Why we need to banish the word “deficit”: How to “chote”

“Deficit” is a terrible word. For a start, it doesn’t really really mean much to many people. After all, it’s a word from economics rather than from real life. Plus there are a large number of Brits (presumably those stupid enough to watch shows like Simon ‘Slimey’ Cowell’s the FiX-Factor, TOWIE and I’m a Celebrity) who don’t understand the difference between “deficit” and “debt”. These good people, probably around half of the population, don’t understand that every day there is a deficit, our debt increases.

We should replace the word “deficit” with the word “overspending”. Every day the Government runs a deficit, it is spending more than it earns. This change of wording would convert the abstract concept of “deficit” to something much more concrete “overspending”. This might mean something to even the stupidest of Brits and even (one hopes) to Guardian readers and Labour supporters.

Words are important. Replacing the word “deficit” with the word “overspending” would hugely improve our incompetent, bungling Coalition’s ability to get its message across. But such an idea would never occur to the sycophantic, career-obsessed, unimaginative advisers (hello Claire, Robert and Neil) and supposed communication experts employed by Cameron, Osborne and Clegg.

Talking of words, I think we need a new word added to the English language. The word is a verb “to chote”. Choting is named after the boss of Osborne’s £2m a year useless quango – the wildly misnamed Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR). To chote is to produce completely imaginary forecasts both to sycophantically please your political masters and to keep your own well-paid, taxpayer-funded and unnecessary job. The buffoon Mervyn King was a great choter – for about 5 years he produced monthly inflation forecasts that didn’t have the slightest connection to reality, but meant that he kept his job and multimillion pound pension pot. As our national debt zooms up into the stratosphere, we can expect an awful lot more choting from the OBR, the Treasury and the BoE.