Black holes

A semantic complaint today. I'm getting irate, for reasons of pedantry, about the misuse of the term Black Hole by politicians. Mostly, it seems, Lib Dems. Nick Clegg was on the Today program this morning talking again about addressing the black hole in the public finances. Chris Huhne was talking yesterday about a black hole in the nuclear power budget.

Of course, we all know what they mean. They mean "hole". There is a great big hole in the public finances.

But a black hole has a very different meaning. Firstly - you have no idea what's going on inside. No information ever gets out. It might be true, of course, but that, surely, isn't the message that you want to send when you're trumpeting the glories of transparent government, and fiscal rectitude. You really don't want to be telling to public that you have no idea, can have no idea, and will never have an idea, of what's going on with Britain's public debt. Not a good message at all.

Also, of course, if you throw something into a black hole, the stuff disappears and the black hole gets bigger. Again, if you're talking about addressing the public debt, perhaps by raising VAT or CGT, then it really isn't the brightest message to send. Give me your money so I can throw it into the black hole, so it's lost forever and the black hole gets bigger.

It is, really, a very, very stupid metaphor, pushed by people who seem to want to make things seem even worse than they are. You can almost hear the cogs whirring "Hole in the public finances doesn't sound dramatic enough - what could be more dramatic? Hmm. Black hole. Yes. That's what." I won't, yet, extrapolate this as an indicator of their understanding of science, but, you know that I'm waiting.

Meanwhile, on the over-egging the pudding side of things, Nick Clegg was also talking about what a tragedy it is for David Laws. Hmm. A man takes a liberal view of the rules to protect his privacy, comes a bit unstuck, keeps his job as MP, and will probably be back in government in 12 months, when until 2 months ago he presumably thought he hadn't a hope in decades of being in government. This is not a tragedy. It's slightly unfortunate. A tragedy is a couple of hundred people killed in Guatemala in a typhoon; a tragedy might be a number of people killed by illegal, arguably war-like, action from the Israelis; bus crashes, or earthquakes, or volcanoes, or suicide bombs. These bring about tragedies. A bloke being MP and still being MP after a question over parliamentary expenses is not a bloody tragedy. Get a grip.