There was a Tory MP on the radio this morning warning against a wealth tax. He said we must be careful not to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs. Like that MP I know little about economics but I do like an argument built on insulting metaphors and I have to say I can’t see any bloody eggs – that goose just waddles about and shits on the grass.  Talking about language, the point of learning English grammar and some French and a little Latin is so that you can have a bit of a laugh as you grow older. It’s no use fighting; the apostrophe war was probably lost round about the time that Eats Shoots and Leaves came out. Maybe Lynne Truss actually helped to bring about defeat. Some people appeared to panic and get the whole thing completely wrong, some tried diligently and made ingenious mistakes which no one had ever made before, and some decided they didn’t give a fuck and put them in or left them out at random just to annoy the bourgeoisie, though you can’t always tell which one is which.  Today it wasn’t apostrophes.   Today I enjoyed the Award Winning restaurant in Waterloo Road where you can eat Al a carte and the Thai take away advertising a large portion for £4.50 or a student for £4.20.

This is my favourite recent language joke: