venta

Most people in my office have their news site of preference open in the background during the day; most people sporadically comment on the headlines.

This morning has mostly been punctuated by people saying "Oh. I didn't know popes could resign."

I do try not to harp on about grammar. I really do. A lot of the time someone misses out an apostrophe and hey, it's wrong, but I knew what they meant. I know my punctuation isn't always perfect either.

But, dear BBC, you are a reputable journalistic institution. And that missing hyphen completely changed the meaning of the headline.

Child killer Robert Black found guilty of murdering Jennifer Cardy tells me that Robert Black, who is under 18, is guilty of murdering Jennifer Cardy.

What you meant was Child-killer Robert Black found guilty of murdering Jennifer Cardy, ie Robert Black, a convicted killer of children, is guilty of murdering Jennifer Cardy.

Flippin' sort it out.

I do take it as read that, due to the law of St Sod, I will have misplaced at least one apostrophe in this post.

Once - long, long ago - a major news event would occur and there'd be the usual comment of "... and I wonder how long it'll be before we start hearing the jokes about it?"

Now, thanks to twitter, you can be sick of the jokes before you've ever really digested the news.

It's less than 45 minutes since Liam Fox jumped, and I'm already thinking that if I hear one more comment about him having dropped his resignation letter in a bin in St James' Park I'll have to murder someone.

So, as of this weekend, Britain's best-selling Sunday newspaper[*] will cease publication.

( Ding, dong, the witch is dead, everybody party! )

[*] Yeah, surprised me too.

Funniest thing on the news today: M&S anti-cellulite knicker claims 'misleading'

...contains the wonderful paragraph:

"The £29.50 Anti-Cellulite Firm Control Waist and Thigh Clincher pants contain vitamin E, aloe vera and caffeine."

Caffeinated pants?

I appreciate that cellulite blights some people's lives but really... who thought caffeinated pants would help?

This morning, on the Today programme, I heard various people talking about the NATO troops' actions in Afghanistan. Someone, I forget who, commented that the fighting in the South was "at close quarters, bayonets fitted".

Which staggered me. I maybe haven't been paying as much attention as I should to the fighting in Afghanistan, but the idea that a 21st century soldier is still using a bayonet (I assume it wasn't just a figure of speech ?) had never occurred to me.

Mind you, I also heard a former US Ambassador to NATO describe certain member countries' refusals to commit troops to the most dangerous areas as "pesky". Which was nearly as incredible.