I still haven’t got over aspiration nation, the Chancellor’s watchword in this month’s Budget, which now seems a long time ago. Why is it so annoying?
One aspect is the rhyme. It stops short of being a repetition, like Humbert Humbert, but settles for a jingle, like Gilbert the Filbert. Another annoyance is the jamming together of two nouns. I can see that aspiring nation would have a different meaning, as would aspirant nation, but aspirational nation is more like it.
No doubt the clangour was intentional. There are plenty of precedents. The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (a US organisation) has a website called Calculation Nation. Someone in America runs a blog called Information Nation with the subtitle: ‘It rhymes so you know it must be clever.’
The same title was given to a book by two authors called Blair and Kahn, and its subtitle ran: ‘Seven Keys to Information Management Compliance’.
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