Mea Culpa: the Tories are down on the farm, clutching at straw

Errors and stylistic glitches in last week’s Independent straightened out by John Rentoul

‘Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right, here I am, stuck in the amidfield with you...’ (Getty)

The Conservatives are in such trouble that they are trying to persuade farmers to vote for them. This week we reported Rishi Sunak’s visit to a farm, where he tried to feed some sheep that ran away: “Sunak was openly mocked by his rivals amid images of him speaking on hay bales.” We city folk were put right by Nigel Fox, who said that the bales in our front-page photo looked like straw rather than hay. “One is bedding, the other food for the winter.” I am sure we knew that really.

Stuck in the middle: Then there is that “amid”, a word we have used a lot recently. What does “amid images” even mean? Here it means “as we publish photos of him”. We could have said “as he spoke on hay bales and tried unsuccessfully to feed sheep”.

One of our most muddled uses of “amid” was in a headline after England’s game against Denmark on Thursday: “England caught between midfield ideals amid search for attacking force.” That is too many “mids”. We have the England team stuck in the middle, between one ideal and another, both relating to the “mid” field, and all happening “amid” a search. What I think we meant was that Gareth Southgate cannot seem to decide on a midfield strategy that would give his team the chance to attack. If so, we could have said that.