Label unfair

MINISTER Rockcliff’s disparaging remark regarding “the Greens and green groups damaging your industry” begs one to ask who are these new green groups as opposed to the Greens per se? Could they be the many concerned mums and dads, and grandparents — ordinary people who are concerned he is ruthlessly pushing jobs with no apparent vision or regard for our East Coast waters and the potential for investment and jobs resulting from what should remain Tassie’s unique clean and green image.

Grammar crusade

AS a crabby retired old teacher my frustration about English language solecisms of prominent people rose to new heights with a recent utterance of Malcolm Turnbull.

He said that the French President invited “Lucy and I” to join him in the President’s jet from Hamburg to Paris. If Lucy had not been with him, would he have said President Macron invited “I” to fly with him?

Please note, also, that the word “of” does not appear in this last sentence and that “have” is in its correct place. Why are people frightened to use the direct object pronouns “me”, “him”, “her” and mistakenly use the subject pronoun “I”, “he”, and “she” when joined by a proper noun as the objects of the verb?

Dear editor, would you please invite your readers to send in further instances of poor grammar and usage. In this way, may the sense of failure of many teachers be alleviated by an improvement in common language.