English usage

  • Unfit for office

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Media, Politics, Social Media

    Yet more proof emerged this weekend of the complete lack of suitability for any public office of disgraced former Defence Minister Dr. Liam Fox MP, the allegedly right honourable member of Parliament for North Somerset (aka the Clevedon Conman. Ed.).

    Foolishly appointed as Secretary of State for International Trade and President of the Board of Trade by Theresa May, the UK’s not at all unelected Prime Minister, Fox was appearing this weekend (and taking time off from golf. Ed.) on Sophy Ridge’s Sunday morning current affairs show on Sky.

    During the course of the interview, the small matter arose of a very inaccurate tweet sent in March 2016 arose. This is of current relevance because of the current UK government notion of a post-Brexit replacement of EU markets by enhanced access to African Commonwealth countries, an idea reportedly scorned by sceptical civil servants and thus dubbed “Empire 2.0“.

    Fox’s tweet reads as follows:

    “The United Kingdom, is one of the few countries in the European Union that does not need to bury its 20th century history” #scc16

    Even when it was displayed on a big screen in the studio behind him, Fox, in a masterful display of brass neck, denied ever sending the tweet in the first place, claiming it was The Guardian that was the perpetrator, a textbook example of the “a big boy did it and ran away” defence.

    screenshot of Fox on Sophy Ridge show with offending tweet

    If the sentiment in his denied tweet is to be believed, Fox has a very selective view of British colonial history, a story of theft, plunder and conquest stretching back many centuries. Referring solely to the 20th century as per Fox’s tweet, Britain wasn’t exactly a benign imperial power, as the following list of incidents will reveal.

    As regards the non-imperial history of Britain in the 20th century, incidents of which the country should not be proud include the Balfour Declaration and Sykes-Picot Agreement (from both of which much of the conflict in the Middle East since the end of World War 2 originally stemmed. Ed.), plus wartime blunders such as the Gallipoli Campaign (posts passim) and the carnage of the Battle of the Somme, as well as atrocities such as the fire-bombing of Dresden.

    Your correspondent is well aware that history does not feature much in the curriculum of the medical course of Glasgow University, but Fox’s sweeping of so much incriminating historical dirt under the carpet in fewer than the 140 characters permitted by Twitter is breathtaking in both its audacity and stupidity.

    As with the Adam Werritty affair while he was Defence Secretary, Fox has once again proved by both his naivety and lack of ability to tell the truth that he his totally unfit for any public office

  • Chronicling allergy

    Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Media, Oddities

    At least once a week, the Bristol Post, the city’s newspaper of warped record, comes up with an exclusive, although this might not be immediately apparent to the casual reader.

    Today is no exception as, buried in this report on the recall of dodgy products is the revelation that some people are allergic to written records of discrete events organised by date, as revealed by the following screenshot.

    text reads this poses a serious risk to anyone with a diary intolerance

    No illiteracy or lack of proof-reading skills should be inferred concerning the alleged “journalist” involved. 🙂

  • Struck off and die

    Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Media

    There’s a skill to writing an intriguing headline that invites the reader to engage with an article.

    Besides the above that skill also involves the ability to make the headline make sense.

    It’s an ability that seems to be lacking down at the Temple Way Ministry of Truth, headquarters of the Bristol Post, the city’s newspaper of (warped) record, as shown by the screenshot below of the head of this article.

    headline reads Nurse who forced feeding tube into girl's stomach and died is struck off

    Comments on the piece accuse the Post’s headline of not making sense, but to your correspondent it does make perfect sense… as long as nurses can get struck off posthumously.

    Update 07/03/17: Perhaps prompted by the mocking nature of the comments, the headline has now been amended to reflect the gist of what actually happened.

  • Hail to(o) the Chief?

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Politics

    Besides his less endearing qualities of bullying, sexism and xenophobia, the 45th President of the United States of America is believed by some not to be very bright either, an opinion which is reinforced by the presence of a glaring typographical error in the text on his official inauguration portrait, which must at some time have passed across his desk for approval (or even been written by him. Ed.).

    Trump official inauguration photo

    Proof readers and the eagle-eyed will no doubt spot it immediately, unlike POTUS did.

    However, orthography and proof reading may be the least of President Typo’s worries at present. 🙂

  • “Th” sound to disappear from English in coming decades?

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Media

    The “th” sound, which had its own letter – thorn (Þ, þ) in Old and Middle English – could disappear from spoken British English, today’s Daily Telegraph reports.

    By 2066, linguists are predicting that the “th” sound will vanish completely in london because there are so many foreigners who struggle to pronounce interdental consonants – the term for a sound created by pushing the tongue against the upper teeth.

    In the wider South East of England Estuary English – a hybrid of Cockney and received pronunciation (RP)– is already being replaced by Multicultural London English (MLE), which is heavily influenced by Caribbean, West African and Asian Communities.

    The Telegraph is reporting on the release of the Sounds of The Future report produced by Dr. Dominic Watt and Dr. Brendan Gunn from the University of York.

    Other predictions from the authors include:

    • Sound softening – hardly anyone says ‘syoot’ for ‘suit’ any more and this trend will continue with the sharp corners knocked off words;
    • Yod dropping – words like ‘cute’ or ‘beauty’ will become ‘coot’ and ‘booty’;
    • Consonant smushing – ‘w’ and ‘r’ are already similar for many southern English speakers, but the letters could completely collapse into one sound, whilst Words with ‘ch’ and ‘j’ could also become indistinguishable;
    • Glottal stop – the slight linguistic trip which turns ‘butter’ into ‘bu’er’ in dialects like Cockney could become more widespread around the country.

    Commenting on the same report, the Newcastle Chronicle leads with the headline “The Geordie accent is on the way out say language experts“, remarking that language experts say that by 2066 the distinctive Geordie accent will sound like a southern one.

    The Sound of 2016 report was commissioned by bankers HSBC, to mark the “voice biometric” technology which the bank is rolling out to 15 million customers, so perhaps it’s worth mentioning here the usual disclaimer about not trusting information from someone trying to sell you something. 😀

  • Stare-struck hack?

    Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Media, Oddities

    Modern British society seems obsessed with celebrity culture: this is no more evident than in the mainstream media; and such is true of Bristol’s (news)paper of (warped) record, the Bristol Post.

    It would appear that no sooner does a Z-list non-entity have something to do with the city than the illiterati that constitute the current reporting staff of the Temple Way Ministry of Truth than they are lost for words – or for le mot juste at the very least.

    This is evident in a puff piece in today’s online edition featuring some nobody off some dire TV talent show, as per the obligatory screenshot below.

    sentence reads X Factor winner Alexandra Burke, who next week is staring Sister Act at the Bristol Hippodrome, has dropped three dresses sizes in less than six months

    So Bristol Post, is a nobody off the telly looking intently at a show at the Hippodrome or taking part in it? In the immortal words of Private Eye, I think we should be told.

  • Golfing news

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Politics, Social Media

    The time-honoured business practice of top executives celebrating POETS Day on the fairway has come in for criticism from an unlikely source.

    At a Conservative Way Forward event at Westminster last week, the current international trade secretary and disgraced former defence secretary Dr Liam Fox MP is reported to have said:

    We’ve got to change the culture in our country. People have got to stop thinking about exporting as an opportunity and start thinking about it as a duty – companies who could be contributing to our national prosperity but choose not to because it might be too difficult or too time-consuming or because they can’t play golf on a Friday afternoon.

    Meanwhile in golfing “olds”, in April 2015, the disgraced former defence secretary Dr Liam Fox MP tweeted the photo below when standing for re-election.

    tweet reads latest student golfer at Tickenham Golf Club @TickenhamGolf #GE2015

    There’s an old adage about glass houses and stones, isn’t there?

  • Post exclusive! Soccer slump leads to bank branch closures

    Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Media, Oddities, Tech

    A strange phenomenon is occurring in Bristol: people not playing football is resulting in the closure of bank branches in the city.

    The source of this curious news is the ever (un)reliable Bristol Post, which yesterday carried a story headlined: “Two HSBC banks to shut in Bristol following slump in customers“.

    The relevant section is shown in the following screenshot*.

    relevant sentence reads There has been a 40 per cent reduction in football in just five years across all of HSBC's branches

    Either football is vital to the survival of HSBC bank branches or there’s a typographical error in the third sentence.

    To help readers decide which of the two above alternatives is correct, your correspondent has not noticed that the floors of HSBC bank branches are marked out with white lines to resemble football pitches.

    As a final thought and a bit of idle speculation, are more errors creeping in to news reports appearing online due to modern “journalists” working with predictive text options switched on?

    * = The article’s copy has since been amended with “footfall” replacing “football” in the third paragraph.

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