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| Polly Toynbee, Katy Balls & Martin Daubney |
Much-loved financial pundit David Buik sent out a tweet this morning:
WOW! - What a line-up for Marr on Sunday! - Polly Toynbee, Mayor Sadiq Khan and Jo Swinson. It's time to wash my hair again - what little left there is! The Test follows at 11.00am - so exciting!
I could be wrong but I don't think he was making a point about BBC bias there, merely expressing his wish not to watch any of those three people.
His followers, however, took him as saying that this was the complete line-up and, thus, a biased parade of Remainers and filled up the thread below.
Enter Jason Keen, a producer The Andrew Marr Show, pursued by a approving retweet from his boss-but-one Rob Burley, lunging at what he must have perceived to be a low-hanging fruit, saying:
Funny how you decided not to mention Priti Patel and Martin Daunbey [sic] are also on #marr David. Did you miss them, or decide that would rather undermine your point?
Ah, but was it his point? Did he have a point, other than to say he'd rather not watch Polly, Sadiq and Jo?
Hope Mr. Buik enjoys the cricket!
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I have to say that I watched all three of them, plus Priti and Martin - and Katy Balls of The Spectator. Two things in particular stood out: Firstly, because of its striking simile, this question to Jo Swinson:
So if I'm one of the seventeen-and-a-half million people who voted to leave the EU in good faith, told by the British political establishment that they would respect my vote, you simply cancel it out, you treat the entire Brexit episode like some elderly bullock that you're going to take into a field and shoot?
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| A rose by any other name would smell as sweet |
And secondly, this strange exchange with Sadiq Khan:
Andrew Marr: Now, the Labour Party is still struggling with the intracacies of its Brexit proposal. In that debate, Sadiq Khan, the London Mayor, is an important player. But with terrible violence on the streets of London, he has a lot more on his plate than mere high politics. He's with me now. I called you Sar-dick Khan. I have been calling you Sad-eek Khan for years, but I'm wrong.Sadiq Khan: Well, it's not the most important thing, but yeah, my name is Sar-dick. It comes from the Arabic alphabet. I really do not mind if it's Sad-eek or Sar-dick. Yeah, but it is Sar-dick,Andrew Marr: We'll stick with the right one.Sadiq Khan: That will be nice. My mum would be grateful.
Who knew that pretty much everyone has been mispronouncing his name for years? Maybe he should have said. I'm sure a lot of people will be all too happy to think of him as 'Sar-dick' rather than 'Sad-eek'!
If Saddo wants the real Arabic pronunciation I suspect it will involve a bit of expectoration on the q.
ReplyDeletePeople have a right to ask you to pronounce their name correctly but we all know in this case it's purely a manifestation of the sickly gelding's PC ideology. People don't usually attempt Irish or Welsh pronunciation of Irish or Welsh names do they? They can't even be bothered to pronounce correctly the names of Americans called Bernard (stress should be on the second syllable) or Anthony (pronounce the th sound). They're Americans, so they don't count.
The USA's national aeronautics and space administration calls itself 'NASA' but British news media work on the principle that if an abbreviation can be pronounced as a word then it should be written as a word, i.e. 'Nasa'.
ReplyDeletePersonally I don't think it makes reading any easier and surely it breaks the PC rule that people get to decide how other people describe them?