Politicians should avoid the passive tense - it can damage your health.

As the Liam Fox affair unravels there is at least one upside. It has highlighted the inadequacy of the passive tense. It is something we should all avoid. It does us no favours and makes us look shabby. Budding politicians should make sure it is not in their toolkits, when they are addressing media and voters or designing their leaflets.

“Mistakes were made…” and “….it was a mistake to allow distinctions to be blurred.” were euphemisms and snowing at its worst. This passive language isolated the speaker from awkward and uncomfortable realities.

The speaker is detached from events. We all became outside observers of situations which seemed to evolve on autopilot. It is academic and sterile language.

The rest of us have to listen to this ducking and weaving. We feel angry that we are being spoken to in a manner beyond our normal conversation. Ordinary language is messy, erratic and personal. The passive: legalistic, objective and anodyne. It gives wiggle room and avoids responsibility for what is being said.

The debacle over military policy and funding in Iraq and Afghanistan lead to phrases such as “We are where we are…” and “It is time to move on.” They were attempts to avoid explaining difficult resourcing and strategy decisions. We felt annoyed that our timetables for making sense of things were being hi-jacked by others who wanted to avoid scrutiny.

The current explanations given to us are doing exactly the same. We want a new type of politics where, for better or worse, we converse actively, precisely and personally.

What riles us is being told to move on. The language of leadership. Bob Diamond, Barclays and saying sorry.

Our banking, political and military leaders have got us into a fine old pickle in the last few years. Bad enough, but what makes it worse is the way they highjack our emotions and seek to wipe the slate clean on their terms and timetable. A case in point is the performance of Barclay’s chief executive: Bob Diamond, who observed before the Parliamentary Select Committee recently, that the “period of remorse needs to be over.”

Unfortunately this tone of communication can be seen elsewhere amongst our leadership cadre. As the military debacle over kit and policy emerged in Afghanistan and Iraq, we heard from our military and political leaders variations on: “ We are where we are”, “Need to draw a line” and “Time to move on”.

We feel cheated that this form of linguistic cop out is used and the electorate looks on with disgust. Political memories can be short, but there is no doubt there is a pattern to this evasion of responsibility, and an underestimation of the emotional intelligence of the citizen.

Thoughts on motivation in Afghanistan - a rebel with a cause.

One cannot disagree that in difficult circumstances our troops are doing a great job. The question is whether it is the right one. Listening to Liam Fox on the Today programme, makes one wonder as to why it is taking so long to get the Afghan army up to speed, when their kith and kin (Taliban) seem to be having a successful war. Might it have something to do with the motivation of fighting for a cause one believes in? A message for our less martial business and political worlds perhaps.