'About a month ago, I blogged about a speech by the leader of the Labour Party in which Ed Miliband used quite a lot of verbless sentences (HERE).
Today, I'm grateful to Stefan Stern for alerting me via Twitter (@stefanstern) to an article by David Cameron in today's Daily Telegraph, presumably written as part of the coalition's 'relaunch' after Tory and LibDem losses in the recent local elections.
For Mr Stern, it (rightly) reminded him of the 'content-free' political speech by the late Peter Sellers - which you can enjoy in full HERE.
Miliband was making a speech, but Cameron was writing an article
In the case of Ed Miliband's speech, one of the comments on my blog pointed out that had the full stops been commas, the verbless sentences would no longer have been verbless and could have served as useful stage directions to help the speaker to deliver his messages in nice short chunks.
I can see (but don't agree) that some speechwriters might want to make a case for verbless sentences when writing for clients speaking in our sound bite hungry world.
But I cannot see any justification (or excuse) whatsoever for leaving out verbs when writing an article that is explicitly intended to be read by readers (of a supposedly 'quality' newspaper), as in the following two paragraphs, purportedly penned by the Prime Minister - which, apart from the first sentences, degenerate into verbless lists:
'This is painstaking work.
'Seeing through the reductions to government spending.
'Cutting regulation and business tax to help the private sector.
'Helping start-up firms, investing in apprenticeships and boosting trade to help rebalance our economy in favour of enterprise, manufacturing, technology and exports.
'And repairing our wrecked financial system so that we can have confidence in our banks and they can lend properly again.'
...
'I’m proud of the battles we’ve fought in the first two years of this Government.
'Battles that we won in education, so that schools toughen up on exams, insist on discipline, and have the freedom to do what teachers and parents want.
'Battles that we won against the teeth of Labour opposition on immigration control and welfare reform, too.'
If this is the kind of English you end up writing after being educated at Eton, I'd be asking them for my money back if any of my sons wrote like this (which, I'm glad to say, they don't).
Or, if it were a ghost-writer who actually wrote this stuff for Cameron, s/he should be sacked forthwith and sent off for intensive private tuition with Mr Gove.
I'd also quite like to know who pays for such illiterate scribes to work in Downing Street - tax-payers or the Conservative Party?
Sarkozy & Hollande both call for 'respect' for each other
Although I had to rely on translations of the concession and victory speeches by outgoing President Sarkozy and President-elect Hollande, both struck me as having made pretty respectable jobs of them.
And 'respect' was definitely le mot du jour, with loser and winner both calling for it to be conferred on the other.
Nor does it seem likely that either of them had in mind the contrived acronym on which the British political party of the said name is supposed to be based - Respect, Equality, Socialism, Peace, Environmentalism, Community and Trade Unionism - which I don't think quite works as an acronym in French...
And 'respect' was definitely le mot du jour, with loser and winner both calling for it to be conferred on the other.
Nor does it seem likely that either of them had in mind the contrived acronym on which the British political party of the said name is supposed to be based - Respect, Equality, Socialism, Peace, Environmentalism, Community and Trade Unionism - which I don't think quite works as an acronym in French...
Putin, Pomp & Circumcision
We Brits sometimes boast that we're rather good at organising formal state occasions. On this evidence, the Russians don't do a bad job at it either.
I was intrigued to see that this particular clip on YouTube (HERE) cuts just as he gets his speech out of his pocket.
And was it just a coincidence that the timing of this historic event coincided with the election of a new President of the French Republic?
I look forward to looking more closely at his speech - but I haven't forgotten (and hope others won't forget) the putrid prose that President Putin has been known to peddle in the past...
Losing words from Clegg, Cameron and Livingstone
Contrary to what some commentators have been trying to make out, there's nothing unusual about government parties suffering heavy losses in mid-term local elections.
Nor is there anything unusual about leaders of defeated parties saying something encouraging to their supporters, especially those who've just lost their seats - and Messrs Clegg and Cameron were quick off the mark (in that order) with fairly brief interviews that did the job yesterday morning:
But while council seats had been falling to Labour up and down the land, the voters of London rejected Labour veteran Ken Livingstone in favour of re-electing Boris Johnson for a second term as their Tory mayor.
As the votes were being counted, Ken must have been hard at work preparing his five and a half minute losing speech. If this was to be his last election, he was jolly well going to make the most of it by letting Londoners know what they'd all be missing, what further disasters Boris had in store for them and just how badly they'd all been let down by the media.
Because yes, folks, maestro of the media though Ken may have been for the last 30 years, it was the media that did for him in the end - or was it?
Nor is there anything unusual about leaders of defeated parties saying something encouraging to their supporters, especially those who've just lost their seats - and Messrs Clegg and Cameron were quick off the mark (in that order) with fairly brief interviews that did the job yesterday morning:
But while council seats had been falling to Labour up and down the land, the voters of London rejected Labour veteran Ken Livingstone in favour of re-electing Boris Johnson for a second term as their Tory mayor.
As the votes were being counted, Ken must have been hard at work preparing his five and a half minute losing speech. If this was to be his last election, he was jolly well going to make the most of it by letting Londoners know what they'd all be missing, what further disasters Boris had in store for them and just how badly they'd all been let down by the media.
Because yes, folks, maestro of the media though Ken may have been for the last 30 years, it was the media that did for him in the end - or was it?
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