Delivering misrelated participles

In posting this comment on the crap grammar of public discourse, I join a large number of like-minded complainants.  This little rant was prompted by reports in this morning's news of 'golden handcuffs' payments of £300,000 each to three British Rail senior managers. Apart from the sense of grievance evoked by the size of this payment in order to retain their already well paid services, and to prevent their defection to the massively overpaid private sector, I was struck by the words of a BR spokesman as reported in the Telegraph.

“ Recognising the huge importance of what this company needs to deliver - better train punctuality, reduced cost and expanding the railway to relieve congestion - retention payments for three key people were made to see through the delivery of our plans."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/transport/10195658/Rail-executives-to-pocket-900000-to-stay-in-jobs.html

This is a classic example of contemporary corporate language, in which agency is avoided, management jargon terms like 'deliver' and 'delivery' are liberally used, and readers are left as confused as they are outraged.

'Recognising' is the participle which has been delivered in this particular sentence.  Participles crave a subject.  But if we scan along the sentence, skipping over the desirable things that are to be 'delivered', we come to 'retention payments'. 'Payments', retention or otherwise, cannot logically be the subject of 'recognise', which requires a sentient subject, such as 'the Board' or even 'we'. (The extent to which either of these could be considered sentient in this context is another matter.)  

The avoidance of agency is augmented by the use of the passive voice: payments 'were made'.  The use of the passive is, of course, a classic way to avoid attributing agency -- and responsibility, with its twin, accountability.   So, the reader is left none the wiser as to who was responsible for a decision to pay these three 'key people' £300k 'retention payments' -- or as would be less politely termed, 'bungs'.

I doubt that the spokesman would recognize a misrelated participle; indeed, there is evidence that he doesn't. Whether Mr Gove's determination to teach grammar will lead to a generation of correct participle use is to be doubted.  There is no evidence that being taught grammar actually improves the quality of writing.

Sixty years ago, George Orwell proposed six rules for writing, all of which have been flouted by this BR spokesman.  None of Orwell's rules mention correct grammar, nor is he concerned with literary use of language, because, as he says, what he is concerned with is 'merely language as an instrument for expressing and not for concealing and preventing thought'.  Unfortunately, the use of language both to conceal and prevent thought is as widely practised today as it evidently was in Orwell's time, and his advice remains as pertinent today as it did then.