Listeners' Strong Messages

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Hello, and welcome to Strong Message here from BBC Radio 4, a journalist and a comedy writer's guide to the use and abuse of political language.

It's Amanda Lucci.

And it's Helen Lewis.

And this week we are dipping into the mailbag.

Do you dip into mailbags?

Who dips into mailbags?

Anyway, I'm good.

I've said it.

So that's what we're doing.

We're dipping into the mailbag to see what our listeners have to say.

Do you see what listeners say?

This whole project has now turned me into something.

Just any phrase now does make no sense whatsoever in front of my eyes.

But fundamentally, just to sum up.

People have emailed us with some of their questions and we're going to read those out and in our heads and then hopefully answer some of their questions.

Starting with the lucky number one, Chris Miller from Ipswich, who says, very much enjoying the programme.

I do appreciate how many of these emails began with some sort of like light, flattering grovelling, which suggests that they know this quite well.

Please, can we have a coroner's report on government of service, given the rapid decline in optimism which was stirred up by Kirstammer in July, inviting notions of a collective labour commitment to working for the public good?

So this was this idea of the Labour government was not going to be messing around like the previous Tory governments.

It was going to be a government of service run by sort of serious people.

Yes.

And with the implication being that the other lot weren't serving.

I mean they certainly were.

Not serving in the kind of New York ballroom scene like you girl you served sense but serving something yes.

Yes and and there is a pattern of any government coming into power saying we are here for the people as opposed to the previous lot who weren't implying that you know if you voted for anyone else you got it wrong

is that too a popular thing to do.

I think the bit that this maybe catches is the fact that Kirstam sort of deliberately leaned into the idea that people thought he was a bit boring.

Yes, to say, wouldn't that seem quite relaxing now after kind of lots and lots of drama and turmoil?

That's right, yes, yes.

It's like, yeah, preparing us for boredom.

Yes, and us not being frightened by

the sudden lack of stimulation and being told to eat our greens.

And then I guess the idea was after that they wanted just to really rub it in how bad the previous government had been and that they were different.

But I think it ran into almost immediate trouble as Tony Blair took all of a couple of months to run into Bernie Eccleston-related sleaze questions.

Keir Stahmer's freebie suits, his wife's freebie clothes, him staying in a flat of a labour donor.

Kind of, I think at that point, the coroner's report would recall cause of death for the phrase covenant of service was probably that very early sleaze scandal.

And that happened when John Major talked about going back to basics, talking about basic, you know, decency, you know, the old British values.

That then was the excuse for any journalist to find out anything anything that any of his MPs had been up to involving whatever it was.

Chelsea shirts.

Brown.

Oh, gosh, I'd forgotten that.

I'd forgotten David Wellers' Chelsea shirts.

Images are all coming back.

I was going to say Brown envelopes stuffed with cash, but Chelsea.

Oh, yes.

Yeah, well, that's a little Christmas cracker for the children.

What a rabbit hole we've gone down there.

Do you remember the phrase government of all the talents?

Yes.

That was Gordon Brown's idea that he was bringing people in.

Everybody started reading this book by Doris Kearns Goodwin.

Abraham Lincoln and Team of Rivals.

Team of Rivals.

The idea that he brought in lots of people into his cabinet.

And obviously because the acronym was goat.

And you got to write about Gordon Brown's GOAT.

Which has some kind of satanic implication.

If you want to go full conspiracy theory on it.

He did sacrifice the goat

eventually, yes.

I think one of the most effective prime ministers was Clement Attlee, because he was unafraid to surround himself with cabinet ministers.

who were actually strong personalities but also very very

good at their job you know if that happened now they would be seen as you know are they going to be future challengers to the leadership?

You know, where's streeting?

Is he now kind of lining himself up to challenge?

As soon as a prime minister's in now, it becomes when are they going to be deposed?

Whereas Attlee was very much into, if I put reasonably good people in place and tell them to get on with it, it might just work out.

Yes, I think one of the intriguing subplots to look for in 2025 will be how well Donald Trump deals with the more showbiz members of his cabinet.

So, you know, his vice president will be J.D.

Vance, who's got his own kind of caucus, particularly within sort of Silicon Valley libertarians.

He's very popular with them.

And talking of Silicon Valley.

Well, I was going to say also Robert F.

Kennedy Jr., who's also a very show-biz-y, podcast-friendly guy.

And Trump has already started suggesting, you know, don't get too popular, Bobby.

So that's going to be one of my things to watch for 2025.

Yes, and of course, the whole, you know, the Musk.

We will not be able to stop talking about Doge.

That is one of my firm predictions for 2025.

Unless, you know, Trump starts turning himself into a kind of podcasty type.

You know, instead of the fireside chat that Roosevelt used to give over the wireless, I do wonder whether we will be seeing the Trump podcast because he woke up to the effect of going on Joe Rogan and all these other podcasts that reached a whole audience that he hadn't reached before.

Yeah, I mean, I always thoroughly recommend to people, unironically, that they listen to his podcast with Theo Vaughan, who's got this sort of lovely syrupy Louisiana accent, but talks to Trump about his very domineering father and his alcoholic brother.

And it's a real insight into his psychology, really kind of up there into the effect that Boris Johnson's mother having to be committed to Bedlam Hospital, as it was,

which unlocked this enormous amount of creativity in her.

Obviously, it was deeply formative on his psyche.

And I love a bit of psychology, so that's another one of my recommendations.

But

give us another letter.

Well, I was just going to say, when we

eventually knock

Stuart and Campbell off their podcast perch.

Yeah, we're coming for the rest is politics.

And And when, you know, when we can fill

the globe in Las Vegas or wherever it is called, maybe we should get Trump on.

Yeah.

Call us, Donald.

No, Farage, we should get him on.

We've been very.

The theorem is basically what we've done is

sort of 360-degree rudeness about politicians everywhere on the spectrum.

No one will ever, ever come and be in the situation.

Angel, what's going on, really going on inside your head?

Tell us, you know, you've got this massive captive audience here that we've captivated.

Tell us about your childhood.

Let's move on.

An email here from Arch Jones.

Is that a name?

Arch Jones?

It's just a man called Jones who is very arch.

Yes.

Sounds like a superhero.

One of the less familiar ones.

It says, hi, hello, Amando.

Love the show.

Thank you very much.

Not strictly a political message or phrase, but how worried should we be comes up a lot in the media.

Now,

that's, I suppose what he's getting at there is if you're an interviewer and it's live and you've run out of questions and it's a story that has negative possibilities, the escape mechanism at the end is, so thank you, Charles, but how worried should we be?

Which, I suppose, turns everything into a potential lethal disaster.

It's also very hard to calibrate, isn't it?

I think it's also a staple of newspaper headlines because essentially when you hear about something that might potentially cause the apocalypse, whether or not it's an asteroid or a new strain of bird flu, which happens all the time, you know, that they, or there's reports out of Angola that Ebola's breaking out again.

The natural question is, is this one I should be packing up my, you know, bullion and iodized water, or am I just okay to kind of go about my daily business?

So I will defend how worried should we be, because it is a question when confronted with lots of news stories that is the instinctive one that you ask yourself.

I suppose if you use it in the right context, you know, if it's, you know, Manchester City are slightly out of form, how worried should we be?

If you're a fan of any other teams, not at all.

No, no, no.

But yes, one of the things that we've really seen with the way that the media has gone in the last couple of years is it has to be very responsive to Google search queries, which is why for a while there was a whole suite of everybody wrote, you know, what time does the Super Bowl start?

Or when is Strictly come dancing back on television?

And they would write an article to answer that question because it was very cheap and easy Google traffic.

Now Google just decides basically it'll AI answer you that.

But how worried should we be?

As a sort of version of one of those very basic questions you might just people just to do type into Google?

Yeah, so yes, strictly is now finished.

How worried should we be?

It's great.

It's a good party game, this, like just putting how worried we should be at the end of every sentence.

So, yes, any more coming your way then?

Jan Godfrey from Rustington in West Sussex says, Good morning, team, which I like.

Thank you, Jan, for joining our team.

Whenever a government department is challenged about not doing something that was promised or expected, instead of providing a good reason or excuse, every single government department will start with, we are committed to

Musco because I can feel my blood pressure rising.

That actually connects with

one from Harvey Flinder or Harvey Flinder.

You've got the options, you know, pivot to whichever one you like.

One of my favourite wheezes is the I don't recognise form, as in, I don't recognise those figures.

I don't recognise that series of events.

I don't recognise that assertion.

He says, this rebuttal is not a clear denial or a refutation, but a sleazy way of pretending that you don't or will not identify certain facts or figures, perhaps even deny their existence.

It is a much more common get out when an accusation is put to a person or to a company or an institution.

If the accusation is, you know, Helen Lewis punched me in the face.

You then, being Helen Lewis, issue a statement saying, well, we're deeply committed to Amadi Nucci's face.

The implication...

You don't recognise that punch.

Exactly.

The implication that I punched him in the face is not something I recognise.

Yes, it is a very classic example of the non-denial denial.

Yeah.

But I do like the idea, how a little bit sympathetic to it.

Again, because if you're a government minister and you're in charge of several thousand civil servants, if you're asked, say, at a select committee, did one civil servant write an email that said, oh, do you know what?

I just hate people.

I want them to be unhappy.

Then you can't instantly on your feet say, that's appalling accusation.

No one in my department would ever say something so heinous.

So you do have to kind of give a, basically, you have to find a way to say, I don't know.

That doesn't then say, oh, so you don't know what's going on in your department.

A kind of unrealistic expectation that you should be monitoring everything at all times.

I suppose that's this giant node.

I suppose it becomes much more obviously applied when it's a very, very specific and serious allegation.

The sort of thing that if it happened, you would remember, or someone would remember, to say to that, I don't recognise that allegation.

Or I don't recognise that characterisation.

Yes.

I did punch you in the face, but I don't think you should be upset about it.

Exactly, because you weren't being you at the time.

Something else was going on.

I was actually just reaching past you, and unfortunately, I went straight through your face.

And watching sort of the various inquiries that, you know, have become a bit like a kind of running series across the decades now, a lot of responses to, you know, specifics are, I do not remember.

So it's not, I didn't do it.

It's, I don't remember, as if somehow not remembering whether a terrible thing happened gets you off committing the terrible thing, even if it did happen.

You know, the the fact that you can't remember it has somehow taken away some of its importance.

It also reminds me of maybe our late great, the late great queen's

finest phrase, which was, recollections may vary.

Vary, that's right.

So profound meditation on the inherent infallibility of memory.

Yes.

Yes.

No, that didn't.

Come on, that didn't happen.

But also, if it's a terrible, terrible allegation and you say, I don't remember, you think, what?

If that had happened, you would remember that.

There's no way you wouldn't have.

Or are you saying that even something like that is so unmemorable in my scale of value?

Punch loads of people every day.

Exactly.

Did I punch you?

Yeah.

I punch 25 people a day.

I can remember who it is I punch.

I'm an entrepreneur.

You know, that's what I do.

I punch people.

You know, how do you expect me to kind of like advance my career and make loads of money if I can't punch people?

Come on.

You know, it's that.

That's exactly

how I feel about it.

Got to stop you there, Helen, because actually, I just need to say, well, we have you all listening to us, if you yourself want to get in touch, you can send us an email to strongmessage here at bbc.core.uk

Sucks!

The new musical has made Tony award-winning history on Broadway.

We the man to be home!

Winner, best score!

We the man to be seen!

Winner, best book!

It's a theatrical masterpiece that's thrilling, inspiring, dazzlingly entertaining, and unquestionably the most emotionally stirring musical this season.

Suffs, playing the Orpheum Theater, October 22nd through November 9th.

Tickets at BroadwaysF.com.

I've got another great phrase, which is, the reality is.

That's from both Kath Razbash and John Francis.

And Kath says, this phrase in an ulster accident was much heard in the early 90s from spokespersons on both sides of the Troubles in Northern Ireland.

It always preceded a statement of an extremely partisan viewpoint.

I've heard again recently in other contexts.

This does make me think about, I think, one of the greatest sketches from the day-to-day, which is based on, you know, the fact that Gerry Adams couldn't, obviously, you know, Gerry Adams couldn't hear.

Can talk me through.

Jerry Adams' voice couldn't be heard, and Steve Coogan goes on helium, doesn't he?

The Day-To-Day was a mastermind subject a couple of weeks back, and I thought, oh, good, I'll have a go in real time.

I got two.

Oh,

do you know what they once did that with the Red Dwarf cast where they did a sort of university challenge of them versus their fans annihilated?

They just the cast just it might was like they might as well have not been there.

Uh but yes, no, we got uh yeah, Jerry Adams to subtract credibility from he had to inhale helium.

And uh this was before health and safety because Steve actually did inhale the helium.

And uh did you have any problem getting that on

people say this is actually a very serious subject and I'd really rather you didn't make a mockery of this.

Well, let me tell you how comedy works.

It's that you can, yeah, you mustn't s make jokes about that.

You should only make jokes about things that won't get us annoyed.

Yes.

You should make jokes about lovely stuff.

That everybody agrees on.

Yes, that's the best form of comment.

But you're right, that phrase, the reality is, usually precedes an opinion rather than a statement, doesn't it?

You know, the reality is the opposition just aren't pulling weight here.

Or the reality is.

We've seen nothing from the government that's demonstrated.

So it's a way of enhancing an opinion rather than by dressing it up as if it's almost like a dictionary definition.

Yeah, I guess also politics really relies on a lot of those emphatic words to, and there's a kind of rhetorical escalation because we don't really take anything politicians say seriously.

So, they it, which is the same thing as like we're committed to.

It's not, you know, you can't just say we're going to do something.

You have to go, no, I'm 100% pinky swear.

Yeah, you know, Carlo takes these back so he's definitely going to build some more houses.

Honestly, I know we haven't all the previous houses.

But if we've tripped up in this particular instance, and we don't yet know that the full facts aren't in, and it would be inappropriate for me to comment on the houses that may or may not have been built.

Well, there's an ongoing investigation.

I think we ought to leave them to do their job.

And when the facts are in, then I can comment further.

I would love to comment now, but I'm actually held back.

All my lawyers, all my the Church of England, the bishops, they're all telling me I can't.

Statute of limitations.

I cannot.

I would so dearly love to go off and one about how many mistakes were made in this institution but i legally can't and i think it would be remiss not just of me but of you and of the entire british public if they demanded me to fill in what actually happened before all the facts are out yeah and also again vince is a touching faith in the concept of you know a final finished version of history doesn't it the idea that some yes what is the point at which all the facts are not exactly exactly it's that thing of someone in chairman mao chairman mao's government was asked about the french revolution yes and and they said it's too early early to say.

How successful was the French Revolution?

It's too early to say.

When do the final judgments come in?

Is it on the actual day of judgment itself?

Is it on Armageddon?

It'd be weird if on the last day of time.

Instead of an earth-shattering, you know, destruction or heat death of a particle and molecule in the universe, they just published the results of all the inquiries.

Yeah, it's sort of like a kind of salmon spawning like if once we've published all the results of the inquiries then finally we can die

draw a line

over that existence the universe okay yes and move on i have one from a new zealand listener uh-huh it's very nice to be uh listened to on the other side of the world uh kiaora again you know that's how it works that is how the internet works i believe media yeah

obviously i'm enjoying the strong message here podcast they say obviously here is my bugbear crisis if there is an overused in recent times, surely it is this, i.e., the cost of living crisis.

I'm not aware of any country where inflation got much above 10%.

While very inconvenient, and it definitely made it tough for the vast majority of people, I do wonder what word will be available if the world ever gets real inflationary problems.

It mentions Zimbabwe and Venezuela.

The cost of living inconvenience doesn't have the same impact on people who genuinely feel the cost of basic items is rising faster than incomes.

Thank you from Robert Kant.

Well, I think for a lot of people it was a crisis, you know, hence the growth in a whole network of food banks that's keeping the entire country and a lot of people above the breadline.

And even so, you know, just about barely managing that.

I mean, if it affects you individually, it can be a crisis, can't it?

That's an interesting point about politics, which is that people talk about the economy.

And this is a big debate, I think, among political economists about, you know, if the government is messaging the economy is doing well, but there are people who do not feel that.

Inflation is such a big deal in the U.S.

election because it was something that people felt very viscerally.

I used to go into the shop and my my eggs cost this and now they cost more.

And if that affects you, that's your everyday experience.

And you don't really care that GDP is actually really bouncing.

Exactly.

And we discussed this in our reset, not relaunch episode where it's all very well to spout figures and facts and so on and do almost like a kind of

slide presentation of where the economy is going.

But the reality is felt on a day-by-day basis.

But maybe the overuse of crisis in other areas, you know, do we have a media crisis?

Do we have a...

Well, I I think we always do, but you, I think that one of the things that comes out about this is, you know, I had a friend who was an anthropologist, did field work on the Zimbabwe-South African border, and one of the things he had was a kind of display of million-dollar notes from Zimbabwe because hyperinflation was so incredibly bad during the time.

You know, in the Weimar Republic, they were carrying notes around in wheelbarrows, notoriously.

So there is obviously quite a lot worse than inflation can get.

Those wheelbarrows were very expensive.

Well, I know that must have been the only thing.

They may eventually use the wheelbarrows as currency.

But I just think you're going to have to just accept, and my coldly utilitarian view on this is that certain words like war, crisis, row,

as long as headlines have a, you know, need to be as short as possible, even if they don't strictly apply to what's happening, they will never die.

You mentioned way back

at the dawn of this podcast,

czar as one of the, you know, the czar, this czar, the media czar, the crime czar, and so on.

I came across just the other week, an extremism czar, where it's actually the thing that the czar is in charge of is actually more frightening than the word czar.

Yeah.

Whereas even whereas czar is meant to make its own frightening, it's almost like tailed off by the use of the czar.

Yes, yes.

It's slightly pathetic, isn't it?

I wonder there will, of course, be a czar czar as the logical endpoint of all of this.

But those words are incredibly helpful.

And yes, okay, so we have most people now read online.

But even if you're reading, particularly if you're reading on a mobile phone, those headlines need to be as short as possible.

And I'm afraid we're just going to have to accept a certain amount of tabloid ease and it is actually impossible to say well we just don't do that try and avoid that because it's unavoidable no it's just how the world works that unfortunately you know the vibe of how things are going has a tremendous and instant effect and if you're not ready to deal with it and if you can't calculate that it's coming and you don't have a kind of strategy for how to deal with it you go under well one war we have all definitely survived is the war on christmas which do you remember about 10 years ago was a big thing.

There was always, you know, Birmingham Council has won't put up lights and is calling it a festive arrangement.

I feel very nostalgic for the war on Christmas.

Yeah, yeah.

Should we bring religion into Christmas this year or shall we try?

But you know what I mean?

It was, it was such a big deal.

It was every deal.

There was somebody who was holding some sort of multi-faith light show, and this was kind of treated as the fall of the West.

And I just don't feel quite,

you know, never really appreciate it till it's gone.

That's how I feel about the War on Christmas.

The absence of Christmas comes earlier earlier and earlier.

No.

Exactly.

Terribly over-commercialized, the war on Christmas.

Yeah.

I'm just going to...

Have you got any more?

I think.

Oh, yes.

No, I.

Yeah, one, but

yes, here's one.

Yeah.

Jim from Devon.

Oh, it's that Jim.

Says, very much enjoying the podcast.

I thought I'd throw a phrase into the pot, which I've noticed as beloved of politicians.

And seems to be especially popular with police commissioners.

This is legacy issues, a version of the mistakes were made, but not by me defense.

So yes, using a legacy issue as something that happened before you arrived.

I love that.

It's very unclassy to say,

I guess in politics, you do say the last lot left this plate in absolute state, and now we're trying to clear it up.

But it's considered unclassy to do that in, say, the police service.

So, instead, you say you've got legacy issues.

Yes, so it's a kind of posh way of slagging off, as well.

Yeah,

I mean, that's quite a delicate little tongs around kind of, well, he was, of course, very corrupt, but it's going to take a lot of thought.

The previous uh occupant of this post

had deep-seated legacy issues that he had to see people about.

Then we would say that because I think we're members of the legacy media.

Well, exactly.

It's no become a kind of catch-all phrase for anything that anybody doesn't like, you know, and doesn't want us to use.

So

we must come up with another name for Musk so that we don't keep mentioning him.

Is there a safe word when we've had too many mentions of Musk?

We mentioned Karen the other week, and he was known when he bought X as Space Karen by a lot of people.

But yes, so he labels anything, mainstream media, legacy media.

So anything that's not this,

anything that's not his platform is legacy media, which is basically you, Helen, and anyone who researches anything or writes, you know, more than five sentences and anything and has paragraphs and

everything.

I found it very funny when he tweeted, we're the media now.

And I was like, well, where are your TV listings?

Where's the racing results?

Where are the horoscopes, Elon?

Come on.

Put together a package here.

Yes, you know, where are you checking your sources?

Yeah,

um, well, on that, yeah, I'm sure he will come back in 2025, like the Christmas leftovers that you just can't bring yourself to bin.

But that is all for Strong Message here.

We are taking a break next week and we'll be back the week after to pick apart more political language.

Our episodes are available in our feed, so make sure you subscribe on BBC Sounds.

Goodbye.

Oh, goodbye.

Best Medicine.

Dissecting funny and fascinating medicine.

I think pain management is the best medicine.

Bibliotherapy.

Therapy by books.

Sleep.

Well,

Spot the Comedian.

Celebrating medicines past, present, and future.

I think transplantation is the best medicine because it can completely change someone's life.

Defibrillation.

Oh, defibrillators.

Okay.

Amazing machines.

That much is clear.

Sorry.

Clear.

That's the new series of best medicine from Radio 4 with me, Kiri Pritchard McLean.

Available now on BBC Sounds.

Sucks.

The new musical has made Tony award-winning history on Broadway.

We demand to be home.

Winner, best score.

We demand to be seen.

Winner, best book.

It's a theatrical masterpiece that's thrilling, inspiring, dazzlingly entertaining, and unquestionably the most emotionally stirring musical this season.

Suffs, playing the Orpheum Theater, October 22nd through November 9th.

Tickets at BroadwaySF.com.

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