Cushion management: 1. New team of company directors who do exactly the same as their predecessors, simply following on from the impression left before. 2. Nothing really changes in companies – despite triumphant announcements and mighty fanfares, it’s the same old stuff every year; world-weary maintenance of the status quo.

Omnishambles: 1. Cockup on all fronts, originally from Armando Iannucci’s TV series The Thick of It; word migrated into mainstream government to ridicule persistent inconsistencies in policies and taxes. 2. Ragbag of misguided notions and poor execution; random set of initiatives with no coherence and crap delivery.

Builds: 1. Other ideas adding to what has been said already. 2. Awful bastardization of a verb into a noun, as in “If we can have your builds on this, please Ron?”; also applied to ever-increasing number of points on an already-overloaded chart.

Astroturfing: 1. When a movement is portrayed as a grassroots initiative but is actually run on behalf of corporate interests. 2. Curious, semi-sporting, analogy that takes a playing surface noun and turns it into a verb, all for the sake of a pun about grass; almost certainly invented by people who have never played football in their lives, but think it might be trendy to do so.

Across the whole piece: 1. Everywhere. 2. Baffling conflict between one piece (presumably singular) and pieces (presumably several); vague suggestion of a lot of stuff; comprehensive, but uncertain in what way; grandiose; omnipresent; often accompanied with a world domination sweep of the arm, as in “I want Project Duckboard implemented across the whole piece, Barry.” (see Across the board, right)