Tuesday 10 November 2009

Gaunt gives Brown an English lesson

The Sun's Littlejohn-wannabe Jon Gaunt has been churning out a daily blog on the paper's website. His weekly column in the printed paper was dropped by new editor Dominic Mohan so we get a dose of his ignorant, 'I ain't no racist but...'- type views online instead.

His Monday blog attacks Gordon Brown over the letter to a dead soldier's mother. At time of writing, it is noticeable that the story is well down the Sun's homepage. The Guardian are reporting the Sun's political editor was unsure about the tone of the coverage and the comments left on the story by readers are more sympathetic to the Prime Minister than the Sun probably hoped.

Gaunt begins his outburst by calling him 'Brown Pants Brown', a woeful attempt to ape the woeful nicknames Littlejohn gives people. He refers to Brown as 'unelected' twice, which follows on from his Friday blog when he called him, errr, 'unelected'. Littlejohn also uses repetition instead of original thought and frequently calls Brown 'unelected'. And Littlejohn's column today also included an attack on the Prime Minister...

Brown is well known for suffering serious problems with his eyesight and having poor handwriting as a result. Gaunt says it was insult to all British troops that he was:

scribbling a note that even a five year old could have bettered.

Of course, Gaunt's blog is the absolute pinnacle of brilliantly written, grammatically correct English. Oh, no it isn't:

If they had spent as much time working out how we were going to finish this and the Iraq war as they did spicing up the dodgy weapons of mass destruction dossier perhaps less lads would be coming home in body bags.

'Less lads'?

Then there's this paragraph, about The X Factor:


Spot the missing apostrophe, the missing 'd', the missing capital 'T' and an erroneous capital 'T'. Like the rest of the blog, a few commas would help too.

However, hopefully that is a firm promise to go underground if 'Jedward' release a single. Because they surely will and then we could be spared Gaunt's tedious blogs and radio shows.

Oh, and his numerous errors, such as:
and:
and:
Would a five year old be able to better Gaunt's use of capital letters? Let's not forget, Gaunt is meant to be a journalist. He's meant to be able to write.

He also berates Brown for his spelling, saying he couldn't even:

be bothered to check the spelling of the lad's name.

Of course, Gaunt thoroughly proof-reads everything and would never, ever get any spelling wrong when it relates to dead soldiers. Would he?


'Wootten Basset'? Doesn't he mean Wootton Bassett? And surely it should be 'in' not 'at' Wootton Bassett.

Towards the end of his rant, amid a series of insults ('disrespectful buffoon', 'unelected, deluded fool') he adds that Brown:

has always exhibited disdain for our troops as emphasised by the 46 seconds he spent talking about them during his party conference speech.

He's criticising Brown for not talking about Afghanistan enough. Clearly Gaunt would never do such a thing. For example, in the 11 days since his blog began he has written about Afghanistan three times, and - being charitable - on two other occasions he's talked about poppies.

But that would be a lot less than the eight times he has written about something he clearly regards as more important: The X Factor.

Indeed, the Monday blog post has his views about Brown and Afghanistan sandwiched between two pieces about the tedious 'talent' show.

The Sun broke this story and has run with it - with help from their friends at Sky - so it was inevitable that their 'star' columnists would have their say.

But isn't it ironic that Gaunt accuses Brown of bad writing and spelling errors, while his own blog is so appallingly written?

10 comments:

  1. Now *I'm* insulted. The Fucking Word Paperclip could have generated a better lesson in style and accuracy.

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  2. 'scribbling a note than even a five year old could have bettered'

    A testament to our hard-working teachers and disciplined, motivated schoolchildren, then.

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  3. Also:
    It's a wind up 'from' Simon.
    The Jam 'used' to sing their song.
    That song, 'Going Underground', should probably be capitalised, and either put in quote marks or italicised.

    Spot on with the absentee commas too. In fact, spot on with the blog in general. It makes me angry, but I think it's an important service to us all. I can imagine it takes up quite a bit of time, but it's worth it. Keep up the good work.

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  4. There's always a real problem in criticising someone else's spelling and grammar because there will ALWAYS be a spelling error in your writing. Also, we may not have voted for Gordon Brown, but (in this country) we vote for parties not for certain leaders. We voted for Labour so we also technically voted for Brown.

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  5. Anything and anyone that exposes Gaunt for the gossip mongering buffoon he is so clearly is good work.

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  6. "But that would be a lot less than the eight times..."

    Less?

    *runs*

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  7. I love the irony of 'The Sun' calling for more resources for the troops whilst the company that owns 'The Sun' pays virtually no taxes at all in this country.

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  8. i love the fact that the sun positions itself as a voice of the working classes and the voice of the people. if sun readers really believe that a billionaire australian megalomaniac has their concerns at heart then we really do live in a mess of a media world.

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  9. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  10. There's a great bit in their article today about this couple who won the EuroMillions;

    "As the pair began planning their new lives, experts revealed their winnings would accrue £234,226 a month in a building society savings account bearing six per cent interest."

    Presumably by "experts", they mean anyone who is capable of doing basic maths?

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