thought it was only a collection of large, grey, tin sheds creating a new industrial estate on an old paint factory site, it has been given the catchy description of ‘ipark‘ by the developers. Nowadays anything that people want to sound technologically up to the minute is an ‘i-something‘, it used to be an ‘e-something‘ in the early 1990’s, and in the 1950’s (with the ‘atomic’ age) it was an ‘a-something‘. That only leaves ‘o’ and ‘u’ for future generations to play with. So my first resolution is to refuse to use any more ‘i-words’ this year.

Similarly, I am refusing to add the word ‘global’ to anything. Today I heard on the radio someone use the (made-up) word ‘globesity‘ to describe a worldwide problem of obesity. By adding the word global it often suggests it is too big for individuals to do anything about, ‘globalisation’, ‘global warming’, ‘global recession’, ‘global economy’. Anyone using the word ‘global’ in this way is using ‘globlique speak‘, a new phrase I have invented and intend popularising in 2008. Except I can’t use it because that would break my New Year’s Resolution.