Ward’s 2009 concise dictionary of new meanings

Intelligence – something stupid and inaccurate you leave on a train

Tough decisions – compromises made when spin is no longer an option

Asylum seekers – UK emigrants rendered unhinged by incompetent arrogance

Sexual abuse – someone you don’t fancy asking you for a date

Menopause – Jordan holidaying in a nunnery

Goldman Sachs – unrecovered swag bags stolen during global meltdown

Foreign Secretary – position given to powerful alien

Bi-Polar – Stephen Fry circumnavigating the World

Balls – brain pouch for senior educationalist

Nerve Centre – New Labour Cabinet

Smear – a skeleton in your cupboard

Briefing – smear

National Debt – aggregate salary of Premiership footballers

G20 – acceleration required to break free of hot-air atmosphere

Black Mischief – Tiger Woods’ revised Memoirs

Tax Haven – the Commons expenses system

Mirage – Treasury forecast built on sand

Swine flu – waste-product chimney for Bonfire of the Bankers

Relaunch – mass torpedo attack by Zanu-Boat pack on HMS Gordon

Barbecue – prompter for Amanda Holden

MAOIS – loony Leftist trussed up to a T.

2020 – vision perfection available after midnight on 31.12.19

Barbecue – all-weather cooking implement used by Met Office

Hippocratic Oath – GP swearword used when told of new NHS budget

Botox – lippy London Mayor’s pub-crawl

Baron – gay life-peer devoid of useful ideas

Green shoots – germinating Japanese knotweed where the economy used to be

Dude – Gordon Brown doing a YouTube broadcast

Rectitude – stance adopted by lame duck lacking attitude

Climate Summit – peak atop mountain of contradictory data

Recession – retreat by depressive into bunker mentality

Own-goal – Government target for 100% to be on property ladder by 2020

Dark Liquidity pools – somewhere to drown unwanted Hedge Funds

Goodwin – bad loss (See also ‘no loss to anyone’)

Off-licence – retailer demanding abolition of new drink laws

Canute (vb) – travel to work knowing there’s no way to hold back recession

Muddle (vb) – to debate with the Parliamentary Opposition

Oxymoron – Elite-educated barrister MP (See also ‘Liberal Democrat’)

Turnout – total of voters now clueless about how things will end up

Islamist – fanatical fog off Scottish coast