Monday 2 January 2012

sloppy over Feltham

"it should be remembered that Feltham and Heston was a Tory seat in both 1983 and 1997", says former Labour councillor John Howarth (prop. Public Impact Ltd, remember "Your Better Off With Labour"?) writing on his blog about the by-election in that constituency last month, caused by the death of its Labour MP Alan Keen.  Except that it wasn't.  Alan Keen took the seat from the Tories in 1992.  Howarth couldn't bring himself to mention the name of Alan Keen, because Howarth's precious boy Martin Salter wanted to be the candidate there in 1992, and despite some seriously dirty tricks, in which Mr Howarth was also very much involved, failed in that ambition.  So not only is Mr Howarth engaging in cheap spite, he is too lazy to check his facts.  Quite in character.  I wouldn't even post about him if his blog accepted comments, but he is in the Reading Labour mode of broadcast, not receive.  You can read the shite for yourself here. He is also, I notice, serialising a piece of fiction.  I wonder where he got that idea?

He ends the post by patronising the victorious Labour candidate in Feltham and Heston (well, she is only a girl, and not even entirely white it seems):

Finally, It’s worth congratulating Labour’s Seema Malhotra, an obviously bright woman who could go far.


and finishes with an asterisk (although there is no asterisk earlier in the text) and a weak attempt to justify his own laziness:

* Apologies to readers for a few more typos than normal in my first draft - I’m putting it down to using an iPad touch screen thing with a will of its own.

No.  Typos are in a text because the person responsible for that text failed to check for them and get rid of them.  Anyone can do that.  It's got nothing to do with iPads.  I've been using one of those since 2010 and haven't produced any more typos than I did before.  Lazy arse.  Unprofessional.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Serialising a piece of fiction forsooth?

Clearly a contemporary version of Snow White with Martin Salter thinly disguised as the wicked queen.

Anonymous said...

Do you notice two rather silly diary pieces in the Guardian about Rob Wilson and his comments about Thatcher? Also, curiously mentioned in Howarth's blog? Somebody's warming up for the next election. Curious that he is targetting Reading East though.

Anonymous said...

Tried to read it but found it very difficult.
It's not the typos as such, it just doesn't seem to flow.
L9