"... some 90 redundancies are anticipated."

I should send these guys my copy of "Doublespeak," or, better yet, recommend them for the annual Doublespeak award.

Reminds me of a few years ago, a legal research data base company that I deal with called Lexis was going through some tough times (they're doing just fine today as part of a much bigger conglomerate by the same name). They had a round of layoffs, but, of course, they didn't call them layoffs--way too negative. They didn't even call it downsizing, because that must have been too negative too. No, they called it "rightsizing." Just so nobody would get the wrong idea that people losing their jobs might be a bad thing. Sheesh!

I hate that stuff, but I had to eat some crow. Someone from the UK emailed me and said that redundancies is the UK version of "layoff".

"Rightsizing" was a popular term during the last recession. I had a friend who referred to it as "dumbsizing" though. Heh.

Get ready for more. There was a lot of movement over January in big corporations. They've been throwing out their operational plans and making new ones based on a recession this year. There's a storm brewing.

Yeah, it looks more and more like a recession, and companies don't hesitate to slash jobs nowadays in an attempt to keep that stock price up.

Kazz, you follow the tabletop gaming scene pretty closely. What's going on with that now that FASA's going under? Is GW doing ok? Will they be around long enough to deliver that LorT tabletop game, and what do you know about the MMORPG computer game they're working on?

Mark: "I hate that stuff, but I had to eat some crow. Someone from the UK emailed me and said that redundancies is the UK version of 'layoff'."

There's no need for you to apologize, Mark. In fact, by retracting your comment, you're abetting the doublespeakers!

Just because the word has become standardized in British English doesn't mean it's any less insidious. It's even more problematic because of its standardization.

Regardless of its origin or level of acceptance, this usage of "redundancy" was coined for exactly the reasons Orwell described. Is "layoff" any better? It's just as palliative and obfuscatory as "pacification" or any of Orwell's other examples.

The worst examples of doublespeak are the ones that have worked their way so far into common usage that they are no longer questioned.

I have always had a particular hate of the word "leverage" in MarketingSpeak.

Having worked for large corporations for the last 17 years I know this word is relatively new. I am sure it is what they are teaching all those shiny new university graduates they seem to be hiring these days.