Mea Culpa: bang a saucepan to mock Boris

Questions of language and style in last week’s Independent, invigilated by John Rentoul

Much ado about nothing... Boris Johnson has still to finish his biography of Shakespeare (Getty)

We said that Boris Johnson “has been paid a huge advance to write a biography of Shakespeare and is regularly mocked for still not having submitted it, more than half a decade beyond the deadline”. I think we should have said he is “frequently” mocked, lest we give the impression that the entire nation turns out on its doorstep at 8pm on Fridays to bang a saucepan in derision directed at the former prime minister.

All-seeing sea: In one of our reports of the deaths off Bournemouth beach, we said: “The tides at Bournemouth see two highs and two lows in a 24-hour period.” As Philip Nalpanis commented, this is a curious example of an inanimate phenomenon, the tide, “seeing”.

It wasn’t even as if there was anything particularly interesting to see: most tides all over the world have two highs and two lows a day, because that is what the moon does. There are exceptions, such as Southampton Water, just along the coast from Bournemouth, because the tide comes in from two directions around the Isle of Wight. Which is irrelevant, although no more so than the information about the frequency of high and low tides at Bournemouth in the first place.