Tag Archives: Twaddle

Stroppy Git Award for Meaningless Twaddle 2025

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2024 was a rich year for misinformation, disinformation, contradictions, ambiguities and straightforward lies. But few instances meet the definition of ‘meaningless twaddle’. Even Donald Trump’s pronouncements have an internal logic to them, even if they are inconsistent over time and bear little resemblance to the truth.

So we have resorted to an admittedly soft target: the instruction manual for an electronic device – specifically an HPM Digital Timer. Here is an extract from the instructions for setting the clock:

Auto on – Is a temporary override when the unit gives power until the program starts. Its used once off then the unit continues on with the program – example if connected to a light and its 6pm, you’re setting the timer for 7, this mode will turn the light on until the program starts then continues to turn off and on as per the program.

According to the 3-year warranty, credit should go to Legrand Australia.

While I’m at the keyboard, you’re probably wondering how effective the netting over our orchard (aka one nectarine tree) proved to be.  Well, we left it a bit late to harvest. So most of the fruit was over-ripe and some had fallen off into the netting.  Most of the nectarines had been pecked, so we were evidently a bit late throwing the net over too.  Nevertheless, the tree yielded about 17kg.  We ate half of that over the course of a week (including in our breakfast porridge every day) and bottled or froze the rest.  Next cab off the rank is the lemon tree.

Stroppy 2024!

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As we bid farewell to the Emmys the spotlight turns towards the Stroppys – or rather the Stroppy, there being only one such award for meaningless twaddle each year. After much thought and hand-wringing the winner is… drum roll… anonymous. Yes, that’s unfortunate, but I don’t know the name of the author of this gem, extracted from a report written for a certain international financial institution based in Washington DC:

James Joyce (portrait)

“A weigh station that is also a public check post shall undertake checks in its capacity as a weigh station unless it is established to the satisfaction of the authorised officer that the payload on the truck or combination being checked originated from the nearby urban agglomeration in which case the check shall be made in its capacity as public check post, and if the truck or combination is found to have committed an infringement requiring immobilisation then that infringement shall be waived and the truck or combination allowed to travel directly back to its loading point for rectification without penalty or permanent record of noncompliance.”

Marcel Proust (caricature)

At only 106 words this sentence can hardly be considered Joycian or even Proustian. But it makes up for that in its opacity, convolution, clumsiness and… well, let’s just sum it up as twaddledom.

I am indebted, not for the first time, to my long-term friend and sometimes colleague Ron Allan, who nominated this passage.

And here’s an unrelated thought bubble… I just read that the average human exhales 255kg of CO2 per year. That’s equivalent to an old-fashioned ounce per hour, so it seems plausible. 

Boeing 747: First roll-out (30 September 1968)

Back to the individual level, the average person exhales about 20t of CO2 over a lifetime. If this number is correct, our species is directly putting 2 billion tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere annually.  This is as much as 800 million petrol-powered cars.  Or 90,000 Boeing 747s.

Perhaps a childless person who voluntarily undergoes sterilisation should be issued with carbon credits.  What do you think?

By the way, do you happen to know (or be) a film producer in need of a potential blockbusting script for a TV series? If so, please let me know.

Stroppy 2021

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It’s been a tough choosing a winner of this year’s Stroppy Git Award for Meaningless Twaddle.

Mondelēz’s brands!

We thought it would probably go to ex-President Trump, but a careful examination of his speeches and tweets persuaded us that we’d have to look elsewhere. The Donald makes liberal use of untruths, half-truths, lavish insults, unfinished sentences and non-sequiturs, but he doesn’t deal in meaningless twaddle. He’d be less dangerous if he did.

Instead, the much-discussed and coveted award goes to a major global food conglomerate: Mondelēz. They own… well, look at the logos – even Toblerone! Even Cadbury, for heaven’s sake!! So it’s no surprise that they turn over US$26 billion per year and have a market capitalization of US$79 billion.

Therefore they must know what they’re doing, right? And when they adopt a radical new approach to marketing, we should also take notice, right? Especially if it’s called “humaning” and disdains caution and anything so mundane as data. So how about this…

“Humaning is a unique, consumer-centric approach to marketing that creates real, human connections with purpose, moving Mondelēz International beyond cautious, data-driven tactics, and uncovering what unites us all.”

I don’t know much about marketing (my book sales bear witness to this) but I do know that these 28 words are the collective winners of this year’s Stroppy. Congratulations, Mondelēz!

PS  It’s 1 February. When I was a boy in London and then the north of England there was a superstitious belief that if the first thing you said on the first day of every month throughout the year was “white rabbits” you would have good luck.  But I never remembered to say it every month. Did you grow up with the same belief?

This Year’s Stroppy

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We had some strong nominations this year, but after much internal debate the Stroppy Git Award for Meaningless Twaddle goes to … drum roll … Ram Charan and Julia Yang, authors of a new book called ‘The Amazon Management System’, published by Ideapress Publishing and available… well, in most places where you’d look for a book these days. My old friend Ron Allan, who made the nomination, selected the following gem:

“Moreover, transparency of such ultra-detailed, end-to-end (cross-silo and cross-layer) real-time and inputs-oriented data and metrics makes the usual uphill battle for cross-functional collaboration much easier.”

With management advice like this, who needs saboteurs? Thanks to Ron, and congratulations to Ram and Julia.

Oh, and the picture is a visual pun on ‘Amazon’, not an intended likeness of anyone either living, dead, extinct or mythical..

The First ‘Stroppy’

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Yes, that’s what some people have been calling the new Stroppy Git Award for Meaningless Twaddle. There have been some strong contenders, especially from the USA, but the winner is… Palladium! Their advertisement for a so-called summit on “reshaping the future through positive impact” was the very first nomination:

strogamet_01

No other nomination surpassed in either meaninglessness or twaddledom.