Below are some recent examples of our plain English copywriting and editing.

The brief:

The Royal Automobile Club of Victoria (RACV) provides roadside assistance, vehicle, home and contents insurance, personal and car loans and more. Andrew Pegler Media wrote the RACV Annual Report after interviewing RACV management. We have extensive experience editing and writing annual reports for government and corporations. Past work includes annual reports for Victorian Department of Premier and Cabinet, Department of Transport, Sustainability Victoria, Sensis, NAB and Computershare.

Copy sample:

The year in claims

The sharp rise in extreme weather events during the past three years has profoundly impacted communities across Victoria. In response, RACV has stood by its members, paying out claims and helping communities rebuild.

Following the hailstorms of March 2010, RACV received 40,000 claims; we continued to manage these claims into the 2010/2011 financial year. At all times we provided adaptable, empathetic and compassionate service. We sourced specialised dent repairers from New Zealand, Malaysia, Germany and the UK. We established six hail response centres in affected areas. And our Mobile Emergency Rapid Response Vehicle caravan travelled to Rowville to provide on-the-spot claim lodgements and vehicle assessments.

The brief:

Rio Tinto is one of the world’s largest mining and exploration companies and APM has worked with it on a number of projects. We edited the Rio Australia brochure for plain English and for structure. We also wrote a number of stories on Rio’s work in the community which involved research and interviewing skills. An extract from one of those stories follows.

Copy sample:

Lou Bavoillot was born on a pastoral station and spent his early working life as a contract musterer in Western Australia and the Top End. Until, that is, he more or less fell into mining after being asked to sit on a dozer for a few weeks.

“And I’m still here,” Lou says, twenty years later.

Now Lou reckons he has found his calling as the superintendent of Gooring Jimbila, a joint venture between Doorn Djil and Gelganyam Investments. Gooring Jimbila employs and trains young Indigenous men to work on infrastructure maintenance at Rio’s Argyle Diamond Mine.

The brief:

Andrew Pegler writes a humorous, plain English and educational blog for Ubank, commenting on domestic and international economics and finance. The weekly blog attracts about 2000 readers and contributes to Ubank’s highly successful social media strategy.

Read the blog: http://bit.ly/2SMjWb

The brief:

The Royal Automobile Association of South Australia (RAA) commissioned a tone of voice guide to better reflect its transformation into a more contemporary, innovative and progressive organisation. With a more consistent and distinctive way of talking to its members, it is now easier to recognise and relate to.

Copy sample:

Times are changing and so are we. We’ve been around for over 100 years which means we’ve learnt a thing or two.One of which is you’ve got to change with the times. We’re transforming into a more contemporary, innovative and progressive organisation, one that speaks in a modern,conversational tone. This means writing like we talk, more naturally. A good test is to ask yourself: Does that sound like something I’d say?

Over the next few pages we explore how our values and personality traits are reflected in the way we communicate with our customers and each other:

■ Reliable and responsible

■ Honest and trustworthy

■ Innovative and progressive

■ Contemporary

■ Successful

But hold the baguette! I reckon the union and the euro will survive this annus horribilis. We’ll probably see a few defaults as sovereign debt – what each country owes its creditors – is written down or off. (My money’s on Greece, Portugal and Spain, in that order. If Italy goes, all bets are off.)

While battered to within an inch of its life, the euro and the European Union (EU) will surprise us all and live on to smoke those super strong cigarettes and neck double espressos for breakfast.

The reason? The EU stands to lose much more from a break-up than it would gain. Originally a French/German idea, the EU was seen as a way to bind the region following the collapse of the USSR. 20th century Europe had torn itself to shreds twice and a union presented a historical opportunity to create a metaphorical scabbard for those sabres, while also opening up new markets for everyone.

A chaotic European collapse might generate waves of resentment and recrimination that could end in feuding economic blocs or, even worse, bloody conflict. And while they may complain the loudest, the BSD’s – Germany, France and the Netherlands – have done pretty well so far in terms of trade volumes. They know what side their croissant is buttered on.

Fate may be on the EU’s side. Data out of the U.S. is starting to paint a pretty picture of recovery. Sure it’s all finger-painted stick figures at this stage but employment is rising, inflation is stabilising, housing is bottoming and, thanks to the declining dollar, exports are up. Meanwhile, the latest NAB report on the Chinese economy points to a soft landing.

And although the year will be a shocker for Europe no matter what, we may not have to worry. If the Mayans are right, we’ll all be gone by December 21.

Further to my recent blog Cyber-structural unemployment, an artificial intelligence researcher in Singapore has developed a robot with a virtual mouth. The “Kissinger” is the size and shape of a cricket ball with touch-sensitive lips that can detect and copy how your partner kisses. An extra touch of intimacy to a long-distance relationship or or just plain weird?

British Conservative leader and now Prime Minister, David Cameron, proclaimed the “Age of Austerity” in 2009. Miriam-Webster dubbed it the word of the year in 2010. Europe grappled mightily with austerity through 2011. And by 2013, our Labor Government, in a tip of the hat to austerity, has promised to balance the budget.

But now, in little ‘ole 2012, we are starting to see some of the results of all this austerity. And those results are not great.

First, let’s back up and take a stab at a definition. Austerity, as an economic policy, aims to cut government deficits by reducing spending, services and benefits.

With our economy doing pretty well, government cuts have been relatively painless. But in countries like Greece and Spain and Italy and Ireland … well, we’re talking strikes, mass protest, civil disobedience and disaffection.

The belief in Europe is that if governments slash spending and balance their budgets they can bolster private-sector confidence and hence confidence in a European government’s ability to pay its debts.

Counter to this thinking is the traditional economic wisdom that during a recession governments should stimulate the economy with extra spending, even if they must borrow to do so. Think GFC stimuli by Obama, Rudd and Chinese Politburo.

Sure, the thinking goes, balanced budgets in the long term will reduce interest rates (encouraging growth) and lead to smaller debt repayments allowing tax cuts, which also increase growth. But austerity in the short term lowers income and raises unemployment because all that stimulating government spending is removed from the economy.

The thinking continues that a weaker economy generates less tax revenue, which offsets the initial savings benefit from the austerity. Therefore, austerity in times of recession can actually make it harder to balance the budget, not easier.

But the austerity crowd, including much of Europe’s policy elite and many in the U.S., is unbowed. It insists that “expansionary austerity” is the key because confidence is the key. Some have even urged Obama to “do a Cameron”, meaning implement strict, British-style austerity.

So, how’s austerity going? To borrow a phrase from Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman, has the “confidence fairy” materialized?

Not so, according to British think tank, the National Institute of Economic and Social Research. These pointy heads took changes in real GDP since this recession began, and compared it to past recessions. The results were alarming.

It seems Britain grew faster during the Great Depression than it is now. Four years into the Depression, Britain had recovered to its previous GDP peak. Four years into this recession, Britain isn’t even close to recovering its lost ground.

Meanwhile, recent employment figures in the U.S. have been surprisingly good. So perhaps it’s lucky for Obama he didn’t “do a Cameron”?

With the trouble in Europe and the sluggish U.S. economy, an orderly Chinese slowdown is preferable to a crash.

The data from the latest NAB report on the Chinese economy shows that tighter monetary policy over the past year has achieved its goal of a soft landing. Domestic activity eased and GDP growth dipped slightly to end the December quarter at 8.9%, the slowest rate in more than two years. (GDP in 2010 was about 10%.)

Inflation ended 2011 at 4.4%, a little higher than the central bank’s target of 4% (our target is 2% to 3%). Inflation is important because too much of it reduces the central bank’s ability to use interest rates to stimulate demand.

On the subject of inflation, the pointy heads at NAB have two main concerns for 2012. First, a lot of money has been injected into the economy over recent years and this may become a problem. Second, rising incomes may push up prices. An interesting side bar is ongoing power shortages, caused by adverse weather conditions and low prices conspiring to ramp up consumption. The fix is in; the government put up electricity prices in 2011, but this is putting further pressure on inflation.

Europe accounts for more than a fifth of China’s exports, so it’s not surprising that those exports declined steadily over 2011. But imports also softened, leaving the trade surplus a little higher at US$16.5 billion. Surprisingly, retail sales in the December quarter were up nearly 18.1% on a year ago, despite the headwinds of tight credit, slowing growth and inflation.

Over all it’s a good outcome for Australia. Our major trading partner is continuing to grow but not at a scary pace, and it still has wiggle room to ease interest rates to fire up growth. Oh and happy Chinese NY, apparently this is a big one. Jeez, I hope it doesn’t dragon.

I’ll leave you with an unrelated thought from Alan Kohler of Business Spectator: “These days big government is ascendant and capitalism is in crisis, thanks to an excess of debt plus the fragmenting, democratising, pirating effect of the Internet. In fact, the way central banks in Europe and the United States are controlling the financial system these days with their emergency liquidity programs, we virtually have a centrally planned economy in the West. Meanwhile, the world’s most successful economy is a communist dictatorship.”

The concept of robots arose in the early 20th century; storytellers imagined how these mechanical workers would help us out. Since the late 20th century, robotic technologies have created everything from automated production lines to cute robot dogs. And now we’re putting robots on the battlefield. Better them than us, eh?

Let’s blow our minds a little: pundits reckon the robotics industry is about where the personal computer revolution was in the early 1970s. For some perspective, imagine being transported from 1975 to the present, and seeing people talking to invisible friends on tiny, brightly coloured, mobile computers that boast apps for everything.

According to a group of experts assembled for The Economist’s ‘The World in 2012′ series, robotics will impact our economy in unexpected ways over the next 25 years. And the coming generation of robots won’t just be hardware; it’ll include a software layer that will replace a lot of jobs.

Take Google or Facebook, which have very few employees relative to their size and impact. Robots and intelligent systems pretty much do the job. At the supermarket, self-service machines are replacing checkout chicks, ATMs mean less work for bank tellers, and voice recognition means virtual assistants can answer the phone 24 hours a day without the need for a ciggy break.

There’s even a robot out there reviewing evidence and transcripts, set to replace armies of paralegals and lawyers. Then there are the 200,000 robot-assisted surgeries a year involving tiny incisions that create less tissue damage and hence a quicker recovery.

As Discern Analytics managing director Paul Saffo said, “We’re all waiting for the robotics revolution. It’s just over the horizon … Over the next few years you can expect to hear the term, ‘cyber-structural unemployment’ and it won’t be a cyclical downturn, but structural, permanent.”

Alarmist? Maybe. But when the stakes are this high, even a “maybe” warrants genuine concern.

Of course, this bubble started with China’s mother of all stimulus plans in 2008/2009. Gordon Chang, an international lawyer and China analyst, has spent much of the past 30 years living and working in China. He puts it this way: by 2009 the Politburo had dumped about $1.1 trillion into a then $4.3 trillion economy. (He’s referring to an easing of lending, in addition to direct stimulus.)

These mind bogglingly huge inputs created growth, but also created a stock market bubble, a property bubble and inflation. And the faster something goes up, the faster it comes down.

How fast? Inflation, at a modest 1.5% in January 2010, rose to 6.5% by July 2011. But that’s just for starters.

The property agent, Homelink, reports that new home prices in Beijing dropped by 35% in November. You heard that right, folks. More than a third in a month. Another property agency, Centaline, estimates developers have 21 months of unsold inventory in Shanghai and 22 months in Beijing.

According to Gordon Chang, in mid-2010, the state electricity grid in China reported that 64.5 million apartments showed no electricity usage for more than six consecutive months. That’s enough housing for 200 million people. Most of it empty.

If these astronomical numbers don’t convince you, consider the surveys that show the rich and super rich in China are, in growing numbers, thinking of leaving the country. That means getting passports and ensconcing their families in comfortable Western cities. That’s what Gordon Chang calls a leading indicator.

If things are going pear shaped fast, what does it mean for us Aussies? To paraphrase and twist the old sin city adage, what happens in China doesn’t stay in China. The real estate collapse is already nailing the construction industry. Since mid-year, steel production in China is down about 15%. And where do we sell most of our iron ore? I don’t need to answer that, do I?

The big question is whether the Politburo can engineer a soft landing. But imminent political change in China isn’t helping. At the end of 2012, the Communist Party will start changing the members of the Politburo Standing Committee. Those guys are the top of the pops. And change means uncertainty, which means weakness, which means power struggles and so on.

So if we don’t get a soft landing and the real estate crisis spreads through the Chinese economy, contagion style, then it’ll be more than steel that tanks. Demand for commodities – our economic specialty – will go off a cliff, taking a chunk of our prosperity with it. Alarmist? I certainly hope so.

Andrew Pegler – 13 January 2012