Today’s example has prompted me to institute the Oratory Award, which will be bestowed upon the perpetrator, normally a person of standing, of a most eye-catching sentence reported by the British media. Uniquely in the history of awards worldwide, the qualifying period will be decided by me entirely arbitrarily – and so will the winner. Regrettably, my budget does not stretch to an awards ceremony.
Perusing this week’s Sunday Times, I nearly choked on my Coco-Pops when I came across this gem.
“Kwasi Kwarteng, the Tory MP for Spelthorne in Surrey, said: ‘This is a form of prejudice because there’s no reason why they withheld the ability to open a new account from [Stratford]’.” (Stratford, by the way, is the name of a lady of Iranian descent whose application to open a new account was rejected by Santander.)
How exactly does one withhold an ability to do something from somebody else? According to Wikipedia, the orator had attended Eton College and Cambridge and Harvard Universities. I imagine the sub-editor’s credentials are no less impressive.
How about these?
This is a form of prejudice because there’s no reason why they should have prevented her from opening a new account.
This is a form of prejudice because there were no grounds for preventing her from opening a new account.
Oh! Can the rest of us look too and submit them for your consideration?
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ABSOLUTELY – the more the merrier! 🙂
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Okay, Anna….found one for you. This is from the Mail article on a funeral that happened yesterday (for Churchill’s daughter). “Sir John read a Bible passage and said he had ‘very fond remembrances’ of the cigar-smoking author.” How do you like that one?
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Do you mean ‘remembrances’? A non-native speaker of English such as me cannot take any chances, so I dashed to my Oxford English Dictionary (it’s red-hot – just like my late Mum’s Great English-Polish Dictionary used to be), according to which ‘a remembrance’ may mean ‘a recollection, reminiscence’ or ‘a surviving memory of a person’ – so perhaps ‘remembrances’ is OK in this context? I apologise if your point is different and thank you so much for taking the time to comment. By the way, I’d love to address you by your first name (it would sound more friendly) but don’t know what it is. Naturally, if you’d rather not reveal it, it’s absolutely fine. I hope I’m not being too forward …
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Silly, silly me – I’ve only just spotted the ‘author’! You got me there – excellent! Millions of thanks!!! 🙂
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Not at all, Anna, it’s Torrie. And no, I meant the cigar-smoking author….of the Bible?
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You see how you can catch me out, Torrie! It’s good to get the taste of one’s own medicine from time to time! 🙂
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