More GBH of the English language

Following my piece ‘The cold blooded murder of the English language’ I regret to report that none other than The Economist, which has always prided itself on its pellucid prose, has fallen prey.

 

Here are some extracts from its latest edition.

 

‘Never have so many crustaceans died in vain’, (Michael Heseltine) whooped.  Whooped? Heseltine? Did he also say ‘Cripes’ and ‘Yaroo’?

 

‘You nodding off yet?’ one duffer asked a colleague (delegate at the Small Business conference). ‘Duffer’, an inefficient, useless or stupid person.

 

‘They (small businesses) lose out to megacorps (non-word) with the welly to stand up to suppliers. Welly? Very Essex Man, then,

 

And finally……

 

‘….the (UKIP) party’s  jackanapes leader, Nigel Farage’ (jackanapes – a mischievous small boy). Oh, very Richard Littlejohn, except he got there first (‘Blair, the grinning jackanapes’).

 

I commend to the writers an excellent publication.

 

It’s called ‘The Economist Style Guide’.

 

‘Management Today’ is worse.

 

One would expect the writing to be serious and business like.

 

The February issue carried a 2 page piece with the title covering half the page in bold upper case.

 

Its title?

 

‘HOW TO MANAGE ASSHOLES’.

 

It managed to get no less than 30 assholes, an unpleasant Americanism, into the piece. That’s a lot of assholes.

 

And the motoring correspondent vouchsafed that the Mitsubishi Evo FQ was ‘fucking quick’ (geddit?).

 

Personally, I reckon that the Editor is – er- an arsehole.