An Irishman's Diary

NEVER MIND all the talk about grade inflation. What worries me, as another Leaving Cert English exam recedes, are the inflationary pressures now facing language itself. Pressures that may only increase if Fine Gael wins the next election and implements its current policies.

On TV’s Vincent Browne show the other night, for example, finance spokesman Richard Bruton spoke of the “transformative change” Fine Gael proposes: unease about which, he said, explained the party’s disappointing poll results. This was not a casual phrase, blurted under pressure from the interviewer (although the host was, as usual, pursuing his quarry like a ferret down a rabbit hole). No, it was clearly deliberate, because Mr Bruton used it at least twice.

Furthermore, I find that he also deployed it during a meeting of the shadow cabinet last February. Then, in a slight variation, he is reported to have called for “transformational change”. Obviously, the policy was still being tweaked at the time, and the subsequent reduction of his adjective by two letters, or 12.5 per cent, is in keeping with the austerity programme.

But the question remains, do we need the adjective at all? To wit: is there any kind of change that does not involve transformation? The only one I can think of – and it’s a stretch – is the change that, back in the 1970s, we used to put in school collection boxes for “Black Babies”. Even that, we hoped, would be transformative; although sadly, Africa’s problems are with us still.

No, I fear that the “transformative change” of which Mr Bruton speaks is just another product of the school of new management-speak: the one already responsible for such delights as “pro-active”. There you had a word – active – that was doing a perfectly good job. Then some consultant decided it didn’t sound dynamic enough for the modern boardroom.

So now it can no longer turn up for work without the meaningless prefix.

It’s not as if “change” is an insufficiently robust word on its own. Sometimes, it can be too robust. Many a loving parent, responding to a bad smell, will still speak carelessly of a need to “change the baby”: oblivious of the trauma this could cause a literal-minded child, who as a consequence may become anally retentive, lest he be sent back to the maternity hospital the next time he relieves himself.

And all right, in a political context, the promise of mere “change” may have become hackneyed. But whose fault is this? Before the last election, Fine Gael declared that change was what people wanted. Then people decided otherwise. So now the party feels it must up the ante. Yet what if “transformative change” doesn’t work either? Next time, desperate for power, will they add an adverb, promising change of a “differentially transformative” kind?

Speaking of power, and being charitable, there is I suppose one sense in which Mr Bruton’s adjective might not be redundant. Namely, if it related to the word “transformer”. This, as engineers will know, is an apparatus for “reducing or increasing the voltage of an alternating current”.

In which sense, it may be instructive to recall that Enda Kenny won the party leadership back in 2002, promising to “electrify the party”. The electrification scheme was highly successful at first, and Mr Kenny climbed the poles – sorry, polls – like a man on a mission. But lately, his momentum has slipped. Perhaps Mr Bruton’s choice of language is a coded hint that the party needs something new, energy-wise. That, to coin a phrase, it may be time for “the big switch”. But that is the charitable interpretation, as I say, and I have my doubts.

MY COLLEAGUETony Clayton Lea was writing yesterday about the pleasant surprise of finding one of his music reviews on this year's Junior Cert English Paper. The experience revived the trauma of his own Inter Cert: after which, he said, "a residual sense of unfairness clung to me for years". Happily, the compliment paid by this year's exam also seemed to have given him a certain closure.

I only wish I could say the same about my involvement in the Mock Leaving Cert English exams last April. One of the papers then featured a “colour piece” – as it’s known in the trade – that I wrote about Ladies’ Day at the 2008 Galway Races. And of course I was flattered. Even more so when the question noted that the excerpt was “adapted” from the original.

This made me sound gratifyingly like James Joyce: as if my high-concept metaphors about women’s hats had needed simplification for teenage readers.

Unhappily, I discovered, the adaption consisted chiefly of adding some makey-up comments that I had “overheard” from spectators at the fashion awards, one of which was: “My money’s on the lady in red!” Not only had this not happened. But if a spectator really had said something as cheesy as that, and I had quoted it, public horse-whipping in Eyre Square would have been too good for me.

Worse, the original report referred to a real-life jockey called Paul Townend. My literary adaptor obviously decided that this spelling couldn’t be correct and promptly changed it to “Townsend”. Thus, my immortalisation on a Leaving Cert English exam paper – albeit only the Mocks – featured both patently-fabricated dialogue and a misspelt surname. After which, the paper cruelly asked students: “What is your impression of the writer?”

At least I was spared their answers. But of course the experience has only added to the residual trauma of my own Leaving Cert English exam all those years ago. The flashbacks have returned now, and I fear the renewed sense of unfairness will cling to me for years.