The land of mindless, trite clichés is ripe with drivel so meaningless that to dwell there too long can induce a spontaneous lobotomy, rendering the hapless victim fit for nothing other than to be a business executive or, even worse, a bishop.

One of the most irritating is this: “Think Outside the Box”. It made its initial assault on humanity in the 1970s and was rapidly spread by Management Consultants who made a living preying on gullible executives. It is a tribute to its inventor that, just like a cleverly designed computer virus, it spread and multiplied and can still be found today living in the backwater recesses of pedestrian minds everywhere.

It takes an especially vacuous cove to come up with the vapid jumble of nonsense compressed into the following couple of sentences; it would be beyond most, but Michael Bird, bishop of Niagara is up to the task:

What I have absolutely no interest in, however, is a ministry of rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.  I need your commitment, your willingness to journey and take risks, your capacity to dream and think outside the box, in order to build upon and grow the work and ministry of this diocese in the days to come.

Here we have the jewel of clichés set in a dazzling array of Titanic deckchairs, journeyers, commitment, dreamers, risk takers, builders and growers.

The most potently mind-numbing concoction outside of an Indaba group.