Lavengro

Don't misunderestimate the Met

An Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police is suing his employer for racial discrimination. It is clear that human relations have broken down in the Met.

So has the use of English:

Ali Dizaei, president of the National Black Police Association, said ..."The negative effect of such an action ... cannot be under-estimated."

Mark Liberman has dealt with this problem at length on the Language Log.

En español se dice crisis

El País publicó ayer un artículo muy interesante sobre la presencia cada vez más evidente de eufemismos en la lengua política .

Vivimos en el tiempo del maquillaje. El Gobierno llama desaceleración a lo que la humanidad vive como crisis, y el PP no ve más que distintas sensibilidades donde todo el mundo ve tendencias enfrentadas. Detrás de cada eufemismo hay un tabú indeseable y, por tanto, impronunciable. El lenguaje de la política siempre ha estado lleno de unos y de otros, como si las palabras pudieran neutralizar la realidad que se niegan a nombrar.

There again

The dreaded homophone strikes again in today's Independent. Surely this sort of thing should be corrected before the letter is published.

Sir: David Burton (letters, 31 May) points out that the most serious consequence of the decision to heavily tax older Mondeo-type vehicles would be that there owners would see "retail sales value plunging from thousands of pounds to virtually scrap".

Their problem

The BBC:

He said Labour MEPs had "insisted since 2000 on their being separate validated audits of their own expenses and they have a separate register about family employment".

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear!