Appraise officials and judges by what they do rather than by what they say. Too often, we hear stern words about punishments, yet the penalties themselves are anything but. Civis is not one for ``throwing away the key’’ or harsh sentences. Jail often hardens offenders, and younger miscreants especially need opportunities to change. Nevertheless, tough talk paired with lenient consequences frustrates. So-called white-collar crime and deceptive dishonesty seem to draw lesser penalties. A Tauranga case last week prompted these thoughts. A motorist paid $24,000 for a Toyota RAV4, only to discover more than a year later that the odometer had been tampered with. The odometer read 150,031km when the car was sold at auction to a trader, who on-sold it three months later, showing 119,244km. Service technicians referred their concerns to the Registrar of Motor Vehicle Traders through the NZ Transport Agency Waka Kotahi. An MBIE investigation confirmed the tampering. Two charges were laid under the Motor Vehicle Sales Act 2003: tampering with an odometer without reasonable excuse and aiding and abetting a company in the offending. The trader agreed to buy the car back at the sale price and was ordered to pay $1000 in emotional-harm reparation. His company was fined $5000. MBIE’s national manager of occupational regulation said this was the first successful prosecution demonstrating MBIE’s commitment to upholding the law and maintaining fair standards across the motor vehicle sales sector. ``This case sends a clear message that odometer tampering and other deceptive practices will not be tolerated.’’ Winding back odometers is straight-out deception and fraud. There are victims, both individually and through the undermining of wider trust. It’s a shame the trader was not prosecuted by the police on criminal charges. Will buying back the car and paying $6000 make much difference to the trader? Will it really deter others? And why has it taken MBIE so long to prosecute someone? Is tampering really that hard to detect and prove? * * * * * Uncommon words are sometimes like unusual makes of cars: once you notice them, they seem to pop up more often. In this case, the word is ``inchoate’’. Previously, Civis had guessed its meaning from context and paid little attention. When it next appeared, the meaning had been forgotten and had to be worked out again. Recently, however, an effort was made to look up the word and think about it. Lo and behold, that was the beginning of greater awareness. Although rarely used, within a week, it appeared again, this time in a book Civis was reading. According to the Collins Dictionary, something inchoate is recent or new, and vague or not yet properly developed. * * * * * It’s time again for curmudgeon Civis to cuss at language irritations. This time, it’s the use of ``utilise’’ when ``use’’ is perfectly adequate. We should all know the principle of preferring simple, short words to longer ones. While subtle differences in meaning can sometimes excuse the use of “utilise”, “use” should usually predominate. In his 1946 essay Politics and the English Language, George Orwell (1984 and Animal Farm) targeted words like “utilise”. He categorised them as “pretentious diction”: words used to dress up simple statements and make them sound scientific or authoritative. One of his principles is ``never use a long word where a short one will do’’. He also advised, ``Never use the passive where you can use the active’’. Of course, we are all language hypocrites. Someone analysed Orwell’s work and found plenty of passive sentences. Civis, schooled in an era when formal grammar was no longer taught, is anxious about displaying ignorance of language and, no doubt, habitual hypocrisy and inconsistency. Too bad. Perhaps, focusing on a rare word like inchoate is itself an example of pretentious diction? civis@odt.co.nz
