Compelling offers

This week, Peter Fahy, a chief constable from Cheshire, called for the legal drinking age to be raised to 21. This is presumably following all the great evidence from the US of how effective this policy is, and ignoring the fact that no other country in the EU has a limit set at 21 years. On the issue of measures designed to make parents take greater responsibility for their children's actions, he has this to say, which is commendable for using equal measures of the type of paternalistic and fascist language that is so prevalent in political life these days:

"There are schemes whereby youth workers and other people offer support to parents who may have a problem with a youngster who's drinking. But we find a lot of parents will not take up that offer... If people are not willing to take up that offer, then there is some form of sanction which actually makes them come and take up that offer."

Presumably, what he means is that when parents are "offered" support, it's up to them to decide that they want it. Of course, not all parents may actually want it, in which case they should be "encouraged" to want it by means of "sanctions". These must be compelling offers indeed. Or perhaps it's just indicative of the fact that we're now far better at devising imaginative language than imaginative policy.

Quote of the day, 24 July 2007

The first two quotes of the day weren't ones I could publish on this blog, but this one comes a close third....

So it seems that a blood test on Alexander Vinokourov has revealed that his sample contained red blood cells from two different people, suggesting that he'd received a blood transfusion before his victory on Saturday's Tour de France time trial. Apparently, this is what his Astana team had to say:

"...the organisers of the Tour de France invited the team to withdraw, which was immediately accepted."

which can't even be said to be a euphemism..... I'm sure they're feeling nothing but pride at being invited to withdraw from the Tour....

Quote of the day.....

"No one will miss targets when they're gone"

Pete Riddell, in The Times, on the cut in the number of public spending targets from the Treasury.

Carry on regardfully

OK, I've tried to avoid doing this for as long as possible, but I can no longer refrain. I suspect this will be the first of many entries documenting blatant abuses of the English language in the mainstream media. So let me start here....

First of all, irregardless is not a word. The term is a literal absurdity. It's illogical. Note that illogical is the antonym of logical (the antonym of antonym is synonym). Irregardless, in its common, erroneous usage, is taken to mean the same as regardless, making it a) a redundant term, and b) doubly ridiculous, since irregardless should mean the opposite of regardless. The opposite of regardless is regardful. If you're really set on using an ir- word, you can use irrespective, which is a synonym for regardless.