Last week, I had the pleasure of providing musical accompaniment to the various speakers at the 'Great Places to Work Conference 2006'. Our job was to 'jizz' up the proceedings. (I think they meant 'jazz'. ) So, in effect, as the HR person from Google walked on stage, my band of reprobates played 'Surfin Eire'. For a lady from Abbott Laboratories, we played 'The Monster Mash'. A naval officer was brought on to that classic 'In the Navy'. It was eight hours of non-stop laughs, I can tell you.

During the speeches I was struck by the use of language, or should I say 'jargon'. Phrases like 'skillsbased', 'task management'' 'let's get granular', 'core values'' 'workplace refreshment solutions' and 'mission statement' abounded.

Let's start with 'human resources'. As a long-time pedant, I can't help but feel that the conversion of the word 'worker' into 'human resource' is like placing human effort in the area of 'coal' or 'electricity'. Now I know that wasn't the intention (was it? ), but it all sounds a little too detached.

God knows, the word 'worker' makes some people a bit uncomfortable (memories of socialism, Scargill, 1913) but that's what people who are paid to work are. Workers.

In the course of my web research of the individual companies, I was struck again by the use of language . . . for instance, Sodexho: "For the forward-looking outsourcing companies the challenge has moved beyond how to reduce costs for their clients. That requirement is a given. The focus now is how to return value to the client through outsourcing and Sodexho is leading this revolution in its markets."

You wouldn't know they do catering, would you?

Sodexho is a worldwide company that provides 'hospitality catering' and support services including cleaning, reception, switchboard and help desks, mailroom, reprographics and grounds maintenance.

Just say it! Say you provide a catering and janitor service! It may be the biggest catering and janitor service in the world, but it's still a big old catering and janitor service!

What infuriates me about this destruction of language is that brainpower starts to be measured not in terms of clarity or charisma but how well you can reel off this verbal diarrhoea. It also provides a platform for blame-driven inaction.

You can see it in The Apprentice. To justify being useless, all the candidates blamed their 'group leaders' (managers') lack of "task management skills in the implementation phase of the project" (couldn't run things). When questioned about their own abilities they had "dealt with the information input and worked out a point of contact scenario that failed to materialise in terms of actualisation". (I failed and missed the deadline because I was farting about. ) But in a way I am being unfair to the business world.

This corruption of language can be found in all walks of life. In art college, we were taught to justify any old rubbish with language, especially the phenomena of installations. You know, flushing toilets, video screens showing nothing but interference. Just watch The View: you'll see what I mean.

In graphics we would have "brainstorming" (thinking).

In music criticism, the words "visceral" and "seminal" are used to describe "loud" and "not very well played". In politics, the phrase "going forward" has overtaken "I didn't interrupt you" as the number one avoiding phrase.

Law loves jargon. And don't get me started on "collateral damage", "extraordinary renditions" or "misstatements". This inflated language strives, as Orwell put it, "to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind". It inflates the perception of the speaker to more than a chancer. It's like verbal algebra.

And why does it exist? To destroy straight talking.

Straight talking requires straight answers. Straight talking reduces all-day meetings to one-hour meetings. And nobody wants to work that hard any more.

As for the 'Great Places to Work' conference, I asked the head guy whether he thought it was necessary to have an organisation devoted to stating the obvious. He said "unfortunately a lot of businesses need the obvious stated for them".

Well this is obvious too.

Surely if you want to make your 'human resources' happier, you pay them more?

You're right, I should leave.

Paddy Cullivan is leader of musical anarchists The Camembert Quartet www. paddycullivan. com