thedanglingmodifier.co.uk

My world this week has been turned upside down by distractions at Westminster. It’s been quite difficult to think of anything else with all this wondering who’s going when and why. And then – having to choose who to represent me at the European Parliament. Such a long list of candidates! Took me ages to read all their leaflets before making my choice.

But once I had, off I trotted to the polling station where I found three clerks sitting in a pretty much empty room. The creak of the floorboards echoed as I entered. I treaded gently, trying not to disturb their reveries, for they were – all three – staring into the open space in front of them. They sat stiff in their seats, a half-dead look on their faces. The slightest shove might have toppled them like dominoes.

I presented my polling card and asked them if they’d had a busy day.

“No,” said one, using a pen and ruler to draw a tidy line through my name.

“We’ve been here since 6.30 this morning,” said another.

“Only a couple more hours now,” said the third.

Then they gave me the ballot paper, which I took into my booth and spent a while unfurling before placing my ‘x’.

I was confused: the instructions at the top of the paper stated very clearly that I should vote for one candidate. But I’ve had so much trouble understanding the words recently – and I remembered voting for several people in the mayoral elections – I thought I’d better check.

“It’s the d’Hondt formula,” said one.

“Very difficult,” said another.

“Complicated to get your head round,” added the third.

I like to keep an editorial eye on the state of our democracy so I rushed home to find out more about the d’Hondt formula. It is very complicated, and I didn’t understand it, but it’s only maths. I don’t have to be good at maths – after all, it’s not as if I’m Chancellor of the Exchequer.

But I’m reasonably good at words – at least the ones I understand. So I decided to check what the Chancellor and his band of merry bankers have been up to recently. I downloaded the ‘UK financial services report’.

In his foreword, Alistair Darling talks about “forces for good” saying that:

“embedded in the seeds of economic recovery, will be an ever stronger will by industry and financial centres to compete and to innovate”.

This is a typical dress-up of language that is so vague it is almost meaningless. Some people will always think that words like ‘embedding’ make their writing sound like it means something.

And here we have “seeds of economic recovery”. Other reports will talk about “green shoots”. But no one will ever ask the author to explain how they managed to embed anything in a seed or a green shoot.

Along comes Sir Winfried Bischoff on page 3 with a photo that makes him look like some sort of spiritual leader. His face has those soft-focus edges and his wrinkles are misted over. His foreword is much longer and lighter in tone than Darling’s, as if he’s much more confident about his career prospects.

But even after the bank bailout it seems these people are still too stingy to pay for decent editorial services. Look at the summary on page 9 of the pdf. Among so much that is wrong – missing punctuation, sentences that aren’t really sentences – there are even verbs that don’t agree with the subject. For example:

“Ensuring that the benefits of the UK’s position as an international financial centre continues to accrue broadly across the UK domestic economy.”

But the real laugh comes on page 11 of the pdf under the heading:

“Reaffirm the UK’s reputation for competence, responsibility and trustworthiness”

The report suggests the banking industry and the Government should work together to “restore public trust”.

These people really have no idea, do they?