New Rules for Naming Government Departments
This has got to stop. The level of ridiculousness we have now reached with the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform and the Department for Children, Schools and Families is bringing the whole process of machinery of government into disrepute. Didn’t we have it before with an attempt to name the DTI as the Department for Productivity, Energy and Industry – lasted about 2 days before someone realised that the best acronym was D-PENIS? DBERR is a ring-tone, and as for DCSF, I give up.
Let us learn some lessons from the past: Ministry of Defence, HM Treasury, Department for Education, Board of Trade, Home Department. Notice the difference? These were not created by a bunch of spin doctors pretending to be Wolff Olins. They said what they did and they were short.
Otherwise we should threaten them with Orwellian style names, the exact opposite of what they do (e.g. Ministry of Plenty handled shortages, Ministry of Love ran the secret police and so on). Viz:
DBERR = Department for Regulation
DCSF = Department for Illiteracy and Innumeracy
DCMS = Department for the BBC
DCLG = Department for Centralisation
Any other suggestions?