Why Cameron must never say “deficit”.

Listening to BBC news, it’s striking how they are still using Labour’s politically-charged vocabulary. When the universities are kicking off about their budgets being cut, the BBC newsreaders are told to talk about “investment” in higher education, rather than spending. Why, though? An “investment” would be to put £1 billion of taxpayers’ money into an Emerging Markets fund, and hope it grows. Giving it to universities – many of which serve neither students nor society – is not an investment. But using the word “investment” is Labour code for “good spending”.

There is one particularly frequent example if this: the BBC regularly confuse the words “deficit” and “debt” – a bugbear of mine, and something James Forsyth deals with in his column in this week’s magazine.

Even when I blog about it, some CoffeeHousers say they don’t know the difference. So Cameron should ban the word “deficit” and simply say “overspend” instead – for that is what it is.