General election 2015

Lib Dems weren't allowed, daddy wouldn't let them, but Nick Clegg was whinging about it this morning saying they did want to go out but were grounded.

I think he's worried people are going to forget he exists by May 7th. UKIP and the Greens spent so much time complaining about lacking media coverage that their coverage now far exceeds that of the Lib Dems. Which is entirely just and of their own making.

In other news, the first one is still brilliant, the latter is new:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YBumQHPAeU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbLGG5UGEKw

I so need some retweets: https://twitter.com/buro9/status/589031202218213378

"I challenge @David_Cameron and @ed_miliband to determine the outcome of a hung parliament through a dance off. #electionDanceOff"

retweeted though I would modify that to determine the outcome of the election dance off through seeing which of them is #wellhung

(I suspect Ed would win that as his car is smaller)

i thought miliband came across very poorly, another non-credible c-unit

http://www.thepoke.co.uk/2015/04/17/english-teacher-decided-mark-ukip-election-flyer-came-letterbox/

i bet oliver can come up with one or two more errors

Maybe it was a trap to make the recipient read it.

Yes, there are lots more (see below). But, let's face it, this is just the chattering classes stressing that UKIP politicians and voters are 'uneducated' and that spelling and grammar are really crucial issues here. This is fairly typical--people always want to show that what they're good at is really important. Significantly, the action of a teacher in 'marking' (which she doesn't, actually, she merely annotates it) an election leaflet suggests that the author(s) is/are (at the level of) children, which is quite insulting.

While one might argue that they're making too much of the initiative described in the text, or indeed disagree with whether it's desirable altogether (the intentions are honourable--get people to come to the town centre rather than, presumably, go to an out-of-town shopping centre, although experience shows that traditional town centres shouldn't attempt to compete with out-of-town centres on car parking; they talk about saving buses, too, which is much more important), they're making a substantive point here, which is what matters in local politics. Most people won't give two hoots about whether the author(s) can spell as long as he/she/they take initiative like this. The attempt to show the inferiority of the spelling and grammar may get a few titters, but is also likely to suggest to many people that the concern expressed here about UKIP is completely marginal and unimportant, when one could make much more important points while ignoring the spelling and grammar issues entirely.

But, as I don't like it when people do things like that (much though I care about good spelling and grammar, there's a time and place for that), here's a quick list of what she hasn't marked. She might argue that one shouldn't mark absolutely everything, but if they're adults and not children, why not?

tl;dr--if you do something like this, do it properly.

• She does note that there should be more punctuation in the first sentence, in detail: 'After four years of campaigning' should open the sentence and be separated by a comma (the sentence order is currently wrong); and '250,000 pounds' (with a comma, not a period) should be in commas or brackets (and be '£250,000' or '£250k');

• 'Win-win situation' should have a hyphen;

• She doesn't seem to note that the third sentence is also an anacoluthon;

• The fourth sentence should start 'It was Sharon's idea to ...'

• 'shoppers', not 'shopper'

• In the sentence starting 'We have campaigned ...', it's unclear whether what they mean is that:

'We have campaigned for this from day one and now we have achieved this. It's a fantastic result for Frome.'

or

'We have campaigned for this from day one. It's a fantastic result for Frome now that we have achieved this.'

or

'We have campaigned for this from day one. It's a fantastic result for Frome that we have achieved this.'

• The meaning of the sentence starting 'Derek said ...' is rather unclear, irrespective of the faulty grammar, as they seem to be saying that they've found additional money that might enable firming up this additional car parking provision in perpetuity after 25 years are over--so why find the money now? I didn't understand that.

• 'Shopper' is again uncorrected where it should be 'shoppers'.

• Period required after 'etc'.

• 'UKIP leader' should be 'UKIP's leader' or 'The leader of the UK Independence Party'. 'Nigel Farage, UKIP leader' is not good style. Ditto for Alan Dimmick below.

• By 'I am backing Sharon & Derek as our hard working local champions' (apart from it being 'hard-working') they probably meant 'I am backing Sharon & Derek, our hard-working local champions, ...'

• '... with a record of getting things done and more of the same to follow' just doesn't work, as you can't have a record of more of the same to follow. Combined expressions like this rarely work well in English as the syntactic markers available to clarify the relations within clauses like it are few in number. Word order is often the only device available.

• 'Who' could be 'whom' in 'who you can trust', but not everybody may wish to participate in the campaign to bring more obvious application of cases back into English. :)

• 'No Tax' should be 'No tax'.

• The list of bullet points about politics is inconsistent, mixing mere noun-phrases ('NHS free at the point of delivery.') with half-sentences. This could be cleaned up. Inconsistent capitalisation, too.

So, overall, not a very complete job on the part of the teacher.

thought so

Maybe that was also a trap by the teacher to get Oliver to read it.

I would have read it, anyway--I find it very hard not to read things. Besides, the topic (how traffic and the local economy work together) interests me.

Oliver, I need to bye you a pint for that.

Heh. Bridges tomorrow?

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/apr/17/solution-to-zero-hours-contracts-is-to-rebrand-them-say-iain-duncan-smith

Ian Duncan Smith really is a complete and utter cunt.

'the taxpayer.'

It all seems to be about 'Hard working families' for Ed.

What about single folk and couples? Those who can't work? Retired people? Won't somebody please think of the retired people?

Plus, it's a weird term. I have a family and work hardish when I'm not on lufguss, but the other four people in my family don't go to work. Are we a hard working family even though only one of us works hard for some of the time?

I'd like to know whether we qualify for all the awesomeness Ed will rain down on hard working families.

get those other 4 shirkers either down the pit or in teh workhouse!!

The 'hardworking families' nonsense was started by the Tories as part of their tactic of demonising people on benefits. What they want to say is people in work, as opposed to all those shirkers and scroungers. But that would be too blatant so they started saying 'hard working families' instead. It's also flattering people and playing on their sense of grievance that they go out to work and get fuck all in return. It's a clever and despicable way to deflect justified anger away from its real source.
It's also an odd term because most sensible people do as little work as they can get away with and, reasonably enough, resent having to put in any effort in their pointless and tedious jobs. A party that promised to speak up for the resentful, lazy or uninspired might do quite well.

demonising people on benefits.

The 'deserving' and the 'undeserving' poor.

A party that promised to speak up for the resentful, lazy or uninspired might do quite well.

The Battle of Aspen!
http://hunterthompsonblog.tumblr.com/post/3832711917/the-battle-of-aspen-freak-power-in-the-rockies

I'm in a nice-ish pocket of Lewisham (the abandonded car round the corner is a Maserati) and it's quite marked that there is absolutely no visible support with posters or estate agent type boards for anyone except the sitting Labour MP who has absolutely loads.

Probably fake, but mmc.

Was reminded that a short while ago David Cameron was near to tears trying to keep Scotland as part of the UK but once they start wanting to exercise some influence within that UK it's GTFO back over the border you dirty Scottishers.

trying to keep Scotland

That really jarred with me.

It seemed obvious that the lack of Scotalnd would benefit the Tories votewise.