All lawyers looking to improve their language skills really must read a new European Commission document with the snappy title ‘Economically dependant/quasi-subordinate (parasubordinate) employment: legal, social and economic aspects’. According to several highly-esteemed employment barristers who have, with remarkable self-sacrifice, actually read this landmark piece of wordy guff, the only useful facts to be drawn from it are four statistics relating to the proportion of European workers who are self-employed, worked part time or are on fixed-term contracts. Clearly, this is an important example of a document that makes every effort to ignore making any worthwhile points and ultimately aims to confuse rather than inform. Important reading for lawyers.