Last Thursday took me to Praia da Luz. I was filming an authored commentary for BBC2's What The Papers Say review of the year (to be broadcast Saturday week) on the way the British press have handled the Madeleine McCann story. I've hardly been to Portugal before, and the Algarve was new to me.

And yet not. I felt I knew Praia da Luz intimately. In front of the ill-omened apartment, framed by a backdrop now as famous as 10 Downing Street, I took my stand on the spot where scores of television journalists have delivered their fatuous “reports”. I knew where the tapas bar would be and which was the infamous window. Everything was familiar.

It is awful to recognise, with a sense of nameless heaviness, a place you do not know: like déjà vu from some disturbed nightmare. As I paced too and fro reciting the script I had written, the melancholy thought struck me that commentary truly finds its second wind when secondary commentary — commentary about the commentary — is launched.

And here I am now, commenting on the secondary commentary. How ever did we get ourselves into this tangled bad dream?

I owe an apology to some trade unions. In last Saturday's opinion column I listed unions whose application forms do not inform applicants of their right to opt out

“of the system of ‘affiliation' to the Labour Party”. My list included some unions (like Prospect, who have written) which do not in fact affiliate to Labour. I should have said that it was from the “political fund” that all these unions operate that would-be members were not being informed of their right to opt out. None who have complained to me, however, seems to have grasped that the fundamental objection is not to trade unionists paying money to a political fund (or the fund paying fabulous “affiliation fees” to a political party) but to signing people up and charging them without asking them.

Last week I cited a Department for Work and Pensions list of its myriad heads of “communications”, “strategic communications”, “communication operations” etc. This has prompted a reader to send me a full-page newspaper advertisement, describing situations vacant in the Commission for Equality and Human Rights.

It advertises the positions of 13 different Directors (“Salaries £55,000- -80,000”): a Director of Policy, of Foresight, of Research, of the Disability Programme, of Business Planning, of the Commissioners' Office, of Legal Policy, of Legal Enforcement, of Corporate Law and Governance, of Information Management, of External Affairs, of Stakeholder Management and of the English Regions.

What is “stakeholder management”? What is “information management”? What does a “Director of Foresight” do? Why is there no Director of Hindsight? Why does the CEHR want a “Director of External Affairs” — are quangos now to maintain embassies abroad?

Well, each job is described. All require (the ad says) “strategic vision”, the Disability Director being required to “lead and direct a portfolio of strategic policy projects” (as well as “deliver the CEHR's mandate and cross-strand approach”), while the Director of Business Planning is “developing” “strategic policy projects”, and the Foresight Director is busy identifying “key strategic objectives”.

The Director of the Commissioners' Office, meanwhile “will fill a strategic role”; the Legal Policy Director (“working closely with external stakeholders”) will “build strategic relationships” while “leading the development” of a “legal strategy”; and the Legal Enforcement Director will ensure the CEHR “meets [its] strategic objectives”. In a text no longer than this column, one clutch of vacuities occurs again and again:

strategy/strategic: 8

policy: 9

manage/management: 10

lead/leadership: 8

relationship/s: 5

build/develop/build and develop: 12

co-ordinate: 3

stakeholders: 4

The landscape is littered with “goals”, “objectives”, and “targets”. An insane climax is reached in the description of the Director of Stakeholder Management's role: “You will help build and develop the external face of the CEHR [though the External Affairs Director “will have a unique opportunity to build and develop the external face of the CEHR”] as an accessible, ambitious organisation. Key tasks will include co-ordinating stakeholder relationships... whilst co-ordinating a process that categorises relationships... You will also establish relationship management objectives and goals.”

On what planet, in what galaxy, in which cosmos do these people live? Is theirs an internal language, known only to a priesthood? Does the language mean anything to them? An entire segment of our fellow citizens is spinning off into a kind of linguistic oblivion, leaving us, gaping and bewildered, behind.

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