ACT Chief Turnip Jon Stanhope has been in the news a bit lately, one of the many reasons is a possible plan to close some schools, and the ABC had a rather interesting article about that [1] yesterday.
The article featured this baffling quote from the Chief Turnip
We cannot continue to sustain a government school system where there are, in the context of the level of expenditure, which we make or investment in education and maintain a school system at that level of under use.
Even if you change a few words it still doesn’t seem to make sense, and as such it is impossible to work out whether or not there is a typo in amongst that. I decided to send a copy of the quote off to the Plain English Campaign [2], and nominate Jon Stanhope for a Foot In Mouth award [3], which is awarded for “a baffling quote by a public figure”.
Shortly after sending an email to the Plain English Campaign, I received a response from Dave Smith. (We previously met Dave on Samuel’s Persiflage #1 [4].) Dave said
This certainly deserves a nomination for the foot-in-mouth award and I will see that the judges get it.
He also went on to say that
The judging for the awards will take place in October. I will let you know if your nomination wins in November.
It will be interesting to see if our Chief Turnip wins this prestigious award or not, it seems like the kind of award he could be very proud of.
Samuel
Comments Disabled To "Chief Turnip’s Incoherent Babbling"
#1 Comment By John B1_B5 On April 20, 2006 @ 12:12 pm
Is there a chief cauliflower ?
#2 Comment By Ed On April 20, 2006 @ 3:00 pm
It’s like he’s started to say something, forgotten what it was, kept trying anyway, and given up in a flurry of random adjectives.
#3 Comment By Samuel On April 21, 2006 @ 1:38 am
Not that I’m aware of John.
Ed, it reminds me of a moment on Yes Minister where Jim Hacker MP is having a hard time explain the futility of having a hospital filled with administrative staff, but no doctors, nurses or patients, and in the process says “but if we weren’t here we wouldn’t be here”. The main difference being that Mr. Hacker’s comment almost made sense.