Whenever I hear the words, “Moving Forward” I want to throw up. Flashbacks of our Prime Minister droning on about moving forward will have that effect on me for many years to come. I can’t help it. She has totally ruined that phrase for me. It was the same with ex Prime Minister Rudd who used the word “robust” so often that I have had to cross it out of my lexicon. And then there’s “argy-bargy” which was done to death by the former Premier of Queensland and is being regurgitated by the current Premier, Anna Bligh.

Who can forget “incentivisation” or “incentivation”? Now that was trendy, wasn’t it and so corporate. The former Prime Minister of Australia, John Howard, adopted the latter as his motto. Fortunately, it has gone with the wind.

The latest annoyance comes from the overuse of “paradigm”. We are served paradigms with breakfast, lunch and dinner. The politicians have grabbed hold of this term and will not let go of it. We have new improved paradigms, hormone-free paradigms, gluten-free paradigms, environmentally friendly paradigms. For crying out loud, give it a rest!

These politicians act like pit bull terriers. They latch on to a word until it becomes the mot du jour. Over and over and over again it will be repeated on TV and in the newspapers. It is mind numbing. I find that I don’t even listen to what they are saying because I’m too busy counting the number of times they have repeated that infernal word.

And so I come to the coup de grâce… the phrase, “the elephant in the room.” Apparently, there is an elephant in the room. We don’t talk about it. We should because it’s there. What is? Well, the elephant is. It’s there but we are ignoring it. So when are we going to notice it or acknowledge it, whatever it is? I don’t know. Nor do I care. Let’s just go on to the next tedious phrase, shall we? Can we? Yes, we can… Oops…