Shortly before I sat down to write this, the various news apps on my phone alerted me to the fact that twenty-six people had been charged, following disorderly conduct at a climate change protest in London yesterday. One of these people was the unreasonably annoying Greta Thunberg.

Now, I’m not suggesting that people shouldn’t have the right to peacefully protest. I would never seek to deny anyone that right. Not even the obnoxious, ever yowling Thunberg.

Nor, despite the hysterical hyperbole of Sweden’s most ubiquitous and attention-seeking pest and her colleagues, am I going to deny the reality of man-made climate change. Too many sensible, reasonable people have been talking about it for too long for any such denials to be convincing.

I’m not even going to rant about the alleged criminality of their antics. No doubt the legal process will proceed according to precedent, so my thoughts on the subject are a matter of supreme disinterest. Even to me.

What has struck me, however, is the new language of protest. As you know, dear reader, I do get rather exercised by the use and misuse of language.

The specific target of yesterday’s protest was the Energy Intelligence Forum, an annual oil industry conference, which was being held at the Intercontinental Hotel. Aside from obstructing the highway, and other public order offences for which people were arrested, members of Green Peace abseiled down the hotel building, unfurling a banner which read, “Make big oil pay”.

And that, dear reader, is what I wish to rant about. Leaving aside the issue of who should pay for what, the term “big oil”, used to describe the global oil industry, seems incredibly juvenile. One supposes that it is meant to sound rather sinister. But instead, it just sounds ridiculous.

There seems to be a fashion for this kind of linguistic stupidity among the sort of people who routinely attend, or at least give moral support to, anti-capitalist or anti-industrial protests. They bang on about “big tech”, which is rather ironic given the fact that technology is always shrinking, “big agri”, which sounds like some sort of dyslexic pigeon English term for a very bad mood, the aforementioned “big oil”, which sounds almost affectionate – rather like a couple of friends of mine referring to their cat as “big Al” – and “big pharma”, which, rather than sounding like the pharmaceutical industry, sounds as though it should refer to a friend of the Fat Controller from Thomas The Tank Engine.

Whether or not these protesters have a point is a discussion for another time and place. But their message is weakened by their own terminology. People might argue that the message is important, not the language. But this is fatuous. Precise, sensible wording is very important. That is how serious messages ought to be communicated. If protesters persist in using this absurd, infantile faux jargon, why on earth should we take them, and by extension their messages, at all seriously?