LONDON: A Tory party ex-chairman got close to victory by noting “Having committed political suicide, the Conservative party is now living to regret it.”

But Chris Patten was beaten to the punch on Dec 1. The award for most baffling remark by a public figure went to an old master of obfuscation, Donald Rumsfeld.

The US defence secretary scooped the Plain English Campaign’s premier Foot In Mouth trophy for his 62-word attempt to clarify a point to a defence department meeting: “Reports that say that something hasn’t happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns - the ones we don’t know we don’t know”.

“We think we know what he means”, said John Lister, a Plain English campaign spokesman, “but we don’t know if we really know”.

Previous winners include the actor Richard Gere and the artist Tracey Emin.

The campaign was set up in 1979 to combat official jargon, circumlocution and muddling information. It has worked with, and provided training for, more than 1,000 private and governmental organizations, including two-thirds of Britain’s local authorities.

One of this year’s Golden Bull awards for unclear English has uncovered a man who is an unrepentant master of mixed metaphors.

Yousef El-Deiry, UK airports manager for the charter airline JMC, writing in the airline magazine, noted that late summer was “historically characterized by pre-maturity, both in terms of psychological wind-down and shedding of temporary staff.”

“The irony is that it is in the latter stages of a race or championship that fortunes are made or lost, and where heroes are born or die, and we should be in no doubt that ‘it ain’t over until the fat lady sings,’” he went on.

“The approach, which I wish to advocate to all our ground team, is to look at the last third of the season as a ‘light at the end of the tunnel’, the long sought-after jewel in the crown, remaining resolute to sprint to victory.”—Dawn/The Guardian News Service.