It’s just over 4 weeks until the elections for the European Parliament on 22nd May.
Yesterday Mr Farage’s xenophobes and Little Englanders launched their election poster campaign in Sheffield.
Radio 4’s Today programme was in Sheffield to record some vox pops; one interviewee described the posters as ‘simplistic bile’.
Quite.
Today’s online edition of the Bristol Post features a great headline to this story, as per the screenshot below.
There is however one thing wrong with the headline: it isn’t true since male tortoises – being reptiles – don’t have a penis, but a cloaca (which is the Latin word for sewer. Ed.) – an opening that serves as the only opening for the intestinal, reproductive and urinary tracts of certain species.
To be fair the fact that male tortoises have cloacas is indeed mentioned by the Post’s unnamed author in paragraph 2:
The four year-old spur-thighed tortoise is suffering from a prolapse of the cloaca which requires immediate treatment.
“Never let the truth get in the way of a good headline” seems to be a maxim of the British press at both local and national levels.
Finally, this blog wishes Cedric and his owner every success in remedying Cedric’s problem. 🙂
Crapita’s mismanagement of the courts and tribunals interpreting contract for the Ministry of Justice may not be getting as much publicity now as previously (posts passim), but that doesn’t mean it hasn’t stopped wasting public money, as the tweet below from yesterday reveals.
@TheCriminalBar Husband's trial with t/e 2-3 days has not yet started and day 3 tomorrow.Reason: #crapita not provided interpretor #mojwaste
— Leisha Bond (@Leisha007) April 15, 2014
As Leisha doesn’t mention the type of court involved, there’s no certainty how many thousands of pounds this laxity has cost, but once again justice is being delayed, contrary to one of the few clauses of Magna Carta still in legal effect (posts passim).
One might even think that the one organisation that should be concerned about this – the Ministry of Justice – seems to be less concerned with justice and more with covering up its own and Crapita’s serial incompetence.
The BBC – and Radio 4 in particular – is often criticised for being the voice of middle England speaking to itself.
However, it seems that Auntie is now making great strides to improve the diversity of its staff, as shown by the Tweet below, which was posted during last night’s broadcast of Any Questions.
Q3: Would a Yes vote in the forthcoming Scottish Referendum be the only way in which England could get it's own parliament? #bbcaq
— BBC Radio 4 (@BBCRadio4) April 11, 2014
Yes, Radio 4 is now employing greengrocers (shouldn’t that be greengrocer’s? Ed. 🙂 ), or at least people who know how to use superfluous (or greengrocers’) apostrophes.
Below is a picture of part of an actual election leaflet delivered recently to somewhere in South Bristol by the local Liberal Democrats.
Note that local party hacks have omitted to change this generic national leaflet’s wording from ‘Anywhere Council’ to the name of the relevant local authority.
I for one would like to wish the candidate involved – [Insert Name Here] – every success.
Hat tip: Bristol Red.
The Wig and Pen public house in Truro, Cornwall had some unexpected publicity earlier this week when a badly temporary temporary sign was snapped by an amused regular before being hurriedly removed by embarrassed staff, according to yesterday’s Western Daily Press.
By the time the sign came down, its fame had spread round the world by social media; and it’s easy to see why.
However, according to the Western Daily Press article, the sign itself was not the only linguistic clanger involved in the episode:
But a remember [sic] of staff named Georgie-Tim later took to Twitter to say: “Well, it got you’re attention!
After one’s had a collision, road traffic incident or ‘accident’, as discussed in the previous post, one virtually inevitable subsequent step is the submission of an insurance claim.
These too have their own vocabulary and are couched in terms intended to deflect blame away from the claimant.
This phenomenon was noted many years ago by comedian Jasper Carrot, as in the video below.
Happy motoring!
Have you ever noticed the language used when road traffic incidents are reported?
As a typical example, look at this story from Wednesday’s Bristol Post.
The headline reads:
Man taken to hospital after his car collided with road sign in Avonmouth
The first sentence outlines how the incident occurred:
A man in his 40s had to be removed on a spinal board after his car collided with a road sign in Avonmouth.
Note how the car’s occupant – presumably its driver – plays a passive role; the car apparently collided with a road sign of its own volition without any human intervention. One would almost think that cars and other motor vehicles are so capricious and flighty that conscious action by human beings is imperative to stop the public highway becoming a large linear scrapyard in next to no time and remaining such permanently.
Perhaps a more accurate headline would have been Man taken to hospital after driving into road sign.
Similar examples of this use of English can be found in any local paper in the country.
However, such language is not confined to the print media. An similar example from inside the BBC in Bristol was posted on Twitter this morning (screenshot below).
Note the absence of any human involvement in the incident: a horse was killed by a fast car. Was it an unoccupied, autonomous vehicle? A more accurate rendition would be that a horse was killed by a fast driver.
Then there’s the way large swathes of the media report collisions using the noun accident to describe them. In the vast majority of cases, there’s nothing accidental about them. According to RoSPA, 95% of all road ‘accidents’ involve some human error, whilst a human is solely to blame in 76% of road ‘accidents’.
According to the Collins English Dictionary, accident has the following definitions:
an unforeseen event or one without an apparent cause
anything that occurs unintentionally or by chance; chance; fortune
a misfortune or mishap, esp one causing injury or death
It would seem that the third definition is the one relied upon by the media. Interestingly, the British police stopped using the term Road Traffic Accident (RTA) some years ago; the police now refer to a Road Traffic Incident (RTI) instead.
Perhaps the media should follow the example of the police if they wish to retain their alleged reputation for truth and accuracy.
The motto of the city of Bristol is Virtute et Industria (Virtue and Industry).
However, one feature of Bristol’s local dialect is the addition of a final, intrusive ‘L’ – a so-called terminal L – to words ending in a vowel.
Consequently, area, say, becomes ‘areal‘, whilst Clifton’s Princess Victoria Street mutates into Princess Victorial Street, so Industria naturally becomes Industrial.
The terminal L is beautifully illustrated in Virtute et Industrial, a song written by Adge Cutler (posts passim), and sung here by the late Fred Wedlock.
As with elsewhere in the country, the Bristolian dialect is not as strong as it once was, mainly due to the influence of mass media and the spread of received pronunciation.
Here from a few years ago is a fine example of the local dialect delivered in song by Adge Cutler & the Wurzels many years ago at the Webbington Country Club, Loxton, Somerset.
Adge was born in Long Ashton, just outside Bristol.
Hat tip: Patrick Wise.