One of the most irritating media trends is the increasing use of hyperbole. An easy example is the climate 'emergency'. In an emergency you don’t eat, you don’t do anything else except deal with the emergency and you might jump out of a window knowing you will probably break your leg. We do not have a climate change emergency.

Climate change is a hugely important issue which requires cool heads and firm action over a sustained period - not running around legislating like headless chickens in response to a manufactured emergency which makes people confuse activity with progress.

Similarly, and almost as frequently used, is 'black hole'. Leave aside that in reality black holes only exist in space. In sensible earthbound parlance a black hole is a huge issue which is of indeterminate size, so big that you cannot see how big it is but it will certainly have a very large, potentially catastrophic, impact.

Which is why it is rather puzzling that having now looked at the books - which have been available to read for some time - the Labour Government has found a £22bn black hole in the UK’s finances.

Climate change campaigners (Image: free)

The size of the UK........

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