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With all the uproar about phone blagging and What Andy Coulson Knew, you may have missed the fact that the Public Administration Committee has been holding a public hearing on how the government uses, and misuses, language.

On the Today programme Matthew Parris made the usual cheap shots at “spin”, but what was more interesting was the way they singled out the creep of management speak (top down, bottom up, total envelope) into so called “accessible” language.

This isn’t about civil servant jargon - the deliverables and outputs and visions - it’s about new ways of saying nothing, using what appear to be nifty analogies (anyone remember Who Moved My Cheese?) to give the impression that was you are saying is easily understood, when in fact it’s even more obscure and nonsensical than ever.

As they played a clip of Liam Byrne, my first thought was that they hadn’t used a very good example, that he was actually using quite simple language.  It wasn’t until he reached the end that I got the point - or rather, realised that there was no point at all and he had just wasted several seconds of my life and doubtless several hundred valuable brain cells trying to figure out what on earth he was talking about. 

What we fondly used to call Fleet Street understood perfectly that simple, clear, impactful writing was the most difficult thing in the world - which is why traditionally the Sun’s sub-editors were the best paid and most jealously guarded.

I wouldn’t deny for a second that many people in corporate PR spend a great deal of time trying to say very little at length and with great authority. A vital skill in crisis management is the ability to talk to a journalist for ten minutes helpfully explaining what you can’t tell them anything at all. 

But being clear and making sense generally runs contrary to human nature - apart for the politicians, just listen to Vicky Pollard or the cute little monster in Outnumbered.  So everyone in the public sector should be making superhuman efforts to say what they actually mean. 

When the story broke on the terror attacks in Mumbai there was much talk of news spreading through blogs and social networks like Twitter.  Details of the siege were reported minute by minute by people who were there.  There is no doubt that the rise in citizen journalism and the availability of these channels has provided a new layer of news sourcing where information comes fast and direct.

It was the medium of radio however that brought the events into vivid and immediate focus.  As the siege was taking place Jim Naughtie on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme conducted an extraordinary interview.  Business lawyer Mark Abell was barricaded in his room inside the Oberoi hotel whist the murder and mayhem was taking place.  “As I entered my room there was a massive blast …and the gunfire has been going on throughout the night” he said, ”there is no escape and we haven’t heard anything from anybody.”  The immediacy and reality of the situation along with Mark’s stoic bravery was evident throughout.Mark escaped and was interviewed again on Today, 24 hours later.  He described his release and the full horror of the carnage he saw when he was escorted under armed guard through the lobby of the hotel.

Radio can deliver insight that text or still image based channels never can.   I have always been persuaded by the views of Gary Carter of FremantleMedia who argues that so called ‘old media’ are not replaced by new they continue co-exist.  He argues  ”The only mass communication medium in history to have been replaced by another is the telegraph and …arguably, of course, the telegram was not a mass communication technology.”

We need to stop thinking of media in terms of “newness” and think more in terms of “richness”.   We can be seduced by something shiny and new and but we must still celebrate that which we already have.

More than a nation of dog lovers, the British love their cars. Third largest car in the EU, 2.4m new cars registered in 2007 and 850,000 employed by the industry. But more even than cars, I’d say we love a bargain.And what a bargain online car dealer, Broadspeed.com, was offering this week: £20 grand worth of Dodge Avenger, but not just one - “buy one, get one free”.  Company MD, Simon Empson, speaking in The Guardian, couldn’t have been more understated when he said: “It’s the power of marketing, I suppose.” Amen, came the holy choir of marketeers across the UK.

Serious times call for serious measures. And those measures now include the motor industry calling directly on the Government to orchestrate a funding package to resuscitate the retail motor trade. The Society for Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) signalled the depth of the problem back in August, when reporting that month’s sales as the worst since 1966. At the time the SMMT caught some flak from the trade for “talking down the market”, and the messages seemed confusing, as with a bi-annual registration change the old focus on comparing August sales seemed misplaced.

But the industry’s lobbyists could clearly see the stark words written in the grime of the car market’s chassis. Yet it was probably David Smith, head of major - and iconic - motor manufacturer Jaguar Land Rover, going on the Today programme that added the true weight of the motor business to helping shift interest rates south by 1.5% at the end of last week. So, with potentially more cash slushing around people’s wallets and the prospect of another publicly-funded bail out package, the car industry should be quids in. But, as the BOGOF dealer offer showed, it’s time to be innovative in marketing, with a combination of tactics to drive people through showroom doors as well as giving them a good deal. It’s also an opportunity to test drivers’ brand loyalty - if someone will try a new marque at the right price, that brand might win a new customer for life.

Talking about the situation with my father - a motor business veteran of 50 years - he was remarkably sanguine. Having seen and sold his way out of economic lows across the decades - when even some UK car makers were not just helped by the state, but owned by it - the industry, he said, would get back in gear again.