Daily Archives: Sunday, August 17, 2014

  • Builder’s English?

    Seen this morning on Church Road, Lawrence Hill, Bristol.

    sign stating smile your on camera

    The person who wrote the copy must have fallen asleep in English classes when the difference between the abbreviated second person conjugation of the verb ‘to be’ and the second person possessive adjective was being explained.

    Never mind, poor English skills don’t seem to have been a barrier to employment with Cleverley Builders of Whitchurch, Bristol or Swann Security; it was uncertain to your correspondent as to who had produced the sign. However, the ability to lie on signage is also valued by Cleverley Builders and/or Swann Security as no evidence of the physical presence of video surveillance equipment could be discerned.

    If the author of the sign happens to read this, help is at hand to assist you in learning the distinguish them.

    Neither of my parents, both of whom left school at 14 years of age and received not much more than a primary education in rural Norfolk in the 1930s and 1940s would not have made such a glaring mistake in English – a mistake which seems all too commonplace amongst the beneficiaries of the modern British education system.

  • West Country confusion

    The Western Daily Press is a stablemate of the Bristol Post and seems to share many of the latter’s afflictions – the same ugly Brutalist building on Bristol’s Temple Way, poor English, dodgy photo captions and the like.

    It was therefore no surprise to encounter a prime example of confused reporting this morning, as illustrated by the screenshot below.

    screensot of garbled article from Western Daily Press

    If one examines the article to which the news page above relates, three disparate elements seem to have been combined by reporter Geoff Bennett (who also writes for the Bristol Post. Ed.) and his associates, i.e.:

    • a headline referring to widespread outbreaks of salmonella food poisoning in hospitals in England;
    • a cuddly kittens picture and apposite caption; and
    • a report on the court case of the alleged groping barber (who was cleared by the court. Ed.) which gave rise to Friday’s sexist Bristol Post front page (posts passim).

    There is nothing like good, unambiguous reporting of the news – and the Western Daily Press is capable of nothing like it!