Few things annoy me more than hearing the expression ‘that’s just semantics’. I understand why people say it. It is used when we hear someone disputing the words being used to describe some set of conditions, which we take to be patently clear and not requiring debate.
But quibbling over wording is contesting how ‘reality’ is being constructed. This kind of contest should be more dignified, but it suffers from being the kind of thing that politicians do to cover their backs.
Which is why a letter to the Sydney Morning Herald recently started with the sentence 'A tax is a tax is a tax'. The context for it is the current pre-budget shenanigans. Mr ‘no-new-taxes’ Abbott has raised the possibility of a ‘deficit levy’ as a response to the budget ‘emergency’ on which much of the Coalition’s election campaign was predicated.
But quibbling over wording is contesting how ‘reality’ is being constructed. This kind of contest should be more dignified, but it suffers from being the kind of thing that politicians do to cover their backs.
Which is why a letter to the Sydney Morning Herald recently started with the sentence 'A tax is a tax is a tax'. The context for it is the current pre-budget shenanigans. Mr ‘no-new-taxes’ Abbott has raised the possibility of a ‘deficit levy’ as a response to the budget ‘emergency’ on which much of the Coalition’s election campaign was predicated.
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