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Great subbing errors of our time

Sunday, July 06, 2008
From those good people at Politics Home:

Clicking through item 6 shows that they have dropped 'ar' from a word, rather mutilating Minette Marrin's meaning....

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The return of the Holy Roman Empire?

Monday, June 23, 2008
Our lucky neighbours on the other side of the Channel / North Sea are about to see one of their high speed trains decorated with, gulp, 'the logo of European Year of Intercultural Dialogue 2008 (EYID)'. Pretty exciting, eh?

However, not really worth blogging about, except on a slow day.

However, compare and contrast this statement from Ján Figeľ (he does have that apostrophe, honest) :

"Thalys trains link the capitals and cities of four EU member states"

with this map:


Paris - check. Brussels - check. Netherlands - Amsterdam - check.

And the fourth capital city? It does sat 'the capitals', not 'capitals' of 'four EU member states'. Aachen was the seat of the Holy Roman Empire (insert the old joke here) of the German Nation, but a reborn Heiliges Römisches Reich deutscher Nation would rather cancel out Paris, Brussels and Amsterdam...

The other possibilities are that Cologne is a free city again, that the Archbishop thereof has resumed his role as a prince elector or Figel' knows something about the breakup of Belgium that the rest of us do not.

Extra special pedantic point, The Hague is not a capital of the Netherlands, although it is the seat of government.


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Don't believe it....

Tuesday, June 10, 2008
From Hansard:

Mr. Evans: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what the value was of goods stolen from police stations in (a) North Yorkshire, (b) West Yorkshire, (c) South Yorkshire and (d) the East Riding of Yorkshire in each of the last three years. [208647]

Mr. McNulty [holding answer 5 June 2008]: The information requested is not held centrally and could be obtained only at disproportionate cost.


What McNulty means is that Greenacre's Finest are far too embarrassed to admit to any such larceny.... Also, given that Evans is an MP for somewhere on the other side of the Pennines, might he have been seeking to make mock?

Not worth a new post, so I will add that I am appalled, disgusted, incandescent etc etc that the confectionery products known as biscuits are being referred to - in Hansard - by a linguistic fifth columnist as cookies. Yes they are. Philip Ian "Phil" Hope, for it is he, represents Corby in Northamptonshire in the United Kingdom, rather than somewhere nestling in the Appalachians. Grr. As they are soi disant 'fair trade' products, it can be assumed that they taste like militant cardboard, so he's welcome to them.

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Why so coy?

Friday, June 06, 2008
There's a mildly interesting item in The Times on political wives, mainly dedicated to sticking the boot into Carla Sarkozy and name dropping to Olympic standard.

Anyway, the writer notes " There are two types of politician’s wife. The first type marries her man before he becomes famous or powerful. She marries him before the grace-and-favour apartments in historical settings, before the banqueting dinners and state visits, before the helicopter on the lawn and the silent, waiting chauffeur.... Carla Bruni, I fear, is the other type of political wife. She hitched a ride on the bandwagon once it was well and truly rolling along".

So far so not very interesting at all, until the sign off:

"Sarah Vine is married to a Tory MP".

A little bit of digging reveals that La Vine is married to Michael Gove of Surrey Heath (whom God preserve) and that they would have married prior to Gove getting elected.

With that tease of a sign off, I cannot be the only one who will ask that question, so the subs should either have dropped that sign off or been a tad fuller.

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Inaccurate precis....

Friday, May 16, 2008
If I was asked to describe the NHS using a boxing metaphor, the best match would be 'on the ropes'. However, Pravda Central has other ideas, headlining 'Chief Executive's report confirms the NHS is fighting fit in 60th year' . Yes it has .

That the relationship of governmental press offices to the truth is, at best, at the bitterly contested divorce stage is hardly news, but the inaccurate precis of NHS Chief Exec David Nicholson's words does represent a classic of the type.

This is what he actually said: "The NHS is in good shape".

Not the same, is it? Not by a long chalk.

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Sentence construction...

Wednesday, April 23, 2008
From the Met:

"A 48-year-old man has been sentenced to life for killing a man as he lay in bed at home".

Could have been phrased more clearly, I think....

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Blair's legislation - 'meaningless' says Straw

Wednesday, March 19, 2008
The Ministry of Justice (excuse the hollow laugh) is rather pleased with itself, judging from this press release referring to "A major clean-up of meaningless and defunct laws from the statute book is due to be launched in the House of Lords today. All or part of 328 Acts of Parliament masquerading as live laws are to be removed under the Statute Law (Repeals) Bill".

The emphasis in the release is on East India Company issues, turnpikes and the like, so yes, a cute diary-type story, and duly picked up by the BBC, complete with a visual plug for 'Black Adder'.

And here is the act itself, listing repeals, in part and in whole, and Blair legislation impacted includes:

  • Crime and Disorder Act 1998
  • Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001
  • Licensing Act 2003

Back on the comic stuff, note that the Unlawful Drilling Act 1819 is only repealed for Great Britain, not Ulster.

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The Turks - way ahead of the curve, or way behind it?

Thursday, January 03, 2008
Istanbul has just been graced with its first feminist bookshop, some 40 odd (?) years after they debuted in London, NY and other happening places. However, the only feminist book shop in London that I can think off - Silver Moon - closed ages back.

Meanwhile, the store styles itself "Amargi...from a Sumerian word meaning freedom and "returning to mother." Having far too good a memory for the deeply unimportant, I recalled that the emblem of the Liberty Press uses the cuneiform for ama-gi, this being the first appearance of a word for freedom, apparently. And here it is, lifted from their web-site:

Wonderful though mothers in general are, going back to one does not seem to be exactly on all fours with freedom as a concept, unless it is the freedom to revert to being a child.

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The trouble with numbers....

Thursday, November 08, 2007
This, from the EU's site today:

"There are already 3 million obese children in Europe and this figure is rising by an estimated 400,000 a year". Although presumably a fair few graduate to being obese adults every year?

And from February:

"A staggering (wobbling, surely?) 27% of men and 38% of women in the European Union are classified as obese. This figure does not include the 5 million children who suffer the same condition".

The first item then goes on to propose compulsory exercise etc etc and the second wanted to 'de-stigmatise' obesity by classing it as a chronic disease (yes, really), but both are far too dull to be worth investigating further.

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Getting one's ducks in a row....

Sunday, October 21, 2007
The EU's site has publishesd an extended whine / outbreak of special pleading interview with remarkably obscure French film director Cédric Klapisch, in which he rails against "American hegemony and the lack of circulation of European films" in a way that is too predictable and dull to be worthy of repetition. However, the juxtaposition of these two bits is quite amusing:

"It is tragic to see that Eastern Europe, for example, has lost its cinematography because film makers have simply fled to the US where the money is".

"Almodóvar helps me understand Spain, Fellini - Italy, Kusturica – countries of former Yugoslavia and Forman the Czech Republic".

Soo, Miloš Forman. The director who brought us, inter alia, 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest' and 'Amadeus'. A quick check of his biography shows the following, "During the invasion of his country by the troops of the Warsaw pact in the summer of 1968 to stop the Prague spring, he left Europe for the United States". Source. Not quite the same as following the money, is it?

Forman has not made a film in Czech since 1968, so I am quite intrigued as to how Klapisch is aided in his understanding by Forman's work. As a point of gratuitous pedantry, it could also be noted that Forman has never directed anything about the Czech Republic, only its predecessor in title, Czechoslovakia.

As a footnote, prior to the Versailles settlement, the good people of Bohemia and Moravia were referred to in English as 'Checks', rather than 'Czechs', and it is rather odd that we have used the Polish rendering for the thick end of a century

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Winston Churchill does techno trance

Wednesday, September 26, 2007
Courtesy of those wonderful people at EUtube:




Someone just a little bit more 'street' than I am tells me that the backing music at the start is techno trance, but morphs into breakbeat at the end.

Anyway, it is this speech by the Greatest Ever Englishman that the EU is mucking about with, and it has been used in a more than slightly misleading fashion. Note the following extracts:

* 'The first step in the recreation of the European family must be a partnership between France and Germany. In this way only can France recover the moral and cultural leadership of Europe. There can be no revival of Europe without a spiritually great France and a spiritually great Germany.'

* 'In all this urgent work France and Germany must take the lead together. Great Britain, the British Commonwealth of Nations, mighty America, and, I trust, Soviet Russia -for then, indeed, all would be well - must be the friends and sponsors of the new Europe and must champion its right to live.'


Delving into pointless pedantry, the evolving map of the EU shows the former DDR being part of the then Common Market in 1957, which makes the reference to Germany reuniting after the fall of the Wall look a bit silly. I suppose the inhabitants of the DOM/TOMs, let alone l'Algérie Française as it was at the time of the '57 treaty, might feel aggrieved for not showing on the map either. Same goes for Greenland.



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Pity Her Maj - she's less powerful than the head of ebay.

Friday, August 31, 2007
At least according to one of those deeply silly power lists that business magazines are so fond of filling their pages with.

The Forbes list has Angela Merkel at the top, with Cynthia Carroll of Anglo American apparently the top British woman at 7th. However, Anglo American refers to her as 'an American citizen' on its website.... So much for fact checking, eh? Which takes us to Marjorie Scardino of Pearson, who also hails from the Land of the Free and is naturalised British. Mrs Windsor rates 23rd behind Meg Whitman of ebay.

No one from our own dear Labour Party makes the cut, fortunately.

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How long is 'ever'?

Tuesday, August 21, 2007
All the way back to the Big Bang, the emergence of Homo Sapiens, the earliest literate civilization, or being really generous, a human life span?

Well, by Tony McNulty's opinion, 'ever' is thirteen years:

'The number of people applying for asylum in the UK fell by over 2,000 in 2006 to its lowest level since 1993, according to statistics published by the Home Office today.....Home Office Minister Tony McNulty said..."There are now fewer people than ever coming to Britain and making claims for asylum"'.

Well did you evah....


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Geography lesson for Derek Twigg?

Thursday, July 12, 2007

What does 'on the continent of Europe' mean to you? To me it excludes this Sceptred Isle, and by extension, Hibernia, Iceland and sundry other islands.

Not, however to Derek Twigg, who sees fit to include Cyprus as being 'on the continent', judging from this response to a written question on 'what British military bases there are on the continent of Europe'. Source.

Twiggy has had his wiki page played with, by the look of things, as he is described as "Member of Parliament for Chemically contaminated Halton (UK Parliament constituency)|Halton]] in Cheshire". Source.

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Ruth Turner - shame on you

Saturday, January 20, 2007

No-one else seems to have noticed, so I will take up the cudgels:

"I have been completely open with the police throughout and will continue to cooperate with them fully. I absolutely refute any allegations of wrongdoing of any nature whatsoever".

Now Ms Turner studied English and History at Salford University, so she has less of an excuse than most for her hideous misuse of the present tense of 'refute' while offering no proof as to the falseness of any of the allegations. I suppose she thought that 'deny' was too feeble a word, and perhaps the meaning of 'refute' has become debased, but nevertheless, not good. I would have accepted 'I will refute'. The Grauniad also disgraces itself by using 'Ruth Turner refutes any wrongdoing 'absolutely' ‘as a sub-headline. Given the foregoing, why no inverted commas? It is not a statement of fact, is it?

Anyway, for the record:

Refute - –verb (used with object), -fut·ed, -fut·ing.

1 - To prove to be false or erroneous, as an opinion or charge.

2 - To prove (a person) to be in error.

Having embarked on a little light pedantry, doubtless I will find myself hoist by my own petard before the morning is out. The clock is ticking..

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