Plus Fours

Hurray! Another bit of literature from the County Council arrived in the letter box today, shedding light on what Jonesy meant by "Beyond Excellence".

To be honest, I thought this whole "Beyond Excellence" nonsense was just a smokescreen. I suspected (quite wrongly, as it happens) that Jonesy was trying to confuse us even more, so as to distract attention from the IBM saga. And the various other sagas.

But no, it seems that the County Council has genuinely managed to improve on its four stars ("the most you can get", as they never tired of telling us). They have now been given a "plus", and to celebrate this have decided to invest in a new flag.

Unfortunately, it seems that the plus is to be placed in front of the stars. The obvious thing would have been to put the plus after the stars, as in "4+". That would at least have made sense to primary school kids and their parents and teachers.

This is what Jonesy (Chief Executive of Somerset County Council) said to his new Head of Communications ("Spin Doctor" to you and me) earlier in the summer: "... we must be careful not to let this 'internal speak' flow over into the language which we use both to describe success and to get our messages across to people ... We are interested in the real things that real people use to judge ..."

Real people? A bit of googling soon led me to the conclusion that Plus Fours are only really of interest to geriatric golfers!