As most people know, the mysterious world of local government is inhabited by people who will never utter one word when several will do, preferably ones with lots of syllables in them that most ordinary people would find totally unintelligible.

So I suppose we ought to be glad that someone is trying to get councils to stop talking in jargon that is utterly meaningless.

The Local Government Association (LGA} has published a list of 200 words it thinks councils should stop using. That deserves one cheer.

Among them are some of the usual suspects - exemplar, co-terminosity, direction of travel etc - which I would be glad if I never heard again.

I wish I had a pound for every time a councillor or council boss had spoken about "being on a transformational journey" and "synergies".

I can't hep thinking the LGA's laudable efforts will be wasted.

Take this extract from a recent council report on the £15million re-development of the Ashford ring road - that's the one with the shared space and £7,000 streetlights.

The report states that the scheme is "an innovative, cutting-edge, transformational project which aspires to be an exemplar, benchmark project and market leader across the UK..."

I rather fear this is one transformational journey may be one that will take a long time, although to be fair, the direction of travel is right...