Not this bloody time

W e have held it in for a very long time but today was the last straw.

For seeming ages journalists have been describing people who defend themselves against legal allegations, or who mount arguments against legal charges, as “defending the charges”. This form of words actually means that they are supporting the charges, arguing for the charges, defending the charges from attack.

It makes as much sense as saying that someone who protects themselves while being mugged is “defending the mugging”.

Now, you know…we’ve put up with it. We’ve sucked it up. We know English is a “living language” and that the education leaders in Australia succumbed to whacky theories and utterly abdicated their responsibility in the 80s, which has led to spiralling, terminal dumbing down and trashing of the language, and that today’s young reporters are, unavoidably, products of an awful and ignorant 80s education and we all just have to learn to live with it. We know that. We can pretend to be okay with that.

We almost didn’t blow our coffee to the other side of the room when we heard even Jennifer Byrne on First Tuesday Book Club talk about someone being “Nobelled” a few of months ago. That’s even worse than an athlete “medalling”. [What is wrong with “winning a medal”, except for how “cool” it makes a sports jock feel to say “medalling”?] We can pretend we didn’t hear that ugliness for whole minutes at a time.

BUT WE BLOODY WON’T TAKE THIS ONE LYING DOWN!!!!

Some bloody policeman told journalists today, after a pair of rottweilers had attacked a woman in the street, that “we’ve infringed the owner”. But you can’t “infringe a person”; you can only infringe their rights. You can infringe a law, say, or a moral standard. We think he meant that the owner had committed an infringement of the law and that he had therefore been served with an Infringement Notice.

Well, we’ll bloody tell you what you’ve bloody infringed, you knucklehead! You’ve bloody infringed our bloody right to hear people in responsible positions use the bloody language correctly, and with some respect, you ignorant bloody bonehead!

Aaaah…..That’s better…..