WE’RE all going to hell in a handcart over a No-Deal Brexit cliff edge led by a bunch of dysfunctional Tories, and the best thing Jacob Rees-Mogg can think of to do is issue a bizarre style guide to staff.
The new Leader of the House of Commons dictates that non-titled males be referred to as “esquire” and has banned such words as “got”, “very” and “unacceptable”. Also for the chop is “equal”, appropriate in a Tory Britain where some are more equal than others and inequality reigns.
Another casualty of the cull in vocabulary is “disappointed”, presumably since disappointment is a given for many at the hands of the Conservative government. Binned also is “hopefully”. See previous observation. Staff are also asked to avoid the phrase “I note/understand your concerns”, no doubt to avoid blatant lies to the electorate as it’s hard to believe the Tories will ever have an understanding of any concerns that ordinary people might have.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m all for a good style guide. They bring measured consistency and an air of calm, often where none exists. Newspapers would be far more erratic without them and I wear my pedantry with pride. It matches well my coveted English Language Anorak. The world would indeed be a better place if everyone were to start the day parsing sentences.
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But I can’t see Rees-Mogg’s irritating style diktats bringing much calm in the face of parliamentary madness. One of his more annoying rules is that full stops have a double space after them. This is just wrong and a waste of space. And the full points he has ordered in referring to M.P.s are, well, pointless. Interestingly, while “Esq” in Jacob’s world requires a full point, it is deemed that “Miss” and “Ms” do not. This is baffling, since both stem from abbreviations. Perhaps we should just be glad that there is no rule asking for all women to be addressed as “Mistress”, the historical ring of which might appeal to Rees-Mogg, who bears the nickname the Honourable Member for the 18th Century.
On the plus side, the style guide does urge staff to “CHECK your work”, although shouting at people in capital letters is NEVER A GOOD IDEA.
Rees-Mogg has also asked staff to avoid metric and always use imperial measurements, despite most of these having been phased out from the 1960s.
Using this as a yardstick, perhaps the Honourable Member might go the extra mile and ditch decimalisation. Perhaps if we went back to pounds, shillings and pence, then the plummeting value of sterling might go unnoticed.
Or maybe we could go one better and revert to groats, or salt, or good old-fashioned bartering and payment in kind. Anything’s possible in post-Brexit Britain.
One wee surprise in the style guide is the request that a comma after “and” be eschewed. Otherwise known as the “Oxford comma”, surely this would be right at home in the Tory party.
But who are we to question the power of the Leader of the House of Commas?
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