Daily Archives: Wednesday, June 26, 2013

  • That’ll lean you!

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Politics, Social Media, Tech

    This blog has written before about politicians’ scrapes with technology and their apparent inability to cope with it (posts passim).

    Below is a screenshot of a tweet (since deleted) by Andrew Selous, the Tory MP for South West Bedfordshire commenting on Chancellor of the Exchequer Gideon Osborne’s comprehensive spending review in the House of Commons earlier today.

    Tweet by Andrew Selous MP
    Tweet by Andrew Selous MP

    Andrew should also know that the first rule about criticising others’ use of language is to make sure one’s own is impeccable (but they probably omitted to teach him that at Eton. Ed.).

    Hat tip: Phil Gibson.

  • Judge gets a relative to interpret as Capita cancels an interpreter

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Politics

    Reposted from RPSI Linguist Lounge.

    Imran Majid writes:

    I’ve been stuck in court all day partly due to another cock-up by Capita. The District Judge was in a dilemma whether to carry on refusing to hear a bail application in the absence of an interpreter. This is the 2nd day, Capita cancelled an interpreter yesterday and then failed to send an Arabic interpreter today. The District Judge got an unqualified relative to interpret. So well done Grayling, you’ve saved the government some money there.