A revolt in the ranks

A revolt in the ranks. There’s one thing about the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development: when it publishes one of its country reviews it goes out of its way not to openly contradict opinions expressed by the host government’s finance officials.

Criticism is veiled with the veto pen regularly applied by officials of the country under review. Which is what makes the section on broadband in this week’s OECD report Economic Survey of Australia 2010 such an intriguing comment:

It seems pretty clear that the Treasury just wanted it known, and on the record, that it does not approve of the Labor Government’s plans.

It should be refudiated! It’s just not proper. But then it is only the Oxford American Dictionary (OAD). Not your real Oxford English Dictionary.  Sarah Palin’s refudiate is the word of the year for 2010!

For those of you disturbed at Sarah Palin getting this recognition there is still time to lodge a protest. As the OAD notes on its website:

Now, does that mean that “refudiate” has been added to the New Oxford American Dictionary? No it does not. Currently, there are no definite plans to include “refudiate” in the NOAD, the OED, or any of our other dictionaries. If you are interested in the most recent additions to the NOAD, you can read about them here. We have many dictionary programs, and each team of lexicographers carefully tracks the evolution of the English language. If a word becomes common enough (as did last year’s WOTY, unfriend), they will consider adding it to one (or several) of the dictionaries we publish. As for “refudiate,” well, I’m not yet sure that it will be includiated.

The historical background to refudiate” can be found on Crikey‘s The Stump website along with the 10 other words on the final word of the year short list.

The European financial crisis. No disaster on the financial markets overnight as the markets seem to assume that Ireland will get at least temporary relief from its European colleagues so it can keep paying its debts but the early editions of the English language papers suggest that the crisis is far from over.

Overnight Eurostat, the statistical arm of the European Union, released updated deficit and debt figures that give an idea of the problem in the region’s different nations.