I Spoke Exclusively in Council-Speak for Seven Days. My Wife Has Filed What I Can Only Describe as a Formal Grievance.

It started, as most terrible ideas do, with a council planning document.

I was reading the minutes from a local authority meeting — something I do professionally, and which I would not recommend as a hobby — when I noticed that the council had described the closure of a much-loved community centre as a 'rationalisation of underperforming community assets in response to budgetary realities and evolving service-demand profiles.' The community centre in question had a toddler group, a Tuesday bingo night, and a leak in the roof that had been described, in a previous set of minutes, as 'a developing moisture situation under active monitoring.'

They were closing it. They just couldn't say so.

And I thought: what if I lived like this? What if I communicated exclusively in the language of the modern British council — that extraordinary dialect of euphemism, abstraction, and weaponised vagueness that costs the taxpayer billions and communicates, in aggregate, almost nothing?

Seven days. Every conversation. I kept notes.

Day One: The Stakeholder Engagement Opportunity (Dinner)

I announced to my wife, Sarah, that I had 'identified a stakeholder engagement opportunity to facilitate a shared nutrition experience at 19:00 hours.' She looked up from her phone. I clarified that I was asking what she wanted for tea.

'Just say that, then,' she said.

I explained that we were currently in a 'consultation phase' and that all preferences would be 'taken into account prior to a final decision being reached in line with agreed household priorities.' She asked if I was having a stroke. I noted her concern and said I would 'action a follow-up communication in due course.'

We had pasta. The consultation process had no discernible effect on the outcome, which, I would later reflect, is entirely consistent with the source material.

Day Two: The Managed Decline of an Asset (The Garden Shed)

The shed is falling apart. I have known this for two years. I have done nothing about it. In normal language, this is procrastination. In council language, it is a 'managed decline strategy for a non-critical peripheral asset, pending a structural needs assessment and capital allocation review.'

I deployed this framing when Sarah pointed out that the door had come off. I told her the shed was 'currently operating within acceptable parameters given its legacy infrastructure status' and that we were 'exploring a range of options, including do-nothing, partial remediation, and full asset disposal.'

She asked what 'asset disposal' meant. I said it meant throwing the shed away. She said that was what she'd suggested eight months ago. I said her proposal had been 'noted at the time' and was 'informing our current strategic thinking.' She went inside.

The shed door is still off. In this sense, the experiment was entirely authentic.

Day Three: The Family Argument (An Extraordinary Meeting of the Household Scrutiny Committee)

We had a row. I won't go into specifics, but it concerned a set of keys, a dentist appointment, and the precise definition of 'I'll sort it.' In normal circumstances this would last twenty minutes and end with someone making tea.

In council-speak, I opened by acknowledging that we had 'entered a period of heightened stakeholder tension' and proposed we 'pause for a reset to ensure a constructive and outcome-focused dialogue.' Sarah said I was being insufferable. I said I was 'noting her feedback and taking it on board as part of an ongoing commitment to continuous improvement.'

She asked me, directly, if I was sorry. I said I 'recognised that the situation had not delivered the outcomes all parties had been hoping for and that lessons would be learned going forward.' There was a long silence. I offered to 'establish a working group to review the process and identify areas for future improvement.' She went to her mother's for the afternoon.

In retrospect, 'I'm sorry' is seventeen fewer syllables. Councils have apparently decided those seventeen syllables are not value for money.

Day Four: Ordering a Takeaway (Procurement of External Catering Services)

I rang the local Indian restaurant and asked whether they could 'facilitate the procurement of a hot food delivery contract, subject to a competitive quality assessment and timely fulfilment of agreed service levels.' There was a pause. The man on the phone, who I believe was called Raj, asked if I wanted the usual.

I said I wished to 'explore the full range of available options before committing to a preferred provider solution.' He read me the menu. I said I would 'revert with a confirmed order following internal deliberation.' He said the kitchen closed at ten. I said I would 'endeavour to meet that deadline within the constraints of the current decision-making timeline.'

We got the usual. Raj sounded tired.

Day Five: The Children (Engagement with Young Stakeholders)

I should note that we have two children, aged nine and twelve. I informed them over breakfast that the household was 'undertaking a review of weekend leisure provision with a view to identifying activities that deliver improved outcomes across the wellbeing, educational, and recreational outcome domains.'

My nine-year-old asked if we were going to the park. I said the park represented 'one potential option within the broader matrix of available interventions.' My twelve-year-old, without looking up from her cereal, said: 'Dad, you're being weird again.'

I noted her observation. I did not, in this instance, have a council-appropriate response. Some truths, it turns out, cut through even the densest bureaucratic fog.

Day Six: The Revelation

By Thursday evening I had begun to understand something. The language of the council document is not accidental. It is not merely the result of committee-think or the slow sediment of institutional habit, though it is certainly both of those things. It is, at its core, a technology for not being accountable.

When a council says a service is being 'rationalised,' no one voted to cut it. When a pothole is 'under active monitoring,' no one has to fix it. When a consultation is 'informing our thinking,' no one has to listen. The language creates the impression of action while carefully preserving the option of inaction. It is, in the truest sense, words designed to mean nothing while sounding like something.

I had been doing this to my family for six days. My wife had started replying to my texts with single words. My children had begun communicating with me exclusively through sighs. The shed door was still off.

Day Seven: The Resolution (A Jointly Agreed Way Forward)

On Friday morning I sat down at the kitchen table and said, in plain English, that I was sorry, the experiment was over, the shed needed sorting, and I'd book the dentist myself.

Sarah looked at me for a moment and said: 'Was that so hard?'

It wasn't. It took eleven words. Eleven words that any council in Britain could have used at any point in the last decade to tell residents what was actually happening to their libraries, their youth centres, their bus routes, and their developing moisture situations.

They didn't, of course. They had a consultation instead.

The author's shed remains in a state of managed decline. A structural needs assessment has been commissioned. It is expected to report in spring.