This may be something or it may be nothing, but I spotted a missing word in a BBC News report about an Australian politician who got herself into a spot of bother after advising people not to open the door to anyone with an Irish accent, prompting accusations of racism against her. The missing word in question identified the political party she represents. Every other British news report I saw about her 'poor choice of words' mentioned the missing word in question ('Labor'), yet the BBC reporter who filed this piece merely called her 'an Australian lawmaker' and 'a minister in Victoria's state legislature'. Bias? Not bias?
Whereas the theocrats in Iran are always referred to as Conservatives!
ReplyDeleteYeah...that one REALLY gets me! lol And also the fact that the theocrats who don't make a big song and dance about being theocrats but are still theocrats nonetheless since they adhere to Khomeini's rigged system are called "Moderates" - who knew it was "moderate" to want to murder gays, banish Jews from your country, approve of chanting "Death to America" at least once a week, wipe Israel off the map, back polygamy, approve of child marriage at age 9 and generally try to bring in Sharia law as much as possible.
DeleteBesides that, who writes "lawmaker" rather than government minister or politician? That is an odd thing in itself. Of course it might be for a reason if someone was thinking about how to obscure the fact that it was a politician and a Labor politician at that.
ReplyDeleteNotice that the explanation and poor excuse for an apology makes it worse; scammers were from the UK and Ireland, therefore single out Irish and don't mention British. Hm. Is that a non sequitur or what?
Labor/labour. Pedantic Spelling Facist observation (caution - I might have been influenced by the Russian secret service in duplicating this from Wikipedia):
ReplyDelete"The ALP adopted the formal name "Australian Labour Party" in 1908, but changed the spelling to "Labor" in 1912. While it is standard practice in Australian English both today and at the time to spell the word "labour" with a "u", the party was influenced by the United States labor movement, and a prominent figure in the early history of the party, the American-born King O'Malley, was successful in having the spelling "modernised". "