The real problem with language is propaganda
Unlike David Shariatmadari, I think there is a problem with language (Lingua fracas!! 23 August). But it has nothing to do with grammar. It has to do with propaganda. I was heartened to see the picture of George Orwell, but dismayed that what he had to say about English was discounted.
The problem is especially easy to see in Australia. Here, journalists blithely talk about border protection, without the inverted commas, when it is protection against people who are not a threat, such as refugees. Processing centres are actually concentration camps; detention is really imprisonment and torture. Similarly, the re-invasion of the Northern Territory in 2004 was called The Intervention, until Labor got in in 2007 and, out-Orwelling Orwell, renamed it Stronger Futures.
All the above terms are used unselfconsciously in the mainstream media, and even, disastrously, by activist groups. Being sucked in by power: that is the real problem.
Meanwhile we have 900 people held as political hostages by Australia: people fleeing persecution in their homelands. Let’s call it a hostage crisis, and act accordingly.
Stephen Langford
Paddington, NSW, Australia
• It’s somehow delightfully ironic that in the middle of your piece dealing with that correct/incorrect English there appears one of the most ubiqitious of current errors, the use of “hopefully” as a stand-alone adverb. Alas, at age 74 I have given up trying to correct the English speakers of the world regarding this particular evidence of the breakdown of civilisation.
Tony Simpson
Wellington, New Zealand
Train experience left a great deal to be desired
Great stuff by Amy Walker on the Caledonian Sleeper (16 August). My wife and I travelled on the train from London (Euston) to Fort William in late April 2018, returning from Inverness back to London (Euston) a week later. For us the experience was certainly not renowned. As a board member of our Railway & Locomotive Society I was keenly looking forward to travelling on this train.
We in New Zealand have had experience with Serco: they lost a contract to manage a private prison here due to too many failings and shortfalls. We should have been warned.
The staff on board were great but the management was terrible. They failed to honoured our dinner reservation on the southbound trip, and left us standing for two hours waiting for a table.
After failing to secure an apology from Serco, we involved a Scottish minister and received the princely sum of £20.
The Scottish government should terminate the contract. We did that with the prison: now the inmates can sleep easy without Serco’s management causing all sorts of nightmares.
David Cuthbert
Wellington, New Zealand
Ducky Derby should not have been publicised
I was surprised to see your implicit endorsement of the plastic-polluting Ducky Derby in the form of your photograph in the issue of 16 August (Fast quack). Is anyone going to scoop these everlasting objects out of the water? And yet the same issue covered the climate crisis as it is affecting Greenland, the impending extinction of the turtle dove and “dwindling water supplies around the world”. Do you have a conscience?
Kathryn Walls
Wellington, New Zealand
Vladimir Putin wants to be one of the wolves
So Vladimir Putin and his buddies in the Night Wolves motorcycle club ride without crash helmets (Born to be Vlad, 16 August). Presumably wearing one would earn him the contempt of his fellow wolves, and fatally damage his tough guy image. And by wearing a helmet he would become anonymous, which would be equally unacceptable.
Ken Burns
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
Please try to avoid discriminatory language
I don’t mind the type of takedown piece you included in the 10 May edition – and I enjoyed this one directed against western culture’s curmudgeon-in-waiting, Bret Easton Ellis.
But please refrain from using what is commonly considered ableist discriminatory language, including the word spastic, even in quotations.
Jesse Gutman
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
