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| Credit: PA/ITV News |
In the 1980s, a celebrity or
politician had reached the height of fame if they were characterised as a
puppet in the sketch show ‘Spitting Image’.
Famously, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and then Prime Minister, John
Major, was given grey flesh-tones to reflect how dull and boring he was.
Oh, how I long for those days.
The principle of the programme was to satirise the rich, the
famous and our rulers. In today’s era of
politics, puppets are no longer required, we have a live-action version.
I can envisage our current Prime Minister, Boris Johnson,
wearing lie-detector underpants that administer an electric shock each time he tells
a porky; it would serve to explain his ruffled hairline, however, I doubt there
would be a battery pack powerful enough to last the day.
Whilst Boris may appear to be the standout
politician for satirising, one must not overlook the exploits of our Leader of
the House of Commons and Lord President of the Council, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Esq.,
M.P.
Rees-Mogg has been busy creating material for the
satirist. Barely 24 hours had elapsed
before he issued his style guide to the civil service, packed with grammarian
rules and word exclusions. In an article
written by Paul Brand, ITV’s Political Correspondent, it is stated that
Jacob Rees-Mogg issued the following rules:
- Organisations are SINGULAR
- All non-titled males – Esq.
- There is no . after Miss or Ms
- M.P.s – no need to write M.P. after their name in body of text
- Male M.P.s (non-privy councillors) – in the address they should have Esq., before M.P. (e.g. Tobias Ellwood, Esq., M.P.)
- Double space after fullstops
- No comma after ‘and’
- CHECK your work
- Use imperial measurements
He also published a list of banned words and phrases that
include:
- Very
- Due to
- Ongoing
- Hopefully
- Unacceptable
- Equal
- Too many ‘I’s
- Yourself
- Lot
- Got
- Speculate
- ‘invest’ (in schools etc)
- No longer fit for purpose
- I am pleased to learn
- Meet with
- Ascertain
- Disappointment
- I note / understand your concerns
That prompted me to send a tweet to the Chief in Charge of
Pomposity which read:
“Dear @Jacob_Rees_Mogg
Due to managing a lot of ongoing disappointment, I got
your style guide late. I am pleased to learn about the very unacceptable use of
commas after and, and I wanted to ascertain what else is no longer fit for
purpose.
I note your concerns about the use of the archaic metric
system, and would like to meet with yourself so that, hopefully, I understand
your concerns. Also, I want to invest, but before I do, I think you should give
equal thought to currency. Are the Government going to reintroduce shillings? I
don’t want to speculate without knowing.”
I have yet to receive a response.
Whilst it might seem odd that such rules have a place in
modern-day Britain, it should be remembered that Rees-Mogg has recently
published a book entitled ‘The Victorians: Twelve Titans who Forged Britain’, which speaks to their exploits but which led A. N. Wilson in The Times to state “the
author is worse than a twit” and called the book “morally repellent”. Whilst
Dominic Sandbrook, in his book review, adopted the epithets “bad, boring and
mind‑bogglingly
banal”. One cannot help but think that
the rules he has issued are just a cynical marketing ploy to promote his book.
Before blindly adopting Rees-Mogg’s cretinous edicts, it is
worth noting that some of our grammar rules were set arbitrarily. John Dryden, a 17th century poet,
literary critic, translator and playwright is believed to be the first person
to suggest that English sentences should not end in prepositions. He did this on the basis that Latin sentences
cannot end in prepositions, ignoring the common use of the English language. Splitting an infinitive was adopted for
similarly mindless reasons in the early 19th century, because in Latin
the infinitive form is one word and impossible to split, although some would
argue that’s not abso-fucking-lutely true.
Dryden is long since dead, but were he alive today, I
suspect he’d have a seat in Cabinet next to Rees-Mogg as Secretary of State for
Pedantry, drawing attention to such heinous crimes as Dominic Raab’s improper
use of the split infinitive in, “Let us turn the country to complete shit.” or
Priti Patel’s preposition ending statement, “An immigrant? Kill it, I don’t even know what you let it in
for.”[1]
Despite having set the rules, it would seem that Jacob
Rees-Mogg is having a little difficulty following them. ITV News found a transcript of one of his
speeches that used “very” twice, “equal” once, “lot” once and “I” seven times. According to ITV, he was even more self-centred
in a speech on Brexit on 28 March 2018 when he used “I” 17 times, chucked in “very”
on four occasions, used “lot” once and, outrageously, included the word “yourself”. If the reviews of his book are anything to go
by, I have a huge amount of sympathy for the poor schlub at ITV that had to pour
over the transcripts.
It may be possible that we are close to tumbling out of
Europe with a ‘no-deal’ Brexit because of these new rules and not because Boris
would have us believe that a no-deal Brexit is the same as an agreed Brexit,
just without the fries and a drink. No,
according to sources close to the negotiation (of which there are none), the
real reason that we are likely to leave the European Union on 31 October without a deal, is because Jacob Rees-Mogg is not happy with the way the
current deal is punctuated. It seems we
have reached an impasse, and that we are unlikely to arrive at an agreement
with the Europeans any time soon. As a
bloc, the EU27 is totally intransigent on the use of the Oxford comma.
Twitter: @GOMinTraining
Copyright © Craig Brown, 2019
1 August 2019
Copyright © Craig Brown, 2019
1 August 2019
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