Anthony- thanks for your thoughtful comments. I don’t think that there is any problem with quoting anyone, even scripture. The test of good English as identified by Orwell, and endorsed by no less than me!, is whether it is understandable by those who it is aimed at, and whether it is precise. You can quote from Pericles, Upton Sinclair or Trevor Kavanagh for all I care, as long as it conveys what you are trying to convey. The problem with ‘Gadarene’ was not that it was obscure, but that it obscured. The best answer to me so far was that the context meant that most people probably understood what he was saying anyway. Fine. But it seems that some people were left slightly puzzled and that his use of the word wasn’t ideal. If he said that political parties were like ‘the pigs possessed by demons running off the end of the cliff in the Bible story’ then he would be making the same reference but people would know what he was talking about. That’s the key difference between your quoting of Pericles, and RFK’s recital of Aeschylus, and this.
Anyhow, you post something as an amusing aside and you get a broadside from James Graham, next thing you know…etc etc.
Anyway, now I am going to lead a Gadamene rush to never hear or use the term again….

Simon- it doesn’t matter if you use the odd term that isn’t understood by everyone. It’s better than dumbing down to the lowest common denominator, which people see as patronising. People will respect the speaker as educated more than they will be object to him.

I must say, having seen both candidates speak about 3 times in the last few weeks I noticed more “educated” words from Nick than from Chris.

I agree what you say about Senator-ese, by which I take it you mean those stock, often jargonistic, phrases politicians use to fill the void of their ignorance. But I don’t think either leadership candidate is guilty of that.

As for snobbery, a leadership race between John Cleese, Ronnie Barker, and Ronnie Corbett would be quite entertaining. If that needs explaining there is no hope at all…

And I have not spent ‘hours’ obsessing over Huhne’s obscure use of language. If anything, I found it pretty amusing actually, but my first reaction was ‘What??!’ and I imagine that many people felt the same way. Apparently you are ‘in despair’, so perhaps you are the one obsessing too much?

As for ‘hoisting by your own petard’, this is fine, but is hardly best practice anyway. If you won’t take my communications skills as worth anything, perhaps you’ll take one of the finest writers in English’s? George Orwell criticised journalists’ lazy use of cliche that no one understands and uses it as an example of something to avoid:
http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm

One of my classes at grad school was taught by one of the communications directors who worked for Hillary in the White House, and her pet obsession was ‘Senator-ese’ and the way that it alienates people from the political process. I am sure she would have had a hernia if Joe Biden started talking about a ‘Gadarene rush to neo-endogenous growth theory’!

But then Orwell was a ‘public schoolboy’ so I guess we can dismiss him with the ad hominem inverted snobbery card!

Blimey. Whatever next? A liberal politician referencing Aeschylus?

http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/rfkonmlkdeath.html

Many people haven’t the first clue about what a petard actually is, but they understand what being hoist on your own one means.

This is just the continuation of the perversion of the meaning of liberal though, its coming to mean moderate and wanting to be nice to homosexuals and ethnic minorities.

BTW I do consider myself to be broadly on the left (stop laughing) - most of my thinking started from concern for the poor and equality of opportunity and a sense of injustice in the world. I just see the state as the main enemy not business.