“Day after day you refer to the proposed changes to the health service as “reforms”. Why are you colluding in this Orwellian misuse of language? To reform a system is to implement needed change for the better by removing existing shortcomings. To describe the proposed changes as reforms is to accept the very premises that you so rightly criticise.

As the philosopher George Lakoff so eloquently explains in Don’t Think of an Elephant, professional conservative wordsmiths manipulate our choice of words so as to frame the debate on their terms. But you are also professional wordsmiths, and your role is to expose these tactics, not collude in them.”

Paul Braterman
Professor emeritus, University of North Texas

The letter was penned with NHS ‘reform’ in mind. It applies just as well to welfare ‘reform’

As The Guardian’s Colin Leys writes: 

“What Wednesday’s vote on the health and social care bill shows more clearly than anything is that many, if not most, of the political elite no longer care whether they are carrying out the wishes of the electorate, and barely pretend that we are any longer a democracy.”

http://ht.ly/6oKTM

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/sep/06/orwellian-language-of-nhs-reform?INTCMP=SRCH