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Friday, April 29, 2005

QUALITY RISES TO THE TOP

A very amusing letter here from the Herald today (since the herald archive is not freely available there is no point linking).

It appears that the leadership of Glasgow Labour & thus the Council, with responsibility for 2.5 billion of spending is maintaining it's well known & unique
standard.
THE Diary passed comment (April 27) on the leaflet produced for John Robertson, the Labour candidate for Glasgow North-west, in which it is claimed that "Spending on Education has went up 52%". The leaflet refers also to a "national minimim wage" and "record spending on tenant's homes". The election agent responsible for the content of this leaflet is Steven Purcell, the prospective leader of the Labour Group on Glasgow City Council.
Labour may indeed have introduced several new taxes by stealth but, clearly, syntax is not one of them.
Michael Bruce, 50 Millbrix Avenue, Glasgow.

Congratulations Mr Bruce

Comments:
"...it's well known & unique..."

Oops.

Pot. Kettle.
 
Hear hear!

*looks confident that he has used correct syntax....*
 
Looking at this again I am quite willing to say that calling Glasgow's governors "unique" was overstating it (Airdrie & Coatbridge for example seem to be as bad tho'on a smaller scale) but I'm sorry but I don't see the grammatical error hear. Please explain.
 
I am informed that the problem is the use of "it's" as possessive rather than "its":

Looking up my dictionary "it's" as possessive form was standard during the 19th C but not now (presumeably as shortening of "it is" became common). Unfortunately the OED isn't online for free but this from an advertisement for it "Oxford English Dictionary, ...
An excellent British English dictionary known for it's accurate and" means it is either legitimate, if archaic, or the OED sellers made a mistake too. I guess I am just a grammatical conservative.

Fairness to the next leader of Glasgow Council requires that I also point out that some of those promoting the Scots language insist that "spending has went up" is linguistic Scots. I think that is silly but then I think water is wet so what do I know?
 
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