Don Watson Slipcase

'ain public life the language has never been held in less regard. It withers in the dungeons of the technocratic mind. It is butchered by the media. In politics it lacks all qualifications for the main game.' Don Watson When the prime minister speaks of core and non-core election promises, your boss asks you to commit to an involuntary career event (you're fired), and hospitals refer to negative patient outcomes (you're dead), you know you are in a world gone mad. Politicians and managers not meaning what they say is nothing new, but these days it seems they are also incapable of saying what they mean. Groaning with platitudes and cliches, their words kill meaning and twist the truth. Spontaneity is rare, expressiveness and imagination long dead. Don Watson can bear it no longer. In his brilliant bestseller DEATH SENTENCE, part diatribe, part cool reflection on the state of Australia's public language, he takes a blowtorch to the words u and their users u who kill joy, imagination and clarity. Scathing, funny and brilliant, DEATH SENTENCE is a small book of profound weight u and timeliness, which is why it was voted the Booksellers' Choice 2003 Book of the Year. Continuing the fight is WATSON'S DICTIONARY OF WEASEL WORDS, an essential reference and a serious weapon in the struggle against those whose words kill brain cells and sink hearts. Sobering, scathing and wickedly funny, this companion to the bestselling DEATH SENTENCE flushes out political and managerial weasels and their hollow words, lampoons linguistic abuse and strikes a much-needed blow for truth and clarity.