The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
Class war ruler ducks bullet
Full confidence. Now there’s a short but telling phrase to conjure with. No sooner does Westminster Education Secretary Gavin Williamson finally say that he has “full confidence” in exam regulator Ofqual than the chief executive resigns.
She’s swiftly followed by the head civil servant at the Department of Education, taking the flak for overseeing the “flawed algorithm” that is being blamed for the muck-up of results for thousands of hapless school pupils.
Having previously refused to back the hapless Sally Collier, Mr Williamson came out with his backslapping message of support literally the day before she fell on her sword.
He was obviously too busy waiting for the right bus to come along under which to throw her to notice that the essence of comedy is timing. Not only the algorithm was flawed, it seems. Or mutant, as the PM might have it. No ministers were harmed in the making of this mess, you notice.
A week, of course, is a long time in politics and this embarrassment will probably be forgotten in much less than that, especially when the next cock-up comes along. It’s just the latest fankle in this ongoing saga of incompetence and “a big boy/girl did it and ran away” at the centre of public life as we currently know it. Full confidence? These people are, obviously, absolutely bung full of confidence but, it would seem, have very little else to offer in tangible terms of capability, loyalty, application, experience and the sheer hard graft of getting a job done at all, let alone done well. Not so much a career as careering from one crisis to the next, taking perfectly innocent others down with them.
So, while in no way wishing to underestimate or downgrade (how apt that might be) the distress, upset and future education and career disruption caused by the exam results debacle, will it really matter that much or make a real difference in the long run? To students hoping to make the most of their talents and abilities and a reasonable living, without destroying their sanity or serenity, maybe. Such modest ambitions are what most of us harbour, after all, contemptible though they may seem to those with more inflated ideas of their own worth and importance. But certainly not if you want eventually to find yourself in what used to be trumpeted as a “top job”.
Many of the current crop of national leaders and public figureheads had every educational advantage known to humanity. But somehow, they’re still not only largely completely unqualified for the jobs they have been given but are also largely completely incapable of doing them when actually at the coal face, to use an old-school, working-class idiom.
A few fudged grades here and there and a year wasted aren’t going to make much difference if that is the way forward to the alleged “top”. The trick is, it would seem, to get yourself not only promoted beyond your capabilities but promoted without any relevant capabilities at all.
“Not so much a career as careering from one crisis to the next, taking perfectly innocent others down with them
Playing around with words
Liking a bit of wordsmithery, I was interested to come across a flurry of argument recently amongst otherwise sane and sensible people debating the use – nay, the very right to existence – of the word “irregardless”. It’s said to be 200 years old and was first included in an official dictionary in 1934. But more people are now using it although, as Eric Morecambe once nearly said, not necessarily in the right way.
“Ir”, as I understand it, is a prefix usually used to indicate a negative but this mixter-maxter has apparently come about as a combination of “regardless” and “irrespective”. What people actually mean, not so apparently, when they say it is good, old-fashioned “regardless” but with a bit of extra prefix-y oomph. It means regardless but supposedly more so. Or less so, depending on the point you’re trying to make. It’s the double negative argument, in the face of which I can only fall back, heavily, on the assistance of the great Scottish double positive. Aye, right!
It’s down, in many cases, to people feeling that bunging an extra syllable somewhere adds emphasis or because they think using a longer word makes them look or sound clever. Trust me, mate. It will take more than that. A lot ir-more.
Of course, we are all surrounded by lots of words that don’t really mean much. Such as practically anything that comes out of a politician’s mouth.
For example, say you’re blameless. Does being ir-blameless make you more or less so?
Does calling someone irresponsible now mean they’re actually responsible? Or only in Boris Johnson’s Cabinet? Maybe it’s a bit like flammable and inflammable, both of which are in the dictionary and credited with being correct usage.
“Irregardless” is in the dictionary as well, alongside the caveat that it is “non-standard usage”.
Or as we used to say in plain English, wrong. But, as someone with more pithy word skills than I put it: “Acknowledging existence and endorsing worth are not the same thing.”
Ir-obviously, I would say. With feeling. And emphasis.