Mea Culpa: a parent, displayed as a warning to others

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

Aerial view of the normally busy approach to Melbourne (Getty)

This was in a Washington Post report on Australian lockdowns which we republished, but it is a useful warning to us all, like heads on pikes displayed after medieval rebellions: “As she loads groceries and nappies into her car, Saphire Hall stops to talk to a neighbour. The mother of four has already been fined A$1,000 (£535) for giving her cousin a lift during the outbreak.”

Apart from its being unclear whether it is Hall or the neighbour who has four children, it is not our style to define people by the size of their family. Although it would be a neat trick if, just for a day, we referred to all men at second mention as “the father of two” or whatever.

Tearing up the roads: In one of our reports of the London marathon, we said: “Junior doctor Phil Sesemann swapped his scrubs for spikes and finished in a remarkable seventh place.” As Roger Thetford wrote to point out, some people do run the marathon in notably unsuitable gear – but it is unlikely that anyone tried it in spikes, which are designed for running on grass, and even less likely that they would finish in the top 10.

Listing ships: The opening sentence of an article about Boris Johnson’s attempt to “level up” the country referred to “the government’s flagship agenda”. It made me nostalgic for boats made of folded paper, taken from the discarded documents of local council meetings, as I imagined a convoy of them, with the one in front carrying a little flag on a cocktail stick.

Boss level: While on the subject of levelling up, I might as well complain about the prime minister taking a cliche that has been on the Banned List since it was first drawn up and making it his main slogan. The idea that the Conservatives want to “level up”, while Labour want to “level down”, is as old as the universal franchise. So I was unreasonably pleased to discover that in focus groups carried out during the Conservative conference the voters hadn’t heard of levelling up – one person thought it might be a reference to a computer game.

Over-borrowed: In an article about the election of Carla Denyer and Adrian Ramsay as the co-leaders of the Green Party of England and Wales, we said: “Many Greens will have noticed that there are now two Green ministers serving in the SNP government in Scotland, able to leverage their modest parliamentary strength.” Leverage is bad enough as a noun, but as a verb seems incongruous. “Maximise” or “magnify” might be better.

Zombie news: We used the phrase “lived experience” a few times last week, just in case anyone thought we were writing about what only the dead know.