Mea Culpa: Do we want to town hall that?

Questions of style and usage in last week’s Independent, presented by John Rentoul

Tribute banned: Spinal Tap say farewell to yet another drummer (Getty)

Traditionally, at this time of year, we get our Spotify most-listened-to lists, a lot of quizzes, and an event in Moscow at which Vladimir Putin talks for hours. This last has been in abeyance but this year it was back. We called it Putin’s “annual marathon press conference and town hall”.

Martin Smith wrote to question our use of “town hall” to mean an all-company or similar meeting. I don’t think it was the right phrase even in US English, because it was a meeting supposedly open to everyone in the country, not just the “town”. “Annual marathon press conference” on its own would have been fine.

Presiding over the praesidium: On the subject of Russian presidents, in the “On This Day” feature on Tuesday, we described Leonid Brezhnev, who was born on that day, as “Soviet president”. He was, as Mick O’Hare reminded us, general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and chair of the Praesidium of the Supreme Soviet, but never president.